Bleh, note to self - when writing any other scathing editorials, if you don’t have time to double- and triple-check you wording and all, then don’t upload it until you do so. 
Folks, because of some excess zeal on my part, and being so pissed off about this issue, I made a coupla mistakes, which I’ll now correct.
I’ve had some email correspondance with cliffe from the CounterStrike devteam in the last day, about some of the stuff I did say, and some of the things I allegedly said - which I worded poorly due to haste in writing, and came out wrong.Ok, time to run it down.
First, myself - like many others in the community - were under the impression that that cliffe was the first person to made public comments about the new netcode and such. He informed me that he only did that after the cat was let out of the bag by another site, and that he had personally asked the Valve staff if it was ok for him to comment, and got the green light. Later on, in one of Gabe’s interviews, he said for people to check out cliffe’s comments, at that point endorsing HIS particular info.
For this gaffe, I owe cliffe a personal apology. I acted on incomplete info - as I do NOT read all the other sites and especially not about all the other mods. There are exactly 2 mods for HL I have ANY interest about at all, and that is TFC/TF 1.5, and CS. I’ll make more personal comments about CS later, after I finish corrections. So, cliffe, sorry about posting inaccurate info about that, and thank you for being professional and mature in correcting me, and filling me in on some info I did not have before. Folks, I’m happy to say cliffe is a 100% class act.
Second, I made a HUGE error in wording - due to the haste with wanting to get the update published to the webpage, and still make it into work on time that night. The quote I made about modmakers was poorly worded, and stirred up a real hornet’s nest of problems, and I want to apologize to the ENTIRE CounterStrike devteam for that one screwup. Below is how it SHOULD have read - had I taken more time to think things out and say everything I wanted to, although it’s still technically incorrect now, given the info I got from cliffe:
And then there’s the other side - the Modmakers. We’ve all seen the CS team break confidentiality by coming out and talking about the netcode and all. They’ve also given out estimated release dates for the patch - and last I looked, they were not Valve employees. Now, I don’t know about you, but although I really don’t think that the CS team is the culprit - due to their great working relationship with Valve that they would NOT want to jeopardize - but I know where my money lies on the betting of the source of the leak. From some other modmaker who got the advance info. Perhaps the modmakers themselves did not make it available as "warez" - perhaps they gave it to a trusted "friend" who did so. But I stick with my belief that it was a modmaker, NOT a playtester, that leaked it.
Screwups like this, folks - especially when running an editorial site, are one of the thing that can get you the most amount of flak, folks. One of my personal heroes in the gaming editorial business, Sentinel, used to catch all kinds of crap for things he said. We both have thick skins and can take the abuse, fortunately. 
Tot just needs to remember to take his time and do more than just run the column thru a spelling and grammar checker. I think I need to go back to getting hold of my old outside proofreader before posting anything again - it might keep the temperatures down and keep the power bill for the Air Conditioning a bit lower on the fort. :P
Ok, I believe that sums up all the corrections and apologies I needed to make - now on to other business. As you might expect, this little business stirred up a firestorm of emails. As per my longstanding policy, any emails that aren’t outright abusive and obscene, that that are at least somewhat intelligible, DO get responses. So, all of you gung-ho CS supporters that wrote in, I’ll be getting back to you in the next day or two. Just remember, if you decided to be an idiot in your email to me, expect to get shots back in return as well. Oh, and for the ASSHOLE that decided to send me a me a .vbs virus as an email attachment - nice try, sparky. I’m not senile yet. :P
Oh, and someone made a comment in one email that I’m "a bit jealous on CS, aren’t you". Now, that comment makes no sense whatsoever. I’m not a modmaker, to be jealous that CS is doing so good. In fact, I used to enjoy the hell out of CS beta5.2 - when I could find wanker-free servers to play on. Which I couldn’t find too many, thanks to the overwhelming number of TKing arseholes, people using the see-thru-walls cheat, and then shooting thru the walls, and finally that cursed Trainer that came out, that TOTALLY hosed the game. After this recent conversation with cliffe, he assured me that his team, with assistance from Valve as well, are working to make the next version as cheat-free as they can. I look forward to seeing what else they can come up with for this impressive mod, even tho I’ll freely admit that Team Fortress is my preference.
Anyhow, I’m going to wrap this up now. Rants, comments, and yes, more flames - you know where to send them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear the damnable siren call of the Diablo2 stresstest calling me again.
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