Listen & Discuss Here: Emerald Leader Arabella Steadham Talks on "Tonight Live" (But Who's Arabella Steadham?)

UPDATE, 11:15PM: This is the MP3 audio of the show. Give it a listen, Paisley asks some very good tough questions. Since the show is over, I've disabled the embedded video. (Thanks Delinda Dryssen)!

Tonight at 6pm SLT/Pacific, Emerald communication manager Arabella Steadham will appear on Paisley Beebe's "Tonight Live" to talk about the third party Second Life viewer that's been the source of major controversies (as noted here and also here.) Apparently the live soundstage has been beset by griefers, so the show is now being recorded in a closed locations. However, I've embedded the show below added the MP3 link above, please watch and discuss in Commments:

According to Paisley's pre-show post, Ms. Steadham is going to make an announcement about the future of Emerald. But then, who is Arabella Steadham? If the viewer is going to exist in any form going forward, it seems an absolute necessity now that its development be led by someone who is known in real life, and can be held accountable for the actions of her or his team.

At any rate, watch and opinionate here!

Comments

[Little Lost Linden]

Holy Moly.

The paisely beebe sim was restarted and there are still 100 people trying to get in. Chaos abounds!

[Jen]

*watches* Aaagh, I don't care about PG vs. Mature events. Let's get to it!

[Jen]

Or... wait... is this the right episode? She said it was an undisclosed location due to griefers, so I'd assume it's the right one... Multiple guests on tonight, I guess.

[Velvet Bikcin]

@Jen It would be awful if too many people sent unnecessary requests and caused things to crash.

[nyoko salome]

;0 ... whistles the ole' 'tonight shoew' theme with a static network card, and imagines ed bellowing 'wee'll bee rrrright back!!' lol guess i'm glad i lost track of time and forgot that this was happening... sounds more locked up than an inworld philip speech!! ;0 :) -ny

[Jen]

So they (somebody at Emerald) asked Arabella to lie? Sounds like resigning was the right move!

And now Jessica's announcement: Restructuring to "prevent anything like this from ever happening again". So they plan multiple people to be involved in development with "transparency".

I wonder if that really will mean anything, functionally.

[Hamlet Au]

Wow, she looks and sounds like Claire from *Lost*!

[Vax Sirnah]

Well, after that, a good portion of my faith has been restored in the Emerald team. It sounds like Emerald is in good hands.

Fractured did the right thing by resigning - it's a hard thing to stand up and admit you are wrong. He screwed up, but I'll give him credit for that.

[Jen]

I could do with fewer choked-up declarations of how terribly, terribly difficult all this trauma has been for her. I'm sure they're getting plenty of flak, but crying about it on Paisley's show is not reassuring me as an Emerald user.

Did anybody actually apologize for having an organizational scheme that allowed this to happen? Maybe I missed it...

[Hamlet Au]

I missed some of it, did either Jessica Lyon or Arabella Steadham give out their real world name?

[Jen]

Nope. Jessica (I think) said explicitly that she's accountable to LL and that they know her real name, and that she wouldn't be sharing it with anybody else due to all the abuse they've received as a result of this. "The right people know who I am."

[Jen]

"it's a hard thing to stand up and admit you are wrong. He screwed up, but I'll give him credit for that."

Vax -- The way they just described it, it sounds like they had to ask Fractured to resign. And even in his resigning blog post he says he did it because he was bored and then forgot about it. Is that stepping up to admit wrongdoing in a show of noble grace? Dunno.

I don't know, maybe I'm pessimistic but I'm just not reassured. I would've liked this interview more if they had focused more on their new professional/transparent approach and less on how mean everybody has been.

[Little Lost Linden]

That was quite a show. I don't trust that Arabella any farther than I can throw her.

The weeks of drama keep coming one after another, not just with Emerald but with SL in general. I can only wonder what is in store for next week?

In terms of SL performance however, I wish SL could just upgrade their engine, you know, like Quake and Unreal used to?

I would like to see a new SL engine, one built for peromance and high end graphics. some day...

[Vax Sirnah]

Eh, he could have trashed everything on the way out. Or made a loud fuss. Or just left with no word. Of the possible actions, he chose a better one. I'm happy to toss an extra point back to him for that.

As for the choked-up declarations... hey, it's tough to see something you care about fed to the wolves. I guess I'm a bit naive, but I'm just fine with moving forward.

[SoyaKnow]

I really do not understand the sympathy people are giving to that guy simply for admitting he was wrong.

He is no more courageous for admitting he was wrong than I am for going out everyday and getting my mail.

Can we really trust anyone associated with him who saw and knew about things before and turned a blind eye? I cannot.

This whole incident is egregious, perhaps worse. Emerald should be permanently banned.

[Little Lost Linden]

For anyone who missed the show, you can now listen to the audio portion of it right here:

http://thebotzone.net/2010/08/22/beware-an-emerald-in-the-rough/

Just page down to the Update! Audio Recording of tonights Paisely Beebe show

[Adric Antfarm]

Hi, we are the new guys. We were totally in the dark about anything bad that went down. We just had no idea. When the truth came out we cleaned house. We want you to know you can trust us based on um...well.

The funny part is you people running around saying this all shocks you. It's been hard to ignore for a while now but I blame a lot of enablers for helping you do that.

I do believe their case of gross ignorance and they want to sever all ties to quesionable activity. I also believe they think they turn this ship around. Based on what I know of them and what they have said, they are are the people to do it.

Emerald was a big bad unstoppable force because of Fractured Crystal. Another leader will be able to create a sad shadow of Emerald at best that makes me wonder if the one person who could stop Emerald was Crystal.

[Adric Antfarm]

What is the point of saying (a few times) that new site is under new control if the fact is it's been registered using a service to mask the registered owner's name?

Domain Discreet
ATTN: emeraldviewer.net
Rua Dr. Brito Camara, n 20, 1
Funchal, Madeira 9000-039

Not saying it's not a new owner or they are hiding anything, but don't throw it out there as a plus to rebuild trust when you are hiding behind a company in Portugal.

[Little Lost Linden]

"Not saying it's not a new owner or they are hiding anything, but don't throw it out there as a plus to rebuild trust when you are hiding behind a company in Portugal."

Anyone know what the pizza is like in Portugal?

[II Singh]

@Jen you hit it right on the head with Arabella's histrionics. I frankly don't give a cr*p about her "bad day". Her "crew" has been giving quite a few folks a bad year. With all the harassment of authors of other viewers and their grandstanding and ego-filled BS... I know more than a few people who would be glad to see the whole lot of them gone FOREVER.

If you are "cleaning up your act" don't you think you should sever your ties to griefers Like Phox/Bluebird?

If you are "cleaning up your act" don't you think you should AGAIN sever your ties to people who have an obvious conflict of interest ---> Skils Hax and CDS?

So how much of this "cleaning house" are you really doing???? My guess would be NOT MUCH.

[brinda allen]

I was there...quite a project geting in.... 30 plus mins.
Arabella did say the lab has her ID.
Personally, I've removed Emerald and am running Imprudence for now.
I do have confidence that the Emerald team will turn this around.

Was what happened bad? You bet! To use your customers computers to harrass someone is not only illegal....it's that ethics thing.

As I saw mentioned above... the "prankster" could have just trashed all and bailed..he didn't do that. Arabella could have washed her hands and said goodbye...I see what she did as commendable and I'm sure many will disagree.

Glass houses and perfect people....
I have done a lot worse things in real life...serious criminal issues years ago, I paid the price. Details?...IM me.

People make mistakes... that's how humans learn lifes lessons...
So often I see many of us that refuse to allow another to screw up.
Am I pissed? No....

[Hamlet Au]

Linden Lab has Arabella's real life details, OK. But then, didn't Linden Lab have Fractured Crystal's real life details, too?

[Nae Mayo]

It's just about what he did is right or wrong but what he can do.
Now he did this because he is bored. What if some day he think he needs more cash?

[Fogwoman Gray]

I cannot get excited about a guy who "steps up and does the right thing" AFTER he is busted. I get enough of that in politics and celebrities.
And I would not trust any of THEM with my passwords either.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I sense the days of the standalone client are numbered.

Hallelujah.

[nexus burbclave]

Hamlet, all of Bernie Madoff's victims had his real life details. It ultimately has little if any bearing on outcomes.

[Hamlet Au]

Of course it does, Nexus. If his investors didn't have his real life details, Bernie Madoff would currently be somewhere enjoying himself in the Bahamas, not in jail.

[nexus burbclave]

Hamlet, it might be a semantic distinction with no real functional difference, but I would argue that the only people that needed to know Madoff's real identity to get the results we got were enforcement. From that perspective, revealing your identity to the enforcers, LL in the case of Third Party Viewers, seems sufficient.

[Adeon Writer]

@Arcadia All Hail our Closed-Source Overlords.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

"@Arcadia All Hail our Closed-Source Overlords."

If you can kit-bash a fully compliant open-source browser-based client with no degradation in performance, I'm waiting.

But if we're wagering, I'm putting a few chips on Unity.

[Hamlet Au]

"I would argue that the only people that needed to know Madoff's real identity to get the results we got were enforcement."

Nexus, I understand your point but I'm definitely not sure Madoff is your best analogy here. Because of his huge political influence and personal connections, Madoff had a lot of ties with the very Federal regulators who should have stopped him, and it's likely they were lax or even looked the other way because of that. If his name was only known to those Federal regulators (which is actually a practical impossibility, but assume he was), it's very likely he would have just wound up with a wrist slap, or even got away with it entirely. Sound familiar?

[Little Lost Linden]

I wanna know if Fractured Crystal or anyone on the Emerald dev team is going to be paying any restitution.

If there will be restitution, I'll take mine in the form of a pizza from Portugal.

[Sandor Balczo]

Perhaps you will not believe me but I saw it coming.

It all looks like a setup to me. Relationships between Emerald and LL have never been very good and the fact that Qarl Linden joined the development team at Emerald after being fired by LL and then the DoS incident happened are not coincidental.

Personally, I am almost certain that most third-party viewers are developed by people who were directly or indirectly connected to LL before making the alternative viewers, and I am equally as sure a lot of them are very young people who think it is cool to take revenge.

I do not use Emerald, but I feel LL was waiting for a faux pas to happen to find an excuse to stop Emerald from becoming even more popular.

What surprises me reading the comments is the sudden surge of people against Emerald when I have heard nothing but praises for months. Gee, it is amazing how people change their minds these days.

Sandor :)

[Little Lost Linden]

What about my pizza?

[Viorel Daviau]

Late posting, but what the hell...

1. She's the same person that it wasn't a DDoS attack because "the site didn't go down". Just, wow. That's the dumbest thing I've read in a LONG time.

2. She's also the same person caught in YouTube videos (audio) joking around with her Emerald buddies over malicious activities...the same she's keeping on her staff.

3. There wasn't sincerity in her voice. All I heard was a bitter loud-mouth complaining.

I wouldn't care if half of their coders were former Lindens. I wouldn't bother with that viewer if it were the only one available...and this video reinforces why.