Zen and the art of voting
This reminded me very much of Robert Pirsig
Posts by Joe
16 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Nov 2007
The True Confessions of an Election Official
Miracle airship tech sustained by DARPA pork trickle
Blank robbers swipe 3,000 'fraud-proof' UK passports
Orangutans concoct plant-based soothing balm
AMD Radeon HD 4850 and 4870
Ubuntu made me puke in a bucket
Monday 21st July 2008 03:48 GMT
The Clear Play DVD Nanny reality filter...
"Most of the time you won't even know what you've missed but you'll be glad it's not there," like shit in a nappy?
Reminds me of how the mainstream media create the popular daily show, the 'news'.
Scary stuff. The world today is a very "blankety blank" frightening place.
Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap
Sunday 22nd June 2008 16:13 GMT
My own comment...
Comforting to think no-one (not even a professor) knows what to do in face of the world energy/global warming crisis. At least the mobile phone charging myth gets debunked somewhat. What happens if you've got a dodgy phone battery though? Does the phone battery continuously keep charging ad-infinitum whilst discharging (or whatever it's doing) or what?
And, just how can it be efficient to pump water up a mountain just to harness its energy for electricity production on the way back down? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
What we need to do - in order to get a reliable source of energy - is plug ourselves into the cosmic grid. There's loads of energy wasted everyday out there in space. Any astronomer will tell you that.
Gamers love in-game ads, ad industry-sponsored survey reveals
Tuesday 17th June 2008 16:32 GMT 
According to...?
... a 'study' carried conducted on behalf of IGA Worldwide, Sony's dedicated in-game advertising partner [yes, part/ner].
“From the 'research' [!] it is clear that the overwhelming majority of consumers enjoyed the gaming experience just as much, if not more, with dynamic ads present," says the senior business development director of Activision, whose job it is to make the company £$MONEY£$.
Well, it doesn't really need reiterating but you pay someone [you own] to do some [ahem] research and they come back with the [convenient] results your advertising company wanted to hear. "Ooh, I just love adverts. They make me go all fuzzy inside. Give me more, I just can't get enough of them after spending £30.00 to play your game. And bring out some patches too. Oh, yes. I just love fixing buggy games." I wonder when we'll have to pay for patching up our games?
Ad-driven games free to the prospective player are already a reality. EA are to bring the Battlefield franchise up to date with a freebie entitled Battlefield Heroes, a cartoonesque homage to Valve's Team Fortress 2. The idea is if you want your soldier to look cool and stand out from the crowd with his 733t military clobber and shades, you have to pay real money for it. Corporate sponsors like Lockheed Martin and BAE are probably chomping at the bit to get some good old fashioned hardware into the series. Cluster bomb anybody?
You'll be able to shoot a sign for a Big Mac and Fries delivered straight to your door and won't even have to get up from the comfort of your favourite gaming chair. Wow, the possibilities are endless.
Son of 419 victim contacts El Reg
Tuesday 13th May 2008 17:58 GMT 
Son of 419
A 'preacher' with children, eh? Not catholic then. My advice is he should either shave his head and go live as a buddhist monk in some (very) out of the way place, having offered his family and their descendants up for eternal bondage in payment of this debt and gross insult to his friends or do the honourable and more immediately satisfying thing and commit seppuku along with his entire household.so he can rid the world of his protracted stupidity and spare it any further embarrassment for his slur on humankind's claim in being an intelligent species.
LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray HD DVD combo drive
Thursday 8th May 2008 03:25 GMT
Read write!
"Being able to format a 50GB BD-RE disc as UDF, then just drag and drop files onto it would be amazing!!"
You're supplied a 25GB BD-RE disk (Verbatim). I burned 20 odd gigabytes of music to it, using the drag and drop UDF method if I remember correctly. Blu ray RAM would be cool. I wouldn't trust BD-RE/R for archival but know nothing of the tech used really so am not qualified to comment.
Had this drive since Nov 07. Took The Reg a while to review? Also, the firmware version is now on second update to YL03: 'Improved Write Strategy' whatever that involves.
I agree it isn't ideal backing up data to optical media as opposed to simply bunging it all on hard disk drives (however configured) but it's sensible to have another copy stored on media you know you'll be able to access that isn't subject to mechanical failure. DVD RAM is still preferred for backing up my personal photos/important files.
BD-RE takes ages... to write.. so.. boring. So expensive too. Nice to have the capability all the same, even if the price/storage ratio isn't great at present. This drive preceded the availability of the read only GGC model, hence purchase though priority was for a dual HD format player. Does the job rather nicely in fact...
Top marks for me, though buying now, I'd probably for for the GGC version and spend the 80 quid saved later on on a faster cheaper blu ray writer, maybe even with RAM if it even ever exists? Link given shows supported write/read media:
http://us.lge.com/download/product/file/1000003671/GGW-H20L_spec_sheet22108.pdf
3rd Space FPS gaming vest
Computer system suspected in Heathrow 777 crash
Nvidia G92-based GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB
Wednesday 12th December 2007 09:37 GMT
GT or not GT?
Tony Smith:>> "What's the verdict, readers - should we be running this kind of data in all future graphics card reviews? Tell us what you think."
Absolutely, yes. Include energy consumption figures. I didn't read through the whole article but did read a review over at Bit-Tech and their findings pretty much match your own. It'll help environmentally conscious gamers assuage their guilt somewhat, knowing they've chosen to burn up slightly less fossil fuels whilst they embark on their next virtual killing/dying spree.
So, regarding overclocking, which card to go for? GT or GTS? And, because the GT is a single slot card would that make it the better option for a SLI configuration? Will Nvidia provide drivers that actually make SLI a worthwhile consideration for these cards? Who knows? Not me.
Beeb coughs to Panorama WiFi-scare travesty
Huge sea scorpion overshadowed humans
Wednesday 21st November 2007 15:19 GMT
Markus Poschmann?
Joke name. Surely?
Giant cockroaches, flies, spiders? How they would mock us today. How come they got so small since then, then? Must've been a gigantic shrinking machine what done it, most likely made by aliens. The Church of Scientology must've deliberately left that chapter out.
Drink rats' milk, suggests battling Heather Mills
Tuesday 20th November 2007 12:43 GMT
@ Youngdog et al
God, that felt good. Haven't laughed like that for too long.
Maybe we should think about milking methane from those bovine and other ruminant quadrupeds responsible for producing all this hot air and leave the rats alone? That way people like Heather can power her 4x4s, the rest of us can continue to enjoy nice tasting milk with our real 'english' tea and those who want to can gorge on burgers till they're too obese and unfit to work.
Realising there may be other more practical considerations for hooking up every arsehole to the national grid, I propose plugging in Heather instead. I'm sure there's plenty enough acid left over from her acrimonious divorce to power this planet for centuries. We could use such celebrities as Hilton and Mill's in series. Hmm. Bono and Bob. Brad and Angelina. Madonna and Guy. The list is endless...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
