* Posts by Jonathan Fitt

27 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2007

How to be a failure at Guitar Hero III

Jonathan Fitt
Thumb Down

Oh dear...

You completely missed the point of the game didn't you.

Nobody ever claimed Silent Scope was meant to simulate being a police marksman did they?

It's a rhythm game (so yes it requires hand eye coordination) with a guitar shaped controller. That's it.

If you play guitar you should have the pluck+fret action down (which people can find hard when learning either GH or guitar), and your pinky will be more adept at blue and orange than mine, but if you can't follow the rhythm game convention of hit the shape when it touches the line, then you're going to suck.

It's more like playing scored air-guitar than anything else, you get to strum along with songs most people could never play and when you perfectly hit the solo, or the song hits a crescendo it feels good.

Rock band multiplies this up by making it a group experience.

What you could do (just had this idea), is produce a USB A/D converter which takes a guitar phono plug and have this produce on the fly midi tracks which are compared in the background to pre-recorded midi track sync'd to the original mp3 which you can hear. Then you could play Real Guitar Hero.

Well if you'll excuse me I have to go write a review of Track and Field where I complain that as an Olympic runner I expected to be better at it...

Smurf gives Paris Hilton a mouthful

Jonathan Fitt
Happy

@Tyler

Hell, people must really not be considering any form of required size when hiring Sys Admins if the job has the need to get into small places:

Have you seen the average Sys Admin!

:)

Jonathan Fitt
Alert

@Anonymous Coward

"Little persons, as you so politically correct call them don't have much choices when it comes to career paths. Just look around.

It's not like they have much to choose from."

What? That's the most backwards (and grammatically shaky) thing I've heard in a while (and I'm on the Internet).

EU employment law prohibits discrimination on size. Granted, in the realms of acting they have few opportunities, but I would put it to you that he could have been a Doctor, or an IT specialist.

If he took a job which had him dressed as a Smurf he clearly already accepted that his employer was exploiting his size.

"They deserve my respect for being able to stand all day in a market, in Christmas."

Unlike all the other market stall owners at that market, and every market all year all over the country?! Is it the standing that gets your respect, or standing while being little? Hmm?

Jonathan Fitt
Paris Hilton

Smurfitude

So would she not be able to call Mickey Mouse cute and say you want to adopt him at Disneyland? Does one need to consider the man in the suit might not want a hug and a photo?

They are playing Smurfs, they should expect to be treated like them.

Do they expect:

"Hey, what's up? Nice hat. It's a bit colder than I was expecting. Oh, you're Russian, that's cool. Do you do these markets every year?"

Seriously. I'm no Paris fan, but a girl goes giddy on seeing a smurf, and that guy totally overreacts.

Europe too cynical for iPhone

Jonathan Fitt

It's feature list is precisely correct for what it is:...

A US made phone for the US market.

Americans don't text nearly as much. Most don't see the point. They never had the 50p/min vs 10p/text that we had in the UK in the early 2000s. That drove most teens on tight budgets to texting. Didn't happen in the US.

Americans don't picture message. Only a small percentage of texters are likely to MMS, so it follows.

America does not use 3G. The US has bugger all 3G coverage and will have for the next few years.

Americans do mobile email. Blackberrys are waaay more common in the US, and have been for a long time.

Americans are used to expensive crap-long lock-in contracts. The iPhone deal isn't that bad over here, it's just the initial price which is higher than normal. Only having 2 GSM operators means that there's little competition. Remember what it was like with only Vodafone and Cellnet? Imagine if Orange hadn't come along and undercut them.

Combine that with the 5 month delay for the European release and it's clear that it wasn't really meant for Europeans.

Get a Touch and wait for the 3G version. Trust me, those who are still stuck in version 1 contracts when it comes out will be kicking themselves.

CBS to Pirate Bay: 'You're ok by us'

Jonathan Fitt
Pirate

If only there was a word for it...

Warner sits on the board of the Motion Picture Ass. of America, which has alleged that the operators of the Pirate Bay are profiteering criminals.

Profiteering criminals, hmm, there must be a word that means that. Nope, I can't think of it.

T-Mobile unlocks iPhone, charges €999

Jonathan Fitt

Eh?

"The cellco claimed T-Mobile's exclusive iPhone sales deal, tied to an airtime contract, was uncompetitive. "

Surely you mean anti-competitive?

Tesco punts Xbox 360 bundle for £33.24

Jonathan Fitt

I remember Tescos getting into trouble with this before

I seem to remember Tescos getting into trouble many years ago for a similar thing with TVs. It got on Watchdog who said that they are not obliged to sell at that price under UK law.

BT blows £250m on wind power

Jonathan Fitt
Thumb Up

NIMBY

I think they look quite nice even in the rolling countryside; a testament of our efforts to keep the countryside the same. Also the noise is not that bad unless you're really close, especially compared to a traditional power plant.

However, you wouldn't want to have one between you and the sun. The shadows of the large turbines in the winter can be quite large (http://www.windpower.org/en/tour/env/shadow/shadowc.htm) any when they're turning you get a 1Hz-ish flicker which is not nice.

HTC adds real, virtual keypads to second-gen Touch

Jonathan Fitt

So close...

I thought for a second that it was a viable replacement for my TyTn/Hermes: touch interface, but with a 2-letter keyboard which would be fine for typing, yet much better than the tytn for dialling.

It was so close, and then I read no wifi! Next!

HTC churn out devices faster than I can keep up with nowadays, and occasionally hit upon a goldy. I'll just wait 3 months for the next iteration.

Or of course I'll just wait for the 3G iPhone...

Israelis offer 'British' pukka-lingo ware to Blighty

Jonathan Fitt

C'mon you couldn't spare 40 spuds...

...to check out the software and give us a real critique?

A couple of before and after paragraphs perhaps?

You shouldn't even have to pay for fork's sake, you're journalists, blagging free stuff should be second nature.

Comodo punts buffer overflow protection

Jonathan Fitt

At 2 seconds

I bet it just searches for known programs: Ooh you have ZoneAlarm that means you're vulnerable.

Irish firm launches 'global' mobile phone

Jonathan Fitt

Dual-band

You are right you'd want a quad band phone to be even remotely global. Perhaps they meant dual-mode, i.e. GSM/wifi with the GSM portion being quad-band.

This product is a non-event. It's really just a reasonable SIM card.

From the headline I was hoping for a GSM/CDMA/PDC/wifi device with satellite capabilities in as a last resort. Something truly global which would select the lowest priced option at any moment.

Then I hoped to see that their next device would be GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSPA/CDMA2000/EVDO/wifi/satellite, and would offer cheap highspeed data anywhere on the planet....

Ah well.

Apple iPod Classic

Jonathan Fitt

Wait for version 2!

The processor in this is terribly slow and really can't cope with the interface.

It chugs through menus, and coverflow feels like scrolling through molasses.

If you should dare and try to scroll through with coverflow with a song playing (I'm always searching for the next song to play) it will start to Porky Pig through the song you're listening to: pppeeerrggger-dddddeeerggggerrrr

Marvelous!

Incidentally the new nano coped much better with this.

I'm looking to replace my ageing 4G 20Gb, but the new nano while splendid is too small (storage-wise), and I would not pay money for the Classic in this state.

What do I do now? When's the next refresh due?

Vista launch jamboree leaves PC World with indigestion

Jonathan Fitt

It's "Damp Squib"...

...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damp_squib

but I can quite see how the Vista launch could be compared to the rotting corpse of a cephalopod.

Teen sticks Xbox 360 power supply in bowl of water

Jonathan Fitt

US Electricity

The US electrical system seems hugely dangerous to me: They operate at half the voltage which means that identical devices need twice the current, there are no fuses in the plugs, and the plugs are crappy and still work when half pulled out the socket exposing the pins.

Combine that with a poor public school system, and I'm not surprised we get these stories.

BAE demos DSL-esque military radio protocol

Jonathan Fitt

Well let's see shall we...

If aChapFromTheRedPlanet is an automaton then it won't mind if I say that it's mother was a snow blower and it can bite my shiny metal ass.

If it is a real person then he might have something to say?

CD-meets-DVD launched

Jonathan Fitt

DVD Audio

Surely higher quality audio is the way to sell physical disks? CDs are obviously higher quality than MP3s, but how about going really over the top with a format which is impractically large to rip without re-encoding?

You could say, "MP3s off the interwebs are fine for your iPod, but are you really going to play them through your B&W's in the lounge?"

Mobile websites fail to satisfy users

Jonathan Fitt

RE: Which users are these exactly?

I admit that I thought the idea of using Lastminute on a mobile slightly odd. I rarely have been in that much of a hurry to book a holiday. But I find I use wikipedia and imdb every now and again while out and about. It's great for those "who the hell is that, and what was that film she was in?" moments.

Jonathan Fitt

Ease of use

I personally find it most useful to be able to comparison shop when I'm out in meatspace, shopping. I can browse in Virgin/HMV and then work out if it's worth waiting for a play.com or amazon delivery over immediate gratification.

But but those sites can be a pig to search even on a smartphone.

However I can definitely see the appeal of being able to do things like buy cinema tickets using a specifically designed mobile portal. Beating the queues by ordering tickets in the pub would be great.

There's also lots of possibility there of using the security provided by a SIM card to authenticate purchases to a pre-associated credit card account without having to go through the laborious details entering which would kill the mobile experience.

Terror-cops get realtime Congestion Charge database link

Jonathan Fitt

Here it is!

I wondered what ground those responsible for "security" would grab from this last bungled "terror attack".

Boeing shows automated spying, flying drone

Jonathan Fitt

I forsee more drawbacks...

Wait, so all I have to do is send a "specially formatted" email to the right address and automated fiery-death rains from the sky?

Surely the effect of spam on this email address could be disastrous?

Plus what about hugely increased munitions the cost as lazy soldiers call in auto-airstrikes from their bunks by mobile phone? Those bombs are anything but cheap.

Iran's 'Rescue Nuke Scientist' game battles US game studio

Jonathan Fitt

RE:RE:RE: Refreshing Change

All mainstream games which play in the Middle East always have you attacking places like Durkadurkastan. The large companies do not always want to stir up controversy by deliberately setting things in Iraq/Iraq etc. despite the awareness that this is on people's minds and is something they want to do.

You have to look to the smaller independent games like this and the new Source mod: Insurgency, for a more close to the bone depiction.

German bus driver objects to passenger's breasts

Jonathan Fitt

Unable to judge

I am unable to give a reasonable judgement from the photo that is now on the site; has it been changed?

Is your phone free?

Jonathan Fitt

RE: Finally

The phone is GSM, and so AFAIK Sprint being CDMA, it won't work on them. Try T-mobile or AT&T in the USA.

Also, don't worry about an operator rejecting it, just take any SIM card from an existing contract, or a PAYG SIM and pop it in and voila!

AFAIK operators do not do effectively a "User-Agent ID" check on the phone model it's normally the phone that prevents you registering with non-allowed providers which locks the phone. Even if they did do a check, how long do you think it would take someone to change this phone to report itself as a Nokia :P

Hotspot prices to fall after Boingo goes global with WiFi

Jonathan Fitt

Am I missing something?

I am either confused or this is bull-whotsit. I had a look at Boingo's website and did a quick search on Reading, UK. All but one of the 3 pages of results were so called "Premium Locations", which had an additional per minute fee, and the McDonalds in Reading is no premium location in my book.

The Global tariff didn't mention anything about being exempt from these

So far it looks like a con to me, they should call it the "Itchy and Scratchy dollars" tariff...

Mobile internet set for take-off?

Jonathan Fitt

iPhone to save the mobile web. LOL

"The AT&T iPhone might shake this up with Apple's genial simplicity"

Don't make me laugh. Simplistic or not, no one will want to wait around for pages to load over GPRS, especially when you start wanting anything more complicated than small pages of text.

I used the mobile web a lot with my old GSM smartphone and it tried my patience on many an occasion. Only someone who REALLY wants to use the mobile web would do it over GPRS. It will win no converts.