grenv: So you had to have a reason for doing it didn't you?

Indeed. I don't like it being watched.

grenv: Here, here!!! :o)

AbigailII: But we knew by default. You had to go ou of your way to find and activate cloak. So you had to have a reason for doing it didn't you?

Lamby: why does anyone need to hide on a games site?

The question is, why does anyone feel the urge to peek? And don't give me the argument of "finding out whether someone is actively playing me" - I've refuted that argument already. You cannot determine whether I'm actively playing you based on the last page I viewed - so what makes you think you're entitled to know?

grenv: I think it must have been a joke! If governments wanted to source information from a game site (doubtful!) I very much doubt 'cloak mode' would be much protection! LOL :oD

chessmec: I couldnt disagree more! Tell me, have a look at my games, tell me, where do I live, how old am I, how much do I weigh, my political view point, my religious beliefs, whether I own pets etc etc etc etc etc
Will will find out NOTHING, unless I choose to tell you! :o)

chessmec: you are joking right? Goverments are building up databases on what games I play? No wonder they miss the important stuff. I notice you are not on cloak, so it must have been a joke.

Lamby: OK ... but it seems that you are behind the times.

chessmec: sounds like paranoia to me! Im happily playing fun games & I dont care whatsoever who wants to watch! :o)

Lamby: why does anyone need to hide on a games site?

all over the world governments are building up and rising supervising systems, looking what people do, collecting data. and they always say: "if you do not have to hide something, you must not worry".
thats always this * argument ... they say it is against terrorism ... but it is against us all.


*word deleted

plaintiger: That's right, because fencer is broadcasting everyone's address, telephone number, Social Security Numbers and bank account numbers. Better hide all that by going into cloak mode.

Watch out behind you!

The thing is, if you are interested in seeing what people are doing, chances are they are interested in seeing what you are doing too.....therefore if you hide yourself, explain why should you still have the privilege of seeing what others, who aren't hidden, are doing?
Besides it's been said so many times, why does anyone need to hide on a games site?

sheesh - yes, let's outlaw privacy altogether!

these people who hate the cloak mode should all work for the u.s. department of "homeland security."

maybe they already do.

grenv: thanks for the lesson, hopefully i wont need to spell it again but you never know :)

Too much talk about cloak mode. Useless ridiculous feature.

Andersp, take note of the spelling. You may need it next time someone talks about scaredy, er i mean cloak, mode

I believe he said somewhere that a bunch of stuff is coming tomorrow. Or did I dream it??

I think Fencer should use his time for REAL features instead of making "celebrities" happy

May be we could suggest for exhibitionists the opposite, a setting for everyone can see what are they doing, including a webcam

Have to use a word i cant spell :)..cant say i hate the cloak feture but in my opinion its the most redicolous (sp) feature on Brain King ..sorry BBW,,i know you love it

plaintiger: Some people REALLY hate the cloak feature, and feel that no one should be able to use the cloak feature.

So they wanted to hide themselves from the prople that use the cloak since they now wanted to be hidden (??)

So basicly, if you use the cloak feature where people can't see what you are doing - you can no longer see what they are doing either.

plaintiger: This was requested here by more than one person and implemented. of course you could just uncloak yourself whenever you need to spy, which can't be done in reverse.

why does cloaking oneself now cloak everyone else? it seems to me a person should be able to choose whether they're cloaked or not, but if i cloak myself, everyone now appears cloaked *to* me. that's not right...

Chessmaster1000: I want to add 20 new chess variants, including Cannibal Chess.

reza: I think even better is not to start five different games in five different windows. I think something like this will do better:

after you mak eyour move and decide to finish it, you are taken to a second game in which you play your turn if it is yours and if not, to another one in which it's your turn and if in non of the other games of the match it is your turn, you simply choose to do whatever else you want to do.

grenv: I agree. It's a very good idea.

frolind: Hear hear. Start all the games at once. Brilliant. Wish I'd thought of it.

I guess this must be far away from the philosophy of Brainking (or not), but is there any possibility this site to have any live-games option in the future? My personal opinion is that this would make Brainking MUCH more perfect and attractive........!

How about an option to start the least number of required games in the x wins/points/games match at once?
So when the match starts, we will get x games at once. And as the games are ending, start new ones if the remaining games are less than the least number of required games to finish the match.
Example 5 wins match:
-Start 5 new games
-Player A wins a game. Score is 1-0. The remaining 4 games might be enough to end the match, so no new game started.
-Player B wins a game. score is 1-1. The 3 remaining games are not enough to end the match, so one new game is started.
-etc.


This suggestion is of course not suitable to the ordinary backgammon matches(with doubling, gammons and backgammons) which are planned.

playBunny: Public teaching games w/ configurable kibbitz gets my vote too!

Here is a very interesting variation of Chess. Cannibal Chess! This is not the game described at Chesvariants.com but another one that Karl Scherer designed. I prefer highly the Cannibal of Karl than that at Chessvariants.com........It's a kind of Loop Chess but it's way more complicated and fun..........!

Rules:
Just like Chess (with checkmate )except:

Every piece can eat (capture) any friendly piece except its King. The King can also capture any friendly piece.

The captured piece it's removed from the board and it's available for playing it anywhere in the board from the next turn.

So simple..........! For anyone that has Zillions of Games registered here is a link that you can download Cannibal and some other variations:
http://www.angelfire.com/ultra/georgecm9000/Zillionsgames.html

I believe that what is between Brainking and perfection is the lack of : Real(pro) Backgammon, Cannibal Chess, Fevga, Progressive Chess, GO, Maharajah-changed somehow.......(Perhaps some more.....)

Wait for Monday, there will be a batch of improvements.

SueQ: I'll second that. having just been treated to a membership by a friend I've been receiving form-letter invitations to fellowships and they give me no incentive to join because they are so impersonal.

It would be nice to have the option to add a message when sending out a fellowship invite.

I think it might be useful to have some links to translators - perhaps in Help or FAQ?

I use the free and excellent value for money ;-) http://translation.paralink.com/. It handes English, Spanish, French, German and Russian (which is very helpful at VogClub) and, strangely, English->Portuguese and Italian->Russian but not vice versa. No Czech, I'm afraid.

BIG BAD WOLF: what about profile pages in more languages?

Since we are growing with new users speaking new languages - it would be nice to somehow mark what languages a person can speak / understand in their profile.

I was going to write to someone new the other day, and would be nice to know if they can understand English or not.

If there were a tickbox to make chat within a game public, games could be played in a "teaching mode" whereby the players could talk about their moves and anybody viewing the game could learn from the chat.

Version II of Teaching Mode would allow kibbitzers to contribute their own thoughts and queries.

Version III would allow the game players to control who kibbitzes and who gets to stay quiet.

Version IV .... lol.

If the idea proves workable then eventually there could be Learn The Game archives which could be browsed by beginners and players looking to improve. These games could perhaps be ranked by a "Level of play" and "Was this instructive?" voting panel somewhere on the game page.

Fencer: Wow. Speedy reply!. Thanks. :-)

playBunny: Yes, it might be useful, especially when the number of supported languages is growing. There will be two new languages released on Monday :-)

Can we have another discussion board please Fencer? Call it English or Language or something and then we can take our quibbles and queries about wording and grammar there instead of filling up Features Requests (of all places, lol). :-)

---------------------------------
However
, having said that, I feel it's legitimate (if slightly cheeky) to piggyback some grammatical discussion on this genuine feature request. Here, then, is a reply to Reza's query about my use of "Logging out".

---------------------------------
Merha
ba Reza,

Reza said:
According to you yourself, it is wrong to say "logging out" because it is an instantaneous thing so continuous tenses don't apply.

But in your own message you say : "Logging out is an instantaneous thing so continuous tenses don't apply."

Lol. Indeed the phrase is "logging out" and perhaps I shouldn't post messages when I'm past bedtime and drooping. ;-)

Strictly speaking the process of logging out does cover more than an instant of time. It takes the time from clicking the [Logout] link to getting the guest-login main page back from BrainKing. But that generally takes only a second or two, perhaps more on occasion. For the user who is logging out (;-)) it's momentary. (And now that I've thought of it, that's the word I should have used, or said "near instantaneous").

But from Brainking's point of view (and thus any users querying the person's status) it is instantaneous. As soon as the site receives the log out request it's as good as done because it will take mere microseconds. If a user sees "logging out" as someone's last action then the system knows and it's already happened - they've logged out. So that's why I say a continuous tense doesn't apply.


So how come you use a continuous tense?

Well, apart from the fact that "instantaneous" was not the perfect word, there's no more succinct way of saying it that I can think of. I could have said "the process of being logged out" or "What happens after clicking the [logout] button", or any number of phrases. "Logging out" is short and sweet.

Perhaps another way of looking at it is that "Logging out" is the name of the procedure - therefore it's a noun not a verb.


And secondly, I think it's just like you're reporting something, a fact, to for example, to the police.

If they ask you "What were you doing?" you say "Looking out through the window."

You are no longer doing that but you say it because at that time you were!

Yes, looking out of windows demands "ing" when you look for a decent period of time; it's continuous. If you had said "I looked out the window" then you'd be expressing a look of much shorter duration (though this time not literally instantaneous, or even near it, because humans don't work that fast - judgement must always be used regarding where you divide the momentary and the continuous).


I think it's quite the same here. Even if the last action of a player has been done ten years ago, I think it is right to say "logging out" since at that time, he/she has actually been logging out!

It depends on what you are trying to express. Let's not use "logging out" because of its momentary (and, here, contentious) nature; we'll use eating.

"I was eating an icecream" puts us back into a past time frame so you can imagine being there looking at me eating. "I ate an icrecream" refers back to that time but keeps our point of view in any subsequent time. If you imagine me throwing the wrapper away or wiping my lips or running for the bus a year later, etc, then you'd say "Yes, you did" - you be maintaining the future-looking-back viewpoint and the whole act of eating would effectively be treated as a single point. If you were to imagine me eating that icecream then you'd be putting yourself back into that point and viewing it as a sequence; and so you'd say "yes, you were eating".

Not knowing the grammar I can't give you labels for this but it's about the time frame from which you view the action. Those who have actually studied grammar should be able to explain these ideas better. That would seem to be anyone not schooled in Britain, lolol - [joke, folks, feel free to argue it; I won't].

Hope this clears things up somewhat.

I'm quite happy to explore other English issues with you so feel free to ask. As you can see, I put some effort into this, so no more than, say, 10 per day, lol. If Fencer gives us an English Language board we can do it there, which could be fun.
:-))

---------------------------------

And my first post there could be about one of the most common spelling mistakes in the gaming context.
"It's lose the game, not loose! Loose trousers lose dignity. Loose language loses respect. Loose play loses games."

---------------------------------
Fen
cer: For some reason, no matter how many times I edited and updated this message, it still appeared with arbitrary line breaks - such as in the word However in the second paragraph.

Bry: It doesn't work with team tournaments.

Jason: when i play a move in the team tourney it goes onto a move in the next normal game, not the next team tourney.?

Bry: Its working for me bry

The "move and go to next game of this tournament" doesnt seem to be working for me?

furbster: Don't I know it!! :)

Any idea how long Fencer?

Yes.

i hope so jules, that'd be quite good fun to challenge other teams in certain games etc!

Are we going to be able to one day again challange other F/s to team Tournes?

If we do get the ability to stop receiving Fellowship messages, I hope we will be able to choose which fellowships we don't want to receive messages from, I'd rather not see a "blanket" blocking. Some Big Bosses send out more messages than others.
Maybe put an option on the fellowship's main page to "block messages from this fellowship".. Personally, I doubt I'd block any. But I understand people wanting to, but I'd hate to see people in my fellowship block all messages just because they get sick of some of them..