Posts by Southern

Marathon

I believe it was the iOS port, but I could be wrong.

Matt Groening reveals location of Simpsons' Springfield

Re: The odd episode is still funny

Concentrate on Futurama!!

Sony 2011 losses are TWICE as bad as expected

My god, if this doesn't show that Sony have lost the plot, I don't know what does.

Game chain sold

Re: WHY!?

So send it to your work address and have them take receipt of it and set your downloads to run at night instead of daytime. It really is not that difficult to overcome your two main objections.

Lego space shuttle hits 114,000ft

Bit like the thunderbirds...

...I can still see the strings.

Amazing achievement, Glueckwunsch / Congrats!

Powerful, wallet-sized Raspberry Pi computer sells out in SECONDS

Re: Re: Re: @ Probing analyst (PS)

Power supply - Use your phone charger, they are all Micro USB these days. Sorry Nokia ;)

SD Card - Come on, you must have a few knocking around. Even so, £10 or under

USB hub/Mouse/Keyboard - Use your own or buy some for cheap. Ebuyer do some for £2-3 each.

Monitor: The whole point is that this can plug into monitors AND TVs. Your thinking is so small; think about the family TV, which has HDMI inputs. The whole point of the RasPi is that it harks back to days of yore when your $old-console plugged into the living room TV.

Case: I'm sure some enterprising people will have something available soon with the ability to loop a Kensington lock around it.

Sony shifts more than a million PS Vitas

Thanks for the link to that forum post - shows perfectly well another great reason to never be an early adopter to these things.

Quite literally, people are throwing their money at their screens and nothing is happening

Well played, Sony.

Sony to strike gold with PS Vita - if it cuts the price

I had the misfortune to be in Game yesterday looking for something new for the Xbox at the weekend and happened to get beckoned over to the Vita stand there. What I found was that their cheapest deal was something around £300 for a vita, memory card and choice of one game out of two. Compare this to Amazon, who for £225 offer pretty much the same package.

As with others, I'm voting with my wallet until the inevitable price decrease after shafting early adopters.

Apple files patent for 'polished meteorite' keyboard

Re: Do I understand your patent correctly?

Have a beer sir - made me choke on my morning brew in mirth.

Woman spanked for dissing ex in Facebook snapshot

How convenient, you fight like a cow!

Once again, Los Abogados win.

Councils spunk £515m in 4 years on CCTV

It's obvious why they need so many cameras; it's so that they can have cameras covering the cameras in case they get vandalised and need to find out who did it.

Cameras, Cameras Everywhere!!

Drew's Cookie Jar - psst. want a forum upgrade

I've got some bourbons...

...and custard cremes going spare for the jar, can I come in too?

Life-size Portal gun to shoot onto shelves soon

In related news...

Burglar uses portal gun to burgle houses while leaving no trace of entry/exit. Police advise people to live in metal houses.

Final Fantasy XIII-2

Having already gotten rid of my copy of FF13 for similar reasons, this sounds all to familiar when a company uses a brand name to sell a half baked game. I know that evolution, not revolution is important, but this goes so far in missing the mark that it veers and hits an old lady in the next county on.

The last great FF game I played was FF9, which combined the best of 8 and 7 on the Playstation and offered hours of exploration and fun - something that more recent titles seem to have ignored/forgotten/hidden/replaced (delete as appropriate). Hell, I'd always go back to SNES era FF games and the mighty Chrono Trigger for an example of better squaresoft titles.

Nintendo cuts full-year forecast – by BILLIONS

Eagerly awaiting Super Mario 87 and Metroid 56 here [/sarcasm]

Honestly, when all their titles are just rehashed versions of old software, you have to question what is going on. I bought my old DS for Phoenix Wright and a couple of other titles that Ninty had no hand in developing and sold it once I had had my fill as there were no titles coming out that I was keen on. Nintendo pander to children who don't realise they are being spoon fed the same old games time after time and seem to ignore the hardcore guys. It's a sad state of affairs when my Game Boy Pocket gets more of my attention than anything new.

I would love to see Ninty be a credible option, but it's quite impossible these days.

Flag-waving Lego Canuck soars to 80,000ft

Let the space-race battle of playmobil vs lego begin. First one to the moon gets to set up a plastic moon base set of their choice.

Ten exabytes wedged into a rather large box by Cleversafe

I know what I want one for...

Dare I suggest that one could download and mirror the entire internet on a system of this size?

Starship Voyager dumped into skip

Good effort on the interior decor, very impressive.

Shame about the divorce and bankruptcy getting in the way though.

More Brits desert high streets to spend £50bn online

Peacocks in your high street? Not for very much longer after yesterday's announcement.

Price is the main thing forcing me off the high street. For the products I buy, these rarely need a physical inspection (PC parts, music, dvds) and I can get these much cheaper on the internet through the usual suspects than I can in the high street.

I still appreciate the ability to try things out, especially things like headphones, clothes and TVs, only to then find them cheaper online.

Record numbers of readers flock to The Register

Have a celebratory pint.

Boffins dig up prehistoric popcorn in Peru

Amazing find...

I bet the Peruvian cinema had better films as well.

Yahoo! cofounder! Jerry! Yang! quits!

Bye Yang, thanks for deciding to pull Geocities!!

Apple offers cash for old kit

In fairness, Apple aren't the only ones offering you next to nothing for workable, useable 2nd hand technology and the first comment is correct; you can make more money by using an auction site.

I had my 2007 Aluminium iMac valued at just over 200GBP by Apple and I sold it for double that to a nice young lady who came round and picked it up for me after using a free web classifieds service.

Facebook rolls out Timeline to world+dog

More rubbish on facebook to avoid. I for one have been lamenting the amount of photos I originally stuck on my account and am now trying to get through and delete them - I don't need an external service to chart what I've been up to unless I suddenly get struck with memory loss.

Flash prices FALL

Question...

Forgive my ignorance, but is this likely to lead to cheaper SSDs or other flash-based products for us consumers or have I missed the point?

Greatest ever first-person shooter* brought back to life

Smells like napalm...tastes like chicken.

Dark and moody corridors, creepy music, stereo sound, dual firing modes, look up/down view, friendly NPCs, swimming/vacuum areas, plus an amazing story. And then there's the multiplayer...

Marathon remains a classic for me and even though I haven't booted up Aleph One for a year since I completed the excellent Rubicon add-on pack, it's good to see the improvements there. Might have to spend some of tonight playing this little lot. Good article

Best Buy fires parting shot at Dixons with closing down sale

Might be a good opportunity to get some cheap CDs and DVDs , because we all know about the hit-and-miss TV at Christmas time. Apart from seeing the great David Suchet in a new Poirot, I'm expecting to catch up on watching my collection of DVDs.

Otherwise I'm not fussed about buying electrical gear that could come without warranty.

How Apple beat IBM in Steve Jobs' first retail war

Great stuff

An enjoyable read and great to see that old sales letter. i hope that the calculator for 10 sales was a scientific one - I can't imagine that being a great incentive otherwise.

Fake doc cuffed in concrete arse shocker

Shopped?

Honestly if I hadn't read the article I would not have known.

Beggar's belief what they get up to in the US.

Microsoft tempts Kinect developers with bacon

Perhaps taking their cue from EpicMealTime?

Certainly an original idea to promote something in the IT world. Hopefully they don't attract too much flak from vegetarian programmers, who are all too aware that bacon is veggie kryptonite.

Clooney fingered for Steve Jobs role in Hollywood biopic

Because Nathan's sadly overlooked.

And there's not a power in the 'verse that can change that.

Kindle Fire: An open letter to Jeff Bezos

Regardless of the astroturfing going on, what else are you supposed to expect from a trumped up ebook reader? Yet again, I'm still happy with my netbook as it can do all of this and more.

Virgin Media broadband in two-day wobble

Ahh / penny drops

Thanks El Reg for bringing me this news; as a virgin media customer, I was trying to figure out why Flickr and Wikipedia in particular weren't loading (or gave connection timeouts) and I suspected Virgin Media had something to do with it.

Glad to know that the ISP is to blame and that the problem might be fixed, althought not being able to randomly look things up on Wikipedia is seriously going to affect my pub quiz score tonight.

US Navy orders laser machine guns

"We aren't told the power level offered by the laser..."

...just a guess at something over 9000, perhaps?

In all seriousness, while lasers are certainly more accurate, I was under the impression that they weren't yet powerful enough to perform the destruction we expect from science fiction. The power requirements must be huge, not to mention reloading spent cells.

But nice to see that scientists haven't given up on the idea just yet :)

The greatest tech show on Earth

Brilliant

Some great event coverage there, I especially like the look of the Kinect-aided robot waiter.

Nice to see a variety of different things to do in one place.

AMD says Xbox 720 graphics to be good as Avatar

omg teh graffix!

Yes, yes, it is visually amazing, but does it offer a decent playable experience? Where's the depth? Where's the innovation? Moreover, how the hell are game developers supposed to take advantage of all this power and to actually deliver a game before development time spirals out of control?

Vote now for the juiciest LOHAN backronym

Re: re: Poutine?

Ooh la la!

Lester, you are spoiling us!

Rebekah Brooks quits - Murdoch accepts this time

Must be a friday

Lots of good news on a Friday. A surprise it's taken this long but nonetheless not unexpected.

Meanwhile we are debating in the office what she's going to do for another job. Something tells me the police may have other plans however!

Pic related, it's her as she gets her coat to leave.

Microsoft plans to open 75 retail stores in US

Accelerate our stores?

I took this to mean strapping a dirty great big rocket booster (surplus from NASA shuttle program, of course) to a bricks and mortar MS branded shop, point it in the right direction (Apple's campus) and hit the launch button.

Marathon for iPad

Excellent

I remember my first network FPS games were playing Marathon Infinity on a Mac Quadra and a G3 Powermac with me and my brother storming through matches with double shotguns. Good times...

Marathon had a tough learning curve compared to Doom and Wolfenstein at the time, but once you learn that you are not invincible (and that running while punching does more damage, HINT HINT) you can get through the earlier levels and get the strategy foundations right for the later levels, which sport more grenade spitting enemies than you can shake a Phfor fightstick at. The fact that the backstory and the ongoing narrative within the levels is absolutely top notch adds to the experience, plus haunting music and lots of dark corridors with scratchy, alien noises. And THAT motion detector lovingly stolen from Alien (the triangles, they come!!) . In some cases, this is even akin to pre Portal-esque AI humor:

"P.S. If things around here aren't working, it's because I'm laughing so hard."

Durandel, Quarantine, terminal 2 message 1

Oh god, I don't care if I've played it all through Aleph One - to the app store!

MS to WinXP diehards: Just under 3 more years' support

Netbooks

Yes Windows 7 is a step in the right direction, but it depends on the PC, as many people have pointed out. My PC (primarily for gaming and folding) uses Windows 7 and as it goes like a rocket, I don't notice any degredation in speed from Windows bloat.

Meanwhile Windows XP is great for relatively underpowered netbook computers. We know its ins and outs so we can optimise it with less fuss, all of our normal Windows programs run on them (not games, obviously), there are fewer hardware compatibility issues compared with Linux/other alternatives and it runs snappily enough for most office and internet tasks.

I shudder when I think of trying to add Windows 7 to my little Samsung N-130, but more often than not, I wonder why I would bother reinventing the wheel when it suits this purpose.

Diary of a cameraman at the last shuttle launch

Title required

Moving aware from issues with the US budget (which is a whole other topic of recent personal interest) this whole article was great. A pleasure to watch and hear the shuttle launch and I am quite glad that it didn't turn into a fireball.

Thanks for sharing!

Parmo v poutine: The ultimate post-pub nosh deathmatch

Nice..

I recall at uni I used to get back from the pubs and want eggs on toast. Except in my drunken state I thought I could do the old trick of cooking with the aid of a mug and a microwave.

Mostly it seemed okay, but occassionally my post pub snack had to be retrieved in pieces with the aid of a spatula as it had become stuck to the top of the microwave's innards.

Good to see proper science of the culinary kind on El Reg.

Sony to can MiniDisc Walkman

Wow

They were still making minidiscs? Unbelievable...did they not see what happened when the iPod came out? Did Sony just put on a pair of blinkers and keep trotting on? Did the success of the Playstation hide the fact that minidiscs were becoming a minority format?

Count me in the 99% of incredulous Britains.

Rustock zombies halved as clean-up efforts continue

A title is required

Talk about great PR and karma boost for Microsoft and more bandwidth for the rest of us.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Worse than DnF?!

Wow, I would never have guessed.

Boffins fix dead satellite using 'dirty hack' in space

Title required

Speaking as someone who lived in Darmstadt during my student years, I am surprised to hear that there are such awesome boffins working in Germany.

Thumbs up, du prima Kumpel!

Sony to launch PlayStation 4 in 2012, say moles

Hmm...

I seem to recall Sony Execs at the PS3 launch claiming that the PS3 was going to be around for at least 10 years. Some plan that worked out to be, but in the five odd years it's been out, they've got a solid product there.

I'm all one for innovation though, so I'm glad to hear that something new will be out soon.

Blighty gets gold-dispensing ATM

Chortle

"You would buy me some gold if you loved me Ricky"

Priceless. Bianca would never have it so good.

Moderatrix kisses the Reg goodbye

Aw....

...I was enjoying those weird sub headings.

Good luck with the new role Sarah!