Posts by Horridbloke

Acer predicts end of cheap PC era

So Acer are saying...

... people will ignore their kit in favour of higher-quality kit from reputable manufacturers?

(Paris because she was never cheap).

@Graham Bartlett

I think I first heard this argument about 15 years ago. Pentiums were being withdrawn due to worries over the maths bug and pundits commented the newer machines had little appreciable advantage over the 486DX2 boxes for "normal" office applications anyway, as shown when companies dusted off those older boxes and pressed them back into service.

So what happened? No, don't answer that, but if (big IF) desktop PCs continue to grow in performance, memory and storage capacity the way they have then at some point those oh-so-desirable Core i7 systems packing 8GB RAM and a TB disk will be on sale at £20 at your local computer fair / car boot sale in the same manner Pentium 2/3s currently are.

Of course at some point we'll hit a desktop usability crisis when the vastly-faster new hardware the software developers were banking on doesn't appear and the latest greatest edition of your software thing runs like an utter utter dog. Ring any bells?

Oxford snaps high-speed movies with consumer cams

Finally...

... an actual point to stuffing a 10 megapixel sensor behind a compact camera's titchy rubbish lens.

Paris, because she's been photographed and filmed.

Inside Microsoft's innovation crisis

Real innovation?

The only "Microsoft innovation" that has genuinely improved our lives, that I don't know to have been bought / ripped off from elsewhere, is the mouse wheel.

(Well I heard it came from Microsoft. If anyone can can prove this wrong I would find it hilarious.)

Homemade airship prang closes highway in Oklahoma

I can't believe...

...there's only been one comment referencing the motion picture "Up".

(Apart from this one).

Parking spot flies to International Space Station

That's great but...

...it isn't _that_ long until the whole thing is due to be deorbitted (before the end of the next decade if I heard correctly). At this rate it'll be finished and then nudged into the atmosphere the next day to burn up.

Alien because they're up there laughing at us.

Apple yanks C64 emulator from App Store

@Brian Miller

"How many commercial games were ever written in BASIC? None?"

Jeff Minter's rox64 was written in BASIC. I had a proper commerical copy of it.

(Okay it wasn't very good, but then most games aren't.)

Lad passes gruelling 'getting on bus' test

@MnM

"When I did GCSEs nearly twenty years ago..."

Ditto - well nearly. My GCSE biology paper included a large drawing of a leaf with several insects on it. The accompanying question was "How many insects are there on this leaf?".

(Yes, the bugs all had six distinct legs...)

Endeavour glides back to Kennedy

The dream dies

I watched the first space shuttle mission landing on t'telly with t'parents back in the early eighties when I was nine or ten. Back then some of us (those without fully developed brains) still thought there was a future in space exploration.

The best part of thirty years later and a manned mission returning to earth is still headline news.We blew it. Confined to a tiny speck of sand, as Pendulum put it.

Doom creator bought by Bethesda

So what?

When did id last produce a title of consequence? Really?

Their game engines have been important but the titles? I think the last cool thing was Quake 2 and that's a long time ago.

Microsoft goes green to win IE 8 and Bing users

Buying BACK the web???

Since when was the web Microsoft's? Never. They've tried enough times to move in and take it over, but they failed and what with the growing importance of little internet dohickeys that don't run windows the lock-out tactic they favour is looking more pathetic than ever. Sod off and die Redmond.

Paris, because she's open.

(No, I'm not an Apple user.)

Asus to slash retail Eee PC line-up

Dead loss?

The Eee 701 was great - an obvious first-generation potentially market-disrupting piece of kit (with obvious room for improvement, like all 1st gen things). The 901 tackled the most pressing deficiencies without compromising the cool concept and it's superb - a big enough screen, great battery life (for an x86), above-average wifi reception and small and cheap enough to carry around in ones man-bag. Oh, and it'll still work after being waved around a bit while turned on, thanks to the lack of a spinning thing.

The windowsification of netbooks is depressing, but don't lose heart just yet. The industry is still groping its way towards a portable or at least coffee-table internet device that people actually like. I'll be interested to see how ARM-based devices measure up on battery life and performance. I have no idea how good they are these days, will they be up to playing normal-res divx videos? That's a killer-app for me.

Until then, the 901 is god.

Mine's the one made of neoprene.

Oracle reels in Sun Microsystems with $7.4bn buy

I doubt I'm the only one to say this but...

"All your database are belong to us!"

Recession takes chunk out of game sales

EA...

... can suck my balls for the time being.

I think they're actually trying to kill off the PC as a games platform, what with the malware and the limited activation nonsense. I've spent a healthy wodge of money on games over the last twenty-odd years and would happily have coughed up for the recent Burnout 11 and Crysis: limey edition titles if they hadn't been messed up. Bring out clean versions of these and I will buy them first thing tomorrow.

I would actually consider an Xbox 360 now if only I could be confident I wouldn't be returning it multiple times for warranty repairs and having to drive to far-flung industrial estates to pick it up from seedy courier depots.

Oh well. Guess I'll have to get a life instead.

Verizon to prosecute anons for communications sabotage

What's the betting...

... the twelve-year-olds who did this then went home and couldn't understand why their torrents and World Of Warcraft weren't working?

Paris, because she'll never be cut off.

Slimline iPhone pictures unearthed

Why...

...do fanboiz keep wasting their lives modelling and rendering these mockups and why do news sites like this keep encouraging them? Surely you're not that desperate for material?

Perhaps Cadbury's should introduce a slightly different shape of Curly-wurly every spring. Losers could then spend the winter designing, colouring and texturing plausible photo-realistic next-generation Curly-wurlies to impress each other with. If they do really really well then Cadbury's might offer them the 2011-season Curly-wurly design gig...

Paris, because she likes Curly-wurlies.

Eset false alarm puts system files on remand

@Sagar

"btw I wonder what anti virus billy g uses...anyone?"

I think it's safe to say Bill Gates hasn't used a Windows-based computer for some years now.

Paris, because she takes proper precautions against viruses.

Bletchley's Colossus makes beautiful music

So basically...

... an arts tosser has wasted somebody elses money doing something self-indulgent? Where's the news angle?

(Paris obviously)

Barcelona boffin births swarming microrobots

Most importantly...

...can they run Crysis?

Kids online: Parents need to regulate, says Ofcom

It's come to this...

"Government should seek to empower parents: but they could not rely on them."

Good grief.

(Paris, because her parents are empowered).

Red Dwarf touches down in Coronation Street

@Nathan Hobbs

"No he was still a hard-light hologram, albeit he had become the next Ace Rimmer and the H disappeared, but that was just a software change. He went of to travel the universe and be handsome and brave in the dimension jump ship."

The Rimmer at the end of the last season, last seen kicking Death in the unmentionables, was the nanothingy-reconstructed-along-with-red-dwarf-and-the-rest-of-its-crew Rimmer. Sorry Dwarf fans, that last season wasn't just a bad dream brought on by late-90s alcopops. I guess the original-holographic-now-hardlight-now-replacement-ace-Rimmer must still be out there somewhere...

I'm thrilled to hear it's going to be a jokey cross-over with Coronation Street though. Can we look forward to Lister taking time out to present special editions of Robot Wars and Cyberzone ("Ooger Wooger")? That would make it even more perfect.

Evil Bill Gates because he's obviously the scriptwriter.

Deliberate mistake?

Err, when we last saw Arnold Rimmer wasn't he alive and not a hologram? So why the "H" on the forehead now? (Sorry if I'm the 117th person to point this out)

HD TV beats depression, claims HD TV company

But I thought...

... that having 200 channels of complete shit was supposed to cure depression?

Security boffins attempt to freeze out cold boot crypto attack

Re: So how would

Stick the key-grabbing distro on a sata/ide disk sporting a cable, take the side off the machine, flick power and quickly swap drive cables?

This might be more feasible with two people : one standing by with the drive cable and the other by the power switch.

NZ cops claim 'first Facebook arrest' of bungling safe-cracker

Can I be the first to say...

... ha ha, what a tard.

NASA will give away old Shuttles for free

Why do they get two?

Boo, unfair! The Smithsonian already has a shuttle (albeit the non-atmosphere-leaving Enterprise) and they've ruined it by cleaning it up.

What's the betting that Beardy Branson will stick a sneaky bid in?

Doctor amputates boy's arm using SMS instructions

Bad reporting

"The boy survived the operation and has since made a full recovery."

Has his arm grown back?

EU flags up wrinkly nuke-boffin knowhow loss threat

What do you expect?

Why would any go into that line of work when for the last twenty years they'd do better getting an unskilled job such as being an estate agent?

Oh well, there will be plenty of estate agents looking to retrain soon.

Scientists decry Bletchley Park's decline

Perhaps...

... the National Trust should make an offer for the site?

As a general rule I hate the National Trust with a passion, however here's something worth saving.

(And no, Colossus couldn't run Crysis.)

Oh no...

I am not generally one for museums but I did the tour of Bletchley Park one sunday a few years ago and heartily recommend it - there's some good coverage of the computer science side of things. It'd be a real shame if this temple to British l887ness and Nazi-pwning got turned into another Tesco car park.

UK game-development degrees not up to snuff, claims industry

Surprise surprise

There's nothing games-industry specific here. Businesses like their costs (eg training) externalised. Eighty percent of employers want somebody who will work 50 hour weeks for under £20K , be 100% up to speed on their second day at the job, show fanatical loyalty for the duration of their project and then bugger off without complaining when they're deemed surplus to requirements. The same companies will offshore to India at the drop of a hat so why exactly should anyone in the UK take any particular notice of what they want?

CherryPal out sweetens Apple with 2W, ultra-cheap PC

What about the other bits

If you're a sufficiently casual user to be happy with something of this spec (and millions are) you'd probably prefer an Eee for its portability (no computer desk taking up space in the spare bedroom)...

... unless the "cloud" element is really really special. Which it probably isn't.

Northrop scoops DARPA mindreader-helmet threat visor cash

How long before...

... the technology shifts from passive scanning to actively prodding the grunt's brain along a bit? I predict a whole new class of wartime unpleasantness.

DARPA wants Matrix style virtual world for cybergeddon

But...

... will these replicants know kungfu?

Mine's the long coat with the guns. Lots of guns.

Boffinry bigwig puts another boot into biofuels

Bad maths

Your figure of 800 flights is based on the fuel consumption for a London to New York flight. Okay some routes are longer, but a lot of them are short hops to the Costa Del Scum etc. In addition not all aircraft are 500-passenger behemoths and therefore burn less fuel per mile. The actual theoretical-production-capacity / Heathrow-consumption is therefore probably a lot better. Are the statistics available for how much fuel Heathrow sells? (FWIW I still don't think the biofuel capacity is remotely sufficient).

Mine's the one with the slide rule in the pocket.

Ubuntu does bird beta

@Chadd

We can look forward to Kinky Kangaroo, Lusty Llama and Nymphomaniacal Newt first.

PS3 capacity boost claims are claptrap, says Sony UK

Sony's record

... so they'll be in the shops from this friday then.

Star Trek XI teaser trailer beams onto web

@AC

In the future the Chinese, Indians and S.Koreans own the world and outsource the dirty low-paid dangerous work to Western nations. Fair turnabout.

Nokia develops eco phone concept

Am I missing the point...

...or would holding onto your existing handset for more than a week be much better environmentally?

Message to the world's teenagers and IT types: "Get a life, it's only a phone".

Tesco in X-rated Lawnmower Simulator shocker

@Dave Thompson

I think you're right about Rover. Remember the internal dialogue representing the three lives of the game:

"Jim won't mind if I borrow his mower."

"I'll just nip and borrow tom's..."

"Good old Alf... He's a decent chap."

Plus "Go on boy! Kill!" and "ARGH! Lay off me you beastly hound!"

(How long before someone fires up an emulator and corrects these quotes?) This is why the Commodore 64 scene was so much cooler than the purgatory of Spectrum ownership.

As this is an IT site shouldn't we have a nostalgia icon? Perhaps Mr T or Adam Ant?

PRECEDENT ALERT

Anyone else remember the Commodore 64 classic "Hover Bovver", in which you stole your various neighbours' flymos and trimmed the lawn with them while setting your dog on the irate owner?

</80SNOSTALGIA>

Star Trek boldly goes on demand

Intergalactic franchise

Err, apart from the occasional exception (only one very bad early episode of TNG springs to mind) Star Trek takes place entirely in our own galaxy. It is therefore merely interstellar, not intergalactic. Get it right.

Liverpool police get mini-Black Helicopter

Aahh, Dr Freeman...

This is just a little too Half Life 2 for my liking. Never mind, a well-placed round from the shot gun will do for them.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum: 25 today

Innovative games.

I remember playing a splendid sheepdog simulator game on a friend's specky. Sadly that particular game genre never really took off.