Funny, I remember this around the time,

Gene's son was doing some comic, and ripped images that were almost identical to Bleach and a few other manga's ( http://www.cnngo.com/tokyo/none/manga-gene-simmons-son-accused-bleach-plagiarism-750585 and http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-02-25/nick-simmons-incarnate-halted-over-alleged-bleach-plagiarism ) . Then his dad comes out that all these kids that steal should be sued, face prision, hang on I think there was an quote saying he hoped they get @ss rapped in prison: yep found it http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/gene_simmons_fires_back_at_hackers.html and another http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/gene-simmons-vs-anonymous-whos-the-bigger-asshole.ars . By his own mouth, his son should be in prison being @ss raped.

Personally it is the double standards everyone has that annoys me

Bit like all the hacking stuff lately, Companies are allowed to sell programs to hijack Itunes, install keyloggers, do what they like and sell it to governments, but the day a normal person does it, 10 years in prison. Hacking a website is like tagging someones building/home, if it is that much of a problem get better protection. 10 years for defacing a website? You can kill someone for less time. You think if you killed gene that the charge of website defacing would still be present? might be a nice option out that has only good points

Bored now, MERRY XMAS ALL

Read this on the train this morning

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21256-rats-free-each-other-from-traps-then-share-chocolate.html

They worked out that in 76% of cases (after training) the rats would free each other from cages.

In another test they were given the choice between chocolate or freeing a mate, and in one or two cases they freed it and shared the the cholocates.

they also did another test where the caged rat could not get any chocolate (even if free), and the first rat still let them out. This is meant to show that they were not just letting the other rat out to social company/rewards.

Point being it is interesting to watch animals show behavoir traits that we have said only humans/apes can feel. Anyway read the paper, my summary wont be great i was really sleepy on the train this morning

Me

I select OS based on most applicable, always have.

For example, I have used linux for personal file servers, web servers and generally used them on and off for about 11 years now. I jump from one OS to another, played with Centos, blacktrack, Ubunto but not since 8 something. I have old PC's at home that run linux as nothing else will run on them and they are just more stable for long term running. I like to build machines that have specific roles, so min install to meet that requirement.

My game PC and laptop both run windows 7, because both machines have the 550 series of gfx and to get the most out of them windows is the best option. That being said i am going to dual boot in to centos the laptop, wonder if i can get it working with a 580m gfx card might do that tonight,

For work I am now rolling out centos machines cheaper than windows and can do everything i need them too and I can build them very specific for their roles.

As someone that enjoys playing with computers, there is no best OS, just the best OS for the job. With that in mind I find it best to keep on top of all of them (sorry mac people i never owned one, but i did consider it so i could develop iphone apps in my spare time so it does have a use)

tl:dr = Choose the OS for what you want to do, and get an understanding of a few to have the best options

I have broken it down in to stages,

firstly getting out the house, being from UK I lack guns but currently have a number of heavy blunt objects for the head shots. I have 3-4 weapons that should get me and anyone around me out of the house.

Secondly, Transport. We need to move and fast away from highly populated areas, I have a volvo (older model) the only electrical part is the starter motor and I currently have a spare wrapped in a faraday cage (part of my nuclear war plan, the EMP from a blast would wipe out 99% of transport so the old Volvo is a great pick as you can patch them back together without much hassle)

Thirdly, Collecting required items. Most importantly is petrol and a generator, I already have these located in a good supply and these are located on the edge of town to reduce the risks of zombies being around.

Fourth, hideout location. I have picked a place that is located near an old fort, high on a hill, great views of the surrounding area and very limited population, like 200 in the village currently. The plan is to get to this place and set up shop with around 10-15 people that I have already selected. The location has a number of local farms and so food itself can be gathered when we get to this stage

Fifth, communication this is harder and being worked on, I am assuming that the GPRS, mobile phone and the standard copper is down, I am in the market for a satellite setup so that I can just point and go and still be connected, think of those world phones where you can call anyone kinda set up.

Sixth, We have food from local farms, communications so we can get news and progress reports (and my daily internet fix :/) We are on the coast so there is the option of escape my water if needed. So stage 6 will be chilling relaxing waiting for the zombies to die out.

Sevenths, Repopulation of the UK with me as the new king,

I have given this a little thought

Been playing with computers long time, more than one fav upgrade,

1) has to be monitors, that first 24" flatscreen costing silly money but just wow when i got it, it then got joined by a 17" friend and then another, mulipul monitors all the way but the orignal upgrade from a 22" CRT that was used for gfx designe to the 24" LCD was the most noticable visually

2) second fav upgrade would have had to be my orignal p4 gfx card upgrade, i just got in to beta for eve online and my system's gfx just did not cut it, after 2 months of saving i got it and got to spend atleast a month or two in beta, most likely my most worked for upgrade when i was working a part time job for 12 hours aweek, but i dont remember what it was :( always wanted a voodoo card, might ebay one for the hell of it

3) My most recent upgrade which is a fav is a NAS drive wioth mirrored raid on 2x2tb, I had been looking for a half decent backup solution for a while and my collection is too big for the cloud, I have a fair bit of media/games/music even have all my college/uni work from over 10 years ago I dont delete anything normally and had been using a removalabe USB drive (seagate 1.5tb) to back it up but as usual the seagate broke after forum browsing the web lots of people had similar problems with the drive and seagate were replacing them without question but by then I had lost alot, so much so that I almost paid to have a proffesional team do data recovery but once i found out the cost i might have died a little inside, Luckly I only lost data for the last 2 years, as i have incurmental backups but it made me relaise just how unsafe my data was. Now nothing important is stored on the home PCs/laptops, Nas holds everything, tho its taking some time to build up the stuff i lost, in fairness it was mainly games and save games and I miss the most :/ I also do have a secondary 2tb USB drive NOT SEAGATE, that i do an offsite backup with every few months. I take home back ups seriosuly

Az

All good MMOs have one thing in common they look after their communities .

Examples

WoW = Spent alot of time creating communities via guides and raiding (team building exercises) Also they did create good servers community however the cross server dungeon finder does take away from the community, which I believe Blizzard has acknowledged and is now looking for ways to foster more team spirit on a server.

SWG = its an oldie but a goody, anyone that played this game will agree that the commity was great untill the Combat reblance and everyone left, that might have just been my server tho.

WAR = This game was tanking, had massive bugs after launch, I believe the thing that kept it floating was the core communities that decided to stay and put up with them. Took around a year to start raising in subs after what can only be described as a buggy launch.

EvE = Game is all about player communities, Without players this game would just stop as the players create most of the action in game while the developers just give the players tools to do so. Again this game pushes complex social relationships in a single server and I think has seen a steady growth in player base since launch. Slow and Steady

Hell lets even throw in Minecraft (public Servers) and say that the community is the reason this game does well, and it is not even that good looking. Something that game studios seem to over look, people will play less impressively looking games to play a better game. Now bad games are hidden behind layers and layers of makeup boasting impressive stats but once you get a look under that you realise its just empty of any content minus shinnies.

The MMO bubble happened after WoW had been out a few months and all these big companies wanting a slice of that cash pie. These big companies came in, made their 'mangement cut' to get a few more % of profits, then when their profits start tanking start blaming everyone but themselves and then start trying to add hacked/rushed features in to the game to get quick sales, and the new fad of micro transactions (boo) and other things to keep people paying to play. The bubble is going to burst and good, games are mostly time wasting things now, when was the last time you had a game studio that cared about their product form the point of a game/story rather than management profit focused? I know a few but most game studios have been swallowed by the management train that thinks getting everyone working in the same way is the best way to raise profits but forget that making everyone work in the same fashion kills creativity that made the original games good.

There are very few MMOs that are pushing the tech and what is possible, i would say most games in the sector these days are wow cloans from large studios that are just trying to cash in on monthly subs. Some of the more niche MMOs are doing ok but they are developing slowly because of low population, but I think start slow and build up a good community is better than massive launch, with everyone leaving after 2 months because of bugs.

I think a telling point is going to be Tor, the amount of money that game has cost, will it even dent wow? I really do get the impression Tor is a massive effort by EA to take the MMO market but show me one game that EA has taken and improved the community? However they do have Bioware

Hey /.

So lets quickly look at some MMOS

Eve-online: Great MMO supported by a company that loves it (to a degree) and really tries to make the game better. Driving 80% by player actions and the developers give the tools to the players to create their own content, this is a sandbox game

WoW: They got it right here, the first real user friendly pretty MMO, with a simple mission system and great back story supported by an existing legion of fans who already played blizzard games. Remember that it took 2 years to iron out the bugs and in that time it had no competition. Not driven by player actions in anyway. We call this a funfair game, all the rides must be built before hand for you to enjoy

SWG: Was also one of my favs because i felt like it had a mix of both sandbox and funfair, the crafting in the game was completely player driven, while the developers still added content to keep people entertained if they were too lazy to amuse themselves.

I tend to believe these 3 older MMOS are the basis of what we really have today.

Moving on, TOR i am not sure about, they are spending huge amounts of money on Voice overs, getting actors in, what i believe they are trying to create is an amazing storyline in an MMO. The problem with this is that MMOs need reply-ability and one great story line only cuts it so much. I will be playing Tor when it comes out but I fear that they are focusing too much on developing a storyline when really they should be building the tools to create communities, since its the players and the guilds/corps/groups of people that make a game good or not. I not got to play Tor Yet, but I just feel this is going to be one of those things that looks amazing, 10/10 but just has not depth to it. Also because of the amount of money they have spent and the fact it will be multi server means once again players really do not change the world and everyone just ends up running the same missions. Meh, Someone make more sandbox games, and yes i know there ar a few out there, i think i consider darkfal as more sandboxie, and ofcouse mincraft not sure we can count that as an MMO tho

When Sony took over SWGs there was lot of fear among the players of SWG, and as stated above they were right to. I have played most MMOs relesed in the last 10 years and SWG with its player driven Crafting system was one of the better games. The CU was a nightmare and the game started tanking heavily after that. Add in the Jump to Light speed space add on I think SOE might have got a slight boast in subs but mostly they took a great game and destoryed it then had to merge all the servers because of low populations.

On a sidenote (please note i can not verify this) The matrix film (number 3) had a different ending written to what we all saw in the end, the reason for the change was that the company funding the film wanted to launch the Matrix MMO off the back of the film and carry the story line on that way, SOE was this company. (great idea) However what we were left with was a shitty end to a bad film, and an MMO that tanked also, to the point they removed all the live actors and the story never progressed at which stage game over. Another example of SOE not really caring about the commities it creates unless they turn over huge amounts of monies.

A few years later they then relased the root kit on the Spiderman (1or2?) sound track that attempted to stop people copying music I also got caught by this one fun fun, this was the last sony product i have brought.

I LOVE the PS3 war on hackers, i mean Sony might as well make it's mission statement as "we know best and dont care what customers say". Sony used to be an company that produced amazing products, they are failing badly but to try and stay competitive they pretend that they are still top dogs by trying to innovate and in this regard they are failing badly and alienating their customer base. Personally I only wanted a PS3 so i could play all my old PS2 games, the OtherOS was also a nice feature, and would have been the only points of the system i am that interested in, both of which have been removed forceabily againts the wishes of the customer base.

Finally the data brech is not their fault however the way they are handling it is disgusting, My personal fav was the preemptive headlines of "Anonymous are hacking teh PST network". Now the kicker in this story, ALL YOUR PASSWORDS WERE STORED IN PLAIN TEXT. oh that felt good, thats right, all your playstation network passwords were plain text which means now an attacker has your email and one of your passwords, this has got to be the biggest identify theif to have happened to date.

TL:DR Anyway Long story short, Sony has been failing for 10-15 years, they believe they are market leaders and so try and make the market move around them but all they are really doing is now shutting down their customer base one group' at a time. They still make great TVs but I will not buy sony products because Sony has proved that customers are not worthy of their concern.

I recently had a 1.5TB External Seagate drive. it worked for a few months then started clicking and within 2 weeks the thing failed. I did some google searching and really REALLY wish i had done more research before buying the drive because it is a very common problem. I even got a replacement and the same thing happened. I have read of someone having 5 replacements in 6 months. Seagate are aware there is a problem as they replace the drive instantly but no public recall.

Google Link to LOTS of web pages details the issues http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Seagate+External+drive+clicking
Seagate Forums
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Other-External-products/Seagate-Expansions-producing-loud-clicking-sound/td-p/30962/page/3
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Maxtor-OneTouch-Products/Maxtor-External-Hard-Drive-Clicking-Noise-Not-Working/td-p/16446
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Other-External-products/Solution-Seagate-Expansion-Desktop-External-Drive-clicking/td-p/49865

I could supply more links, but from a personal view NEVER use seagate for anything but Throw away data. I was using it as a backup for my PC and in the end lost 500gb of data in the process.
Do not by Seagate hard drives

Hello /.

Late comment not sure anyone will see but oh well here we go.....

I am in the group of 10% that does not see 3d the way the rest of you do. My eyes are of different strengths leading to having one very dominate eye and one lazy one (not wonky it looks like a normal eye). This results me really only seeing One image when I watch the film instead of my brain trying to use the 2 images to create depth. So when everyone in a 3d film is going being amazed by the images jumping out I just see one flat image with some discoloured overlay image that looks out of place because I am only seeing it from one side. At present i have been to 3-4 3d films and wont be going to any more, even watching the film the way i do it still gives me a headache after 30 or so minutes, the crappy picture overlay which everyone else uses to create depth just looks bad and the whole experiences i feel is rather pointless.

So where am i going with this? 3D is a nice concept however currently I personally have not experienced it like 90% of people have, not that this is a bad thing but for someone that has been playing games since he was 5? owned most consoles (I am a PC gamer) there is a slight worry now that the market is going in a direction that I can not follow. I am hoping that it is an option that can be disabled and you can still play games 'the old fashion way' (anyone know if 3d on the 3DS can be disabled?)

Thanks for the link,

Your link is someone building a render engine for Duke to Run Natively which is nice but a lot of work. Buying the Game from the website GOG installs it with DOSBOX behind, so you are playing the original game via DoxBox (http://www.dosbox.com/) so no need to update, and DosBox is pretty undemanding on system resources. Secondly Tunngle The VPN client is useful for more than Just Duke3d, Been playing Red Alert (original) and C&CRA2 as well. Basically Tunngle allows network games for older games, thinking about it I wonder if dungeon keeper works.

Well I am big Duke Fan, to the point that once we heard it was finally coming out a friend and I got Duke3D working over WAN which I will share today. Firstly pick up a copy of Duke 3D Atomic Edition (i like this website http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/duke_nukem_3d_atomic_edition) I think the game is in open licensing but not 100% sure. Then download Tunngle from http://www.tunngle.net/ which is a WAN VPN thingy that allows you to play Local network games over the interweb. Install, Start Tunngle, Full screen Duke select network game and you now have multiplayer Duke3D in 2011 (if the game lags its because your internet connection has a high ping time) Side note I hope they keep capture the babe in the new game, could be fun but something tells me it is going to get patched :/ Luke

I understand where you are coming from

However what is being missed here completely by all this drama is that Sarah Palin had government related emails in her personal mail box. Now under US law this is highly illegal as all government related emails must pass via the public system so that it can be monitored.

This guy broke in to her email, found emails relating to her work which by law should not have been there and suddenly there is a massive circus and he goes to prison. This is just another case of the government using a scape goat to hide the fact that a government official was doing something they should not.

Also he did not HACK it, that would imply some skill, he simply answered the secret question and got the password reset. His fail was that he used a Proxy that was known to give up private details if requested by the government.

Now finally in closing, I agree he did something wrong, however if this had been done to a normal person no one would have cared. The reason for the media circus was/is to take the light off the fact that Sarah is talking to other government members via private email so that it stays off the audit trail.

Hello and htank you for your informative post

This is very much correct, with a 4gb Xbox elite you can not play co-op as it requires a real hard drive and flash dont count. To add insult to this problem MS are not selling the hard drives for the elite as stand alone, meaning new console.

Well thats untill i found a video, (which i can not locate so i will decribe)

The old Xbox 360 hard drives have the same connector (on the phyical drive) so if you can get the hard drive out the shell (cut my hands lots without the correct keys but possbile) you can simply slot it in to the new elite. Fits well with a little force, and does not break or void warrenty on the new console only the old hard drive. I now have an elite with a 20gb storage which is easily enough for Co-op

Hope this helps /b/rothers

This will always be a problem with instant communication,

However, I have NEVER let my mobile phone dictate my social interaction, for example if my phone goes when my friends and I are chatting I DO NOT ANSWER IT, they see this action and if they then call me and I dont pick up the assume I am currently busy. This dynamic has taken rather a lot to work in to my every day life since most people expect instant reply but its now understood that if it is important leave a VM or text message and I will get back to you when I can.

This also works with Email, Best practice is to only look at your mail once every hour instead of always letting it run how your day goes.

Take control people and stop letting technology and the people around you decide what you do and when :/