Rockinawsome's Hideout - Yes, I realize awesome has an E

Just thought I'd post a warning here, in case someone else has the same spam and needs to google it.

E-Card "greeding" is obviously malicious and harmful, but I didn't take any chances by downloading it.

The file the spam Email asks you to download comes from: 66.83.239.226. The link in the email contains an .exe file, needless to say, don't click it!

I took the time to post it here because it slipped by the Google spam filter, and it has no record on the internet yet.

I've played the beta, and it's the worst battlefield game ever made. While the game is ascetically pleasing and charming to look at, it plays clumsy, has poor design, and is downright irritating.

The game is "free", but you'll need to pay for "Battlefield Points" to acquire new clothes, weapons, emotes, etcetera. So that whole bit about EA seeing a new way to do business -- as seen in a certain magazine article (Games for Windows, I'm looking at you) -- sheer garbage. EA not only has space reserved during the beta for ads, but it's willing to make you pay for anything remotely interesting about the game.

When you play the actual game, you will discover that planes are now even harder to control, lag spikes are all too common (this is a beta--so this can be fixed with fewer people on the servers), crouching does nothing in terms of avoiding damage, and sprinting seems disabled.

The most irritating part of this game comes in the form of its RPG-like elements. Players have levels which enable them to receive all sorts of bonuses --the only problem is some of these bonuses seem to make players virtually invulnerable. Killing a level 30+ player with a level 5 and under character was pretty much impossible (and believe me, I'm not what you call lousy at shooters).

The game breaks down three classes: soldier,
commando, and something else I didn't care about.

I chose the commando.

Sniping the enemy was as effective as throwing rice at them, facing the wrong way in a wind storm. Though red numbers appeared above the heads of the enemies I tried so desperately to pick off, they would merely lumber about, taking their time to find me, absorb 3 or more hits to the body region, and miraculously kill me a 100 yards away with a machine gun.

Stabbing is equally ineffectual. I may as well try to chop a tree down with a butter knife as kill a high level player with a commando knife. I felt like I was an actor in a B-rated remake of the movie Psycho, hacking at my prey repeatedly before my prey decided it hadn't really been hurt that bad, run away, or turn around, and kill me with a shotgun.

In player chat, the topic frequently became about whether or not "good" players (usually higher 30+ level) were cheating or not. One considerate fellow made it his job to run fraps to be sure -- he failed to find any cheating.

The problem with this game is that it's much more RPG than it is shooter, and for an RPG -- it sucks. You're not finding loot, you're paying for it, with real digital money.

If you however, enjoy touting over your friends how much better you are because of how much time you've speant playing a game which isn't any fun, and enjoy creating better characters not based on any fantasy world achievements, but on real world success -- this game may just be your thing. But don't expect your friends to stick around, or to like you for anything more than that fat lump in your pants -- that is, your wallet.

I didn't stick around either, I quit playing when I realized that 5 tank shells later, I still couldn't kill a high level player.

Disclaimer: (This is an informal review, no research has been done of any kind, other than what I experienced first-hand. Errors may be plentiful. *Hell, it hasn't even been proofread or edited.)

I'm fairly certain Niccolo Machiavelli wasn't the greatest guy in the world, but he has some excellent quotes I keep stumbling across.

(Like in Medieval 2: Total War)

Here are some of my favorites:

“Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.”

“Before all else, be armed.”

“Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.”

“God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us”

“Politics have no relation to morals.”

“Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions”

“Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.”

“Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.”

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”

“It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope”

“There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt”

“You don't avoid such a war, you merely postpone it, to your own disadvantage.”

“He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.”

So, out of sheer curiosity I happened to check out what this folder is: C:\ProgramData\Lx_cats

A quick google of the folder gave me this page:

http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/ if-you-have-a-lexmark-printer-you-may-also-have-lexmark-spyw are

The ini file looks like this:

[CATS Control]
CATSParticipation=0
ArchiveCount=10
FirstSurveyDays=60
NextSurveyDays=180
NextArchiveDays=30
NextAIOFetch=0
NextUpload=30
NumRetries=5
TimeoutSecs=50
UploadURL=https://www.lxkcc1.com
MaxMsgSizeKb=600
UserName=b2btest
Password=b2btest
UploadINI=0
DeleteStatus=1
[CATS Scratch]
InstallDate=2454732
LastSurvey=2454732
LastArchive=2454909
LastAIOFetch=2454936
LastUpload=2454732
LastUploadError=0
LastConnectError=0
GUID=55555-55555-555-55-55555 //changed this line, obviously
[Serial Number]
Serial=blahblahblah //and this line

Nice little backdoor, huh?

How can we have so little protection from the government against this digital invasion of privacy. There exists far too little legislation and far too little effort spent enforcing what e-legislation we do have (in reference to USA).

Our politicians are either too old or too stupid to deal with the digital age effectively.

Another poster on this site referenced the fact that Lexmark has been doing this for years. Worse, another poster commented that other large companies such as Creative may be doing the same.

A colon killed my ASP.NET, Visual Studio 2008 webserver. How you ask? Here's how.

So apparently, an update changed one text file, which needed only ONE more colon, and that inhibited me from being able to view my ASP.NET server.

This means that after hours of pulling my hair out adding ports and removing them from my firewall, and configuring exceptions in my router, uninstalling and reinstalling browsers, changing options in VS2008, it came down to the fact that someone forgot to add a colon.

Ouch! It's times like these that I wonder why computers are so great. It's going to take a few hours of Mass Effect to make me remember....