pianoknight

Remember when games in general were completed BEFORE they were released? Now we get rushed-to-market product riddled with bugs that are addressed in future DLC ($$$).

It's like buying a car without a transmission. "Oh, you wanted to get into SECOND gear? There's an optional purchase for that."

Yeah, I'm guessing if it gets removed, it'll get targeted by Symantec or McAfee, etc., as a malicious site and taken down for distributing malware.  Looks like there isn't much of a real threat to the theft of copyrighted work.

Still, good reminder to make sure that you're up to date with antivirus and malware detection software.  I'm slightly biased towards Symantec/Norton because I've seen how they go about malware detection, but there are plenty of good (and free or free-ish) alternatives out there.

Looks like the site claims to have an Australia address, which probably makes it that much more frustrating to hang him on violations of US/CAN copyright laws.  Further, the original site was registered from a Moscow IP.

The address and phone number number on the listed on the site are confirmed to be fake.  Their social media feeds are littered with porn and links to malware.  And further, it seems that a few users have tried to "buy" something using disposable accounts, yet the site never asks for billing details or provides any kind of confirmation of a purchase.  Seems that this might be a malware site and they're using something as maddening as copyright infringement to drive traffic to the page.  If that's the truth, than it's eerily brilliant in a way.

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/07/08/creepy-website-is-stealing-images-selling-them-as-posters

http://modmad.tumblr.com/post/124825715490/attention-the-whole-wallpart-thing-seems-to-be

http://www.thephotoforum.com/threads/website-stealing-and-selling-images.386416/page-2

Yeah, I suspect yesterdays removal was probably due to complaints or domain registration issues.  My concern wasn't so much that he's operating a website selling things, but rather that he's claiming the site to be secured by Symantec, when I'm fairly sure it's not.  If you're gonna steal other people's artwork and sell, why would you fork over large amounts of cash to a Fortune 500 software company for their certificate?  Answer: you don't, you'll just pirate that like you pirate your stolen goods.

If Symantec finds out that he's not a legitimate customer but is defrauding people into thinking his site is secure, they'll probably send him a nice cease & desist letter.  In other words, it's not gonna stop him from selling stolen art today, but maybe if there are enough complaints and C&D letters to his host or ISP, they'll consider permanently removing the site.

Also, it's amazing that anyone would ever buy something from this site.  It's so stupidly shoddy.  I would NOT be surprised at all to find that anyone who's bought something from his site later had their credit card information stolen as well.

Did some talking with Symantec.  Looks like Wallpart has been taken down, at least temporarily.  SYMC folks have added them to a watch list to see if it crops back up.

Side note - their website has a "Norton Checked" emblem that seems to just be a copy/paste of the actual logo from another site.  I worked for Symantec for 7 years and would be pretty surprised if this page has legitimate user authentication or SSL certification.  On a side note, I'm sending this page to some former coworkers in the case that they somehow ARE certified, so Symantec can drop them.

If you look at the logo, they should Visa, Mastercard and AmEx, then the Norton logo, but it's clipped on both sides.  Shoddy work.

What is this Wallpart site, anyway? Seems like they're selling stolen work to people who mistyped Walmart. 

Grandma, allowed online: "Let's see. Johnny wanted a poster of this Mark Shawn Lynch. Hmmm, maybe they'll have one at the Wallsmart. Oh look, they has one of those websites. Okay, found a picture of a pastel soccer uniform. Wow, those are pretty colors. I'm sure Johnny will like this... Aren't soccer and football the same thing? Maybe they have one for his Nintenda."

Not to offend the original creators of those concepts, but...  who would buy them?  I mean, the artwork is solid, but I just don't see a big market for printing and framing some random graphic designer's idea of a sports team concept.  Setting aside my design inclinations for a moment, as purely a sports fan I would rather buy a poster of my favorite player (see: photograph) or maybe something that showed the history of my team's uniforms.

These guys all seem like some 6th grader who figured out how to open a simple eStore (all the websites are cookie cutter) and they just post random Google Image results that apparently, people will pay $5 for.  If you're that hard up for a printed image of a concept, why not just download it and head to the UPS Store yourself?

On 7/11/2016 at 9:29 AM, The Giant Pacific Octopus said:

 

That logo is way better than the logo they use now.

 

But then again, a picture of a German Shepard's shaved ass would look better than the logo they have now.

INTERNETS!

UCF and USF face an uphill battle into the Power 5, IMO.

• The SEC has been clear they don't want to expand within their existing footprint, so UCF/USC bring nothing that the Gators haven't given them already.  The SEC would likely chase after states/regions like North Carolina, Virginia or Oklahoma before doubling down on lesser Florida teams.
• The ACC might be slightly more favorable, but they would always be 3rd and 4th fiddle to the Canes and Noles.  
• The Big Ten doesn't want 'em, academically or otherwise
• The Pac-12 makes absolutely zero sense.  Nothing like a "Pacific" conference having schools who border the Atlantic and Gulf.

The Big XII is their only legitimate option.

10 hours ago, dfwabel said:

The size of the TV markets really don't matters as only BYU moves the proverbial needle.

 

The Big XII will take the lowest bidders so the existing ten members get more money.  Neither the MWC nor The American distributes more than $11M total to an individual member school, so taking just say $11M/year for football and the a normal pool of CFP and NCAA distributions will still be a net positive for any G5 candidate.  

Exactly. This move is about self-preservation and really, preserving Texas and Oklahoma's path to the playoffs. Let's be honest, there are no nationally-relevant teams that want into the Big XII (sorry Snyder) and by adding little fish the existing teams just cut their pie smaller.

This isn't Delaney scooping up Nebraska or the SEC courting College Station. This is purely about preserving the Texlahoma kingdom and making the conference relevant in the big money playoff world.  Just look at how hard they backpedaled on all that "one true champion" crap when they tried to shoehorn in BOTH Baylor and TCU. It bit them in the ass and they realized that 12+ is the magic number for entry.

On 7/18/2016 at 8:57 PM, dfwabel said:

So much for the raid of two ACC schools for B1G.

 

http://awfulannouncing.com/2016/espn-will-launch-acc-network-by-2019-extends-acc-rights-through-2036.html

 

Poor @Bluevodreal

 

Scrambling to make Texas and OU as B1G immediate move.

If Texas politics can be separated from Texas football, I'd welcome the Sooners and Horns into the Big Ten immediately.  I think Nebraska's main beef (and probably Colorado, Mizzou and A&M) is that the old guard of the Big XII wanted schools to swear fiefdom to the conference, yet they still allowed Texas to pursue their own network.  The Longhorn Network is honestly a dismal failure, especially now that both the Big Ten and SEC Networks are set to rake in billions annually.  The Pac-12 Network is lagging a bit behind, but with another wave of expansion I'd expect that - and the ACC Network - to catch up quickly.

The powers in Austin seem hellbent on charting their own destiny, but it's quickly leaving them behind.  Yes, they keep the lion's share of profits from their own, personal network, which estimates peg at somewhere between $12-15m annually.  Compare that with the $21.5m that Big Ten schools receive.  Yes, Indiana makes more TV football money than Texas.  Let that sink in for a minute.  And remember, that deal is only for HALF of the Big Ten's games.  We're not even counting the other half of games that get scooped up by ESPN, ABC or other networks to the tune of $13m per school.  At the end of the day, teams could be on track for a $50m payday by 2018 and the SEC is within a whisper of that figure as well.

The big question here is whether Texas independence is worth tens of millions annually.  History is a bit ironic as 2016 college football seems to mirror Texas' own fierce independent streak.  The ten gallon hats would have you believe Texas' experiment was a shining, stand-alone democracy, but the textbooks reveal that the country was bankrupt, lawless and starving when the Unites States agreed to annexation and statehood.  Only time will tell if the Longhorns follow suit and join the rest of the nation or if they cling to their lifeboat while the rest sail on.

11 hours ago, jaha32 said:

 

I knew this MHU logo looked familiar. It's nothing more than a traced version of this Penn State logo below. All they did is add teeth, paws, and illegible letters.

 

 

WOW that's a bad trace job, too.  Somebody did that in MS Paint. 

Not D-II, but my alma mater Bellevue University (Nebraska) is an NAIA school.

Legacy

Current

14 hours ago, 4_tattoos said:

Part of me believes Texas could survive as an Independent program. Seems like they have a long history of not getting along with their conference mates.

This is exactly it.  And I'm sure I'll get targeted (good football verb, there) as being biased against Texas, but the reality is that UT wants to eat their cake and have it too.  College football is the biggest money maker by far and the core of the Big XII really hangs on the Texas-Oklahoma rivalry.  If Oklahoma ever wises up and leaves, I think the conference either falls apart or moves out of the Power 5.  Sure, Baylor and TCU have been relevant for a minute, but the same was true of West Virginia and Oklahoma State a few seasons ago.  

Look, there are exactly 64 teams in the Power 5.  Should a breakaway from the NCAA ever happen and/or a playoff expansion, it seems pretty damn logical that there would be 4 conferences of 16 teams each, instead of this weird imbalance of 12-10-14-14-14 that the Power 5 currently have.  The Pac-12 is largely protected just because of geography and both the B1G and SEC have way too much money and influence.  That leaves the Big XII and ACC as the most vulnerable conferences and I wouldn't be surprised to see one of them fold.  Given Texas' wishy-washy stance on conference unity, my money's on the Big XII.

On 4/7/2016 at 1:41 PM, CLEstones said:

 

That's fine.  I am assuming if this is true, like when they added Nebraska and again when they added Maryland and Rutgers, that the B1G did some sort profit and revenue sharing split analysis.  It would seem that adding the markets from Rutgers and Maryland seemed to work well.

Yup.  Here's what you need to know about Big Ten expansion: if the league has member schools in the footprint of media markets, they reap a bigger share of profit from those subscribers.  In other words, the Big Ten gets more money from someone who subscribes and lives in Pennsylvania (Penn State) than someone who subscribes, but lives in Texas (no Big Ten schools in the market).

To make money, you either need a team with a strong national following or access to large media markets.  In the first case, a team like Nebraska brings a large national following, so you get subscribers at a higher rate (in the state of Nebraska) and then a perhaps larger number of subscribers who live out-of-market.  I'm a good example here as a Husker fan living in Oregon.  The Big Ten makes less money off me than a Husker fan living in Nebraska, but again, a school with a large national draw makes up for this.  It's a reason that schools like Oklahoma have been occasionally mentioned in future expansion talk.

The second option - a large media market - is what the Big Ten gained through Rutgers and Maryland.  While there are objectively fewer Rutgers or Maryland fans who subscribe to the Big Ten Network than say, Ohio State or Michigan, those two schools bring the collective Washington-Baltimore-Philly-Jersey-NYC media markets.  Millions of millions of people.

And remember, that the conference makes a larger percentage from subscribers INSIDE their footprint?  So teams like Maryland and Rutgers don't necessarily have to bring large numbers by themselves, because how many other Husker-Buckeye-Wolverine-Nittany Lion-Badger-Gopher-etc fans do you think live in that Mid-Atlantic corridor?  Maryland and Rutgers give the Big Ten a way to make exponentially more money off the rest of their fan base who lives in arguably the most dense region in the nation, outside maybe the LA-San Diego madness.

To avoid cutting the same pie into smaller pieces, the only real contenders for future Big Ten expansion must either be {a} schools with large national followings and boatloads of potential subscribers, or {b} a school that brings access to a media market untapped currently by the Big Ten.  It's why schools like Virginia Tech are unlikely candidates (although had been previously mentioned) because they don't provide any real additional access that Maryland does not.  

The combo of Oklahoma and Kansas provides an interesting mix, notably because of Kansas' access to Kansas City and St. Louis, which are large metro areas the Big Ten is not serving.  They already have NYC and Chicago - and SoCal is just too far out of the region - so I'd look for any future expansion to aim for the remaining Midwest metro hubs.  Texas provides a double whammy since the Longhorns have both a big national draw AND huge, untapped media markets, but like Notre Dame, their thirst for independence remains too strong, in all likelihood.

16 hours ago, Quillz said:

Chris stated they were doing some work on the CSS. The stock IP.Board setup doesn't look much different from 3... Quotes definitely still appear in their own box. If they don't, then the skin was modified so they intentionally appear that way.

My quotes are now showing in boxes, so I wonder if it was some kind of cookie/update issue.  FWIW the site looks much better now, so perhaps I was seeing a sort of "half-update" when I posted my comment earlier.

The layout is like Buffaslug knocked up the new Buccaneers jerseys.

Sarcasm aside, I HATE that quotes are no longer contained within a border.  It looks like every new poster is saying the EXACT same thing since you can't distinguish between quoted text and the new reply.  

Sorry guys, it's barfy.

Nebraska/Wisconsin seem to look more alike here than they do for real...though maybe that's just this medium vs. photos/game action.

Wisconsin has thinner sleeve stripes than Nebraska and yours seem to not catch that so much. Wisconsin's should be even thinner. Maybe dropping the black shadow on the W contributes too (but I totally support that).

Other than that, I think the board has two philosophies: 1. Wisconsin must overhaul because Nebraska was first and 2. There are some tweaks that could be done but ultimately we'll live with the similarities.

Going with #2: I favor one stripe on Nebraska's pants to match the helmet. One team should probably change to an even less-blocky font, but I love block and I don't want UW going to some loopy font. I'd consider superfluous double-outlining (white-on-red-on-white like the hockey team did until a few years ago). But if they ever consider that, they'd probably go to black outlining, which I do not want.

Bingo.

And Wisconsin's shade of red is a less saturated of red. It's closer to a true cardinal shade like what Stanford wears and leans ever-so-slightly towards a pink/magenta undertone, especially in certain lighting. Nebraska's red is a much brighter red and closer to a "truer" red, if that makes any sense.

The red used on UW's helmet stickers/decals is also NOTICEABLY much darker. Compare the Motion W to the facemask. With Nebraska, the N, stripe and mask are all the same red (lighting in the photo below makes the stripe look darker, but it's not).

Also, you can probably get away with more use of black on Wisconsin. They already have the red helmets with black stripes and the Motion W has the black drop shadow. Traditionalists will tell you that black does not belong in Nebraska's uniform, other than perhaps as an alternate once a year.

The best part of Fraser's work getting stolen all the time is that he's literally made a class on how to design like him, step-by-step. For $10 I'd greatly prefer to learn to emulate his style than face a lawsuit over it.

exactly, he has put out all the tools and advice to style things the way he does and instead of a ton of people emulating him, a ton of people steal from him. i mean, it would be funny if i didn't feel so bad for him. Fraser is one of the industry's very best and i wish the world were more fair to him.

It's the nature of the internet.

Access + Anonymity = Ass Holes

Magic with the Bulls

Forgive the quick, messy isolation of each logo, original on left and theft on right.

Thieves' adjustments: removed star, darker color, different whiskers, missing tooth, thinner mane accents, and no back-of-mouth detail. Otherwise everything is exactly the same. (Not condoning, just comparing, while exhibiting the laziness of logo thieves these days.

here's where it gets a bit weird. the only adjustments he made was removing the star and "recoloring" the logo. what he is actually using is an early version of the logo, the original one i used in my Behance presentation with the updated presentation as a background. (shout out to Fraser Davidson who suggested some of those final changes)

the only early version i have left is this one below with the alternate blue color i was experimenting with and the lion's head removed from the shield, thats the version he stole

We're at May 27 - two days in? I'm DYING to see what happens by the end of tomorrow if it's still up.

They're partially designed to prevent terrible post-season mismatches. Would GaSou have been killed last year? Probably not. But keep in mind that in 2012, UTSA went 8-4 as a member of the WAC while transitioning up from FCS with wins over two D2 schools, two FCS schools, a Texas State squad also transitioning up to FBS, a 1-11 Idaho squad, a 1-11 New Mexico State squad, and a 2-11 South Alabama team.

Think of where an 8-4 WAC team would have landed before and 2012 UTSA would have likely been beaten senseless in their bowl.

That's exactly why the process for moving needs to be somewhat drawn out and involved. Otherwise, schools might consider dropping a level to build up their wins (and recruiting, etc), then transition back up. The relegation system found in most European soccer leagues just isn't feasible for college football.