you may remember This Post from a long time ago for the track “Love Again” which i produced, well this time i bring you the Music Video, featuring the original vocalist Lara Fabian.
Hope you enjoy it!
Firstly, gaming is not something i take seriously, however i do like getting the achievements on the XBox 360. Now, achievements are a great way to get people to keep playing a game after they have usually finished doing everything else the game has to offer, Halo 3 being one of the games with the most gamer score up for grabs and the most achievements.
As you may or may not know, the Achievement descriptions can sometimes be a little bit blunt and only contain a short description of what you have to do to obtain this achievement.
A couple of days ago, Me, a friend, and a few of our family members decided to have a few games on Halo 3, we created a party of 8 and joined in a social matchmaking game. All is well, the lobby we was in has a maximum of 16 players, yet we didn’t get matched up with anyone (pay attention to this) . So, there is only us 8 in the game, fair enough, its a social lobby, nothing in there effects any ones rank and so on.
So while were playing, a few of us with live accounts unlocked some achievements… fantastic… or not, because shortly after we were presented with a continuous message popping up telling us our accounts and XBox 360 consoles had been banned from earning experience for 2 weeks. Annoying as hell as we had not done anything wrong.
I created a topic over at Bungie’s forums, and after being greeted by the usually halo 10 year olds with there “hard talk” and “l33t” status, a bit of information finally came out.
Firstly, the system auto bans people who seem to be doing “too well” or benefiting “too much” from a game. Another reason given is that if there are “dead sticks” for example, people not moving, you will get banned.
Now, according to Bungie, me, my friend, a bunch of kids and my friends wife should all be aware of this. They say we should KNOW these rules. My point to them was, how the hell would we know? The impression i got is that everyone is born a Halo geek, and we are all taught the basics of Halo game play when we enter this world.
So all that aside, people with some knowledge and actual intelligence start to comment in the topic i made expressing their opinions, and a few valid points where made. Why would Bungie ban us for playing a family game and doing nothing wrong and effecting nobody, when there are Network manipulators out there, “boosters” and hackers / modders actually changing how the game works.
Answers? no, the topic got closed because “the trolls have come out” (their words) some people speak up, they end the topic and cut of discussion. Way to go Bungie!
They also decided to hide behind the “its in the XBox terms of service” (which apparently everybody with an XBox reads) saying it states you cannot cheat to get achievements. I’m sorry… but where did we cheat? The mythic achievements state that you should do a certain task (for example 5 shotgun kills) on a mythic map, in either ranked or social playlist.
We did this, we was in a social game and we got them legit. No where does it state that you cannot have a game containing all your own friends AND, remember what i said before about not being matched up with anyone else, well, if they didn’t want the achievements to be obtained this way 1. Why make them obtainable in a social playlist, 2. why did we not get matched up with anyone, there was 8 of us in a size 16 playlist with over 6,000 people playing in there.
Now, were not to bothered about not being able to earn experience, we play for fun, not to be respected by a bunch of kids who live for Halo, to be honest, we don’t give a damn. I do care about morals though, which Bungie seem to be lacking.
The fun doesn’t end here though, we decided to play again today, social 8 player again as the kids enjoyed it last time. Again we didn’t get matched up with anyone, and after a few games, guess what? We have a whole bunch of new messages popping up saying our accounts and consoles have now been banned from matchmaking altogether! which means we can no longer play Halo 3 online.
I don’t swear a lot on my blog, but FUCK YOU BUNGIE, seriously, banning us and a bunch of kids for playing a social game, seriously, what the fuck. Bungie seriously need to re think there auto banning, because it takes the piss, if they don’t want us to play like that, or don’t want people to go the toilet in the middle of a game, they should boot players out of the game who don’t move for so long, or quite simply MATCH OTHER PLAYERS UP.
No, that’s not the case though, Bungie would rather ban innocent people playing their game because they themselves lack the intelligence to make a system that fucking works properly.
Fuck the hackers and manipulators and people cheating in ranked matches effecting other people, totally ban a bunch of innocent kids having fun and harming no one.
I’m seriously starting to think those “l33t” 10 year olds from the forums i was talking about earlier actually run Bungie Studios because as far as I’m concerned, we didn’t cheat, we played a feature that is openly available to every single person, there was no detailed information on how to get these mythic achievements and i don’t know of ANY other game who bans you from playing it because you got an achievement in a different way to how the developers intended. If you ask me, if the achievements are not meant to be obtained this way, its a bug in the game, which leaves only Bungie to blame.
Anyway, rant over, i finished the game, i have all the achievements, i have no reason to play it again and i WILL be getting my money back for the game. Only reason we played it was for a bit of fun, the kids at Bungie though have taken the fun out of it. Its a video game and that’s all these is to it, they seem to think its some big important religious icon or some crap.
Oh and a bit of advice for anyone else who has any complaints they want to put forward to Bungie… don’t bother, they don’t care, chances are they will find a way to ignore you, cut your topic off or whatever and hide behind some technical crap from the XBox live terms of service which no one reads anyway.
Here’s the whole topic if you want to check it out http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=40340052
Until next time people
With 2009 over, its time to focus on the plans for this year, in regards to my work, there’s a lot of stuff to come. Firstly, the massive IP.Mail application, which so far is proving to work amazingly well and has had a lot of support. I’m hoping to have the first public Beta version of IP.Mail released by the end of January.
Bouncy Radio Center will also see a new version coming out, and more importantly, a new module which will allow for people with dedicated servers to run and manage their own SHOUTcast server right from within the radio center itself.
Bouncy XBox LIVE will also have some cool updates, this time for the Forum Achievements which people have been awaiting for a while.
For BouncyServers, we shall be soon doing an updated on our licensing software in order to have everything managed from 1 client area instead of the 2 client areas we currently have (for hosting services and licensing) this should make everything much easier for everybody.
More updates will be coming soon, so check back!
Anthony
Its been a while since i have posted on my blog, I’ve been crazy busy with lots of updates and new Apps. First of all lets talk about updates to current Apps.
Bouncy Radio Center v9.1
This was a pretty big update on my part, mainly with new module the Radio On-Demand feature which is now a part of the radio center and comes free at no extra cost to new and existing license holders. radio On-Demand provides a secure way to provide music to your members without compromising the security or privacy of the MP3. in a nutshell, it prevents people downloading the files, and only allows for them to listen to the file “On-Demand”. This is a fantastic way to promote songs you have for sale, as such, i added some features to add buy now links and price fields to each On-Demand file.
As well as this cool new feature some bugs and improvements have been made to the system, for example the RAJAX module has been re-written using an output function in order to feed live data to other hooks and modules. As a result, this prevents those annoying errors people were having in Internet Explorer and other problems where the browser would cache the RAJAX data causing old entries to be shown. This is now a thing of the past.
Bouncy Radio Center 9.1 Change log
FIXED: Listeners chart error after a new installation
FIXED: Scheduling a show with an end time at midnight returns a
BRC302 error that the show cannot end before it has started
FIXED: Problem with the flash charts when a custom admin directory
name is used
FIXED: Problem with the LiveStream Player when a custom Admin
Directory is used
FIXED: Flash Charts do not work when .htaccess is used within
admin directory
FIXED: Livestream player fails to initialize when a .htaccess
file is used within the admin directory
ADDED: Support for Radio Request Hook
ADDED: Support for Bouncy License Control Center Application
FIXED: RAJAX Support for Internet Explorer. data Now updates correctly.
ADDED: New RAJAX Methods and data construction using
$this->buildOutput() functions.
ADDED: Radio On-Demand feature
Bouncy XBox LIVE v2.1
Updates to Bouncy XBox live were mainly just compatibility and fixes for IP.Boards new version of their forum software. A list of changes is below.
Bouncy XBox LIVE 2.1 Change log
FIXED: Public Module Ordering
FIXED: JS Errors in Internet Explorer
FIXED: Theme Errors
ADDED: Support for Bouncy License Control Center Application (REQUIRED)
ADDED: IPB 3.0.4 support
ADDED: Halo 3 theme
Bouncy License Control Center
This is a new app which is required to be installed for the above licensed apps to work correctly. This adds better management of your app licenses as well as finally being able to reset your own local keys, a feature i initially overlooked during the development of these apps. This app will also provide you with latest information directly from us, a list of available apps with links to product pages, purchase pages and latest version information. You will also find some options which load up OUR license control panel right inside your Admin CP!
Check out the image below for some screenshots of the latest apps.
Design is something i enjoy doing, and the excitement and overwhelming pride that takes over me when i complete eye catching, good looking designs comes second only to when i pull off an app that i thought i couldn’t achieve.
With this in mind, i have decide to embark on the skinning journey for IPB 3.0, skin choices at the moment are very limited as its still early days for Invisions fantastic new software, and with that in mind i am working on 7 skins with different theme’s all based around the 7 deadly sins.
The 7 sins idea came to me a while ago but i never put it into effect, reason being IPB 2.3 was going to be replaced, and the determination to put so much effort into creating skins that were going to be no use in a couple of months seemed like a waste, so i waited.
Starting off the themes is the 7 Sins (Pride) skin. When looking at it you may wonder what does this skin have in relation to pride. Well, the skin is based on BouncyBootlegs and BouncyServers design, something 2 sites in which i am very proud of, so this skin is more related to my own personal pride. both sites have come along way in the last 5 years, especially BouncyServers, with a bigger client database than ever and more and more people seeing the benefits of hosting with bouncyservers i think it is definatly something i should be proud of.
As usual you can see the development in progress of these skins, at time of this writing the default skin on the dev forum is the pride skin, which i am still finishing off, but you ca register and comment on the skin and leave any comments in the shoutbox, or here on my blog!
The default skin will be replaced with the next skin i work on when it starts so you can visit at any time and be sure to see the current skin that’s being worked on.
http://dev.bouncyservers.co.uk is the link you will need, or you can check out the screenshot below 
So i have had OS 3.0 on my phone for a few days and was unable to setup internet tethering because o2 did not offer the service until today. However, yesterday there tethering information page came online along with their prices for the service.
So first of all let me explain to you what Internet Tethering is. It basically allows you to connect your mobile phone to you PC or Laptop via USB or Bluetooth and then allows you to use your iPhone as a modem, providing internet to the device its connected too. Pretty much like a mobile broadband dongle does.
Now, anyone with an iPhone from o2 will be aware that all contracts come with unlimited data over 3G and from WIFI Hotspots, so there is no need to purchase additional internet to use your phone tethered right? wrong!
This is another services in which is provided solely for the provider to make money.
The image to the left shows the prices o2 are charging to use the internet tethering feature on you iPhone. Now the problem with this is that it actually costs o2 or apple NOTHING for us to use Internet Tethering yet they are charging us for more data to use with tethering, when we already have unlimited data plans!
Now, i also have the fortune of owning a Nokia N95 and over the last year, when i have needed an internet connection on my laptop, i have put my Sim card in my Nokia N95, USB connected it to my laptop and launched Nokia PC Suite.
Now Nokia PC Suite comes with a program called “One Touch Access” as seen in the below image. This allows your laptop or PC to connect to the internet using your Nokia N95 as a modem and using your phones 3G or in my case 3.5G connection as the sources.
Now last year i phoned o2 and asked them if my laptop using my iPhones 3G data would cost me anything, to which they replied “No, you have unlimited data plan, you will not be charged for using data”
So, Nokia have provided this feature for years, and now Apple have finally jumped on the bandwagon giving it a new name of “Internet Tethering” and forcing operators to charge for the service… yes, FORCING.
Yesterday i phoned o2 with a few questions, first was why my iPhone would send MMS but not receive them, answer being i have os3.0 early and o2 have not provisioned the MMS receiving yet. when i questioned them about tethering, they said its something they have to charge for as its in their agreement with Apple. So the prices as shown above or just ridiculous, i have unlimited data, yet i have to purchase extra data just to use for tethering, when the data is provided the exact same way! Over 3G, so why should i have to pay extra for it.
Now, like me, many other o2 iPhone customers already spend a minimum of £45 a month on their contract with o2. with the smallest tethering package, that price will jump up to £60 a month and only allowing you 3GIG of internet for tethering!
The iPhone is a great device, but they are starting to annoy me big time with the charging for services which have been free on other devices for years! I really don’t understand how they can justify it or how they can charge you such a high price to use a feature that is absolutely free on other devices.
Slowly backing away from the iPhone, and i can see myself Jail Breaking it now just so i can use the device i paid for how i want to use it, not how Apple force me to use it!
The Bouncy Radio Center admin modules are now complete! and with it some cool new features.
First of all it now has its own error reporting functions meaning if there is a problem with your radio connection it will tell you what the problem is, and suggest how to resolve the problem (see above screenshot).
Now, there are 2 modules, an Overview Module and a Managment Module. Overview is the default and gives you a quick look at various things about your radio such as Scheduled Shows Today, Scheduled Shows This Week, number of resident DJ’s and number of Guest DJ’s. It now also has an upgrade history showing you what versions you installed and when.
Managing DJ’s is now much more simple. You no longer have to search for a member and edit their profile. You can now see all DJ’s from one page, Add new guest or resident dj’s, change a dj’s type or delete a dj (see below image)
Bouncy Radio Center 9 should now be ready for release very soon! Not much further to go boys and girls!
Stay Tuned!
Summer is here and what better way to spend a hot summers day than in a swimming pool. Its a very simple process. Set up the pool, fill it and jump in.
Well, we got an easy set pool… a massive one, so you would think it was easier. For the people who don’t know what an east set pool is, it usually involves no construction, just a inflatable ring round the top, because air rises in water, the force of the water raises the sides, meaning you have a solid set pool with minimum effort.
Below is a picture similar to the one we have just bought.
Its actually identical, except ours has a white ring around the top, and a different filter pump. Now, your probably wondering what the fire brigade has to do with this?
Well, the first time i filled it, with a regular outdoor garden hose, its took a whole day, and then some. kids were a bit disappointed, so the next day came along, and we took the cover off it, done.
Problem is the time it takes to fill, after so long the water becomes manky, the filter can only clean it so much.
Now, i was told that the fire brigade will fill pools for you, for a price of course. So i gave them a ring.
First of all the receptionist didn’t know anything about them filling pools and put me through to the fire chief, he said to me that they do fill them but its quite expensive. at this point I’m thinking hmm, maybe charge £20 – £30 so the chief said he was going to get the price list, and then he said it, the price for me to have the fire brigade come to my house and fill the pool.
£284 per hour
…
…
…
shocking right, £284 for the fire brigade to fill the pool in the above picture.
The weekend just gone has been absolutely unbelievable, so many problems with company’s trying to over charge me for things.
First of all, our data center, we ordered are new server, which was supposed to take 24 hours to get provisioned, and now being more than 48 hours later i am told that it has not been setup because of an outstanding invoice. Thing is, we have no outstanding invoices, and telling them this we are told over and over again to email there system admin’s and so on, which just results in us having to repeat everything over and over and sitting around for hours waiting for email responses. We just this minute however asked to speak to a manager, who was very helpful indeed, he had already reviewed the situation and had the whole thing resolved in a minute or two. still, 3 days of messing around.
Next on the list is Rapidshare, somehow my Rapidshare “Rapidpoints” had been stolen, and used to order a new Rapidshare account, when i checked the logs it appears that a server in Chicago was responsible for redeeming / stealing my points. Now, they responded to me informing me a phishing websites, which is what i would expect them to do, fact is, i use a download manager to download, so my login information is never entered manually into any website, and when i login to my premium zone, i manually type in the Rapidshare URL, so i know that I’m entering them into the correct site. again, i reported this on Saturday, and i only just got my points back today.
Third and finally is o2, after my recent article about the £655 phone bill a lady on the phone told me that i would not have to pay a bill this month and that it will be sorted out for me, however, checking my bill i notice i still have a £655 phone bill, which is not a good sign, and in my experience, things are never resolved as easy as they first appear to be, so its probably going to result in more phone calls to o2, more explaining of the situation and more frustration for me.
Also in regards to the recent article about the tool Ben Wizz, he sent more emails to our support department insisting that the cancel button doesn’t exist and if it is there now, that we have just put it there. what a joke, he also continued to refer to me as a “Fat Tw@” who eats nothing but McDonalds and has a sl*g of a girlfriend, which couldn’t be further from the truth, still though, it shows exactly how immature this guy is, and the fact he’s been caught is getting to him. Also I’ve had a few messages from people who are hosted with him, SHOUTcast mainly, I’d recommend you move to a different company pretty swiftly and cancel any payments you make to him, apparently he uses a MSN Address he “hacked” and a hacked PayPal account.. again, he’s full of crap, we can all be hackers, all you have to do is create a new hotmail account under a completely random name, for example, John Smith, then add all your buddies, and say “hey its ant, i just hacked this john smiths msn, how cool am i, now, send me £100 or i will hack yours” seriously? get real.
Anyhow, this guys stupidity has provided many laughs during a frustrating weekend.
don’t forget to comment and let me know how your bank holiday weekend has been.
So today at the office has been rather amusing, so I’m going to tell you all about it.
We had a client who’s name was Ben Swift, and he had some sort of grudge against another website in which we host and was attempting to DoS (Denial of Service) attack this site totally un-aware that it was hosted at the same place he has his radio.
Now, Mr Swift thinks he is all high and mighty and that he was hidden behind a proxy whist attempting to make his DoS attacks using lame downloaded “n00bie” software. He was very much mistaken.
Bouncyservers and its data center consist of a lot of technically advanced minds, and a simple IP check on the attempted attacks pointed to him, meaning i was able to identify him instantly, now, Mr Swift says he didn’t live where he actually lives, told me he was in an army barracks and there was nothing we can do about it and we cannot trace him.
Wrong again Mr Swift, our data center take this stuff very seriously, and they were able to track him no problem, he says were looking in the wrong place because he used a proxy, and as far as I’m aware, Blue Yonder don’t provide proxy servers, and if he WAS using a proxy, it would of been much harder for us to trace him, the fact we knew it was him and traced it to him proves we know what we need to know to take legal action.
Anyway, he still persists on telling us he cant be traced because he signed up to our services with a fake address and registers domains with a fake address, fact is, we have his ISP information, and have reported it to them for malicious activity.
Now, onto the funny part.
Mr Swift thinks he is a big bad hacker guy who cant be traced, and he sent us this email.
ben swift
Client
25/05/2009 17:01Hi if there was a botton with the work CANCEL on it i would have clicked it a long time ago so stop been stupid noobies that you are and delete my accounts because i am not paying for your shitty services any more useles crap lol
Now, he’s apparently super intelligent and is able to avoid our technical team, yet he is unable to spell and types like a child, and for someone who is MORE than internet savvy, how was he not able to see this?
As you can see, the cancellation button is there, he was unable to find it, which to me, proves his intelligence.
Also as i mentioned to him in this support ticket, how are our services “shitty” when we were able to prevent his malicious attempts at an attack, trace him and protect the clients site he was trying to attack?
Quite simply, were not
Now, as for Mr Swift, he will find that his address and name will be blacklisted from ISP’s and find himself unable to get a fixed line internet connection, and if it turns out he is in a Army barracks, well, he’s going to be in some SERIOUS trouble for using a military internet connection for malicious activities, that’s the type of stuff that can cause a war if attacking the wrong place. Now, i know some of you reading this know Mr Swift, so please, feel free to laugh at him all you like for being so retarded thinking he is so savvy and intelligent. Turns out his big mouth has done nothing but get him into trouble and help build our case against him.
We actually spent around an hour today laughing at this guy whilst we were building the new servers, true entertainment indeed.
