Posts by Dave

Fusion-io ups SSD ante

So, $19,200?

I'll take two!

Seagate customers swamped by Barracuda drive failures

@Gulfie

4 drives is plenty for RAID-5 - you can have this setup running perfectly well with 3 drives. Using four drives he would have the setup A-B-C-Parity. You probably have RAID-5 too. The number has no bearing on the amount of drives you can include in the array.

Customs warns of killer consoles

@Pie

I think it emerged that he had unplugged it while still wet from swimming, or something similar. Of course by the time that came to be common knowledge nobody cared anymore and it had already been blamed on a dodgy foreign power unit.

Microsoft marks Windows' anniversary with Windows 7

And it's not just maths that's the problem...

Looks like the Windows 1.0 spellchecker didn't pick up 'rudamentary'.

Demand for consoles, add-ons skyrockets as PC games plunge

'Exclusive' PC titles

Supreme Commander, TF2, Portal, Left 4 Dead and Bioshock aren't PC exclusive. I'm not sure if you get the original FEAR in FEAR files, so that might be.

Anyway, I have been a die-hard PC gamer for most of my life, until the past year or so when I bought an 8800GT when it was released and Crysis still struggled. I just thought, to hell with it. I'm not paying the price of a console every few months for new kit to find stuff still doesn't work as it's supposed to. I just want to pop a game in and kick back without fannying around. Console games in recent years have gone from strength to strength and I don't see myself going back to gaming on a PC until they sort out compatibility, ridiculous software requirements and the godawful DRM that seems to infect every title these days.

Acer: We’re comin’ at ya, Dell

@Vince Lewis

Agreed! I work at a school where we had a batch of about 100, and about half of them (mine included!) more or less fell apart after about 6 months with various build quality issues. This was about 12-18 months ago. Consequently I'll never touch them with any of my own money.

Reg reader completely loses the plot

Partys, party's...

You guys are kidding, right?

All together now: "parties"!

Nintendo introduces redesigned DS

No GBA slot

Isn't that where the Guitar Hero bit that is being heavily advertised right now fits? Hmm... well done Nintendo.

Overall, it looks like a DS Lite with everything they could think of slapped on for no particular reason. I'll not be upgrading.

Acer punts £199 Linux laptop

Almost perfect...

Finally, someone's got the formula spot on! It's such a shame it had to be Acer... we got about 100 of their laptops in at work and on probably 50% of them the trackpad buttons have fallen apart. Can't blame cack handed users either because mine did the same thing, even though I rarely use the buttons. They were snazzy, but the build quality was horrible, and as such I've sworn off ever buying an Acer product again. Such a shame...

Why I downgraded from Vista to XP

The real reason for downgrading...

Because everyone knows it's cool to hate Vista on the interweb!

Personally I've been using Vista since release and I've never had a problem with it (no, really!). Of course XP will run quicker than Vista. It's older software. Guess what, 98 will run even faster than XP! Just like Quake 3 will run faster than Crysis.

When XP was released we had the same spate of moaning that it was a load of crap and people would stick with 98 forever. And so, history repeats...

Taking the piste: Wii to bring skiing to the living room

@Greg

Yes, because ultra-realistic gameplay is what Nintendo has been aiming for the last few years, isn't it? I remember all those times playing Wii Tennis and thinking I would be playing at Wimbledon in no time! Please. It's meant to be a bit of fun, nothing more!

Boy burned in PSP trouser blaze

Knock off battery?

I wonder if the battery was an official Sony battery or some chinese knock-off, as is usually the case in instances such as this. If it is some cheap battery, the family will likely have no luck with Sony, whom the article reports they will be contacting, because it's not up to them what other brands do.

Samsung PS42Q97HDX 42in plasma HD TV

Pointless?

Why review (or indeed even buy) a 42" HDTV without having a HD signal available to pump through it? Upscaled DVDs don't quite count. It's a bit of a pointless review if you ask me, because the whole reason for HDTVs existing is that they can be used to display HD images, yet I'm none the wiser as to how this TV performs in that department!

Will Microsoft parachute Windows 7 in early?

Count them...

"I have never understood this numbering scheme. By my count, shouldn't this be Windows 9: 3.x, 95 (4), 98 (5), 2000 (6, and ME doesn't count), XP (7), Vista (8), "Vienna" (9)."

No. 95 is (4), and 98 and Me are both just 95 with bells on, so they're all (4). 2000 was never meant to be a home OS. So Vienna is 7.

Retailers: Xbox 360 to win next-gen console war

@PIB

What's with the Reg bashing?

49% does make a majority if it's the most popular of 3 choices... Given the percentages in the article, the question wouldn't have been "Will the 360 win?," It would have been "Which of the following 3 consoles do you think will win?" The other answers got less votes, and therefore the 360 voters are in the majority.

360 preference in GAME? Maybe...

But only because the 360 has the widest selection of good software. This is what the game shops want to shift because it's what they make the most money on. The 360 has loads and loads of games out, lots of them great, lots of them OK, and some of them crap. IMO it's got the largest amount of great games to choose from though. Thus they have loads of shelf space.

The Wii has loads of games out too, but most of them are just crap. It's got its fair share of gems of course, but most of the available software is mini game collections or bad ports with motion sensing tacked on.

The PS3 doesn't have much in the way of software at all, so it doesn't get a lot of shelf space either.

I'm not a frothing 360 fanboy either, I have a Wii and I love it. But as with any Nintendo console, the truly great games are few and far between. That's just the way of things.

German law smites Warhammer fan flick

@Mark

OK, I'm not a lawyer or anything. I just play GW games, so I'm somewhat familiar with the situation. That's all.

For those not familiar with GW at all, the videogame Dawn of War is based on 40k too. It introduced a new chapter, the Blood Ravens. GW own the rights to the game. After that game, world+dog now play Blood Ravens. They may even get their own rules. This is fine because GW own the rights. If the Damnatus team introduced a new chapter or race or something GW couldn't do anything with it. And yes, people probably would want to play the new race, character or whatever. The demand would be there but GW couldn't do anything about it. Damnatus would be free to produce their own rules for them without giving GW anything. This is because under german law, they can't sign over their author's rights.

Not sure about this one, but they may even be able to use GWs own chapters, make models, magazine etc without thanking GW. Obviously, they can't allow this. It doesn't make them a big mean corporate greed machine. It's just good business sense.

Further, they were already told no, years before now, but of course the story doesn't mention that. The fact that they carried on is their own misguided choice, which is at best naive and at worst damn stupid. They should have sought permission BEFORE shooting, not after.

The point

Is that although the rights to Warhammer and 40k are, of course the property of Games Workshop, the movie wouldn't be. If the makers decided to introduce new characters, races, and so on, the rights on those creations would be theirs, not those of Games Workshop. These rights can't be signed away, and so there's no real option for Games Workshop other than to say no to the film, because it would open such a can of worms if they were to allow it to go ahead, it doesn't bear thinking about. (GW wouldn't be allowed to include such races and characters in their game without asking the Damnatus team first, for example).

Also, the Damnatus team were told during 2005 (I think) that they would not be granted permission to show the film, but they carried on anyway, hoping that Games Workshop would change their minds. They didn't, but that just makes the Damnatus team somewhat naive to have progressed even though they had been told no.

Sony PS3 narrows gap with Nintendo Wii

Third gen?

"Microsoft sold 11,288 Xbox 360s in Japan in August, rising to 18,717 in October. It's the only third-generation consoles to have seen a month-on-month sales increase of late, though the gain is small."

Third gen? I didn't realise Playstations and Saturns were the first consoles released!