Emerald Viewer advantages?

Funny thing is that anytime someone posts on the forums complaining about being hacked they will never answer the question about what viewer they have been using.

That said there are recent cases of ISPs being the ones that drop people into the wrong accounts. I think it happened on facebook where one of the ISPs admitted it was their fault that people logging into their account at facebook were put into someone else's account and vice versa. Anyone recall the episode of that happening with the secondlife.com website? There were reports of this situation.

So not only do you have to put blind faith in all the programmers of viewers and in LL's staff you can't even trust your ISP to not screw you over.

That said the whole situation where ISPs can redirect a person into the wrong account at a website they do not own is rather alarming. It should not be possible. I wonder what sort of rank amateur written US government surveillance software that the Chinese hackers leverage is involved lol.

Tin foil hat time for Ann you say? Oh no I have a reference citation to make your day:

http://www.pittsburghlive.com:8000/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_662566.html

Since that is possible then basically we are all screwed now.

Doesn't that make you really want facebook integration?

No wonder the facebook stoner sez we have no privacy. He should know. He wrote the crap code. *Imagine a college dorm room stoner coder tapping on a keyboard between boilermakers and spliffs mixed with ecstasy and LSD. And psilocybin mushroom sandwiches.

I presume that any hanky panky with their viewer would eventually be detected by someone, so maybe the trust issue probably is a minor one. If it were the only problem I had with Emerald, I might use it, but it's not.

You are afraid of content theft? You should be. But you should not blame Emerald or anyone else who makes viewers (with great wanted and needed features LL intentionally ignores) for it. You should blame Teh Labratory, the guys who know the loopholes better than anyone else. They were reminded of them for years, yet they have not done anything to plug them. Nothing but producing bubbles of hot air and obfuscation about clear facts of negligance

It takes less than a handful of lines of code to change to turn a "legitimate" viewer into a full blown "copybot tool". So everybody can make that and will make it anytime, anywhere, anyhow. LL knows that. You should know it. And it can't be resolved by making a list of "trusted viewers" (remember the handful of code?). It can only be fixed on the core, and LL is in charge to fix their protocols and simulators, they are to be blamed. Not any client developer. Of course they wont, it's better to produce viewer 2.0 with features nobody needs or wants, it's better to talk about RL networking BS, it's better to continue to ignore residents, the easy stuff; rather than fix the problems at the core; the root cause. A great job LL

The only way to prevent people ripping content is through enforcing policy in a strict yet fair and even-handed manner.

But that's crazy talk.

I CAST THEE OUT!!!

Even if I accept that Emerald wasn't tainted by those three thieves, and I don't although it may be true, the reason to be wary of anything that those three people do is because they are known thieves. As I said, it's the characters of those people that causes me to be wary of anything they are, or have been, involved in.

Incidentally, the Emerald developers are not a team. They are individuals who work on their own bits - presumably what each of them fancies doing. One of them posted that here. He actually laughed at the idea of the Emerald developers being a team.

It was posted on the blog not many weeks ago. One person posted as someone else, having found himself in the other person's account. The person who was in the other's account was absolutely straight. He posted to show that it had happened and then logged out. There was a thread about it here. I don't know if the cause was discovered though.

I don't see anyone blaming any viewer producers. The only people being blamed in this thread are the three who helped to develope Emerald, and it's right that blame should point at them.

Have you ever looked at one of the best known opensource projects, namely the linux kernel? it has over a hunderd individual working contributers each one working at their own bit of code most not even talking to eachother.
developers in an opensource project rarely work as a team.

Are they? "Known thieves," I mean.

Earlier you said they'd been involved in making viewers that can rip content (an act which, while deplorable and which can well be a criminal offense -- ripping, I mean, not making the viewer -- is certainly not theft, at least not in the UK), but now you say these people are "known thieves" too.

What do you know them to have stolen? Or, indeed, illegally to have copied? Or do you mean that you don't know, but you have your suspicions, which may or may not be well-founded?

I didn't suggest that it's a bad idea. I mentioned it because it's easy to imagine that the people working on Emerald are a team and couldn't slip something in if they wanted to.

Alright, it's an assumption of mine, based on my thinking that they tested their work while they were working on it, by testing on other people's items, perhaps as well as on their own.

It is easier to use alts in a build box to do this sort of testing than to do it in an uncontrolled environment.

You are perfectly entitled to be leary of anyone who distributed a viewer with dubious capabilities; but to say that those developers actually themselves are thieves just because you *assume* they used the viewer to steal others' content is libelous.
.

They are anonymous, so it can't be libelous. Apart from that, I consider anyone a thief who intentionally makes the equipment specifically so that other people can steal. I do believe they tested for real - on other people stuff.

Yeah, I agree the current Emerald viewer is kosher.

There are a few known Copybot viewers that cloak the SL official viewer as well as Emerald during the login process. So if you're using Emerald, the info shown what avie is using what viewer won't always be 100% correct. In fact you could arrive at a scenario whereby an Emerald user could end up reporting another Emerald user as a Copybotter, because that's what it shows on their Radar. Apart from CryoLife, the Emerald viewer won't have the ability to detect the newer generation of malicious viewers.


*Additional* Agree with Boy Lane's message above.

Like the Firefox browser I guess.

The reason I originally asked about the Emerald Viewer (some 7 or 8 pages ago, wow is this a popular thread!) is because I wanted to go on the OS Grid. Hadn't been there in a long time, and someone told me that though you can still use Hippo Viewer, it is no longer being supported or developed, and that people on the OS Grid are now using Emerald Viewer, and that I should download a copy of that to use for OS Grid.

Any comments? Feedback? (Have I opened a new can of worms?!)

The features I find most useful are temporary uploads, teleport history, windlight presets, having draw distance handy and the "worn" tab in inventory. I used the extra attachment points until I realised most people saw me as wearing my fur stole in a most embarrassing place . Jiggly bewbs were fun for an afternoon but not something I bother with. I really don't like the extra decimal places in the build window. They seem to jump all over the place.

What I like least about Emerald is the amount of paranoia it seems to generate. There's been some of that expressed in this thread, about the dev side, but as well as that, there's the inworld paranoia - all the "somebody's looking at me!" stuff.

Safe enough, I'd have thought. Use a different password, obviously, and don't upload any content you don't want to release full perms. Same goes whatever viewer you use.

In your opinion.

I don't think wanting to wear a ring and hold an object at the same time is an unreasonable desire. And it's not an "abuse of the system" until I'm using at least one more attachment point than the maximum total allowed by the standard viewer.

Go pound sand.

Immy on the " blue dropdowns of death" attack:



Thanks for that, Immy!

(^_^)y

Funny story about that script. The last person to BBOD me was a newb at NCI who accepted a folder with an attachment promising free money if she wears it. She had no idea what she was in for. (._.)

We all quickly ARed her and worked on halting the script. The Linden that arrived had the opportunity to chat with her and get her to detach the thing. I was in IMs with him and got that much info. (^_^)

Since it was an accident, she wasn't ejected, suspended, or formally warned. I proceeded to help her figure out her inventory so that she could delete the attachment so it doesn't come up again. All the while, shielding her from the dozen or so people trying to shun her as a griefer. They were requesting she get banned. They were criticizing me for "siding with her". Mob mentality sunk in strong. (._.)

And... These "Known thieves": Are they as "known" as I am a "Known griefer"? (=_=)

Maybe people would not be as hard on you if they knew they were suspicious because you look like this guy's sister: