Posts by poopypants

Sue whichever company has the most money

"Samsung repeatedly said that this was mostly their suppliers' problem,"

Unfortunately their suppliers don't have nearly as much money.

Refunds are only sought for games that are not fit for purpose (i.e. don't run)

Steam tracks the number of hours played for each game in your library.

If these records show that you have been playing the game for more than an hour, then your claim that the game does not work would be weak. If however you were not able to launch it (faulty goods - not fit for purpose) then your claim would be much stronger. In that case they should grant a refund in keeping with Australian law (and presumably disable the game in your library).

The fact that they do not already do this for all their customers reflects badly on them.

Ah, memories...

I remember writing code that implemented password protected "Golden Screwdriver" upgrades to an 8085-based statistical multiplexer over 30 years ago. Gave one of our sales creatures a nice little source of extra income on the side.

Ghost in the machine?

Probably about time

something was done about those annoying pests.

That's not how it works

The security clearance is not tied to employment, so termination of employment does not revoke security clearance. What does happen is that a security pass is handed in, but that only happens as part of manual employment termination procedures. Since employment was not meant to have ended, those manual procedures would not have been carried out. Possession of the pass would have enabled continued entry, regardless of employment status.

Fascinating

If I am to take the above posts at face value, then it would appear that there is less freedom in Great Britain than in this 'ere former penal colony.

If I set up a camera, lights, etc. and some total stranger walks up to my camera and takes a picture, who owns the copyright?

Answer: the person who took the picture.

This is not snow...

Spider webs after a flood in Australia:

http://cdn.twentytwowords.com/wp-content/uploads/Australian-spiders-escaping-floods-03.jpg

I never allow automatic updates. I figure that by the time I see the nag screen (usually several hours after the release), if the update was catastrophic it would most likely have been pulled.

If only there was some more efficient way of harnessing the energy expended through all that pedalling.

Unity support for WebGL

Of some relevance is the announcement that popular game engine maker Unity will be supporting WebGL as a target for 2D and 3D games developed using its IDE:

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/04/29/on-the-future-of-web-publishing-in-unity/

Here is an example of a game built in Unity and published to WebGL:

http://beta.unity3d.com/jonas/DT2/

(Don't forget to press escape at the start to dismiss modal message. Otherwise you'll die. Currently supported browsers for this content are Firefox and Chrome 35)

They didn't mention how much computing power was involved, but I imagine it wasn't trivial.

If NVIDIA could do something similar it might provide enough excuse to buy a GTX TITAN Black.

I imagine it could handle something like that with relative ease.

We live in interesting times

If only life was a little more boring.

Oh dear. With regard to civil liberties, the political choice in Australia is between Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. It's a sad state of affairs when there is not a single political party in this country that is fit to govern. I weep for my children.

It's obvious

Gaia squeezed a pimple.

Well, if things don't work out

maybe Scotland would consider becoming part of the Australian federation. We invited the Kiwis, but they have this thing about ex convicts. Or possibly they're just jealous because we have more sheep.

We admire the Scots' outstanding achievements in the fields of alcohol consumption and fried foods - the most outstanding example of which is the fried Mars Bar.

None of these are good ideas

A lot of Bad Things can be prevented by imposing onerous restrictions on our freedom. We could save thousands of lives by engineering cars to be unable to exceed 30 KPH. We could prevent a great deal of violence by abolishing alcohol. We could prevent a lot of diseases like type II diabetes by abolishing fast food outlets and banning the sale of junk food. We could reduce terrorism by spying on everyone. None of these are good ideas.

The Order has a ridiculous aspect ratio and appalling fps. Not as ridiculous as calling it "cinematic" however, rather than the unwanted performance compromise that it is.

It is better than it was

The International E-Sports Federation originally had entirely separate contests for men and women, with one set of games for men and a different, smaller set of games for women. Thus women were prevented from competing in some popular games. In reaction to the resultant outcry, they made the male competition open to everyone. They could also have dropped the female competition, but chose not to. In any case, it is an improvement over the previous situation.

Currently wondering which one I'll get first: NBN or Half Life 3.

No need for conspiracy theories

Probably the crew were overcome by smoke or fumes and switched to autopilot before losing consciousness. They never recovered, and the plane crashed when it ran out of fuel.

Probably the wreckage will never be recovered.

The greatest single cause of piracy in Australia is the inability to rent or purchase copies legally.

Want to watch a movie or TV show on Netflix? Sorry, not available in Australia.

I have a headache.

C is popular because

- performance (generated object code is fast)

- deterministic resource use

- direct access to low level hardware

- you can find a C compiler for the vast majority of embedded devices

- the runtime and generated executable are small

Keep in mind that there are far more embedded devices running C code than desktops running anything else.

Not convinced

I have a pair of 2560 x 1440 monitors. If I use a magnifying glass, I can make out individual pixels. If I don't, I can't. I'm not convinced that 4K would make a noticeable difference, and I'm absolutely certain that it would mean reduced fps in my video games.

Dark social?

Oh, that'll just be me emailing myself a link to something interesting I saw on my smartphone so I can read it on a bigger screen. I do that a lot.

Far Cry 3 in Chicago

Or illegitimate love child of Far Cry 3 and Grand Theft Auto. Whatever it is, it is a lot of fun. Sure, the UI sucks on a PC, and I sometimes accidentally draw my gun in public when pressing the middle mouse button, but I can live with that. It adds spice to the game. Some have had problems with stuttering, but fortunately I haven't (admittedly I have a Titan). Like Far Cry 3, you have the equivalent of towers and outposts, both of which have to be conquered to reveal game aspects for a particular area. Like Grand Theft Auto, you can pull people out of their cars and drive recklessly with little or no consequence (although you can lose points for running over civilians).

I guess I'm in a minority when I prefer the vehicle control scheme of Borderlands, which uses analogue input from the mouse to steer instead of digital input from the A and D keys. In fact, given that the cars don't have guns, they could have used the left and right mouse buttons instead of W and S when driving.

Is it the start of a franchise? Maybe. It worked for Grand Theft Auto, but I get the feeling that in this game they were unsure that they had compelling content and threw a whole bunch of different side quests against a wall and are watching to see what sticks.

Still, overall, I think it is worth buying.

Is this one of the reasons why PC sales figures are down?

Because people are building them?

I am so glad

that I am getting old and won't be around to see the glorious future. I feel sorry for my children, though.

"The average Australian fixed broadband user consumes 46 GB per month".

I read that, then glanced across at my other screen where I am downloading the 40.7 GB Wolfenstein: The New Order, which according to Steam should be done in 3 days.

Next week's download will be Watchdogs. I wonder how big that will be?

$US1589bn?

From which orifice do they extract these numbers?

Meh

Seems horribly underpowered. It wouldn't have a hope of running Crysis at max settings, let alone that upcoming torture test Star Citizen.

Having spent far too many hours on internet forums

I am far from convinced that "continuation of the species" is a desirable goal.

More consumer guff that is surplus to requirements

I certainly won't be watching for it.

I stopped watching movies a couple of years ago

I now spend my spare time playing computer games instead. Much better value for money and the resolution is 2560 x 1440. As for the TV, the only time I turn it on is to watch Doctor Who (I've been watching that since the first Doctor).