So today I wake up wondering how the meeting between the Emerald Development team and the LL people went. I logged in and made an inquiry and was handed a link to the latest blog entry by Jessica Lyons. In it she gives as much information as she can regarding what's going on between Emerald and LL.
Apparently Emerald Devs were handed a list of requirements they had to meet in order to even be considered for TVPD listing again... but LL said it's gotta be kept hush-hush so for the time being, the Emerald supporters and those who were scared off of Emerald in the previously blogged 'mass paranoia incident' are going to have to wait and hope that everything turns out ok. One thing we were allowed to know is that LL wants the Emerald Devs to stop using the (now infamous) emkdu.dll or llkdu.dll files in their coding.
Side note: emkdu is licensed by Emerald and llkdu is licensed by Linden Labs...so is Linden Labs going to stop using llkdu.dll or is this going to be a 'do as I say and not as I do' thing? hmm... Back to the topic at hand...
As mentioned in Jessica's blog post, kdu is "a closed source image decoding library which provides a significant speed improvement over the open source alternative." I found that particularly helpful for those of us, including myself, that had never even heard of emkdu/llkdu/kdu prior to all of this. Well, the Dev team are going to comply with the hypocritical request, in future releases, possibly (hopefully?) reluctantly because they know it will affect the viewer. It's also mentioned that the intention of the Dev team is to fully comply with the terms that LL has given them, and that they are working hard to come into compliance as quickly as possible.
I was the recipient of a group notice today that made me literally face-palm myself in frustration. It was yet another log tossed on to the 'mass paranoia' fire. As I looked back in the group notices I realized the one prior was even worse... it essentially says that if you value your SL account, you'll delete Emerald and change your password (same garbage story as before, right? read on...) then it goes on to proclaim that people have lost their accounts due to having Emerald viewer (um what? when? where?) then it references the blog post made by Phillip Linden yesterday. Today's notice wasn't much better, 'don't listen to anyone who says it's ok to use any 3rd party viewers!' it shouts (not verbatim, but very close), 'you're giving these people the keys to your account when you log in with their viewer!' (um, LL has that information too, and they can be just as irresponsible with it, for that matter, they have more than just your password) 'They can take all your stuff!'... ok let's stop there. Enough is enough. Anytime you open the internet and put your information in, whether it's as simple as your email address or as important as your credit card number, you're taking the chance and having faith that the company isn't going to misuse your information and for that matter, that it's not a spoofed site. Your IP address isn't as private as you'd like to think it is, there are sites like ipgoat that give you an idea of what's easily obtainable information.
So you get to make grown-up choices now, what will you log into SL with, if you log in at all? I'm still logging in with Emerald. Why? Because I trust that the past transgressions are just that, the past. I have faith that this Dev team will prove themselves to be honorable. I also know that at this moment in time, the Emerald viewer, for me, is far superior to the official SL viewer and it works better on my system. I've downloaded the latest beta, the questionable section of coding in the emkdu.dll has been removed, and I'm back off and running pretty quickly. Make an educated decision for yourself, don't change viewers just because the scare tactics seem convincing, if you're a current Emerald user and you're happy with it, just upgrade to the 'clean version' and continue as usual.
For 1636 versions: http://www.emeraldviewer.net/downloads.shtml
For the latest Beta versions: http://emeraldviewer.net/forum/index.php?topic=4176.msg21413;topicseen#msg21413
(I'm linking to the Emerald Forums for the Beta releases because when the Mac build is ready, I'm assuming that the link will also be posted there, other than that, the links in my last post are still good)
Until the next time.... Krisy
I am glad to hear that you root for positive side of Emerald. I have been looking into the Emerald situation all day to see what was really going on. I am not one of those people that really care what others might say or in other cases might whine about, I was just looking for the facts. It kinda seems like no one really knows what happened in short order though. I had seen the interview with PB with the two memembers of Emerald, and while they were talking about the emkdu and how it had been changed, but not really what had been done to it to change it. I read a separate article about the DDOS attacks and another article about how they had two websites written into the login screen "browser" code(the screen you see with your SL name and password and waht not) to show side by side the traffic Emerald was getting verse another viewer that was a Malicious viewer as more of a gloating event but it was being considering a DDOS attack since it was bogging down the server on the other viewer since a website link was being prompted everytime someone started up the Emerald Viewer Clinet. So yeah I am still kinda confused about what happened to get to the point we are all at today. LOL We know the how, when and what and here, and maybe the way, but it's more of the Huh? part of it. xD
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