Posts by Luca Spiller

Wii-like motion-control games to come to the PS2

RE: Why not PS3?

"Do they just think that the PS2 is a more reliable platform in terms of market penetration? Is it a cheaper dev kit for the developers?"

I expect the answer is yes and yes. Although the PS2 is old news (so probably a cheaper dev kit) it has survived the last 7 years and is still going strong. It is still strongly being sold in shops and Sony are bringing out a new revision.

Do you think parents are really going to shell out £450 for the latest console when they could instead spend £100 for old new and get the mostly the same games (ex, The Simpsons Game)?

Beer set to hit four quid a pint

The cheaper alternative...

petrol, it will probably get you drunk quicker as well.

Dominos trns 2 txt

After a night drinking....

...something short and easy to write could be good.

Re: Crap and over-priced...

I get 50% at my local as a student, that isn't quite as good as what you get though I don't think, and its only on collection (5 minutes is too far to walk when you are hungry).

Tesco takes fight to Sainsbury over Medion PCs

No monitor.. hmm?

I am quite supprised there is no monitor, but if you go into your local Tesco Extra they all have a selection of monitors on offer so it isn't that much of a problem.

DVLA turns censor on grubby number plates

The DVLA can...

EM33 TIB

Ebuyer.com runs on a Commodore 64

No wonder...

No wonder their search is crap....

America wastes gazillions with always-on PCs

Lets not forget the supermarkets...

I work in one of the big supermarkets. All of the tills are powered by yonks old NT based machines that are probably rather inefficient. These are left on all through the night as at 11pm they do their end of day stuff and upload reports of takings.

The self service tills are even worse. These are XP based and have nice bright monitors that aren't even dimmed down when not in use. These again have to do the end of day stuff and aren't even turned off when we close for Easter or Christmas.

The main reason why they aren't turned off is because these little buggers take around 20 minutes to boot back up again... You would have thought companies would have avoided these problems by now.

Another thing I find rather interesting is why companies always get the latest and greatest hardware and software where as the office workers are probably still just as efficient as they were 10 years ago running Windows 95 and Office 95. You can get hardware now that runs just as well as this did but uses only a few watts per hour, if companies used these instead their power usage would drop greatly.

Defamation lawsuit seeks to unmask anonymous cowards

How do you libel a jane doe? - Cont

"In addition, Doe I claims that the postings on the site caused her to miss out on summer jobs with law firms, since several of the postings appear in the top results for a Google search for her name, and she suggests that the firms saw these results and passed her over for the positions."

Surely she must NOT have remained anonymous on AutoAdmit for this to happen, or somebody else posted on other sites with links to AutoAdmit containing her name. Even if the law firm did refuse her a job because they though she had STDs or whatever else this thread claimed, surely she would have a case against them for discrimination?

Jobs: one more thing... a browser war

Safari could be forced on the masses

I am a student at uni and contrary to popular belief most people that I know who aren't computer experts use iTunes on Windows. Why you ask?

1) iPods. All us youngsters have these funny iPod things nowadays (except me it seems) and what is bundled with that? iTunes! Why use two different apps to manage and then load your music onto your MP3 player when you can use one!

2) Sharing. Everyone at uni loves sharing music and why go to the bother of having to find the music, copy the music onto a pendrive, go to another computer, and then copy it on to that (which is illegal btw) when you could just listen to it through iTunes sharing.

3) Music downloads. I am not really sure why anyone would want to use iTunes to download music, but strangely they do.....

At least 75% of people I know at uni use iTunes so that is a fairly heft amount!

So anyway, how is Safari going to dominate the world? Well IMO Safari 2 for Mac sucks, that why I use Opera. It crashes a lot and doesn't work too well on some sites, and that is just the beginning. But if Apple is going to bundle it with iTunes and QuickTime, and when it installs make this the default browser most people aren't going to change it. They will find it works much better than IE7 and probably won't even know how to change it back.

The only people who won't be using Safari in this case are those clever enough to install another browser. Apple 1 Everyone Else 0.

Wireless power limit doubled to bridge digital divide

The digital divide...

I live in a rural area where we have broadband (up to 8mb, but I can only get 5.5mb). The nearest town with proper shops is 10 miles away and the nearest place with good shops is about 50 miles away. We also can't get mobile signals and can only get Freeview (sometimes any TV signal) if it hasn't been sunny during the day due to atmospheric conditions (in other words we have no TV for most of summer....).

Now this is area would probably rank quite poorly in how much technology an area has, so why do you ask? It isn't because we have a poor TV signal. It ain't because we can't get a mobile signal. It probably ain't because we can 'only' get 5.5mb broadband. So why you ask?

Because half of the people here are so f-ing old they can't even use their car radios!

The so called digital divide isn't because people don't have access to this sort of technology, but it is because they don't know how to or want to use it.

Westminster street lamp pay-back cut to 750 years

Hmmm...

Couldn't they just reduce the number of street lamps to save money? I live in a village that doesn't have a single street lamp and we are all fine. Most built up areas seem to have far to many street lamps to me, and I expect you would be able to see just as well by turning off every other one.

You could always go down to your local Poundland and invest in a torch.

Apple moans over sex toy ad

Maybe they should sue over Ann Summers' logo too....

People could get confused with a red apple...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AnnSummersLogo2.jpg

Devon villagers chip in for mobile coverage platform

You think Cornwall is bad....

I am in the heart of Exeter and can't get Channel 5 or Freeview.....

The same goes for mobile coverage on Orange.....

Digg buried by users in piracy face-down

It isn't illegal over here

The number is only illegal in America according to Wikipedia, The Inquirer has an article displaying it (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39330).

I am actually quite shocked (not really supprised though) as the behaviour of Digg users. They do not have a legal right to post whatever they want, and imo the removal and banning was fair.

On the other hand I am amazed at how many people have posted the number around the internet........

ITV plays catch-up

Online gaming...

Will the players need to phone a premium rate number?

Joost on brink of adding commercial breaks

Lets not forget the network problems

At home on my 8mbit connection it will work most of the time, but here at uni I have no chance. There is a http proxy in place and Joost can't yet go around it - Skype works fine though....

'Traffic Taliban' moots speed cameras in cats' eyes

Catching the speeders is easier...

If you really want to catch the speeders you don't need any fancy hidden cameras, you can easily use the hardware available today with some simple software.

Place one camera at the beginning of a stretch where people speed often, and place another at the other end. The cameras (similar to those used for congestion charging) record the number plate and time they are noticed. From this you can easily calculate the average speed with little problems between entry and exit of the stretch.

Ok, so the cameras may get destroyed / mugged by some chavs who can't race their Vauxhaul Nova's anymore...

How to get your Wi-Fi working again

The problem isn't your neighbours

The problem isn't your noisy neighbours, instead like CPUs your wifi hardware just loses range over time....

Nintendo nudges sales forecast upward

They are on their way back

I spoke to someone in Game the other day and they said that after Easter they should be getting good levels of stock in. At the moment they have a waiting list of about two weeks for people to get their hands on one, so if you want one get down to your local Game.