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Renagade

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Posts posted by Renagade

  1. Posted

    Hmmmmm I have just been looking through one of the cds off a games mag and found this and thought it awfully odd for someone to release a free game another thing thats odd is it forces u to install punkbuster instead of it being optional.

    Now normally i wouldn`t think any more of it except that ravenshield has just got a new patch which has just got punkbuster and some ppl have been questioning just what else punkbuster gets up too asideincreasing ur ping and the empassioned speech from this guy doesn`t make matters much clearer rock.gif

    heres the post

    Quote[/b] ]Hello, **and warning: long post to follow

    With PunkBuster coming soon to Raven Shield, we have activated the RvS Support page at http://www.evenbalance.com.

    After the initial release, we will focus on support issues for the first few days so that the community can get used to running with PunkBuster before we enable the various cheat detections. For most games, the 'warmup' period is about 10 days after the initial PunkBuster release.

    We have received a few emails from supporters telling us that there has been a lot of misinformation regarding PunkBuster posted on these forums. Due to the anonymous nature of the Internet, punks can join forums and type whatever they want and usually make it sound believable enough that the uninformed will develop opinions without actually having personal experience. This is unfortunate, but it is just a fact of life on the Internet these days - trolls will be trolls - punks will be punks. PunkBuster owes its success to the grass roots effort of game communities having a rallying point and working together. Any time you see a negative post about PunkBuster and the writer does not provide a specific verifiable source for the "information" being asserted (which is virtually every time), you should take everything said by that poster with a grain of salt or just disregard it entirely.

    We have been through the process of PunkBuster integration several times now. The patterns have become predictable:

    - Once PunkBuster is released, it takes a few days for the honest gaming community to get used to how it works, this is normal

    - During those few days, punks will claim victory by saying they can still cheat on PunkBuster servers (it is quite humorous to us that some punks have already claimed victory in RvS before PB has even been released)

    - A few days later, after we are certain things are running smoothly, we will activate some of PB's cheat detections

    - Lots of punks will get caught with their cheats that they were told are undetectable

    - The punks start crying, howling, whining, etc. both on their punk cheat/hack forums and in the regular game forums

    - Then we raise the bar and activate all of the cheat detections over the next few days

    - Then the punks finally realize that if they cheat on PB servers, they are going to get caught sooner or later, so they try to find other ways to fight PunkBuster

    - That leads to various things but primarily to the spreading of misinformation about PunkBuster in communities where it has not yet been introduced; they figure that if they tell a lie enough times, then people will eventually believe it

    - In the end, most servers will run with PunkBuster enabled (by the admin's choice); most players will be comfortable using PunkBuster and many will only play on PB enabled servers; most punks will mostly quit playing on PB servers and go try to destroy other games where there is no resistance - but some will stay and just quit using cheats/hacks; a very small minority may try to hack in secret and cheat with exploits that have never been published - PB will catch some of these using various methods

    There is no doubt that the punks will descend upon this thread and try to rehash their old tired assertions for why PB is bad. I will restate once again some of the key principles behind our philosophy. Each person has to make up his or her own mind.

    * Honest players have a RIGHT to play fair games with some degree of comfort that the rules of the game are being followed by all participants (this is the concept of integrity). In sports, the referees and umpires are there to preserve integrity. Players still cheat - sometimes they get away with it, sometimes they don't - without the umpire watching, a lot more players besides Sammy would be using corked bats. Another example: In real life, police are there to preserve the integrity of traffic laws. People still speed - sometimes they get away with it, sometimes they don't - without the traffic cops, a lot more drivers would speed worse than they already do. I believe all reasonable people see the absolute necessity of having referees and police in their respective venues even though they are not 100% effective. PunkBuster is the same way ... being software it has bugs just like every other single piece of software. It also does not catch 100% of cheats out there - we have always said this. It is our goal to get as close to 100% as possible and PunkBuster is better now than it always has been and is getting better all the time. And just for the record, we have developed code to catch unpublished cheats - numerous custom cheats have been caught in the past few months that have never been published. PunkBuster used to be only reactionary, but it is no longer limited to fighting only published cheats.

    * Punks do NOT have a right to infringe on the right of honest gamers mentioned above and they do NOT have a right to destroy the integrity of fair games without consequences. Over the past few years, so many punks have gotten away with their selfish destructive behavior, that they start to feel like they do have a right to act like childish brats and ruin the competition for others.

    * Even Balance respects the privacy of PunkBuster users. There has never been a single case of PunkBuster being used to invade the privacy of a PunkBuster user and there never will be. There has never, currently is no and never will be any code in PunkBuster that transfers personal information from a user's machine to some other point - nor stores information somewhere for later transmission - encrypted or otherwise. It is natural for people to be suspicious of software that is invasive and PunkBuster is invasive - that word is even used directly in our End User License Agreement. We want our users to know what PunkBuster does and what they are agreeing to when they install PunkBuster. Anyone who is not willing to accept the tradeoff of running an invasive program for the chance at a fair game should not be running PunkBuster.

    * Being invasive is not the same as disregard of users' privacy. We consider PunkBuster invasive because it expects to have the full ability to scan a user's system *for cheats*. That is the only thing PunkBuster looks for ... code that can be used to cheat in online competition. That is the only thing PunkBuster is concerned about. When information is transmitted by PunkBuster, it is either short codes about the presence or absence of cheats on the user's system (it is not the files or information itself) or it is screenshots of actual gameplay so that the server admin can decide if the player is cheating by looking at the screenshots. PunkBuster has a significant amount of coding to make sure that transmitted screenshots will only show gameplay on a PB server and not include information present on the user's desktop. However, there are rare bugs (such as in video drivers and even DirectX itself) that cause information in video memory to get mixed up and PB captures what is supposed to be on the screen, but is actually a buffer that holds something else (usually random garbage in these cases). These instances are extremely rare, but since they can happen, we always tell users to not run anything else while they are playing on PB servers. Just run the game - shut down your other programs before playing.

    * Our EULA is written the way it is to protect us against frivolous lawsuits. We know we would win any lawsuit filed against us because PB simply does not and furthermore CAN not transmit users' private data from their computers - it just doesn't have that type of code in it. However, knowing what we are up against, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that someday one of the punks who continually threaten to sue us actually will try. Our EULA is written such that no attorney would even take a case against us without requiring a significant up front deposit from the would-be plaintiff to cover the attorney's fees in the event of losing the case (which would be a certainty from our standpoint, or as close as you can get with regard to legal matters). The EULA is worded specifically to allow a judge to throw out an obviously frivolous case at the earliest possible point in the process and furthermore so that any attorney worth his or her salt would know this before filing in the first place.

    * PunkBuster is very popular among honest gamers. We have millions of users in the various games we support. We have contracts with id Software, Activision, the U.S. Army and now Ubi Soft ... some of the biggest and brightest stars in the industry (with more to come). Our reputation for caring about our users is important to us. We have never directly charged players nor admins to use our anti-cheat product. We provide one on one support for our product. We have never even subjected our users to one single advertisement on our website even though we get enough traffic to derive significant revenue from popups and other forms of advertising. We have never solicited or even accepted willful donations including years ago before we had commercial contracts. We do not harvest nor sell/transmit email accounts or any other information about our users (including IP addresses, etc.) to anyone.

    * PunkBuster is very unpopular among the cheater / hacker punks. That is something we are very proud of. Most of you would be surprised at the lengths the bad guys will go to in order to try to reduce PunkBuster's effectiveness in fighting cheating in the games we support. Every post I've read on this forum telling 'stories' about bad things involving PunkBuster are complete fabrications or at best, twisted misrepresentations of what really happened. That's why none of them have links to any verifiable source documenting any case to back up the false claims.

    To wrap up, let me say 'thanks' once again to our supporters and the community of honest players and admins regardless of whether or not you choose to run with PunkBuster enabled. We are looking forward to being a positive part of the future success of Raven Shield. We can't wait to start busting the punks who have been destroying your games.

    -Tony

    rock.gif

    ps, does enemy territory have a flamethrower like RTCW in it?

  4. Posted

    Quote[/b] ]Materialistic nature of humans should not be condemned and it is something we all have. we need to feed ourselves and survive as much as we can. however trying to sacrifice non-materialistic part of human life to achieve the material. getting 100,000 bucks per year is nice, but if you have to work 12-14 hours a day, then you are a machine pursuing money, not a human.

    It depends if it meaningful work or just plain crap that u work to the bone for while someone else reaps the rewards rock.gif

    I`d give it all for a shot at the bigtime ghostface.gif

  8. Posted

    any words on BBC sexed up inquiry?

    I realy hate that silly phrase crazy_o.gif

    Now we`re talking about this stuff did u guys over there get t he news about one of our weapons inspectors killing himself,or getting hit if ur one for a conspiracy wink_o.gif

  9. Posted

    That would make one sweet addon for OFP!  smile_o.gif

    (I've often wondered why no militaries use pump-action GLs before)

    The nades knocking about can`t be good.

    Has anyone made a shotgun which fires a blast of pellets at t he same time instead of them streaming out really quickly ?

  10. Posted

    I think its just in germany and surrounding areas but elsewhere u can freely to copy it from what i`ve heard rock.gif

    What was the link amp removed ?

    One paragraph that could be applied to today was at the end of the book

    Quote[/b] ]That is intelligible on purely human grounds. A shrewd conqueror will always enforce his exactions on the conquered only by stages, as far as that is possible. Then he may expect that a people who have lost all strength of character--which is always the case with every nation that voluntarily submits to the threats of an opponent--will not find in any of these acts of oppression, if one be enforced apart from the other, sufficient grounds for taking up arms again. The more numerous the extortions thus passively accepted so much the less will resistance appear justified in the eyes of other people, if the vanquished nation should end by revolting against the last act of oppression in a long series. And that is specially so if the nation has already patiently and silently accepted impositions which were much more exacting.

    Anyway if mein kampfs a load of bable what`s maos bible about then?

  17. Posted

    I found hitlers diarys,which is making interesting so far, now im looking for more from the other leaders.

    I think mussolini had a book about him but im not so sure on stalin,churchill,roosvelt and the japanese guys.

    Can anyone recommend any books so i can get a bigger idea of the actions and motives ??

  21. Posted

    I found the one with the a-130 but its just from a crappy ir camera,how it was deemed bannable here is odd as it looks like an ancient video game with the little men as white blocks

    Anyway i don`t want that kind of stuff of ppl getting blown up apart from the blitz on iraq.Think more along the lines of what misterfrag found or stuff like in the opening to ravenshield although if someone founed the funny video of the russians or chinese having a brawl in their courthouse it would be sweet biggrin_o.gif

    I also found some more stuff by searching back through the threads.

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