Posts by Mr Brush

Engineers are cold and dead inside, research shows

Engineers often simply lack understanding of emotional situations

Sales 'people' on the other hand are actually evil. Truely dead inside and would happily eat a baby if there was margin in it.

iPhone 5 has 'laser keyboard, holographic images'

Re: If it was true then

>> If it were then even the fandroids would dump their Androids......

If it were true, it would have already been around on Android for a year or two before Apple 'invented' it.

Apple iPhone 5 hands-on review

Re: "Apple have never taken the "rip it up and start again" route"

> Ahhh...sort of like Porsche with the 911?

More like Ford with the Mondeo.

The luxury car analogy doesn't wash, no matter how many times it's trotted out.

PS3 fans buy more digital content than Xbox buffs do

Re: Xbox is a bit comical

No arguments here. Came to post pretty much the same thing.

I love my XBox for gaming (and I do buy a fair bit of DLC), but it's not much use as a media hub. Too noisy and rubbish codec support.

Mine is an old Premium console and newer models may be quieter, but in spite of Microsoft's re-positioning strategies, it's just not a very good media box.

Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards

No sexy times till 1987?

The adult themed Beat 'em and eat 'em, Batchelor Party and the dire Custers Revenge were all around in 1982.

They were grim though.

Go Daddy boycott threat for backing hated anti-piracy law

US Webmasters need not worry

United States Senator Roy Blunt wrote this in response to a letter questioning SOPA:

"I am a cosponsor of the Protect IP Act which would cut off foreign websites dedicated to counterfeiting and piracy that steal American jobs, hurt the economy, and harm customers. It would allow the Justice Department to file a civil action against those who have registered or own a domain name linked to an infringing website. The bill does not allow the Justice Department to target domain names registered by a U.S. entity."

Read that last bit again: " The bill does not allow the Justice Department to target domain names registered by a U.S. entity."

So if the nasty pirates are American, there's nothing SOPA can do about it. Epic Fail!

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2584140&cid=38449002

Early 2012 date for UK Kindle Fire debut

Picked one up while on a US visit last month.

It's a bit of a shock when it tells you that UK accounts can't access anything (even the free stuff) from the Amazon Market, but GetJar did the job over there until I had a chance to root and sideload the regular market when I got home.

Fab bit of kit at a great price, I just hope that rip-off britain prices don't apply when it does cross the pond legitimately.

Moviemakers on a quest for their real-time 3D Holy Grail

Yep..

Some random realtime 3D coverdisk demo got me hooked, then I moved on to Real3D, didn't get on with Imagine and ended up spending serious cash on an Amiga 4000/040 and one of the first UK versions of Lightwave 3.5 when it got unbundled from VideoToaster.

That rig spent 4 months rendering a 20 minute video. I was paid the grand sum of £800 for my trouble.

Hackers port iPhone 4S' Siri to rival devices

Except...

Apple didn't develop Siri. The tech was developed elsewhere and bought out by Apple in 2010 to prevent the app from going cross platform.

Of course it is still wrong to hack the tech and it does cheapen Apple's investment, but the main thrust of this is to prove that you don't need a 'magical' iPhone4S to use the product as Apple would have you believe. All the 'magic' happens upstream on a big box and the iPhone is simply a dumb delivery device for the sampled voice data.

Eleven - if you will - rocktastic music movies

^This, in spades

The first time I heard his version of 'Hurt', I cried like a baby.

Renault Fluence ZE

I can't be the only one...

who misread the name as Flatulence?

Or maybe that's being held back for the gas powered version?

Apple expels serial hacker for publishing iPhone exploit

"So as unfortunate as the iOS vulnerability is, it's worth remembering that what Miller is able to achieve with InstaStock is essentially what has been possible on Android handsets for more than a year."

So as per usual, Apple is playing catch up with something that Android has been doing for ages?

FLAME ON!

Manufacturers testing wider cars for swingbellies

Jaws of the Tiger, Tony!

Jaws of the tiger!

C and Unix pioneer Dennis Ritchie reported dead

Well said

I read the C Programming Language 2nd Ed cover to cover on a number of occasions. It is as you say an excellent book.

Then I bought Soustroup's C++ Programming Language expecting more of the same. Oh dear.

:(

Sad news indeed.

No doubt his passing wil be overshadowed by the beatification of Pope Jobs I.

BBC iPlayer, Lovefilm, 4OD aim for Xbox

Yep, this was the stumbling block last time. MS don't like 'free' content and wanted to restrict iPlayer to Gold subscribers, the Beeb said it should be available to all.

I wonder who blinked first to let this happen?

Sony Ericsson: 'We dropped the ball on iPhone'

RE:Gimmicks

They are gimmicks. However, when Apple features them in two year's time on the 'all new' iPhone4xyz. They'll be 'magical' and 'revolutionary'.

Acer Aspire 5755G 15in Core i7 laptop

Overheating?

My three month old Aspire which has pretty much the same spec but with an i5 CPU is a great bit of kit. However, 10 minutes of pushing the CPU hard results in a thermal shutdown.

It's well ventilated and free of dust, but it can't cope with a 100% load. The system options for fan management are laughable, and I've had to limit the CPU to 85% through power management to stop it happening.

Anyone else got the same issue or is mine a dud?

Game graphics could be 100,000 times better

The 1990s called...

They want their Voxels back.

Nice technique for static scenes. However, heavy reuse of object geometry is required to prevent the scene becoming huge in storage terms. Also, character animation is tricky, so a hybrid system would be required for any game that isn't a tree or landscape simulator.

Corporates love iPhone, iPad more than Android kit

Private Apps

I'm pretty sure there's a mechanism for private/corporate apps to be delivered to iDevices without having to go through Apple vetting and iTunes. Only stuff that is to be available to the great unwashed has to run the gauntlet of Jobsian approval.

The article is probably right. The phone supplied by my employer is an iProduct because the managers and purchasing bods like to have shiney stuff that tells everyone how important and tech savvy their people are. However, my personal mobile is Android because I actually know what I'm doing.

X-COM UFO: Enemy Unknown

A true classic

I lost so many hours hunting around crash sites looking for the last alien, they were always very good at hiding.

Other highlights were the flying missle tank (urban crash site missions are much easier when you can fly up the outside of buildings) and the hardcore Mars Attacks type alien in the purple cloak who used mind control to wipe out your entire squad in one turn *grrr*.

The underwater sequel never really clicked for me, but the German remake that was around a couple of years ago was a good attempt, shame about the dodgy camera angles.

Amazon tackles soaring textbook prices

It has already been established that the Kindle isn't much use for textbooks

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/26/kindle_flunks_out_of_college/

You can't flick back and forth through Kindle texts.

I love my Kindle, but it is purely for reading in a linear fashion. I've long since given up trying to use it for reference books.

Dinner Spinner

Can't speak for the other perms...

...but prevent device sleeping is handy to stop the screen going to low power mode when you've plonked the device down and you're working from the displayed instructions. Otherwise you'd have to keep jabbing the screen with a (possibly dirty) finger to keep the lock from coming on.

GOLDENBALLSUP! Beckham website defaced

A simple mix up of the name and time of birth fields

Time of Birth: Beckham

Name: Half Past Seven

Apple orders millions of iPhone 5s for September release

Popular culture FAIL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg look around the 1:40 mark.

Child of Eden

PS3?

Genuinely didn't know this was out for PS3 too. Does it use the Move controller?

No Gingerbread snack for Desire owners, says HTC

^ This ^

My HTC Hero eventually got upgraded from 1.5 to 2.1, I didn't expect 2.2, and I didn't go gurning to all and sundry that I wasn't getting it.

The mobile ecosystem is a fast moving beast and trying to design a handset for things that may or may not be needed 12 - 18 months after it release is not economical.

Every one wants a free (or very cheap) phone with their contract, for that price, you're going to get a handset that meets the current requirements and should meet the proposed spec for new stuff that's just around the corner. After that you'll be upgrading anyway.

Fanboi icon, because I'll be sticking with Android and it'll probably be HTC flavoured.

Cornish cow plucked from jaws of death by Navy chopper

Fishheads in Bovine rescue drama

Didn't read the article because it has Mr Page's name at the top. However, I would imagine that it goes something like, "Well done the Navy (who are much better at flying than everyone else). Obviously the RAF couldn't never do this because the Typhoon is shit."

RAF Eurofighter Typhoons 'beaten by Pakistani F-16s'

No

The Typhoon does not have a gun.

It has a 27mm Mauser Cannon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauser_BK-27

Apple uncloaks top 10 tools of iOS 5

Thought that too

Apple have blatantly lifted ideas from Android here. If the boot was on the other foot there'd be swarms of legal parasites gathering and herds of braying fanboys calling for blood.

It seems the Android is open enough when you want to steal the ideas.

Xbox 360 sales reach Sony-smashing milestone

No title for you!

The lack of any buttons to supplement the motion detection is a problem for Kinect.

Take Wii bowling for example, you release a button to release the ball, the Kinect version has to guess. This translates to a slightly mushy experience in certain types of game.

A lot of the cool stuff on Kinect Hacks uses a secondary input device such as a WiiMote to get around this limitation.

That said, my kids jump, dance and run themselves ragged in front of the XBox now, that can only be an improvement (they gave up on the Wii after a week).

Toshiba reveals iPad 2 rival

Let me fix that for you

Everybody wants a tablet...

...but I guess some will settle for for an iProduct.

China goes on attack over Google phishing claims

China has the honour of being the first country blocked from posting on my site.

GeoIP + ban on anything coming from 'CN' = 99% reduction in spam.

LA Noire

3 Discs?

Meh, Just install to HDD, problem solved.

At least 360 users get to choose whether or not to install stuff.

Sony unsure if PlayStation Network user data was stolen

@Anon fanboi

Actually Gears3 is looking superb, I've been playing the beta all week. It plays more like the first one (that's a good thing) and dedicated servers remove the old host advantange frustrations.

XBL did go down for a while in 2008, that was due to a huge influx of new users over Xmas, not getting caught out by 1337 h@x0rZ. MS gave away a free game to make up for it, most users didn't need to call the waaaaambulance.

But hey, lets not let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Acer boss quits after board disses his future strategy

YMMV

1st Acer thing, Pentium 75 PC back in 1990-something. Bloody Awful.

2nd Acer thing, AMD based Laptop circa 2005, fantastic piece of kit.

3rd Acer thing, New i5 laptop bought last month to replace above laptop as it's getting a bit long in the tooth. Just as good, if not better than old one.

I often recommend them to people looking for good value kit.

Software bugs block O2 PlayStation phone release

Additional testing required

Translation: Still trying to beat the last level of Crash Bandicoot

Microsoft's new 'Bing deals' fails to support Windows Phone 7

Can we get a bigger FAIL icon?

The current one does not convey the epicness of this fail.

Opera (finally) gets hard on WebGL 3D

> Microsoft doesn't ship OpenGL drivers with their OS

Erm, yes they do. The default OpenGL32.dll on Win95 through to XP provides GL1.1 support.

IIRC, Vista and Win7 even manage to support GL1.5 out of the box.

No new strings for Guitar Hero

It died a while ago

They've just been flogging the corpse ever since.

I loved GH & GH2, a genuinely new and cool idea. However, as soon as the DLC for GH2 surfaced with stupid inflated prices, the flogging of the cash cow became clear. GH3 was crap, GHWT was simply a bland rock band clone and I haven't even bothered looking at GH5 or GH:WoR.

Boffins squeeze a mesh onto Android handsets

Yep, even my 5 year old daughter knew about the Serval.

However, this is only because she has one as her 'pet' in Kinectimals.

LCD pushbutton sunglasses issued to US Navy SEALs

Erm....

@Anton,

Unless there's been some big changes in the last few years the tech of the automatic welding mask is a solar powered LCD.

They instantly darken when the arc is struck, and (almost) instantly lighten when the arc is removed. I suspect the (very short) delay in lightening may be artifical to prevent getting a visual zap when the arc fluctuates during the welding process.

No special coatings, no 60 second lighten up times. See http://www.ashleysdirect.co.uk/solar-powered-lcd-welding-helmet-ce-approved.html for a typical example.

Microsoft insists autistic Xboxer is a cheat

Update on the story

Turns out the kid handed his account over to someone else to get Recon armour in Halo. That's where the cheating happened.

Mom backpedals furiously, non-story comes to an end, Microsoft are somehow still the bad guy.

I've never seen the MS banhammer used incorrectly. There are always cries of injustice and threats to never buy an MS product again, but the truth is MS (and Bungie) don't do this kind of thing on a whim, they have enough data to make the right call.

If you are a blantant cheat and want to carry on doing it, feel free to go do it on PSN, XBL doesn't want you.

Google unleashes Android fondleslab SDK

Fix the emulator!

The SDK is still using the same god awful ARM emulator. It runs like an asthmatic dog pulling Canada up a mountain, even on a quad core system. How are you meant to develop anything when the test environment is so piss poor?

CoD: Black Ops 'not fit for purpose', fans claim

Who'd be a game developer?

Producing products for baying mongs who demand demos, speculate wildly on features, pirate the final product and cheat at the online side. Then drop it like a turd after a few months declaring it to be 'A bit shit innt?'.

Full disclosure: I don't see the fuss over CoD, but I do understand the huge technical obstacles that it has to overcome to allow '1337 $n!p3rz' to swear at people all over the world from the comfort of thier sofas.

Pavement hogging Segway rider convicted

Shame

The Segway seems like a great idea. When the Gov + dog is trying to to persuade us to buy electric cars and pushing the price of fuel through the roof, a small personal transporter for short trips is just the thing we need to help stop people jumping in their gas guzzlers to drive 400 yds to the shops.

Perhaps they should be allowed to use cycle/bus lanes to avoid mowing down Grannies?

Microsoft Kinect goes gangbusters

This happens every time the 360 gets a big release

Guitar Hero 2 was the earliest one that I can recall, but if you visit the Xbox.com forums a few days after any major game or hardware release, you'll see a bunch of '$PRODUCT broke my Xbox' or '$Product gives you the RRoD' threads.

Xboxes break all the time (I'm on my third), it's got nothing to do with Kinect, COD 27, Rock Band Drums or any of the other scapegoats.

Kinect blamed for Red Ring of Death outbreak

Take a look at the XBox.com forums...

Just after the release of any big game...

Guitar Hero 2 breaks your Xbox

COD:MW broke my 360

Rock Band gives you the RRoD

Kinect fries your console

Etc, etc, etc.

*Yawn*

I'm surprised it's taken the BBC so long to catch on to this non-news event that gives them good chance to bitch about MS after every game release.

Simple fact is the 360 is quite capable of destroying itself with no outside assistance (I'm on my third). That fact that some consoles spontaneously combust just as their owner trots in the door with the latest, greatest thingy is a shame, but nothing to do with that new game (or shiney new hardware).

What's more worrying is that the same basic fault still persists after umpteen hardware revisions.

Sony PlayStation Network vs MS Xbox Live

Yes, you can use your stuff on another machine when your signed into LIVE

However, when you've got a replacement 360 and you take it away for entertainment while stuck away from home in a nasty hotel for 5 weeks, and you discover that because you're offline, you can't access half your content (even as far as games declaring their saves corrupt because of DRM failure), it's a bit of a pisser.

Ditto for the days when LIVE just doesn't work and you can't sign in.

DRM = Bad. End of.