Posts by serviceWithASmile

The year's best... console games

me

and the author makes 2.

not sure that counts as "many" :)

My reason for dismay, however, was that my dear mother had been advertised at by microsoft and now is confused about kinect, xbox360, ps3, and wii.

She wanted a wii with wii fit, but after seeing the ads I had to spend a patient 4 hours explaining the difference and that wii fit is probably what she actually wants.

And of course a completely separate 4 hours explaining the same to dad.... *sigh*

Not dismayed about the product itself. I don't see a problem with it, although I wish microsoft would make kinect able to be used on the PC - there is a market there that isn't being exploited.

Would be fun to get it to run commands - like you could give your comp the thumbs-up and it would start playing the A team theme, or a devil horns sign and it starts playing iron maiden.

I count as a hardcore gamer, but I wouldn't say I'm totally unconvinced by motion control.

It's just that for me, a mouse and keyboard or controller is *usually* better for actually playing the game.

New NASA model: Doubled CO₂ means just 1.64°C warming

this ^^

You could argue that *all* NASA boffins are top boffins because if they weren't they would still be at boffin school, working towards their "Top Boffin" qualification :)

Seriously though, I think this every time I hear BBC news announce "experts say..." or "experts agree that..."

Who are these experts and why do we never hear from their brethren the enthusiasts or hobbyists?

Anonymous attacks PayPal in 'Operation Avenge Assange'

the web would be boring

if it weren't for stuff like this.

Where normally I would say "go anonymous", I don't really have an opinion on this one, but you can't deny the entertainment value.

I know plenty of people disagree with their tactics and view them as irresponsible "skiddies" (a term I never knew existed before reading el reg comments).

I don't disagree with the sentiment but rules quickly become meaningless when only one side plays by them - right now that's us, and until not so long ago, probably most of Anonymous too.

Might seem a little OT but I'm mostly talking about Operation Payback here. Not sure if I will be cheering on Operation Assange or not, but I will be getting in some popcorn.

Mass mind control artist condemns El Reg to obscurity

@thecakeis(not)alie

Best comment ever.

I love how every time el reg takes a shot at an American we end up with debates about concepts too complicated for my head to hold all at the one time with participants ranging from the most intellectual to the most emotional, and from both sides of the pond.

I genuinely enjoyed your comment. Thank you.

More on topic, I agree with the sentiment that those who shout the loudest get noticed the most.

Reason is, by definition, reasonable - shouting is not.

However the flipside to this is that those who are reasonable know what shouting for the sake of it sounds like.

If you don't, just watch anything where a politician is asked an uncomfortable question, and listen - I mean really *listen* to the response.

That's what it sounds like.

Incidentally, I know a couple of teenagers for whom this is the way to win any argument about anything regardless of what the opposition says or does. It also doesn't matter whether or not they win in the end, just that they shout louder or get the last word.

I say let Rush say things if he wants.

As el Reg has noted, alot of it is just air.

Wikileaks DDoSser 'Jester' in phantom cop raid tomfoolery

the hackers have turned on each other

When the war starts, will it be fought entirely online in Tron-like arenas, where only the 1337357 will survive?

tbh this guy sounds perhaps a little misguided. DDoSing Assange's leaky discharge does not win him any brownie points, except with Sarah Palin. But then, North Korea win brownie points with her too.

I'm not taking Wikileaks' side, it just seems a tad desperate to DDoS a site that is leaking embarrassing secrets. Hasn't he looked at it at all? It is politically inconvenient, yes, but the whole "putting soldiers lives at risk" is built on bullshit.

If the US gov were concerned about soldier's lives, they wouldn't be invading countries with them.

Does he think he's doing his country a favour by taking this action?

Patriot hacker is an interesting term. Is he on US.gov's payroll or their wanted list?

They do seem to take hacking* rather seriously - just ask Gary Mckinnon.

*which seems to mean pretty much anything involving a computer and an internet connection these days. If they don't want it to be seen, why put it on the fscking internet!?

Beer because I think I need one now :)

Yes! It's the Reg Top 5 FUTURISTIC GUNS Thanksgiving Roundup!

1776 you say?

To which I reply: 1812.

Your move, America.

When you consider that we were fighting ourselves, it's little wonder we won.

Tally ho, chaps

Axl Rose sues Activision

they deserve each other

Axl is a bitter, arrogant bag of hasbeen and Activision are stupid, mindless greedy idiots.

They lost infinity ward out of nothing more than idiotic greed and have made more bad moves than I've had pints. They most likely didn't do this out of any clever political or strategic thinking, more likely they either thought "oh it won't matter" or didn't check.

Waxl has probably been waiting for exactly this moment to strike - like that guy he got sued for downloading Chinese Democracy.

It's nice when the bad guys fight each other for a change.

But up until now, I thought this kind of IP trolling was mostly limited to the software industry - that is, software other than games - i.e Google, Novell, SCO, et al.

Mon the lawsuits

Brits say 'no, no, no' to 3D TV

GT5?

that is actually being released?

I thought it was nothing but a rumour started to sell more PS3 consoles.

You know, like the Halo movie

where is the trollface icon?

Cyber cops crush plod-snapper site following Millbank riot

did nobody think

that perhaps the Prime Minister describing a political protest as "not right" is not conducive to a healthy democracy?

not saying we ever had one in the first place, but they do try hard to appear that we do...

slightly more on topic - I'm partway into a degree in computing, and so far thankfully been able to pay my course fees with help from uk.gov.

if you think I'm sponging, consider that I've been in full time employment for nearly half my lifetime.

My total sponging of course fees totals £400, and apart from a single rebate I've had the arse taxed off me the whole time.

How much of "your" tax money do you think your average politician spends on phreaky online porn subs or cleaning staff for their second home per year?

point is, if course fees were to go up too much (read:30% or higher) and I couldn't get gov to help, I'd probably have to spend the rest of my LIFE working towards this degree, purely in order to improve my knowledge / skills to make me more employable, rather than just 6-10 years (yeah it's an OU degree, no time for anything else).

So I totally sympathise with these guys.

UK.gov needs to know when we don't like something; it's not like they ever cared if they broke a few eggs when making the omlette.

That would keep poor plebs like me in my place, wouldn't it?

Alleged bad Appler should pay back $1m

pay back 1 mil

to Apple?

It would only count as paying it *back* if the companies are going to get their bribe money refunded.

Sounds like this could not have hurt Apples business, considering the products these companies produce as a result of this information.

I wonder if he was selling the kind of hardware specs that devs would normally *expect* from a tech company and that Apple can't be arsed / don't want to provide?

Of course he could be bent as a 9 bob note.

Even so, I'm having difficulty figuring out why Apple think they are entitled to the bribe money that was paid to one of their employees to sell their secrets?

Unless Apple are quite happy to sell the secrets for that price to others aswell...

Yes I have an Apple, no I don't subscribe to the cult, shun the non beLIEver etc.

50m-year-old mystery space object doesn't look a day over 30

very cool

+1 for SCIENCE

but what we *really* want to know is, is it full of stars?

Google bosses get tasty raise

google

are just luring their employees into a false sense of security.

they are evil I tells ye, EEEEEVIIIIILLLL

MAD Students Union bars 'racist' ZOMBIE PHYSICISTS

the definition

I searched for it *using* google.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=define%3Arace&btnG=Google+Search

The actual definition that I quoted was kindly provided by:

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/

specifically, the third definition under "noun", here: http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=race

if you type "define:word" into google it will look up definitions from dictionary sites for you rather than troll infested comment threads mentioning the word.

If you dispute the definition, feel free to look it up in a book.

Surely

If you can be racist towards a Zombie, then "Zombie" is now considered a race of humans?

This is in error, as people are not born Zombies but made into them by an infection of some kind (yes I'm ignoring the Dawn of the Dead remake).

The definition of race is, according to google:

people who are believed to belong to the same genetic stock

And the definition of racism:

the prejudice that members of one race are intrinsically superior to members of other races

Even according to most Zombie films out there, people are not genetically predisposed to becoming Zombies, they are bitten by one and forcibly made into one. So how can one form a prejudice that one's race is superior to another race which is not, in fact, a race?

You can discriminate against any group, or even individuals who are not affiliated in any way but have (atleast in your eyes) a similarity. But you cannot be racist towards a group of people who wear the same coloured tie as they might be made up of different races, so you can only be discriminatory towards them. Consider that all it would take is for you to wear one of the same coloured ties one day to become a member of the race you are prejudiced against. If Zombies existed, all it would take is a bite.

However your race cannot be changed. Someone born Asian cannot become Caucasian. They can take steps to appear so, but their genes remain the same.

A bit serious I know but the misuse and by extension taming of the word "racism" in the media and by normal people in these kinds of situations pisses me off.

Either way if you've ever played L4D you'll know Zombies are superior :D

Bare breast ballot finds scant support in small US town

so the law

has gone titsup?

thanks, i'm here all week

PS: mmmmmmm mammaries

Vanquish

have a look

at "Killing Floor" for PC. You can get it on Steam dead cheap. Multiplayer zombie co-op survival horror, with bullet time :)

I'm not sure how it's triggered, I think maybe when you get a couple of headshots in a row.

AFAIK it happens in MW2 also, could be wrong though.

Also, a mech game that is actually good is something I'm still waiting for. I liked ZOE and Lost Planet and AC, but they are a little too Japanised for me.

We can only hope that one day a heroic necromancer will raise Mechwarrior from the dead to begin anew

excellent answer

thanks.

this does make sense, i'm a gamer myself but FPS for me is more of a benchmark of how well your system is running the game. I didn't think that it mattered much in terms of how good it looked (obviously so long as it stays over 30) but I wondered...

So I just broke out Crysis (had to be done) while monitoring FPS (PC, natch).

Turns out I *can* actually see the difference, even past 60 it's noticeable.

Can we have a Crysis icon?

can you

tell the difference between 60 and 30 fps with just your eyes?

I thought 22 fps was the point at which your brain sorts out a bunch of quickly changing pictures into a moving image?

just curious

MYSTERY of vanished PARIS spaceplane, playmonaut

did he eject before impact?

In War There Are Some Lines You Should Never Cross.

Prepare to cross the line.

Mission: to evade and survive

His only weapon is his will to survive.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159273/

I'll wait for the dvd.

Online badness: The kids are not alright

won't someone think of the children?

how about their parents?

I don't really think I understand what this study is trying to say.

Something about boys being exposed to sexual images, and girls being subjected to cheap one-liners.

OK let me translate that... boys more likely to look up porn, girls more likely to accept friend invites from smarmy dickbags.

If it were my spawn in this situation, I'd kick myself for letting them have full net access at 12 years old. Unless they'd proven to me they were mature enough to deal with it.

The intertubes is a wild place, and just like real life you will occasionally bump into someone that says something or does something you don't approve of. But does that mean you need protected from ever witnessing that event?

Wouldn't the world be such a fantastic place to live if only we'd be protected from seeing things that might upset us.

I think perhaps that now internet access is seen more as a utility than a luxury or a tool for a specific job, there are far too many people jumping in without knowing how deep it is.

I propose a formal and compulsory Internet course with written exam which must be passed before a computer can be purchased. It will include such modules as proper grammar and spelling, basics like URLs and email, and a very explicit warning to never piss off 4chan.

Two-year wait for Windows 8, MS blurts

forget a new version

I'd like a whole new OS.

i'm not interested in a ctrl-c of win7 with a different colour scheme released and touted at me again before I've even gotten around to changing the desktop background on my current install.

seems to me that the famed MS business model is much less than sustainable, given that when you consider:

most are still using (and most of those are still happy with) XP,

a few have (some are happy with) vista,

less have (most happy with) win7.

everyone else has *nix.

what is the problem that win8 is meant to solve for us all?

3 years seems like a very short life for what is otherwise not a bad OS

who is going to buy it?

ICO reopens Google Street View privacy probe

invited != authorised

having an implied invite to connect to a network does not authorise you to snoop all data traffic on that network that is being sent to and from machines OTHER than your own.

doing so would be akin to walking into someone's house and assuming you were invited because they left the door unlocked.

Wikileaks outs 400,000 classified Iraq War docs

return the stolen materiel?

"The only responsible course of action for WikiLeaks at this point is to return the stolen material and expunge it from their Web sites as soon as possible."

How exactly would one go about returning a data file?

Or did someone actually send a physical truckload of paperwork to mr Assange for him to spend months in a room scanning?

The world needs to know!

Cameron cocks up UK's defences - and betrays Afghan troops

re:nonsense

if the political parties in this country were *actually* different from one another, rather *all* being a bunch of scumsucking nepotistic parasites with different coloured ties, you'd come close to having a point.

You want to hear some weak, accusatory drivel?

How about "I read an article I didn't like waaa waaa waaa it's all Lewis Page's fault waaa waaa waaa"

The start of the article clearly had the word "Comment" as a heading. Not "The Truth".

who is

"we"?

last I checked it was the government who borrowed money from the banks to give money to the banks so the banks could pay back the banks they borrowed money from.

and as far as I'm aware, those dickbags rarely do what "we" want them to.

can anyone remember the definition of "democracy"?

Dane-Elec myDitto Nas device

just looked that up

actually looks pretty decent, BUT it doesn't have the USB key gimmick which I have to admit makes me want the myDitto much more

thanks for pointing me to it though

FINALLY!

finally a cross-platform, cross-service NAS!

this is what I've been waiting for, something that will be accessible from all OS (I have xp, win7, ubuntu, OSX and occasionally other *nix) and serve audio and video to the consoles!

now all we need to know is...

can it run crysis?

Medal of Honour

BFBC2 is more fun

But what I really want to know is, why on earth did they make one game authored by 2 devs with 2 different engines and 2 different styles of play? Isn't that really 2 games?

Also, the last thing I want is another MW2 clone - considering it's a clone itself, aren't we nearing the point of diminishing returns for mediocre 6 hour long shooters with totally lame plots?

P.S to those asking about PC specific stuff - I'd like to know too, but the review was for the Xbox version - it says on the green thingy.

P.P.S: Thumb me up if you think Maverick should have died instead of Goose

Anonymous plants pirate flag on MPAA website

hehehehe

go anonymous!

it's good to see somebody fighting back. it feels like in today's world we roll over and accept too many little injustices too often.

being treated as a suspected criminal when you buy a dvd, for instance. you STILL can't skip those fscking copyright notices...

I'm glad someone is sending these guys a message.

Some may argue that it is immature and not the right way to go about it, but to be honest I'd never imagine the MPAA or RIAA or ACS:Law having such things as morals, or even being mature. Right and wrong don't seem to mean much to those people.

so I say... stick it to the man :D

KeyCase iPad Folio Deluxe

apples revenue plan becomes clear

situation: lack of innovation, competitors better

solution: drag the market down to our level, then charge extra for basic functionality

step 1: buy 40 million asus 901s - remove keyboard and usb hub, hobble OS, add shiny screen, sand edges

step 2: double price, halve cost per unit

step 3: $$$

step 4: sell leftover keyboards with bluetooth dongle taped on

step 5: $$$$

step 6: sell leftover USB hubs

step 7: $$$$$$

Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed

yes

you are using windows, that's the problem

in most cases, "doing something wrong" is normal usage.

a most excellent comment

"

"The Windows people hate Linux per-se, 'cos they think it's cheap and tacky! The Mac people think their precious interface designs are being ripped off! Finally the Linux hardcore people think it should be given away with the book Linux for Dummies!"

And those of us who use all these technologies, appreciating each and every one for it's particular benefits or drawbacks, using each as appropriate to the task in hand, think all of you are dicks.

"

I would have posted this if not beaten to it.

Time, I think, for the various proponents of each OS to grow up a little and be more open minded towards other OS users. I'd include myself in this but I'm already there, albeit recently.

An OS is a tool to do a job, not much more.

There are too many people who view it as picking a football team to support - you might be hated for supporting Rangers by a Celtic fan, but how often are you hated for using a 12lb sledge over a 10lb sledge?

Linux *does* come with a free political movement though :P

Penguin in the picture: top video editors for Linux fans

thanks

for a well balanced and informative article.

recently we've been looking for something to edit vids and also record screencasts natively on Ubuntu, now we have our app :)

sudo apt-get install kdenlive

:)

HABITABLE ALIEN WORLD discovered 20 light-years away!

+1

also, won't they be wondering when our moon is going to show up?

how ironic would it be if we have actually conquered every advanced planet within 80 lightyears decades in advance by scaring the shit out of them with transmissions of our millitary might, only to show up with no weapons wrapped in padded white suits saying "we come in peace"?

IMHO, we should be putting ion cannons and nuke launchers on the ISS.

When the invasion force gets here, it will be because Firefly got cancelled.

Trident delay by the Coalition: Cunning plan, or bad idea?

re: it wasnt me

"Why does our system need to be bespoke...?"

because if it wasn't, alot of geeks would be out of a job -

and alot more CEO's would lose their seat on the gravy train

Microsoft: IE9 will never run on Windows XP

more like

*has the potential to be* the fastest windows ever - considering you would have much faster hardware to run it on

^_^

BioWare zeroes in on Mass Effect download snafu

SCIENCE!!!

1.5GB of 48K =

1.5 / 1024 = 1536 MB / 1024 = 1572864 KB

1572864 / 48 = 32768

So. 1 BF (BiowareFail) is equal to 32768 DS (Dead Speccys)

also, as I pionted out on their forums a little earlier -

for any penguin lovers who want their very own bioware DLC for completely free, just run this command!

dd if=/dev/zero of=foobar count=1572864 bs=1024

won't even use up your download allowance :D

corrections to "SCIENCE!!!"

the first few " / " should infact be " * "

my aplogoies to any pedants, coders or mathematicians reading this comment

NASA buys cutting-edge Cornish robot

define

a "real" scotsman.

I see your och aye and raise you a jings hoots

Boffins baffled by mysterious Martian crater

this is creepy...

if you look at the high res jpg here: http://download.esa.int/images/marsexpress/471-20103007-2216-2238-6-ft-01-OrcusPatera_H1.jpg (1.5meg)

you can see some lines (they look like small, straight valleys) that are intersected by this crater.

fair enough, maybe mars had liquid water and rivers at some point.

but if you look at the one just about reference 1, it actually goes through an impact crater - so the crater was there before this line / valley thing formed.

Whereas all the others are intersected by the craters along their paths.

how odd......

wait a second, isn't the moon shrinking, causing similar ridges to form on its surface?

this would be a great time to sell plots of land on mars - they will only get smaller!

anyone else played mass effect?

black helicopters because the universe is NOT expanding

AMD to dump ATI brand

RIP ATI

I've always used both ATI GPU's and AMD CPU's, primarily because of cost vs performance, and because when I started building systems the pentium4 had reared its ugly head.

In regards to the p4... I've never seen a CPU get THAT HOT and keep going...

This is a good move IMO.

I'll be able to stop remembering about the merger when driver hunting, and they are keeping the radeon product line so its all good.

The important point here is they aren't getting rid of the staff who make ati cards, so the same good quality, competetively priced hardware should continue.

Bye bye ATI, I'll miss you.

I'll miss you even more when I have to replace my case sticker :(

Drunken employee pops cap in server

apologies

but i just have to say it:

HEADSHOT!

i'll get my coat

re: shooting them's too quick

yeah.

personally, i'd just turn the air conditioning off.

then ask it to do sums.

siilicone won't last long at 100 degrees :D

flame for obvious reasons

p.s now i think about it, i'd sabotage the temp sensors and / or put the max shutdown temp up

Facebook Places 'sparks interest in similar services'

re: anon

lucky bugger.

I have a *fairly* uncommon name and AFAIK theres only one me on FB...

maybe I should change it to john smith.

admittedly 10 pages of results for your name in most cases is an exaggeration

the only thing that scares me

about this emerging technology is the possibility that one's bosses may require such software to be installed on your phone and set up to automatically respond to your bosses phone, so they can check up on you.

it's not immediately harmful in the scenario I described, but things of this nature rarely stop after the first hurdle.

anyone remember when googling your own name didn't bring up 10 pages of your social network accounts, something you said to someone else the day before, your favourite food and a few pictures of you and your family and friends for good measure?

I imagine the next step would be all of the above, plus where you are right now to a 6 figure grid reference.

welcome mat because *someone* assumed we put it there

Halo: Reach leaked to net 3 weeks before release

i saw the reach beta,

it looked alright.

the devs have apparently added such new and innovative features as puffs of dust when you shoot a bullet into a wall, more than 32 AI's on the same part of the game, etc.

All so very impressive (in a 1998 kind of way). But not enough to make it worth paying for. I don't torrent (aside from linux distros :D ).

I wonder if the game sales are not the blockbuster hit everyone is expecting, will microsoft blame the "pirates" responsible for this exploitation of their badly implemented security?

nice one for doing so though, I have to say. made me smile :)

on a side note, what's with all the moderatrix deletions today?

microsoft-sponsored foaming-at-the-mouth fanboys swearing too much?

Google dubs Oracle suit 'attack on Java community'

@technome

your, sir, win.

can we have "respect" / "diss" buttons?

Dell accused of hiding incriminating evidence in defect case

seconded

i had one of those problem seagate drives, IMHO how seagate reacted was good.

My drive came back with every byte it had before it broke.

Of course I would have preferred it not to happen at all, but sometimes mistakes happen.

Dell on the other hand.....

crap sales, crapper support, arguably crap hardware (atleast these optiplexes).... and it turns out they knew this a decade ago?

shirley there are laws against this kind of thing

ASA: You can't say 'f**k'

instead of "F**CKING"

if they had written "WE GO FORTH AND MULTIPLYING LOVE YOU", would it still have been banned?

because we still know what that means.

Dell crafts mother of all graphics cards

i asked a similar question

last time these cards were mentioned on here.

it was pointed out to me that they will all be running in an air-conditioned server room most likely, so in this case the GPUs take advantage of the server / server room's cooling.

probably won't last long in your coolermaster HAF932 though :)