Erik

RAF good to see you and everyone for that matter, reminds me of the days I enjoyed a stroll through the halls of OFF. I wish I had time this morning to respond to everyone personally because you deserve it, sadly I'm pressed for time. I appreciate hearing everyone's views, even the not so flattering ones, they are what make this community great even though keeping it together is a fight and half. All things worth having usually are. A well deserved toothy lashing. I deserved that in all honesty. However let me respond to some of this. When you've poured as much blood sweat and tears into a place, things are always personal, no matter how hard you try to separate them. Was my response a bit over the top, yes. Is it a big deal that Hasse informed Siggi that the "new official forums for OFF are now at the competition", no. I see these posts often and I usually ignore them it's simply business as usual. Doesn't mean I like them, but it's business as usual. Yesterday was just one of those days I guess. I work hard keeping things together for everyone including the OFF community, always have still do. It's no secret that Doug from SimHQ has had long standing issues with us, it's a mission a personal grudge to see us tarred, feathered and taken into town. Why? Because CombatACE was built by and on the separation of some of the lead guys from SimHQ, they were the inspiration that built this place. So is it personal when our traffic goes there? You bet. Yesterday as I mentioned was one of those blood sweat and tears days. I had just spent the last exhausting week pulling many 25 hour days upgrading our forum software and redoing the entire SF2 download section for the guys. A huge undertaking. I'm sitting back watching files get moved into the new library I just finished building and I just happened to see SimHQ Doug, "guod" and Polovski downloading files. 1500MB worth of files to be exact, at our expense. Does this sit well with me? No. Did Polovski share a Hello, did Doug say thanks? Not that I've seen. So yes we're the anti-christ when it comes to things site related, and yes we're the ones that caused so much of a problem that the Devs avoid us, but they have no problem using our services. Hence the insult. It's like two competing gas stations on opposite corners but one's been around longer and the other has a bathroom. So the folks stop at one to use the restroom and buy their gas at the other, then around lunch time the guys working for the other station across the street come over to use the facilities. I voice my concern about it, mention maybe I should close the bathroom, and I'm the asshole. Go figure. So did that six days a year ago matter? Probably not. Am I using my health situation as guilt, a resounding fuck no. It's what happened. If I wanted the sympathy because I was shallow I'd have shared the unpleasant side of things, but instead I shared the fact I survived it all. Is any of this a basis for a debate? Not really. You say I should take things head on, well I have, and I do. I've stated very clearly my intent, I want the community back together, it's time. Am I beating around the bush or putting on some half arsed email campaign? No, I'm keys down letting it fly right here in black and white. Like you I probably have no dog in this hunt either, I just think I do, when in reality he's back at the kennel shagging a beautiful red haired retriever. I'm in a hunt with an absent dog, such is life. Thank you for coming, thank you for keeping up with me, thank you for being part of what I love about this community. You can fault me for many things, you can disagree with every word I've written, and you can say I'm foolish for fighting the windmills. But not one of you will ever fault me for not caring enough to save this community or support it which to me is a far better crime than turning my back, extending a right handed central digit, and walking off. So that gentlemen is the picture of the gentle blonde tucked tightly behind the bezel of my RPM gauge. It's the reason I'm in the fight and the reason I'll be returning home from it. Be well and let's stay in touch.

System Restore back to before the change if all else fails. How annoying when upgrades go like this. I think we've all been there.

I think you have the idea backwards, maybe? You are the mountain, the rock that ultimately will buy and fund the decisions. Mohammed is the one that has to bend and be flexible, anticipate the mountains moves so he may travel there safely where he will reward the mountain with his great creation and the mountain will release it's deepest closest secret, the pocket book. If Ford said hey we're only going to be making this puke green color car this year because that's the paint we want to buy and if you guys don't like it tough cookies. I think Ford would be having some massive inventory reduction sales come July and August and there will be a whole lot of people riding around in things other than Fords. If I can offer you nothing less, no home, no place to be, take away from here that you are a powerful commodity that businesses are lucky to have and should want to fight to earn their business. With that said ... your comments are welcome but I think I've beat the dead into this horse. Take care.

I personally think you as "customers" under value your worth. I believe if there was a concise voice by the masses saying you want us we'll be over there ---------------> that's where the developers would go to post their news and keep their audience informed. The decision to follow the devs over there is noble but it's not going to do anything for those that follow. Will they get free copies of WOFF for following them over there? It's such a wishy washy reason to say well we're just going to follow because that's where we're going. The pilots I know chart their own course. Maybe I'm just brave, or stupid, enough to say something but if you want change it has to start somewhere.

There won't be any slighting of the OFF community over a decision beyond their control. That was not the intent of my post this morning. The point is there's no loss to the OFF community because I haven't done anything. The forums and downloads are still here and we are still actively promoting OFF, but what is OFF doing for us? That is my entire point. To the mention of do unto others ... well that would mean I'd have to just turn it all off and walk away decision made.

CombatACE is proud to roll out some new badges. In the past we've always honored our veterans with a status and recently a badge to go with it. Now if you're enlisted service, US, Royal, French, etc., and there's a way we can confirm it, we'll give you a corresponding badge to go with it, perks included. We want everyone to know that we're proud of all those great many that serve their country. PM me if you'd like a spiffy new badge. Here are some samples and I have them for just about all major armed forces. Of course, if you were part of the TooTTooT Tribe Air Force I probably won't have one of those. Those with current Military Veterans badges can exchange them for your service badge with a yellow ribbon like the last image.

Thank you for reminding me of the features here. I appreciate your view.

Siggi sorry I hijacked your thread. Bad form, I should be ashamed.

There was and is more going on behind the scenes, there's no doubt in my mind. It was evident to me with what was said in the conversation between Winder, Polovski, and myself. Doug at SimHQ has been after our traffic since the day we opened our doors. It was the final gem stone in his faux crown to reach and strike for OFF while I was incapacitated. I will compare CombatACE against SimHQ any day of the week. I don't have to make promises, the concept is built. We were made from this community, constructed for this community, and designed with you all in mind. We don't use software that is outdated and we're designed for abuses that sometimes come our way. I'm not bitter and I'm not even petty. I advertise for Doug, you'll see his SimHQ logo on just about every page here. Free of charge, no mess, no hassle. Where's the war Doug? I missed it? Doubt you'll ever see a CA logo over there. I don't want to bash SimHQ, sorry for transgressions, they are a competitor and they offer different things, I respect them for that. Something's up though, I agree. I remember a couple years back when AVSIM crashed, taken offline by an disgruntle internal associate. They lost a ton of stuff and they had to rebuild from the ground up. I praised Tom for his courage to stand up and say wow we slipped up, shouldn't have happened, we're on to fixing it now. I even donated for the repairs, from my pocket from us at CombatACE not as just myself. I certainly wouldn't have emailed Tom's associates who use his forums, and shown them an exit strategy, even though they were down for weeks. I suppose it's just a different view, and a different class I hope to never grow into.

It's a simple concept, where's the love? If your neighbor borrows your gas can to fill his lawn mower each week and he never bothers to return it full when it's empty, eventually you'll quit loaning him the can. Simple gestures of kindness, really and we all practice them. I get to host the files, incur the costs of the downloads, bandwidth, disk space, advertising, SEO marketing, backing up and maintaining them and what do I get in return? Links to my competition. Where is the equality? I understand the huge abyss of downtime lasting six days was horrible, just horrible. I pray SimHQ never has such issues where the cosmic clouds align and someone yanks the plug by accident while nobody is around who can do anything about it. It will happen. Machines can and do fail, systems fail, and in the end I pleaded with Winder and Polovski to reconsider, begged for forgiveness and took steps to ensure it would never happen again. We all make mistakes, mine was thinking I was too healthy to worry about such foolery as hospitals and dying. In the end it's claims of "lost business revenue", "liability and dependability", 6 days gents, 6 days. You all have waited years for concept to reality. In six days I got Maybe it's time for this to come to a head, maybe I'll end up loosing in the end, who knows. What I want is for everyone to rally behind us and support us. The "new home" exists because you allow it, not because somebody gets stressed over 6 days. In the grand scale of things, what did I cost them? Wonder where they would be if people gave up hope easily and simply couldn't wait six days? How can I say this any clearer? I want you all back. Period. End of story?

I feel for you MB but I praise you at the same time, quality begets quality, and you my friend are top notch.

I really dislike these posts. "new home" ouch. When struggling to survive my pulmonary embolism last year OFF moved during the downtime that happened while I was in a coma. I don't know what the best course of action is but this is a smack in the face after everything I've done for the community. If you're so unhappy here why do you continue using us for downloads and such? Oh maybe because SimHQ doesn't offer a system like ours? Hmmmm what a terrible situation you guys are in. I think dumping the lot and cutting ties might be the way to go.

After looking, I see that you can group move files as well by selecting the tick box on the far right and move from the moderator control panel at the bottom. So if you have multiple files on the screen all going to the same place you can move them from there without editing the file and changing the storage location which is the hard way it looks like. Single or multiple files can be moved right from the listing page. Nice, you guys should have this done by tomorrow.

The new SF2 file structure is built and ready for files to move in. I have disabled uploading to the old directories so incoming SF2 files will have to be uploaded into the new structure. Files can still be downloaded from the old directories. The old directories are easily identifiable by the words (To Be Filed) at the end. All the files in the directories that say (To Be Filed) need to be moved to the new section. This can be done by editing the file directly and changing it's storage location > then saving it. The file, comments, images all move at the same time. Since I disabled uploading to the old directories you won't be able to put any files there by accident, saving time and confusion. Once all the (To Be Filed) directories are empty [[ say "0" in grey ]] then let me know and I will delete them as you tell me to. I hope this is everything you wanted. Thanks to Neil it's pretty intense and well defined for ease of use. We're going to call this thread "done". Have fun guys. One of us needs sleep after a three day marathon to get this done.

On his way out to lunch, CombatACE's Lead Engineer Bruce Shingleton smiles for a photo as he comments on the downloads he is responsible for and oversees. "Last week we got a new pencil for the pencil holder on my desk and we blew past the five million downloads mark," says Bruce. Indeed we've reached a milestone and are quite proud of the silent counters that keep track of important yet needless numbers. We hope you've gotten hours and hours of entertainment out of the downloads we've help provide to the community, even if you didn't download all 5,000,000. .

Caught it. Old not dead.

No, it's a very robust program. You might try removing it, and re-installing it. Otherwise I'm not sure how to advise you.

He's got a whole section of "Add On Ships" broken down by type, ie aircraft carrier, frigate, subs, etc. Do you think we really need to define Naval countries because it will be a US then Other section which to me I think can be done as MB has it. My 2cents. I just ran the totals I've done 77 sections already and I have 230 more to go. This thing is intense. If anyone says they can't find anything they can bugger off. My fingers are worn out and I'm 1/4 of the way done. I'm so depressed.

I spent the last two days putting this wicked crazy catalog together that MigBuster sent me, it's almost done. When it goes live I'll drop all the old files in their old directory structure into a "To Be Filed" section and close that section to uploading. So the files can be moved whenever you like and we should just make MB a moderator, he does the job anyway, then maybe he'd like to help see his dream come true. Thoughts?

Hello ??? Did everyone fall off the planet suddenly when I wasn't looking? Work has begun on the new file system. I am going to need some help moving the files. Who is qualified to do that and help out?

http://www.7zip.com/ Most will use a high end graphic suite that will allow you the use of layers and various other tools. That's something I think is covered in the guides and sections here. Maybe not specifically within the IL2 section but skinning is universal for the most part once you have the right files from the whatever you're skinning. You're welcome to read some of the guides in the Strike Fighters section, for example, that will get you started. Sorry I'm not much help, but the modders are the pros around here. I mostly keep the floor clean. Welcome, BTW

That's not how Microsoft intended their software to work, I'm certain. The whole purpose of storing a local cache on your computer is to speed up delivery time of websites, which to some people relates to browser speed. The cache is designed to be dumped and the only thing I can think of is somehow either it wasn't getting dumped or was dumping a cache it wasn't using. Eventually the TTL (time to live) on the those files would have run out and the browser would have downloaded them and replaced them solving your problem. But who wants to wait a week for that to happen. Gosh sorry it was such a hassle for you guys and glad it wasn't everyone having that problem, can you imagine? Erik

Chrome > Settings > Show Advanced Settings > Clear Browsing Data > Select "beginning of time" and "empty the cache" > [Clear browsing data] IE > Tools > Internet Options > Delete > Mark (Check) Temporary Internet Files (Uncheck or check others as desired) > [Delete] Firefox > Tools > Options > Advanced Tab > [Clear Now] Opera > Tools > Delete Private Data > Mark (Check) Delete entire cache (Uncheck or check others as desired) > [Delete] That should fix these page issues for everyone. If you have instructions for other browsers feel free to post them here. Thanks.