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Dr Zaius

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  1. That raises an interesting question about movie studios etc putting up fake torrents, is the "evil pirate" who downloads a fake a torrent still attempting to infringe copyright if it's impossible that any actual infringement could take place? Personally I think the fake torrent/P2P thing is akin to the Police trying to stop stabbings by handing out rubber knives on street corners, anyone with half a clue realises it's fake the moment the see it anyway. To me these proposed changes seem ridiculously scary, I'm glad I live in moderately liberal country where there's enough paranoid hippies to keep everything in line. Piracy isn't a serious offence, why don't you let homeland security round up sex offenders or something instead? You as well declare piracy = terrorism and send the cruise missiles off to hit duplication factories in south east Asia, at least then it would stop the people taking the most out of the RIAA/MPAA/etc's profits. I can't see these changes doing anything but hurting your average Joe who decided he couldn't afford to buy the DVD of the latest trash out of Hollywood and pirated it instead then gets dragged off to jail for half his life.
  2. I use a similar VGA box to use my Wii in 480P over VGA: http://www.consoleplus.co.uk/product_info....output-hd-ready (I didn't order from Console Plus, just the first google result) The resulting image is perfect and nothing seems to be lost in the conversion from component to VGA, the only issue with the VGA box I use is that it doesn't do 480i conversion so I have to swap cables if something doesn't do progressive scan like the Everybody Votes channel. From what I read when I was shopping around pretty much anything that can convert 480P component to VGA will work, there doesn't seem to be any compatibility issues. I only got the model I did because I only wanted it for my Wii and I could source it locally, not sure if your after any other features.
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crackdown_Soundtrack
  4. With XP you could just copy the setup files off the CD to the harddrive and then boot from any boot disk that gives you a DOS like environment (any old Windows 98 disks you have lying around etc or just grab something from www.bootdisk.com) and then run "winnt" in the "i386" directory to start the setup process. The same method might work with MCE, although I'm not sure of how MCE differs from XP Home/Pro as far as the installation goes. I can't guarantee it will work though, you may need some command line switches on winnt to install the MCE components.
  5. Dr Zaius

    key cards

    You'll first have to figure out what card it is, I'm guessing it's RFID, magnetic stripe or a smart card. Although there are others and many different variations of each type of card and proprietary systems etc. If you can't identify what type of card it is yourself then it would be helpful you could provide photos or at least a description of the card and the card reader. Also you might want to check on the policy of your place of residence, you may have signed something about not attempting to circumvent the card system. Even though your only copying your own card (well you don't mention an intent to copy anyone elses...) there still could be some issues with doing this.
  6. Do you really need to carry all that stuff to school? :P I can't really recommend any brands of bags to buy, they're all quite similar and it really comes down to what style of bag appeals to you, has adequate pockets etc versus the cost of the bag. I've always been happy with Targus bags, seem to have alot of padding and enough storage for me and they can be found quite cheap. Although I only carry stuff for uni, a laptop and accessories (external hard drive, network cable etc). ShinmaRyuu mentioned he's a got a military style bag, this is something I would definately look into. I'm not sure of what stores are around where you live but Army Surplus places can sell you excellent bags at a low price. They always have heaps of pockets and padding and won't fall apart. As far a home made solution you can always "mod" an existing bag. Learn how to sew or talk nicely to someone who can. This way you would get exactly what you want and you can make sure it will last. I believe that was episode 1 in the "Dressing Leet" segment?
  7. Zelda is a must if that's your sort of game, it will keep you busy for a while and you can replay it a few times, sadly there's not much in the way of sidequests to keep you busy once you've finished the main story. Red Steel has frustrating gameplay and a horrid storyline but it still has it's good moments. The level where that guy puts you through his "game" in his funhouse was done excellently, yet there are other levels that were bland and unchallenging for a modern FPS. Likewise there are moments when the gun/sword control feels perfect, yet most of the time it's feels horrible. It certainly has the makings of a great game but it does need a lot more polish. I would recommend people pick it up just so they can catch a glimpse of what could have been possible. I haven't played Splinter Cell but I've heard the controls aren't that good and it just feels like a last minute port like Call of Duty 3. I'll have to try it out myself before making any judgement. These sorts of games in my opinion are just not suitable for the Wii. Two games coming out soon that look promising and have gotten good previews are Sonic And The Secret Rings and SSX Blur. I'm still skeptical on how good Sonic will be but I've pre-ordered it anyway. SSX Blur looks like it has great Wii controls and goes back to what made the old SSX games so much fun. Other games coming soonish after that I've got my eye on are The Godfather: Blackhand Edition, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Blazing Angels: Squadrons Of WWII. Although I haven't really seen enough of these games to make any predictions on what they will be like. We're still months away from the big titles like the Mario games and Metroid, they're pretty much guaranteed to be great games.
  8. Well it runs GC homebrew so it will run CubeDoom. Although CubeDoom isn't anywhere near finished and it will still just be running in GC mode on the Wii. But yes it will run Doom.
  9. I'm not sure how sophisticated you want to make this game but you can always just download the trial version of FPSC and see if it's usable for what you want to make anyway. Game development takes a lot of time and hard work, you may be able to throw something together quickly in FPSC but you'll likely be disappointed with it. If you do plan on looking at game development or coding for personal or career reasons in the future it is definitely worth spending the time to learn programming etc. Time may be limited now, but it will only get even more limited once you leave school. :P Good luck with whatever path you choose to take.
  10. FPSCreator is sorely lacking featurewise and performancewise from the brief experiences I've had with it, as was suggested you are better off making a mod or TC for an existing engine. You will however run into scripting/coding when you try to mod just about any game. Even with FPSCreator your need to be able to script to do anything advanced. If you don't want to learn any coding or scripting languages then your definitely out of luck as you won't get very far without even a basic understanding of programming fundamentals. Depending on your goals I would suggest you either start modding an existing game or look into Flash/Actionscript and go from there. Although FPSCreator isn't that good in my opinion, I would recommend Dark Basic Pro made by the same company. It provides a nice and simple interface to DX9 with heaps of addons and a great community to help with things like AI, physics, networking etc. It can compile native executables for windows and archieves reasonable framerates, you can also get an extension so you access the DBP engine directly from C++(unmanaged) or from .NET languages like VB.net, C# or C++(managed). The language is easy to learn and follows typical BASIC syntax. A number of commercial quality games have been made with DBP, although you won't be making the next Unreal Tournament game with it or anything.
  11. I'm uncertain of the truth behind the article but I can't see this getting anything more than a solid round of laughter from any lawyers. Even if the base wasn't in Iraq and was actually on British soil is would be hard enough to get the case anywhere near court. From what I gather the entire article is speculation anyway, they can only guess what the terrorists intended to do with the maps, there's no evidence they are being used specifically for artillery fire. There's also very little in the way of actual quotes from military officials to support these allegations and a lot of journalistic nonsense to make it more of a story. I don't see how the blame can be laid on Google, are you going to sue a company that makes binoculars because they allow terrorists to see into your base from a distance? Perhaps you would like to sue the makers of the mortar's for making a device capable of killing people? Maybe you want to sue Atlas publishers for showing the terrorists where London is? Better yet how about you sue your own training facilities for producing such inept officers? I also find it hard to believe that a relatively modern army like the British doesn't know how to operate in hostile environment where detailed intelligence is easily available to both sides. There's been half a century of spy satellites, high resolution cameras etc. I think it was about WWI when generals realised the enemy could see their positions from the sky in their observation balloons. Surely someone at the base has some sort of training in methods of countering such attempts at probing their bases' defences? Standing on a high vantage point with a telescopic lens does the same thing. Stand at the gate of the base with a handheld GPS unit? The "evidence" seems to prove nothing more than terrorists understand how to use Google Earth. I do understand that the maps probably are being used for some not so good purposes but there are a lot of other reasons for the maps. Looking at military bases in the US, Russia, China etc is quite popular among users of Google Earth, you never know what you might see. Perhaps someone was merely curious as to what was really in that big British military base down the road? Merely speculating on the intended purposes again and there's other ways to gather intelligence. I'm guessing a camera is probably cheaper and more reliable than a decent broadband internet in Iraq? Obviously the maps aren't giving the terrorists pin point accuracy. While I regret the loss of any human life the inhabitants of the base aren't exactly being slaughtered. I imagine casualties are what would be expected of an inexperienced "terrorist" randomly firing a poorly made and maintained mortar towards your base. It sounds like Iran is a lot more likely to improve their accuracy then Google Earth, some how I don't a lawsuit would work against Iran either though. That means that you too can sign up for it and use it. If it's such a wonderful tool for reconnaissance then maybe you should use it to hunt Osama down? There's hundreds of providers of imagery, Google Earth just happens to be free and popular, if consumers can find an alternative then surely terrorists can too. There's no way you can count on all of them to censor your base. Maybe that's why they're not hitting anything, they're firing their mortars at where you had your tent pitched two years ago. Apparently "rogue militias" can't get internet access or a printer but "terrorists" can get them just fine and sell the maps? As mentioned earlier it can already be done in many other ways. As I suggested before, perhaps Iran, the mortar manufacturers and the whoever trained these soldiers should be sued first. How about you move things around every now and then to keep them guessing? The insurgents have learnt to be evasive, perhaps the British forces should learn it too.
  12. Indeed there's always unpublished exploits and the risk of exploits in the related software: webserver, php, sql database etc, or an exploit in another application on the server that could allow an attacker to gain access. Don't let mine or anyone else's comments on security bias you, you should be choosing forum software based on functionality. Any security issues on any forum software can be mitigated by a good administrator, and as you say backups are critical.
  13. I admit that SMF has had a number of vulnerabilities over the years. But it's still in my opinion a lot better than other forum software with regards to the number and severity of security issues. None of the holes I've seen have ever made me particularly worried as they are only minor things, I've yet to see a single SMF board that has been hijacked, not that SMF is bullet-proof by any means, it just seems to be in my opinion a lot less prone to being exploited. I still maintain that a good administrator can prevent any security issues. Every vulnerability listing for SMF that I've seen has some sort of negative comment about the SMF development teams attitude to security, if they truly were so reckless then we would be seeing SMF boards being hijacked all the time and the entire userbase would be complaining about it, this isn't happening. If these holes really are such a huge issue then why aren't the discoverers of these holes making all us SMF administrators aware of their significance on the community forums? Thousands of administrators all complaining at once would change any "attitude problem".
  14. I've yet to see a security hole in SMF that wasn't fixed immediately and most of the holes found have been in the beta/RC stages of 1.0 and 1.1. You even get an announcement about updates as soon as you go to the admin centre and from there it's just a few clicks and the patch can be applied. I can't see how the most newbie of administrators could fail to update their forums in time. Perhaps you would like to take a look at the track record of other forum software? Do you not remember the masses of hijacked phpBB forums in recent years? I'm not saying phpBB has a reputation for bad security, I'm just saying your point is rather irrelevant when compared to other forum software SMF has been excellent security-wise.
  15. VBulletin has always seemed a bit bloated for me, but if your going to be spending money on forum software then you'll be best with VBulletin. If you've never admined a VB forum before then be prepared to spend some time learning how to tweak it just how you want. If you know your way around VBulletin then it's great software, but it can be quite daunting at first. I'm not sure what the VBulletin community is like now? I assume there's still thousands of mods etc and you get professional tech support. Personally I'm of the opinion that SMF is the best option, I've been using it since the beginning with more or less no problems. It works great no matter the size of your forums, plenty of mods/tweaks/themes if you want them and friendly tech support and community. SMF has converters from all popular forum software that work great. Administrating a SMF forum is a piece of cake, the code is easy edit, the layout/theme is easy to edit etc. I really can't say enough nice things about SMF. I'm sure other forum software works just as well as SMF, I've just never needed to use anything else for my purposes in recent years. IPB has always been horrid in my opinion. I don't know enough about where phpBB is heading with the new version to comment on it. SMF has always worked perfectly out of the box for me? I do remember some issues with cookies back in the 1.0 Beta days though.
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