Posts by Toby Rose

After Death Star II blew: Dissecting the tech of Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens

100 years between Battle of Naboo and Jakku? More like 60 - 70.

Get your basics correct and then try again with the article.

Too many people on this bandwagon!

NHS website hit by MASSIVE malware security COCKUP

A DoH spokesman. More like a Doh! spokesman!

Twitter: It's JUST LIKE Elder Scrolls (no it's not)

I played Twitter and got bored with very quickly.

If you wrote something like this documentary for your homework at school, you'd get an "F" and be told to write it again.

Grand Theft Auto V: Violent, sweary and amazingly ambitious

Re: "The presence of Michael, Franklin and Lester,"

The one character you can't afford to misname is Trevor!

TV tax takers reveal Brits telly habits

A Quarter?

More than a quarter (even) watch TV on a mobile device!! The only way that can possibly be true is if the surveyors have mistranslated 'portable' for 'mobile' and then included the smartphone/tablet users who would gladly eat up their battery lifespan watching mostly drivel.

Times celebrates disappearing readers

The Times ...

... they are a chang(e)in'!

Superhero game beta sucks boobs into honeypot

Do it!

Gotta love the first video post on the Sunbelt site by user 'doitfaggots'!

Xbox Live billing site snubs Firefox

Billing?

Surely the issue here is having to pay to play games you've already paid money for?

Meryl Streep to tackle Margaret Thatcher

Meryl to tackle Margaret

From the title it sounds so so promising. Then you realise it's got nothing to do with ladies rugby!

Animated CAPTCHA tech aims to fox spambots

Whatever happened to the kittens?

A couple of years ago the folk at b3ta used kittens in CAPTCHAs; the bot or human had to distinguish the kitten from the other life form/object. Has anyone adopted their approach? Seems a lot cheaper than animations!

Victorinox offers hackers £100,000 challenge

Comes in useful ...

Out in the wilderness or fishing exhibition.

Pass me a Leatherman!

US kiddies treated to Playboy TV

TV Schedule

Next on C-Boobies we've got Fingermouse!!

Interpol chief questions body scanner rollout

Who?

Manufactures these body scanners?

And who's been lobbied?

Physicists assemble world's smallest snowman

More a cowardly lion ...

Than a Tin Man too.

Pull the plug on Pandas, declares BBC man

BBC Wildlife Presenters ...

They soak up enough licence fee money. Let them go ...

The WWF

The WWF will be laying the Smack-down on Packham now!!

Breakfast cereal freebie CD dishes up hard-core smut

Nuts!

Only the tastiest and wholesome nuts go into our cereals!! Try with strawberries and cream for something different ...

Scareware package mimics Windows Blue Screen of Death

BSOD?

People who fall for this stunt have never experienced BSOD so the context is lost when displayed in a browser window.

They'll still fall for it though ...

Cartoon lion urges Lancs kids to dob in terrorist classmates

in view ...

Voila! In view a humble Vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villian by Lenny the Lion.

GPS, swipe cards to monitor Welsh school kids

Lost or impersonate?

If a kid wanted to do naughty things then hey presto! Dennis the Menace or Minnie the Minx could swap swipe cards with Walter the Softy! Gnasher could distract Walter with ice-cream or something whilst Dennis does the exchange. Pie-Face or Curly could be involved too.

Imagine the uproar when Teacher gives Walter the cane!!

BMW driver follows satnav to edge of cliff

Take the ferry

Of the 59 phrases that make up my sat-nav's vocabulary, I've wondered when I might be advised to take the ferry, (large unavoidable metal thing at a river or sea crossing). Maybe it would be better to include a watch-out-for-the-impending-cliff-edge! phrase instead.

Microsoft knew about Xbox 360 disc-scratch problem, employee claims

Excuse (MS)

Mine was left flat and still scratched discs from day one. I got a load of tosh from an MS-employee, telling me to keep the unit horizontal, on a vibration-free surface etc. I reminded her that I've never seen this happen with any other optical disc readers/writers I've purchased over the years. I highlighted her to the well-documented problem to which she made no comment. If MS knew nothing about the problem, wouldn't she be surprised and a bit more sympathetic?

There's an identical DVD-drive available for PCs: these units have a protective resin around the laser housing, the XBox ones don't. When the disc spins up, it knocks against the housing and the give is all in the plastic of the disc. This happens when the XBox is reading data from the disc; typically when lots of data is required for the application running (graphically-intensive routines).

Eventually, the disc wears out at the spot and is rendered unreadable.

Luke Skywalker's lightsabre goes on sale

Imperial Entanglements

I'll give you 60 thousand now plus 60 thousand when we reach Alderaan.

Half of Brits abuse apostrophe's

Use a space instead!!

What difference would be substituting one character for that of another?

Yes! It's the Darth Vader breakfast toaster

Mouse Droid

Should have been Mouse Droid-shaped instead!

Sony to save planet with PS3 firmware overhaul

@Tony Chandler

Hardly madness using a Sixxaxis to interface with the console.

DVD / PlayTV

Lets hope that the 'period of inactivity' doesn't switch of the Sixxaxis whilst watching a DVD, Blu Ray disc or Play TV. I found it annoying on the 360 when my controller 'remote' would power down after 10-15 mins.

Pause live TV but first connect to your console via Bluetooth.

US woman shot by cast iron stove

She might never have noticed ...

... If she was frying popcorn.

Tikitag lets anyone become Big Brother

As well as mental institutions ...

Tag the inmates so if and when they escape, there's a chance of finding them.

Don't want ugly bars on windows? Have Tikitags instead!

Tesco causes couple condom catastrophe

* Phew *

I thought this article might balloon out of proportion but you managed to keep it all in the teat.

Dancing to power London nightclub

Dance ...

... While the record-spins.

Minister urges end to videogame rating feud

Common Sense

The BBFC's rating is instantly recognisable as it resembles the film rating. The Pegi system is just a load of numbers to most people and lets face it, Britain hates numbers; especially reading some EU document pertaining to what the numbers mean. Those parents will let their kids play the 18 rated, adult themed games as well as watch the video nasties.

There are some truly terrible kids-games out there - they might as well play with some quality s/w like Call of Duty 4 or GTAIV.

Yes! It's the Star Wars Nintendo DS stylus!

What next?

Lightsabre toothpicks?

Oops I've lost my last stylus. I think I'll buy one that I can't actually slot into my DS. Hang on a min, that's the reason I lost all mine in the first place. I won't loose this Star Wars one because I'll be having lightsabre battles with all my Jedi friends.

Gamers love in-game ads, ad industry-sponsored survey reveals

Yet again ...

... I've not been asked to participate in a survey.

Then again I don't work for IGA Worldwide or know someone thereof.

If you're listening Sony, it's a big no from him and a big no from me.

Headshot to those 1300 'gamers'! Remember this, you'll stand out like a sore-finger camping next to a large, neon billboard!

NZ hydropower drought could see leccy rationing

Temporary Solution?

Can't they put some of their sheep on dynamo-treadmills until the rains cometh?

Phorm in phormulaic logo phorm storm

Out of Phorm

Time for the Sheffield designers to come up with another logo! They don't want to be associated with these lot do they!

Ofcom says yes on more TV ads

They already bend the ruling

I complained about the amount of advertising on Lost when it was on C4.

The regulations go on about hour slots. This means that if a programme doesn't start on the hour and runs into another hour slot, (quite feasible for even a 40 min show), then the programme can utilise both hours advertising allowance. No rules are made for the channel's own adverts - this is at the discretion of the channel itself to broadcast as few or as many - the case here with C4.

There's a fine line between what people can put up with and what the broadcasters can get away with although judging by the popular shows, for the majority of the viewing public, this isn't much. Carte Blanche for advertising then!!

Smith says answer to knife crime is through the arch window

What's next?

A company, (read Director/Shareholder), stands to make a fortune in albeit temporary sales in their particular brand of metal detector. I bet the CCTV manufacturer, sunning himself on his desert island, from a massive sale a couple of years back is expecting a new neighbour.

Children are impressionable and will lap up this 'security' meaning less people to complain about all this intrusion.

Aussies whip out their a*se antlers

Years behind ...

... We've had Roger's Profanisaurus for ages.

HMRC offers £20k reward for ID goldmine CDs

Here are the discs

Not only a waste of time and money for the police but also the HMRC. They'll have to verify each CD received. There will be many pretenders to the 20 grand and one CD looks pretty much like another.

Gamer takes Microsoft to court over Halo 3 'errors'

Scratch Alert

From day one, (March), I had this unreadable error on GoW. To my distain, when I removed the disk to give it a wipe, there was the first scratch. As said, any graphically intensive XBox 360 game, where the data is streamed from the disk will cause scratches, (with one particular DVD-ROM drive). Oblivion was rendered unplayable and Forza II too.

That was the final straw. Back to Microshaft the box went via courier. Six weeks later, even after multiple calls, no sign of my box. Over the phone as expected, Microsoft wouldn't acknowledge the fault with the DVD-ROM, even telling me to keep the pantyliner-shaped box on a level and stable surface. Stand the machine horizontal etc and not put jam on printed side a la Tomorrow's World.

Main point of the matter is that they would only refund me four weeks on XBox live. In total my box was AWOL for eight weeks. In fact my box is still AWOL, I got sent a new one, which I promptly sold. Never looked back, (until writing this now). My PS3 might not have all that many games yet but I've the confidence in the product to be working for time to come.