coan.net: Of course not. I don't see any bad banners here. Furthermore, I have three computers and none of them is infected by any spyware or adware and all of them are used to test BrainKing pages (which means that people who observe "something strange" are obviously doing something wrong).

Regardless if people want to accept it or not, banner ads can contain spyware. I have tested this, and reformatted a hard drive, installed the program in question and as soon as banner ads appeared, the virus came and my firewall program and anti-virus programs lit up like a Christmas tree. This particular one was so malicious that the only way to stop it was to disable IE. The following day a friend from Thailand PM'd me with the same problem and the same symptoms, same virus.

I am only saying this to show that it is possible. In this case, it's not as severe. It appears to only be a redirect, but keep your eye open. This could be just a test for something worse down the road. Also, banner ads do not represent the site. Fencer cannot do anything to completely stop viruses from leaking through them. If you absolutely do not want any chances of lost data or spyware, then backup any important files and if the paid service here removes banners, you won't get them.

If you are like me, you will fight these nasties as they come and learn the system. If anyone thinks they are infected, feel free to contact me and I can try to help you further or send you to the right people that know more than I do.

grenv: I agree with you. My PC had been on, but idle while I was out of town for the weekend. BrainKing was my first site visited with IE upon my return. And www.errorprotector.com welcomed me very shortly thereafter. Pure coincidence? I don't think so.

Fencer: Are the banners hosted on BK or on third party hosts? Can the advertiser change the banner after you approved it? Or the server be reconfigured to redirect to certain pages when certain files are requested?
anybody: If it really is a banner on BrainKing causing it, can you identify what banner(s) were present on the page when you were redirected?
How come there's only a few people complaining about it when there are thousands seeing these adds? Maybe there's some other external factor involved (like having spyware or addware on the computer, as has been suggested already).

(I don't have adds activated and really don't plan to, so I won't be answering any of these questions )</b>

pauloaguia: All banners are hosted on BrainKing and nobody can change them after they are published.

The banners are .swf banners. This means any frame in the "shockwave flash" movie file can contain a redirect. They can be programmed to go off at different times.

jadarite: If it is true, how come that I wasn't redirected anywhere although I always see all banner ads for testing purposes?

Fencer, I am only speculating, but you can do a lot with .swf files (which is why you don't see many of them allowed on community sites). If you are really concerned, I recommend you not use .swf banners and only use animated .gif files.

jadarite: I don't think there would be a serious threat if we use swf banners. Who doesn't like them, can install an ad blocker and never would be bothered with them anymore.

Fencer: Whoa! That attitude concerns me.

Why would you not be concerned about malicious software being hosted and distributed by BrainKing? More specifically, Concerned about the perception of BK's user base.

Several users have had "suspect" problems on BrainKing. To tie this in to "Feature Requests"...I suggest making a Blog entry something like: ...with all the testing and approval process of banners...no security issues found...Continue to research and monitor banner behaviors....

As opposed to just saying...use an "Ad Blocker".

Summertop: I am concerned but I have also no reason to believe there is any malicious software on BrainKing. As you have said, several users have had "suspect" problems but it's not proven that our site is responsible for that. And using a good anti-spyware software is a good practice because there are many sites where a spyware distribution is really proven.

Fencer: My ad blocker when in use makes BK go funny, the icons don't show and much of the basic things (like dice in dice poker) just show up as red boxes so I can't use it.

... Is that a general problem or can you recomend an ad blocekr that does not interfere with BK?

Jules: How about this one?

Jules: In Opera you can choose to (un)block only specific content if you want. Just click the page, choose "Block Content" and happily select the pictures / flash / whatever you don't want to see.

Call this "tough love", the way to deal with malicious files at whatever level is to let them come in and that way you can know how to remove them. You can download software and plugins. That will not deal with the files, but hopefully avoid them. What happens is when Norton or another well known service finds new viruses online, they make upgrades to their programs. This is why you will never have a complete anti-virus program, because the virus programmers out there are busy making a new one that can get around the latest prevention methods (anti virus program, ad-blockers, email scanning, etc...)

If you can't stop the viruses from coming in, and you are scared at the notion of letting them in, please consider getting a "HIPS" program, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusion-prevention_system

http://www.techsupportalert.com/security_HIPS.htm (I have used Cyberhawk, second one listed, and now that I found this link I think I'll check out a few others)

A firewall I use and like is Comodo Personal Firewall http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/

When I had my experience with a virus earlier this year, both Comodo and another firewall I was testing immediately alerted me when the main files of the virus were re-installed and starting to execute them. So it gives you plenty of time to reboot in safe-mode and deal with them. Obviously, if you have an older virus hit you, and you have an anti-virus program, it will not only do the same but remove them for you (sometimes with a reboot necessary). With the HIPS program, it goes a few steps further and learns your behavior to determine intrusions.

Fencer: A redirect in a banner ad isn't strictly speaking spyware and is not detected by any of my spyware programs.

Errorprotector is most likely leaked through your Active X controls in IE as evidenced here:
http://www.cb7tuner.com/vbb/showthread.php?p=965040 "C:\Documents and Settings\******\Local Settings\Temp\Install-Errorprotector-Free.exe ->"

Your spyware programs wouldn't detect it until it executes. Often times, it will install other files into the C:/ (right there, or it will install them in your windows system folder). If you are clean and sort by date, the nasties will be at the bottom and usually with some oddball file name like "sk239dkdm22e.exe"

PLEASE, can we now move this non feature request thread to the Computer discussion board ( http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=52 )where it is definitely now more appropriate. Thanks so much!

I won't be posting more on this issue here since rod03801 has provided an alternative link. I have added it as a favourite board, so post there. You can also message me for further info.

Could the "Number of games on MainPage" setting affect Ponds and pending invitations as well?
That is, if I set it to 5, then I'd like to view only 5 Ponds on the MainPage and then, if I wanted to, the (more) link would show me the rest...

I would like to see the Tournaments and Waiting games have the concept of "New" like discussion boards. That way, I could go to those pages and see which ones were added since last time. Also, in the games menu, next to the "Waiting games" and "Tournaments" links...instead of showing the number of entries, show the number of NEW entries.

This would help advertise new tournaments and games. Currently, I have to periodically go check to see what is there. I have to wade through hundreds of entries each time.

If I could log in and see...Oh, there are new tournaments. Then I could go look at just those new ones to see if I want to sign up for any.

Summertop: Well in the tournaments page, you can choose "Created in last XX days" - to for example, see all the tournaments created in the last day.

I like being able to look at my trends and changes in BKR - The graph is very nice - each block showing the progess made or lost with a win or loss.... how bout a pop up line that tells you the opponents name or the game link - like when you move the mouse over a tournament link it show the current standings - this could show the game link so you know the opponent and can jump to the game that either cost you big time or pushed you out of a slump....

redfrog: Like making each dot on the graph a link to the game involved....

emmett: exactly

coan.net: yeah...but I would still have to go to the tournament page "periodically" and do a search. I would even have to remember when the last time I checked to calculate how many days its been since I checked....

On our main page our Favorite Boards are in alphabetical order, but the Fellowship ones below are in date order they were created.
Could we have a way to set the order of the Fellowship ones. Most of us are in alot of Fellowships, but probably only support a few of the ones we are in on a regular basis. It would be nice to put these at the top of the list.
Something like the little arrows in settings for doing the Context Menu would be ideal

Do not you think RANDOM should be the default color when inviting someone?

mangue:

Gordon Shumway: Maybe a setting for that, as I usually prefer to create my invitations with the "second player" color, so my opponent can make the first move right away.

pauloaguia: I agree.

But random is the best for everyone, if fairness is truly a factor. I actually will only play people lately if it is random. That's what is good about team tournaments. It feels random. I wonder when we'll have another team tournament

Feature request: Regular team tournaments.

emmett: Random as default would be common sense , then if people wish to have and advantage or not they can still choose.

Team Tournaments, i asked Fencer a couple of weeks weeks ago and he said , but agreed they should be regular

mangue:

The new games page for Fellowships is a nice idea, although most people that belong to Fellowships, normally only ever goto the Fellowship Discussion board.
How about having a line just under the DB heading saying something like:
Fellowship Waiting games (xx)

It may attract more people to use it then if its on screen all the time

Can anyone tell me if is possible create one only tournament with free prize and prize with an entry fee? I never saw that and think would be interesting. For example, a random tournament with 1 year rook as prize, but for inscription is necessary 50 brains. I think would be a great idea.

It just came to my mind a simple way to avoid the timeouts for those rare situations when vacation days simple just don't do (other because of a prolonged absence or because you're playing against a pawn that had an unforseen situation and doesn't have autovacation)

The simple answer (at least in my mind) is to allow your opponent a postponement. When it's your opponent's turn to play there would be a new link by the game page that says (give your opponent a postponement of XX days for this game). If you clicked it, and confirmed your action, the deadline for your opponent would suddenly be added of XX days (for that game and move alone). Onde the player moves again, time settings are applied as usual. I think this isn't hard to implement with the current timeout protocols that already exist.

In the FAQ entry that would be associated with this feature write something about how this is an exception and people shouldn't count on their opponent providing an extension for them, they should always expect the initial time ocntract to be obbeyed, etc, etc, etc, so that people don't come and rant like "you could have given me an extension and you didn't - you're mean" sort of thing.


This would certainly help in those cases where I think a game is going far too interesting for it to be solved with an unglorious timeout.

!Undertaker!: the entry fee is used to form the prize - the more players enter the tournament the bigger the prize. The chances of a particular player to win are smaller but the reward if (s)he does is much bigger.
The way you're suggesting, the more people enter a tournament, the less the chances are of winning and that 1 year rook prize or whatever seems to be further out of reach... Especially considering you still need to spend something to enter that tournament - it doesn't seem as attractive to me somehow...

But of course, that's just my personal oppinion... others may think otherwise.

Sure this has been brought up before, but is still a problem
Until we have a system that would allow byes in Elimination Tournaments could we have some other way to manipulate multi-games Tournaments so all (or at least most) that enter can still play.

2 ways of doing this i can see:

Either when setting up the Tournament each game can be set to its own number of players 4, 8, 16 etc... which i would imagine would take a lot of programing, BUT would work better & fairer

OR

The ability to go into the Tournament and edit the number after the deadline. In other words if the popular games (Hyper, Back, Ludo etc...) get say 8 players they would start as normal.
If we could then be able to edit the entry number to 4, would the system then start those with 4 players ?

Only problem i can see is what would happen if we had 5, 6 or 7 players
I guess we could delete people, which is not good really, but then neither is getting people to enter a Tournament they will not get enough players in certain games to play.
Just because these people play the less popular games, why should they lose out ?

(or i guess we create separate Tournaments for every game, that a lot of work for 103 games)

Please can we have a system that uses byes so everyone can have a game

Any chance the tables with data can have an ID attribute Fencer? Like <table id="tournament_list">

It would make it so much easier to perform some data mining on BKs pages.

I'm thinking especially about fellowships and torunaments pages, since thoseare the ones I'm interested about right now, and also where we have less statistics on BK. But I guess it wouldn't hurt to extend it to the whole site...

I'd like Ludo to be added to the auto-pass game pick list thingy.

plaintiger: ... and ani-chess, and all the checkers variations too...

pauloaguia: both those games are on my autopass program. http://www.mctrivia.com/autoplayer/ but I agree it would be nice to see them on the site itself.

pauloaguia: 100% agree, but those would need what we called "auto-play", automatic play when there is only one legal move. It is logically perfectly equivalent to auto-pass, but psychologically different - which is probably the reason why it is not implemented here :-(

nabla: good point.
But I remember Fencer saying once that he planned to implement both. Probably it's not a pshycological matter but a matter of Fencer's time

pauloaguia: If you could find where he said that, it would give some hope to all auto-play fans !

Fencer, could we have a way of telling which invites we have where.
I have some new games waiting in the brainking Waiting Games area and some in Fellowships, but have no way of knowing which ones are where, they are all together at the bottom of the page.
So dont know which have been accepted from where, so dont know where to create more

Maybe put the Fellowship name to the right of the tick box on the Main page or put our Fellowship invites underneath the Waiting games in the Fellowship

I see some players have a lot of referred users and some of those have never played on the BrainKing.
I tried to get a referred user and created a new game using " Type the e-mail of the person you want to invite to BrainKing to play this game with".
I play chess with her now, but I don´t see my referred user, if I look My profile.
Is this feature throw "Send invitation" only? Is this way better?

Jaak: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you only get that person as a referred user if they buy a membership. Has this person bought a membership?

nodnarbo: No, I believe there are two concepts: referred users and referals (I thinks those are the terms in the english version).
- Referred users are just users you invited to the site, and register, doesn't matter if they become paid members or not. You can see them on the profile of the user who referred them (like in this list, for instance, where you can see one of the user's last action was at the same time of the first login so didn't even do anything, never played here).
- Referrals are when paid members that were invited by you eventually registered. These count for Brains.

Jaak: The first ones are guessed based on the link they followed when (s)he first came to the site. If that link has any reference to your userid, and (s)he register on the site, then that user will become one of your referred users. Probably when you invite them to a game, that link doesn't have your userId? You'll have to wait on a reply from Fencer on this one...

nabla: Unfortunately it was nowhere public... he sent it to me in a PM when I asked him what exactly was intended by the feature to find the best way for me to translate it to portuguese... I just found that conversation in a PM, not a DB.

So, before I'm accused of violating the UserAggreement for bringing private conversations to public, I'll just shut up about it...

But I'll leave my feature request for AutoMove to be implemented too (or AutoPlay or whatever you want to call it)