Of all the bloody gall...

Okay, so someone was posting in a Phoenix Self Help group chat asking a question, and I responded with a comment that, while not very popular in some circles, is nevertheless absolutely true.

[2013/08/22 15:53]  Gulid Resident: Is there someone that can help me? My avi's body still looks grey even though I am on the v4.4.2 viewer, i did a clean update and everything and yet my avi si grey so idk what to do at this point :/
[2013/08/22 15:53]  Gulid Resident: i mean clean install
[2013/08/22 15:54]  Sophie Katsu: Guild you mean you're on Firestorm?
[2013/08/22 15:54]  Archangel Mortenwold: Might want to check the Firestorm Viewer support group, though I'll tell you right now their only response is likely to go out and buy a new computer.
[2013/08/22 15:54]  Mister Acacia: Guild, this is the Phoenix viewer group. You want the Firestorm group > secondlife:///app/group/3a1be8d4-01f3-bc1a-2703-442f0cc8f2dd/about
[2013/08/22 15:55]  Mister Acacia: Archangel, don't be an idiot.
[2013/08/22 15:55]  Gulid Resident: but mine says phoenix firestorm
[2013/08/22 15:55]  Gulid Resident: i dont know the difference
[2013/08/22 15:56]  Archangel Mortenwold: Who's being an idiot?  That's their response to most issues raised by users.
[2013/08/22 15:56]  Masdison Resident: You don't need a new pc other viewers work
[2013/08/22 15:56]  Mister Acacia: Guild, Phoenix viewer is a V1-based viewer that is now obsolete. Firestorm is made by the same people, it's V2/3 based and is current.
[2013/08/22 15:56]  XLR8RRICK Hudson: Guild I will IM you and help
[2013/08/22 15:57]  Archangel Mortenwold: There's Singularity and there's Cool VL Viewer, which both work well.  As for Phoenix being obsolete, that's true only so long as no one picks up the code and updates it.
[2013/08/22 15:57]  Mister Acacia: That's bullshit Archangel.
[2013/08/22 15:57]  Archangel Mortenwold: Isn't there anyone willing and able to that task?
[2013/08/22 15:57]  Sophie Katsu: why is it bullshit?
[2013/08/22 15:58]  StarlightShining Resident: really Arch - you told such troll rubbish
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Sophie Katsu: Jessica said anyone can have at it if they want to update it
[2013/08/22 15:58]  StarlightShining Resident: sure - go ahead - several have tried
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Mister Acacia: Because the support team does not automatically tell everyone to buy a new pc.
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Masdison Resident: Another thing the ssb has nothing to do with your avatar being gray, your av should look good its all the other av's that are gray
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Archangel Mortenwold: What's this "rubbish" to which you refer?
[2013/08/22 15:58]  Sophie Katsu: has that changed?
[2013/08/22 15:59]  StarlightShining Resident: sophie - go ahead and pick up Phx - many that actually know how to deal woith a viewer have tried and given up
[2013/08/22 15:59]  Sophie Katsu: oh ok i thought you were talking about his other comment
[2013/08/22 15:59]  Sophie Katsu: why are you telling me that?   i'm not a coder
[2013/08/22 16:00]  Sophie Katsu: i just repeated what Jessica said in one of the interviews that i saw on video
[2013/08/22 16:00]  StarlightShining Resident: as you said sophie - anyone can pick it up and take it forward
[2013/08/22 16:02]  Masdison Resident: I still use phoenix at time and its working fine in most sims but if you go to a sim that has the ssb all the av's look totally gray but your av looks good
[2013/08/22 16:03]  Mister Acacia: SSA (was ssb) is on all regions now.

At that point, the moderator blocked my ability to post in group chat.  Here's the screen cap so you can see for yourself.

Now, just to show you how true it is that the typical response to any and all issues with Firestorm really is to go out and buy a brand new computer, here's a screencap lifted right from the Firestorm blog itself.

Wow.  That looks like someone being told to go out and get a new computer, with the ass clown making the reply not even bothering to ask if the person to whom he is replying is even on a PC that uses Windows XP.  My computer runs Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit edition, with the following specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 260 Processor (3214.35 MHz)
Memory: 8192 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6600 Series
Windows Graphics Driver Version: 8.17.0010.1077
OpenGL Version: 4.1.10750 Compatibility Profile Context

And guess what?  Firestorm won't run for you-know-what.  If it doesn't crash on start-up, it does very soon thereafter, and in the interim all I get is blackness with nothing fixing it.  My PC was designed to allow me to run graphics-intensive programs on high settings without breaking a circuit.  Yet the typical response to any and all issues with the badly-programmed Firestorm is "go out and buy a new computer, come into the modern age", as though that and not the crappy programming by the developers is the only thing to blame.  And when this is pointed out, it's met with name-calling, profanity, and censorship.  This is what the Firestorm developers and their merry band of suckups are like, dear readers.  You don't usually see this kind of behavior, this sneering contempt for one's own user base, in a lot of other places.

So yeah, I left that group and have no plans to return.  Now that Server Side Baking has gone grid-wide, I'm using Singularity Viewer full time.  Its building features still aren't quite on the same level as Phoenix, but the developers are a lot more receptive to input than the Firestorm elitists are, so who knows?  It just may end up becoming the premiere viewer for builders.

Seriously?

With a host of bugs and security problems running rampant through their craptastic viewer, forcing many users to roll back to earlier versions, you'd think the lying douchebags who develop Firestorm would be smart enough to do something sane, like, you know, fix the damn bugs instead of denying they are bugs and ordering people to go out and shell out money they don't have for new computers.  But no, now they're seriously considering blocking access to older versions so that the only viewer users can log in on is the last three updates.

Many users can't use the three most recent updates because of insurmountable problems with the viewer code, so they will be effectively blocked from using Firestorm at all should the developers decide to pull this stunt.  Worse is that they are seriously considering blocking access to Phoenix, after a suggestion by one Firestorm user.

According to their own message on the viewer log-in screen on Phoenix, some 28,000 SL users still use Phoenix (I'm one of them).  If Jessica Lyin' and her merry band of assholes do decide to block Phoenix, it would mean further alienating, literally, tens of thousands of people.

This obviously is not sitting well with blog readers:

Honestly, I have never seen this kind of behavior before by any organization or business that wanted to remain open.  Do you think McDonald's got to be the top burger chain by ordering its customers to go out and spend money they don't have just to be able to make use of their product, lying to said customers, and preventing them from gaining access to their restaurants?  Hell no, not when the competition is so fierce.  It would be stupid and suicidal for them as a business.  Firestorm may not be demanding that people pay money for the "privilege" of using their viewer, but just as with any business, they are producing a product — a defective one at that — and if they want people to use that product, they had better grow up and start going to work fixing their many mistakes.

UPDATE: 15 AUGUST, 2013:

Upon logging in this afternoon, I was hit with the following window in Phoenix:

What this means exactly is yet to be known, but I will keep you updated as information comes in.

Jessica Lyin' Whines, Lies

Jessica Lyin' makes another lie-filled rant on her blog attacking readers while whining about nasty comments made on said blog.  The deceptions are numerous, but here are the ones that are, in my humble opinion, the most laughable.

I have never taken the liberty of speaking my own personal opinion on this blog as it is not a place for personal opinions. It is a place for political correctness, fairness and unbiased, unemotional facts. However, today I’ve decided to make an exception because I feel some opinion is called for at this point in time.

This is a flat out lie right in the very first paragraph.

Here's an example of her "speaking" her own personal opinion:

Not only is this a major update with loads of new features, as well as performance and stability improvements, but it is also a necessary upgrade for you if you want to be able to render avatars correctly when Linden Lab throws the switch for Server Side Baking (appearance). Because all Firestorm users will need to upgrade to this release, we have put it through unprecedented development and testing with no fewer than three levels of Quality Assurance: internal testing, Beta testing and our new Preview Group testing. We truly hope and expect this to be the best release we have ever issued. Grab the downloads from our Downloads page and enjoy!

It is highly questionable as to whether the "new features" are actually improvements, just as it is mere opinion that there are stability and performance improvements.  Given the sheer number of complaints about reduced stability and lower performance that has always plagued Firestorm, Lyon's remarks are nothing more than her own dishonest opinion.

It is also a flat out lie that Linden Lab will somehow throw some mythical switch and block access to "old" viewers.  It is true that viewers that are no longer maintained will experience an increasing number of bugs as Linden Lab introduces new code that the discontinued viewers aren't programmed to handle, leading eventually to viewers that will no longer be usable, but it is simply an outright falsehood to claim that Linden Lab will deliberately block people from logging in on "old" viewers.  The only significant instance I can recall when this actually happened was when the Lab shut down Emerald Viewer, and that really only because the head programmer inserted malicious code into it which he then used to launch a denial of service attack.

It is, again, a matter of opinion that Firestorm users "need" to get the latest viewer.  They may want to, but considering all the alternative viewers available, "need" is a pretty strong word to use.  Next:

Anyone reading the comments on our blog posts since the release of 4.4.0 would almost be lead to believe we were actually trying to ruin SL by releasing a viewer with bugs. They might even be lead to believe we intentionally put the bugs there.

Okay, this isn't a lie per se, but it is a serious grammatical error.  The past tense spelling of 'lead', as in to lead a horse to water, is 'led'.  By using the present tense spelling, it confuses the reader as to what the hell she's blathering about.  If nothing else, it exposes her poor communication skills.  One might think that Lyon and Co. are out to ruin SL for their user base, but I've never seen anyone make that accusation.  Ruining SL for the Firestorm user base is almost certainly an unintended consequence, but it is hardly the driving motivation behind Firestorm and as far as I am aware, no one has actually made any such accusations to the contrary.  Jessica Lyin' makes up more bullshit.

To those of you who have non-constructively complained just for the sake of complaining, flamed us, trolled us, attacked us, and criticized us publicly as if we were trying to release a broken viewer to ruin everyone’s SL experience…. Kindly walk away from your keyboard. Thanks. Your negativity does not help anyone and only makes it harder for us to remain motivated in spending countless hours of our spare time trying to improve your user experience.

This is both dishonest and arrogant in the extreme.  It's bad enough to falsely claim that people are making assumptions about Lyon's motivations that they haven't actually made.  It's a whole other level of batshit crazy to arrogantly order people not to use their computers at all just because their complaints about the instability and poor performance of Firestorm hurt her feelings.  Well, Jessica, maybe if you and your elitist clique of chronic bullshitters focused less on attacking any and all user complaints and actually devoted time to fixing the issues, you'd not get nearly as many complaints.  You'd also get a lot less grief if you pull the bug out of your ass and leave it out.  You and your team of amateurs aren't ha;f as clever or talented as you think you are.  THAT is the reason you keep getting so many complaints.  Your dismissive replies and arrogant commands to the very people whose SL experience you claim you want to improve are what attracts all the negativity you despise.  In short, hypocrite, a lot less negativitity from you will yield a lot less negativity from others.

Here's another bit that had me chuckling:

There are proper channels for support requests and blog comments is absolutely not one of them.

I'd like to know why people don't feel that they can use the "proper channels".  is it possible — indeed likely — that using the "proper channels" doesn't work because when people do use them their issues are ignored or dismissed?  The primary responses to any and all issues had by Firestorm users are to "get a better computer", and "we don't have any problems, so it must be your computer that's the problem", and similar condescending dismissals.  With that kind of response to legitimate issues of stability and performance, it's no wonder people feel they can't get any other response from Lyon or her lackeys except to post in the blog.

We’ve been accused of not caring and/or not trying to deliver to you a good product. This team works damn hard to make every new version of Firestorm better than the last.

You don't care, and obviously you're not trying hard enough because each new version carries with it more bugs than a roach motel.  Like I said, you're not half as clever or talented as you think you are.  Here's a suggestion you'll dismiss condescendingly: grow the hell up and go get some help from people who know how to program, like Henri Beauchamp and Siana Gearz.  At this point, having alienated so many truly talented programmers, I doubt they'll do it, but you never know unless you swallow your pride and try.  Then again, you could simply fork their code and insert it into Firestorm, like you did Henri's mesh code for Phoenix Viewer, but you don't have the programming know-how to make it work as well has he can.  Time to bite the bullet and start facing some unpleasant truths, bitch.

We’ve been accused of not testing enough prior to release.

This might be true — the making of the accusation, that is.  And the accusation is probably accurate.  It's pretty obvious that not enough testing went into the new releases because they were rolled out riddled with bugs ranging from black screens to constant crashes on startup to ridiculously low frame rates.  If you spent more time testing and less time patting yourselves on the back, and devoted more time to working out all the bugs before release instead of insulting your user base every time they point out the bugs in Firestorm, you'd have a lot less stress to deal with.

While the development of 4.4.0 was somewhat rushed on account that we had to get the LL Server Side Baking code out into a release, we were also extra diligent in testing everything to the best of our ability. knowing that everyone would need to be on this release when LL flips the switch for SSB, IT HAD TO BE GOOD. So I even created an additional level of testing with our preview group, re-purposing it as a third tier of QA with roughly 1700 users to run the release builds prior to officially releasing it. And they tested it… and it took several different release builds before we felt we had it right… before the consensus among our internal development and support tests, our beta testers and preview group testers said “This is ready for release”. Well perhaps it wasn’t ready, and as the leader of this project that blame should lie squarely on my shoulders not those of our developers, support personnel or quality assurance testers.

Again, it is a lie that Linden Lab is "flipping a switch" on anything.  Linden lab is at this very moment slowly implementing Server Side Baking throughout the grid.  This is done by writing new code into its default viewer and making changes to the code underlying Second Life itself, doing test servers to make sure it's ready before any gridwide release.  The whole reason it took mesh so long to be released was because the Lab needed to be sure it worked on enough servers before they could roll it out to the rest of the grid.  There has been no date set in stone for when Server Side Baking will make its official debut.

Obviously Lyin' Lyon has no idea how SL or computer programming actually works, and just makes shit up to tell people so she can look like she knows what she's saying, or she does know and is deliberately deceiving people for whatever reason.  I'm gonna go with the former hypothesis on this one.  She's not smart enough to engage in a deliberate campaign of deception, and there's no reason to do so anyway.  So chances are she's just dense and is pulling stuff out of her ass so people don't think she's an even bigger idiot than she's exposed herself to be.

It is nice, though, to see her take some responsibility for rushing a release out before it was ready.  Now, here's where she exposes her earlier lie about having done thorough testing:

For those of you disappointed with 4.4.0, so am I. Even though it seems the vast majority had few problems we did release with some significant bugs. None of which I might add, showed up significantly in our testing. Inventory not loading, Textures not rezzing, Black rectangles in snapshots, Prims not showing up, low performance are some of the problems that either did not show up in our testing or was missed but which did end up existing in the release.

First you said you went through all this testing to make sure there were as few bugs as possible.  But right here you're acknowledging a slew of serious bugs that have a big effect on the majority of users (at least the ones who have been brave enough to complain).  If you had actually done as much testing as you claim, then why did so many bugs get past your team?  You admittedly rushed out a viewer you knew wasn't ready, but now you claim you did thorough testing before releasing the viewer you acknowledged wasn't ready for prime time.  Make up your mind, liar.  You can't have it both ways.

LOLing All Over the Place

Remember how in my last post on the topic of craptacular Firestorm Viewer, I reported that development team head Jessica Lyin' claimed that even though they have a workable release, her team wasn't going to release it until after Linden Lab officially rolls out Server Side Baking?  Well, it looks like she got tired of fielding complaints about having to wait an indeterminate time for the next release because she went ahead and released it anyway...and no surprises, the new release is as full of bugs as ever.

Users are reporting the usual crashing-on-startup, voice not working, and now the entire viewer screen going black with no way of resolving the problem.  After replying to a few complaints with links to her never-responsive JIRA, Lyin' finally gave up on answering questions about the bugs and told everyone to just file a JIRA instead of posting their problems in the blog.

Now, this comes after Jessica Lyin' claimed the testing went through no fewer than three phases before release.  Somehow I doubt all that much testing was done.

Rubbing salt in the wound: lying and saying they've worked hard to make Firestorm look like Phoenix as much as possible, when they obviously haven't, and telling people to go use some other third party viewer.

Jessica Lyin' to Firestorm users: Don't Expect Working Update Any Time Soon

Well, at least she's not springing any big surprises on anyone.  Jessica Lyin' posted an entry on her blog April 5th stating flat out that there will be no usable update to Firestorm any time soon.  With server side baking coming at some undisclosed date in the near or not-so-near future, disgruntled users asking questions but receiving no honest or real answers, and as usual, Ms. Lyin' is, well, lying.

On the one hand, she says that the "coming Firestorm release DOES support Server Side Baking."  Then she turns around and says that she and her team of suckups won't release the new viewer now "[b]ecause Linden Lab has not released their viewer with Server Side Baking yet. And if we release Firestorm now, and then LL realizes there needs to be more code changes for Server Side Baking that will affect both their viewer and ours, then we will have to do yet another release immediately after."

Okay, so where, you might be asking, is the lie?  In the first sentence of the blog entry, Lyin' says flat out "that the release is quickly approaching."  Define "quickly."  If we go by the timeline Linden Lab has traditionally adopted, "quickly" could be six months or a year from now, or two years from now, or maybe never.  That's not what any reasonable person would call "quick".

So basically, Jessica Lyin' is telling Firestorm users that although the next update will be ready to roll out very soon, if not now, they're going to wait to release it until Linden Lab officially rolls out Server Side Baking, which could be a while in coming.

Commenter Bear Silvershade rightly called B.S. on this one, stating:

I had to think about responding to this thread, because invariably, the small number of people who voice an opposing view get bashed or labelled a troll. Sadly, that is likely to happen to me, but I am so frustrated.
So let me see if I have this right. You are not releasing a version of Firestorm you have, that you feel is stable, and would likely include the long awaited snapshot tiling fix, because… you don’t think it would be cool to have to release an update a few days to a few weeks after this one?
I admit I am not a loyal firestorm user. Though I think it is one of the best viewers available, the infrequency of updates to take advantage of newer code or newer features has always been a concern. That came to a head in December when the tiling bug fix came out. Since one of my main activities in SL is making images, that was a major fix, and one that many others had been waiting for as well.
That’s when Firestorm lost me completely. It’s now four months without that fix being implemented. The absurdity of including William Weaver’s phototools to make this an ideal viewer for image makers, even starting a flickr group to show off images made with it, but not getting out the tiling fix as soon as possible still has me shaking my head.
Other viewers, including LL, release regularly. Are you saying that you can’t even come close to living up to that standard?
More annoying, it appears from one blogger’s comments that there was a stable beta available some weeks ago, apparently only available to a select few.
Now we have to keep waiting, even though you have something you feel is releasable? I am sure I am not alone in being willing to update my viewer a few days after a release. It happens with all kinds of software.
Now, before the putdowns start, you really want users avoiding posting for fear of retaliation or otherwise being shut down or disregarded? Or would you rather have an inclusive group where users feel like they are contributing and their concerns are honestly being listened to.
I will likely try the new viewer when it comes out, hoping that it lives up to the wait, though I have some concern that it won’t.
But that’s as may be. The fact is, in the end, there are other viewers out there, including the Lab’s, that do offer regular updates, so problems are dealt with and new features/fixes are available.
Jessica, I applaud your and the team’s commitment to quality. But it’s time to leave this no beta model/favoured few model behind and show a little more respect for your user base.

Naturally, Lyin' went on the attack with her patented brand of lies combined with condescension and dismissal.  Bear replied:

Perhaps you could try not trying to pack so many changes into each release? You will always be chasing the next feature, and if you are waiting till a whole bunch is perfect, well this is the result, that needed working features aren’t released, because you are waiting on something else.
As to regular releases, well, I am not worried about how popular the viewer is. Exodus, like Zen, appears to have ceased development, though while they were developing, offered nightly builds. Singularity, when the tiling fix and others features/patches came out, got a baseline viewer out that they plan to build on, in a reasonable time frame.
But Dolphin releases regularly, usually every two weeks or so. Niran, while I think it goes too far wit UI changes, also releases regularly.
But as to “irresponsibly releasing a build” that’s what a system of development and beta releases are for… let us decide, instead of adopting this paternalistic and, frankly, somewhat condescending attitude. If I am trying a LL dev build, as I often do, and it has a problem, I don’t get angry at them, it was my choice. I’ve never got to report a bug, since others usually find them before me.
Though you say you are not dismissing my concerns, frankly, that is exactly what you are saying in your final sentence. “We have reasons, you just don’t understand” is how that comes across to me.
Maybe if I say it more clearly.
1) It is disrespectful of your larger user base to release betas to a special few so they can enjoy the benefits (and, yes take the risks)
2) It is a poor model that ends up with four months between releases, leaving users without fixes that are ready to go.
3) Incremental releases allow us to decide what level of chance we are willing to take.
4) Contrary to your comments, many viewers, including LL and TPVs, release more regularly, getting improvements into the stream as they are available.

More lies, condescension, and dismissal from Jessica Lyin', followed by a disheartened final response from Bear.  Again, no big surprise there.  The baseline response from Ms. Lyin' and her merry band of suckups is always to go on the attack, dismiss any and all criticisms no matter how legitimate, and engage in rampant dishonesty.

User Sorrow made the following observation:

Only issue is they generally don’t screw up either. Every CoolVL weekly patch has worked flawlessly, every Singularity Alpha build aren’t problematic, same as Nirans, etc.
Only up to date released problematic and buggy viewer is Firestorm.
With firestorm updates being so slow, by the time this next version is released, it will already fallen 1-2 months behind the Official, CoolVL, Singularity Alpha, etc as the other viewers are already far ahead in development with the next batch of LL Patches, code, and new features..
It’s almost like, instead of thinking ahead like other 3rd party developers and working with LL developmental code and beginning to code and enact their own version of the LL future development, instead you wait until the official LL viewer to implement it, then barely start working on it, while on the other hand, the other 3rd party viewers have already released their own updates as they already completed development of the new features.
Sorta like this Server Side baking.. it’s been talked about for months and months, implemented on the developmental viewer then beta viewer for months as well, however it doesn’t seem like the FS team bothered* to begin working on it during this time (like the other developers), instead waited all the way when LL was ready to roll it out on the official viewer, thus months behind everyone else.
“viewers with such a small user base can afford to screw up where we cannot.”
you should follow CoolVL’s or Singularity’s model, have weekly or bi-weekly (even monthly would be better than nothing) releases labeled as “Alpha (Use At Your Own Risk)” no matter how small the patch, having regular releases, even if they are alpha or beta versions, this will more likely keep everyone satisfied, plus help your team locate and identify bugs if you have an alpha version JIRA rather than previously where the bugs end up being located within the official major releases (much better idea than this “Preview Idea” as a few days probably isn’t enough to locate all problems in a viewer.

I put the key parts in bold-type. *: I corrected a grammatical error so the sentence conveys the writer's meaning.  Anyway, Sorrow makes a very good point: Henri Beauchamp and Siana Gearz update their viewers much more frequently than Jessica Lyin's team does, and their crews are smaller.  They do, however, have the benefit of being more talented programmers, and they stay ahead on the updates.  Lyin' is basically dismissing these and other TPV developers as being too small and insignificant to emulate so as to better serve her users.  Do you feel insulted by that attitude?  I am, and I don't even use Firestorm.

So there you have it.  Jessica Lyin' has what she claims (probably falsely, as usual) is a workable update to her crappy viewer, but won't release it until after Linden Lab rolls out Server Side Baking, which means it could be any time between now and never.

Oh well.

By the way, for any of you programming wizards out there who might be interested, I managed to download the code for Phoenix Viewer (not Firestorm), so that it can be updated and resurrected under a different title.  I have no programming skills, but I can pass on the files for you to work with.  What you do with them is up to you.  Send me an e-mail or reply in the comments to let me know if you're interested and I'll find a way to share the files with you.

Problems with Server Side Baking

Here are some links regarding the in-development server-side-baking feature being prepared for gridwide use by Linden Lab:

http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/sl-projects-week-8-3-viewer-materials-and-ssb-load-test/

http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/playing-with-ssb-and-viewers-quick-test/

http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/viewer-round-up-summary-week-8/

As expected, there are some issues with the feature, but many Third Party Viewer (TPV) developers seem to be getting their viewers up to speed, most notably Singularity and Cool VL Viewer.

Not surprisingly, the Firestorm elitists and liars are having a tougher time getting their resource-hogging, crashtastic, low-frame-rate to work, and are claiming that it will likely be some time before a stable version that can handle Serve Side Baking will be released -- so naturally, the Firestorm clowns will release a version of the viewer that has SSB before they can even get it working properly with Linden Lab's code.  "Genius" at its finest.

Also not surprising is that some commenters aren't buying the lies Jessica Lyin' and her merry gang of suckups are telling.  "Joseph" writes:

It really does not surprise me at all that Firestorm is in such a terrible state right now. And at the meeting it sure had a tone and implied like so many problems are caused by LL’s code even though Jessica did make sure to state that many problems come from Firestorm itself. The LL 3.4.5 is a GREAT viewer and certainly isn’t some mess of buggy code like it sounds like the Firestorm devs make it out to be. If any Firestorm user or any of the Firestorm devs truely used the LL 3.4.5 viewer for a decent amount of time they would see that not only does it perform a hell of a lot better than Firestorm it has a hell of a lot less bugs. Firestorm is a crappy clunky mess in comparison. All things considered the LL 3.4.5 viewer is an awesome viewer. The problems Firestorm is having right now is because instead of just adding features and UI improvements over the past couple of years to the LL viewer, they have delved and messed with so much of the internals of the program itself thinking they can do everything better than the lab. If one looks at the commits to the code since the beginning of Firestorm over two years ago, the developers have mucked and messed with so much more of the code than just adding features and UI changes. Instead of just letting LL deal with the internals of the program they have gone in and tinkered and messed with so much of the guts of the program itself and this is why now after merging it is such a terrible mess. If the Firestorm devs had a minimalistic approach to what they changed in the code other than UI improvements and adding features, the current internal version wouldnt be the unstable horrendous god awful mess it is now. Anyone can go to their mercurial repository and see exactly what they do to their source code, and see hundreds if not thousands of commits since the beginning of the project of them making changes to the core engine of the program so to speak and that is why they are in the mess they are in today. Often times Phoenix was described as a monstrous unmaintainable collection of hacks held together by bail wire, spit, duct tape etc…and the irony is that now a days that is exactly what Firestorm has become.

As evidenced from this and other comments, not everyone believes what Ms. Lyin' has to say, and for good reason -- people know from actually trying to use Firestorm that it's an unworkable mess of code, the very same critiques used against Phoenix, which actually works on more people's computers and which has now been abandoned by the developers.

As for the Server Side Baking issues, it's clear that the official roll-out may not come quite as soon as previously stated by Linden Lab or others.  It'll be implemented across the grid sooner or later, but it seems clear that the TPVs most likely to have stable viewers that have SSB won't include Firestorm.

End of an Era for Phoenix Users

As many of you already know, the Firestorm snobs have officially abandoned their only viable SL viewer in favor of an unusable, bug-riddled, resource-hogging piece of software junk.  The decision to kill Phoenix Viewer was always that of its developers, and now they've pretty much done it.  People can still log on to Second Life using Phoenix, but since it's no longer being updated features will continue to break as Linden Lab implements new code that is incompatible with Phoenix.

And it's a real shame, too.  Phoenix has a user interface that is far superior to Firestorm, is intuitive, and doesn't force you to spend countless hours trying to figure it out.  What's more, Phoenix always had and will always have a higher frame rate, more stability, and use fewer computer resources, than Firestorm.  Abandoning it might just bite the Firestorm snobs in the arse as people move on to Singularity and Cool VL Viewer.

Well, I guess it's time for me to move on to Singularity full time.  I won't be able to do as much building on that viewer, since its abilities to position prims aren't as precise as Phoenix, but I'll keep on the developers to get that problem addressed.

Jessica Lyon Proclaims Her Utter Contempt for Phoenix Users

In an insulting blog post that can basically be summed up as, "Here's a half-assed attempt at incorporating mesh into Phoenix, you whiners!  Now go install Firestorm already because we're through giving our users what they want!", Phoenix development team leader Jessica Lyon just alienated another chunk of what is probably going to be a rapidly dwindling user base.

Phoenix 1185 was, is and will always be our most stable release ever. Please do not expect this phoenix viewer with mesh to be as stable, it simply is not. If it has stability issues it's because it is now a hybrid of two different code bases. The bottom line is that a V1 viewer with a lot of V2 code hacked into the render engine is not going to give you stability as you've come to expect it from this project. Mesh was NOT designed to work with V1 code. We deliver you this viewer on an AS-IS basis.

Wow, that was unnecessarily harsh.  As if that wasn't bad enough, Lyon goes on to send a volley of hostility toward RLV users.

RLVa has not been updated in this Phoenix viewer release. This was my decision, not that of Kitty Barnett. Although I said some time back we would update RLVa in Phoenix it became obvious that the work/time commitment involved in doing so was simply not reasonable or responsible. Kitty is a very valuable asset to this team and I refuse to take her away from the ground breaking work she does in Firestorm and v2/v3 to put a large time commitment into a dying viewer code base. She is worth far more than that. If you want updated RLVa I would suggest using the Firestorm Viewer or Kitty's own Viewer Catznip. I offer you my sincerest apologies for going back on my word in regards to RLVa update in Phoenix, however I believe it was the right decision.

And now the condiment on this shit sandwich:

Please don't complain if this release doesn't work perfectly. If you find the viewer to be unusable you can return to our 1185 version without mesh or switch to the Firestorm Viewer. Complaints about the stability and usability of this release will largely go unheard, we did not modify the mesh code to work in V1 and will only spend limited time trying to fix issues resulting from it. Complaints about this project removing focus on Phoenix Viewer should go to me at [e-mail witheld by me — A.M.] .

Now, I get that customer support isn't something elitist tech heads are known far and wide for.  But even this lunatic ought to have sense enough to recognize that she's just invited a flood of angry e-mails with this.  How can a person spend an entire entry insulting and scolding her own user base and then be stupid enough to invite even more scorn than she's brought upon herself?  And her finishing move:

Phoenix Viewer is becoming harder for us to provide support for at an ever increasing rate. Almost all our support team members are using Firestorm (by choice) as their full time viewer, and being that Firestorm is now our default viewer this should be expected. Support for this release and the phoenix viewer in general will be far more limited this point on. Support will continue to try to help you but in many situations may be unable to do so. Please do not get angry at them if they are unable to provide help for you. Also, please remember... Our support team is not required to help you, they do so on their own accord because they want to.

In summation, "Suck it, Phoenix Viewer users!"

Now, I could go on to psychoanalyze Jessica Lyon's unhinged entry.  I could tell you that it is indicative of a spoiled little child who can't for the life of her understand why her backhanded attitude and lame insults toward her own user base aren't garnering her the respect and unbelievable oral sex she probably expected in return.  I could tell you that Lyon's attitude reminds me a lot of the Democrat Party of today, which continually insults its voter base while bending over backwards to placate the far right GOP that will still never respond with anything other than total political warfare with the ultimate goal of forever annihilating the Dems (hence my becoming a member of the Green Party in RL) — the only thing doing the opposite of what your base wants and then insulting said base accomplishes is to drive said base to go with another party, and that's always going to be true whether it's a political party or, in this case, a third party Second Life viewer.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm glad that the Phoenix development team finally decided to get around to producing a mesh-capable version of Phoenix, which always has been and always will be far superior to V2-V3-Firestorm.  But the fact is that as much as the Firestorm viewer itself is responsible for perceived negativity toward Jessica Lyon and her fellow clowns, so much more responsible is the shameful, over-hostile, elitist attitudes of the whole lot of them.  This is why alternate viewers such as Singularity, Cool VL, Rainbow, and other V1-based viewers will eventually outstrip Firestorm and the horrible viewers it's cloned from.

Phoenix Developers Release Official Firestorm Viewer to Mixed Reviews

So the official release of Firestorm is now available for download.  Many SL users, particularly those who never waste an opportunity to gush over Viewer 2 and Viewer 3 or dis Viewer 1, are singing its praises.  Unfortunately, many users are still experiencing the usual round of glitches and user unfriendliness.  Some criticisms include:

"hi hi just one question for you.... WHERE ARE MY GROUPS & FRIENDS ?"

"I'm having problems with the new version of firestorm. I can't rez and I have cleared cache, relogged. rebake and it's still not working. I've done this a dozen of times and i'm still a red cloud. Can anyone help me?"

 "I just downloaded it and logged in and don't like it. I'm a red cloud and can't get that to change, can't seem to get the 'advanced' tab, can't find anything... don't like everything spread out along the bottom and top, I'm a builder and no textures are rezzing... I'm using a new laptop with Windows 7. a An inworld friend said I could make it be more like Phoenix, which I do like, and there is a video to watch to do that. I'll try that... otherwise, I won't use it :( "

"Can it be that mesh is still summat, ummm, alpha-ish? How these releases could pass QA and get rolled out is over my head. I’ve been playing around with mesh-clothes on both versions and had a lot of issues with clothes not fully rezzing or not rezzing at all. I hear from others who are using the current releases that they only see (or rather don’t) my alphas but not my mesh attachments. I've tweaked several graphics settings, cleared cache, did clean installs -- but overall to no much avail. The issues persist. Given that mesh is one of the key features, or rather _the_ key feature, of V3-based viewers, this is simply absolutely intolerable from a plain player’s point of view. I must confess that I consider this not even beta-stage behaviour. It’s a clear show-stopper in my opinion. I’m well aware that this is very likely an issue which has to be addressed by Linden Lab, but all the same… And no, I didn’t test this against the current Linden viewer. I don’t want to climb up the wall and gnaw my way through the ceiling."

"On to day 3 of trying to get a working version of this viewer. Kinda hard to get anything done when this pile of code keeps telling me i belong to zero groups. friends list empty of names. This is getting more frustrating than making hair"

"Hi having issue with the latest firestorm viewer...ok so basically i did a complete clean reinstall and it works magically for about 10 mins then i spontaneously crash....i really dont know why i've tried lower my graphics reinstalling...i've tried the lesser graphic version but i'm still having these issue's as i use my partners alienware aurora to run SL i dont feel like its my p.c's fault ...any theories?"

 "did anyone else crash upon initial running of Firestorm.. or simply put, sim crashed? or is it just coincidence that i logged into a sim that crashed as firestorm began to load the world?"

"I've never heard of a sim crashing because someone logged in with a particular viewer. I'd have to guess it was an annoying coincidence. I've been getting errors about something called the LLAppViewer. I've looked at the Jira and apparently there are at least two others with the same issue. I'm starting to think that the latest version of FS wasn't quite as ready for prime time as they thought. On the other hand, anything with LL in the name makes me wonder if it's an SL issue and has nothing to do with FS. Actually, I do like FS.... when it runs. Sometimes it will run for hours with no problem and other times it crashes every few minutes for no apparent reason. Maybe I was wearing the wrong color socks."

"It is a lot better than previous versions of Firestorm. I simply hate though that you are so careless with space. Take the "People" window for instance: - First an almost empty line with only a minimize button on it. - Then a HUGE almost empty line with the word "People" on it and another 2 small buttons (geee.. that couldn't be all on 1 small line)? - Then another line where I can filter people. I don't need it but.. IF you want to use, at least place the options button next to it so you can ditch another row of pixels - then 4 tabs that are hardly interesting. "Nearby" is the only one ever used by me. the "Friends-tab" is already in conversations / contacts. Same with the "Group-tab". "Recent" might or might not be useful. So far I hear nobody who ever uses it... so ditch it? - Then you have a seperate button to add friends next to options. rightclicking on a name and then adding a friend is much more intuitive.. so get rid of that button? - Then there is a yet another row with "Profile", "IM", "Call" and "Share". Again... those things you can all reach by rightclicking on a username. That is much more intuitive and you can save another unnecessary line. This is just one window that has it... but litteleraly all windows have silly almost empty space in them or totally unnecessary options. I will not go back to Phoenix because I realise the technology is obsolete. On the other hand.. you have a very very long way to go till Firestorm has the compact and easy to use feel that Phoenix has."

That's pretty much the same set of problems people have been having with V2 and V3 since their initial release, and now on the official, non-beta release of Firestorm.  "Cindy" writes:

The bottom status / menu bar is still covered by windows, still no text labels, inventory / outfit management is still split over 43487565 different windows with different functionality / look and feel instead of 1,IM notifications are still in the bottom right and get covered up and missed, and the bottom chat entry is still on the same line as the buttons instead of its own line that pops up above the button bar as needed.

In general, windows still have too much crap in them filling my screen with stuff I don't need to see and reducing my view of the world.

So, it's better than the old firestorm but still contains the all the crap I didn't like about V2. You have added SOME v1 appearance, but all the badness of V2 is still there all over the place.

...

 Still no script pre-processor. OK, that makes Firestorm useless for scripting now as I was using that feature extensively, and once you have used it, ALL your scripts now NEED to use it if you want to edit them. Delete from hard disk.

...

I've been pushing to get the issues I've listed addressed since the first pre-release of FS. I must say that I'm very very disappointed that all the issues I created jira entries for are still problems in the "final" release. These are "core" to me and many others. My tone is based on the frustration of seeing some of our most critical concerns being ignored.

So what does FS give me that I can't get in other viewers? In other words, what is better about FS? Considering Mesh is in several v1 viewers so far it comes down to one, ONE little thing. Mulitiple clothing layers (such as wearing 3 shirts at once.) That's it. Why would I switch?

I was told by many many people to basically "shut up, it's still a beta, they will fix it!" Well, here we are, it's not not a beta anymore and still has some of the worst usability flaws ever seen in a modern software product.

I've been told that V1 viewers are a dead end, ancient technology, obsolete. Nobody has proven that however because it's not true. There is NOTHING that is currently in a V2/V3 viewer that can't be ported back. And guess what? Anything useful IS being ported back. If not already done, it's in progress.

I've been told that it's harder to make V1 viewers with V2 features than V2 viewers with a V1 GUI. Well, I have to point out that FS has been in development for 18 months by a team and is still lacking basic V1 GUI simplicity and usability, and that Mesh was ported to V1 viewers in 6 months by one guy. Ain't the truth a bitch?

As for Mesh, agreed it's not ready. Not at all, especially for clothing due to the lack of a parametric deformer (the ability for Mesh clothes to be re-sized or automatically sized to actually fit your avatar.) In-world objects though it's pretty cool, but as I can get it in Singularity or some of the other V1 viewers, I have no need to perform self-flagellation and use FS to see it.

According to the most recently available statistics from LL, more than 50% of the users still use non-mesh viewers so it's a little loony to wear mesh hair / clothing as you look like you are totally naked wearing a box or sphere on you to the majority. Best to wait until Mesh viewer adoption has reached critical mass (>90% of users.)

...

I've been hearing that opinion that V1 viewers will cease working as LL turns off services being repeated over and over since 2.0 first came out.

Let's set the record straight. First and foremost, while LL initially indicated that some back end services may be retired, they have since backed down on most of that retirement such as the NON-web profiles.

But here is the kicker - any viewer that is still maintained will continue to work. Why? Very simple. Any V1-only protocol that is retired will simply be replaced with the V2 version as needed - just as Mesh was ported over. We will still happily use the far superior V1 interface as more V2 features and protocols are pulled in. That's it. That's the whole secret that the Firestorm team and it's cheerleaders don't want you to know.

The Phoenix/FS team has declared that the next Phoenix will be the last. Don't let them fool you - after all, the Phoenix rises from the ashes, right? Isn't that what the name is all about? It's open source. I'm sure it will be forked and maintained by avid fans. I know several people who are holding off doing any work on it until the final version is stabilized Even if Phoenix doesn't in itself get picked up, other V1 viewer projects regularly are picking up ideas and code to integrate back in to their alternatives.

In my not-so-humble opinion, Phoenix is still far and above the feature king. It's the most usable and user friendly viewer available, bar none. It is suffering a bit from performance issues however - Singularity has it beat hands down there, but that should get resolved with the Mesh back-end.

 Even people who enjoyed the beta version are having problems with the official release.

 I loved the Beta. The Beta crashed sometimes, but it worked pretty well.

Now the new one is remarkably slower. It still doesn't keep settings, such as window positions. But now it doesnt even keep my graphic settings. I was hoping to get a fixed version, but now it turns out to be worse.

I didnt check out the mesh upload capabilities. But im not sure if I can trust them yet.

I'm not using Phoenix anymore, but I won't be using this version of Firestorm either. I'll just wait for a version where the show stoppers are fixed, because they are really annoying.

 And that about sums it up: Firestorm still isn't ready for official release.  I'm beginning to wonder if it'll ever be.

Viewer Snobbery

The latest gripe fest on the Phoenix Viewer blog demonstrates just how out of touch the development team is with reality.  Now, don't get me wrong; I prefer Phoenix, which is still much more stable than, say Singularity, even though I believe Singularity will eventually supplant Phoenix as that development team ceases to update their viewer.  But the attitude coming from Jessica Lyon and her supporters is downright puzzling, not to mention irritating.

Lyon and her supporters are making the argument that trying to backport Viewer 2 and Viewer 3 features into Viewer 1 interface is like "taking a diesel engine from a school bus and fitting it into a ford pinto".  But Henri Beauchamp, the developer of Cool VL Viewer and whose code the Phoenix team used to bring mesh capability to Phoenix, cleared up a number of exaggerated claims by Lyon.  Far from taking "many" months of work, it only took Beauchamp two, two and a half at most, albeit with him working overtime in his spare hours to get the work done.  And contrary to the diesel engine metaphor, Beauchamp stated on his forum, "It's more like replacing the battery and alternator of the car engine with newer, more powerful ones (ll* libraries), replacing the mechanical injection with an electronic one to make for the increased mechanical power demand from the alternator (v2 classes in the viewer code) then adding air conditioning to the car (mesh renderer). Nothing that would make the poor car into a weird hybrid vehicle."

So it really isn't that difficult to backport the Viewer 2-Viewer 3 code into the Viewer 1 interface, contrary to what Jessica Lyon and her supporters claim.

I get the impression that the Phoenix Development Team decided to follow Linden Lab's lead and go with the crappy, bug-ridden, crashtastic, user-unfriendly, outsourced viewer that most Second Life users can't stand and would prefer not to use.  That's why so many people refuse to use the default SL viewer, and instead go with third party viewers such as Phoenix, Singularity, Cool VL, Rainbow, and others.  That's bad enough.  Literally adding insult to injury, however, was the condescending dismissal of legitimate criticisms that Viewer 2 and its clones (including Firestorm) are highly unstable, have a tendency to gobble inventory -- say goodbye to no-copy items forever -- eat up loads and loads of memory even on newer computers, and tend to crash said computers when the viewers alone aren't crashing, by telling disgruntled users to buy new computers instead of the decade-old ones we're allegedly clinging to.

This is a false assumption on the part of the Phoenix Development team, for many if not most users are not on ten-year-old computers.  I, for example, am on a computer that is less than a year old, has a monster graphics card, and is built for gaming purposes.  Yet the Viewer 2 and Firestorm beta I tried kept crashing on me, and often crash my computer altogether (even Phoenix and Singularity crash my comp).  Another dismissive claim is that users only tried Firestorm for a few minutes before giving up on it, despite people complaining that they spent hours on Firestorm only to have the same problems.  Simply put, people don't like the user interface no matter how much the Phoenix team tries to gussy it up, and the viewer itself is a bug-infested resource hog just like Viewer 2.  It's not a matter of people clinging to old technology, rather, they simply don't like the craptastic interface of a product that messes up their newer computers.

I think what's really driving the outright hostility coming from the Phoenix team and its supporters is simple snobbery.  They hopped on board a product that someone told them was the latest rage, and they genuinely don't seem to accept the legitimate reasons most people don't like it.  What if Coca Cola had stubbornly stuck by its "New Coke" product even after the massive customer backlash?  That company would now be out of business.  Instead, Coca Cola wised up, came out with "Classic Coke", and remained competitive with Pepsi, its closest competitor.  That was honest of them to do, and they survived by accepting and acknowledging their business mistake and correcting it.  If Phoenix developers want their viewer to remain the preferred one used by SL members, they will have to accept and acknowledge their mistakes, make the necessary apologies for their attitudes, and keep working to correct their mistake by continuing support for Phoenix Viewer.  it's what more of their user base seem to want anyway, and it makes better business sense.

Thoughts On Mesh and Rebuilding

With mesh imports now becoming a reality in SL, I've been seeing blogs wherein the writers boast about revamping their regions with all new mesh builds, including buildings, vehicles, and the like.  It's their regions and they can do what they want with them, but I have to admit I'm a little puzzled as to why so many people are being so quick to replace as much as they can with the mesh imports.

The fact is that a huge chunk of SL users will not be able to even see mesh imports (properly) because not all viewers support mesh.  Sure, some third party viewers, like Firestorm, are cloning Viewer 2 in hopes of being able to adopt mesh, and I think someone told me that Kirsten's Viewer is mesh-compatible.  But most people still seem to be using Viewer 1-based viewers, including Phoenix, Singularity, and Rainbow, which cannot yet support mesh (although the Singularity team is working on bringing mesh import-and-viewing capability into its viewer).

Then, of course, there is the prohibitive cost of importing mesh objects.  See, sculpt maps cost only ten Linden Bucks to import, seeing as how they're actually texture-images you import like any other image.  Mesh objects, on the other hand, are apparently priced according to the level of complexity, and they are said to come with a prim-cost.  So the more complex and the larger the size of a mesh build, the more expensive it is to import it.  Given this, why is it expected that anyone but people with surplus disposable income (a group the size of which gets smaller and smaller by the day) will even be able to afford a lot of mesh imports?  While I don't begrudge the right of people who can afford to toss away money like that, it does puzzle me that anyone thinks that something so cost-prohibitive will catch on quickly, if at all.  If anything, with the real-world economy causing people to tighten their belts, I don't expect nearly as rapid a switch to mesh from sculpted and reguler-prim builds as is being claimed in some circles.

I've made no secret about my opinion toward Viewer 2 and its clones, and the elitist attitudes of its proponents.  But there is a practical aspect to this whole craze over mesh that some people may not care to recognize.  Most of the grid can't and probably never will be able to see mesh imports, unless people switch to a viewer like Singularity once they are able to add mesh to theirs.  So a lot of mesh-importers will probably begin to lose visitors to their regions once they start having to deal with people coming to their sims, seeing a bunch of blocks, spheres, and ovals instead of the supposedly super-awesomely-detailed mesh imports they ran right out and spent money bringing in; then the cost issue will begin to slow the growth of mesh importing.  If region owners and moderators don't handle these two tricky issues correctly, they'll only turn people off and end up hurting their own traffic rankings, and in SL, losing traffic means losing a lot in donations and vendor sales.

Now, will mesh eventually become the standard of SL?  Probably.  I just don't see it catching on quite as fast as its proponents want to think.  One thing Linden Labs can do to avoid that is to lower the cost, both in Linden Bucks and prim count, of mesh imports.  Yes, it took a lot of time and labor to integrate it into the grid.  But charge too much too soon for your nifty new toy, and don't expect a lot of sales.  The second thing Linden Labs can do is to go back to the drawing board and bring back the Viewer 1 user interface for its current system, or something as close to it as possible.  If nothing else, at least give users a choice instead of turning them off with the current cruddy viewer that seems designed only to frustrate people.  Other grids, such as InWorldz, are catching up to SL in terms of stability, and they use viewers that are user-friendly and easy to learn.  By lowering the cost of mesh imports and producing a better viewer than what is currently being pushed on us, I am confident Linden labs can avoid shooting itself in the proverbial foot.

Just my opinion, for what it's worth.

Phoenix Viewer Gets New Update, But Developers Promise it Will Break

The Phoenix development team is announcing its latest update.  As is typical, they are trying to dismiss concerns that Viewer 1 will no longer function by addressing questions that don't seem to have arisen.  You can read the condescension here.

What grabbed my attention, though, was the following comment:

Both Singularity and Cool VL Viewer are in the final stages of having mesh implemented. It is wrong to think V1 and mesh are mutually exclusive. It might be that Phoenix will be left behind, but there sure will be mesh capable V1 viewers pretty soon.

I don't expect the Phoenix development team to give a straight or satisfactory answer, but that's not the only comment worth noting.  (Note: I asked a similar question in the blog thread.)  I've experienced this myself on the latest Firestorm beta release, and received nothing but dismissive answers in the past, which is why I uninstalled the viewer and left the support group.  Here is a comment that sums up the problems many of us face when trying to use ANY Viewer 2-based viewer, not just Firestorm:

i'm TRYING to get used to Firestorm, if the webkit crash can be fixed :( Right now it crashes for me as soon as I load the viewer, and then i'm stuck... search does not work, some group chats wont work... we've been goign back and forth on JIRA for a couple of weeks now (thank you Whirly), I've even submited logs! HELP!

The general response, other than to repeatedly sing the praises of their Viewer 2 clone, is to either ignore the issue or write it off as a troll post.  In this light, it isn't surprising that the Phoenix development team is rolling out at least one last update for its superior, Viewer 1-based viewer.  In spite of claims to being #3 for users, Firestorm is still in ultra-buggy beta mode and it is based on a viewer that only a fraction of the SL user base even bothers with.  Most people I encounter in SL are either on Phoenix, Singularity, and Imprudence, with Singularity starting to appear more common — especially among users who signed on to SL before Linden Labs rolled out its cruddy Ukrainian made viewer.

So what the Phoenix development team is saying is that even though Viewer 1-based viewers will no longer work, they'll still work, or something along those lines.  They'll just break so that they become unusable, which doesn't mean Linden Labs is effectively blocking them.  But unless they are made by a development team with the skills and patience to resolve the issue, the inability to work properly means that Linden Labs is effectively blocking them by making them unable to function properly, if at all.

Can you see the contradictions in that train of logic?  Yeah, I thought so.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted about Viewer 1 and Viewer 2 developments.