Benefits Woman...

This REALLY annoyed me, taken from The Sun

SHE sits surrounded by top-of-the-range flat-screen tellies, laptop computers, games consoles and two high-tech gaming chairs.

But single mum Pam Bainbridge hasn't earned a penny to pay for her luxury life - the bill has been footed by TAXPAYERS.

Mother-of-three Pam, 33, hasn't worked for 13 years and is proud she has managed to save from her benefits to pay for new bikes, a £1,600 Golf car and Sky TV throughout the house.

Sitting on her three-piece leather sofa with her chihuahua pooch Milo dressed in designer dog clothes, she says: "Everything I own is thanks to the money I have earned in benefits and I am not ashamed to admit that.

"I realise there will be people reading this who feel furious that I haven't got a job but I am not ashamed.

"I work really hard as a full-time mum and consider my benefits to be my wages.

"When you have three kids to look after, you cannot clock off at 5pm every day.

"I don't have the option to come home from work and put my feet up - my whole life is a job. In fact, I bet that people on £50,000 a year don't work anywhere near as hard as me."

Although Pam feels her life is tough, she in no way regrets having children Scott, 13, Chloe, ten and seven-year-old Jack by two different men.

She says: "If people stopped having kids, then the world wouldn't continue. We all have a responsibility to have children.

"All my kids are well behaved and never cause problems. They have everything they need in life and I try to make sure they never go without."

Every week, Pam's rent and council tax for her three-bedroom semi in Carlisle are paid for by the state.

She then gets £35 in income support, £137 child tax credits and £45 child benefit, and recently started receiving £35 in child support. Her children get free school dinners and each term she pockets £85 to pay for school uniforms.

Pam also gets free prescriptions and glasses if the kids need them. Excluding her rent and council tax, her benefits total £252 a week.

She says: "I am very good with money and have been able to save for the things that I want in life.

"For Christmas, I managed to save £1,000, which I am really proud about. With that, I was able to buy my kids top-of-the-range trainers, games consoles and new bikes.

"It felt good to be able to save money and I am proud of myself for spending my benefits wisely."

Twice a year Pam must attend a meeting with the Benefits Agency, who try to convince her she would be £50 a week better off if she got a full-time job on the minimum wage.

Luckily

She says: "I tell them they are talking rubbish. If I was working I would have to pay rent and council tax and would never get to see my kids. I don't have a husband to bring home the money and I really want to be a stay-at-home mum.

"Luckily, the Government allows me to do that."

Pam, who last worked when she was 20, adds: "I never liked school and I avoided it whenever I could. I used to sneak home when my mum was at work. All I dreamed of was being a wife and mother.

"Even when I saw the careers counsellor at school, I told her all I wanted in my future was to be a mum. She was absolutely horrified."

Pam left school at 15 to do seasonal work in hotels. After three years she went to college to study nursery care. But a year into the course she fell pregnant with Scott.

That is when she started receiving benefits. She says: "I was thrilled to be a mum and happy to apply for benefits so I could stay with my baby.

"My own mother worked very hard as an admin assistant and, although I love her dearly, I never felt I saw that much of her as a child.

"Benefits have given me the chance to stay with my kids and see them grow up."

After separating from Scott's dad after little more than a year with him, Pam had Chloe and Jack by another man but they split after five years.

She now gets £148 a month in maintenance from Scott's dad but nothing from Chloe and Jack's father.

She says: "Each time I had another child I received more money from the state. It felt great to be in charge of my life and my own money - it's like a warm security blanket.

"I have peace of mind that, no matter if I am sick, I will still get my money."

And she insists: "No one can call me a benefit skank or scrounger because I am very careful with the money. I make sure there is enough to pay my direct debits, which total around £470 a month.

That goes on gas, electricity, water, the TV licence, Sky, BT Vision, credit card, house and life insurance, BT phone and internet, catalogue payments and my mobile contract."

Criticism

Last year, Pam returned to college but dropped out after two months with stress and glandular fever.

She says: "I found it too stressful bringing up three children and trying to study throughout the day.

"I probably will have to return to work when my kids grow up as my benefits will be cut. But I am a single parent and it is my view that we should not have to work. In my opinion, single parents aren't secure employees."

Pam's views will horrify taxpayers. But she says: "People constantly think they can have a go at me because I am on benefits, but I refuse to be ashamed of my lifestyle.

"It is not my fault benefits are available to me. I would be a fool not to take them and I feel proud I am able to save and spend wisely.

"I'd never have a child just to get a council house. Teenagers who do that are really wasting taxpayers' money and it's disgraceful."

But Pam is now pushing for a bigger house than her three-bed semi. She insists: "I have three kids and need a room for each child. I've been pushing the DSS for a bigger place and will continue to ask, no matter how many times.

"Benefits are offered to me and I don't know why anyone in their right mind would turn them down. They allow me to be a great mum and be with my children every single day.

"I wouldn't want to live any other way."

See what I mean?

Prison Break: Conspiracy

I knew it would happen.

They made a PRISON BREAK GAME! OMFGWTFWOWYEAUHHHHHH!

I don't know whether to be excited or not, but I love the show (Own the complete seasons 1-4 box set) and hope that the game can do it justice.

The story takes place in Fox River, you play a company agent sent to Fox River to keep tabs on Burrows and Scofield, but as you can imagine...That doesn't happen.

Detail are sketchy at best, but here is a trailer and a few images:

Prison Break: Conspiracy Trailer

More on this as it happens.

Preorder from Amazon:

Prison Break: The Conspiracy - 360
Prison Break: The Conspiracy - PS3
Prison Break: The Conspiracy - PC

 Box Art.

MWM | Web

Olympic Gold For Great Britain!

Amy Williams, Team GB's Skeleton competitor has cleaned up at Vancouver, sliding her way to a gold medal by beating the rest of the competition by half a second!

I actually saw it live at about 2am last night, it was an incredible performance and the support she got from fans at the Sliding Centre was just amazing, the crowd went wild when she crossed that line...

Well Done Amy, your Olympic glory will be with you forever!

VAC? (Valve Anti-Cheat)

I found this on another site, I think this might have some information that you might not have known about:

"The enemy is closing in. Hordes of desperate soldiers battle their foes in a ravaged city. But one of the opposing fighters seems more nimble than others. He’s nailing his targets with ease, blowing off limbs and racking up his score. It’s as if he has X-ray eyes.

The battle is taking place in an online action game, Counter-Strike, and the nimble soldier is being controlled by an anonymous player. And he’s not playing fair. He’s using an online cheating program that increases his speed and allows him to see through walls. For Valve Software, the Bellevue, Wash.–based creator of this and other best-selling computer games such as Half-Life and Left 4 Dead, it’s not just a nuisance, it’s a real-life war. The company has discovered more than 200 000 different types of cheating programs being used by gamers online. There’s even a cheat-code black market, where downloadable cheats go for roughly US $10 a pop.

“Everyone wants to play in a secured service,” says Jason Holtman, Valve’s director of business development, “and you can’t play securely when someone’s cheating.” So now the company’s engineers are battling cheaters via Valve’s online gaming service, Steam.

Development on Steam began in 2001, and the service was launched in 2004 in conjunction with the release of the game Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. Valve founder Gabe Newell and his team originally conceived of Steam as a delivery platform for the company’s titles. As more gamers migrated online, Steam became a farm league for indie developers ( Media Molecule, maker of LittleBigPlanet, delivered its first game, Rag Doll Kung Fu, on Steam). “We always knew we wanted to support a set of games,” says Steam’s lead engineer, John Cook, one afternoon in Valve’s military green conference room, adorned with life-size models of weapons from the games.

Today Steam is a full-blown social and distribution network with more than 570 titles, 20 million subscribers, and 14 languages including Polish and Thai. After downloading the Steam client for free, gamers use it to buy and download games, participate in an online community, and receive software updates for titles they already own. At any given moment, Valve moves a staggering amount of data—40 to 80 gigabytes per second—worldwide. To maintain this, it uses roughly 200 servers in 40 countries including the United States and Russia.

But for all the innovation, Valve is engaged in a meta-game of its own—fighting the cheaters who want to exploit the system. It may seem petty to outsiders, but in the video-game industry, which, according to technology research firm NPD Group, takes in $18 billion annually, having a secure play environment is essential. “Cheating is a superserious threat,” says Cook. “Cheating is more of a serious threat than piracy.” The problem first showed up on the company’s radar in 2004, after it heard rumors that a cheater had devised a way to see through walls. “Our reaction was, we want to keep our games online as long as possible,” says Holtman, “and we couldn’t do that with this going on.”

The company combats this with its own Valve Anti-Cheat System, which a user consents to install in the Steam subscriber agreement. Cook says the software gets around antivirus programs by handling all the operations that require administrator access to the user’s machine. Periodically, the company transmits ”client challenges” to a player’s machine, running software that scans for cheat codes. The Anti-Cheat software might, for example, trigger a dormant code on the player’s machine. If the machine doesn’t send back the appropriate response, the code alerts Valve to a possible violation.

Valve also looks for changes within the player’s computer processor’s memory, which might indicate that a cheat code is running. Finding anomalies is not difficult. The company knows what series of operating code is required to run the game and can spot suspicious activity. Once code is suspected, it’s turned into an incident report, which is analyzed by Cook’s team of 16 engineers. Sometimes code is determined to be a standard privacy or security measure.

“We can see it and say, ‘Oh, that’s just antivirus software running the background,’ and flag it as okay,” says Cook. Valve keeps a directory of cheat codes and can compare new incident reports to others in its database. The team then tests out the code using copies of their own game. Once designated as a true cheat, it’s added to the database for future reference.

Valve’s Anti-Cheat software raises privacy concerns. “Any time you, as a user, allow someone to run software or a process on your system, then you’re not in control,” says Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco–based nonprofit advocacy group. But, he says, such measures are not unique. “This is an inherent issue in the gaming industry and a lot of other industries,” he says. ”It’s hackers versus these companies.”

Cook says the company is taking steps to ensure that hackers don’t exploit the Anti-Cheat software itself. “The software is constantly updated and sent down in small portions for the servers as needed,” he says, ”so hackers only get to see small portions of it running on any particular time. So while they may be able to work around pieces of it, they can never hack everything.”

Cheaters are getting more brash and crass, however, posting videos of their exploits on the Web to lure buyers. But Valve has raised its profile, too, spreading word throughout the community when cheaters get caught—just in case any bad guys don’t think it’s on the case. Cook hopes Valve can win the war by fighting its enemies with the most potent weapon of all: permanent bans. Once a cheater is found, Valve ties a product key to the Steam account so that the player can be tracked and banned from playing its games. In total, more than 20 000 cheaters have been blocked since 2002. ”No game is fully cheatproof,” says Cook, ”but we’re desensitizing people to this. Nobody wants to lose their account."

More info on Steam Here 

You can also get the following games from Amazon to use with Steam, you could even save some money! 

AvP On The Way!

Afternoon All!

My review of Aliens Vs Predator is on the way, however due to work commitments it could be another few days before it gets finished...Sorry!


In the mean time, here is a funny picture:

I Mean...Like...REALLY?!

So, here I am. Once again.

Sitting at the computer, mouse in one hand, TV remote in the other...and I'm looking down at my little brother of 12 years who was sitting on the floor of my bedroom watching TV with me, just a few minutes ago...and now he's passed out asleep, snoring like a stuck pig with nasal problems.
Cute image, I know.

Anyway, I'm wondering how kids these days manage to get through the day. Its 6:30pm (at time of writing) and he's like...bed time sleeping, fully flat out for the count!

Even the smell of his mothers spaghetti sauce failed to rouse him from his slumber.

It's not as if he's done a lot today. There's no school this week so he slept late, played in the street with his friends until lunch, helped me move some stuff into the garden shed, then went back out with his friends until about 6pm...It's not as though he's just finished a 9 hour stint at work or anything...

Perhaps Red Bull + Children would be a good thing!

Oh snap, he seems to have woken up. The sound of the shutter on my camera must have been the icing on the cake. Shame its a carrot cake.

Get Him To The Greek!

4th June, 2010.

This movie could kick some ass, all up and down this thing!

It's a co-production by Nicholas Stoller (Dir. Yes Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Jason Segal (How I Met Your Mother, Knocked Up). In my opinion these two are comic geniuses who deserve Oscars already!

The idea of the movie is that this guy called Aaron Green (Jonah Hill, Knocked Up, Superbad) works for a record company as an intern, one day he is ordered to escort a British rock star named "Aldous Snow" (Russell Brand, Forgetting Sarah Marshall...Ironically he plays the same guy in this movie too) to a concert in LA's Greek Theatre.

But of course, things aren't going to go well. It's that whole "Apatow-Rogan-Segal-Stoller" theory of mine. These guys are all friends, they all write/produce/direct and star in their buddies movies, and each one is solid gold. There's a very slim chance that I won't pee myself when watching "Get Him To The Greek", for the only fact that I have yet to be unamused by a movie from these guys.

Once again, Jun '10 is the release date, but of course...I'll remind you closer to the date ;-)

More on IMDB.

Oh, you can pre-order from Amazon! Get Him to the Greek

BioShock 2 Update Released.

Well, it's not uncommon to have a game get an update within the first few days of release. And now BS2 has had the same treatment.

Apparently the multiplayer is SCREWED right now, lag, matchmaking, all broken.

Will update soon, still trying to find some info!

Fallout: New Vegas.

I'm VERY excited about this one, Fallout 3 is one of my favourite games so I'm delighted to hear about a new game from the Fallout franchise.

Apparently, this one will build on the Fallout 3 engine...And thats where the similarities end.
There are rumours floating around that this game may have NO connections to the other Fallout games.

Personally, I was hoping for a Fallout 3 sequel, but I guess I can manage without one!

Anyway, here is all of the info I could pull from different websites about Fallout: New Vegas.

• The Brotherhood of Steel is back, but the core story revolves around the NCR and Caesar's Legion.
• SPECIAL now has descriptions - eg CHA 10 = Cult Leader, EN 1 = Basically Dead.
• Those descriptions for Strength: 10 - Hercules' Bigger Cousin 9 - Doomsday Pecs 8 - Circus Strongman 7 - Beach Bully 6 - Barrel Chested 5 - Average Joe 4 - Lightweight 3 - Doughy Baby 2 - Beached Jellyfish 1 - Wet Noodle
• You get a Vault 21 jumpsuit from the doc who revives you, along with a pistol and a Pip Boy 3000.
• Weapons can be modified, but modifications only have positive results. The magazine implies you won't need to make a choice between different mods, because they won't be mutually exclusive.
• And a little later the magazine contradicts itself by writing that adding a larger magazine increases reload times.
• Every weapon has a special attack, not just the golf club. It seems that Fore! does not mean groin shots are back for every weapon.
• Guns have different knockback amounts, pistols don't do much, shotguns blast people away.
• There's a town-specific reputation, and Obsidian has 'hinted' that the reputation will impact endings.
• Karma has been overhauled, tracking the factions and ideologies that you agree with.
• Nightkin are back, as blue-skinned Super Mutants who've gone schizophrenic through Stealth Boy use. They attack you while cloaked, deactivating cloak at the last minute to hit you with a club.
• The Tabitha situation can also be resolved by convincing Tabitha to revolt against the other Super Mutants.
• Helios One is not only a power plant, but also the location of the controls of a solar weapon developed by Poseidon Energy which you can employ yourself.
• You can now choose the main character's age.

As you can see, this could be the making of something amazing. More on this one when it happens. This game is like...pre-pre-pre alpha testing (ie they haven't even MADE the game yet), so it's gonna be a long time in waiting, apparently autumn 2010 is the estimated release date. But we know better than to trust the first published release date.

REVIEW: BioShock 2

**WARNING - THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS**

Well, the time has come. BioShock 2 is now a few days old. And my god has it made a good impression so far!

IGN gave it a MetaScore of 91/100, Modern Warfare 2 only scored 4 points higher. The overall score from MetaCritic was 89/100, based on 12 different reviews and metascores from different people/websites.

Now, onto gameplay.

In general, things are the same in Rapture; no silly matrix style ninja fighting...you point and shoot (or throw a plasmid) then run the hell away as fast as you can!

The controls have been slightly modified from BioShock, but these can all be rebound to the old keys if you wish to do so (something I did, just like MW2).

BioShock 2 is still running on the Unreal 2.5 engine, with elements of the Unreal 3.0 engine; just like the original. 

The main difference in BioShock 2 is that this time, it was designed to work on a PC as well as on a console. BioShock 1 (PC Version) was a port of the Xbox 360 version, which meant lots of bugs/glitches/crashes that were never really fixed (BS1 was only ever updated to version 1.1 because 2K Games started BS2 development soon after the release of BS1).

Story time kids,

the idea this time round is that you are a prototype Big Daddy, the first one ever created that was forever 'linked' to a Little Sister. 

However, you pissed off the wrong woman and eventually she caught up with you and made you pay, by making you blowing your own brains out.

Game Over? I don't think so, you wake up on New Years Eve 1969 (10 years after the events of BioShock 1) and discover that there is much more to the situation than you thought!

Now you need to work out how and why you survived, and what you need to do to save the day.

That's all of the story that I'll share with you, I really wouldn't want to spoil it (and honestly I'm only about 2 hours into the game, so I don't even know how it ends yet!).

Changes from BioShock? Yes. Lots.

First (and best one), Dual weapon and plasmid - No more hitting RMB to switch between the two, you can wield both and really kick the living daylights out of everything in sight.

Textures - Much dirtier, more grungy and nasty looking. Remember, its been 10 years since BS1, the place with filthy back then, so imagine what its like now?...Yeah, not nice, looks way cool though!

Gameplay - Seems much more fluid, more dynamic. Levels seem to flow together a lot better than the prequel.

Music - The sound of BioShock 1 was amazing, the music was unsurpassed, until now. The music timing in this game is beyond belief, when you first spot a Big Sister sitting on a rock out in the sea the tone of the music drops and as you get closer to 'her' the sudden change and burst of loud music actually makes you sit there and say "Woah..." as she turns towards you and backflips off the rock and swims out of sight. Breathtaking. On another note, I purchased the special edition of BS2 yesterday, I have no intentions of ever opening it...But it does contain a CD with the entire soundtrack of BioShock 2, and a specially made vinyl record with a few musical pieces from the game on. I really want to open that and dust off the record player, but I must resist...for now! 

In short, everything that has changed, works beautifully. Even the new hacking system which I first struggled to get used to is now one of my favourite parts of the game.

Something has to be said about the Multiplayer aspect of BioShock 2.

Personally, I'm not impressed.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea. But I think they've gone about it wrong. 

Rather than sticking to the standard, renamed-Team Deathmatch, Capture-The-Flag, Domination and Free-For-All modes; they should have made a multiplayer mode where YOU can live in Rapture, have a profession, NPC's and PvP during the Civil War, think of a Fallout 3 MMO Hybrid, with added sea water, and you're getting there. Would have been amazing in my opinion.

Honestly though, I'm not playing BioShock 2 for the multiplayer, granted I may play with my fellow MWM members from time-to-time, but I won't be doing so off the bat. BioShock 2 singleplayer will be my primary choice in Rapture-fuelled carnage for the foreseeable future, but who knows...they might update and improve the multiplayer! 

Hope you enjoyed my review, if you're interested in purchasing BioShock 2, your best bet is Steam, No DVD's to lose and you can use the Steam application to keep in touch with your friends while you play.

Don't forget, BioShock 2 requires some fairly decent hardware, so check your PC will meet the requirements below BEFORE you buy, Steam do not offer refunds if the games you buy will not work on your PC.

BioShock 2 Minimum System Requirements:

• OS: Windows XP (SP2+), Vista, Windows 7
• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3800+ 2.4Ghz or better, Intel Pentium 4 530 3.0Ghz Processor or better
• Memory: 2GB
• Graphics: NVIDIA 7800GT 256MB graphics card or better, ATI Radeon X1900 256MB graphics card or better
• DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c
• Hard Drive: 11GB Free Uncompressed Space
• Sound: 100% DirectX 9.0C compliant sound card or onboard sound device

Thats all for now folks. Come back next time for Aliens Vs Predator!

-TheDillusion

(Link Plug: MWM | Xfire | Steam )

Poll RESULTS!

Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll!

My next review (After BioShock 2) will be Aliens Vs Predator!

See you all soon, my BS2 download is 94% finished, so I'll be away for the forseeable future ;-)

-Dilly.

BioShock 2, Countdown has BEGUN!

Thats right folks, not long now until BioShock 2 will hit our living rooms and plunge us all back to Rapture for another bout of ADAM fuelled carnage.

Now, if you want the game, but don't have a pre-order from Steam (currently £26.99 with 10% discount) or with a game store (Like HMV, GameStation etc...) Then honestly, your best bet is online retailers.

Amazon is pretty good for Games and general "tech" stuff, and personally I prefer Amazon over eBay now due to all of their "paperwork". But that's another post for another day!

Heres a link to Amazon's listing of BioShock 2, it's the US version, Amazon Associates doesn't realise I'm in England :P