If they don't make it in for this upcoming patch, they will be in the next one.

Well the whole point of the logs is to flag things we need to look at. But after a gig of repetition its a case of "Yeah, we know, now shut up already"

Here's the workaround for log spam:
In your pirates directory where pirates.ini lives, create a pirates_local.ini file. This has overrides for the default values. Add the following lines:

[Logger]
SharedObject=None


See the part before the ':' here __VVVVVVVVVV
Sat Feb 23 16:26:04 2008 ERROR SharedObject: Tried to get singleton shared object flsCharacter but 2 exist

That's the class of the log. These can be turned off individually with a line like the one above. So
Tue Jan 08 17:13:51 2008 ERROR Pig: Fileheader extends past end of .pigg, probably corrupt .pigg file! #

Gets disabled by adding this to the [Logger] section.
Pig=None

Similarly,
Tue Jan 08 18:13:28 2008 ERROR UI: Unable to find base image for button icon
Tue Jan 08 18:24:10 2008 ERROR Sound: Tried to play an invalid sound name DrawWeapon

you can disable with
UI=None
Sound=None

While it's not ideal to shut everything off, this lets you get rid of the worst offenders so you can reclaim your hard drives...

I'm attaching a pirates_local.txt which you can rename to pirates_local.ini with the 4 values set.

The small changes help us understand if there's really a larger problem. I know it's hard to know our internal mood from the outside, but if you really want to know how things work, I'm the one who freaks out and demands answers. Then everybody says "oh yes, we're working on that" and I'm like "When?!!". On the plus side, this helps us get dev logs out. For example, there's a change going in tonight that's part of the tuning for PvP, and I realized we hadn't put out a dev log on it or PvP in quite some time. So we're going to write up where we think we are, what we're doing about it, and where we're going.

There is no disagreement on "use a reasonable ship, get back in quickly". That seemed to be working better in the beta based on the stats, but it's clearly not in the release. I'm not sure why there's a disconnect there, but we clearly need to fix it.

As has been mentioned many times, we'll occasionally ask someone to resubmit a design for technical reasons and approve it quickly. So sometimes a submission appears to have been accepted remarkably fast. This shouldn't be cause to rethink your flag or sail.

Check out the thread on "User Content 2.0" for information on how the process is changing, as well.

Not for 1.2, but maybe soon

I answered this already futher up, but I don't mind saying it again

Yes, chat bubbles work on the OS.

You doubt correctly

It generally boils down to degree of difference and the intent behind the creation. There have been successful lawsuits against people who've very painstakingly, by hand, recreated another work of art. It's all "original work" -- if memory serves, the object in question was actually sculpture -- but since the intent was to reproduce the original (and it was very successful at it), the original copyright holder won.

There's no set standard, though, so one should always use care when taking direct inspiration from an existing piece. Copyright law was originally written with text in mind, where it's comparatively easy to determine whether a "substantial portion" of the original is being reproduced or not. With 2D works of art that's much less clear.

Or, to bring it back to the original question -- tracing indeed can be OK, provided the end result is intentionally and noticeably different.

Hope that makes sense. And yes, a graphics tablet is a wonderful tool for any flag or sail maker.

As some of you noted, 3 outages in a week kinda sux but leaving problems around longer than necessary also kinda sux. We're working to find the right balance. This announcement marked a slight change in that we're now more determined to give you 24 hours warning whenever possible. It won't always be possible but enforcing that when it is helps you plan and will prevent us doing quite so many in a week.