Posts by Greg 648 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Apr 2007
To all those who have said "but people do this all the time," yes they do. But do they do it to this extent. Don't compare it to cars unless you're going to talk about relative value. When I bought my iAudio, I paid a premium for it so I could import it before I went on holiday. When I came back, the product was on sale for a whopping....£30 less. Oh noes! Then it went down over time in small increments - £20 here, £30 there, until it ended up a lot cheaper than I paid for it. But that's the way of things - the value of a product declines with age.
What didn't happen was that I came back off holiday and iAudio had lopped £150 off the price of the machine, because that would have been just stupid, and a fairly good indication of rampant profiteering. Which is what's going on here.
Of course stuff comes down in price after it comes out. But by that much, that fast?
"it fell to Microsoft's general manger for interoperability and standards, Tim Robertson, to say through gritted teeth: "Given how encouraging today's results were, we believe that the final tally in early 2008 will result in the ratification of Open XML as an ISO standard." "
In other words, "we'll try even harder to rig the vote next time."
"Hey Cade, how can you blow Ballmer and type and at the same time?"
Wow, you really fucked up that insult, didn't you, FanBoy?
Out of interest, how does being against iTunes make him pro-Microsoft? Especially as last time I checked MS weren't really a force in this arena. (If they are and I haven't heard about it, that illustrates my point neatly.)
Or perhaps, just maybe....you're an idiot?
Wait...HOW MUCH???
</yorkshireman>
In all seriousness, with regards to the first comment posted, I don't think the PS3 was ever really bad value, simply down to the Blu-Ray player. It's a stinking amount for a console, but when you can buy a really powerful console and Blu-Ray player for less than the price of, I dunno, a Blu-Ray player, who's going to go for the second option? It's exactly what they did with the PS2 and its DVD capabilities, and it's exactly where Microsoft continue to miss a trick with the 360.
That said, it hasn't worked as well this time, because their new console costs twice as much as the old one. A PS3 being "good value for a Blu-Ray player" doesn't stop it being really expensive.
Excellent. Well, not for the people in America, but TorrentSpy's attitude is absolutely spot on. If the Americans are going to try and make them break their ethical code of conduct based on no charges, no proveable illegality - never mind the fact that America should have no jurisdiction over servers held in another country - then TorrentSpy should just tell them to get lost, and that's exactly what they've done. Got a problem? Sod off then.
Well done TorrentSpy!
Seriously?
While I do worry about how the games I own on Steam will be maintained in the long term (yes, I might want to play Prey in ten years time, which is why I have the DVD), I'd much rather buy BioShock from Steam, even at $55, than buy a DVD with that kind of crap on it.
Wait a minute....maybe that's the plan! That's genius! Evil genius, mind.
That the scrap merchants around here have started advertising on billboards and on the radio, which hasn't happened before. One near me is even getting bikini-clad babes into its posters, and running a money-based prize draw for people bringing scrap to them! I get the feeling that that's only going to encourage these arseholes to destroy infrastructure.
Here comes The X-Box 360 Service Pack 1.
The original kit was a piece of crap that didn't have HDMI, overheated and died, etc. Here's a new version, that we'll charge you another £300+ for, that works in the way the first ruddy console should have. Only this one still doesn't have HD-DVD playback without bulky add-ons. For that, you'll have to wait for Service Pack 2.
This seems familiar...
This is why cable internet access kicks ass. It's supposed to be a contended service, right? Because my connection never slows down. I'm supposed to get 4Mb/s. I get....4Mb/s. Constantly. Always. (Except when NTL used to give me free upgrades to higher speeds, just for kicks.) And does it ever drop the connection? Maybe once a year.
Granted, Virgin are trying their best to ruin a god NTL service, but still, my cable line is the most rock solid net access I've ever known.
""It is about 70 percent bigger than Jupiter, the Solar System’s largest planet, but less massive, making it a planet of extremely low density. Its mean density is only about 0.2 grams per cubic centimetre, or about the density of balsa wood,"
Perhaps the Magratheans are using IKEA for their new planets?
Actually, if I remember Intel architecture correctly, the cores would probably end up tripping over each other trying to access a shared cache, so it's actually quite an accurate analogy. Bwhwahahaha. :-)
(OK, I know the more modern/expensive chips don't share cache between cores, but I still thought it was funny....in a nerdy way.)
"Parkin demanded an inquiry into the technology, pointing to a range of maladies which could be down to radio waves cooking the brains of pupils and teachers alike. These include loss of concentration, fatigue, reduced memory and headaches."
Yes, this student appears to have a severe case of teenager. Obviously brought on by evil wi-fi. But mobiles phone are alright, oh yes.
Bloody Panorama.
If you ever want a demonstration of how flawless Mozilla's update system is, use Minefield for a while. Every single day the browser updates itself to the latest nightly build - not had a single crap-out yet and the whole update process takes around 20 seconds.
Compare that to Microsoft!
Oh, and has been said above, I would much rather have a browser be updated every week (or even every day) with the latest flaws patched, than one updated whenever the dev team (and end user, let's not forget*) can be arsed, leaving flaws exposed for much longer. The article should be praising Mozilla for getting patches out so quickly. Nicely done, lads and lasses.
*I say this bit because a lot of the XP users I know turn off Automatic Updates straight away. No-one really trusts MS to manage their PC, especially after they labeled "Genuine Advantage" anti-piracy software as a critical update.
I know that these are rip-off prices as prices go, but run this one by me again...
"including a six-litre methuselah of Cristal (£30,000), two three-litre jeroboams of the same (£9,600)"
So 6 litres of Cristal is £30 000, but two 3-litre jugs (ie, 6 litres) comes to £9600?
There's an idiot who can't count, and a bar staff who enjoy ripping people off. But then again, who in the monkey-loving feck would pay more than £50 for a bottle of ANYTHING? I might stretch to £100-£200 for a really good whisky, but we are talking amber nectar here. People with that much more money than sense deserve a good rip-off here and there.
I've never been a tidy-looking person. In a suit, I look like a man with a head transplant. To work, I wear t-shirts (generally with something stupid on them), baggy pants and trainers, and I have a pony tail. I sit coding with my headset on, rock music playing, and my feet up on the desk. Why does th MD not give a toss? Because I get the work done, and I'm good at it. And that, if you ask me, is the right attitude to have. In my line of work, my abilities are far more important than my looks, so it's good to have a boss that shares that utilitarian perspective.
I'm quite capable of putting on a shirt when the situation demands it....but it normally doesn't demand squat. I can get the work done without a tie, thanks. Besides - my department boss is just like me!
24 months @ £20 a month = £480.
Laptop = £400.
Obviously, they won't be that price for CPW, but still - how much of the profit on this broadband deal is going to be eaten up in laptops? It's not like they're going to retain many customers with their current level of amazingly crap service.
For teh last chuffin' time! eBay do NOT make those sales. They don't sell the pictures, fence the goods, or produce many of the oddities that appear on eBay. They're just a marketplace, same as my local real world market. People pay to pitch up there, so do you expect the market to hire a henchman for each and every stall? Don't be stupid.
eBay do try to regulate things but eBay holds millions upon millions of auctions at any one given time. Do YOU fancy trying to admin all those pages, smart-arse?
Aaah, Webster. Your daily dose of pure plonker always makes me smile.
"Ya think that MAYBE the Japanese are favoring a homebrewed (Sony) product as a matter of pride, even though it is higher priced and inferior to the Foreign (US) Microsoft XBox 360 unit???"
Higher priced I can agree with. Inferior? Are you mental?
Though the rest of your post answers that second question rather nicely.
Wait for it....
Before the flame war starts, I personally wouldn't have touched the "agreement" for no further compensation. While I'm not the kind of person who sues for tripping up in the street, their incompetence cost you a lot of money. And I wouldn't have wanted another Mac after the experience with the first one! If the first one tried to set me on fire I wouldn't trust the second one not to. My first laptop was a Packard Bell (I know, I know!) - they were swiftly added to the list of Brands I Just Don't Buy. I know it's just me and my argumentative self, but I'd have told them to shove the Mac sideways and send me a cheque for my lost earnings.
I've heard some depressing things about Apple customer service. This hasn't helped my views, TBH. You just gave me another reason to resist the iExistence.
"But how does that explain/excuse the completely lopsided way anything is portrayed by the register when it comes to Apple?"
Some of El Reg's articles are based on the opinion of the author. That's what makes El Reg different to other sites that just pander to whatever press releases are thrown at them by Apple (*cough* BBC *splutter*) - El Reg have the balls to stand up and say "sorry, we think this is shite."
And as for giving it a 90% review, then returning it - I would refer to that as the novelty wearing off. He bought the phone to do the review, thought it was quite good, but quickly got tired of it and returned it. Makes sense to me.
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