Stretching my legs in Eve Online!

Incarna has been released and is up and running with only minor bugs to worry anyone! For the first time capsuleers can get out of their pod and stretch there legs, and what a job they did.

Granted your confines are cramped but this is just the beginning of a string of releases planned for the Incarna version. I personally can't wait to interact with other capsuleers at bars or in Corporate offices to discuss future operations and plans of galactic conquest.

One issue i do have is the pricing of clothing for capsuleers. Basically in order to get at these "elite" items you convert a 30 day Game Time Card known as a PLEX in exchange for a new currency called AUR, which is used to buy these clothing items on the new market called NeX - Noble Exchange.

Now, a 30 day Game Time Card normally costs about 390mil (which itself has been rising from 320mil when they came out) or about $20.
1 PLEX = 3,500 AUR
Most items in the store cost about 3,000 AUR so thats about $20 per item of clothing
HOWEVER - There is 1 item, the monocle, which does absolutely nothing for the character except puts a bug looking item over his eye, costs a whooping 12,000 AUR or 4 PLEX's, translate.... $80. Now my issue is i don't spend $20 a month on cloths for myself, never mind digital ones for my fucking internet spaceship character to wear.

I reckon its an experiment that CCP are running to test the water for that to charge DUST 514 players for the shiny upgrades. Because DUST 514 has been declared to be a free part of the Eve Online Universe (Read free MMO), bar the initial downlaod cover charge, it plans to make money by selling what i can only assume to be upgraded guns/vehicles/armor for RL cash, which can then be traded for ingame like any other items for ingame currency. That's only speculation, but its something CCP need to look at very closely and fix before people get more annoyed.

As always, to get your free 14 day trial for Eve Online, simple click HERE and maybe i'll see you in space soon!

Turret System Renovation

Nice new blog from CCP Salvo about the new turret effects, great read!!!   
EVE Online | EVE Insider | Dev Blog

LulzSec's 1000th Tweet message.

Lulzsec, the anonomous group that DDoS'ed Eve Online last week reached there 1000th twitter and released this statement on the 17/6/11

"Dear Internets,

This is Lulz Security, better known as those evil bastards from twitter. We just hit 1000 tweets, and as such we thought it best to have a little chit-chat with our friends (and foes).

For the past month and a bit, we've been causing mayhem and chaos throughout the Internet, attacking several targets including PBS, Sony, Fox, porn websites, FBI, CIA, the U.S. government, Sony some more, online gaming servers (by request of callers, not by our own choice), Sony again, and of course our good friend Sony.

While we've gained many, many supporters, we do have a mass of enemies, albeit mainly gamers. The main anti-LulzSec argument suggests that we're going to bring down more Internet laws by continuing our public shenanigans, and that our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you. But what if we just hadn't released anything? What if we were silent? That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now, inside PBS, inside Sony... watching... abusing...

Do you think every hacker announces everything they've hacked? We certainly haven't, and we're damn sure others are playing the silent game. Do you feel safe with your Facebook accounts, your Google Mail accounts, your Skype accounts? What makes you think a hacker isn't silently sitting inside all of these right now, sniping out individual people, or perhaps selling them off? You are a peon to these people. A toy. A string of characters with a value.

This is what you should be fearful of, not us releasing things publicly, but the fact that someone hasn't released something publicly. We're sitting on 200,000 Brink users right now that we never gave out. It might make you feel safe knowing we told you, so that Brink users may change their passwords. What if we hadn't told you? No one would be aware of this theft, and we'd have a fresh 200,000 peons to abuse, completely unaware of a breach.

Yes, yes, there's always the argument that releasing everything in full is just as evil, what with accounts being stolen and abused, but welcome to 2011. This is the lulz lizard era, where we do things just because we find it entertaining. Watching someone's Facebook picture turn into a penis and seeing their sister's shocked response is priceless. Receiving angry emails from the man you just sent 10 dildos to because he can't secure his Amazon password is priceless. You find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it. We release personal data so that equally evil people can entertain us with what they do with it.

Most of you reading this love the idea of wrecking someone else's online experience anonymously. It's appealing and unique, there are no two account hijackings that are the same, no two suddenly enraged girlfriends with the same expression when you admit to killing prostitutes from her boyfriend's recently stolen MSN account, and there's certainly no limit to the lulz lizardry that we all partake in on some level.

And that's all there is to it, that's what appeals to our Internet generation. We're attracted to fast-changing scenarios, we can't stand repetitiveness, and we want our shot of entertainment or we just go and browse something else, like an unimpressed zombie. Nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan-nyan, anyway...

Nobody is truly causing the Internet to slip one way or the other, it's an inevitable outcome for us humans. We find, we nom nom nom, we move onto something else that's yummier. We've been entertaining you 1000 times with 140 characters or less, and we'll continue creating things that are exciting and new until we're brought to justice, which we might well be. But you know, we just don't give a living fuck at this point - you'll forget about us in 3 months' time when there's a new scandal to gawk at, or a new shiny thing to click on via your 2D light-filled rectangle. People who can make things work better within this rectangle have power over others; the whitehats who charge $10,000 for something we could teach you how to do over the course of a weekend, providing you aren't mentally disabled.

This is the Internet, where we screw each other over for a jolt of satisfaction. There are peons and lulz lizards; trolls and victims. There's losers that post shit they think matters, and other losers telling them their shit does not matter. In this situation, we are both of these parties, because we're fully aware that every single person that reached this final sentence just wasted a few moments of their time.

Thank you, bitches.

Lulz Security

"

They certainly have a unique sense of humor.....

Eve Online DDOS attack - no damage!

A message from our COO.


At 17:00 UTC today, CCP became aware of a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) against the EVE Online cluster and web servers.


Our policy in such cases is to mobilize a taskforce of internal and external experts to evaluate the situation. At 17:55 UTC, that group concluded that our best course of action was to go completely offline while an exhaustive scan of our entire infrastructure was executed.


While some may feel that such a drastic reaction was not warranted, it is always our approach to err on the side of caution in order to ensure the best possible service for our players and the security of their personal, billing and account information.


We understand the effect this disruption has had for our players and apologize for not having been able to explain fully to the community what was going on. In these cases it can often be counterproductive to containment to give out information while we are in the process of evaluating the scope of any potential problem.


Our taskforce concluded at 22:05 that neither the game servers nor the CCP infrastructure had been breached. Further, we can also confirm that no personal details such as users’ credentials or credit card numbers were exposed through this incident.


The servers were brought back online at 23:00 and we will continue to monitor the situation closely.


Again, we sincerely apologize for this disruption.


Regards,


Jón Hörðdal


Chief Operating Officer


UPDATE: Shortly after service was restored to the EVE Online Tranquility server, the CCP Security Task force became aware of ongoing traffic flooding which prompted them to take the server offline. At 00:30 UTC, Tranquility was brought online again and is being closely monitored. Please be advised that we are prepared to take the server offline again if warranted. We thank you again for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience and sincerely thank you for your continued patience.

Brewing in Galway!!

I got a very interesting email the other day asking me if I'd like to join a group who are starting to brew in Galway as a medium size project.

For my technical project in college i build a temperature control system (Brief explanation) which allowed me to cool a body of water. These guys basically wanted me to keep a system heated at about 40'C, so i looked at my system and adapted it very easily thanks to the awesome power of the Arduino Mega!

The cool thing about all this is that I've been wanting to get involved in a larger project than what I've been doing up until now, this will be the first time someone else has relied on some of my original work! Exciting but a little scary, better make sure everything works lol

For the first batch we plan on producing about 19 litres of Elderflower Champagne and a bit of Cordial to sell at farmers markets. And hey, who knows? Maybe a company will grow out of this :)

DUST 514 - BIG NEWS!

DUST 514 will be released on the PlayStation 3! The confirmation comes today as the DUST 514 site went live and the PlayStation blog released this statement!

DUST 514 will be a console FPS MMO based in the Eve Online Universe in which Mercs will fight on planets under the command of  Capsuleers (Eve Online Players). The battles on these planets will effect the outcome of Sovereignty wars on the PC game. DUST 514 players will have access not only to a primary market but also a secondary player run market to purchase upgrades such as amour, weapons, turrets and tanks.




EVERYONE BE EXCITED! THIS GAME WILL BE AWESOME!

Eve Online Info :)

** Damage types ***

Guristas - Kinetic / Thermal
Serpentis - Thermal / Kinetic
Blood Raider - Thermal / EM
Sansha's Nation - EM / Thermal
Angel Cartel - Kinetic / Explosive / Thermal
Minmatar Fleet - Thermal / Explosive
Amarr Navy - EM / Thermal
Caldari - Kinetic/Thermal

***Enemy Weaknesses***

Guristas - Kinetic
Serpentis - Thermal
Mordus - Thermal & Kinetic
Blood - Thermal
Sansha - Thermal
Angel - Explosive
Mercenary - Thermal
Rogue Drones - EM


*** Mission types ***

Administration: 50% Kill, 50% Courier
Advisory: 34% Kill, 66% Courier
Archives: 5% Kill, 90% Courier, 5% Trade
Astrosurveying: 40% Kill, 30% Courier, 25%
Mining, 5% Trade
Command: 97% Kill, 3% Courier
Distribution: 5% Kill, 95% Courier
Intelligence: 85% Kill, 15% Courier
Internal Security: 95% Kill, 5% Courier
Legal: 50% Kill, 50% Courier

Notice the Donate button?

Yes, I'm afraid I've had to join PayPal to pay for some electronic parts I've had to buy online for the Quadrotor!

If you feel like donating a small amount to help me get the Quad into the air it will not only be greatly received, but it will also help me get future UAV projects off the ground!