Ever since its inception “Walking in stations”, also known as “Ambulation” or “Incarna” has been a hot topic for the gaming media and Eve Online players. Most publicity has been positive yet some players are calling for the project to be scrapped in favour of using resources on developing neglected current in-game content.

It seems however that this is all now finally in full motion, a recent dev blog by CCP’s new senior producer “Zulu” states:

Development of Incarna is something that CCP has committed to for multiple reasons, but the most prominent one is fairly simple.

To achieve our goal of EVE being a complete sci-fi experience we must have full body avatars. When we talk to people who like the concept of science fiction games but aren’t attracted to EVE, it becomes obvious that there is a need gap that can best be filled by having a character to associate with rather than a spaceship, and I would venture there are many existing players who want this option as well.

As of August 17th, there will be about nine teams working on Incarna. Of those, seven are on loan from other projects – to which they will return once Incarna is launched – and the remainder are EVE development teams. The EVE teams can work on both Incarna and in-space features, but they are assigned to Incarna for now. Actually one of the teams is spending one and a half releases on Incarna, the other about three releases. So the resource cost from EVE is very contained while the size and impact of the feature will be massive.

Also stating that 9 development teams totalling 70 people will be working on the project, making it Eve’s highest concentration of resources and development for a long time.

Yes… “honour” is spelled incorrectly, this is the title spelling – Damn Americans.

We are offering a copy of the highly anticipated Medal Of Honor to one lucky FingerSports community member. The game will be available 15/10/2010.

Operating directly under the National Command Authority, a relatively unknown entity of handpicked warriors are called on when the mission must not fail. They are the Tier 1 Operators.

Over 2 million Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines wear the uniform. Of those, approximately 50 thousand fall under the direct control of the Special Operations Command. The Tier 1 Operator functions on a plane of existence above and beyond even the most highly trained Special Operations Forces. Their exact numbers, while classified, hover in the low hundreds.

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We have deployed two new “Community Mix Servers”

As the name suggests these are open to any and all community members and friends, these should be used instead of clan servers for mixes, to help get our name out and to provide our clanless floaters somewhere to peddle their skills. If we find that we need more mix servers we will just put more up! They are running z-block, sourcemod, KAC and normal match configs.

If you would like match admin to these servers follow this link to the forum thread and drop your steam ID in, we will get it on the servers asap, please also use the relevant mix channels in Vent.

We have also taken on a new team.
They are lightsout of www.lo-gaming.eu. Nice bunch of lads, hoping to help them develop and looking forward to mixing and playing with them in the future.

Their forum section is here

Lets start with your PC

what you should have running and how to make sure it doesn’t get infected.

Firewalls and Routers

Software and Hardware firewalls are the easiest way to control incoming traffic to your PC or home network.

Firewalls are designed and configured to regulate the flow of internet traffic to a computer, based on the properties of the traffic. For example, if someone tried to scan your system for open ports (think of ports as windows), the firewall would kick in, automatically intercept that packet and drop it from the network.

Windows firewall vs Commercial firewalls – Windows firewall, although very basic is in fact quite comprehensive as basic protection, the only problem with windows firewall is that is can be very annoying, it will prompt you at the most silly times and updates can also be annoying as well. It is a good idea to turn windows firewall off and get yourself another form of Software Firewall from a more “gaming friendly” company. I use Kaspersky Internet Security personally and have had quite a few in the past, I find Kaspersky to be extremely good, it is lightweight and so doesn’t eat system resources and it also has a “gaming” profile which when turned on will stop all firewall and anti virus prompts while you are in full screen applications (games mostly). The only catch with Kaspersky is that it does cost.. barely anything perfect in this world comes for free unfortunately. If however you are one of the hordes of gamers who outright refuse to part with a tenner for a years worth of protection there are some *free alternatives which will help to keep you safe.

*free – Most come with basic features, make sure you check that a firewall is in the list of features on the free version of your software.

Another alternative is of course a hardware firewall – These obviously cost more but are generally better at intercepting and dealing with network packets, they can also not be “tainted” like software variants and are therefore better overall. Firmware updates are usually free which means that the purchase of a hardware firewall is a one time affair.

For a list of free and paid Anti-Virus and Firewall software click this link

Malicious software

Virus, Spyware, Keyloggers, and the like.

Viruses

Just what is a virus? It is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user.

Viruses can be spread in the following ways:

-Downloading and executing attachments from email files that are sent by unknown persons.
-Downloading and running files from dodgy websites (i.e. skin packs, programs) without virus scanning them first.
-Some viruses can infect your computer, stay in memory, and infect other disks (Such as floppies/usb drives). This method is very uncommon nowadays.

Viruses cannot be spread in the following ways:

-Downloading models/sounds/skins from a Counterstrike server or any server for that matter.
-Be transferred from one player to another in a server.

Keyloggers

Keyloggers are programs that run in the background without your permission, and log every keystroke that you make.

Keyloggers may be spread in the following ways:

-The same ways that viruses can.

-A hacker can invade your system and install one without your knowledge.

Keyloggers cannot be spread through any game servers or from player to player.

Trojans

Trojans are programs that are designed to install malicious software while disgusing themselves to look like a harmless piece of software.

Trojan horses must be executed in order to infect a computer. Their actions can range from installing a virus or keylogger to opening ports, to changing your homepage. They can be spread in the ways listed above under the virus section. As per keyloggers, they cannot be spread in-game in any way.

Spyware

Spyware is a program which secretly records a computer user by capturing all keystrokes, websites visited, and chat conversations.

You may be thinking, “Isn’t that what a virus/keylogger does?” The answer is yes but with one key difference. Spyware is installed without the user’s informed consent. What is “informed consent”? It means you install the spyware without actually knowing that it is spyware. It may be disguised as a browser helper (BonzaiBUDDY is a good example), or a program (SpySheriff). Both of these programs decieve the user and record certain browsing activites. The difference between spyware and trojans is that spyware doesn’t necessarily destroy your data or replicate itself. It just makes your computing experience much worse.

Things spyware may do to lower your computing experience:

-Change your browser homepage to something else (commonly advertisements).

-Constantly display popups which contain ads.

-Consume valuable system resources.

-Report your activites to a website for data collection.

-Annoy the living crap out of you

How to protect yourself

In this subsection, I will show you how to protect yourself from the various baddies on the internet. The first thing you should always do, is make sure windows is fully updated. This is crucial when securing your computer as Microsoft occasionally sends out vital security patches. The second thing you should do is:

-Never open up email attachments from people you do not know.

-Do not use pirated software (if you have to, install them in a Sandbox first)

-Don’t go to dodgy websites (I.E. Websites that offer you free CD-Keys and the like)

Anti-virus software

The best defense against viruses is a good anti-virus program. These programs have a list of virus definitions which they compare scanned files against. If any part of the file’s code matches a definition, it is flagged as infected.

For more info on how Anti-Virus software works, click this link. You should run a virus scan on your PC every three days or at the bare minimum, every week.

For a list of free and paid Anti-Virus and Firewall software click this link

Anti-Spyware programs

Anti-spyware programs work the same way that Anti-virus software does. For more info on anti-spyware software visit this link.

Password Protection

In today’s world of computing, nothing is more important than choosing a good password. Even if a hacker can get past a firewall and anti-virus software, he can be stopped in his tracks by a secure password. In this section of the guide, I will show you how to create a secure password.

How do passwords work?

Let’s use Steam as an example. When you enter your password into Steam, it sends a hash that password to an authentication server. The hash of the entered password is then checked against the password hash stored on the server, and if they match, you can login. The password you enter into Steam is never stored on your computer. So the only way a hacker can get access to it is through social engineering or keyloggers.

Choosing a secure password

Choosing a good password may seem like a hard task. In reality, it really isn’t. Just follow three basic rules when creating a password:

1) Your password should be something memorable. Try not to use anything that is personal to you.

2) Don’t use the same password for everything.

3) Don’t base your password off of your username. Mix letters, words, and numbers together.

Ways passwords can be cracked

Passwords can be cracked in a variety of ways. One such way would be brute-forcing. Basically, a computer works through and tries every possible password combination :O . It’s a time-consuming process, but, given enough time, any password can be brute-forced. Another way that passwords can be cracked is through a dictionary attack. This time, a computer tries a predetermined list of words in a dictionary file (hence the name) to guess the password. This process can be very fast, but is not guaranteed to work. Your password will inevitably cracked if you choose an easy to guess password.

Examples of weak passwords are:
-Admin -123456
-p@s5\/\/0|2D -qwerty
-ANY SINGLE word found in the dictionary.

Examples of strong passwords:
-t3wahSetyeT4 -MoOoOfIn245679
-4pRte!ai@3

You may notice that these passwords would not be common in a dictionary file. Also notice the fact that numbers, letters, and symbols are used to generate a password that is long, yet somewhat memorable. One more thing you must know about passwords:

VALVE WILL NEVER ASK YOU FOR YOUR PASSWORD!!!!!

Social Engineering

Social engineering is the number one reason people lose steam accounts, Social Engineering is a set of techniqes used to manipulate the victim into giving personal information. MANY people fall for phishing. This is because they are either unexperienced, or because they are not paying close attention to details. In this section of my guide, I will alert you to the dangers of Social Engineering, and show you how to avert them.

Techniques used to “phish” information

There are an immense number of ways phishers can get passwords from people. Sadly, many of these techniques succeed in getting sensitive information.

The first technique that we will talk about is Website Forgery. The number of people tricked into giving info to a fake website is HUGE! What happens is, a scammer creates a fake website which looks and functions almost exactly like the original website, with one key difference. All the info entered into the site will be recorded and sent to a phisher. Observant users may note that the URL of the imitation website looks just like the original website. This is because clever scammers may use scripting to cover up the real url, and replace it with original site’s.

So how do we get around this? Well, its quite simple actually: Turn on your phishing filter! Depending on what browser you are using you should have a filter to nail this kind of activity, turn it on and you should be 90% covered, the other 10% comes from being vigilant yourself, make sure the sites you are visiting are legit, be careful when following links provided by others and if you are in doubt just don’t go to the content.

Friends list/email phishing

Lately, there have been a lot of phishing attempts over the Steam Friends List as well as e-mail. Sadly, most if not all hijacked accounts are phished using this method. The user is contacted via His or Her Friends List and is then thrown the bait. Most of the time, it is someone impersonating a VALVe employee, claiming that “something happened to our database and we need to reconfirm your account or else…” The user is then prompted to enter His/Her account details.

Keep in mind that these sorts of scams require a lot of patience on the part of the phisher. They will do anything possible to make their pitch sound believable. I cannot stress this enough: VALVe will never ask you for your account information.

Facebook/Twitter/Etc Phishing

Keep your passwords separate!

An increasing way for phishers to get your information is to “study” your other means of internet communication. Often enough people can guess your password based on information phished from other sources, such as social networking sites. Your steam account can have hundreds of games on it, which all have value. To secure this information it is very wise to have a separate and completely unrelated password for steam. If your PC is at home and you are the only person with access to it, it’s a good idea to have steam remember your password, that way keyloggers will not be able to get your information without “guessing” it from other sources.

If something is missed please post below and I will add it.

This information has been gathered from loads of sources, including the Steampowered Forums and VALVe website.

We are looking for like minded, mature individuals and teams who have a sense of humour and are regularly active. People who join up need to be aware that we are a community, not an organisation. That means we need people to take part, in return we offer servers for most games, vent (and hopefully soon mumble) access as well as a decently populated and sufficiently ridiculous community forum. We have a variety of members from all over the place playing most games you could think of, current big titles at the moment are TF2, MW2 and CS:S however some of us play everything else you have on your steam list.

Please use the contact form on the main site or post your desire to join on our forums.

Upcoming FingerSports events include:

Community fun tournament – with a unique twist
i40 Community team (16 people booked, paid and seated so far)
Webbo’s naked webcam dance v2
Starcraft 2 giveaway draw