Ryan

Threaten with both! A family size bar of Dairy Milk round the face hurts like hell. Or the Christmas edition Toblerones... Or...

The file that contains all the settings is called Default.rdp and is in your My Documents root. It's hidden, so you'll have to edit your view options to see the bugger.

Here begins my weekly/monthly/whenIcanbearsed-ly gaming news updatey blog thingy. On to the gubbins... Battlefield Heroes Format: PC Price: £0 http://www.bfheroes.org/images/Battlefield-Heroes-Screen-5.jpg Battlefield Heroes is a new shooty shooty fighty fighty game from BF2 developers [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Illusions_CE]DICE[/ame], published by gaming monolith [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts]EA[/ame], due in Summer 2008. The early premise was to create a game that can be played by anyone, regardless of skill level or PC hardware. It will do this in a variety of ways. To keep the minimum spec down, the developers are using a (very) slimmed-down version of the Battlefield 2 engine. It'll apparently "run on granny's old laptop". Minimum specs are currently: 1Ghz CPU 512 MB RAM 64 MB Video Card (integrated cards will be supported) 500 MB - 1GB HDD space To ensure you're not playing with annoying newbs, or ridiculously skilled level 60 players, the game will use a matchmaking system that pairs you up with similarly-ranked players. This will hopefully keep things fair - good players will progress up the ranks and be paired with similar levels of opponents and team-mates. Not Available in Shops That's right, you won't be able to buy the game in shops. You won't be able to buy the game anywhere in fact. It's part of EA's new Play 4 Free business model, borrowed from hugely successful titles in Korea. The game will be completely free, and you won't have to spend a penny playing it (unless you're still on dial-up). Money will be made by having advertisements on the game website, and in game menus as banner ads. Mercifully, there will not be any adverts or billboards in game, as the developers agree that they would be very out of place. Players also have the option of buying unique upgrades to customise their character, such as helmets, goggles, gloves etc, or power-up-style options. They won't, however, give paying customers much of an edge over the freebies, if at all. Gameplay The game will be a third person shooter, with the camera over your character's shoulder. This was decided upon so that you can see the action better, and see your lovingly customised little hero. There will be 3 character classes to choose from, Soldier, Commando and Gunner. From the wiki entry: Spawn times are to be kept very short - probably 5 seconds - to keep the fun going and reduce wait times. There will be hand weapons per class, as well as tanks and planes. Abilities will grant players skills such as healing and being able to lob handfuls of grenades at once. The Achievements system will be mission based, and will grant players badges upon completion. As you level up you will gain access to more items and levels (maps). Style The team at DICE were keen to try something different than their last couple of games, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. They needed a style that'd downscale to crappy computers and still look good on a bleeding-edge gaming beast of a PC. They wanted to convey 'fun' and keep it all very accessible and over the top. Comparisons will be drawn to Team Fortress 2, but Senior Producer Ben Cousins insists that this was on the drawing board long before details of TF2 were available (if we're being pedantic, TF2 switched styles late on in development). The result is a cartoony world that treads the line somewhere between Roadrunner cartoons and Commando comics. Uh-oh There are a number of things that can go wrong with this. The advertising may get a bit nuts. I know i won't be playing if the advertising becomes too in-yer-face. EA are notoriously bad at responding to patching issues depending on who you believe, but as they're hoping to reach many many people, they'll have riots on their hands if they fail to respond to hundreds of thousands of rabid gamers requiring bug fixes. Resources Official site: http://www.battlefield-heroes.com Hilarious trailer: http://www.battlefield-heroes.com/video More screenshots: http://www.bfheroes.org/Battlefield-Heroes/News/New-Army-Screens-Shots/ Final Thoughts I personally can't wait for this - i think it'll be a hoot. It'll either be the most awesome-est thing ever created or the biggest pile of unfinished poop casserole ever committed to hard drive. If it is indeed a load of old cobblers, we've nothing to lose but the time it took to download and install it. Hopefully they'll get it right though. Looks like my tan will have to wait...

Hehe! Read a few, quality I'll work m'way through more when i'm not being paid to do other stuff.

Ahaa, http://www.google.com/search?safe=vss Seems to work well. Next step would be to block the page that lets you change it, and redirect Google to the above URL. Shall have a crack at that today hopefully. Thanks!

Appending "&safe=vss" to search results works nice, but as per my original post, i still know of no easy/cheap way of appending this to users' searches.

Just had a little try of this (http://www.google.com/search?safe=vss), doesn't worky i'm afraid. Doesn't seem to use safesearch at all

Just re-read this thread - How do you link to this chrbb? May be very useful.

Bosh, done and tested - lovely. Cheers dude

We're now fully IE7. In IE6, i used GP to set the users' home page. Now, it seems that if i log on with a test account, i can change the home page in IE7, and on next log on, it stays as the new one (the GP home page isn't being applied). Anyone had any experiences with the above? I assumed it'd reset when they logged on again. Is this related to the change from IE6 to IE7? (I'm assuming IE7 stores this information differently, so is bypassing/overriding GP setting, or the GP is applying wrong for the same reason) I downloaded the IE7 adm, but it's gonna end up messy as you can't edit current GPOs with it; have to create new ones. Ideas? Is my only option really to go with the new adm? thx

Yep, agreed - i'd say the biggest benefits are freedom and flexibility. We're not dictated to by anyone, and while you can feel a bit out on your own sometimes, you're afforded a degree of freedom that you might not get elsewhere. There is the issue of where the dosh comes from, but that's a very specific issue, depending on where you are.

Awesome site, that guy is nuts. I'll be having a dig through these later!

I'm not quite ready ban Google images outright yet (i can hear the clang of the pitchforks at the mere thought of that). I've been toying with a custom start page for a while, which might be a cheeky way of doing it...

@ Jona: As per original post, i'm aware that that's an option, but am unsure as yet as to how i go about doing so. @ elsie: Mandatory profiles may have to get looked at. Not specifically for this, but in the grand scheme of things.

Roaming profiles here

I'm gonna post a reply, not because i can be of any use, but simply because i'm worried that you'll look daft having a lengthy conversation with yourself. But hey, at least you're getting nothing but sense so far

Had a dig through Google and here, and have yet to get a definitive solution. Is there a way to enforce Google's SafeSearch (to strict) remotely or centrally? There seems to be a couple of options from what i've read so far: - Append "&safe=strict" to web requests - Copy a cookie with settings into profiles Using ISA Server 2006 if that helps. I'm not gonna cry if it can be changed by the kids, as long as it's on by default - they'll eventually get bored of constantly changing it. If it can be locked down - bonus!

And the white dinghy's back - good spot.

Not seen Scary Movie? It's Miss Mann, the gym teacher I'll admit i thought it was a man, even after seeing the movie multiple times. *shudder*

Happy Birthday

http://www.jaynetrcka.com/pixs/jt43B.jpg ? *runs for the hills*

Sounds like a job for delprof! Searchy forum!

Can i point you all in the direction of http://80scartoons.co.uk/ My mate runs it, and it should answer all your nostalgia-related questions. Cue the warm fuzzy glow of recounting memories... mmmmmmmmmmmm....

I get sooo much hassle for taking reading material to the loo. I do all my best reading and thinking in there (like most blokes)

http://edugeek.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=1517&d=1205453521 "And it just went upside down!!"