Everything old is new again.
Jack Thompson called and wants his murder simulators back.
Prince Harry takes a stand against poverty, injustice, inequality? Er, no, Fortnite
The game Fortnite should be banned, according to Britain's own Prince Harry, because it's "addictive" and "irresponsible." "The game shouldn’t be allowed," he told mental health experts while visiting a YMCA in West London, arguing that parents don't know what to do about their youngsters' addiction to the game. He went on: " …
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Friday 5th April 2019 16:55 GMT bombastic bob
Re: Everything old is new again.
worth pointing out, life itself IS violence. The constant competition and struggle for dominance within our own sphere, mastering our own destinies, getting hired INSTEAD of some other applicant, buying the sale items BEFORE the store is out of stock, jumping in line BEFORE it gets too long, passing people on the highway who don't *FEEL* that your time is worth them moving out of the way, and so on.
It's a rat race. And the rats are winning.
And WHAT do we want to teach our young'unz? That ASSERTING yourself is WRONG? That STANDING UP to bullying is WRONG? That FIGHTING for what is RIGHT is WRONG? That the world is nothing more than 'safe spaces' and 'participation trophies' and '1+1=3 is ok as long as you FEEL GOOD about it' ??? There are NO winners anymore because it means there ALSO has to be LOSERS?
* W R O N G *
The world is a violent place. Just look at nature and what animals do to one another. Civilized society limits that violence, but cannot eliminat it. The "daily struggle" for survival is STILL there, and the ones who are MOST aggressive, MOST competitive, and MOST assertive, are the ones who WILL SUCCEED. And NOT being able to cope in a VIOLENT world puts the next generation at a SERIOUS disadvantage...
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Friday 5th April 2019 09:09 GMT Steve Davies 3
Re: Thanks Harry
According to the guy (speaking on the Radio yesterday) who had the account, it was Instagram "wot did it" because it was pretty well dormant. He'd now going to use his Twitter account a lot more to stop the same thing happening.
but hey don't let the truth get in the way of slagging off someone.
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Friday 5th April 2019 11:27 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?
Re: Thanks Harry
So if you don't use something very much it's OK for somebody else to steal it?
I'm not sure the word 'steal' is applicable in this context, because who 'owns' a freely provided service? Do I 'own' my instagram account or does instagram? Or do I own the content of the instagram account, which is a moot point if it's not being used? I'm fairly sure that somewhere in the T's&C's of most of these services they state that the service can be withdrawn at any time and without notice. I used to regularly receive emails about my dropbox account closing in 90 days unless I log in and use it. I didn't and guess what? I no longer have a dropbox account.
Clearly it's not OK for someone to decide to use my car because I've been on holiday for a fortnight, but I provably own the car. The company who built it transferred ownership rights to someone for money, who then transferred those rights to me for less money. But before we can use terms like 'steal', we need to define ownership, and in the case of free online services, I think that's very ambiguous at the moment.
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Friday 5th April 2019 13:58 GMT Julz
Re: Thanks Harry
Agreed, I was being a bit hysterical to make a point. It's just gets very wordy and looses it's pithiness if you have to define ownership and explain terms and conditions when all you want to do is point out the injustice, however slight, that had occurred to Kevin Keiley.
However, if you havn't paid for something is there really a contract and if not then T&Cs are a bit moot and everything is on an as is basis.
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Friday 5th April 2019 07:58 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?
Re: Thanks Harry
Personally I think they should be disbanded and all their assets returned to "the people" (from whom they were taken in the first place).
Royals eh? Very nice. And how'd they get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. We're living in a dictatorship! A self-perpetuating autocracy! Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I'm being repressed!
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Friday 5th April 2019 11:33 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?
Re: Thanks Harry
I thought we were an autonomous collective.
We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as sort of executive officer for the week but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs but by a two thirds majority in the case of more....wait, that's not a bad idea...
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Friday 5th April 2019 09:45 GMT Peter2
Re: Thanks Harry
all their assets returned to "the people" (from whom they were taken in the first place).
I, uh. Really?
Your a bit late, I take it that you hadn't heard that this process was completed in 1760 under George III? The Monarch's assets were separated off and paid to the Treasury, and in return the government ran a Civil List returning a set figure. Under the existing arrangement the Monarch currently is paid 15% of the profit of the Crown Estate, with the remaining 85% vanishing into the bottomless maw of parliamentary spending.
Personally, I would support putting a major constitutional change as dissolving one of our major constitutional pillars to the people in a referendum with a simple question.
Would you like to dissolve the following institution:-
A) The Monarchy
B) Parliament
And make it clear that the management of the dissolution of either is dealt with by the other institution, not the one being dissolved.
I think we both know which institution faces immediate eradication due to a near total lack of public support.
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Friday 5th April 2019 11:53 GMT The Indomitable Gall
Re: Thanks Harry
" I take it that you hadn't heard that this process was completed in 1760 under George III? The Monarch's assets were separated off and paid to the Treasury, "
Which is why anything since taken from the people would be accurately described as stolen in a legal sense. Under previous monarchs, many state assets have gone mysteriously missing from high-security locations and no charges have been brought, including several generations of crown jewels. The crown jewels were quite certainly stolen. Who by, we can't say, but the lack of any action suggests someone who is above the law. Some of these disappearances are said to line up quite coincidentally with cashflow problems in the households of the then-reigning (now dead) monarchs.
" and in return the government ran a Civil List returning a set figure "
Ah, so we got back what they stole from us... by buying it? You think having to buy back what was stolen is justice. If so, I'll sell you your own car next Sunday.
Oh, and then you mention the Crown Estate. How did they get the Crown Estate? Now I'm not saying they stole it, but I think the previous poster would. Why did they have rights to own the land in the first place?
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Sunday 7th April 2019 11:08 GMT Duffy Moon
Re: Thanks Harry
Of course it was not only the royals, but all their Norman mates who stole all our land and still haven't given it back after a thousand years.
It's funny really, the idea of claiming land ownership by way of brutish thuggery would be frowned upon these days, but we have done nothing to reverse those claims.
Perhaps a land tax would be a good step?
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Friday 5th April 2019 17:08 GMT bombastic bob
Re: Thanks Harry
Over here across the pond, we have our 'royals' too. It's just that membership in THAT club has less to do with lineage and more to do with "being in the club". Names withheld to avoid political arguments in this thread.
At least there's an opportunity to work your way up, get lucky, and sort of 'join them', but who'd want to? Yeah, THEM.
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Friday 5th April 2019 03:52 GMT Teiwaz
Re: Ignore
el'Reg - by royal appointment
By Royal disappointment after this article (which I couldn't agree more with).
Sixth in line now? (do we really need a six or more backups? If so, wouldn't it be better to keep them safely in a bunker somewhere underground in case of surprise nuclear strike, zombie outbreak or triffid meteor shower?).
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:35 GMT fajensen
Re: Ignore
Algorithms, my darhling. Algorithms designed to optimise media "engagement" and "page-views" basically dredge up all the worst stupidity and splurge it on the front-page.
It happens because Digital Media runs on advertising, which makes them compete on metrics like "page-views" and "engagement" (the amount of interactions people have on a media site, f.ex. via comments).
The more page-views per second, the more valuable the add space is and the more successful the media will be. Nothing drives "page views" and "engagement" as well as outrage and it is well understood that nothing drives outrage quite as effectively as the inane or offensive uttering of liars, morons, racists, bigots, idiots or the unholy combination of all those
desirable properties.... drivers for add-revenue: Brexiteers.If everyone was nice, then there would be a market for Microsoft Tay to drive traffic to Daily Mail!
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
To play Devil's Advocate, "shooting people from helicopters in Afghanistan" and seeing what happens as a result, to both the shot and those doing the shooting, seems to have had a dramatic effect on his attitude.
Also, he was trained on helicopters by the son of a friend of ours, who went to a comp. and entered the Army almost by accident. And the son likes him.
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Friday 5th April 2019 12:37 GMT Paul Kinsler
So 1-1 on the anecdote score.
This is a one-day-visit anecdote, versus a trained-him-to-fly-helicopters anecdote. Unless H was a whizz at helicopters, that probably took longer than a day - and so presumably gave a better opportunity for the anecdote-supplier to judge.
But still anecdotes, I agree.
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Thursday 4th April 2019 22:57 GMT VikiAi
Is Fortnite addictive? Or just fun to play?
I am not in its target demographic and all my nieces and nephews who are very much in its target demographic tend to sneer at the idea of playing it, so I really don't have enough exposure to really know!
From what little I have seen/read about actual gameplay, it seems like it was designed to be fun and easy to get into without too much cognitive investment, so I guess that could be 'addictive'. But it could also just be a generic-but-well-designed-game that became quite popular for a few years as a result of aforementioned design, too.
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:31 GMT Peter2
Re: Is Fortnite addictive? Or just fun to play?
Well, games have always designed to a reasonable extent to be fun and relatively easy to get into to maximise their market and get recommendations via word of mouth. That part is not a problem, and I don't think anybody serious (beyond a handful of cranks) has ever seriously argued that it was more dangerous than say, sitting in front of a TV/Radio/Gramophone.
Older games were a case of pay once, and that's it. Then when MMO's came along that needed central infrastructure they switched to a monthly/yearly subscription. Still fair enough.
The problem comes with a new business model; give the game away, but introduce "power ups", that give you a substantial advantage over somebody that doesn't have them (aka pay to win), which practically requires everybody to buy these power ups to get a level playing field. Introduce these in lock boxes (ie gambling) paid for in real money via micro-transactions and you get (some) people spending hundreds a month on these things, many times what has been paid for gaming before. In order to get people to spend this sort of money, the game is deliberately designed to be as addictive as possible to maximise the income received from micro transactions.
Facebook is (imo) just as bad as these games as it's designed to be deliberately addictive to maximise facebooks income from adverts, and to hook other people into the things along with you. Both tend to result in a situation where people are neglecting their real lives in order to stare at a screen, which is not healthy or particularly socially desirable.
This can reasonably be considered to be a problem that does need addressing.
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:40 GMT DavCrav
Re: Is Fortnite addictive? Or just fun to play?
"The problem comes with a new business model; give the game away, but introduce "power ups", that give you a substantial advantage over somebody that doesn't have them (aka pay to win), which practically requires everybody to buy these power ups to get a level playing field. Introduce these in lock boxes (ie gambling) paid for in real money via micro-transactions and you get (some) people spending hundreds a month on these things, many times what has been paid for gaming before. In order to get people to spend this sort of money, the game is deliberately designed to be as addictive as possible to maximise the income received from micro transactions."
This is the real problem. Freemium gaming in general is exploitative, and has to be, as otherwise the business model cannot work. It must sustain itself from people spending money on a free game. Thus it was very few options to do so: pay to win, which defeats the whole object, or interminable wait times that annoy you, but with enough good content in it to make you want to pay to skip the wait.
And like most long-tail-like concepts, they have to make most of their money from a small percentage of their player base.
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Friday 5th April 2019 12:18 GMT Peter2
Re: Is Fortnite addictive? Or just fun to play?
I don't play it either, but if the purchasable items were purely aesthetic then most people wouldn't bother. A quick look shows "Exclusive Legendary Heroes" and "Exclusive Legendary Weapons" for sale and I have great doubts that those are purely cosmetic.
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Monday 8th April 2019 09:13 GMT Prst. V.Jeltz
Re: Is Fortnite addictive? Or just fun to play?
"t if the purchasable items were purely aesthetic then most people wouldn't bother."
You clearly dont know the yoof of today.
They go nuts for "skins" , will pay a tenner for their weapon to have a different paint job.
my step son was about to pay £30 for a knife (yes - in game virtual software knife)
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Thursday 4th April 2019 23:03 GMT Joeyjoejojrshabado
Unpopular opinion
So the point you're trying to make is that Harry has behaved like many normal people do and that he is therefore disqualified from expressing an opinion about a thing that normal people do? (excepting that he is not, actually, a normal person)
Also, what is the problem with cross dressing? He made no comment about cross dressing as far as I can see, but is being attacked for it by the author who refers to it as "bad influence...irresponsible behaviour".
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Friday 5th April 2019 07:10 GMT Nattrash
Re: Unpopular opinion
I don't think the point really is with "behaving like a normal person" or "cross dressing". I think the general idea/ remarks refer more to the fact that the base for the significance and/ or weight of opinions/ position/ privilege/ resources is perhaps very small to non-existent if it is based on nothing more than the fact that you were the 1st sperm to reach its goal. And with that, we do have to recognise of course that this is not an uniquely British aberration, or even connected to aristocracy. It seems to be an adverse event connected to the human species in general.
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Friday 5th April 2019 07:41 GMT steviebuk
Re: Unpopular opinion
Because we don't see him saying the same about cigarettes & alcohol. And he now has an account on another form of medium that people find addictive, that being Instagram. But we don't see him say that should be banned as they need to make their money some how, and they just know their Instagram will blow up and they can make a pretty penny out of it. A pretty penny out of other peoples addiction.
Although The Reg has lost a lot of street cred by linking to the god awful Daily Mail several times in this article. But I do like the ending :)
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:44 GMT fajensen
Re: Unpopular opinion
The point is that a person of importance is diminished by allowing that his/her preferential-lane media platform is used for trivial opinions on trivial things that really does not mean anything, not even to the "common people" he is trying to "engage" with "on their level".
He is basically using up his influence on putting himself in the position of that loud geezer there is at any pub; Of course this is a Safe Space to enter, because nobody cares about his inanities either! But, really, such low ambition!? Is it really OK to become a tosspot loser just to be comfortable and never challenge anyone on anything important and never have his fingers smacked!?
If he had any balls, he could talk about childhood food poverty in the UK, and question why this is acceptable in a supposedly 1'st world nation!?
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:44 GMT DavCrav
Re: Unpopular opinion
"So the point you're trying to make is that Harry has behaved like many normal people do "
I've lost count of the number of times I've dressed up as a Nazi for a party.
"he is therefore disqualified from expressing an opinion about a thing that normal people do?"
Actually, yes. You should be disqualified from expressing an opinion on whether something mildly addictive should be banned from society when you, yourself, have done all sorts of irresponsible things over the course of your time, and you are totally insulated from real society and the consequences of your actions by money and immense privilege.
Remember the black spider memos? We need to make it clear to the dolt that his opinions should be immedaitely and vociferously discarded.
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Thursday 4th April 2019 23:21 GMT Chris Gray 1
tax it
Tobacco and alcohol are taxed, and hopefully some of the money taken goes towards treatment expenses for those who are harmed by those addictive substances.
So, if games like Fortnite really are harmfully addictive, then they should be taxed, and the money earned spent on treatment of the addicted.
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Friday 5th April 2019 09:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: tax it
Age restricted?
So why are 8-10yr olds playing it as witnessed on the bus yesterday.
I'm actually with Harry on this one. These games are deliberately designed to be addictive just like hard drugs.
I never saw the point of shoot'em'up, MORPG (or whatever) and even Social Media but I'm just a grumpy old fart (and proud of it) and after 40+ years in IT I am really, really glad that I'm retired and doing other more productive things with my life as opposed to being a football of MBA arseholes aka PHB's.
I'm waiting for some paint to dry which is infinitely more interesting that playing Fortnite or GFA(1-?) or any computer game other than the odd Solitaire or Spider.
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Friday 5th April 2019 09:49 GMT Kane
Re: tax it
"Age restricted?
So why are 8-10yr olds playing it as witnessed on the bus yesterday."
Because their parents are not supervising the use of their devices closely enough? Maybe?
"I'm actually with Harry on this one. These games are deliberately designed to be addictive just like hard drugs.
That's probably closer to the truth than some people are willing to admit, particularly when it come to the Looter/Shooter genre (I'm looking at you EA/Activision-Blizzard, with your bastardly loot boxes), however I tend to stay away from those types of games, for a number of reasons:
- 1 - I don't play well with others in online environments
- 2 - I despise the mechanisms of the constant pestering that has become prevalent with the monetisation practises being employed and
- 3 - I prefer a solitary experience where I am free to explore the environment and story that has been presented via the developers artistic expression.
However, I realise as I'm writing this and reading through the remainder of your post, that this will largely pass you by as it appears you have denigrated my hobby and pastime by comparing it to watching paint dry.
May I recommend a couple of sessions of Catan instead?
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:35 GMT BigSLitleP
Re: tax it
If he can't wrap his head around something as simple as Fortnite, he's not going to grasp Catan.
Can i recommend watching Eastenders, drinking a can of whichever cheap beverage is on offer at the supermarket and making stupid, rambling statements such as "back in my day, kids played outside"
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:47 GMT DavCrav
Re: tax it
"however I tend to stay away from those types of games, for a number of reasons:"
I would like to add another reason:
4 - I do not have large quantities of time to spend playing a computer game, and therefore cannot hope to be as good at it as someone who spends all day on it. I don't need to be repeatedly beaten by someone else because I cannot dedicate a portion of my life to getting better.
This is why I avoid all multiplayer gaming.
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Saturday 6th April 2019 04:54 GMT Geoffrey W
Re: tax it
There's something oddly pleasurable about being thrashed repeatedly by some anonymous stranger. I just played Need For Speed - Rivals and got driven into the weeds by players playing as racers, and busted by players playing as Bobbies in fast cars. There's no escape for me. One of the cop players kept hunting me down and running me into a wall. I felt like weeping. I'll play again over the weekend. Perhaps I'm a closet masochist.
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Monday 8th April 2019 09:15 GMT Prst. V.Jeltz
Re: tax it
"These games are deliberately designed to be addictive just like hard drugs."
whoa call the fun police!
Games by their very nature have to be "addictive" or no one would play them
A game thats not addictive is .... well shit.
They didnt make this one extra addictive by sprinkling cocaine on it or anything !
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Thursday 4th April 2019 23:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Harry is getting a little preachy about this stuff.
You can get addicted to almost anything. TV, video games, social media, sports, running, who knows what else. I hadn't thought of this until now, but I bet there are people out there who are addicted to music, and start losing it if their background music is turned off.
Rather than focusing on one video title, maybe the Royals should get behind some efforts to just get kids to go outside and play more often?
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Friday 5th April 2019 11:18 GMT rg287
Re: Harry is getting a little preachy about this stuff.
Rather than focusing on one video title, maybe the Royals should get behind some efforts to just get kids to go outside and play more often?
Err, they have and do. Since at least 1956.
Prior to that, Philip was quite heavily involved in the Central Council of Physical Recreation, and the Earl of Wessex is now President of CCPR's successor (the Sport and Recreation Alliance).
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Friday 5th April 2019 00:17 GMT Gene Cash
A "fun" game is addictive.
I don't find Fortnight fun, but if a game is fun, I do tend to play it to the detriment of things I "should" be doing, so I guess that could be classed as "addictive".
However, the online multiplayer environment is **toxic as hell** with all sorts of racial, gender, cultural and other slurs and insults hurled by people losing games. It's like the Rule 34 of swearing. If you can think of it, you'll hear it, and worse. I certainly would supervise my child to the hilt.
This is true regardless of if it's GTA, HALO, Fortnight, PUBG, Call of Duty, or anything else even mildly competitive. To my surprise, these people are even in the Minecraft community, which is about as non-competitive as it gets.
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Friday 5th April 2019 15:43 GMT MJI
Re: A "fun" game is addictive.
Toxicity in games.
Seen it in SP games with casual PVP where hard core types wipe out everyone, why not sod off back to COD.
Yet a more hardcore MP game with a SP element was not toxic until the COD crowd got a free trial. They whinged like mad as it was slow and they got wiped. Lots of cheating accusations and the like, no it was a game played by older skilled slower players, not so much by kids.
Game 1 was a casual but fun MP aimed at the SP players to give the game life. Got toxic.
Game 2 was a FPS with story and a decent MP needing skill more than reactions. Toxic for a week then returned to fun.
It does seem to be that the COD crowd are most toxic.
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Friday 12th April 2019 12:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: A "fun" game is addictive.
FIFA was brilliant back when people could send you voice recordings after a game.
My sister used to forward me the ones her husband got - they were amazingly offensive - his style of play being to pass the ball around keeping possession, which is very frustrating for an opponent.
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Friday 5th April 2019 02:17 GMT Cheshire Cat
So?
Show me someone older than 30 who hasn't done some questionable things in their youth that they would rather not have done. Harry's list of faux pas seems tame compared to some less public people I know.
The only difference is that Harry is young enough that these things were more easily recorded and spread to the Internet; and royal enough that tabloids and gossip mags are interested in doing so.
He's entitle to his opinion, and we're entitled to listen or ignore as we choose. Personally, I'd say that anything fun can get addictive if you've not much self-control, and I wouldn't let my kids play it without the teamspeak disabled, or at least restricted to known friends only.
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Friday 5th April 2019 02:29 GMT samkam
Best Text for a Long Time
"The Prince's comments serve as a periodic reminder that despite an enormous effort and the seemingly bottomless goodwill of the UK press and general public, the Royal Family remains dedicated to its core mission of remaining firmly out-of-touch while considering itself to be a moral and ethical guiding light for a society that continues to pay for its gilded existence out of some combination of longing for past glories and pity."
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Friday 5th April 2019 07:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
I hoped that Brexit would have banned...
... the Windsors soap opera from European media. But it looks there is a large enough share of people that is badly addicted to these useless people lives and their idiotic "events", even outside UK.
It's in many ways more worrisome than Fortnite, the latter will eventually go, those people unluckily reproduce, having nothing else to do.
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: I hoped that Brexit would have banned...
Come On, in Brexit, we see a 1'st world nation have a collective psychotic episode over it's narcissism being thwarted. It is such a debacle that they totally have to stuff the media bandwidth with royal and celebrity inanities to create some semblance of normality.
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Saturday 6th April 2019 05:08 GMT Geoffrey W
Re: I hoped that Brexit would have banned...
Brexit is what happens when blind dogma takes precedence over considered pragmatism. And ERG members have the nerve to say that Marxists are dangerous and should never be allowed to run the country. Self awareness is not their strongest super power.
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Friday 5th April 2019 06:05 GMT Compuserve User
Prince Harry doesn't have any real responsibilities and will probably not sit on the throne, so he is free to make all kinds of whimsical comments that get media exposure for 15 minutes and then the issue disappears in the ether. We are all entitled to our opinion. Harry has done some remarkable things (research them if you must) and I agree with him in principle. If we were living in a world of 1980 where kids can go playing out after dark safely or after tea go play on your spectrum or commodore, then there should be no obesity in children and more future competitors in the Olympics.
Unfortunately it is not 1980 or 1990, knife crime is on the rise and kids have to stay home where it is safe. We had Team Fortress for frickin ever, and nobody complained about the violence in that game. It is like a cartoon, just like Bugs Bunny cartoons and the violence that was contained in each episode was much worse. So kids relate to cartoon as not being real. I notice Harry doesn't refer to call of duty or CSGO which I bet he is an avid player.
If Harry wants a change in social media and violent comic type video games, maybe he should resolve the gang and knife crime problems in the UK, so the kids can you out and play like we did in 1980. He deserves a pint for trying, but something tells me he won't even think about it.
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
I believe getting more public exposure for a mental health charity is a small step towards reducing violent crime. Jo Cox, for instance, was murdered by someone of very dubious mental stability who had been exposed to the more evil people on social media.
I'm not an American, I live in a country where the law says that what you say can be as bad as what you do. And I tend to agree. In the US, a Hitler would have his speech protected and be free to surround himself with intimidating, armed followers. In Germany, he'd go to prison. We're in between the extremes, videlicet Rees-Mogg and Tommy Robinson (Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the far right), and I think there's a lot to be said for that. But if Mair had been taken seriously, Jo Cox might still be alive.
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Friday 5th April 2019 07:11 GMT Chris G
The article has the tone of someone with an axe to grind having the luck to find a platform where they can indulge themselves.
I don't care about our royal family beyond the fact that the monarch is the legal head of what passes for a British constitution.
There are dozens of other higher profile celebs with far less savoury pasts who feel obliged to impart their notions of wisdom to the world. Perhaps Keiron could do a weekly hatchet column so that we can laugh at all of them.
As for the game, never heard of it so I guess I am uninformed.
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Friday 5th April 2019 07:44 GMT Teiwaz
There are dozens of other higher profile celebs with far less savoury pasts who feel obliged to impart their notions of wisdom to the world. Perhaps Keiron could do a weekly hatchet column so that we can laugh at all of them.
I would like to second that.
Maybe that arse Russell Brand?
For one reason or another we've been forced onto this 1984 vibe, we might as well make use of the more cathartic 2 minute thing.
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Friday 5th April 2019 09:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
re. There are dozens of other higher profile celebs
I beg to differ, in this age of free information, the plebs should be made aware of such outbursts of wisdom from our masters, as we're supposed to emulate their enlightened ways. Not that the register is first to report, it was splatted all over their site by the watchful beeb yesterday, if not a few days back.
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Friday 5th April 2019 08:28 GMT Chris G
@Teiwaz.
Royalty and royal blood is no more meaningful than being holy, the biggest difference between kings and popes is that the latter recognise mo borders at all. The royal and the holy still have to take a dump on a regular basis qnd smell no better than anybody else.
By the way, I bet my sword is bigger than yours!
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
Given Brexit and the tabloids, Kipling is more relevant than ever:
"Holy priesthood, holy king, holy People's Will,
Have no truck with the senseless thing, order the guns and kill!"
(He was supporting the view that the only proper form of government is by elected representatives. Kipling might have been an imperialist, but he was a pro-British style democracy imperialist.)
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Friday 5th April 2019 15:49 GMT MJI
Re: That joke is too effing old
Hewitt
Just not possible as Hewitt is not the son of Prince Phillip.
Look at the pair of them Harry is a chip off the DoE block.
I find it so funny as people really get wound up by Prince Phillip, then get similar by Harry.
I get great enjoyment out of people getting wound up like that as it makes them out to be fools.
Oh and look at those ears!
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Friday 5th April 2019 08:44 GMT rg287
Streisand Effect?
Ironically of course, not being on Instawank I would be entirely - and blissfully - unaware of this latest missive from the house of Hewitt/Spencer/Windsor/Markle had Kieren not been so thoughtful as to deem it news worthy of my (or anyone's) attention.
So yeah. Thanks for that.
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Friday 5th April 2019 10:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Cheap
Now I'm not a fan of royalty, but a bunch of cheap ad hominem attacks like this is beneath even The Reg. Surely?
Wouldn't be the first time. They've gone right off the deep end about Elon Musk in the past. Not drinking the Kool-Aid is one thing, but there was at least one hatchet job that was quietly and significantly edited after 2 hours (with no Errata or notes at the bottom) and a bunch of comments deleted.
Possibly they'd posted a draft (before a subeditor had gone through with a red pen and asked for all the sources and citations).
Either way, it wasn't - and isn't - a good look. El Reg maybe a Red Top, but it's not (supposed to be) The Sun. Fortunately such lapses in judgement are rare.
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Friday 5th April 2019 11:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Cheap
Betcha a signed dollar they didn't call him a paedophile.
Oh this was well before that, when Musk's only crime was being a bit bombastic. Such a piece might be reasonable today, but it wasn't then.
The tenor of the article implied that Musk had personally pissed in the author's cereal that morning and the whole article was riddled with factual and objective errors (which were pointed out in the later-deleted comments - we spend our lives reading between the lines of nonsense from Security Vendors. Most people here can smell bullshit from 5 miles!).
Calling it a hatchet job was generous. Borderline libel more like (which presumably is why it was heavily edited). It was below El Reg then, and it remains so now.
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Friday 5th April 2019 11:19 GMT Kickstone
Sweaty tryhard
Gamer myself, now my 8 year old son is. We were always close, but games have made us even closer. Nothing better than a Friday night, extra cheese pizza's in the oven, firing both Xbox's up and trying to blow the virtual sh*t out of each other.
Harry really needs to stop trying to impress and get his own house in order. I'm sure the relationship I have with my son will be a lot healthier than the one he's about to have with his own privileged offspring.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
