ooh a flowchart of what makes COSMOS work

My biggest worries regarding this are as follows:

• Its using Microsoft’s .NET technology, when it would probably be far cheaper and more versatile if it used PHP and MySQL. However I realise that MSSQL is the database that the game runs on and using .NET technology makes it easier to work with the data they already have.
• There is Blogging Software mentioned. This worries me the most. What about those of us who already have blogs? Will we be able to easily integrate COSMOS data into our existing blogs? Will we even be able to access it? What about services like PodLogs and GameScribe, which were started by players for players? Would it not be better to show them some love rather than develope a rival service?

This is all beside the point as yet again there is very little information regarding functionality and usability in this blog about COSMOS. The majority of EVE players and future users of the system are simply not interested in how it works at this level, what we want to know is what in fact it will do once it is all up and running.

Some questions I have:

1. Will I be able to get my EVE-mail forwarded to another email account?
2. Will there be out of game chat/voice access?
3. Will I be able to change my skills/orders?
4. Will I be able to issue and accept contracts?
5. Is the introduction of COSMOS going to include an upgraded in game browser?
6. Will Players be able to develope their own applications and utilities (web-based and otherwise) with access to the COSMOS API?

Tell us how COSMOS will benefit us and improve our ability to interact with EVE, not how the various magic boxes talk to each other. Personally I don’t care, as long as it works and is useful.

Till next time, good hunting and don’t let the reds get you down.

PS: Did CCP not even consider using Google Wave? Looks like it has potential.

Welcome to the seventh installment of the EVE Blog Banter , the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux . The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here . Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic comes to us from CrazyKinux, and he asks: “What 3 things haven’t you done in EVE and why? Would you be willing to try one day? Why so? Why not?”

This is a tricky subject, mainly due to the fact that there is so much to do in EVE that its hard to narrow down what I haven’t done to just three things. Well I might as well start somewhere…

1 – Like a Battleship Virgin.

Unlike many of the people I know and have met through playing EVE, I have never flown a battleship and only in the past few months have I had the skills to do so. When I first started playing in 2004 (yes, it has been that long) I was unfocussed and did not have a specific goal. Everyone I knew and met was training and scraping together the isk to get into a BS and to me it seemed like an awful lot of work for a ship who’s role and capabilities were actually quite limited. The Battleship was the pinnacle of piloting achievement at the time and flying one was seen as more of a status symbol than anything else. This has changed in the intervening years and the BS is now the mainstay of many a blob.

I plan to climb into a BS at some point in the near future but my activites at the moment lend themselves more to cruisers and frigates than the lumbering power of a BS , and if more firepower or tank is called for I can fly a variety of battlecruisers quite effectively. I have the skills for all the Amarr and Gallente Battleships (apart from the tech 2 variants, I’m a while away from those yet) and would welcome any suggestions as to which would make the best general purpose PvP boat.

2 – Manufacturing, Schmanufacturing.

I’ve never really been into the whole economic side of EVE, I understand that it is the heart of the game and that to tap into it with the right skills and knowledge can bring untold wealth, but its never really interested me until recently.

My move from mission runner to pirate has brought home the necessity of being somewhat self sufficient in ships and modules so in setting up my hi-sec hauler alt, I put some thought into giving her the skills necessary to keep me supplied with ships and basic modules. I’ve now reached the point where I’ve got way more ships than I can feasibly fly and am looking into selling them to make a bit of cash so I can move from frigate manufacturing to cruiser construction.

The problem being that EVE’s economy is a complex and somewhat baffling beast and knowing where to sell and at what price is the key to manufacturing success. I’ll figure it out eventually and have ready source of income to keep my main living in the style to which he has become accustomed.

Then there’s invention and research to take into account…

3 – I’ll Never Stop Learning

I’ve never claimed to know all there is to know about the world of EVE, I don’t think anyone can. Its such a huge universe, with fathomless depth and complexity, that no-one can ever learn every facet of its gameplay. There is alot I hope to do in New Eden, I might join one of the big alliances one day and make the move into the intriuge, strategy and politics of the 0.0 wars. I may one day command a fleet as part of a bigger strategic engagement. I may start a corporation of my own and build my own little empire in the depths of low or nul-sec space. There is so much I haven’t done, and so much I would like to do that to try and narrow it down to three things is a preposterous endeavour. I want to do everything one day, but at the moment I’m taking one day at a time and working towards the hallowed depths of -10 security status. Learning alot along the way.

As Microsoft used to ask “Where do you want to go today?”, EVE is constantly asking me “What do you want to do today?” and the beauty of it is that it will never stop asking (fingers crossed), and I can answer differently every time and never do the same thing twice.

Check out the contributions of other participants in this months Blog Banter:

• CrazyKinux’s Musing, EVE Blog Banter #7: Eh, nobody told me you could do this in EVE!
• One Man and His Spaceship, Blog Banter 7 – Expanding My Horizon
• I am Keith Neilson, EVE Blog Banter #7 – What do you want to do today?
• Rifter Drifter, Blog Banter 7: Trinity
• Roc’s Ramblings, Blog Banter #7 – The me I am not
• Morphisat’s Blog, Eve Blog banter #7 – Treading waters unknown
• Sweet Little Bad Girl, Blog Banter 7 – Roads Not Followed
• A Mule in EvE, DD, defend against a gank & POS gunning
• Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah, Choices
• The Wandering Druid of Tranquility, “One, Two, Three…three things….hahahahaha”
• The Ralpha Dogs, Road Not Taken… Or Not
• Melindhra’s Universe, EVE Blog Banter #7 – Where no one has gone before
• Life in Low Sec, Blog Banter #7: Possibilities
• EVE Guru, EVE Blog Banter 7
• Diary of a Pod Pilot, [OOC] EVE Blog Banter #7: Stones left unturned
• Flashfresh – The Pirate, EVE Blog Banter #7: This isn’t me…
• Nefchast’s Gaming Blog, CrazyKinux’s EVE Blog Banter #7
• A Merry Life and a Short One, EVE Blog Banter #7: Syphilis Doesn’t Count
• Rip Lacunae, Past & Future (Eve Blog Banter 7)
• Broadside, EVE Blag Banter #7: aspiration
• Into the Unknown, Eve Blog Banter #7: What haven’t I done?
• Diary of a Space Jokey, Blog Banter #7: So much to do, so little time
• Achernar, To Live a Bit More of It.
• Articulated Sky, Never Say Never
• Zargyl, A Seibestor Scholar, Blog Banter #7.
• Kane Rizzel, Small Fish in an Big Pond.
More coming as they are posted!!!

If you want to catch up on previous Banters (some of which I have participated in and some which I haven’t) CrazyKinux has collated links to his contributions here, from there you can get to all the other participant’s contributions.

Till next time, good hunting and watch out for the flashies.

Jacqui Smith is the UK’s home secretary. She has recently been caught out fiddling her expenses. Not once, but twice.

The first time she was claiming her sisters house in London as a second residence, simply because she occupied a room in it on those occasions when she needed a place to crash whilst in the city. After all the recent hoo haa over MP’s expenses this seemed to be stretching the rules somewhat and makes the minister in charge of the police and law enforcement look a bit of a hypocrite.

The second, and much more damaging IMO, incident was the fact that her husband had watched some porn on pay-per-view and charged it to her ministerial expenses. This takes the cake. Especially as she’s been known to campaign against lap-dancing clubs. She needs to be gone and gone now.

Not only has she presided over some of the most draconian bills to come out of the home office, she’s guilty of abusing her position and spending my money in ways which I deem unacceptable for an MP.

Get rid of her. Now.

(TBH I believe that every MP should be out of a job and our government is a corrupt and snivelling entity who doesn’t dare to lead effectively because thay care more about the opinion of a populace who they have deliberatley kept ignorant of political issues than they do about decisive and effective leadership. Get rid of them all, but especially Jacquboot Smite.)

What is happening in Isreal/Palestine, and what has been happening for what seems like forever, is an obscenity. It is an affront to rational thinking human beings that it can be allowed to continue. It makes me so angry that the people involved seem to want to perpetuate it. The following is a list of failings, crimes and idiotic behaviour which have not helped the situation in any way whatsoever:

• Hamas are allowed to rule with impunity in Gaza simply because they were ‘democratically’ elected. This is the worst failing of both the international community and the Gazan people themselves. The international community for giving tacit recognition to a hostile terrorist organization claiming to be a government and the Gazans for not standing up to Hamas and saying “No-more”.

• Isreal hasn’t had the guts to put an end to it once and for all, though I am of the opinion that one day their patience will run out and Gaza will be reduced to a very slowly cooling sheet of glass. Their compassion, as much as Hamas’ intransigent islamic moobattery, is to blame for the mess that the Palestine problem has become.

• That no-one in the rest of the world can see Hamas for the islamofascist terrorists that they are and only see the self-inflicted suffering of the people of Gaza. We are moved by pictures of dead children, not to put an end to the situation but to hand over our cash to Hamas. Any aid which makes its way to Gaza is only going to fill the ‘government’s’ coffers so that they can buy more weapons and start the whole dance over again.

I’d like to throw my full support behind the BBC and Sky news in their refusal to air an appeal for aid for Gaza. I praise their integrity, its just such a shame that they cannot be honest about their reasons for denying the Hamas sympathizers air time.  I believe that someone in the Beeb (possibly influenced by unseen footage captured by their reporters) has come to the conclusion that any aid will go straight to Hamas and that Hamas is an enemy of civilization. In a time of war (which we are constantly being told we are in) it is the act of a traitor to give aid and succour to the enemy. I don’t believe that their decision has anything to do with impartiality as they claim. Their loyalty and steadfast upholding of the values of western civilization in this matter (if their motives are infact what I believe them to be) are to be praised and celebrated, not matter how much I might disagree with them on other matters.

As I see it now there is only one outcome to Hamas’ continued hostility towards Isreal and its not good for either party (though at least Isreal will still be there when its over). Unless the Gazan people overthrow their own government (possibly with the help of Fatah, who may be incompetent and corrupt but at least they aren’t as murderous and insane) or the international community does something to help Isreal oust Hamas (Hah, fat chance!) in order to hand Gaza back to the Palestinian Authority (currently in control of the West Bank, where things are apperntly much nicer), the only outcome I see is one that involves more death, more destruction and less compassion from Isreal.

A strong message is needed from the international community that Hamas is persona non grata. All that needs to happen is for us to look the other way whilst the Isreali’s deal with it and the problem, whilst far from being solved, will be of a different nature. Once Isreal shows that they are not to be trifled with it may cause a rethink from groups of islamicists in the region. Iran may have second thoughts about pointing a nuke in Israel’s direction, the Saudis may come to the conclusion that its harder to drill for oil through radioactive glass, and the Syrians, well who knows what the Syrians are thinking, I doubt even the Syrians do.

I hope it doesn’t come to it, but becoming devoid of all human life may be Gaza’s only hope for peace.

Note: All comments on this post (apart from the obvious spam) will be published, even the ones that are threatening and full of hate and bile. I can track your IP and any threats of violence will be reported, such behaviour will also do the job of undermining your own argument and making my point for me. Do yourself a favour and have a think before you post.

Oh dear, the Daily Mail doesn’t like the fact that some celebs are using twitter. Surprise, surprise.

What bugs me about this is the sheer hypocrisy of it. On the same page , in the sidebar there is a series of links and photos with the header “Don’t Miss”, all stories about celebrity shenanigans. So the DM can publish gossip about celebs but woe betide the celebs who use Twitter to self publish.

Do they feel their grip on the media slipping, I wonder? Do they resent that fact that people have other sources of information available to them?

I follow a couple of famous bods on Twitter (Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller), to name but a few) and find their tweets a useful reminder that these are people, not just media constructs. Its as if the DM is saying that celebs aren’t allowed to have mundane lives and do normal things that other people do every day.

Jade Goodie is not special for having cancer, thousands upon thousands of other women have cancer all over the world and they don’t get their photo’s in the national press. Leave the poor woman alone.

So Kate Winslet doesn’t like Brangelina (so the DM says anyway), I personally don’t give a shit.

More celebs should tweet if only to remind us that they are simply ordinary people who have worked hard to get where they are and there are more pressing things to be concerned about. As Gaza descends further into anarchy, The Chosen One prepares to lead the US even further away from freedom, Russia demands protection money as only a mafioso can, and the world’s economy is driven even further into the ground by government meddling. The MSM still feeds us non-news and trivia to keep the masses distracted and subservient.

This is not the worst that the Daily Mail and their compatriots are guilty of but it certainly shows where their priorities lie. They lead us to believe that we should be concerned about the lives of the famous whilst they manipulate our governments into measures designed to fill their already bulging pockets. Its becoming hard to tell whether the media owns the state or the state owns the media, but to be honest it doesn’t matter as the results are the same.

Our freedoms are eroded in order to appease ‘public outcry’ directly influenced by the media’s coverage of the issue du-jour, whilst the real problems go un-noticed and un-reported. Has anyone seen or heard any news about the riots surrounding the protests outside the Israeli embassy last week, or the anti-semitic attacks being perpetrated around the world by coalitions of neo-nazis, hamas sympathizers and the progressive left? I’ve certainly not seen any mention of them on the BBC or heard anything about them on the radio. This is kind of worrying.

Sorry about the rant but the mainstream media is lying to me and the masses are lapping it up. Raiding the galley for desserts whilst the ship sinks around them. It makes me sick and I can only hope that its over soon, one way or another.

I will not be ruled by men such as these. The venal, shallow and corrupt dregs of humanity, who stoke their egos by gaining your approval through the lowest means available. Who allow their morals and ethics to be bought for the price of a few votes and a sniff of power.

Are these men worthy enough, pure enough, perfect enough, to tell you how to live your life? Do they have some insight and knowledge into your very being which makes them better than you at deciding how to live? I think not.

They only have power because we gave it to them, time to take it away.

(HT: Counting Cats in Zanzibar)

YouTube – 5 Friends.

This Video is a pile of tosh and here’s why.

Warning: politics incoming.

I don’t vote (especially in the US as I’m a brit), but I don’t vote for a very good reason. I don’t vote because if I voted it would be tantamount to agreeing to let whoever gets in have a degree of control over my life that no-one should have, apart from me.

I don’t vote because I will not give a politician permission to rule me,

I don’t vote because I don’t believe that anyone is competent to define which choices I am able to make regarding my life but me.

In this so called democracy (both here and over the pond in The States) the rulers (allegedly) only rule with the consent of the ruled. Well I withhold my consent. By not voting.

By voting you agree to give up your freedom to define your own life to someone who doesn’t know you, and probably never will.

By voting you give your tacit permission to those who are elected to do whatever the hell they like for five (four over there) whole years. Who knows what they could do in that time?

By voting you are perpetuating a system which has demonstrated time and again that it does not represent, and may never have represented, the wishes of the people.

By voting you become the enemy. By voting you become not a fellow citizen but an oppressor to be resisted at every opportunity. You would take away my freedom? Deny me the right to live as I choose? Why? What have I ever done to you? I’ve never even met you (well some of you I have, but this is rhetoric, I’m trying to make a point). Don’t worry though, I’m not going to firebomb your house or blow myself up on a train. Because I believe that you are entitled to exactly the same rights of self-determination and freedom that I am and would do nothing to compromise that principle. Unless you were about to physically assault me, my family or my property, then I might have to break your thumbs.

So these celebrities have no right to ask me or anyone else to vote (no matter the country holding the election). They have their lives, their freedom. It is in their interests to perpetuate a system where the rich can buy their freedom and it is not the birthright of every person on the planet. They don’t care about you, your everyday lives, or any of the issues they mention in that video. They don’t care because they don’t have to, they’re rich enough to buy themselves a nice little bubble which insulates them from the big bad world.

If the US had socialized medical care, do you think any of these people would use it? If global warming/climate change/whatever-the-PR-boys-have-said-its-to-be-called-now, really does make the seas rise it just gives them more water to float their boats in, and their hilltop house gets a sea view. They don’t care about the war, they aren’t the ones fighting it.

So here’s my advice to all of you who want to live the American Dream of “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Don’t Vote. And convince others not to vote too, its the only way to guarantee you get any of them.

Thank you for reading, keep the comments civil please

(Hat tip to Broken Toys.)

Yeah, trust a lawyer to give unbiased advice. Its money in the bank for them either way.

EA are at it again. With the furore over Spore’s DRM and the resulting one star rating on Amazon.com you’d think that they would take a hint. I noticed the above mentioned EULA and ToC shenanigans when I was playing the WAR Open Beta and dismissed it as just a beta thing. What did I care, I was getting to play the game for free. If they’re making paying customers do this every time they log in I may have to think about whether I want ot buy it or not. (I was seriously considering it.)

EA treating its customers like shit in every game they release is nothing new , Spore’s draconian ’3 installs’ is probably the most high profile example but the inclusion of spyware in Battlfield 2142 is my biggest gripe with them to date (that an the fact that they produce derivative license based games with little or no creative integrity, Spore aside).

They’re big, rich and arrogant and they can get away with it because people will still buy their games! I hope Gabe Newel uses the cash from the (rumoured) sale of Valve to Google to buy up EA and tear it to shreds. I can always live in hope that Ricctello will see the light and realise that money in the bank is less important that customers who like you and don’t pirate your games out of sheer spite, which is what’s happening at the moment.

The reason Spore is (allegedly, I haven’t seen any figures and would doubt their reliability if I had) the most pirated game ever is simply because EA expects their customers to take it up the ass and like it. The majority of gamers (true gamers that is, not the 12 year old girls and gay guys that play The Sims) will quite rightly turn around and kick EA where it hurts the most, their sales, by pirating the game and playing it for free.

What EA seems to be failing to realise is that if you treat someone like they’re a criminal, then they will more often then not become one. The reasoning being that it doesn’t matter if your a good boy and obey the rules you get treated as if you’ve broken them no matter what so why bother?

EA is the one company that gives gaming a bad name at the moment. They’re obviously just in it for the money and have no qualms about how they get it. And I thought they were getting better, more fool me.

Not so chuffing has been GOA’s handling of the situation that arose over the last few days. I downloaded the client without much fuss (except for it being in 7 chunks totalling 8.5 gigabytes, why?) and went to the site to authenticate my key. This is where the problems started.

Apparently GOA’s authentication servers melted. Here’s what GOA had to say after a few hours of them being down:

Our registration and authentication servers have been taken offline for maintenance. This means that it is currently not possible to create new accounts or authenticate Open Beta keys. During this maintenance we are processing all queued account registrations and key authentications. These services will be available as soon as this work is complete.

This was at 4:30pm CET yesterday, after I’d been trying to get my key authenticated all day and after the actual game servers went online. No apology, no “Sorry, we’re having some problems.”  An apology at this point may have defused alot of the invective that was beginning to flow, though not from me but we’ll get to that momentarily.

The next update was at 2:30am CET:

We have encountered serious problems with the authentication system since this morning, while the stability of the game servers, the speed of the patcher and the performance of the downloader have all been satisfactory. This issue, combined with an exceptional amount of traffic and a fault which was not identified during the extensive tests we ran on our platform has unfortunately limited the access to our servers to only a few of you along with our closed beta testers who had already been a part of the closed beta.

During the day, we have reconfigured authentication and database servers several times, both of which suffered under the huge number of simultaneous connections. The investigations and corrections we have done so far were essentially targeting the parts of the system which didn’t require a complete stop of the writing process in the database. This means we preferred to keep the database turned on during the day to let it work on the huge number of accounts that were in the process of being handled. This operation will continue through the night and when complete, we will shut down the database and reconfigure it.

If the operation works as anticipated, we can once again give you access to the account page and let you register your code for the open beta. We expect the whole maintenance to be finished late Monday morning.

Naturally, we will keep you informed of the development of this maintenance and we expect to give you an update mid-morning.

We thank you for your understanding at this very impatient time and we sincerely apologize for the situation.

There, at the end, is a sincere apology. Almost as if it is an afterthought, so maybe not quite as sincere as it could be. Insults, threats and slurs of varying flavour were now being thrown around in the Warhammer Alliance forums. Then, this morning, the CEO of GOA (or someone writing as him) post this:

Dear all,

I rarely address players directly, but I wanted to write you as too few of you have been able to access the open beta today.

As my team explained in the previous post, although we have opened the servers and corrected numerous issues during the last 24 hours but we have not yet solved the issue of saturated Open Beta key activations that we’re currently experiencing. I am sincerely sorry for this, and I understand all the frustration the situation has spawned.

Today was a dark day. We expected a massive influx of players, but reality was even harsher.
I personally commit that we will communicate to you as clearly as possible on the resolution of these current issues. My goal is to give Warhammer Online the success it deserves. Be ensured that all GOA teams, with Mythic’s support, are working hard to bring you the best possible game experience.

Best regards,
Ghislaine Le Rhun
GOA CEO

Off screen, a discussion was held between the gentleman above and Mythic’s CEO, Mark Jacobs, which he mentions in passing here. What follows is the entirety of that mention:

We had a number of conversations with them today about everything that happened. GOA messed up and their CEO has apologized and promised to do better going forward. While this isn’t enough to mollify everyone it’s still a good start.

Its not much, but enough to give me the impression that Mythic are not happy with GOA. This is not surprising in the least, but again more on that later.

The majority of that post, linked above, was aimed at the invective being posted on the forums. Which I think Scott Jennings has done a fairly decent analysis of over at Broken Toys.  I’m inclined to agree with a couple of comments on Mark’s post, its not his job to tackle things like this, he pays people to do that, unless of course that Mythic doesn’t have a community management team and that is also being handled by GOA. In which case he was quite right to voice his take on events.

Between the message from GOA’s CEO and the latest post there were a couple of updates telling us nothing new and apologizing alot more. Then, finally we are told that we can register our beta keys and will be informed by email when they’re authorised. I’ve been waiting 5 hours for that email.

There is a history to this tale, a background which really makes you wonder why it happened at all. When Mythic first started developing WAR they were independent. They started developement and signed a deal with GOA which gave them responsibility for the European management and publication of WAR. Then EA came along and bought Mythic, turning it into EA Mythic. EA were given the responsibility for the US and Oceania management and publication of WAR. GOA were kept on to do the European side of things. The US and Oceania open betas are running fine and a great time is being had by all. The European open beta is in the situation described above.

GOA has a history of mismanaging MMO’s. The European servers for Dark Ages of Camelot gradually emptied as their mismanagement of that title lost them players to the US servers. That says alot, EU players were willing to put up with lag and queues simply so they could play the game, rather than play under the auspices of GOA. Mythic were warned of this on many occasions, with the example of DAoC being used in alot of cases. The fans, and future players of WAR voiced their concerns and were ignored it would seem.

GOA als has a history of ignoring the players of the games they manage, made evident by the calls for them to redesign the WAR-Europe website so it wasn’t so heavily reliant on Flash and also to open registration of open beta keys much earlier than the day of launch (of the beta that is, not the full game). These calls were ignored.

This from a company which describes itself thusly:

GOA is the videogames department of France Telecom’s “Content Division”, and benefits from seven years experience in the management of multiplayer online role-playing games.

A forerunner of this activity in Europe, its teams reconcile expertise with a passion for games and take advantage of France Telecom’s technical platform to offer the best of online games to European players.

You’d think they’d have learned from their seven years experience, wouldn’t you? And you have to wonder about the competence of France Telecom’s technical people if this is result of their expertise. They may offer the best of games but as has been seen in the past they often don’t deliver.

My suggestion to Mythic? Get rid of GOA and hand the whole thing over to EA. At this stage it looks like the only damage control that is going to work. Players have already lost what little faith they had in GOA and to ditch them now in not only in the best interests of Mythic and EA (guilt by association is not fair but it does matter) but it is in the best interests of the players (we who pay the bills.) and the franchise.

Warhammer deserves better. Its been part of alot of people’s lives for a long time, more so in Europe than in the US, if managed well and treated with respect this could make EA and Mythic an awful lot of money. Games Workshop (where do they stand on this debacle I wonder) have a following numbering in the millions in Europe and the reason that we put up with price hikes and almost annual reissues and revisions of the rules is because we know that they love what they do as much as we do. GOA has no such record, neither do Mythic or EA. If this is not fixed and fixed quickly Warhammer Online in Europe will die and its biggest market will be underexploited.

Sort it out Mr Jacobs, you will carry the can if you don’t