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Pentium
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Ok so I respect, if disagree, with Mark Pickavance's opinion of BF2142 (reviewed issue 929) but I cant let his spyware etc. comment go. There has been much discussion of this her and on other forums / news outlets and unfortunately many people still don't understand what this 'spyware' is. Unfortunately it seems Mark doesn't either!
For a start EA has published numerous statements about the advertising technology, all of which have been ignored. Instead people are believing so called EA bashers. In actual fact the software does not run when the game isn't running and it certainly does not record sites you visit in your browser. The system instead simply allows a 3rd party advertising provider record your IP address WHILST you are laying the game for the purpose of targeting ad's predefined for your location.
Is that such an awful thing. Thousands of websites and other programs record your IP address (many of the websites I write record vistors info for stats tracking etc). EA record it then pass it temporarily to the Ad agencies servers! It is perfectly legal for anyone to record the IP of anyone using their service. Although EU law does not allow this information to be used for advert purposes (hence the whole servers outside the EU loophole EA have used).
If Mark takes offence to this kind of data collection then he should (if he plays them) remove all his STEAM games too as Valve record (and always have done) your IP address in the same way as EA. And in fact they determine the types of updates / news / Steam adverts you get depending on your location. They even use the data to form user / gamer statistics! And they have been doing this from the start but no-one took offence to it.
So in future can we have facts please instead of wild assertion. Anyway.. 2142 is an ace game bringing everything that was good in BF2 and adding the awesome Titan mode!
As to graphics quality I very much doubt that maps as large and complex (in terms of physics and weaponry) in the battlefield series could ever look as good as COD2 and the like.. It would require a super fast net connection to get it that good!!!
Rant over 
Cheers,
Tom
My Crime is that of curiosity, my crime is that of outsmarting you
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486
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I could not agree more.......
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486
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Well said Tom,agree completely,definitely a case of yet another band wagon rolling in and everyone jumping aboard,what EA are doing is nothing to be realistically afraid of,try looking into who is monitoring what you do on the web,now that is scary,not what is being done but who is doing it,various US so called "security experts" monitoring our online banking activities for a start,which our own government states quite clearly could not be done by our own security agencies because it is illegal,go figure that one out!
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Octo-core Atom @ 233GHz (ES)
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I'm not sure Mark's angle was necessarily the human-rights one. I took it that he was angry that a product he'd paid for had the audacity to force targetted advertising at him. It wasn't the means that was being criticised but the concept behind the end result. You've paid for the game at full price, so why does the publisher need to ram unwanted and unsolicited adverts down your throat?
As a publisher, EA is in difficulties (since long before this incident) -- almost entirely of its own making.
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486
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Jason (28/11/2006)
As a publisher, EA is in difficulties (since long before this incident) -- almost entirely of its own making.The 150,000 people that downloaded the lastest need for speed game through bit torrent won't be helping either, maybe EA looks at battlefield as a cash cow, just like the sims series , however with EA's turnover i don't think they have to much to worry about just yet.
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Pentium
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We too sensitive? I was a little leery of all the 'anti' when this was first brought up, and soon bored with it. Think EA have dealt with it very honestly in this case - they didn't ram the ads down your throat, exactly.
The company's image is important. They could probably take a few tips from Valve (just look at the websites).  Count that as me agreeing with Jason's last comment.
Product quality is all - including respect for users privacy. It's all the same thing.
There were mutterings about Steam account 'activation' for a while. But I don't remember what exactly was written about it.
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Pentium
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Jason (28/11/2006)
I'm not sure Mark's angle was necessarily the human-rights one. I took it that he was angry that a product he'd paid for had the audacity to force targetted advertising at him. It wasn't the means that was being criticised but the concept behind the end result. You've paid for the game at full price, so why does the publisher need to ram unwanted and unsolicited adverts down your throat
As a publisher, EA is in difficulties (since long before this incident) -- almost entirely of its own making.
I would agree with that last sentence J but nothing more I'm afraid: He used the word Spyware which I would totally dispute, plus said explicitly that it would track sites your browser visited; which is completely untrue!!! TBH i'm not worried about his opinion on it - each to his own as I said - more that he has written something that is untrue but will be believed.
I am a bad one to talk as my first few 'articles' were full of errors but this is a big one that could conceivably badly affect sales of the game!
As to unsolicited ads I suppose that's fair enough. But it hardly classes as unsolicited... Spam falls into a category like that but at least in this case you have signed up for something. Plus I dunno if you've played the game Jason but their not rammed down your throat - in truth I've played it for about 12 hrs in total now and don't actually remember seeing one.
In all honesty go to any hardcore BF2142 / BF2 players forums / clan sites and you will see this topic dissected thousands of times over, and they all say that it is not a problem. If us gamers are happy with the game (and 80% of us are - it's an awesome game) then EA have done the business surely 
As Boy wander says EA have been very very honest about this and I respect them very much for that!
Cheers,
Tom
My Crime is that of curiosity, my crime is that of outsmarting you
-- MMMugs Clan member, MM-UK Folding Team Member, Web programmer, Electronics student and Micro Mart contributor --
[ Main/Gaming (Vista): Core2Duo E2140 @ 2.65Ghz, 2GB ] [ Laptop (XP): CoreDuo 2.5GHz, 1GB ] [ File Server (Ubuntu 7.10): P4 2.93GHz, 256MB ] [ Folding 1 (Diskless folder): Unkown PIII, 256MB ]
-- Inactive / in build--
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Octo-core Atom @ 233GHz (ES)
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I haven't played the game, no. I was merely trying to offer some balanced reasoning about Mark's comment.
"Spyware", I believe, can be defined as software that calls home when you don't want it to and uses information about your system or habits in an attempt at commercial gain. I would say EA's mechanism most certainly falls into that category. I think the blinkers need to come off.
Classic PCs
Original IBM PC (4.77MHz 8088, 256KB RAM, monochrome) · Original IBM PC XT (4.77MHz 8088, 512KB, 10MB HDD, monochrome) · Original Compaq Deskpro (7.14MHz 8086, 640KB, 20MB HDD, CGA graphics)
Home Computers
Commodore VIC-20 · C64 original · C64 Terminator edition · C16 · Amiga 500 · Amiga 600 · Amiga 600 HD · Amiga 1200 Acorn Electron · A3010 (Archimedes) · A4000 (Archimedes) Others Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K · Dragon 32
Consoles
Nintendo Wii · GameCube purple (x 2) · GameCube black · N64 black (x 2) · N64 clear blue · SNES (x 2) · NES (x 2) · DS silver (x 3) · GBA SP silver · GBA purple · GBA clear · Game Boy Color clear · Game Boy Sega Dreamcast x 3 · Saturn · Mega Drive II · Mega Drive · Master System Atari 10-in-1 · Jaguar (x 2) · 7800 · 2600 wood-grain Microsoft Xbox 360 · Xbox Others Mattel Intellivision · MB Vectrex · GoldStar 3DO · Sony PlayStation (original)
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