How times change… I remember how I grew up with computers and computer games and I remember how we have been playing games then and how games are played now. I remember exactly the intensive matches at late nights in front of our monitor and I compare that times with now but let’s start from the beginning.

The last three months I bought more games than in the past few years. That’s because of getting more involved in some great projects about game programming. I thought it would be time to get some of the latest games. If you read the previous blog posts about Steam and censorship in Germany you know that I bought the Half-Life series and added also Crysis, Fear2: Project Origin and Far Cry 2 to my list. It’s no secret that I have my favorite games like Blood, Quake and Doom series and anything that is id Software related. I thought now it would be time to get something new and see how the progress is. When it comes to sequels I like playing them from the first part to the last. You don’t start watching Terminator 4 and then continue to watch Terminator 1, 2 and 3. Back to the story I bought the complete Half-Life series on Steam with all add-ons and start playing it. After finishing it I continued with Far Cry 2 and Fear2. I played Dead Space and continued with Prey. Ok these are not only new games but since I did not played them I thought of giving them a try. With every game I finished I got more and more disappointed.

Back to the times where Doom and Quake ruled my world. I remember how fascinated I have been when I first installed my Wolfenstein3D copy and played it. Wow. It was a non-stop wow effect. Something like that was never seen before I thought (not only me but friends of mine did also but I will still talk for myself in this post). Short time after a friend gave me a Doom copy to play. I installed and that wow effect was now “damn wow²”. Impressed? No. I was impressed². This was more than groundbreaking. Tight atmosphere, great graphics… everything. Doom 2 was released and the expectations were met. Cyber demons and imps. This was my world. I have never been so addicted to any game like I was then with Doom. I was a big Ghosts’n Goblins fan, I was a big Bubble Bobble fan and was addicted to The Great Giana Sisters. Everything which run on an Amstrad CPC and on a Commodore C64 was good and even better on an Amiga but owning a PC you don’t really had good games. This should change soon, and the start did id Software. While we learned the terms deathmatch, rocket launcher and spawning we eat, drink and sleep Doom! Not for long. The next groundbreaking game hit the grounds when Quake was released. These guys are awesome I thought. The gave us Wolf3D, Doom and when there comes a moment where you think “This cannot be done better” id software showed us that Doom was just a breadcrumb. I won’t talk for other genres since they did not interest me very much (or they did not interest me at all to be honest). I was totally Quake :)

Soon other companies came up with interesting games and the whole computer games branch became a lucrative business. Games like Unreal, Half-Life etc. dominated the shooter world either with groundbreaking technology and graphics or with tight stories. So years passed and we are now in the year 2009. I played as I said the games mentioned above. Some of them new games, released in 2009, others released the last 3 years. Not one of those games could impress half the way they should. I mentioned already that I got disappointed with each game more and more. Let’s take Far Cry 2 as paradigm. This game looks awesome and starts with introducing you to the story. After that you spend nearly 80% of the time walking, driving or riding through the world, 15% with matches and 5% with story. It was more boring than playing 3 years Tetris non-stop. Let’s take Fear2 as example. This game was played within 3 hours. It was shorter than anything else I have seen. This cant be true. I thought a good game is balanced between some new graphical experience, some tight story and having fun doing the things in the game world, the developers want you to do. All games (Half-Life2 is an exception) I played have no fun and are either too long or too short to play.

Next point is the fact of sequels. How can a developer still think he can release a sequel if a title was successful? I know this is a pure monetary reason, but are they kidding? I think FarCry was a good game and was from the technical aspect great. Far Cry 2 sucks. No relation to the first part, absolutely no fun and way too long. In fact, having a long play duration would be usually a good thing but if the long parts are boring because nothing happens it’s a very bad thing. How can you release a sequel which doesn’t have anything in common beside the title? I mean that’s like Quake2 would play in Russia. In Quake you learned about the stroggs (or you heard about them since there was no story in Quake) and you would expect Quake2 to continue with the stroggs (like it did) but id software would say: “no let’s do something better. You are a lone marine in Russia and have to fight against yetis”. WTF. Let’s take Fear2. I loved Fear. I played it late night with the volume turned up and I was frightened, shocked, impressed and wanted more of Alma. That’s the reason why I bought Fear2 and with my enthusiasm I started playing it and to my surprise I finished it the next evening. Ah Ok. It’s business as usual in our days if games are sold for 49€ with a duration which is not even half the money worth. I mean the Quake or Quake2 add-ons cost about 20€ and have longer game duration than Fear2.

I understand the extra long developing time since it’s not easy today to release a competitive title within a year. Engine programming, textures, sounds, scripting, threading, networking all that shit takes time. Some failed since they were arrogant enough to think they could produce a game within 2 years and stay competitive with their title (hello Daikatana). Others just are kidding and telling lies about their production (hello DukeNukem EVER? now never). But hey. Talk to your publisher and tell him that it’s realistic to release a very good game in 3 years and having it sell good or to release it in 2 years and it’s not worth the money.

Yeah that's the year 2009. The times where Quake dominated the game scene we had fun, fun, fun. Now we have empty pockets because of the high prices and no fun, and we still say thanks to the publishers. I will avoid now the discussion why publishers have a lot of nerve to change the content of a game only to sell in Germany and Australia. This would take too long. But it’s important to mention that if they wouldn’t do this and would spend the money for changing the content to improve the released game they would most probably have better sale numbers. It’s only an idea. While it’s order of business to change content just to sell in countries with strict laws this is also the wrong way. Microsoft didn’t sell a game in Germany just because the changes in content would have changed the story that much that it would be a complete different game. Id Software never censored their games just because of Germany and however everyone here owns id Software games. They did not become bitches of the German government. If others would follow this example the German government would change its laws since selling something means taxes and taxes means money for the government so software developers should really think about.

Where are the good old times where playing computer games means fun and not filling the gap between TV-serials and lunch. where are the good old times where developers have been idealists and produced games with content and story and not this bitchin censored stuff just to make some dollars more.

Just some thoughts of someone who enjoyed playing games and now suffers from the capitalistic behavior of software developers.

Ok let’s go with the story. It was end of August 2009 and I was bored. I wanted to play some cool games. I’m the ego-shooter guy and I was looking for something I haven’t played and so I thought it would be time to get Half-Life 2. You guys are rofl now I know… There have been some reasons I didn’t play HL2 until today. The first reason is that I really never missed it. I have read all the critics, tests and articles since release of HL2 but I found it never interesting enough to buy it. I’m the proud owner of all id Software games, I’m the proud owner of the Blood series, I own several other shooters uncut (for those of you who live in Germany know how important the words “uncut” and the complete id Software series really is). The second reason is that I never had have really time to continue to play games. I have my own collection and played my games more than 5 times. So what did I do to get HL2? I searched through internet to buy it and here the odyssey begins…

I went to the Steam website and found the Half-Life Anthology pack which offered HL, HL: Blue Shift, HL: Opposing Force and Team Fortress Classic for only 14,99 €. Wow I thought and put it in my shopping cart. Before playing HL2 let’s play through the complete HL1 story so things will be more clear and more fun guaranteed. So I also put the Half-Life Orange Box in my shopping cart. The Orange Box includes HL2, HL2: Episode 1, HL2: Episode 2, HL2: Lost Coast, Portal and Team Fortress 2 for 29,99 €. I thought I did a good job with getting those two packages. Of course I read the details on the product page carefully to avoid any problems with my newly acquired hardware. After paying I started download over Steam and after finish I started playing Half-Life. At first of course I didn’t recognize anything weird. It was cool to play and I felt like those days when Half-Life was released and we were all in this skeletal animation fever of Half-Life ;)

After playing some time I noticed that the soldiers are missing. Ah ok we have robots here so it was clear I was playing a German censored version. In Germany all games or media which don’t meet some specific criteria are censored. An institution exists called BPjS which play the games (or watch the movies) and decides if it is ok or not. Criteria is explicit gore, explicit sex, strong language and stuff like that. The idea of the BPjS is not bad at all and in theory I would support their doing. Bad is the realization of their ideas. In fact everything that seems to be violent (in computer games) is forbidden like in a dictatorship or communism. German readers of this blog know exactly what I mean. I was browsing the steam forums and noticed other people face the same problem. There were rumors to change the language for Steam and so Half-Life and other censored games will be with the unlocked or uncensored content. I tried nearly every solution provided there except the most logical: to contact the Steam support. So I got my support ticket and started to wait. 2 days, 3 days finally a reply. The reply told me the sadly I live in Germany and Steam is not allowed to sell Half-Life uncensored in Germany since it is censored here. They are only allowed to sell the damn fucking censored version. Ok I’m 33 years old and I knew hard it was in former times to get our Blood or Blood 2 copy or to get our Quake copy. Now in times where you can buy and download your games over the whole internet there is someone who cares what stupid laws here in Germany are?

I’m not angry on Steam, it’s only a platform who sells games. I’m not angry on German government, they showed and show and will show in future that they are able to be No 1 in most stupid laws on the world (hey US guys don’t laugh, you guys elected George W. Bush, the most stupid president of the world, twice :)).

Back to the story. I contacted the Steam support telling them that this is absolutely inacceptable since nowhere on the product description was a note that Germans get a censored version. I noticed that on the Left 4 Dead product description there was a big red note on German “gore reduced version”. Oh damn what does this mean. A shooter who is gore reduced? Would you ever play a racing game without racing cars? Imagine Need for Speed without cars. Imagine a strategy game without strategy?!? How stupid is that? They should reduce the price of the German version.

While some discussions on forums claimed Steam guilty for this censored shit, others named Gabe Newell as cause of this disaster. What really made me angry is the fact that the German government created the institution which is controlling media, movies and computer games and censored what they think.

Here is an example: You will be able to download Dead Space (a great game btw) from Steam (even from Germany). Nothing is censored, blood gore, all the good and bad things what makes us play those action games. But you won’t be able to get Half-Life, FEAR 2, Left 4 Dead or games like that over Steam.

1. BPjS sucks. BPjS is the German institution which play dictatorship here in Germany. They censor computer games because of violence and gore. What about all the strategy games where you make war against whole countries and destroy and mass destroy whole continents? 
2. Software companies and publisher suck more than German government. I mean they develop cool games and than change the content to meet the requirements of German and Australian laws? How stupid is that? That equals the fact that if Lithuania had a law which allows all foreign car brands to use only 3 wheels instead of four Mercedes Benz would change their SL to 3 wheels? Software companies did not understand that if their games are not half enjoyable if they are censored? id Software did not fall on the knees and so they never provided censored content. That’s what it all is about. Even Wolfenstein3D is more fun than Half Life with censored content. Software companies have to realize that if someone in Germany wants their game, there are enough possibilities to order it from Austria (see links below), Switzerland, Greece, France, Great Britain with delivery times within 3 days. There is no reason to care about governments.

What did I learn from all that shit above? I liked Steam very much and the idea is very good having one platform where you can buy all of your games having them downloaded and up-to date. If you buy a new PC just install the Steam client and after login into your Steam account all your purchased games are installed automatically on your new machine. It works and the idea is great, at least if you don’t live in Germany. If you live in Germany and use Steam you are an idiot. There are plenty of import shops from Austria where you get German uncut versions. I started to buy there and am to 100% satisfied. I won’t buy on Steam again, not as long as I live in Germany (I think Australians face similar problems). Or would you drive a car with three wheels only because of your government?

"Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." - Mark Twain

On www.quake.de I noticed a news post talking about an online petition against the planned ban of action games in Germany. It’s not a secret that since Wolfenstein 3D and Doom Germany was somehow against those games, because of the excessive violence in those games. Let’s avoid starting this endless discussion if those games influence people in their doing (THEY DO NOT!!!), but you cannot avoid something in Germany as long as our government put something in mind. Sadly the rampage which occurred near Stuttgart (Fellbach) and some copycats started the whole discussion again.

I was rolling on the flour when I followed again the discussion about “killer games” in german TV. All the discussions were held very subjective and failed the complete point. German politicians, educators, teachers and even representatives from church had the same opinion that those “killer games” do influence the players. How stupid is that? What the fuck do those monkeys think? Now whole germany talks about banning ego shooters. I pay an ass full of taxes every month hoping that the politicians who get paid from my money do something meaningful. Hoping that they will release laws who help people. You say I’m completely wrong. They have nothing else to do but discussing about themes they have no idea about. That's not stupid but a reason to fuck them of (in case you would have a rocket launcher ;)

The game industry defuses ego shooters which have to be sold in Germany. There are many popular examples, like Half Life, Unreal2 and so on. In those german conversions you kill robots instead of human NPC. Instead of blood you see something green which could be oil. This is censorship in its finest art. I thought this is only in dictatorships but Germany should be a democracy or am I wrong? Ok, lets try to not be so polemic.

One of the first games I ever played was Wolfenstein 3D. I remember the time where we exchanged the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D and shortly after some time Doom on two 3,5” floppy discs. I continued playing Doom2 and Quake and am one of the lucky ones who found Blood and Blood 2 in stores and was the first in my town who got his copy of Quake 2. Until today I played to 99% ego shooters and have in my collection nearly all “killer games” I could ever get including Kingpin, Sin, Quake3 Arena, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, all mission packs to Quake and Quake2, Fear, Doom3, Quake4 and so on. And I’m also lucky since all versions are not versions for the german market but the originals ordered from UK and USA. And do you now what the best is????

YES I LOVE KILLER GAMES, AND NO I DON’T PLAN A RAMPAGE ON ANY SCHOOL OR ELSEWHERE

Why is the fact ignored, that everywhere in the world where the original copies of those ego shooter games are played, the number of rampages is not higher than here in Germany? We have one famous example with the rampage at Stuttgart for a long time. And the discussion heated up, just because police found a copy of Counterstrike on the computer of the gunman of Stuttgart. Oh my god how stupid are our politicians really?

It there will be a law which forbids ego shooters the crime associated with obtaining those games would rise immensely but who cares, right?

Dear politicians, please go back to work (in fact start work even if it’s the first time in your life) and care for real problems which we have here in Germany and don’t loose time with things you have no idea about and where you are definitely wrong in your thinking. You are wrong because you tried to find the guilty for the disaster in Stuttgart. Not the computer game was the reason for the rampage but his fucked up family affairs, his father for not securing the gun and keeping the gun in a place where nobody has access to it. Every 5 dime psychologist will tell you that. Ah I forgot. German television was clever enough to let psychologist talk, but those kind of psychologist who tell you that, what you want to hear (or at least the opinion of those who pay their bills).

I watched the Champions League final 2009 on TV between FC-Barcelona and Manchester United where Barcelona won 2:0. It was a good game it was quite nice to watch and entertaining. The sad thing is that a team won which shouldn’t be in final! Why? FC Barcelona simply didn’t deserve to be in that final, and they have been and that only because the really really bad referee of the return game in semi finals where FC Barcelona played against Chelsea London. Do you remember? Mr. Henning Övrebrö did everything to avoid that Chelsea reaches the final. 3 times there should have been a penalty after two fouls and one hand but it wasn’t. Ok this is the subjective opinion of me you will say now. Not really dear reader.

There has been a test site one hour before the game between FC Barcelona and Chelsea London on the UEFA website where the result was even predicted. More annoying is that also the two yellow cards for Drogba and Alex were predicted right. As the website www.goal.com wrote on an article (which you can find here) the semi final was a pure fraud and everything agrees with this. The UEFA wanted Chelsea to loose. A pure English Champions League final wouldn’t be that entertaining since it would be the same as last year.

If it was not a fraud from the UEFA then it’s really sad that assholes like Henning Övrebrö are allowed to continue be referees in such important matches.

More possible is that the UEFA cheated that game so it’s more sad that all the assholes behind the UEFA get money for that.

Sorry FC Barcelona but you are not the winner of the Champions League 2009. Sadly this years Champions League didn’t have a winner and why? Because the UEFA in cooperation with Henning Övrebrö did everything to push FC Barcelona within the semi finals to the final or in other words: they did everything to let Chelsea loose the semi finals and not reach the final.

For my regular users: Sorry for using that language above but some things make me angry so I think now I said all.

I can’t believe this still happens. I have recently been at a customer to talk about a new project. After hours of a very constructive meeting we decided to talk with the technical assistance at this company. I’m working as a freelancer and so I usually talk to the executives first to know what they need and what they exactly want to have and after that I have to communicate with the companies local technical administration. So as I said after a very constructive meeting with the executives we took our notes and went to the companies it-department. Usually you just have to examine how local infrastructure is at the companies. Best place for getting this kind of information is the administrator. Now this time it should get some kind harder. As maybe some of you know I like working with ASP.NET. In fact I like the .NET framework as whole very much. I also develop in C++ and Assembler or the old Visual Basic 6.0 or let’s talk about PHP for web development, but most of you may agree that the .NET framework opened some great doors for developers. So to continue with this story I faced an administrator who thought himself being an Linux god. Not enough of praying Linux whole day he was against anything which comes from Microsoft. I tried to explain him why we want to develop a portal with ASP.NET and why we want to use a MS SQL Server as backend. I also tried to explain him why and how we want to implement this in the existing infrastructure of his company, but I soon noticed that he was not very cooperative, trying to explain with some very poor arguments to the executives why not to use ASP.NET. I won’t go more into detail, I only want to say that we needed about 3-4 hours talking with the executives and planning a whole new project and on the other hand we have been sitting about two hours talking to an administrator who’s job is to give me the required information (would have taken about 15 minutes) and we noticed that he was anything but cooperative and helpful.

Why am I telling this story?

BECAUSE I’M SICK OF THIS “MICROSOFT IS BAD” AND “LINUX IS BEST” DISCUSSIONS.

I have developed the DirectX.DevPak for the MinGW compiler (the most complete devpak for DirectX 9.0 available). I have released a various of other DevPaks for Dev-Cpp, but not because I thought the Microsoft is shit or because I didn’t have the money for the Visual Studio 6.0 but to help people who use Dev-Cpp to develop DirectX applications. I work since I can think with Microsoft products in my business life and also worked with other operating systems then windows in my life. Every OS has its advantages and disadvantages. But to tell you the truth I never thought that I would sit in the year 2009 at a company and have to start such discussions like “Micro$oft is sucking”.

Does anyone of those fuckers knows what he is talking about? I mean it’s ok when on forums people ages 15-16 discuss each other endless nights why MS is shit and so on. I really laugh about this but I mean I was talking to a 35 year old person who was against something that he didn’t tried out.

So I decided to mention some points here why those discussions suck. These points are directly addressed to you Linux and PHP suckers. Wake up. You live in 2009. Do you listen to yourself when talking? Why don’t you give arguments when you compare Linux with Windows? Why don’t you argue when you compare PHP with ASP.NET or MySql with MS SQL Server? And don’t tell me you give arguments, because you don’t. You say Microsoft is commercial which is right and Microsoft products are full of bugs, but thats all. You cannot give really arguments. An argument consists of a predication, of a statement and finally of an example. This is all missing when you talk.

Here is a list of arguments you should think about before busting my balls:

• If there haven’t been Microsoft, the technical progress of the personal computers would have never improved that way. Imagine how much did a x86 like the 386DX cost without MS-DOS and how much did it cost with MS-DOS. Imagine how cheap personal computers have been with the Microsoft Windows 3.11 and how much you had to pay without this. Imagine how fast personal computers became because hardware developers tried to keep up with new features of the operating system. And most important question: Where has Linux been that times?
• One of the most nerving statements of Apple users: “Microsoft Windows is full of bugs”. Ahm yeah you idiots. Did you know that Microsoft has to develop operating systems which must work on every available hardware configuration? They have to do an ass full of work on research and development and still hardware configurations change from hour to hour since hardware manufacturers release new versions and new components nearly every day. Ok we have to admit that Microsoft maybe released some kind of operating systems which have been crap (I’m talking about the ME edition of Windows 95) but they soon learned from their mistakes. So show me what Apple has to do? Apple can concentrate on one hardware with slight differences in configuration. That’s all. Apple is like Porsche. Porsche is working for the last 10 years on one and the same model (the 911). The game industry spreads block busting titles every month, pushing hardware to the limits. New hardware is developed and has to be integrated as soon as possible. Do you want to play Doom3 with Ghost’n Goblins graphics? No you don’t!!!
• Microsoft is profit oriented. Yes and 99,9% of the other companies on the world are too. Come on stop thinking like a child. If a company is not profit oriented it wouldn’t exists very long. Are the game developers not profit oriented? If some of you stupid idiots answer this question with no than I would recommend you to go to the next store, take a game and walk out without paying for it. This is one of the most stupid arguments I ever heard. Of course Microsoft is profit oriented. Do you get Apple iBooks for free? Now the Linux community will say they have a much greater operating system which doesn’t cost a dime. That’s true, at least the part “it’s free” is true. But why is it free? Because it’s developed by a community and not a company. I would like to see you guys what have happened if a company had developed Linux. :)
• “Microsoft products suck. They require Microsoft operating systems.” Yes. Read the point above. Imagine Mercedes-Benz would produce fenders which fit also on BMW or on Dodge. How can you people be stupid enough to think in this times economy someone would do this. And why should Microsoft develop something which also runs on Apple, Linux or anything else?
• “I’m a developer and the Visual Studio is so expensive I cannot afford it so I use MinGW for Cpp development and PHP for web development.” Come on, you really bust my balls. Since the release of the express editions this shouldn’t be an issue. If you work on commercial projects you have to get yourself a professional edition but that’s also for Dev-Cpp (which uses the the MinGW compiler and don’t say no!!! Read the license agreement of Dev-Cpp!!!). That’s for all tools same.
• “ASP.NET sucks. PHP is the best!!!”. If I would have a gun, then you would have a big hole in your head now. This is my favorite on the list of most stupid arguments. I took the time to make a test with a guy who is a PHP pro. The target of the test was to develop a small testing solution with a database backend and some business logic in there. My partner used PHP and MySQL and I used ASP.NET with MS Sql Server Express.
• I was finished with my application within two days. The application was fully customizable, fast, secure, easy to extend. The PHP pro was still working on the database interface. This was an extreme example. In reality the gap wouldn’t be that big but it showed up that development with ASP.NET can be more fast than in PHP (especially when starting from scratch). As a freelancer time is very important also as security, reliability and customizability.

This is only a short list of points. Of course you can extend this list endlessly. Nobody sais that Windows is the best operating system. Nobody sais that ASP.NET is the best web development platform. Nobody sais that Microsoft does always a great job. But how can you be so ignorant and not see the truth. Microsoft helped the technology reach the standard we have today. And we must admit that we like it. We must admit that we like the fact where we are today. And we also must admit that we are glad companies like Microsoft will influence the direction on where we will be the next 10-25 years. I’m 33 years old and work with computers since I can think. I know the times where the only affordable technology an Atari VCS 2600 was. I remember the times where I owned an Amstrad CPC. That times personal computers with 1MB Ram and Hercules, or CGA graphics still have been prohibitive with some kind of DOS.

You Microsoft haters. I didn’t get paid for this blog and I also work with Linux and PHP if needed, so I know both sites of the coin. What I didn’t understand and as long as such discussions exists maybe I never will understand how ignorant and subjective you guys are. Open your eyes. Does anyone of you know that Google could me much more dangerous to you than Microsoft will ever be?

Hello and welcome again. For those of you who are regulars here I have some changes. The complete category "street racers" will move to the www.codejdm.net website. I started already moving some posts so here you won't find any update or info on street racing cars. This will be a pure coders blog ;)

For all the car enthusiasts like me just update your bookmarks and be sure to check out www.codejdm.net for the latest and greatest infos

Instead of writing some new posts I decided it's time to update the blog so some posts may be not formatted correctly. This will be fixed the next days, so hopefully you will understand that.

It's a bad thing when having a blog and not updating it because you have nothing to say. It's not so bad when having a blog and not updating it because of the lack of time. So this is the most common problem of a freelancer and also mine. I could now write some lines about the economical crisis all over the world, I could sit down and write about german laws and their incompetence and I also could sit down and tell you about my holidays I spent in Greece.

Most important I have to say today is that I'm drowning in work and that's a good think. All of my projects got stuck in the past few months but since I'm a pro developer my work is my hobby and some updates will follow on most of the important stuff such as the Fusion Charts API library or a game engine I started.

I'm not the guy to promise something if it's not sure to get it finished so stay tuned the next days for some updates which affect all the parts of development ;)

Keep coding.

On June 22nd 2004 I launched my site G-Productions. This site provided mainly game programming stuff, the "famous" DirectX Devpak for Dev-Cpp and the PrinterDLL, a library which allows Lotus Notes to print in landscape mode. Soon the site established and I got a very high visitor-rate per day. The greatest thing for a developer is when people honor your work with a comment, an email or just with linking to your site.

I used LDU from http://www.neocrome.net/, an easy to install and easy to use CMS with many features. All I wanted was to give community something back (I know: same violin every day but really I wanted to help community).

I'm 32 years old and a programmer since the good old Amstrad CPC times (in other words for over 15 years now). What I never understood was the work of hackers. Skilled developers who prefer to destroy instead of create something. Who prefer to intrude instead of secure a network and so on...

And exactly that is the case why I don't understand why they still try to hack my sites. Especially the site G-Productions was hacked successfully more than once and only with security updates and a strict user validation things calmed down. Log files show that hackers still try to fuck my things up, but not only the G-Productions site. This blog was also hacked but the people at www.dotnetblogengine.net released very soon a fix for that.

Nevertheless I have to say a big thanks to all hackers who try to hack my sites.

Why this? Because I'm a professional software developer, and because of YOU (with you I talk to the hackers) I additionally secure the sites of my customers. Because of YOU I went more into the security stuff, no matter what is used (PHP, ASP, ASP.NET). Because of YOU I improved my skills in securing a website, a database application.... Because of YOU I install daily backups on web servers. Because of YOU I learned so much and use so much of my lately obtained knowledge.

So if you are a hacker and read this article please take a second to leave a comment. I would be very pleased about it, and never mind about the G-Productions site. Keep trying because of YOU my google hits got more than double as much as they have been before what puts more money in my pocket. Also thank you for that ;)

... and I have some cool stuff for you in the pipe. I know I have only two or three regular visitors on this site so there is no need to explain much. Now spending some days off, I took the time to plan some new projects for public. Regular readers of my "nearly dead" project site G-Productions know that I love doing stuff in game programming. So one of my new projects will also be game related and soon will be published here

So stay tuned....