Valve kill 32 man TF2 servers.. but what is next...

This was posted on the HLDS mailing lists (list.valvesoftware.com) a little while ago today. It made me laugh for a bit but it also made me think a bit too.

Read it and see...

Hello, Let's run a book on which servers Valve will randomly filter out next, without even so much as the decency to tell us.

1) Australian servers. Let's face it, it's those pesky Australians who are so far up Valves sweet asses it must be embarrassing for Valve. Those Australians need to be taught a lesson to counter balance all of that Pacific rimming that's going on.
2) Servers that have an unusually high number of players with 8 digits. Come on let's face it. The 8 digit crew are all noobs, snotty nosed teenagers and haxors.
3) Servers outside the Western United States that have an unusually high number of players with 6 digits. If a server attracts the old and wise, they're community is going to be too smug.
4) Servers running FF.
5) Servers that sends the player into a different world where there is 1000's of custom skins and the admins have been sad enough to invest 500 odd man hours into creating a work of art, not to mention the modding communities whose total output dwarfs anything that has come out of Valve.
6) Servers that attract the top players. C'mon something has to be wrong, they're all hacking.
7) Servers that attract too many noobs. No scrub that, they're all in Washington State.
8) Servers that are running that new plugin, which lies about the total number of available slots.there's 32 slots but 24 are advertised!!!
9) Servers with unsuitable chat language for minors. 10) Servers with 2 slots, passworded, that say "Valve doesn't listen to server admins" as their server name.

Right. That's my list. Odds anyone?

Fact is Valve killed off 32 player servers by filtering them out of the master server list (as far as I follow it). IMO that's fine - it is hardly a killer blow to any servers and it's their choice after all! But the amount of craziness this move invoked has been staggering. I mean are Valve REALLY likely to start picking and choosing which mods (or types of mods) are allowed to run and filtering out servers running "unauthorized" ones?

Dammit they provide and API and SDK to allow people to make mods -they are not going to kill any off (unless of course they do serious damage - in which case such a move is understandable).

Plus how the hell will they pick out specific mods and kill them off? It would be a stupidly difficult task - and not one they are going to undertake (it's not as if they are Valve servers - you can do what you like with it!).

So yet again we get silly hype and scaremongering and Valve get a load of bad press in the server admin community. Sure they're not perfect and their updates do often break things or make silly changes. But give them a break - the service they provide is pretty damn fine considering they are still churning out game after game and, despite regular massive breakages, the engine is fairly stable and very powerful.

Why cant we all just enjoy the game for once???

(And I STILL haven't had time to buy and Orange box GRRRRRRR I'm running 7 TF2 servers and I'm not able to play any of them - THAT's a problem!)

Your gonna love this

I keep forgetting about this place... gah. This week I've decided to spend the week doing 1 crazy thing every day - up until next Monday (after that I have exams so meh). Today I bought a new computer - for £400 :( which isn't so much crazy as stupid but there you go. I'm not sure what tomorrow brings but I'm a bit scared. There is an aim at the end of this - a couple of things I'm building myself up into doing :) but they will take a big dare to myself so this was a small(ish) start.

The question is how far can I go, ok so I have an idea of how far that is but I want to try and explore this. The further we can push ourselves the greater the reward - we'll I don't totally believe that but it will do for now.

If I achieve anything decent I'll be sure to let my 'public' ;) know...

In other news people have been moaning about my Facebook status's and how cryptic they are. If your bothering to read this and your a Facebook friend (lucky you :P) then the whole fun is trying to work out what the hell I'm on about. It's like MSN status's; they can be a great way of getting across a subtle message without just blurting it around. I try and write stuff that means something and relates to how I'm feeling.

Ok so it's a bit crazy I agree, but if you didn't like crazy then you wouldn't be a (Facebook) friend right?? :)

Restaurants should be banned

Today I went for a great curry with some mates. About £7, bring your own beer, traditional Indian fare! Actually I had to wait ten minutes after everyone else to get my Rogan Josh as they 'forgot' about me! Seriously restaurants need to be banned. Still, can't complain. It was cheap and tasted gorgeous.

On the more positive side it was only 2 minutes walk from our flat. My friends had a 20 minute walk to get home, and it's freezing tonight. *evil laugh* In fairness last year they used to live as close in to Leeds centre as I do now whilst I lived nearly 5 miles out. The times they laughed over me (and Dom) walking home (well smiled to themselves then!) makes up for the times I am ribbing them this year :)

Exams!!!!

I had the first 2 exams today! The first was OK (control systems) as I remembered most of the Laplace transforms (ugh!) and the rest was common sense. Maths was harder. The first half was vector calculus which is really tough stuff. But fortunately the second half was A-level standard statistics (or at least could be solved by those methods) so that kinda rescued it.

These exams are worth 20% of the marks for each module this semester so 60% plus would be a good marker and take the heat off in January.

Tomorrow I have programming (easy), embedded systems (simple) and Electromagnetism (*cries*). I hate that last one - really it's physics not Electronics. I sit through the lectures and it seems like a foreign language. Those first 2 are great though, my type of 'bespoke' electronics. Programming I find especially easy, I tend to soak up these computer languages and my good knowledge of PHP really helped with this module!

I say, Extraordinary film!

I watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen again tonight, with Sean Connery starring in it! (he really is the best Bond) not bad but a little corny :) although I found out too that it is based on a comic book series so I might have to check that out - though Wikipedia does say it's very different to the film..

People seem not to like the film incidentally, I really don't know why. Sure it's corny and the special effects look a bit archaic at times but it's a wonderful romp through 1899 Europe! The only let down is the ending (from when Venice gets bombed onwards) which isn't so much weak as predictable and drab. They could have pepped it up a bit!

At least the bitter end is suitably tear jerking!

And tomorrow?

Tomorrow I will have to get my flatmates to clear up the flat. I went away for the weekend (3 days) and they 'trashed the place. Tonight one sloped off out with some mates and the other went to his (apparently not but blatantly so :) ) girlfriends house. Tomorrow they won't escape....

Today I have been...

... Watching - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
... downloading - District 13 (interesting looking French action film)
... buying - A card for my Mum's 50th!
... hating - My flat being a complete mess (not my fault)

Vista come vista go

So what exactly Will vista bring to us? Apart from a long beard after all the wait of course!

At inception Vista was meant to be the next big stepping stone in OS's, Microsoft's answer to its critics. And at the start the feature list proved it! Most prominently a new file structure to replace the current NFTS format. That sounded pretty useful - especially considering the features MS promised for it. Considering how going from FAT32 to NFTS format made XP an 'evolution' it was a promising start for Vista.

The best bit was we were getting an evolution in the next version of Windows! Something that has never happened before. Not only that but it was to be released soon after XP...

Then it got delayed - really delayed. You could argue for hours over whether that has been a marketting ploy to maximise sales of XP (Personally I suspect that played a part) but no one really knows. What is certain is that our amazing new OS to play with was not going to be around as soon as. Ah well we said - think of all the new features - it must take time to write them all!

Then of course news that most were being dropped or re-worked as add-on's for release after Vista (like the new directory format). So now what is Vista, as far as I can tell it is just XP with all the security patches applied (OK so totally rewritten but feature wise...) and a flashy new GUI.

And you know what my XP Corporate already looks like that thank you very much, that's what mods are for. And the mods improve all the time. So do I need Vista, no. Will I buy it. Yes because it will bring benefits in the future and will save me messing with shell upgrades to XP (plus I like to have the latest stuff. But I will be keeping my current XP on all my other PCs, Vistas will only go on my main rig.

Now when is that release date? Changed again?

(PS I'm now using Blogger Beta which is all very nice :D go google go)