Carbonized Blog

Ok so Halo 3 is finally out and I got it the day of it's release. I decided to play it on Normal and finished it in eight hours (not continuously). I'm sorry but for me Halo 3 does not live up to the hype. I found Halo 2 was more fun to play. Don't get me wrong the online matchmaking side is as good as ever if not better but the campaign sucks. There are no long vehicle levels such as the Mombasa tunnel and Mombasa bridge. Then you get the varying degrees of difficulty. Some levels are piss easy while some are a nightmare. It's taken them three years to develop this but I think most of the time must of gone into touching up the scenery and adding more background stuff and comments from the background characters.

Don't get me wrong it's a good game but just doesn't deserve the hype. Now before you all start posting crap on here saying I'm a hater I actually bought my first Xbox when Halo 2 came out and that's the game I have always returned to. I bought Halo CE after finishing Halo 2 and I've read all four novels based on the Halo universe and have the graphic novel.

Oh and I wont spoil it but the ending makes no sense at all.

My friend gave me this site to look at and I found it so good I'm passing it on to you lot. Get A First Life.

Today I found out that AOL has stopped working on it's Active Virus Shield anti virus program. It was a brilliant program and was powered by the Kaspersky engine. Now they offer a new anti virus program that is powered by McAfee but requires you to have an AOL screen name to download. Nice of them to inform their users about this. I mean you need to supply an email address to get the serial for the program to work so I know they have my address to inform me. Anyway so now I am using the free version of AntiVir from www.free-av.com. It doesn't scan email or web streams but scans all files as they are read or written to so will catch anything that comes from these sources.

A friend of mine sent me this link, whyfirsfoxisblocked.com, which apparently some sites send you to if they detect the Firefox useragent. Now the first thing that is stupid about this site is the fact you can easily change the useragent in Firefox using the Useragent Switcher extension. But the main stupidity of that site is this.

AdBlockPlus denies site owners the freedom to block AdBlockPlus users, therefore all FireFox users (except those using IETab) are blocked. It's a simple matter of opposing the censorship on the part of AdBlockPlus and therefore the support offered to them by Mozilla.

Hmm hate to burst their bubble but you can install IE7Pro for IE 7 (funny that). Which provides a host of features including AD Blocker which works in exactly the same way as AdBlock Plus on Firefox. You will also note that their is no way of contacting the owners of WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com.

A more complete list of features for IE7Pro is Tab Enhance, Super Drag Drop,Inline Search,Spell Check, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, user script, User Agent Switcher, AD Blocker and Flash Block.

The title of this entry was taken from the Reuters report on it. If you are not aware of the story a British schoolgirl was told by her school that she was not allowed to wear her "purity ring" at school as the school has a strict no jewellery policy. The "Purity Ring" is an idea from America wear teenagers who have vowed to remain virgins until marriage wear this ring to identify them as such. The girl then took her appeal to the high courts here in the UK. The court decided the school was right and she lost the case. Her response to the press was

I believe that the judge's decision will mean that slowly, over time, people such as school governors, employers, political organizations and others will be allowed to stop Christians from publicly expressing and practising their faith.
Now I'm sorry but what has a wearing a purity ring go to do with being a Christian? If the purity ring was an indication of being a Christian then all Christians would be wearing them. The purity ring is just an indicator of a personal decision the wearer has made and not an indication of their faith. The wearing of a crucifix or a cross is a symbol of being a Christian but even then it's not required that you wear one. The only religion I am aware of that requires you to wear jewellery is Sikhism where you must wear/carry the five K's (I can't remember exactly what they are). This girl trying to claim her school is discriminating against her religion to me reminds of the times you get people complaining of racism/sexism when they get turned down for a job because somebody better qualified came along.

I think what best explains why this fiasco took place is the fact that "Playfoot's [the girl] parents are key members of the British arm of the American chastity campaign group the Silver Ring Thing, a religious group which urges abstinence among young people.".

Agree? Disagree? Think this girl is right? Think this family gives Christians a bad name? Feel free to comment, that's what it's there for.

You can read this particular report at Reuters.

Well at least one anyway. Today I received an email from Yahoo! saying my account had been reinstated on Yahoo! Answers despite their previous one saying they had reviewed my case and decided not to reinstate. Now I hope they ignore my email about deleting my answers lol.

Another day another email from Yahoo! Answers saying one of my answers has been selected as best. Not bad going so far. I've had two answers chosen as best since Yahoo! 'suspended' my account from Yahoo! Answers. Oh well since Yahoo! wants to get petty I've decided to get petty as well (yes I know I should take the high road but stuff 'em). Anyway I just emailed them and told them to delete all 111 answers I have supplied to Yahoo! Answers along with the 19 that were chosen as best.

So Yahoo finally got back to me after I emailed saying that I thought suspension for a first offence was harsh and here is their response.

We appreciate your inquiry about your suspension from Yahoo! Answers and/or the deactivation of your Yahoo! ID. We reviewed your case, and decided that your account is not eligible for reinstatement.

Unfortunately, you will not be able to recover any information within this account. Should you decide to continue using Yahoo! products in the future, we hope that you will comply with our Yahoo! Terms of Service and any product-specific guidelines.
Isn't that nice of them. No warning just instant ban. And they still have yet to tell me exactly which rule it is I broke since I cannot find anything when I went through their guidelines or Terms and Conditions.

Just another reason why Yahoo! Answers is a waste of web space.

Today I received three emails from Yahoo! Answers. The first informed me that my account had been suspended but no reason was given in this email. The second email informed me that a post I had made was against their terms and so had been deleted. The post in question was in response to someone asking about downloading music. My answer was

I'm going to assume you mean tracks you should be paying for. Emule is brilliant for obscure tracks or one of songs but I'd recommend Bit Torrent for downloading full albums.
yet I cannot find a single rule this post broke. I have emailed them asking but have yet to receive a reply.

The funniest thing is that 4 hours later I receive a third email from Yahoo! Answers. This time to inform me that, yet again, one of my answers had been chosen as the best answer. I believe that makes 17 best answers for me so far out of about 100 I think. I say I think because my suspension also includes the removal of my Yahoo! Answers profile. So once again Yahoo show how totally stupid and incompetent they really are.

Ok the movie has not been delayed except for us Brits. The new Transformers movie is already out in Australia and comes out in the US, France, Philippines, Netherlands and several other countries this weekend (4th July). But here in England we have to wait until 27th July to see it!! WHY????????