I am sat here listening to Metallica (The Four Horsemen) and drinking Jack Daniels from the bottle. Merry Christmas and all that. Anyway, I want to rant tonight about the Krauts(Germans) of BF2. For some inexplicable reason, they seem to think they are exempt from the ROE that all BF2 server admins have to abide by. I was on one server a couple of days ago called =SOW=, it was a vehicle Karkand server, yet you were kicked for stepping into an APC, tank or anything which wasn't a a car. Of course, being a German server, C4 and claymores were verboten, as were commanders. Another thing... this 'GGC', the German players of BF2 have resorted to creating their own 'Aryan' master ban list used by many German servers, they seem to think they are above Punkbuster/PBbans etc, perhaps this is an indication of a deep, intrisic desire of Germans to control everything they can, much like some certain events which happened between 1939 and 1945, anyway....

I'd also like to stick two fingers up to our Yank friends at ICANN, yes, I am sticking two fingers up at their policy of insisting those who register domains under their jurisdiction are up-to-date with genuine WHOIS contact details. I think that sucks for people with .com/.net/.org domains who want to keep their name and address details private, we have laws in this country to keep that sort of stuff private, and with .uk domains you do have the option to hide this information, thank you Nominet, USA take note! Anyway, speaking of domains, my invoice is ready for my next year of hosting, I am very pleased with my current hosts and will be renewing for another year for the bargain price of £60.

Looking forward to 2009, good times are ahead, I can feel it! It's amazing, it's been nearly a year since I first registered HWDN, I remember having so many plans for it, although priorities have now changed, but HWDN and Hellwrath are as relevant as ever! I am now at about 35,000 points in BF2, I look forward to getting to Sergeant Major, I'm about 15,000 points away, you can usually find me in EAF or uKm Karkand servers ammo whoring away! Anyway guys, this will probably be the last post of 2008, happy Christmas and see you later, I've got some whiskey to drink!

Free speech wins a major victory today over the shadowy, un-elected, unaccountable IWF, the UK's secretive Internet 'Big Brother', an organisation which doesn't just block what you shouldn't be looking at, but also blocks what they think you shouldn't be looking at. This is quite disturbing to say the least, 95% of UK Internet users fall under the blanket of the IWF and most of us were completely unaware of the organisation until this week with the blocking of a Wikipedia page for the album 'Virgin Killer' by the German rock band 'Scorpions'. So what was the block about? Well, the image accompanying the page was a scan of the 1976 album featuring a nude girl on the cover which the IWF took objection to, therefore restricting all access to the Wikipedia page and also 'blacklisting' Wikipedia as an illegal website. After the blacklist was implemented, all UK traffic to Wikipedia went through just a handful of IP addresses belonging to IWF proxies, meaning it was impossible for Wiki administrators to differentiate between genuine Wikiers and vandals, so these IPs were prevented from editing articles on Wikipedia. And that's just the start... in an almost breathtaking act of Stalinist revisionism, the IWF forged a fake 404 error page, suggesting people trying to access the Wikipedia article were trying to access a page that didn't exist, an absolutely stunning act of censorship and cover-up designed to mislead visitors to Wikipedia. They could at the very least TELL visitors their access had been blocked instead of attempting to disguise it.


The IWF's incompetence was further highlighted when numerous people demonstrated different ways to access the Wikipedia article and the offending image itself from the UK simply by using a slightly modified Wikipedia URL. It should also be noted that the image can be accessed from numerous websites including Amazon, Google Image Search and others, the album has been legally sold in music stores for 30 years, ironically, the image has been brought into mainstream attention and has presumably been accessed by millions, which can only be great publicity for the Scorpions themselves.

So what have we learnt? Well, we've learnt that the IWF is a shadowy, unelected Internet censor which can block any material it pleases, illegal or otherwise with impunity, we've learned their IT people probably need to go back to school and learn how to effectively block content, we've learned that in trying to block access to this article and image, the IWF have gone and done the exact opposite and the article is now the most visited on Wikipedia and the image is being propogated and viewed across the Internet more than ever. We've also learned the IWF employ primitive deception techniques to attempt to confuse innocent Internet users like those who tried to access the Wikipedia page in question. We've also learnt that good Internet people like those on Wikipedia stand up for what they believe in and aren't afraid to stand up to tyrannical governments and oppressive organisations hell-bent on restricting access to and material on the ultimate medium of free speech - the Internet!

Right, now that's off my chest, I'm off for a shit and a shave, if that's ok with the IWF that is...

Currently listening to Floorpunch....

Hmmmm Friday, which means beer and BF2! I am now in the top 100,000 players in BF2, had a damn good game with RtK and =EAF=TomFoster in the EAF server (Karkand). My next goal is to get in the top 10,000 then the top 1000, 100 and ultimately the top 10!

In other news, you may have heard that YouTube are putting in place stricter rules on content, most notably 'profanity' (Awful Americanism) and 'Sexually suggestive' videos. Basically, any video which has 'profanity' or sexual content will be demoted, think about this, this is American Puritanism in action, but hang on one second, let's remember that YouTube LLC is a private company, they aren't a public service, which I think is a fact many people seem to forget, YouTube can restrict or delete videos however it likes, YouTube has become such an important part of our online lives that it seems we have forgot this fact.

<rtk> "01:17 - RTk leaks the lizard!!" /U

So yeah, don't blame YouTube or Americans, YouTube is an American site, but it's also a private business, I say to anyone, if you wish to create a truly 'free' and open video sharing site, then do it, the Pirate Bay equivalent of YouTube might be interesting, although then again it may just be filled with porn and hate, who knows!

Dudes... I have three fucking beers left - yooooooooooooosh!

What follows is an official SMEG press release by RtK:

"On this frosty nght of Friday 6th December 2008, the Team [SMEG] consortium looks towards another 12 months of Gaming, Topical Discussions and City Centre Meetups and General Shinanigans![sic]"