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13-04-2001

Friday the 13th. I found out how to reinstall the MS Force Feedback 1 joystick after having the Force Feedback 2 installed.  Format C: . I kid you not, the only way I could get the system to recognise the FFB1 was to format the harddrive and start from scratch.

    It's funny what people will do to get some recognition. My wife, RCAF_Huntress has been flying/chatting on the zone for around 2 years, recently another female pilot who has been around for some months now decided to start using the name The_Huntress.
It seems she craves the recognition and respect that RCAF_Huntress has earned. Aaah well, some people are just plain weird. Repeat after me "It's just a game"  lol
 

12-04-2001

ComCentral have interviewed WA_Kaze for their "Aces Interview" page. Reading through the Interview archives, it's amazing how many time I thought "Those were the days"  hehe  . Damn ! I must be getting old.

07-04-2001

I finally got to try out the Microsoft Force Feedback 2 joystick. My first impression is "Oh No! they've done it again!" I've used a Force Feedback 1 for more than 2 years and am so used to the button configuration I never have to look at the buttons. Microsoft, in their wisdom decided to change the button positions.  I figured not a problem, I'll uninstall it and reinstall the FFB1. Wrong !  lol. Windows now reports the FFB1 as being disconnected.  Uninstall, reinstall, still no go. Looks like I'll be learning to use the FFB2.
:-(

02-04-2001

Received an email from CH_Arkangel  lol  :

After 19hrs and 30mins (minus the 2hr nap in New York JFK pilot lounge) I
Made It!
Wow whata trip, had to midair refuel 7 times, plus refuel at airports I
landed at. Total trip distance 15,967 miles.

Course route:
Eutingen Germany to Paris 254mi

Paris to London 193mi

London to New York 3120mi

New York to San Fransico 2269mi

San Fransico to Dutch Harbor (Aleutian Islands) 2073mi

Dutch Harbor to Japan 2481mi

Japan to Moscow 4399mi

Moscow to Eutingen Germany 1178mi

Took around 66 pictures during flight, what I'm going to do with them, I'm
not real sure yet but I got them lol.

I did not get "zoned" (this flight) and actually was able to return to the
main chat in Ridge without things goin "poof".

lol Thx for the "Press release" lol
 

29-03-2001

Just when the furore over Time Compression, Belly Landings etc had died down, up pops another controversial issue. This one is the No Bullet Hole _ _ _ _ (Insert the word Cheat or Aid, depending on your point of view)
For those unaware, there is a downloadable bitmap which overwrites the original bitmap in the CFS/Texture directory, and does away with the bullet holes in the windscreen.

     So is it a cheat or an aid? There are those who say that Fuel Dump for CFS2 is a cheat also, while others say that it is an essential part of the game that Microsoft forgot to add.
Look at Bellylanding/Respawn, some say it part of the game and Microsoft intentionally left it in, others say it deprives an opponent of a kill and therefore is a cheat.   Catch 22?

How do you define what is a cheat and what isn't?
The generally accepted definition is that if it gives an unfair advantage over an opponent and is not part of the original game Microsoft released, it's a cheat. Does the No Bullet Hole Bitmap give an unfair advantage? You bet it does.

The dilemma here is that there is no way to detect who is using it. The fact that well known pilots are using and see nothing wrong with it doesn't guarantee the "Fly With Who You Know And Trust" rule will work either.

In the meantime, what do we do? Do we treat it as as storm in a teacup and hope it will go away? Do we say it's not a cheat? Do we make it widely available so everyone has it, thereby nullifying it? Or do we hope someone writes a program to detect the different files sizes and add to the bloat of other addon programs already used to detect altered files and cheats?

I'll leave the answer up to you.
 
 

**

 

Interesting game going on in Ridge today hosted by _CH_Arkangel. The game read :

Sysops please don't boot me I'm not zoned. Around the world flight, if you need me ZM Uncle_Arky -   No Other pilots accepted.

Arkangel I think you've got way to much time on your hands mate.  LOL
 
 
 
 
 

22.02-2001

Microsoft has opened up 3 rooms in Fighter Ace for free play.

21-03-2001

Continuing cable connection woes. Telstra Bigpond customers have been switched to the Southern Cross cable, Sydney to California in 165ms, but once the connection hits www.verio.net in the States, the latency soars to 1000ms+. Not too good for online gaming is an understatement.

17-03-2001
In the "What a Good Idea" column is this story about @Home cable internet services in the States:

Subscribers to United States broadband cable service @Home have sued the company alleging it misled people to sign up for the service.
The suit filed against the company on March 12 alleges that it signed up about three million customers on the promise that it could provide faster Internet connections.
However, the lawsuit claims the company had routinely slowed customers' connections by limiting uplink speeds and overloading the number of users sharing nodes of the service, Bloomberg reported today.
The @Home service acts as a local area network, with nodes providing pools of bandwith in geographical areas. The speed of the service deteriorates in line with the load placed on the node by its users.
The suit claims customers are frequently subject to disconnections from the service, and that email was often lost or delivered late.
The lawsuit is also critical of the company's help desk, saying customers were placed on hold for up to four hours, and calls answered by untrained technicians, it alleges.

I wonder whether we can do that here in Australia?
 
 

**

 

Telstra Bigpond have finally switched subscribers over to the Southern Cross cable after their cable was severed last week.
Unfortunately SC is not much better at present.
 

15-03-2001

As stated previously, Geforce 2 cards are now selling cheap. I've been having problems with my GeForce 2 MX card, tried the latest drivers etc etc but game was still like a slideshow even though CFS was saying I was getting 91+ fps. Was in a game with Kaze last night and had a talk to him. He is using Nvidia 6.53 beta drivers so I downloaded those to try them out. Game got a bit better, I then downloaded the GeForceTweak prog, ran its "Fat Settings" option went into Quick Combat at 1024x768x16 resolution and consistantly got Q4.3 fps. This utility optimizes the registry settings and I'd imagine, overclocks the card. So far no problems. Get the GeForce Tweak from here.

13-03-2001

New Zealand Special Air Services (SAS) soldier Major John McNutt was one of 5 people killed when a US F-18 fighter accidentally dropped a 500lb bomb on a training range in Kuwait this morning. Another tragedy so soon after a US Navy submarine one. ** Australian internet users are again left with decent connections after a fishing boat severed the cable off the coast of China. Despite having bandwidth on the new Southern Cross cable, Telstra Bigpond is not switching customers to it as they did a couple of weeks ago when the same cable was severed. Logging onto the zone, everyone was either red or n/a.

06-03-2001

With the release of the GeForce 3, the GeForce 2 family of Nvidia cards are now selling very cheaply. Funnily enough TNT2 cards are still being manufactured and  sold in low end machines. If you're looking for "Bang for Buck" you still can't go past the GeForce 2 MX card with 32Mb ram, in the next month or so the GeForce 2 MX card will be available with 64Mb ram for sub $AU300.00, giving even better performance at a good price.

06-03-2001

Logged onto Combatfs.coms messageboard earlier and got "The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later."  They have recently moved to a dedicated server so I never expected to see that message.

Had a late night last night removing viruses from a 3 computer network. The first virus, the W32.HLLW.Bymer wasn't too much of a hassle to remove, the second one, the W32.Funlove.4099 took a lot longer. Check out Sarc.com for information on these viruses and make sure you have the latest virus definitions installed. With the amount of viruses doing the rounds you can't afford to say it won't happen to me.

04-03-2001

The details for the 2001 CFS Convention have been announced at ComCentral. Check it out. ** Need video card drivers? Here is the download site for various drivers for the most common 3d accelerator cards.

02-03-2001

Virus Alert
I received Irish virus in my email this morning :

Top o' the mornin' to ya.
You have just received the IRISH VIRUS.
Being  Irish,we dont have too much programming experience,so this virus works
on  the honour system.Please manually delete all the files on your hard drive
 and forward this virus on to everyone on your mailing list.Thank you for
 your co-operation.
 

 

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