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@Makkes It was actually two years ago, but I get the picture. I'm glad I managed to help someone out with their problems. I'm also glad to see that there are still people who search for solutions to their problems before posting it on a forum.

Since I imagine that all the usual suggestions have already been made, I'm going to make an unusual list of suggestion taken from this article: Release more demos. Demos are becoming rarer these days, and this provides an excuse for piracy. Of course Crysis had a full demo for example and was still pirated to the tune of almost 1 million copies in 2008 alone, however a demo released before the final game will help some legitimate purchasers avoid the temptation of day-zero piracy, help manage user expectations about the final game, spread valuable word of mouth legitimately, and also help identify major bugs earlier, leading to quicker patches. Make copy protection and DRM methods clearer on game boxes and on game websites. Also publish a link to a page detailing the hardware with which the protection is incompatible (e.g. SecuROM & known DVD drive incompatibilities). Aside from deflating claims of a cover-up, this also allows customers to make a fully informed purchase and lowers support costs. Publish realistic minimum and recommended specs. Too many people assume that minimum specs are sufficient to play the game at low settings, when in reality minimum specs are usually sufficient to only barely run the game in an unplayable manner. Recommended specs should be published to a standardized level across all games, e.g. 'Below is the recommended hardware to achieve an average of 30FPS at 1280x720'. Provide a toll-free tech support line for DRM-related issues. It's completely unreasonable for legitimate purchasers to have to pay several dollars a minute to call tech support regarding issues that are no fault of their own, such as SecuROM disc check failures and known drive incompatibilities. Emailing tech support on these issues is also a complete waste of time due to vague stock answers, so email support also needs to be shored up. Stop delaying releases by region. Releasing games earlier in some regions is probably the single biggest incentive for people to pirate a game and contribute to day-zero piracy. Releasing games with different protection methods in different regions also allows pirates to simply attack the weakest link to achieve a working crack. For example the TAGES system in STALKER: Clear Sky went uncracked for two weeks after release, however the Russian StarForce version of the game's executable - which was released three weeks earlier in Russia - was cracked and used as a working crack for the non-Russian versions upon their release. So release all games globally at approximately the same time, and unify the protection method if you're serious about slowing down day-zero piracy. Lower prices on digital distribution. Instead of making sure that digital copies match retail copies in an effort to protect retail distribution, accept the transition to digital distribution by lowering prices to realistically reflect the lower costs, potentially increasing sales due to the greater convenience at a lower price.

My simple prevention measure that I use to help prevent infections is to run a copy of Lubuntu in a virtual machine then do my web browsing and email through that. I've never been infected through any Nexus site though.

My guess is that you didn't install v1.33 full before installing v1.34b5. The 1.34 beta patch is used to patch 1.33, not v1.3. If you use BAIN in Wrye Bash to install mods, you can use my OOO BCF located here to make things a bit easier.

This would probably explain the influx of spam into my previously clean email address. Oh well! Spamcop is about to get a large delivery. I imagine that people are buying these spammed products otherwise there would be no point. The spammer would just be losing money. Also, I think the spammers use bad grammar as an attempt to get their mail through some spam filters.

Recently I found a way of taking a large number of feeds and combining them into one. So I decided that I would like to use this service to take the "Action Log" feed for the various mods I have installed then combine them together to form one feed that I can use in Firefox to keep track of updates. I managed to create the system I have in mind and it works. The one thing I have noticed is that the RSS feed for every mod keeps a log of every change that has been made since somewhere in 2008. Not a problem in my case though since I could just tell the service to filter out every channel that was created before a certain date. The only problem I have though is that filtering by date requires that a channel has a PubDate element, which the "Action Log" feeds don't have. Instead, it was decided that the date would be stored in the "Description" element. ATM, I'm asking the service to check for certain words and numbers to determine the date a feed was created but this is not an ideal solution, IMO. So basically, my request is this: Please can someone modify the "Action Log" feeds so that every channel has a PubDate element, even if this can't be applied to channels that already exist? The Description element can be either kept the same or possibly changed to be the same as the title. Help in this regard will be greatly appreciated. Kind regards

First, try avoiding double-posts. Second, my recommendation with the unknowns is that you list them on BOSS's Bethsoft forum topic, preferably with a description of what the mod does and/or a link to the mod, so that it can be added to a future version of the masterlist. It will probably take less than a week or two to get added. As for me, I have never seen any of those mods before so I can't really recommend an optimal load order for them. As for the mods that were recognised, I spotted a few problems: I recommend that you remove this. The performance improvement is minuscule and numerous people have reported that it causes bugs. The version of this mod you have installed recently became outdated. I suggest you get the latest version. Are you sure both of these need to be installed? It looks to me like two seperate languages of the same mod, but I could be wrong. The masterlist and DR's readme both tell you to use only one Timed block ESP but I see here that you have all three installed. I suggest you delete the two you don't want.

It's nice to know my work is appreciated.

I just tried the Maidenhead server right now and I can confirm that it now works properly. Thank you for fixing this server Dark0ne.

@Hazarks JohnnyDeath13 didn't get banned, he got a warning. I don't know if it's just me or something but I still can't get the Maidenhead server to work; trying to download something gives me a timeout error.

@Johnnydeath13 LOL, you clearly don't know what is going on to make that remark. Dark0ne said that he is moving servers, not getting new domain names. Can't wait for the upgrade and I hope this will also fix the issue with the Maidenhead, UK server.

It sounds like you haven't installed the mod's meshes and/or textures correctly. Missing meshes/textures often cause invisible objects. My suggestion is that you double-check (or even triple-check) that you have installed everything correctly.

I believe I addressed the issue you mentioned on this page of my guide. I cannot stress how important it is to check that a mod works properly before you give it a permenant place in your load order. I can also see that you don't have the Unofficial Oblivion Patch installed. I know this because the UOP already has a custom race fix intergrated into it. Hence, you would not have had that problem if the UOP was installed.

Hmm, I've never seen nor heard of that problem before. Have you read my entire guide? If not, I suggest you do so. If it didn't help, I can't really think what the problem could be. In that case, I would probably recommend that you start a new topic here or on the Bethesda forums concerning this problem.

@Ranokoa You forgot about the game companies. If all pirates amend their ways, the game companies will have more money to make better quality games. Anyway, I agree. I'm glad to see that at least one person decided to do the smart thing. I've seen a number of people try to argue that most pirates are demo testing and will soon either buy the product or leave it. The truth is that this is far from the truth though. Along with all the other excuses for piracy. In general, if you can afford a PC/console and an internet connection, you don't have any reason to pirate software. If you can't, then how will you download/play the game?

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this problem but I seem to have recently noticed a problem concerning a mod's comment topics. Basically, I am currently watching the comments topic for about half of the mods I have uploaded here. However, I noticed about a week ago that there were two new replies made in the comments topic for one of my mods but I never received a notification for either of them. I did, on the other hand, recently receive a notification for another topic I am subscribed to where the previous reply was made a year before. If this problem is not just something unique to me, my guess is that it could have something to do with the fact that comment posts are mostly made outside the forum.

This topic is nearly a year old. I think that would be defined as Thread Necromancy, which I don't think is allowed here. As for your problem, what exactly is wrong with v17 that you can't use it in your game? All versions of OBSE are backwards compatible which means that mods created using an older version of OBSE can be used with a later version.

"But it is their fault if I wouldn't have internet," I'm not sure what meaning you are trying to convey in this sentence. If your internet connection is not working, that is not the game companies' fault. It is your ISP's fault. Instead of complaining about how game developers shouldn't do these things, just go over to your ISP and get your internet problems fixed. That is the more productive way to handle the situation. After some reading, I guess you are correct. Every version of MW2 seems to require Steam to play. But still, you're the one who brought MW2 into your house therefore you're the one who decided to take the risk of playing a game that required an internet connection to play. Finally, this is not a piracy discussion topic, this is a DRM discussion topic. I only brought the issue of piracy into my post because the entire reason DRM exists is because piracy exists. If I'm not allowed to point that out, then it is impossible to make an argument in support of DRM. Besides, piracy was mentioned a number of times in the previous topic with at least three moderaters visiting it and the topic only get locked when someone actually admitted that they were a pirate. If I did or said something inappropriate in the OP though, then I apologise.

I recently found this topic on this forum: DRM Software. Have they gone too far? What shocked me about that topic is how opiniated the issue of DRM has become (even amongst our moderaters, it seems). Since the above topic was locked before I could say anything, I will use this post to reply to the people in the other topic and hopefully give everyone some new information. Sorry everyone. I had to start using code boxes near the end because I got a "too many quotes" error. @Everyone First of all, a game company is a business. And like any other business, their first priority is to make an income and improve said income in any way they can. Therefore, it is not logical to think that a game company would do things (eg DRM) that would jeporadise their income (since that would go against their foundation principles). There also seems to be the mis-conception that you own a game once you buy it. That is not the case, however. At all times, it is the game publisher/creater that owns the game, not the end user. What you are actually buying from the company is a license to play that game, not the game itself. This is all in the game's Terms & Conditions which you have to agree to before you can install the game. I can imagine that most people just click on I accept without reading more than a sentence. For some more real info on this issue, you can read these two articles: PC Game Piracy Examined Assassin's Creed 2 DRM A number of times in this post, I will mention how you shouldn't buy the game. What I am trying to say is that if lots of people don't like the feature you are complaining about and choose not to buy the game, the game company will see this and amend their agreement to try improve their income again. If they don't do this, it is highly likely that the problem is actually your expectations and that you should probably change them. Games are a luxury item and you do not need to play them to survive. 1. Since most PC gamers already have a continuously online connection, what is the problem? Those that don't shouldn't have a copy of the game to begin with (for reasons I will explain later). 2. There has always been a limit to the number of copies you could install. I remember a game I bought 9 years ago called Pharaoh. This is in the Terms & Conditions (though I don't have the exact words): You may install and use this game on only 1 PC at a time. If you have a laptop, you may install an additional copy on that as well but that's it. Also, you may not use the PC and laptop copy at the same time. The only difference between now and then is that game companies have become better at enforcing that rule. In fact, companies that give a license to install on multiple PCs or (shudder) an unlimited number are actually giving you a priviledge so be grateful instead of complaining. 3. What the hell is wrong with having to log in to a server? It adds maybe 10 seconds to the game's loading time (less if you auto-login). Considering the amount of time it already takes to start and load a save, less than 10 seconds is negligible. 4. Steam is not just a DRM system. It a save manager, game shopping, auto patcher, launchpad, etc. It is possible to start a game without having to open the Steam window (read the documentation) though Steam needs to be open to start the game. Also, Steam uses a neglibible amount of background resources. So what exactly is the problem? 5. You can thank the pirates for that. Without them, the DRM (and hence, game lockouts) wouldn't exist to begin with. 1. Valid point. Just don't buy Steam games in future if you always have a problem with them. If you choose to put up with those problems instead, then don't complain. 2. I've already said that previous games only allowed 1 installation. Mass Effect also has this feature. However, the documentation clearly says that if you are online when the game is uninstalled, you get an installation license back to use again. If you aren't online at the time, you can later use their license revoke tool available from their website. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Spore and Bioshock 2 also has something similar to this. 3. Not sure about DOW2 but this happened to Assasin's Creed 2 and Silent Hunter 5 as well. The reason for these two is that pirates were attacking the servers, preventing some users from logging in. So thank the pirates. If the problem is bad management though, simply don't buy any of Relic Entertainment/THQ's games until they clean up their act. If you choose to put up with those problems instead, then don't complain. 4. The Empire: Total War's box clearly says that Steam is a requirement to install the game. Game companies have to, by law, note ALL the game's requirements on the box or website before you purchase the game. It is not their fault that you didn't read. 5. I have been through a number of storms and only a few have managed to knock something out (it was always the electricity though). So you experienced a storm that knocked out your internet (and telephone?) but not the electricity. That would be a rare occurence that game companies are not expected to account for. Blame your ISP for the inability to play games, not the game company. You never had control over the game to begin with. It is the game company that owns the game and controls the license you purchased. Read Spore's documentation and visit the website to find the license revoke tool I mentioned earlier. Maybe but unfortunately, piracy has progressed to the stage where offline methods of preventing piracy don't work anymore. You can thank the pirates for that. That is not your call to make. It is the decision of the company that owns the game. Besides, the restriction is that you may install the game on a limited number of PCs at once. Therefore, if you uninstall a copy, you may now install that copy on another PC. If you don't like it, then don't buy the game. Is a castle wall supposed to completely stop an enemy from getting in? No, they will eventually break through. Is a locked door supposed to completely stop a thief from entering your home? No, a thief will eventually find another way in. So what is the point of a lock and castle wall if they are eventually going to fail? The point is to delay them long enough to accomplish a certain goal (ally or police arrives). Therefore, the purpose of DRM is to stop the cracks long enough that the game's sales cover the costs of development. Once you realise this, the logic of DRM suddenly makes sense. The only reason console games aren't affected is because it is excessively difficult to pirate software on a console. Anti-piracy measures are built into the console itself. Hallelujah! We have a believer! What exactly is wrong with your internet connection that it can't support a constant connection to the internet. Even my (uncapped, admittedly) dial-up connection here in South Africa meets that requirement. Unfortunately, piracy has progressed to the stage where offline DRM doesn't work anymore. You can thank the pirates for that. What is wrong with your internet connection. My dial-up in SA meets the requirement. That anti-DRM movement is going to fail. If using DRM means that game companies get the income that they deserve, no amount of complaints are going to make them remove it. Is something wrong with your internet connection too? Rixirite ...I put the disc in all excited then steam started up and it asked for the DOW2 CD key. That made me mad. CD keys are so common nowadays that getting angry at having to type one in is completely unreasonable. If you don't want to type in CD kays, don't buy the games that require this (that's a very long list though). Rixirite ...before it gets a chance to install Steam says "Our servers are busy at the moment, please wait while they become available."! I became intolerant to this nonsense, but restained myself because I wanted to play the game. That's just bad luck. Get over it! Rixirite ...once it was done it took another 15 minutes to patch. Read the Steam documentation. There is an option which allows you to disable auto-patching if it makes you upset. You will have had to patch the game eventually though so why not now rather than later. Rixirite I had to create a GFWL (Games For Windows Live) account in order to play the campaign! The campaign is single-player! I don't care about achievements and Cooperative gameplay, yet it required full GFWL access to play the game. The same applies to skirmishes when I want to fight AI. This is to cater to the majority of gamers who do want achievements and/or cooperative play. I do agree that there should be an option to make this optional though (like Fallout 3). Also, a GFWL account can be used with any additional GFWL games you purchase in future so it is a one-time procedure. Even better is that if you do your email through Hotmail (and a few other Microsoft services), you already have a GFWL account. Rixirite ...wanted a refund but I can't do that because I installed it through steam therefore you cannot "return" a digital copy. Simple, don't purchase digital copies in future. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if you are, in fact, allowed to return digital copies but you simply haven't read about it. Jim_uk I refuse to buy any single player game that requires an internet connection to play, when I buy a product I shouldn't have to ask permission to use the thing. Ubisoft and now EA are on my "avoid" list, I'm sick and tired of being punished for buying games while pirates enjoy them with none of the issues we face. You live in the UK. What is wrong with your connection that it can't handle being constantly connected? Are you saying that my expensive slow South African internet is better than yours? Also, where exactly are you required to gain permission to play the game. Buying the game license is where you gain the permission to play. Pirates don't have problems with DRM but they get a whole slurry of new problems that legitimate owners don't have. Besides instablity and the risk of malware, people that pirate AC2 can't get any missions and also get a white-screen-of-death error. So what would you rather have? A simple DRM that requires you to login to a server while you play a game? Or an hour or so of no mission followed by a white screen error? Your choice. Bben46 Ubisoft will be blaming the pirates for their reduced sales instead of their inane DRM...And many others who would have bought a legal copy will now become pirates just to play a game they would have been happy to pay for. The pirates are going to find a way to steal it no matter what. This just penalizes the legitimate purchaser. I have done the research. I have read so many sources of information. The global average is that for every legitimate copy of a PC game installed, there are 6 or 7 pirated copies installed elsewhere. It is clear that it is piracy, not DRM that is causing a loss of sales. And these figures existed even before these intrusive DRM were introduced. So it is clear that this DRM was only created because the game companies are losing so much money to piracy. Also take note of what I said earlier, it is not logical to assume that a company would make decisions that causes them to lose profits. One of the articles I mentioned above mentions that games with no DRM are pirated even more heavily than games that do have DRM. Therein lies the logic with DRM. Compare DRM to a castle wall or locked door, not an immovable rock. And now that I think of it, if your internet connection can't handle the small amount of bandwidth required to be online while you play a game, how is it going to handle the enormous bandwidth required to download a pirated copy of a game. Reading your post, I think you DESPERATELY need to read the articles I linked to. Evilneko Of course. That's their plan...Nevermind the fact that sales are actually increasing, or that the pirates actually buy MORE: a not-insignificant number of "pirates" actually buy the stuff they like, and are more likely to buy future games from the same developer. ...not logical to assume they make business decisions that reduce profit. The reason sales are increasing is because people that would have pirated the game got tired of waiting for a crack and bought it instead. That is the reason DRM works. I have done the research and I do not believe that "pirates buy more" statement for even one second. The VAST majority of pirates download software so that they can have a copy of it, not to demo-test it before buying the legitimate version. That's just piracy propaganda to make it look better than it actually is. The biggest reason they would choose not to pirate future software is because they can't find a pirated version of it. If you don't have anything to hide, there is no reason to be scared of ACTA. In fact, I think that we probably deserve it considering the issues that ACTA is supposed to address. I do, however, agree that charging money for a demo is an unfair move. EA probably wouldn't need to charge money if piracy wasn't eating away at their sales though. AlienSlof But these companies punish the legit people who buy the game for it. Would you buy a car and then have to check in with the dealer each time you wanted to drive it? No, you wouldn't. So why should gamers? Honest people are being punished for other people's mis-deeds. You can thank the pirates for that. Without pirates, there would be no need for DRM. Is it unreasonable for someone to protect their investments? As for the car example, the difference here is that it is infinitely easier to prevent cars from being stolen from a factory than it is to prevent software piracy. Also, there are already effective measures in place that can recover stolen cars, unlike software. Therefore, car companies do not need intrusi AlienSlof It will encourage piracy instead of defeat it. Hell, you can't even re-sell some of these games now, due to accounts being tied to them. That goes against everything I've researched. You can't resell these games because it means less sales for the game company. Unfair but that's how it is, unfortunately. At least Steam allows you to return games for a discount on another game they have. Balagor I personally think that the gaming compagnies should give up DRM, and I think we also need a GREAT change of moral amongst certaint people in society. The last time I saw a game company give up using DRM (ie Ubisoft with Prince of Persia), the game was massively pirated and very few sales of the game were made. In fact, from it's release date up to now, POP has only managed just over 2 million sales. The DRM-heavy AC2 made more than half that figure in it's first week. When we change our moral values, game companies will remove DRM. We can't expect them to remove it before that though because pirates will only take advantage of it. AlienSlof I won't be punished for someone else's criminal activity. I bought AvP recently, but when it arrived, I found out that it required Steam. If I wanted Steam, I would have it installed already and bought the game through it. A game on a disc should NOT require a 3rd party application to run. That is just an unreasonable request for the reasons I mentioned above. Is there something wrong with your internet too? Thanks to DRM, they lost a few customers and gained a whole lot more who would have pirated the game had a crack been released in time. MonsterHunterMaster and I can't play it cuz my internet stick has a problem and so the internet on my computer isn't working. So I can't install modern warfare 2 cuz steam isn't working Simple. You shouldn't have bought the steam version. If your internet isn't working, then get it fixed. It's not Infinity Ward/Activision/Valve's fault your internet is out of action. Shoren ...but what Balagor said is true for the worst of us, of the pirates. Actually most of the pirates (like me for example) download games so we can test their full potential without any limits which demo places and if we like it we buy it. If not we'll just delete it. Simple. You've been banned but anyway. Correction: you (maybe). Pirating something to demo-test it is one of the oldest excuses in the book. The reason demos exist is so that you can test the program's capabilities and see if it suits you. If the demo isn't satisfactory, then look for a review on the product. If you're still not satisfied, make sure there is a money-back guarantee then buy it. If you don't like it, then simly return it for a refund. That is the correct way to test a product, not pirating it then hopefully going out to buy the legal version. Once you have a pirated version of some software, there is almost nothing stopping you from keeping it instead of buying the legal version. It is for that reason that the vast majority of pirates never buy the legal version of the software they use. And logically speaking, why would a game company go to great expenses and risk losing sales and gaining a bad public opinion if most of the people who pirate their software are simply demo-testing it and are going to buy it in the future. They are basically going to lose profit, which goes against their business principles. That's the thing about piracy. You can make all the excuses and justifications you want but at the end of the day, these excuses topple like dominoes when they are examined and they end up being just cover stories to justify their selfish greed. Anyway, I hope this long post gives everyone some real insight into the topic at hand.

Purple objects in your game means that the game can't find your textures, either because they aren't there or because you don't use ArchiveInvalidation. First, double-check that you have installed all the mod's resources properly, you may need to use the readme to see if there aren't any special instructions. If that doesn't work, then make sure you are using ArchiveInvalidation. The easiest way of doing that is to download this mod: ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated!.

I'm glad to see you found the problem. That is a very strange solution though. I've never needed to have a microphone plugged into my PCs to use every part of the CS.

You aren't understanding what I am trying to say. A wolf is a creature. Therefore, when a GetIsCreature command is called on a wolf, the condition will return true. If the GetIsCreature command returns true in your script, the critical hit stuff is IGNORED. Read my script again and you will see that creatures (a category which includes wolves) are immediately ignored by the critical hit code.

One should never make assumptions. I compared GetIsCreature and IsCreature in the CS wiki and I can't see any difference between the two. GetIsCreature has always been available too. So what I can't figure out is why the OBSE team would add a function to find out whether an actor is a creature or not when such a command already existed.

My script improvement isn't going to let your sword decapitate creatures, it will let you decapitate anything EXCEPT creatures. If Target.GetIsCreature == 1 Return Else ... means that if the target is a creature, the script is ignored. In other words, it will decapitate playable (argonian, khajiit, imperial, elf, etc) and non-playable (dremora, etc) races as opposed to the previous script which only decapitates playable races.

I just tried the link and it works fine. Maybe it was something wrong with your connection.