Posts by Chris

meh

http://community.norton.com/norton/board/message?board.id=nis_feedback&thread.id=39119

Is this

a Geordie phone company? Have they made any phones anyone's bought before?

Indeedy

AllAboutSymbian reckon it's a Symbian machine. Which is, as you say, a pretty major change. Did El Reg just forget that it's got a completely different operating system on it?

He said meg

He meant gig. It's a mistake you twats.

How can you idiots

vote for anything other than "webinar" for fuck's sake? The most stupid "word" invented in the last century by miles, used only by irredeemable cockbags.

Surely

it's Multivac/Univac, isn't it?

"Damn, you people needs lives fucking retards."

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I definitely need a life fucking retards.

Did I type that out loud?

@AC, searching for "is Spore cracked"

Yep, cracked and up on all the usual suspect sites THE DAY BEFORE RELEASE. So it didn't even stop 0-day "piracy", and the only people being hurt are those who actually paid money for it. Those who torrented it have paid nothing, _and_ have a better product which they can install as many times as they like, on as many machines as they like. That really showed those pirates, didn't it?

Pinch of salt

After the total cock up of this author attempting to understand the difference between "buying and selling stuff" and "subcontracting" the other day, I'll find it very hard to take anything they say seriously. What's next Tim, some crap about straight bananas?

Crysis

What's going on with those Crysis benches? Either there's something wrong with the tables, or the test setup, or a sub-£100 9600GT is about as good as the insanely expensive new card...

Stop everything right there!

That's the apex of human civilisation. We've finally realised our true potential.

I suggest that we stop every activity right now so we don't screw it up.

I like the V+ box

It's a great wee thing. Record two, watch one has been handy on more than one occasion as well.

There aren't enough HD films available from the on demand thing, and the ones which are are usually shit, but every now and again a good one turns up. Plus the Planet Earth/Planet of Fish etc. Attenborough series have been available in HD pretty much ever since the box was installed (probably over a year ago now? Can't remember exactly) and mean I don't need to buy the DVD sets.

Also, you forgot to mention that the Beeb is showing all their Euro 2008 coverage on BBC HD as well. Well, when they're not busy pulling cables out half way through a game, that is.

nice

Very much like the idea of the FM transmitter: hopefully the N96 will have this as well?

@dervheid: the N91 and N95 both had the ability to stick your own headphones inline with the wee remote thing, so Nokia have been doing this for what, 2 years now?

whereas the second generation product

are for who? Slightly less rich people who still don't have anything better to do than waste money playing games? The entire discrete graphics card industry depends on those who don't have anything better to do than etc...

@Gav

I'm not sure you're right - there was an interview on Radio 1 with a couple of the guys from Radiohead recently, and as far as I remember, they stated flat out that they made more money per download than they did out of normal CD sales.

but

wasn't the wii the only console _not_ being sold at a loss on release this time round? Sony certainly were absorbing a big fat loss on every console sold, even with such an expensive release price, and I'm sure I remember seeing the same thing for the Xbox 360 when it was released (although they weren't taking as much of a hit).

Laaaaaaag

Blimey - people complain about input lag to monitors sitting on their desktop. Now he thinks that people will be happy to send mouse/keyboard/wavey stick thing controls across teh intarweb, wait for everything to be processed in the "Cloud" and sent back to their screens?

Not for a lot longer than 5-10 years, methinks

bollocks

Just read it again, it does say

"The first winner of each laptop gets to keep it (one laptop per vulnerability entry) as well as a cash prize sponsored by ZDI. Once a laptop is won however, no more exploits may be submitted. Therefore there are a maximum of three cash prizes, one per laptop."

So there's no reason _not_ to keep going after one has been hacked

Spooky

We had one of these Halo things set up at a few of our sites a while back - I had the chance to use it recently and it's weird. I think it's a bit like the "Uncanny Valley" thing with CGI: it looks _almost_ like you're in the same room, but it's different enough that it's slightly unsettling.

That being said, it's a very cool thing, and seems to go down pretty well with the people who use it a lot more than I do.

@Marco

Except in this case, as it was last time, the ratings are not a measure of "what is used in the production", and don't give the consumer any worthwhile information whatsoever.

It's based on the fact that they don't have any information. If Greenpeace actually had any data apart from what's published on a company's website, then it could be worth paying attention to the press release. As it is, it's an attention-grabbing big bag of nothing.

@Graham Wood

Sorry, but I think the answer might well be that the only way of making sure of this is to move to an ISP who categorically state that they will not get into bed with this kind of thing. Thankfully there do seem to be a few who actually have some morals.

There's a section on the badphorm.co.uk message board which has a list of ISPs who have definitively stated that they will not do this. Personally I would ignore the ones where the answer has just come through standard "contact us" channels - I was told categorically that VM would never work with a spyware company when I called...

However, at least two (I think Aquiss and Newnet) have had MD or CTO level people confirm that they wouldn't go for this. I don't know where I'll be heading yet, but they're two I'll be considering. Any other ISPs making a categorical public statement that they would not employ this kind of thing will also put themselves in the running. Whatever happens, I will be cancelling my VM contract as soon as the notification goes out that this is going live. Which is a shame as I really like the V+ box and it's going to be a royal pain in the arse to cobble something similar together myself.

More-in-sorrow-than-in-anger-but-with-quite-a-lot-of-anger-in-there-too,

Chris

re: Downing Street petition

"ISP's you have been warned! Some set up a Downing street petition please!"

There is one, it's here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ispphorm/

Wisnae me.

@Graham Dawson

Pot. Kettle. Etc.

If you're going to make a comment about a team being able to get into the Premiership, at least make sure you pick one that isn't actually in the Premiership and really doing quite well, otherwise you end up looking like a complete tit.

Not Dave

The History Channel isn't Dave, Dave is the bizarrely-rebranded UKTV G2 channel.

"Dave, where you're never more than an hour away from another episode of QI".

@David Wiernicki

It's a video game you idiot. Learn the difference between when things matter and when they don't.

You're not _seriously_ trying to equate the ability to buy a video game or not with the ability to avoid being tasered to the ground for asking dumb questions are you? Well done. You must be very proud that your society allows you to buy a video game, yet punishes someone who asks questions in a public forum with electric shock. Get a sense of perspective.

re: Bandwidth Throttling

How much data are you talking about? My largest downloads are probably Exchange/Longhorn betas/rc from MSDN, (somewhere between 3 and 6 GB if I remember right) and they manage to stay at about 1.5MB/s if not slightly faster on Virgin 20Mb for the duration. Steam was running at just under 2MB/s for the last few things I reinstalled (Psychonauts and, um, something else) until the last few days, which I assume is a problem with people pre-loading the Orange Box. Can't say I've noticed any throttling...

re: Tidelocked

My thoughts exactly - surely Iapetus is locked to Saturn and should get sunlight all over at different points in its orbit of Saturn, like our Moon does with us, no?

re: desperately trying to get into the server / virtualisation market ?

Virtualisation fair enough, but they're _in_ the server market already, and not as a niche player either.

oh please

Pearl Jam always were and always will be rubbish, a dull heavy metal band who got famous by grabbing on to Nirvana's coat-tails and pretending to be grunge because that's what the kids wanted at the time. They're the Seattle equivalent of the Merseybeats.

Not that they should have been censored by some idiot webmaster, but don't let agreeing with their politics get in the way of recognising that their music is crap (cf. Coldplay)