Posts by Kev Beeley

Ready to go again, soldier? Final Fantasy VII remake revealed

Count me in as interested. I never finished the game as the SCSI card I was using at the time threw a major wobbly, and crapped all over the windows partition of my PC (but mercifully left all the primary Linux ones intact). Play time had been in excess of 55 hours at that point, and I just couldn't stomach restarting it.

I probably would have been done with it if I hadn't spent hours trying to breed the Gold Chocobo. When I came back to it a couple of years later, it would install, but would never run due to the intense shonkiness of the port...

I'll echo what others said, though, and hope it's treated with a light touch - Square could quite easily polish this one with a turd-smeared cloth if they're not very careful.

Happy 2nd birthday, Windows 8 and Surface: Anatomy of a disaster

Having used Windows for 25 years now, it really speaks volumes that I had to look up what the hell the "Charm Menu" was...

Brit giant Daisy stuffs face with treats, but she ain't piling on ££££££s

Ever time we tried to get away from Daisy and their lackadaisical idea of 'service' they ended up buying out our new providers. It became a slightly tortured in-joke over time, and one I'll inevitably have to deal with again, unless they eventually do a Mr. Creosote on us.

The cute things they say

A user asked me once if I could get our order management system to generate a report of all the orders it didn't know about.

After the few seconds it took my brain to try and comprehend the sheer idiocy of what I'd been asked, I replied, "I'll see what I can do, but before that, could you ask your children to write a comprehensive list of all the words they don't know and let me know how you get on?"

Bletchley Park spat 'halts work on rare German cipher machine'

With each passing article on this story, I'm increasingly reminded of that god-awful Left Twix/Right Twix advert. They're two parts of an entire story, and one could not exist without another.

Those single Twixes are never satisfying enough.

Sega’s Out Run: Even better than the wheel thing

It was...

The PC Engine had a very limited release in the UK as the Turbografx, using the same styling as the American release, but dropping the "16" from its title. Compared with the original PC Engine and following Core machines (which are TINY), it just looked pretty ugly.

The PC Engine still remains the only console I want to own but have not.

Soon.

Vinyl sales reach 15 year high, Blighty becomes No. 3 music buyer

Re: The music industry: @Mark Honman

The sound quality of vinyl fell through the floor during the mid 70s through the 80s as they used lower quality vinyl and made it a lot thinner.

In addition, albums increased in length due to the limits in time being expanded by Tape/CD, and manufacturers often ended up trying to cram everything onto a single record. A 12" LP doesn't really lend itself to an hour of music on a single disc and even 45 minutes begins to push it. That lead to tighter and less deep grooves.

Combine those two elements, and yup, Vinyl can sound pretty crap.

The resurgence is partially due to using decent quality vinyl, and often on double albums or greater. And shoving in a digital download code (or even a CD) so you still easily copy to your digital music player of choice helps sell them very well.

I'm quite happy to buy vinyl as my primary format. The legal downloads do help, but for my money, the tactile nature and involvement of vinyl easily beats the indifference of shoving my iPod on shuffle and never listening to an album as it was intended to be played.

Goldman Sachs: Windows' true market share is just 20%

Exactly my thoughts

When companies such as Goldman Sachs, or credit agencies like Standard & Poor's 'announce' such things, my first thought is "So, who are they attempting to make money for NOW?". Strikes me as nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy after this.

Bash Street bytes: Do UK schools really need the Raspberry Pi?

So what's really that different to now from then?

So, this will 'only interest a small percentage of the schoolchildren' and 'therefore isn't really viable' is only a challenge in these modern times?

Back in the early 80s home computers were treated by most of those who chose to take any interest as a way of playing games, but everything else the computer could do was readily accessible; nothing was hidden from you if you chose to look any deeper, and some of those who did play games went exploring, usually to try and 'write their own games'. Out of a school of 300, I'd say only 30 or so kids took much interest at computers at school, and maybe 10 for anything other than playing games.

Now, most computers are treated as devices by to play games or "do something on the net", but everything about the machine is so abstracted that if you do want to look any deeper, you're likely to be out of luck. That same school of 300 would likely have 290 who use computers, but almost zero who have any way of delving beyond that tightly-controlled veneer.

Sure, the Pi and its ilk would probably not manage to get more than 10 or 20 kids interested in the guts of computers and computing, but even getting it back to the percentage from the early 80s would be a success; Those skills I learned had uses FAR beyond simply programming, so not even providing the tools to offer the chance to find out is a tragedy in itself.

Microsoft said “Where do you want to go today?”

In my opinion, that little flashing "K" in the corner of the screen offered far more potential.

Skype touts FREE* Wi-Fi across the UK

Re: nope, totally lost here...

Though it's pretty straightforward to set your own access point up in a small business, they are not likely to separate private and public networks, and not deal with the elephant in the room - The Digital Economy Act 2010. Since that pushes culpability of copyright infringement onto the provider of the service (i.e. the venue owner), it could prove costly to provide 'free wifi'.

This service, offering the filtering, should also indemnify the small business owner, since the connection to this access point is no longer managed by them. Given the cost of a fully-managed service from the likes of The Cloud is quite a lot more, it's not a bad deal really.

Rainbow Islands

Superb game!

This game helped me destroy three joysticks, almost destroyed a monitor, and helped teach my neighbour's kids the finer points of swearing through the open window of my bedroom. Graftgold did SUCH a good conversion job on the Amiga, and when I finally have the funds, a copy of the original arcade PCB will be mine!

As much as I enjoyed Bubble Bobble and Parasol Stars, this one will always be the one which holds a special place in my heart.

Here lies /^v.+b$/i

In the filestream of life...

cat life | sed 's/is/was/g' > afterlife

How to make boots on Mars affordable - One way trips

Somehow, I'm reminded of this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svAQ6BCIgxg

(NSFW due to lots of swearing, even if it IS beeped out)

Ballmer: Windows Mobile lost a 'whole generation'

Seriously?

"The Holy Grail is the consumer, seduced by must-have gadgetry that they'll bring into work and that their company's IT departments then have to run and support."

Users bringing in their shiny new Windows 7 slabs protected by a 3 month trial of McAfee or something as useless, and demanding that the IT Dept has to support them? I think they're in for some disappointment.

iPhone 3.0 - born on schedule...

Interestingly enough...

...the new finder feature is also finding and happily displaying emails that I deleted over four months ago, had removed from trash, and also do not exist on either the server or my desktop unit. Quite how it's achieving this feat without lying to me that a mail has been deleted is beyond me.

iPhone auto-correct puts Euro tongues out of joint

It can be annoying in English too

Every time I sign my name on an EMail it immediately wants to correct it to keV...

'Why not try nude female midgets?' says Microsoft Adcenter

Well

I fully expect the entire list to be bought by eBay and/or Tesco before the end of the week

Hackintosh maker gets legal greeting from Apple

Honestly, what is the problem?

In years gone by, I never recall much vitriol spewed out by Atari ST users, complaining that AmigaOS was tied exclusively to Commodore's own hardware and should be litigated against to make it compatible with their own hardware. That Sony should be FORCED to make their Playstation games compatible with Saturns. That Bentley should ensure that their engines fit quite happily in a Ferrari.

Microsoft chose to sell their OS to whoever wished to install it and had compatible hardware. Linux and similar strive to make their OS as compatible as possible. Apple chose to tie their OS to their hardware and ensured that in the terms and conditions that it wasn't to be run on 3rd-party hardware.

Does that really matter? Each was ultimately a concious decision made by its creators.

Honestly, just use whichever damn operating system you want to. Don't like a company? Don't buy their products. End of story.

O2 starts 3G iPhone stampede - and runs away

Conflicting information

Nice email from O2 on the 30th June telling me it was time for an upgrade.

Nice text message this morning telling me I'm not.

Nice lady on phone telling me that I can't upgrade until the 23rd July regardless of what the mail said.

Chances of there being any stock left then? Pretty damn low!

Ah well. Perhaps it's time for a change of phone number anyway.

Nintendo Wii 'like a virus', games boss sniffs

Whatever...

I doubt I'll ever really fit into what this gentleman at Epic thinks is a standard gamer. I've had my Wii since launch night, and it's still regularly played. A lot of this I would put down to simply NOT liking the kind of games that I'm supposed to like 'in my demographic'

I'm still only at around the 10-ish games stage, but this was primarily due to the fact a lot of pap was released on the console during its first full year; many 3rd-party games developers dismissed the console out of hand, found themselves scrambling to play catch-up, and consequently had little experience programming for its control scheme efficiently.

Rather like the latency in decent 3rd-party DS games, it seems they're now beginning to get used to using the controls as an enhancement and not a handicap.

Mother of God seen on USB Flash drive

I'd be sold

If it bled data from its stigmatas when it reaches maximum capacity.

Camelot pulls scratchcard amid numerical anarchy

I'm feeling generous

Since she feels swindled by Camelot, I'd be quite happy to offer her the choice of a -£5,000 or -£10,000 prize to compensate for her loss.

W1NNT number plate vendor mocks L1NUX

Still...

I occasionally see a car with R15 CPC driving around the Crawley area. That's a bit of a blast from the past.