I was a huge fan of Savage 2 for quite a few months.
The game itself was pretty sweet, and when they added full voice chat (previously only the commander could chat, and the chat was often buggy) the game just got better.
S2 Games makes good stuff, supports open source (Savage 1 source was released after Savage 2 came out, and the community updated the game quite a bit), and make good games.
They have really, really sucky marketing though, so expect to hear about the game on geek friendly sites like slashdot, but if it's anything like there previous games, the player base will be a few hundred players.
On the plus side, a large percentage of those players would be able to make UI interfaces, maps, and the usual stuff that normal players can't.
I'd never had any bother until about 6 months ago. After each Windows reinstall I change anti-virus software.
This time I was using Grisoft, I used them a few years ago and thought they were fine.
However, after this reinstall I had trouble playing Team Fortress 2. TF2 kept warning me my pagefile was running low, before crashing a couple of minutes later. I usually have virtual memory disabled, but after each crash I'd increase virtual memory by a couple of gig and retry, it'd still crash.
A bit of Googling told me Grisoft was being naughty, and after unistalling it and installing Avast it has all be smooth.
Elder Scrolls 3 - Morrowind, safedisc harmed performance so much that the developers removed it in the first patch. The nocd crack was recommended by just about everyone.
Part of the problem is that the developers don't usually install any DRM, it's usually done by the distributors.
So even if the developers thoroughly test a product, but the public always beta tests the DRM.
Gold Rush and Dustbowl are the 2 maps where red attacks and blue defends, clearly red has a major advantage. I'd like to see how much closer the sides would be if Valve only included maps using the default spawn times.
Actually look at the link - you can see that red has a clear advantage, red wins about 80% of the Gold Rush maps, and about 58% of the Dustbowl maps.
Again I'll state - I'd like to see what the percentages would be if Valve only included the servers which used the default spawn times, I'd expect red to much less of an advantage (or maybe even no advantage at all).
Great, I properly research and link my post, then completely screw up:
Gold Rush and Dustbowl are the 2 maps where blue attacks and red defends I mean "Gold Rush and Dustbowl are the 2 maps where red attacks and blue defends
Gold Rush and Dustbowl are the 2 maps where blue attacks and red defends, clearly red has a major advantage. I'd like to see how much closer the sides would be if Valve only included maps using the default spawn times.
Gravelpit is an exception, since that map is unbalanced, it's far easier to attack than defend on that map (of the non-medic achievements the perfect defence of Gravel Pit is the 2nd rarest, and the only one I lack)
As for engineers and teleporters, your point doesn't even make sense "Thus, quick respawn + teleport = back in the action much faster than red." The best you could say is that it gets them back in the action at the same speed as red, and even that is inaccurate.
Each teleporter has to recharge between each use, if you've got a fast respawn rate you'll need at least 2, probably 3 teleporters to keep the momentum up. In a game with 12 players on each team if you're using 2 or 3 player as engineers you better hope that the rest of the team can carry the extra weight. Engineers excel at defence, at attack they are pretty weak.
Let's not also forget all it takes is 1 spy to cloak, run past the attackers and sap all the teleporter entrances, which gets easier the more teleporters there are (since less attackers will actually be walking to the action, therefore less chance of noticing the spy).
The fine article is a little light on details, only mentioning Unreal Tournament, but in Team Fortress 2 there is a good reason red win more (bottom chart in parents link).
In any of the Attack / Defend maps blue plays the attackers, and red plays the defenders.
To keep things fair the attackers respawn a lot quicker than the defenders (since the attacker has to respawn and run halfway across the map, while the defender usually respawns only a short walk from the final defence point).
Since waiting 10 to 20 seconds to respawn is pretty boring a lot of servers reduce the respawn rate, this gives a major advantage to the defenders (red).
So why do red have a slight advantage in other TF2 maps? After someone has played TF2 many hours, they'll realise that they generally win more as red, they may not analyse why they win more, but the end result is players with a lot of TF2 experience tend to join the red team without really thinking about it.
Personally I think Tribes 2 did it right, the enemy always is red.
I really don't like virgin media for ethical reasons (stuff like this, Phorm, calling Net Neutrality 'bollocks'), but unfortunately their internet access is quite good.
Usenet hasn't worked in ages the old usenet access was news.blueyonder.co.uk, it only had a couple of days retention. A couple of months ago they changed to news.virginmedia.com, now with about a week retention.
If I was you I'd definitely phone them, you are paying way too much. I was a sweet customer of theirs for years, there prices on their website had come down considerably, but it'd never been reflected on my bill. Compare your current package with what they currently have on their website, then compare it to a similar package on Sky, phone them and threaten to leave. They'll price match.
Is all of this all down to the British Government or is it coming from the EU? Unfortunately it's both from the UK and EU.
Watching Sky news (one of the two main news stations) earlier today they referred to the data retention law as an EU law, but that isn't entirely correct.
When the UK was president of the EU it brought in Europe wide data retention laws. It was shortly after 7/7 and managed to get enough votes to be passed.
When an EU law is passed the member states implement it in their own way (all member states are required their phone companies / ISP's to log phone / internet data for at least 6 months, some do longer).
So while this is technically an EU law, it was brought into Europe by predominantly by the UK.
Allowing the data to be stored by the government is a new, UK only law.
I've tried a few gaming keyboards - The zBoard, Saitek Gamers keyboard and Razer Tarantula.
Without a doubt the Tarantula is the best. You can redefine each key to another layout and it's stored in the hardware, so I know I've got Dvorak (with swapped backspace/caps lock, and Start menu/pause) in Linux, Windows and even my bios.
If you've used Dvorak for a while you'll come across little hiccups - like Flash games which are hardcoded to use 'wsad', to switch between keymaps all you've got to do is press the 'Profile' button and F1-F5.
The Tarantula is the only keyboard which actually comes with a tool to help remove the keycaps.
Some downsides: The remapper software is only available for windows, once a keymap is created you can switch anytime, but you'll still need windows to create it. Razer have got a little friendly with microsoft, so I doubt they'll release a Linux driver.
The remapper software is dumb, when remapping it applies each key change instantly, so you need to use Windows On-Screen-Keyboard to set some of the last few keys (win/sys32/osk.exe)
It's got an annoying 'heartbeat', if you've used any Razer products you'll know what I mean. The Razer logo slowly glows bright then turns off every few seconds. Looks cool, for 5 minutes, then it's just a distraction. Mine is covered with duct tape.
Get the tastiest breed of cow, find the tastiest cow of the breed, kill the poor thing, and grow the cloned meat in a vat.
Once the system is working, I'd imagine it'd be a lot cheaper than the current system, think of the energy cows waste (breathing, blood pumping, etc). Admittedly cows allowed to roam get that energy from grass, but it's still trading a massive waste of land for a massive amount of unwanted methane
I'm sure meat grown in a vat would be a lot easier to tinker with than meat grown by a cow, allowing things like vitamin enriched beef, long life beef, burn resistant beef, bacon flavor beef (admit it, you know you want it), possibly even replacing the cow fat with something like omega-3 fat...
As for ethics, some people may comment about not giving a damn if an animal feels pain, but I'm sure if they bothered to research it, all but the most psychopathic would feel empathy, they'd just rather not think too deeply about it. Likewise, I suspect my footwear was made by some child slaves in some faraway country, so while I avoid that brand, I'm fairly sure if I researched the brands of footwear I do buy, I'd find some pretty bad things.
Uptime of that long using just a NAT firewall, I haven't been following all the windows updates, but I'd have expected something withing the last 755 days to break your system, maybe something like a stack overflow of the TCP buffer (which would bypass your NAT easily).
I'm assuming one of the more prolific worms in the last couple of years would've automatically piggy-backed on all outgoing net connections, trying the above exploit.
Is your tracker popular? Any other open connections? Is the PC purely a server, or do you websurf on it occasionally?
I have a Windows XP box with an uptime going strong at 550 days, last I checked (over 50% cpu usage, disk usage is somewhat low, it's a torrent server).
Probably a troll, but...
550 days without rebooting in Win XP?
How many critical security updates have you missed?
This would be a massive boost for FOSS, the cheapest new computers in the UK are £200 ($400), Vista Home Basic OEM is £52 ($104) of that cost (prices quoted including tax, from ebuyer.com, but most of the bigger shops are about the same).
Given the choice of a 25% discount, or having Vista installed, I doubt many would choose Vista.
Technically they could reuse their old XP CD, but I think most shops would pre-install some OS, so the user knows that their PC is working when delivered.
As long as the user can press a power button, wait a minute, then be able to surf the web, most will never bother installing XP.
I was hoping people would convert because they saw that FOSS was more stable and secure, so this isn't quite the glorious victory I was hoping for, but a victory is a victory.
For the last several years I've alternated between nVidia and ATI (nVidia 4200Ti, ATI 9800XT, nVidia 6500, ATI X1900XTX).
My last card (the ATI X1900XTX) cost ~$600, since then I've started paying a lot more attention to Linux, and unless ATI do some decent drivers it'll be the last ATI card I buy.
I retract my previous statement, it looks incredibly likely my next card will be an ATI.
Looking like I'm going to be becoming an ATI fanboi.
For the last several years I've alternated between nVidia and ATI (nVidia 4200Ti, ATI 9800XT, nVidia 6500, ATI X1900XTX).
ATI's windows drivers are terribly bloated (NET framework catastrophes), the only reason I still bought ATI was because of the excellent, efficient 3rd party Omega drivers (Win32 only).
My last card (the ATI X1900XTX) cost ~$600, since then I've started paying a lot more attention to Linux, and unless ATI do some decent drivers it'll be the last ATI card I buy.
Since most people are mentioning SWG I'll put my comment about PlanetSide (think Tribes with 100's of players and minor character levelling).
I fair enjoyed PlanetSide, a new patch with bug fixes and a heavily requested feature would be released every few weeks, and all was well. The developers were active both on the forums and in the game, all was well, the golden age of PlanetSide.
Then they annouced that they'd bring in clan owned bases and 'platoons' (groups of squads), in the next patch. It sounded really good, really got the clans excited.
Then clan owned bases and platoon got delayed by a few months so the developers could work on 'Core Combat', an expansion pack nobody wanted.
I can't remember how much they charged for the expansion pack, but the concept of it pretty much annoyed me, SOE didn't hire outside developers to create the expansion, they took away the developers who were upgrading the main game.
I can't find out the monthly price of PlanetSide (good job Sony, hiding it from potential users), but I'm going to guess at $15/month.
If $15 / month pays for developers+bandwidth+servers, then if the subscribers are deprived of the developers (bug fixes / updates) for a few months either the monthly fee should reduce, or the expansion pack should be free. Those developer hours were already paid for in the monthly subscription, selling them again as an expansion was crooked.
There was a bit of a backlash, the expasion was pretty poor, many forum members refused to buy it, instead moaning that they wanted clan owned bases and platoons.
A few weeks later SOE released clan owned bases, which couldn't be upgraded unless members of your clan bought the generally useless expansion pack.
After that SOE bug fixes / new features slowed up.
Disgruntled, but still, I carried on subscribing...
A few cheats were well known by the more experienced players, but they were obvious and not used by respectable clans, but used by a lot of idiots, example: automatic weapons would fire 5 rounds/second, by binding the mouse wheel to fire (or using a macro) you could fire much faster.
After SOE not fixing the bugs a player (can't remember his name) did a video demostrating the bugs which had been known about for months. Instead of fixing the bugs SOE banned the player.
That was pretty much the last straw for me, I sent them an angry email and cancelled my subscription.
For me to sign up to another Sony product they'd need to demonstrate vastly improved customer service, and their RIAA / rootkit actions over the past couple of years make me think its got worse. Much worse.
You're 100% correct, a huge difference between 1,000 and 100,000, when I proofed my post I was focusing on the other point (that the UK has 43% more prisoners than any other western european country), so unfortunately it slipped through.
I've been a lurker for years, and this is only my third ever post, but I've got to point out the flaw in your logic.
So in this one South London neighborhood that I occasionally frequent, there was an armed robbery at 4 in the afternoon on the main street last Saturday. It's a quiet neighborhood, very well-balanced, well-off, so it makes sense to come there and rob people.
There was a similar robbery the previous week....
The trouble is, this particular chunk of street doesn't have any cameras
It looks like you've got some small time crooks with an IQ over 90 deliberately targeting areas without CCTV.
Please, think about what your asking for. Will putting CCTV on your street make these crooks apply for jobs at the supermarket, or will it just make them target a street 500 yards away.
CCTV doesn't prevent crime, it just redirects it.
I live about a 15 minutes walk from the town centre, a few years ago the council did a pilot scheme of putting CCTV everywhere in the town centre and the two most deprived areas in the town.
CCTV worked, very well, the crime rate in town fell, the council called it a massive success, while my area saw a massive rise in crime (we're situated between town and one of the deprived areas), the police fly-postered warnings about bag snatchers, burglaries rose (3 on my street of 20 houses within a year, I'd only heard of 2 burglaries in the previous 2 decades).
My area got CCTV about 18 months later, and crime has dropped to marginally higher than before, so while I'm happy that my area has CCTV, I'm not fooling myself, the crooks are still committing crimes, the council just spent a fortune on CCTV to make them walk a few hundred extra yards to commit crimes.
We still get local kids being vandals, but they've largely moved off the main streets and into side streets (a few weeks ago every car on the street was vandalised, the local cemetery has been vandalised repeatedly), the CCTV still catches the dumb crooks, or the ones so desperate for a fix that they don't care, but any even remotely smart crook is now targeting somewhere else.
The only way CCTV can actually prevent a non-idiot crook is by putting CCTV literally everywhere. Everywhere.
So yeah, you're right, The trouble is, this particular chunk of street doesn't have any cameras, but the only reason it's your problem is because someone else decided to shift the problem onto you, and your solution is to shift the problem onto someone else. Can't blame you, it really sucks living in a high crime area, but when the entire country tries to shift the problem onto someone else it doesn't really work.
My solution: Don't really have one, Britain already has by far the highest prison population per capita in Europe (141 per 1000, 2nd place is Germany with 98 per 1000), so I doubt building more prisons would help, I guess the only real options are to go the absolute sissy route, treating the thugs nicely and train them to be productive members of society, or to bring in daily torture in prisons to make thugs really not want to go back. Hopefully there is a 3rd way I'm not seeing, but the current system isn't working.
Yes, it basically gives the exemption from being sued for losing your info as long as they inform you about the loss promptly.
I wouldn't count that as a privacy promoting law.
I'd guess the original intent was good (public must be informed), but corporate lobbiests altered the law to protect themselves (can't sue companies).
IIRC there was too many companies losing laptops, the public were getting nervous getting a letter every month or two, so the law is getting reworked so the public only needs to be informed if the company believes there customer database would be used for fraud.
Pretty much means that no company has to inform their customers of a lost database unless their database is hacked and the hacker leaves a note saying "m3 s0 l33t, g0nna use ur data 4 fake CC!!! lol!!!"
Disclaimer: I am not a California resident, just remember this being discussed on/. a while ago.
Also try for the the Wonder which allows you to know any tech known to 2 factions, after that you can set research to 0% and concentrate on building up your cities.
The Hunter-Killer Algorithm was nerfed in the AC expanison, which made the probe team tactic even more viable.
The AC expansion added 7 new factions, which were generally more powerful than the original 7 factions, which was a shame, since mixing new/old factions in one game becomes unbalancing, but the 2 alien factions add a different element.
Slashdot Mirror
I was a huge fan of Savage 2 for quite a few months.
The game itself was pretty sweet, and when they added full voice chat (previously only the commander could chat, and the chat was often buggy) the game just got better.
S2 Games makes good stuff, supports open source (Savage 1 source was released after Savage 2 came out, and the community updated the game quite a bit), and make good games.
They have really, really sucky marketing though, so expect to hear about the game on geek friendly sites like slashdot, but if it's anything like there previous games, the player base will be a few hundred players.
On the plus side, a large percentage of those players would be able to make UI interfaces, maps, and the usual stuff that normal players can't.
Modded interesting, "Slashdot itself acts like a closed source company".
Read a few posts futher. Source is available, not as clear cut as I originally thought.
Posting to remove mod.
Mouse gestures really make life easier.
I couldn't go back to a firefox without them.
Mouse Gestures Redox for Firefox.
My tip: install it, remove all gestures except:
close tab, previous tab, next tab, reload.
If you've only got a 3 button mouse set yourself some 'rocker' gestures (hold down right mouse button, then press left to go back a page).
Gestures make life so much easier.
For Windows there is also StrokeIt, which adds mouse gestures to anything.
I'd never had any bother until about 6 months ago. After each Windows reinstall I change anti-virus software.
This time I was using Grisoft, I used them a few years ago and thought they were fine.
However, after this reinstall I had trouble playing Team Fortress 2. TF2 kept warning me my pagefile was running low, before crashing a couple of minutes later. I usually have virtual memory disabled, but after each crash I'd increase virtual memory by a couple of gig and retry, it'd still crash.
A bit of Googling told me Grisoft was being naughty, and after unistalling it and installing Avast it has all be smooth.
Elder Scrolls 3 - Morrowind, safedisc harmed performance so much that the developers removed it in the first patch. The nocd crack was recommended by just about everyone.
Part of the problem is that the developers don't usually install any DRM, it's usually done by the distributors.
So even if the developers thoroughly test a product, but the public always beta tests the DRM.
Here is a direct link to the actual chart
Gold Rush and Dustbowl are the 2 maps where red attacks and blue defends, clearly red has a major advantage. I'd like to see how much closer the sides would be if Valve only included maps using the default spawn times.
Actually look at the link - you can see that red has a clear advantage, red wins about 80% of the Gold Rush maps, and about 58% of the Dustbowl maps.
Again I'll state - I'd like to see what the percentages would be if Valve only included the servers which used the default spawn times, I'd expect red to much less of an advantage (or maybe even no advantage at all).
Did you check the parent link? Here is a direct link to the actual chart
Gold Rush and Dustbowl are the 2 maps where blue attacks and red defends, clearly red has a major advantage. I'd like to see how much closer the sides would be if Valve only included maps using the default spawn times.
Gravelpit is an exception, since that map is unbalanced, it's far easier to attack than defend on that map (of the non-medic achievements the perfect defence of Gravel Pit is the 2nd rarest, and the only one I lack)
As for engineers and teleporters, your point doesn't even make sense "Thus, quick respawn + teleport = back in the action much faster than red." The best you could say is that it gets them back in the action at the same speed as red, and even that is inaccurate.
Each teleporter has to recharge between each use, if you've got a fast respawn rate you'll need at least 2, probably 3 teleporters to keep the momentum up. In a game with 12 players on each team if you're using 2 or 3 player as engineers you better hope that the rest of the team can carry the extra weight. Engineers excel at defence, at attack they are pretty weak.
Let's not also forget all it takes is 1 spy to cloak, run past the attackers and sap all the teleporter entrances, which gets easier the more teleporters there are (since less attackers will actually be walking to the action, therefore less chance of noticing the spy).
The fine article is a little light on details, only mentioning Unreal Tournament, but in Team Fortress 2 there is a good reason red win more (bottom chart in parents link).
In any of the Attack / Defend maps blue plays the attackers, and red plays the defenders.
To keep things fair the attackers respawn a lot quicker than the defenders (since the attacker has to respawn and run halfway across the map, while the defender usually respawns only a short walk from the final defence point).
Since waiting 10 to 20 seconds to respawn is pretty boring a lot of servers reduce the respawn rate, this gives a major advantage to the defenders (red).
So why do red have a slight advantage in other TF2 maps? After someone has played TF2 many hours, they'll realise that they generally win more as red, they may not analyse why they win more, but the end result is players with a lot of TF2 experience tend to join the red team without really thinking about it.
Personally I think Tribes 2 did it right, the enemy always is red.
If I was you I'd definitely phone them, you are paying way too much. I was a sweet customer of theirs for years, there prices on their website had come down considerably, but it'd never been reflected on my bill. Compare your current package with what they currently have on their website, then compare it to a similar package on Sky, phone them and threaten to leave. They'll price match.
Watching Sky news (one of the two main news stations) earlier today they referred to the data retention law as an EU law, but that isn't entirely correct.
When the UK was president of the EU it brought in Europe wide data retention laws. It was shortly after 7/7 and managed to get enough votes to be passed.
When an EU law is passed the member states implement it in their own way (all member states are required their phone companies / ISP's to log phone / internet data for at least 6 months, some do longer).
So while this is technically an EU law, it was brought into Europe by predominantly by the UK.
Allowing the data to be stored by the government is a new, UK only law.
I've tried a few gaming keyboards - The zBoard, Saitek Gamers keyboard and Razer Tarantula.
Without a doubt the Tarantula is the best. You can redefine each key to another layout and it's stored in the hardware, so I know I've got Dvorak (with swapped backspace/caps lock, and Start menu/pause) in Linux, Windows and even my bios.
If you've used Dvorak for a while you'll come across little hiccups - like Flash games which are hardcoded to use 'wsad', to switch between keymaps all you've got to do is press the 'Profile' button and F1-F5.
The Tarantula is the only keyboard which actually comes with a tool to help remove the keycaps.
Some downsides:
The remapper software is only available for windows, once a keymap is created you can switch anytime, but you'll still need windows to create it. Razer have got a little friendly with microsoft, so I doubt they'll release a Linux driver.
The remapper software is dumb, when remapping it applies each key change instantly, so you need to use Windows On-Screen-Keyboard to set some of the last few keys (win/sys32/osk.exe)
It's got an annoying 'heartbeat', if you've used any Razer products you'll know what I mean. The Razer logo slowly glows bright then turns off every few seconds. Looks cool, for 5 minutes, then it's just a distraction. Mine is covered with duct tape.
Get the tastiest breed of cow, find the tastiest cow of the breed, kill the poor thing, and grow the cloned meat in a vat.
Once the system is working, I'd imagine it'd be a lot cheaper than the current system, think of the energy cows waste (breathing, blood pumping, etc). Admittedly cows allowed to roam get that energy from grass, but it's still trading a massive waste of land for a massive amount of unwanted methane
I'm sure meat grown in a vat would be a lot easier to tinker with than meat grown by a cow, allowing things like vitamin enriched beef, long life beef, burn resistant beef, bacon flavor beef (admit it, you know you want it), possibly even replacing the cow fat with something like omega-3 fat...
As for ethics, some people may comment about not giving a damn if an animal feels pain, but I'm sure if they bothered to research it, all but the most psychopathic would feel empathy, they'd just rather not think too deeply about it. Likewise, I suspect my footwear was made by some child slaves in some faraway country, so while I avoid that brand, I'm fairly sure if I researched the brands of footwear I do buy, I'd find some pretty bad things.
Windows does something similar, but slightly more buggy.
Use the default Windows file manager to login to an FTP server, move a file, then cancel the move.
Windows deletes the partially moved from from your system, then sends the delete command to the server too.
Been like that since Internet Explorer 4 to at least Internet Explorer 6 (which was the last time I checked).
I am surprised.
Uptime of that long using just a NAT firewall, I haven't been following all the windows updates, but I'd have expected something withing the last 755 days to break your system, maybe something like a stack overflow of the TCP buffer (which would bypass your NAT easily).
I'm assuming one of the more prolific worms in the last couple of years would've automatically piggy-backed on all outgoing net connections, trying the above exploit.
Is your tracker popular? Any other open connections? Is the PC purely a server, or do you websurf on it occasionally?
Probably a troll, but...
550 days without rebooting in Win XP?
How many critical security updates have you missed?
This would be a massive boost for FOSS, the cheapest new computers in the UK are £200 ($400), Vista Home Basic OEM is £52 ($104) of that cost (prices quoted including tax, from ebuyer.com, but most of the bigger shops are about the same).
Given the choice of a 25% discount, or having Vista installed, I doubt many would choose Vista.
Technically they could reuse their old XP CD, but I think most shops would pre-install some OS, so the user knows that their PC is working when delivered.
As long as the user can press a power button, wait a minute, then be able to surf the web, most will never bother installing XP.
I was hoping people would convert because they saw that FOSS was more stable and secure, so this isn't quite the glorious victory I was hoping for, but a victory is a victory.
I retract my previous statement, it looks incredibly likely my next card will be an ATI.
Looking like I'm going to be becoming an ATI fanboi.
For the last several years I've alternated between nVidia and ATI (nVidia 4200Ti, ATI 9800XT, nVidia 6500, ATI X1900XTX).
ATI's windows drivers are terribly bloated (NET framework catastrophes), the only reason I still bought ATI was because of the excellent, efficient 3rd party Omega drivers (Win32 only).
My last card (the ATI X1900XTX) cost ~$600, since then I've started paying a lot more attention to Linux, and unless ATI do some decent drivers it'll be the last ATI card I buy.
Since most people are mentioning SWG I'll put my comment about PlanetSide (think Tribes with 100's of players and minor character levelling).
I fair enjoyed PlanetSide, a new patch with bug fixes and a heavily requested feature would be released every few weeks, and all was well. The developers were active both on the forums and in the game, all was well, the golden age of PlanetSide.
Then they annouced that they'd bring in clan owned bases and 'platoons' (groups of squads), in the next patch. It sounded really good, really got the clans excited.
Then clan owned bases and platoon got delayed by a few months so the developers could work on 'Core Combat', an expansion pack nobody wanted.
I can't remember how much they charged for the expansion pack, but the concept of it pretty much annoyed me, SOE didn't hire outside developers to create the expansion, they took away the developers who were upgrading the main game.
I can't find out the monthly price of PlanetSide (good job Sony, hiding it from potential users), but I'm going to guess at $15/month.
If $15 / month pays for developers+bandwidth+servers, then if the subscribers are deprived of the developers (bug fixes / updates) for a few months either the monthly fee should reduce, or the expansion pack should be free. Those developer hours were already paid for in the monthly subscription, selling them again as an expansion was crooked.
There was a bit of a backlash, the expasion was pretty poor, many forum members refused to buy it, instead moaning that they wanted clan owned bases and platoons.
A few weeks later SOE released clan owned bases, which couldn't be upgraded unless members of your clan bought the generally useless expansion pack.
After that SOE bug fixes / new features slowed up.
Disgruntled, but still, I carried on subscribing...
A few cheats were well known by the more experienced players, but they were obvious and not used by respectable clans, but used by a lot of idiots, example: automatic weapons would fire 5 rounds/second, by binding the mouse wheel to fire (or using a macro) you could fire much faster.
After SOE not fixing the bugs a player (can't remember his name) did a video demostrating the bugs which had been known about for months. Instead of fixing the bugs SOE banned the player.
That was pretty much the last straw for me, I sent them an angry email and cancelled my subscription.
For me to sign up to another Sony product they'd need to demonstrate vastly improved customer service, and their RIAA / rootkit actions over the past couple of years make me think its got worse. Much worse.
You're 100% correct, a huge difference between 1,000 and 100,000, when I proofed my post I was focusing on the other point (that the UK has 43% more prisoners than any other western european country), so unfortunately it slipped through.
Thanks for the correction.
I've been a lurker for years, and this is only my third ever post, but I've got to point out the flaw in your logic.
...
So in this one South London neighborhood that I occasionally frequent, there was an armed robbery at 4 in the afternoon on the main street last Saturday. It's a quiet neighborhood, very well-balanced, well-off, so it makes sense to come there and rob people.
There was a similar robbery the previous week.
The trouble is, this particular chunk of street doesn't have any cameras
It looks like you've got some small time crooks with an IQ over 90 deliberately targeting areas without CCTV.
Please, think about what your asking for. Will putting CCTV on your street make these crooks apply for jobs at the supermarket, or will it just make them target a street 500 yards away.
CCTV doesn't prevent crime, it just redirects it.
I live about a 15 minutes walk from the town centre, a few years ago the council did a pilot scheme of putting CCTV everywhere in the town centre and the two most deprived areas in the town.
CCTV worked, very well, the crime rate in town fell, the council called it a massive success, while my area saw a massive rise in crime (we're situated between town and one of the deprived areas), the police fly-postered warnings about bag snatchers, burglaries rose (3 on my street of 20 houses within a year, I'd only heard of 2 burglaries in the previous 2 decades).
My area got CCTV about 18 months later, and crime has dropped to marginally higher than before, so while I'm happy that my area has CCTV, I'm not fooling myself, the crooks are still committing crimes, the council just spent a fortune on CCTV to make them walk a few hundred extra yards to commit crimes.
We still get local kids being vandals, but they've largely moved off the main streets and into side streets (a few weeks ago every car on the street was vandalised, the local cemetery has been vandalised repeatedly), the CCTV still catches the dumb crooks, or the ones so desperate for a fix that they don't care, but any even remotely smart crook is now targeting somewhere else.
The only way CCTV can actually prevent a non-idiot crook is by putting CCTV literally everywhere. Everywhere.
So yeah, you're right, The trouble is, this particular chunk of street doesn't have any cameras, but the only reason it's your problem is because someone else decided to shift the problem onto you, and your solution is to shift the problem onto someone else. Can't blame you, it really sucks living in a high crime area, but when the entire country tries to shift the problem onto someone else it doesn't really work.
My solution: Don't really have one, Britain already has by far the highest prison population per capita in Europe (141 per 1000, 2nd place is Germany with 98 per 1000), so I doubt building more prisons would help, I guess the only real options are to go the absolute sissy route, treating the thugs nicely and train them to be productive members of society, or to bring in daily torture in prisons to make thugs really not want to go back. Hopefully there is a 3rd way I'm not seeing, but the current system isn't working.
Yes, it basically gives the exemption from being sued for losing your info as long as they inform you about the loss promptly. I wouldn't count that as a privacy promoting law. I'd guess the original intent was good (public must be informed), but corporate lobbiests altered the law to protect themselves (can't sue companies). IIRC there was too many companies losing laptops, the public were getting nervous getting a letter every month or two, so the law is getting reworked so the public only needs to be informed if the company believes there customer database would be used for fraud. Pretty much means that no company has to inform their customers of a lost database unless their database is hacked and the hacker leaves a note saying "m3 s0 l33t, g0nna use ur data 4 fake CC!!! lol!!!" Disclaimer: I am not a California resident, just remember this being discussed on /. a while ago.
Also try for the the Wonder which allows you to know any tech known to 2 factions, after that you can set research to 0% and concentrate on building up your cities. The Hunter-Killer Algorithm was nerfed in the AC expanison, which made the probe team tactic even more viable. The AC expansion added 7 new factions, which were generally more powerful than the original 7 factions, which was a shame, since mixing new/old factions in one game becomes unbalancing, but the 2 alien factions add a different element.