Re: Why the US intel community would disclose source and methods just to bolster credibility.
Still going to be quite funny when some script kiddie in Sweden or Argentina says "Yeah, it was me. I did it."
65 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
That no one has actually made a phone styled like a TOS communicator - sure there's a USB one, but no actual mobile phone which looks like something Kirk would use.
I'd have bought one in a heartbeat, especially if it had the authentic sounds when someone rang you and you answered!
A game that so creeped me out that when the loading screen suddenly popped up as I was moving through an (empty) corridor, I cried out in terror. My wife winds me up about that to this day.
Doom 3? Seriously? Oh look, there's a shadow/pickup - I bet a monster is going to appear... yep, it did. Yawn.
Doom was far scarier than Doom 3.
Is there going to be an option not to get ANY Facebook prompts, links or even mentons on iTunes, because I've done quite well without them in the past and have no interest in anything to do with Facebook?
I've been quite happy with my iPhone/iTunes stuff over the last few years, but I don't givea damn about Facebook and having to put up with nag prompts every single time I buy or view something is likely to lead to me going elsewhere - I've purchased 270Gb worth of music/games/films/books and TV progs from iTunes, but wil go elsewhere if Facebook becomes the only way to do things on iTunes.
My PC gaming these days tends to be MMOs, most of which I've either got a lifetime sub for or have went F2P. Sure, I'll still put money into them, but only when I see something I like the look of. I have a 1TB hard drive nearly full of Steam games too, all of which have been paid for (mostly when things are on sale at a decent price).
The only Ubisoft games I've got are on my PS3 - the Assassin's Creed games, the remake of Beyond Good & Evil. I just prefer playing them with the PS3 joypad.
I pay for what I enjoy and since I haven't pirated a game since about 1989 (Sinclair tape copying, ah those were the days), that leads me to believe that it's not 90% of PC gamers who are pirating games, but 90% of PC gamers who just aren't buying something because it isn't enjoyable or (like me) who are buying it on console because its a better experience.
I'll step down from my centre of the universe podium now.
All Ubisoft have done with this is ensure I will never buy their games on my PC, instead going to the console for it.
There are posts from the developers on the Bioware forums that state (paraphrasing) - "It is possible to get the best ending in single player without playing multiplayer, but it's twice as hard"
So, no - multiplayer ain't necessary if you don't want to do it (Although the Mass Effect 3 Databook app does seem to offer a nice way of helping to build it up too).
No need to do multiplayer at all.
Just ensure every single side mission and system scan is complete before doing the last mission.
Ending was a bit disappointing though after all that. For my money, as epic as ME3 was, it's no ME2.
Right, back to The Old Republic. Maybe this time I can get a character above level 35 before wanting to reroll.
Although that thing is now off my machine and all traces of it burnt, as it has done it's job - I should get the code via email around 12pm tomorrow and then my last worry will be gone.
Early start worked okay for me, got in on the first wave and have been enjoying playing it - very smooth - much better than beta (although that's probably me realising I hadn't had SLI enabled for 4 or 5 months - it still ran okay on one card, but boy did my graphics cards fans get a workout. Now, not so much.
Looking forward to a good couple of years playing this - we'll see if it lasts the 6 years I managed to play City Of Heroes for.
I had fun.
Regardless of what other MMOs the game is like, the fact that I had fun overrides every small complaint I came up with.
People seem to forget that - too much nitpicking when all you need to ask is "did you enjoy yourself?"
I'll be there on the 15th and a good while thereafter!
and wha tthey don't tell you is that in order to get the dust out of the damn thing, you have to actually remove the keyboard - there's no proper way (air cans can only do so much) to get the dust out from the underside...
A couple of clips would make the damn thing so much easier to clean and thus last longer, rather than having to perform computer surgery every 6 months!
Never again. It was nice at the time, but I've given up on all Dell's drivers (I don't care about the shiny keyboard, so I've now just using generic nVidia drivers).
Back to desktops for me next time.
That was BT - "You can only get 4.5Mb download. Nothing we can do about that."
*Switch to Sky*
Immediately moved up to 12Mb and am now regularly getting 14-15Mb from 1600-2300, which is when I'm using it.
Same line, same neighbours, no Virgin in our area, so someone was telling porkies about line speed.
I was a bit disappointed last night, as the "US Only" part of it was kept in the small print.
Hoping that by the time Mobile Me is discontinued at the end of June, we will have a global iCloud.
Otherwise, it's another case of "Global" being west coast of the USA to the east coast of the USA (plus some tiny islands elsewhere).
Really disappointed that the news agencies and certain sites who report technology news (ahem), didn't point out this rather important part of the announcement (it was the first question asked after the discussion, from what I've now read!)
LA Noire ready to go when I get back from business trip tomorrow - Older 40Gb PS3 and the only game which ever gets the fans whirring all the way up was last year's Red Dead Redemption.
We'll see how it handles LA Noire, but given RDR's fan beating performance, I don't think it's the firmware that's to blame...
Have been playing the Lego games since they first emerged.
Got a bit confused this time around when the RTS elements popped up.
Turns out that we should have went down Dooku's path first, rather than Grievous', as that was where TT had placed all the tutorials.
Once we'd figured that out though, the game turned out to be fun. I could happily do without the RTS elements though.
Lego Pirates to look forward to next month, followed by Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7 later in the year (around the time of the DVD release of the last movie, I'd reckon.)
Still waiting for my Lego Justice League or Lego James Bond though... :(
When BBC execs start using Android devices, rather than the Apple stuff. (Or when one of them with enough power does).
I own an iPad and even I think this is waste of that forced subscription fee I've got to pay. I've already got an iPlayer shortcut, so what benefit will an App bring?
when you're on horseback is annoying.
The fact that I've got to rotate on the spot (something I normally only expect from PC games) when I enter an area to make sure everything's loaded is also annoying.
That being said, I'm having an absolute blast with the game. It's good fun. It continues ACII's plot (and that, more than anything, is why I'm playing the game), even if it did do the whole "remove all the weapons" thing way too early.
Until City Of Heroes releases Issue 19, this is what I'll be playing.
I would react to that sodding Sagat or M Bison defeating me soundly for the nth time in a row by throwing the Joypad at the floor in disgust.
Never once was I or the joypad injured, nor the occassional friend, little brother or parent who also happened to be in the room.
I do recall a time where my much older cousin reacting to being defeated by his 16 year old relative by twirling the joypad on its cable sling style and firing it against the wall, where it shattered into a million pieces.
One of the pieces bounced off me, but I obviously forgot to inform anyone about this injury or I, too, could have been a statistic.
Luckily, I'm a bit more precious about my PS3 joypads than I was about my Megadrive ones and they have never once been in danger of being thrown at the wall. Perhaps I'm just a but calmer in my old age or perhaps it's just the fact that despite having to repeat that bloody mission in Assassin's Creed 2 for the gazillionth time, I appreciate the expense to replace it these days.
There was probably some sort of moral in that spiel, but I can't be arsed looking for it now.
I have a Sky+ box sitting above my PS3, as I suspect a lot of PS3 users in the UK do. (okay, granted, it could be below, or to the side or some other direction).
This isn't going to get them anything other than the idiot buy, is it?
Probably quite profitable, if other indications are anything to go by. (says the iPhone 4 owner).
...sandbox games is getting jarring.
Give me a game that either tells a good story or allows you to construct a good story in your head around the bare bones of the game.
Having to shoot 150 birds to get an achievement isn't always the best way to lengthen a game.
it's one of the reasons I loved Max Payne II so much - short, sweet and to the point, but it's like reading a graphic novel. I'll come back and play it every 6 months or so and enjoy it every time.
I'm enjoying Mafia II so far - don't let the obsession with having 1001 pointless tasks take away from the fact that the game tells an engrossing story.
It's not perfect, but it's much better than these "It's not GTA!" reviews make it out to be.
I find the folders very useful (even if they do only allow 12 items in them)
I've now got everything on 1 page, which is handy.
The iBook reader is the best thing about this. Got a couple of books yesterday and can now read them on the subway on the way into work, without carrying a weighty tome around with me.
My battery used to last two days - I'm hoping the fact that it only lasted a day yesterday is to do with all the downloading and app using I was doing yesterday and not any issue with the new OS.
I'll get the new phone next month, after the furor has died down.
(If you'd asked me 14 months ago, I'd have told you I'd never have used this icon, but actually trying the product, rather than ridiculing it from a distance changed my mind)
I've had a steady 1.2MB download speed since switching to Sky, despite plenty of other people in my area using the line and despite BT saying that my line couldn't handle any more than 500KB.
I can stream HD from iPlayer without an issue and I can get Steam games downloaded within a couple of hours. And (after just checking my T&Cs), it is Unlimited. No caps, no nothing.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Or is the law now able to enter your home and check all your computers, back-ups, C64 & Spectrum tapes...?"
I hope not - I'm fairly sure I've still got a copy of Barbarian (okay, that's just a box image) and Sam Foxes Strip poker lying around, and given the quality of the Spectrum graphics, it may be stated that something has "caused harm" to the breasts involved - erm....
Can we just get Judgement Day over and done with? At least with the machines, you know where you stand.
Yes of course they will scrap the scheme once they're in. They're completely trustworthy that way.
Expect it to be "scrapped" and then reappear a few months later under a different name.
It should be mandatory that for any election promise which is not met within the first year of power, an immediate re-election should be called and the ones who broke their promises are not allowed to take part.
That'd soon get us down to the weird sort of parties.... or they'd actually tell us the real, depressing truth - ie. Vote for us and we'll screw you over. Promise kept, job done.
I haven't used Paypal in years, since they screwed up a transaction, leaving me very red faced.
My wife will occassionally dabble in eBay purchases and every single time she uses Paypal, she gets a flurry of emails through claiming to be from random banks within a few seconds of completing the transaction.
The irony is she works for the first bank in the spam list.
(The first time this happened, I made sure her PC was clear of viruses and the usual culprits which it was - we've test this on multiple PCs now and it's always the same - kind of proves that Paypal transactions lead to unwanted Spam).
I know you were joking.
You know you were joking.
Most people know you were joking.
But one person will see your comment and assume you're being perfectly serious and that will either lead to a small flame war or increased government regulation because they have no context on what is humour and what isn't.
"And then ... by a strange process yet to be fully exposed ... the elected politicians mysteriously come to adopt the policies that the Home Office espouses."
Of course it's been fully exposed - there were fantastic documentaries about the process decades ago... what were they called again...?
Ah, of course.
It was Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
Excellent fact finding documentaries they were.
I used to be the biggest anti-Mac zealot in my workplace.
But as time went on and I saw some of the features of the iPhone, I decided I was going to get one.
And it's been the best damn phone I ever had.
It doesn't drop calls like pretty much every other phone I've had in the last 11 years randomly did. It has web access which actually works. It allows me to download apps to play games (which are the main ones) and it means that I don't have to carry a separate music player as I've got nearly my full collection on it.
If you'd spoken to me 6 months ago, I'd have been in the "yeah, it's rubbish" camp. Then I actually used it and realised it wasn't.
It's not perfect by any means. But it's functional gripes around the interface I've got, rather than "It doesn't allow me to do X" gripes.
I say again, the best damn phone I've ever had. I'm not a Mac zealot (this is being typed up on my Vista laptop, which is the best damn laptop I've ever had, even if I can't wait to receive my copy of Windows 7).