Ambrosia Dance Club

This just in! Joe Linden has announced officially that as of tommorow, Wednesday, Emerald Viewers will be blocked from login.Thats correct. No more Emerald viewer. Blocked Banned Banished Kaput just like I predicted! Hasta La Vista baby! You have been terminated.

Here is the official announcement for those of you who don’t read the blogs.

BANNED

As of 10am PT Wednesday, September 8, the Emerald Viewer will be blocked from logging in to Second Life as a result of violations of our Policy on Third Party Viewers. Residents who have been using any version of the Emerald Viewer will need to use a different Viewer to access Second Life. You can download the official Second Life Viewer, developed by Linden Lab, here. Or you can learn more about alternative Viewers, developed by third parties, here. There are several new Viewers listed in the TPV Directory, so there are many alternatives available to you.

We take Residents’ privacy, safety, and security very seriously and will take action to enforce the policies that help protect it. As our CEO, Philip Rosedale, has blogged about, we recently removed the Emerald Viewer from our Third-Party Viewer Directory due to violations of our Policy on Third-Party Viewers.

Since then, we have been in communication with the Emerald development team and have requested several changes in order to remedy violations of our policy, including changes necessary to meet our privacy requirements, and to address GPL license violations. Unfortunately, the team was unable to comply within a stipulated time frame. As a result, we have decided to block logins from the Emerald Viewer in order to protect our Residents. All versions of the Emerald Viewer will be blocked from logging in to Second Life as of tomorrow at 10am. Please be aware that attempting to circumvent our blocking to access Second Life with a banned Viewer is a violation of the Policy on Third-Party Viewers and may result in the loss of one’s account.

And there you have it. The official demise of Emerald. For those of you who demand third party poison there are lots of alternatives available such as Emergence and Phoenix which essentially are clones of Emerald. As for myself I will muddle along with the bug strewn Viewer 2.1. It may totally suck but at least you kind of know who wrote it as opposed to other third party viewers. The Emerald Developers showed that no matter what promises are made its apparent that things can be slipped in to third party software at will. Caveat Emptor.

If you read profiles of people you may run across this line a lot: “I hate Drama, Keep it away from me”. What is this Drama they are talking about that is so abhorrent that they have to issue statements to ward off its evil forces?

Going to the dictionary turns up this definition – “an episode that is turbulent or highly emotional”. Well that certainly sums up a lot of the interaction that is going on in and around the club. Let’s face it, after a person has been in Second Life for a bit and seen and done pretty much everything that can be done what is left for amusement? Some people become content creators and spend their hours buried in Photoshop turning out cartoon underwear. Others find some form of employment to generate funds to satisfy their blood lust for the latest SL fashion. Some join a Roleplay Community like the bisexual kamikaze vampire wombats and become lost in a world which most of the human race cannot relate to. And then there are those who specialize in entertainment through Drama creation.

These shrieking harpies – don’t get me wrong there are plenty of men involved in this as well – can turn even the most trivial encounter into high drama in seconds. They have state of the art drama creation devices like Emerald “Who has a cross hair on my Boyfriend Radar” or an evil titler which they use with deft skill to create an atmosphere of charged tension that they feed off of.

“Hey, stop looking at my boyfriend’s ass you whore”

“Excuse me? I was AFK pulling laundry out of the dryer”

“I will hunt you down across the grid and cut off your bewbies with a rusty butter knife if you keep looking at my boyfriend you slut!”

“Please I just came here to dance and listen to music!”

“And to steal my boyfriend you skanky streetwalker!”

This exchange of course erupts into a full blown dance floor brouhaha that usually results in one or more of the parties beginning their long descent into the Ambrosia Ocean below the club. The drama queen has been entertained. Mission Accomplished.

There was this episode of Star Trek where the crew of the Enterprise and some Klingons were fighting each other for control of the ship. People would be stabbed and then miraculously heal to continue fighting. It turned out that a malevolent entity was aboard the ship that fed off the emotions of evil fighting and had created a situation that could satisfy this need in perpetuity.
Of course, Captain Kirk figured this out and made a truce with the Klingon Commander and they all laughed at the evil alien until it fled into the void of space. Without the drama it had no purpose. See, you can learn a lot about life by watching old episodes of Star Trek!

So, ignore the drama! Hit that mute button. Laugh at it. Just whatever you do, don’t feed it. It has an appetite with no end.

The following is posted from the Emerald Viewer Blog. Apparently the Emerald Viewer will be no more. Read on.

The End
•September 1, 2010 • 73 Comments

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of night we tried to die
This is the end

United we stand and divided we fall. Thus ends the final days of the Emerald Project.

Approximately 10 days ago I and a number of devs came together to reform the Emerald Team in the anxious hope of continuing the most popular TPV in Second Life. The incredible driving passion, flair for innovation, endless energy and camaraderie were all still there. Because of this, I was sure we could make this work.

Alas this was not to be. Linden Lab has made demands of the team that are impossible to meet. Among the demands not listed publicly elsewhere was to publicly release an RC without any ability to load the emkdu or llkdu files. This was do-able. The final demand was to ‘delete’ 3 key members of our team. While making this demand, Linden Lab was quite aware that this was effectively the guillotine to the project.

This is the opportunity for a fork project to develop and create a TPV version of snowstorm, which is what Linden Lab really wants. I am aware of a number of small projects underway now, and I wish them the best, the very best in their endeavors.

For you, the user, what this means is that there will not be any further releases of the Emerald Viewer after today. The existing releases will continue to operate until Linden Lab decides to terminate their access and end Emerald once and for all.

There will be one final version of the Emerald Viewer released here later today; that is, the viewer we’ve been working on for the past six months. It would be a shame to let the efforts of the developers who put so many unpaid hours into this project go to waste.

This virtual world is ever changing and must be, otherwise it will stagnate. This incredible environment will continue.

Arabella Steadham
Communications Manager,
Emerald Project

- Because there was no consensus amongst the developers about whether or not to comply with Linden Lab’s requirement to remove three core developers, Lonely Bluebird offered to leave the Emerald project only if the team voted for this. Rather than wait for any kind of vote, a hostile takeover was attempted by a portion of the Dev Team trying to gain unauthorized access to the emerald servers without knowledge of the others (including me, the server owner).

- the vote eventually took place, with a minority even voting. This few that voted did not all vote in favour of removing Lonely Bluebird. The vote took place after the takeover failed, for forms sake

- Linden Lab has made it abundantly clear and in fact stated quite bluntly that they want Emerald numbers, which at this point in time number around 50% of total Second Life logins. These have been the stats for some months now.

- The primary issue that resulted in the demise of Emerald was the attempted and failed takeover of the project, far in advance of any requirements deadline set by Lindenlab. This hostile takeover was initiated by Jessica Lyon.

Draw your own conclusions. I say its Kaput.