Man, I'm disappointed in you guys. There's no exploit here... look again at gumOnShoe's sig. It turns out he has no sig, but he made an image that cleverly looks like one (including text) and attached it to his post.

OK, I think this has been fixed.

This is something we've been discussing, and I agree with you. You're going to see user icons showing up in more places around the site...

At 1/11/08 02:13 AM, RupeeClock wrote: I'm just thinking, if the reviews can have these nice little user icons, why can't the BBS?
Or maybe even the profile pictures?

At 1/11/08 02:08 AM, Little-Rena wrote: That is helpful, though it's not even letting me respond to mine at the moment, lol. Also, I like how the x/x users found this blah has been replaced by what most people think. But I want to reply to my reviews :(

Clear your browser cache and you should be able to. (We always seem to have this problem with new features - I have something in the works that should eliminate this problem in the future.)

At 1/11/08 01:55 AM, Darkside7000 wrote: I did notice that there are no links to the flash/audio from our userpages though?

Ack, good catch. Fixing now...

Yep, I just now updated this stuff. You may see some weirdness at first, until your browser cache updates. I love the new review layout - the user icons with each review, and the big pixel-y scores (they blended in before).

I changed some stuff in the login process earlier today that's the likely culprit. If anyone else has trouble, please say so in this thread - and let me know if you also use MSN.

Gmagnum, I'll be sending you a PM shortly - if you can help me try to solve this, I'd appreciate it. I don't know anyone with MSN, so it's tough for me to test.

Because of the security issues we have to contend with, we restrict what uploaded Flash can do.

Why does your game have to load external files? Can you remake it to not have to do that?

I misinterpreted "virtual directory" as "virtual host" in the previous post, so I take that part back (I don't have virtual directory experience).

I generally avoid these sorts of discussions because they're ultimately a waste of time. Everything's relative - it's rare that you can ever say "A is absolutely, 100%, better than B" about anything. Especially when it comes to operating systems and programming - the fact of the matter is that it usually comes down to personal preference and comfort level, since there are a lot of choices for almost every situation. It's good to have lots of tools in the toolkit, so you can choose the one that makes the job at hand easiest - but that doesn't mean that tool is inherently better than others in every situation.

With that said - CronoMan, someone really slipped you some bad information at some point. It sounds like you fancy yourself some kind of expert, but some of your claims are way off base, and I'd hate to see people take your words as gospel.

At 10/5/07 06:32 AM, CronoMan wrote: PHP does not qualify for a professional arena. PHP is a toy, and will remain a toy ;)

Yeah, we built Newgrounds and serve over 500,000 visitors a day with... a toy. PHP is a mature language, not without its flaws (like any language), but with most features you'd expect from a modern programming language. Declaring offhandedly that it's a "toy" is like someone in 1995 claiming that the Internet is just a "fad". NG is far from the only site doing big things with PHP.

ASP.NET is alot more advanced and goes alot more in-depth than PHP does. PHP is simply a CGI scripting language, it is not "connected" with the webserver in the same way ASP.NET, and therefore can't fully utilize the functions of a real webserver.

This might seem true to a beginning programmer, since ASP.NET nudges you into using their framework, whereas PHP does make it easy to do CGI-style programming and doesn't usually ship as part of a framework (though there are many). But if you've spent enough time programming to understand what a framework is and why it's helpful, you could appreciate the power PHP gives you build whatever back-end structure you want, customized to your specific needs.

Again, I'm not claiming that PHP is the end-all be-all, but we have a nice MVC setup at NG, built from the ground up with PHP. I enjoy the flexibility it provides. Statements like "PHP is simply a CGI scripting language" are, frankly, ignorant.

Apache is a simple webserver, it's nothing fancy. IIS has features apache can only dream about.
And one thing I especially enjoy in IIS is multi-process, which Apache does not have.
Each application is run as a seperate process, which means that if one application suffers a slowdown, or a crash of some sort, the rest of the websites will continue to go on as if nothing's happened. as far as I know, Apache lacks this. Additionally, it has no real SSL-support, security credentials (other than fs), thread-pooling, ISAPI filters, custom errors at application level, bandwidth limiter, server certificate managing, virtual directories etc.etc.

You've never used Apache, have you? It has options to either run as multiprocess or multithreaded, and tons of add-on modules. And then (among other questionable claims) you state that Apache doesn't support virtual directories?? Wow. How do you think Apache-hosted sites work? Apache's supported them since time immemorial. Anyone who's used it for more than five seconds knows that.

IIS (6.0 ->) conquers Apache, and my guess is that IIS will gain more popularity in the future.
If you have in-depth experience with both IIS and Apache, I can't see how it's even possible to consider Apache as a serious web-server in a business environment :)

Yeah, why would anyone ever use Apache? Other than those silly, marginal sites like Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, CNN, Slashdot, Flickr, Digg, LiveJournal, etc, etc. (Incidentally, while IIS has gained ground, Apache is the most-used webserver and has been for over a decade - so statements like yours lose you a lot of credibility.)

"Sieve of Eratosthenes" - now THERE'S a term I never thought I'd hear again. That was the focus of one of the first AP CompSci labs I made, for the class I taught. Did you see it in class, too?

IE sucks when it comes to doing fancy schmancy animation-type stuff in JavaScript. IE 7 is better than 6, but it's still worse than Firefox and Safari. We had to do a bunch of half-baked hacks to make the blog comments look right in IE, and while it's been tested extensively, I'm not too shocked that there's at least one situation (this one) where it goofs up.

If we can reproduce it, we can fix it, but James wasn't able to do so - I guess let us know if it keeps happening. Do you run any toolbars or weird plugins?

What browser & version are you using? And does it happen every time you scroll, or just some of them?

You may find this interesting:

http://www.newgrounds.com/lit/levels

Your voting power may have gone down a bit - but the level cutoffs are now fixed, meaning that you can reliably go up in voting power as you go up in level, and never lose it. So even if you went down slightly, you'll be able to get it back more quickly than you would've before - and keep going.

Ack... this was a screw-up on my part. I was using a mathematical function to determine voting power that was all wrong - but it's better now. Apologies to ramagi and our other high-rank users who were briefly cast down with the hoi polloi. :)

If you haven't seen it yet, check out smileycrew's series Lab of Ingeniocity. It's sort of like Bill Nye the Science Guy crossed with Aqua Teen Hunger Force - funny, well-drawn, and worth a look.

We love to see our artists gain exposure outside of Newgrounds as well. smileycrew has contributed a lot of good stuff here, and recently submitted Lab of Igeniocity episode #1 (Killer Hair Gel) to a contest at Acceptable.tv. It's in the finals, and if it receives enough user votes, it could end up being shown on VH1.

So get yourself some good karma and go show some love to an artist who deserves it! Voting ends at 9 PM EST tonight.

At 5/22/07 05:26 PM, Inferno42 wrote: I <3 this game and mocking V-Tech. If you don't like this game, GTFO! Also, nobody cares about the victims or their families.

That's really cold. Of course, you certainly have a right to your opinion. Just as I have a right (which I am exercising) to think you're an ass.

At 5/21/07 07:01 PM, Listen2Reason wrote: Actually, that quote wasn't really said by Voltaire, but by a woman writing a biography of Voltaire who used it as a summary of Voltaire's beliefs. But it's close. ;)

It's an overused "quote" - oh well. I thought it seemed to apply more here than in most places it gets used.

At 5/21/07 04:10 PM, Striker028 wrote: is it such a great thing that makes newgrounds great, then? don't get me wrong i worship this place....but is letting it stay on right? clearly it's not moral....

Clearly it's not moral... to you. The point I was trying to make is that what's "right" or "moral" to you may not be the same as what's "right" or "moral" to someone else. Newgrounds is a testament to the fact that one person's "immoral" is another's "art".

i see your point ross, and it's a good one. however, i'm not sure if the NG staff is thinking more towards their own image or the best thing to do....

I don't know what you're getting at here, but what I wrote had nothing to do with anyone other than myself. So any scenario you've concocted in your mind about the NG staff conspiring is likely to be more interesting than the reality.

At 5/21/07 03:30 PM, Erkie wrote: Two threads and an "eloquent speech in newgrounds defense" goes to show how blown up Newgrounds can make controversial BULLSHIT just so they can look like they'd been mauled or hounded by some "moral group", be it media, individual or religious.

Actually, it was more of a "here's an opportunity to take something that's generating negative attention, and use it to illustrate what makes NG great". Infuse that with as much imagination and/or cynicism as you wish.

Side note - I find it especially funny when people talk about Newgrounds as if we're this faceless corporate monster. If only you could watch the day-to-day operations of the site. We are, beyond a shadow a doubt, one of the least corporate "big sites" on the Internet.

At 5/21/07 02:30 PM, Jessii wrote: Then what was the point of the thread that asked us to voice our opinions as to whether it should be removed or not?

To provide a central place for debate/discussion on the topic. It wasn't "Let's take a poll and do whatever the posters to this thread say," as some people have misinterpreted it.

I'm working on a Clinical Psychology degree, so if someone's perception is so distorted that they needed to create a game out of a tragedy, it's poor taste.

Isn't the overriding point here the fact that your definition of "poor taste" might not be the same as everyone else's, but that we can all still get along?

In the previous thread, we saw a diverse range of opinions concerning V-Tech Rampage. Here are some of the popular views expressed:

-- This is an outrage, remove it.
-- The author's disturbed, what if it was his brother/sister/friend who was killed?
-- The author's just trying to get attention, and sadly, here we are giving it to him.
-- I would say to keep it, but since the author tried to make money off it, he's a dick and it should be removed.
-- Keep it on the site, it may be in poor taste but it's a freedom of speech issue.
-- Keep it on the site, there are far more offensive things already on Newgrounds.
-- What's the big deal about?

I think this is a good time to reflect on what Newgrounds is all about. When Tom first started the site many years ago, it was a place for his personal creations, some of which were too "edgy" for the mainstream (such as Assassin, Club A Seal, and Telebubby Fun Land). Many of his productions pushed (and occasionally pole vaulted over) the limits of "good taste", but he published them nevertheless, and they found an audience. The number of NG visitors grew rapidly and soon other artists started sending Tom their Flash creations for him to post. It turned out that a lot of people didn't really have an outlet for their not-fit-for-the-mainstream creativity - and Newgrounds evolved from a showcase for Tom's work into a showcase for everyone's work, free of the usual moral judgement and censorship.

Newgrounds found its niche and flourished, and today, we have one of the most unique communities on the Internet. We're a place where you can find polished, professional-quality animations and games, as well as creations that are more coarse, more personal, more "anything goes" - and everybody's welcome. While we do have some loose content guidelines, the site is still a haven for artists that might not have anyplace else to gain exposure for their work.

Speaking only for myself, I think V-Tech Rampage is in poor taste. In terms of gameplay, it's decent, but tying it to this recent tragedy is a bad idea, in my opinion.

Still, it's not any one person's job to judge the Flash that people submit to The Portal. That's left up to the Newgrounds community at large, which judges submissions with its votes. As the saying goes, I may disagree with what PiGPEN's doing, but I'll forever defend his right to do it. Telling him that his game should not be allowed on Newgrounds goes against the principles upon which this site was founded. You're entitled to form any opinion you like about him and his work, but once we take away his right to put it here on NG, we lose track of what makes Newgrounds great.

At 5/18/07 02:49 PM, turningthekey wrote: Whoever made that game has a right to make it, but that doesn't mean that they are justified morally. The harm they are doing by making that game is emotional rather than physical, and so they have a right to cause it, but that doesn't make it any more right. While to have a government that works we need to have our laws based on physical rather than psychological protection, that doesn't have anything to do with what is moral.

Newgrounds isn't a government organization, and so they aren't obligated to give everyone a platform. And I hope that everyone at Newgrounds realizes that for me to support free speech I don't have to give everyone equal access to my personal megaphone or printing press. I am not the government and so I am personally responsible for any message I print or otherwise relay. And every person on the Newgrounds staff that has the power to delete that game but doesn't, is personally responsible for the hurt that it causes people.

turningthekey, you made some lucid points. My response would be:

How is V-Tech Rampage causing emotional/psychological harm? No one is being forced to play the game, so I'll assume that the fact that it exists is what causes harm. But couldn't you justify censoring almost anything if your rationale is: "Does its existence cause someone emotional/psychological harm?"

I'm sure if we took a poll asking "Is this game in poor taste, yes or no," the overwhelming majority would vote "yes". But does that justify removing it? If so, where do we draw the line? As soon as 50.01% of some group finds a submission to be done in poor taste, should it be removed?

That's not what Newgrounds is about. Newgrounds is about giving users a voice, outside of the realm of moral judgement (but within some very loose content guidelines). PiGPEN has a right to make that game, and a right to submit it to Newgrounds, and if it passes judgement (which it did) a right to keep it here. You have a right to think he's an insensitive asshat for making it, and many people have exercised that right. But once we take PiGPEN's rights away, the whole thing comes tumbling down.

At 5/18/07 03:07 PM, Mavericker wrote: Why do you assume I'm watching them? I can just read the reviews to find out what's going on.

So then you're not actually offended by watching them, but rather you're offended by their sheer existence?

My advice to you is to get a new hobby, to replace "trawling the Internet looking for things that offend me".

At 5/18/07 02:50 PM, Mavericker wrote: Ross, those movies are about a child character getting raped, and sodomized.

How did we go from talking about icons, to talking about Flash?

In any event,

a) They're cartoons and
b) If they disturb you, why are you watching them?

I don't know if anyone told you, but there are more than one or two "naughty" things out there on the Internet. So if you're on a mission to rid the world of all of them, you should probably pick up the pace.

Or, alternatively, you could learn to live and let live. But I guess that's not the born-again Christian way.

At 5/18/07 02:09 PM, Mavericker wrote: You don't see something wrong with child porn?

See, saying things like that is why people like you often get referred to disparagingly as "Bible Beaters" - because you put false words in my mouth, in the most sanctimonious way possible.

Obviously, no one condones child porn. It's not acceptable here on Newgrounds. However, your definition of "child porn" is evidently far more broad than ours. Personally, I don't consider an icon with a 15-pixel high cartoon character breast to be child porn. If it's causing you to lose sleep, then by all means, find another website to frequent. No one's forcing you to come here - but the fact that you do, and want to tell us what is and isn't acceptable, is tantamount to censorship. And that's not what Newgrounds is all about.

Mavericker, this is Newgrounds, not HappyChristianFunLand.com. If you're easily offended, you're at the wrong website. I'm happy that you're a born-again Christian, but please stop trying to force your idea of what's "offensive" on us.

At 5/18/07 01:47 AM, PiGPEN wrote: THIS THREAD IS JUST A WAY FOR THE NEWGROUNDS STAFF TO PROMOTE THE GAME WITHOUT LOOKING LIKE THEY PROMOTE THE GAME.

No... this thread exists because, if there's somethng especially noteworthy (which V-Tech Rampage is, for better or for worse) happening in the NG community, we want to give everyone a place to discuss it on the frontpage. Would you rather be ignored?

There's a poll over at GamePolitics asking: should the game be taken down? As of right now, with 1,286 votes cast, the results are:

51.1% - Leave it, it's freedom of expression
34.4% - Take it down, it's offensive
14.5% - Not sure