Posts by Flawless101

NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron

Terrorism, the new word for communism.

I wonder how many new laws have came about because of "terrorism".

'I think you DO do evil, using smoke and mirrors to avoid tax'

Getting bored

Of reading about how "unethical" it is to avoid paying tax. Maybe I'll and the companies will care when it stops being unethical and becomes illegal.

First, the bad news: EA bags Star Wars games rights

Re: Battlefield 3/4 - Star Wars ???

1942? Not even EA are using the setting (much) these days. Not like they used to anyway. It's all tacticool modern shooters with added realism, blue filters, and lens flare. No exceptions.

Just licence Obsidian the KotOR franchise, pretend TOR didn't happen and I'll be happy.

The Reg puts Vulture inside the Large Hadron Collider

Awesome pictures

Interesting stuff, good Friday morning read.

Wonder if a few of them network cables have ever slipped out.

Why hacking and platforms are the future of NHS IT

Meanwhile where their is serious money...

look at the insurance industry. It's been fairly successful in standardizing a lot of information.

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

I don't get why there just isn't something like this for the NHS.

AVG: That World of Warcraft hack? RIDDLED with malware

well duh...

These mmos go to incredible lengths to stop hacks being possible, can't catch them all but they're doing a fine job of it.

I bet most of these are VB programs that look like they were thrown together by a 12 year old child, and in fact probably were. What's more surprising is that people actually think these things would work.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Water levels...

Screw the water levels with a rusty jagged piece of metal.

Mozilla's Persona beta adds password-free Yahoo! logins

Hmm...

First time reading/hearing about this.

Is this another single sign on attempt? Like MS Passport? Which no one wanted or trusted.

I still don't get why ease of use is better than having a decentralised point of failure. If that database (as far as I understand you still sign into Persona and it uses wizardry to sign you in elsewhere) got compromised you'd still be up a creek without a paddle.

Hard luck lads, todger size DOES matter: Official

Don't think about stuffing that sock down there just yet...

http://life.nationalpost.com/2013/04/08/size-does-matter-women-rate-men-with-larger-genitalia-as-more-attractive-ottawa-biologist-says/

"Perhaps unsurprisingly, they preferred men who were tall, long and V-shaped. Overall, body shape accounted for about 80% of the variation in attractiveness scores, penis size about 6% and height about 5%."

Also, the study doesn't take into account a few things. Such as the female participants may have been biased towards larger penis' based on sexual pleasure, or if you're a grower and not a shower you lose out, and finally other cultures where full clothing isn't typically worn.

http://www.nature.com/news/bigger-not-always-better-for-penis-size-1.12770

So there you have it, unless you are short, O shaped, and have a grower rather than a shower then you might want to consider using a lot of socks.

Then again, if you are tall, V shaped, well endowed and drink too much of tasty beverage in the icon it'll all be for nothing as nothing is making the little private stand to attention.

Tick-tock! 40% of PCs start Windows XP malware meltdown countdown

Re: Anyone else still considering installing WinXP systems?

I snagged some licences for it when I still had my student MSDN account. Using them on some old laptops and a netbook, why not? all I use them for is hooking up to the TV to watch something on netflix.

BT boss barks at TalkTalk for being 'copper Luddites'

Couldn't care less (at the minute) if BT have a supposed monoply...

All I know is over the years I can't fault their customer service too much (at least compared to other services) and that I get 5MB/sec over their fibre.

Maybe I bad attitude to have, but all they need to do now is run it the 20 metres from the cabinet to my house.

Still a fair bit behind over countries, I hear our scandinavian friends have insane speeds. The google fibre throwing out close to 1GB/sec to Kanas is also fairly astonishing (up and down stream).

Parking ticket firm 'exposed private info' - ICO making enquiries

Bit familar

Didn't something like this happen before, a few years back? I seem to remember something to do with a website and photos of a parking garage that could be tweaked to see different cars + their licence plates etc.

The healing hands of guru Dabbs

Hmmm

I have a similar power.

On Friday afternoons I walk near alcohol and it just disappears, along with my money. It's a difficult power to control.

Facebook skins Android with Facebook Home

You know what I don't need?

This.

I'm just glad rooting and custom are options. I thought the crap HTC and Samsung bake into the OS was bad enough, don't even get me started on what network operators throw in.

Fuck I just to install a few simple apps on, read a few emails, listen to music and send texts and phone calls. I think I spend more time maintaining my phone now than I do my PC(s).

Disney shutters Star Wars game unit with 200 layoffs

Burying it

Let's be honest here, LucasArts died long ago when the creative force behind funny smart adventure games left (Shaffer et al) this is just accepting it and burying it. They were a shadow of them former selves making/publishing Stars Wars game upon Star Wars game, and the worst crime about this? They never followed up on truly great games, No Republic Commando 2, No Battlefront 3 (although they were just the publisher but I doubt it had anything to do with the dev house(s) when crap like The Force Unleashed got an undeserved sequel, there is no justice.

I think I'll play Grim Fandango later.

Google offers Adwords deals - but you can't trust their numbers

Re: More marbles

An unforgivable mistake.

I am NOT a PC repair man. I will NOT get your iPad working

Ergh...

I avoid going to my local Tesco now, as a friend who works there (seemingly 24/7) will ask me something about his shit-kicker laptop.

I just reply with £20/hour to any request these days. I work in front of a PC all fucking day, I just want to get home and play video games on mine not tinker with theirs so they can get back to facebook/adult movies/whatever.

One did pay the £20/hour, easiest £60 I made. I felt like a consultant.

Ten serious sci-fi films for the sentient fan

Re: Obligatory "What, no...?" comment

Hmm, I think she filled the role well and I was interested in her as a character. SAC is a great series though, think it really expanded the universe in a good way.

Re: Is Deckard a human or an Android?

I wish that scene remained out of the Final Cut, sorta ruins the whole experience (read arguing in pubs about it).

Re: Obligatory "What, no...?" comment

2 down votes! I am shocked.

I'm not an anime fan, but Akira is a movie I believe any sci-fi fan could watch and perhaps even enjoy, the music and visuals are top-notch. Ghost in the Shell is also great, but I also find the pacing a tad odd, a lot happens in a small time frame but I don't think it's really reflected in the movie. I'd avoid 2nd GIG but the series, Stand Alone Complex, is pretty enjoyable with a good story.

Not a movie, well maybe you could argue the remake movies or EoE, but Neon Genesis Evangelion is another series I urge people to watch, I was gobsmacked to how much I got into it... and that's all the Anime I've seen.

SimCity 2000

Pretty sure some versions of it have been abandoned (at least some versions of it) and are free game. I see it's also still on GoG.com, at a somewhat extortionate price.

Hey, software snobs: Hardware love can set your code free

Would the cart then not need reinforced as the farmer might try to add more to it and the force from tractor pulling it?

Microsoft unwraps sysadmin-friendly Office 365 for biz update

Subscription...

I often wonder who sits down with their beverage of choice and thinks, "yes, that's what we need... subscriptions to use A WORD PROCESSOR."

Hipsters have spoken: Microsoft is 'hip to be square'

about as relevant as neo-punk/rocker/teddy boys/goths/mods/nerds/jocks/preps/grunge/skaters...?

SimCity Classic

Re: SimCopter

They really did milk the SimWhatever phase at the correct time. SimTower, SimCopter, SimFarm etc.

Still good memories of them all, without trying to sound too much like an old man I doubt any SimCity to come will live up to SimCity 3000 in my eyes.

On that note, here's the "perfect city" some person spent 4 (real life) years designing and building.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtB2ZfVuLhY

It's rather impressive.

Sony promises PC-based PlayStation 4 for Christmas

Price...

Price will be the key issue, the PS3 was far too expensive on release and really suffered for it (even though they sold it at a loss). Not to mention the use of a different CPU architecture put some developers off, at least at the start.

I think it looks good overall, the routing of sound to the controller and being able to plug in a pair of headphones is a neat idea.

11-YEAR-OLD code wizard hacks Greedy RuneScape geeks

Re: Oliver Mayes

I hope you alerted Jagex that people are hacking their game!

Crap security lands Sony £250k fine for PlayStation Network hack

Re: Lapdog not watchdog

Thanks for those sources and references, anon! I'll believe you, this time, because "Anonymous Coward" makes a lot of posts here so they must be trustworthy.

McDonalds burger app gives it to you straight from the horse's mouth

Wheres the option...

No option for feeling worse!

I could be disgusted to learn that my McD's isn't ultra processed meat! How else will my hangover be cured?!

NRA: Video games kill people, not guns. And here's our video game

Re: What irks me about their argument

The anti-gun culture is impervious to logic? That's a good one.

Worms is probably a bad example, have you never felt your blood boil like you had just seen the white whale when one of the NPCs hits you with a bazooka while you are in a cave, with two S bends then a hairpin at the end.... then they do the same with a grenade.

What irks me about their argument

Here's a good read by Erik Kain,

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/01/15/killing-pixels-why-the-nra-shooting-range-app-wont-you-violent-but-neither-will-call-of-duty/

If you can't be bothered to click through this is basically the crux of it,

"My primary quarrel with the NRA on violent video games is simply this: violent video games are everywhere but the only place where regular mass shootings occur (at schools, theaters, etc.) is the United States."

I just wonder what it'll actually take for culture to change.

Amazon-bashed HMV calls in administrators, seeks buyer

Re: Sad, but...

Have to agree. HMV was always... different when it came to selling goods. You could walk in and find the same item at three different prices, and it was the sticker price that counted. My mind was blown that day.

Swedish school puts Minecraft on the curriculum

@tkioz

It's all fun and games until some kid yells "FORD IT!"

British armed forces get first new pistol since World War II

The CTs armed forces should also look into using bunny hopping to get to unreachable locations and gain superior speed over the Ts other combatants..

First Swedish Pirate Bay server displayed by Computing Museum

Do my eyes deceive me...

Is that... cardboard?

Razzies set to torpedo Rihanna's Battleship

Worst movie?

I've managed to avoid most of the crap this year, but I did pick up Terminator Salvation to watch one cold winters night. I turned it off the moment a 100 foot robot managed to sneak up on them in the middle of the desert.

Didn't even know there was an Atlas Shrugged part 1, must be a sleeper hit.

John McAfee the Belize spymaster uncovers 'ricin, terrorist plots'

Mind bloggling

Just when you think John McAfee cannot get more crazy he comes out with this. I think I would go insane if I had to live his life for just one day.

Valve hauls down The War Z, offers refunds

"Apparently" but there has been little to no proof it was, and given that a lot of it was copy and paste it's piggybacking of the survival zombie genre.

DayZ hacking is wild however. The fact so much of the game is client side means you can edit memory at will, to the point they are banning people if you had CheatEngine (program to edit memory of a process) running.

Nasdaq's RIM shot: BlackBerry maker ejected from top 100

Re: EA

A very good point, the MMO market is just waiting for something properly new to come along. There's far too many failed WoW-clones, but why do they keep making them? WoW was relatively new and fresh when it was released (and at the right time, Everquest > Everquest 2 fiasco) while WoW has got stale (the basic model of questing, pvp, and combat hasn't truly changed over the years) they have built around it.

Not only do they have all that experience, and money, they also excel at "bringing" the best bits of new MMOs to WoW. I think WoW was somewhat unique in its development too, that it used a relatively large number of pro-everquest player during WoWs design, such as Jeff Kaplan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Kaplan_(game_designer))

There's a reason, while slowly but surely, EvEs subscriber base has been increasing year to year (http://mmodata.net/ - not perfect, but better than nothing for comparing subs between MMOs).

EA/Bioware also failed at something Blizzard does very very well, customer support.

Ten... tech stocking stuffers

Automobile brands

I don't what it is, but every time I something by automobile brands it just looks tacky and I am instantly reminded of the friends episode were Joey decks himself in Porsche gear so he can pretend he owns one.

Search engines we have known ... before Google crushed them

Re: next google

You create something cool in your garage and hope a billion dollar company sails past and picks you out of the icy cold waters.

I remember overhearing a couple of people talking one day, arguing over what search engine to use. It boiled down to using Lycos if you were searching for something on the internet and you used Ask Jeeves if you wanted to know the answer to a question.

Simpler times.

Judge: There'll be no US Samsung ban, BUT no new trial with Apple either

Trying to draw a line under the issue?

Sounds like she just wants the issue put to bed, and never brought up again. Ever.

Google unlikely to get kid-glove treatment THIS side of pond - Euro biz players

Re: US Governance

Just the US?

Shiny new UK.gov stats website a 'disaster' - MPs

Re: Link?

Wouldn't want the thing to crash.

Colour me shocked.

I'll never understand why government IT is the way it is. My experience of it just gave me the impression of amateurs with no proper understanding of the tech, sure there was diamonds in there... but it was mostly awful. Imagine a proper in-house IT company for software dev using industry standards, and support. Perhaps I've just experienced the worst of it, but it I now have a special appreciation of how bad IT can get.

A dream too far?

Kim Dotcom shows off new mega service

Interesting

File storage websites having been dropping like flies recently. Rapidshare basically just ended itself too by having 30 GB only of publicly accessible data.

I wonder how long this will last?