Posts by Powelly

LG offers BRAIN-SAVING CANCER-BL... er 'good luck charms'

So, let me get this straight; LG have given out stickers with their own logo on telling people that their own products give you brain tumours. Aside from the diabolical scientific knowledge, doesn't this count as a pretty catastrophic marketing own-goal?

Prince of Persia: Baggy trousers and curvy swords

Incidentally; "Turban Sprawl". Bravo!

This brings back memories! My mate and I played PoP1 through end-to-end on my first ever PC one summer between school and college. Even on my humble green screen the graphics were amazing for the time. We became slightly obsessed with home quickly we could complete key sections - the only game I've ever played where I've developed a similar obsession is Mirrors Edge a few years ago.

Sacked Zynga bods learn their jobs are gone via Facebook

I bet Shay Pierce is feeling pretty smug today:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/04/02/omgpop-ceo-publicly-trashes-ex-employee-after-zynga-buyout/

He is looking pretty prophetic today:

"An evil company is trying to get rich quick, and has no regard for the harm they’re doing along the way. It’s not making things of value, it’s chasing a gold rush. An evil game company isn’t really interested in making games, it’s too busy playing a game — a game with the stock market, usually. It views players as weak-minded cash cows; and it views its developers as expendable, replaceable tools to create the machines that milk those cows. It follows unsustainable practices (like cloning or even completely screwing innovators; or abusing viral channels until they have to be curtailed) — all practices which, in the long-term, not only make things worse for every other company in the industry, but ultimately for itself. Zynga is not the only one of these, but yes, they fit my definition.”

Wales slams Amazon over lack of Kindle support

Re: The welsh lobby

" the former got very vocal when Bill Clinton used the verb 'to welsh' to describe a group that had reneged on a deal"

All well and good, but unless it was written down the word he will have used will have been 'welch', which has nothing to do with Wales. It's similar to those idiots that get worked up about the use of the word niggardly, insisting that it's racist despite the etymology being nothing to do with race.

BBC unveils UltraViolet DVDs, BDs

Re: i think i shall stick to my currant set up......

The Sultana Brunei is on the forum again!

Re: No such thing as UV DVD

I agree - very useful. I wish they'd do something similar with books. I like having paper copies of some training books, just because it's easier to have on the table next to you and scribble on etc., but there are times when having an electronic copy to refer to when out and about would be a godsend. Music books are another one similar, but I refuse to pay fifteen quid for a music book and then the same again for an electronic copy.

Mystery martian object is relic of (our) civilisation

Re: another shitty black & white image?

No can do; that one's back on Earth in the TV studio. ;-)

New I-hate-my-neighbour stickers to protect Brits' packages

Re: I ****ing hate this.

I see your lazy postman story and raise you a very lazy postman story: I remember paying for express delivery on an audio interface delivered from the US to UK a few years ago. I got it delivered to my parents' as I knew they'd be in and the Post Office is three doors down from their house, but still their post turned up with a 'We Tried to Deliver and You Were Out' card. My Dad went to collect it and was told 'we left the card because you weren't in', at which point he was forced to point out that they are a Newsagents, they open at 4:30 in a morning and close at 19:00 at night and that the postman had left the letters (and card) on the shop counter. The guy delivering was too lazy to walk to the end of the terrace with a parcel. I always tried to support my local Post Office, but that was the point when I stopped.

Organic food offers basically no health benefit, boffins find

Re: Written

"Tastes the same, but results in less fish ending up all weird."

:-) Now if that was the slogan I'd definitely buy it!

(Although my inner grammar pedant feels the need to point out that it should be 'fewer fish')

Wikipedia collapses threatening the very fabric of civilisation

Re: Uh ho...

:-) Reminds me of the Demitri Martin gag:

"I bought a new dictionary the other day. First thing I did was look up the word 'Dictionary'. It said 'You're an asshole'"

BT broadband packs up again - second big outage in a fortnight

Re: 12 sites down

I've always found Demon really reliable for me. It's been down once in the five years since we've been a customer. That was an epic 5 day outage that included our voice line for the first 2 days and was about a fortnight before my wife was due to give birth. In that case a BT Engineer had been working in the cabinet 20 yards down the road just before it went down, but you'd be a fool and a charlatan to think it was related - complete coincidence according to Openreach!

We're looking at moving from Demon, but that's purely down to their frankly ridiculous FUP, which chops your speeds to 128K, but gives you no option to pay for extra when you use over 50GB per 30 days.

Songkick Concerts

Re: A Thea Gilmore fan?

My first thought on browsing the article as well! Not seen her live for a few years, but always excellent in my experience.

Apple iPad sales drop by DOUBLE DIGITS in Europe

Is there some kind of Daily Mail-esque statistical blunder in this article?

""iPad sales in March grew 134 per cent compared to February"

So the volumes in March were 234% of those in February - i.e. much more than twice as many?

In which case:

"the total number of iPads flogged dropped 22 per cent in April across Western Europe compared to the previous month."

Means that they still sold 182% of the number sold in February?

Even if that first stat should read either "grew by 34%" or "were 134% of those in February", this is still means that they sold 104% of the February numbers, so it's hardly the sales disaster that the article seems to want to suggest.

Of course it's entirely possible it's me making the schoolboy error - it is Friday after all. That coupled with having a new baby at home means my brain is pretty much BSOD.

iLuv Vibro Classic II

Agree with the other posters. If you've chosen to call your company iLuv, don't call your product the 'Vibro'. Coming soon; the iLuv Girthmaster 5000 iPad dock.

Ten... two-bay Nas boxes

Re: I went down the DIY route

It is a bargain, but be careful on the cashback. I was looking at these yesterday as it happens and the form on HP's website says that it must be invoiced and delivered by 30th April (ie. Today!) They may extend it though as it's been running for ages now.

Brydge pledges to turn iPads into MacBooks

It's quite a nifty idea, but sadly I think you're right. It just looks too much like a Macbook Pro.

Google Drive stalls on LAUNCH DAY

Re: Point?

I agree. Hangouts is an excellent service. The screen sharing an collaboration tools have a couple of niggles, but overall are top notch.

Dad sues Apple for pushing cash-draining 'free' games at kids

Re: XBLA

"Well my 2 yr old son managed to buy £100 worth of MS points on the Xbox whilst I was in the kitchen. "

Think yourself lucky - I work with a guy whose two year old son bought him a £4000 shed from Ebay in much the same way. Fortunately the seller was sympathetic.

Arcam rDock

Never mind the review. The sub-title deserves a prize.

Eight... AirPlay speakers

Re: How much?

I agree. I don't know if it's down to cost of licensing the Airplay tech from Apple, or because Apple has some kind of minimum spec written into the licensing agreement to maintain quality, but there must be a gap in the market for cheaper systems (<£100). I just want something to stream iTunes to while I'm washing up, sitting in the garden, etc., but don't want the hassle of an Airport Express and separate speakers.

As an aside I think it's ludicrous that Apple don't allow an iPhone/iPod Touch to function as an airplay receiver, but I can download an app to do exactly that with my Missus' Motorola Xoom.

Belkin Dual-Band Travel Router

If this would hold 3G SIM as well and allow you to swap between being an ethernet connected router/mi-fi device I'd be searching for my credit card right now. Given it doesn't is it any different from a normal wireless access point?

New iPad: Crack open your wallets, fanbois, here's what it'll cost

Change the record people

Two things that you can guarantee in the comments for every single piece of kit that Apple announce:

"£nnn! For that price I could buy [insert name of generic Chinese ebay purchase] with the same spec and buy [insert name of generic Chinese ebay purchase] with the change"

and

"[Daily Mail Mode]$nnn x exchange rate = £nnn x 1.2 - another example of rip-off Britain![/Daily Mail Mode]"

Ageing Mario blamed for Nintendo's woes

"Busted flush?"

:-) Sub-heading of the month!

Tesla X e-SUV to sport monster touchscreen on the dash

Display good, controls v. v. bad

As AC points out (12:22), touchscreen controls are downright dangerous. The big advantage of physical controls is that you develop the muscle memory for where the regularly used stuff is and can therefore do things like adjust the heating, turn on the hazards, etc without looking away from the wheel. You can't do this with a touch screen because your fingers get no point of reference. This reeks of style over usability.

Big LCD display instead of the usual dials probably isn't so bad assuming that the reflections are managed. Probably saves costs as well.

Apple's new TV allegedly spotted... in Canadian office

"Wouldnt ITV have something to say about that?"

Based on the state of ITV's accounts these day Apple could probably buy them for the price of a grand skinny frapumochacino, use the name and dump the rest in a skip.

@Toastan Buttar

Bravo sir! I doff my tifter to you.

Boffins out earbuds that sound right when inserted wrong

Why?

Given most in-ear earphone are shaped to the ear anyway then isn't this just an inovation looking for an application?

Ex-staffer: Apple assigns new workers to made up projects

@Awwwww

Steve! Welcome back - everyone told us you were dead!

RIM slashes BlackBerry PlayBook tablet prices

Meh

No thanks RIM. Although it's slightly cheaper than the Xoom that I scored from Dixons for the missus on Monday (£249 for 32GB thanks to El' Reg!), with the Xoom, half an hour after turning it on I had Netflix and the Kindle reader both installed for our viewing and reading pleasure, GMail fully syncing and new emails showing in the desktop widget and AirBubble installed to stream the living room PC's iTunes to it as an Airplay device. Alright, so the equivalent PB is £50 cheaper, but the Xoom is Ice Cream Sarnie ready and I can't do any of the above with a Playbook without thhe much fabled new OS and its bizarre Android transalation tools unless I'm mistaken.

The fact that they've kept Balsillie and Lazaridis on the board and the new CEO used to be the COO reeks of rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship to me.

Spring launch for Apple OLED TV with Siri, says retail mole

Loss on each set

"the major brands lose money on the sets they sell."

Excuse me for probably being dumb, but how does this work commercially? I can see how it works with a games console, where you make the loss back through media sales, but how does this work for TV's?

UK probes Snickers over 'celebrity' Twitter adverts

Was this paid for by Cadbury?

Regardless of anything else, which genius at the marketing company managed to get "Celebs suddenly develop a modicum of intelligence, but eat one of your bars and immediately turn back into a dribbling, ignorant cretin" past the customer?

Snickers apparently makes you:

* Lose any economic savvy (Jordan);

* Lose any love of literature (Cher Lloyd);

* Lose any desire to play music (Botham).

Where do I sign up?!?!

Juror jailed for looking up rape defendant on Google

@She was told

"Also, if her grasp of spoken English is not so good, why is she teaching psychology in the UK?"

Or indeed serving on the jury in the first place. If she was being truthful there then you'd have to wonder how she'd grasp the subtleties of the case if she couldn't grasp the subtleties of 'Don't look them up on the web'.

OCZ refunds punter for dud drive shortly after El Reg steps in

@Translation

What he said. Another lost sale here. Coincidentally I was looking at SSD's on EBuyer the night before last and they'd got OCZ on offer. They had decent reviews, so I was on the brink of purchasing. Definitely not now though. Can anyone recommend a good, high-speed small (60GB ish) drive to use as a boot drive in a MacBook Pro?

Console accessories

" even National Express coaches have wall-sockets now, so there's nothing holding you back from hardcore gaming on the move"

Not sure what they're rated to though. You may well find that plugging a console and screen into the sockets on trains or buses would result in nothing more than a loud fizzling noise as the sockets burn out, followed by a good hiding from fellow passengers.

Modern Warfare 3 flogged on eBay for a grand

@DEAD4EVER Re: mw3 controversial

I'm conflicted now - I don't know whether your post is a clever parody (in which case nice work!) or you've genuinely strayed in from the Daily Mail comments section by mistake. Given the content, lack of punctuation and poor grasp of capitalisation either is possible, but regardless your post was most entertaining.

Porsche finds top gear with BlackBerry design

My word that's ugly!

(Most amusing byline on the article though!)

Apple updates MacBook Pro laptop line

Cooling?

I hope they've improved the cooling as well. I moved from a 17" dual core 2.66 GHz i7 to a 15" quad core 2.3Ghz i7 and the latter runs much much hotter. Hope the extra hike doesn't result in even more heat - I now get audible fan noise when just watching iPlayer whereas with my old 17" machine I could count on one hand the number of times I'd heard the fan. Looking at the Apple forums, I'm not the only one with this problem on the faster processors.

On the positive side, those Sandy Bridge CPU's are like the provebial fecal matter from a gardening implement. I've never seen the CPU usage go above about 15% in Ableton Live.

UK punters happy to pay £3 to top up e-wallets

I'd love to see the way the questions were phrased. As you've mentioned in the article the results seem fanciful in the extreme.

Why modern music sounds rubbish

Self fulfilling prophesy

The problem is that the genie is out of the bottle and no chart acts are likely to change. Because heavy compression means that your song sounds louder anyone who bucks that trend to give more dynamic range is by definition going to sound quieter on the radio than their contemporaries. Quieter means fewer sales. Not a chart band, but Iggy's Raw Power remaster that was released a few years ago was notorious for this - everything was clipped and unlistenable.

Can't see the attachment from work, so apologies if I'm repeating what's posted.

Apple recalls 1TB Seagate HDDs

2.15"

2.15" iMac - to quote my dear old dad: try using that for very long and "you'd have eyes like a piss-house rat."

Patent row gets Playstation 3s banned from Europe

LG

"Aside from that, I'm sure a manufacturer of cheap shit disc drives won't keep this up for long. Or perhaps they've had a little help from someone."

Not that they're one of the world's biggest conglomerates or anything? I don't think they'll need to have a whip-round any time soon.

Apple MacBook Pro 17in Core i7 BTO notebook

Just taken the plunge

After months of procrastinating I've finally taken the plunge and taken delivery this morning of exactly the same machine to use as a music laptop. I actually paid £1550 including delivery on ebay from a UK supplier and, other than coming with a US power supply and the £ key being a # key there's no discernable difference. I agree with what others have said about the learning curve when moving from a PC, but I'd expected that. Even so, I'm getting up to speed pretty quickly as it's all fairly intuitive once you learn the basics. Price wise, I think it's pretty reasonable, especially for the 500 quid off list that I've paid and, aesthetically it's streets ahead of any PC laptop I've ever used. Oh, and the multi-touch trackpad is a work of genius!

Ironically the thing that put me off for so long was the holier than thou nature of a lot of the Mac fans. It's not the panacea that some people make out, but it is a very nice machine indeed.