Jessica Lyon

Everything Coffee said. All the things... Especially the "Please help."

Plot twist... OR maybe many of those music players of SL don't share their knowledge or scripts because they literally downloaded them from a free script library which is in public domain already. Banking on that most users aren't aware or savvy enough to copy these scripts themselves, they instead make money by essentially selling what is already free. Pretty much preying on folks. There are far too many examples of scripts for sale on marketplace which are literally copy/pasted from free script library sources. Shame that... Not saying Pantera's script is a copy/paste, as she's a brilliant scripter and likely pulled that together in about 60 seconds from the top of her head. But... a script to play music is not a complicated script, and there are I'm sure, free sample scripts available. Just a thought. 🙂

I should add, I appreciate you giving guidance and advice to our users on how to alter the Firestorm interface. Not so much the toxic way you presented the information though. Thanks.

Not sarcasm at all. The viewer is open source and we always welcome contributions from the community. Especially given how much work we actually do with very few developers these days. In that Jira I created, I did point out issues and things I disliked. But pointing out things we dislike, offering suggestions on how they could be improved is a million times easier than actually making the changes, and more so maintaining those changes. We don't really need advice or critique, although I do welcome it. What we need is people to help do the actual work, and then maintain that work for the next 5-10 years through dozens if not hundreds of code merges with LL code. My point being, it's easy to pick apart what we don't like about something. It's a whole different world to try and fix it.

We look forward to your contribution, and thank you for your constructive feedback! Jessica Lyon Project Manager Of the viewer with the disgusting and ancient-looking User Interface.

Oz! It has been a great honor and privilege to have worked with you the past 11 years. I remember you coming in as a liaison for third party viewers during a time of great chaos in the TPV space. You created order, structure and in doing so, kept the Open Source nature of Second Life alive. You will be missed by many! Enjoy your retirement! You have earned it. Jess.

LL's EEP bug fixes are just out of RC. We are instructed, as are all TPV's to NOT release anything from LL until it is mainstream release and out of RC. Therefor we couldn't release those EEP bug fixes without violating the Third Party Viewer Policy. That said.... we do in fact have those changes merged into a branch and we are in a QA cycle already. We are also 'hoping' to pick up LL's mesh uploader changes/improvements to be included in our upcoming EEP bug fix release. We have FAR more users than any other viewer in SL, including the LL viewer. This means that if we release something very buggy, it has a much more detrimental impact on the over all user experience in SL. We care tremendously about the user experience. Improving the user experience is our number one objective. We are responsible for what we release. I am responsible for what we release. We work very hard to make sure that everything we release is of the highest standard possible within our ability.

/me digs out the keys to my panic room.... Filled with popcorn and booze. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't deeply concerned.

Hi Magnus1285. I am the owner of the Firestorm Project and the Firestorm Community Gateway. I just want to reassure you that no one on our team has any means of checking or looking up your physical location in the world. Our gateway helpers utilize a translator hud that uses an LSL function called llGetAgentLanguage (as was mentioned above). All viewers do broadcast the default language you have chosen to use and llGetAgentLanguage simply queries and returns that information. So our helpers know only what language you have chosen from within the viewer you are using and they try to respond in that language via their translators. This is in fact how most translators in Second Life work, and we use one of the widely available cheapo translators found on SL Marketplace. Firestorm takes privacy very seriously and I can assure you we have no tracking mechanisms what so ever to locate your physical location in the real world or within our virtual world. I hope that puts you at ease, and if you have any other questions please feel free to drop me an email at jessica.lyon@phoenixviewer.com. Please stay safe. Jessica Lyon CEO/Project Manager The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.

Firestorm with VR support? WOULD LOVE TO! I mean it.. I really would! But one small problem. For us to do so, would require that each of our developers working on it, own a VR headset. And not just one, but one of each brand most likely. We'd also have to purchase headsets for a few of our testers and QA, and of course at least a handful for our key support people. If I had to hazard a guess... maybe ~20 headsets should do it. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of money. Not to mention, we are very heavily taxed right now in development areas. Really short handed these days, as there are fewer and fewer developers around SL now. There was an attempt at FS VR support a while back, can't remember who it was that worked on it now, but it got abandoned. And I heard recently someone else is trying their hand at it. I genuinely wish them luck and hope something comes from it. But unfortunately, it can't be us.

We have a few things no other third party viewer has... Starting with the lions share of the Second Life user base. A ridiculous amount of users... insane amount of people relying on us... Which brings me to the other thing we do that no other TPV does. We provide live support... to ALL of them, at no cost. Beyond all the other reasons I won't get into details on, just the two above justify our strict and sometimes lengthy QA process. We also must ensure our releases are of the best quality possible, because unlike smaller viewers who can release an update or hotfix on the fly without causing any ripples... (a few hundred or few thousand users). When we do that, well over 70% of SL users have to update their viewers and THAT is extremely disruptive and troublesome to everyone on the entire platform. We do not have the luxury of being snappy with releases. We have a very heavy burden of responsibility to get it right each time we release. Jessica Lyon

Ok, I've found a solution for you both Prokovy and SosiaalinenKokeilu. Since the experience will only work over firestorm land and you both do not want to be forced into the experience I've found the perfect solution. I have added both your names to the ban list from all estates, therefor you will never have to worry about the experience abusing you. I hope that resolves this matter sufficientlly for you both, and if there is anyone else concerned about us abusing you on our land please let me know before you come to our land. Have a great day everyone! Jessica Lyon Project Manager The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc

The Firestorm experience has zero to do with the Firestorm viewer. You were added to the experience because either you were in the firestorm gateway or possibly the Firestorm gateway exhibit at the Sci-Fi convention which we utilized the experience key to give visitors a tour hud for touring the role play area on the gateway. Could you explain please in what way you feel you were abused with the experience key? In what way have we abused the experience key against you?

We only have and use the one experience key, and only for the two things described. We will however soon also use it to help new resi's wear a 'housecoat' when they're naked and are having problems getting dressed. So that will work by temp attaching a stylish housecoat and then we can offer them a teleport to one of our private change rooms where they will then be further aided by one of our gateway helpers or mentors.

My mistake! Apparently it cannot be revoked once enabled. However.. again... the experience will only work over Firestorm Land so avoid our land and it will never impact you. Once we have the new RegAPI LL will disable the forced Land Scope Experience. It's temporary and it's for the sake of new residents joining SL. Also.. really?.. Honestly? Do you think after all these years with a clean exemplary record, that we would use experience keys to abuse you? We are trying to do a good thing here with the Gateway, we are trying to improve Second Life and that's all we've ever tried to do and done in our nearly 6 years. In 6 years not one person on my team of over 100 people, have earned a ban or suspension. And you think we're going to abuse you with an experience key... sigh...

Hi SosiaalinenKokeilu, So the Firestorm experience is a land scope experience which is set on only in the Firestorm Community Gateway regions. This is because new residents need to have accepted the experience in order to exit the Orientation Island, otherwise they get stuck there, log off and never come back into Second Life. Once we have the new RegAPI from LL new sign ups will automatically have their experience enabled as well, so as to make their first time experience seamless. The Firestorm experience is being used two ways. First, and most used to help residents get from place to place on the region, which is llTeleportAgent. We use this to make it easier for them to teleport around the regions as well as teleport out to other helpful gateways. Exp Key is great for this since we don't have to confuse new residents with landmarks and make them have to dig through inventory to find them. The second place we use the experience is to attach a parachute to their avatars if they use the Sky Lift for skydiving, and to attach the CrowleyCorp Golf hud so residents can play golf. Probably you are not aware of how experience keys work and what their limitations are, but I'll let you do your own research on that since you have clearly already made up your mind that we are evil people. So I'll just close with this final statement. The Firestorm experience only works over Firestorm land and once you leave the Firestorm regions you can revoke the Firestorm Experience without any trouble. Finally, I would suggest that if you fear we will harm you in some way, that the best thing for you do do is not return to our gateway regions. Thanks for your concerns and complaints. Have a wonderful day! Jessica Lyon Project Manager The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc.

Steph... Hi, I'm Jessica Lyon.. project manager of the Firestorm Viewer project. We have well over 80 people just on the immediate viewer team here between developers, support staff and QA. Out of everyone on the team, if I had to pick one person who we rely on most, someone who would be voted most valuable player if we were a sporting team, it would be Whirly. In fact I suspect just about everyone on the team would also vote Whirly. If we were to lose Whirly we'd be nearly lost without her. Same goes true for LL, although she is not on the payroll, she spends more time on the LL jira than most lindens and has earned her badge with both us, and LL. I'm sorry, but you cannot say or think you know more about any particular problem than Whirly does. And especially in this case, you are incorrect. Furthermore, by challenging Whirly, you will be up against practically the whole of the internet in her defense. Really, you're out qualified here. I'm trying to be nice. The only thing worse than someone giving wrong advice, is someone giving wrong advice who thinks they know everything.

Just about everything passes through the simulator. You are connected to SL through the simulator. There is plenty of information out there about how this stuff works. You should take some time to look it up before you make assumptions about knowing something when you don't. It's a disservice to yourself and especially to those you give advice too. I'm not going to argue with you on this. There is the right answer and the wrong answer and argueing with you isn't going to make you any more right. But generally speaking, if whirly knows something, then she knows it and is right. When she isn't sure about something she openly states she isn't sure rather than making assumptions. You should try it some time ;-).

Steph.. please... Step back. Whirly knows more about SL and the bugs within SL than any of my developers and most of LL's developers AND QA combined. You are wrong, she is correct and just please.. step back. This is not an arguement you can win because a/ you're wrong, and b/ Whirly wins the internet. The end. ;-) No really... Seriously lol.

haha! Poison.. That first image you posted... you have captured my main Jessica Lyon account and that of my mirrored Alt. I'm the one with the black tail with a pink tip ;-) Which I might add... I still wear that tail with pride!

Completely bull... some folks apparently have nothing better to do. Anyways, I've posted a blog post on the firestorm website addressing the lies and pointed out what I believe is the motivation. Very pathetic. Jessica Lyon Project Manager The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc http://www.firestormviewer.org

It is fixed in our latest release available for download from our website, Version 4.3.1.31155. Meaning Merchant outbox will work for linux users on that Firestorm version. Jess.

Thought I would just chime in here for Linux merchants. Though I can't speak for sure about other third party viewers, certainly Firestorm's latest release has this issue fixed. I'm going to assume Singularity has this working as well, and probably other TPV's who have recent releases out but I don't know for fact. I'm actually pretty sure we submitted the fix for this issue to LL a while ago so I'm a bit surprised it hasn't made it to a public release yet. This thread was only just brought to my attention, I'll see if I can push some buttons for LL to get this fix out in their official, but in the meantime the message for merchants is “you do have alternatives.” Jessica Lyon Project Manager The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc

Our mission statement is to "Improve the user experience". Since the beginning of this project we have worked diligently towards cooperation and communication with Linden Lab because we can achieve our mission far better by working with them than against them, and we certainly do not want to be against them. Who benefits? I believe they benefit in that we make our users happy, our users are their customers, and happy users tend log in more often, stay logged in longer and spend more money than dissatisfied users, however I don't think LL see's it that way unfortunately. But LL does express interest and make effort to work with us and other third party viewers for whatever their reasons may be and that's good for everyone. We benefit working with them by having some say on things LL does which ultimately lead to improving the user experience or detracting from it. Our benefit is in having a strong voice, which gets stronger the more users we have. Improving the user experience brings us more users, more users give us a greater voice and influence, a greater voice gives us more control over improving the user experience. It's a convenient cycle. While we do not gain monetarily, we do earn enough income through google adsense to cover our running costs which are a few thousand dollars a year, but we do not earn income individually. I don't believe it would be fair to earn income from what is 90% written by someone else. Firestorm is based off LL's viewer, we just make modifications to it. It is a common question from people as to why we do what we do if we do not earn anything. There are several reasons for this which I'll try to outline. Why do we do it? - We care about you, no really we do! We are passionate people who genuinely care about the users of Second life, because we are users too, just like you. - We use Firestorm too and any improvements we make to Firestorm we benefit from as well. - We get great personal satisfaction from knowing we've helped someone. Just like helping an old lady across the street makes you feel good about yourself, for us knowing we're helping hundreds of thousands of users makes us feel good. - Our developers like developing. It helps hone their skills and is in itself rewarding to accomplish creating some great feature that a lot of people enjoy, benefit from and appreciate. Ultimately though the underlying reason is that what we do is personally rewarding to us. So to answer your question... We ‘try’ to work with LL, though some days we have more success than others. We do not work ‘for’ LL though, we work for our users. We do support and encourage LL when they do things we believe will improve the user experience, and we advocate against things which we feel takes away from that experience. In some cases we will fight LL on something if we believe strong enough about it, if our users express strong enough objection to it. We try to be the voice of the average SL user and for the average SL user by reflecting to LL how the average SL user feels, what they want, don’t want, etc. We listen closely and communicate with our users so that we are as accurate as possible in speaking for you. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail but we will always continue to work towards our mission of improving the user experience. I guess it is more accurate to say we work with LL in order to support the user. Hope that helps explain things a little bit. Jessica Lyon Project Manager The Phoenix Firestorm Project, Inc