Posts by James Delaney

El Reg nails Street View spycars to Google Maps

Re: Stand out!!

I'd love to see a fleet of popemobiles driving around our towns and cities.

Ofcom flashes cash guarantees at BT for fibre investment

The answer to high costs

Put them in the sewers.

the cables that is, of course if they never get round to sorting out a decent fibre network maybe we could put the bigwigs at ofcom down instead.

Microsoft's own chip design blamed for Xbox 360 RRoD

@Anonymous Coward

The whole point of consoles is that you can play in the comfort of a massive sofa with mates and a big screen tv.

<rant>You only need to buy a new version of the hardware if you bought something that was designed badly and has an inherent fault. If you really want to of course you could buy one again after a few revisions so that you can have a slimmer case, lower power consumption etc. The key fact is that a game made for the 360 or the PS3 will work on any revision throughout the life of the console which is not the case with the myriad of options (that are constantly being replaced by manufacturers) with a PC build.

Although there have been several versions of the PS3, you won't need to buy another version (in theory) for up to 10 years. My guess is that you'll have upgraded your PC significantly by then and probably replaced it - which is fine if you can afford to do that and don't mind doing it every couple of years.

I've not yet made the jump to a next/current-gen consoles and am still using an original PS2 - the first revision - that makes it almost 8 years old and it still plays all the new games coming out for that platform. 8 years later. Can the same be said for the Pentium 3 at 766MHz with a Nvidia GeForce 2 or Radeon DDR (DX7!) and Windows Me? No?

Kinda makes 300 quid seem like a good deal.</rant>

Dixons admits 'it's even worse than you thought'

Just making things worse

"training and incentives will be improved for all store colleagues."

It's the incentives that are ruining the company. The last thing they need is improving!

I know they want to become profitable but if they removed the incentives and just trained the staff then the customer would get the product that is actually right for them and they'd be able to develop a decent product range.

Of course, the ability to use common sense seems to decrease the higher up the management of DSGi you get.

Paris could probably do a better job than the sales staff at these places. Maybe her next series will include a stint at PC World.

Judge issues arrest warrant for Darth Vader

Chad Vader

I think he might be trying to stay low in an American supermarket:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGR4-SeuJ0

First supersonic swingwing synthi-fuel flight tomorrow

@Anonymous Coward re: @Peter Fielden-Weston

I think he's referring to the last line of the article:

"And indeed, the US military is also seeking tech which could get jetfuel from alternative feedstocks - such as algae scum or even mushrooms - which could potentially be carbon-neutral one day."

Missing: 80GB PS3. Last seen: Sony's website

@ Tim

Erm, "Drop the gaming stuff, and cut the price massively and then you'd have a top notch Blu-Ray player (as the PS3 is supposed to be) for a bargain price."

Wouldn't that be a bit wierd for a PLAYStation to not play games? Surely what you're looking for is simply a standalone Blu-Ray player? I'm aware of a few on the market.

The PlayStation 3 is a games machine first, it just happens to be able to play Blu-Ray discs rather well.

Google adds terrain to Google Maps

@Hedley Phillips

You can get rid of the overlay on the satellite images by unchecking 'Show Labels' under the 'Satellite' button (when in that view)

Apple Macs

@Shakje/Peter

Shackje: Which mainstream manufacturer did you buy it from? My guess is you built it yourself - which isn't the point of this article. This was a basic comparison of Apple models for those thinking about purchasing a ready-built machine.

Peter: That sounds like you've been unlucky. I have used macs since the early 90's. In that time I've had four and none ever had a hardware fault. My current iMac G3 will be seven years old in a few short months.

Although I have a soft spot for Apple's machines I do currently use a Windows PC at work and have one at home (built myself). When I have the cash i'll be seriously looking at an Apple-refurbished MacBook Pro.

Huge jellyfish pack slaughters 100,000 salmon

Fences

Well, if you're going to keep 100,000 fish in a nice little pen in the ocean, you should surely expect something like this *might* happen.

Jellyfish 1: Hmmm, I'm hungry. What's that? It looks like a huge, organised supply of food being kept over there for us. What do you think?

Jellyfish 2: I think we should leave it alone mate, it wouldn't be fair on the poor guys in charge of that.

Jellyfish 1: Shut up gimp. Let's go.

Huge sea scorpion overshadowed humans

@BossHog

Would it be scampi? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scampi

If so, then maybe the claw they've discovered could be considered as a form of Super-Scampi?

Testers give iPhone virtual keyboard the thumbs down

So?

Is the touchscreen keyboard good or bad?

They managed to complete the tests in the same amount of time as blackberry users but made more mistakes.

Does this mean that you can afford to input text whilst making and correcting more mistakes in the same time it takes a blackberry user to enter the same text whilst only allowing them time to make a couple of mistakes?

That would therefore suggest that the touchscreen keyboard and iphone interface are better - if you suffer fat finger syndrome?

Royal Navy presses IT Crowd for nuclear missile 'servers'

Alright already!

Its a bloody joke for godsake!

Does this really warrant a story on El Reg.

We all see the advert on telly, we all understand it's a tongue-in-cheek IT reference that we as IT guys all relate too - even if we don't think it's a good idea to turn-it-off-and-on-again we still get the joke.

Can we all move on now?

PC sales boosted by Europe's laptops

Re: Andy

Great comment, until your last sentence.

The latest XPSTM M1330 from Dell is £1231, ok it's got 2GB RAM, and Windows Vista Ultimate, but it only has a 13" screen with a lower res and includes a lower spec. graphics adapter than the bottom of the range MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Pro costs only a little more (rather than being "massively overpriced") and, oh, it doesn't come with Vista. Since the shift to Intel, I (personally) do not know any Apple laptop owners that wouldn't buy Apple again.

For the record, I use a PC at work and one at home - although I'll be switching back to Mac as soon as I can.

Bubbly billygoat-bursting boffinry brouhaha at MoD

Re: Chris Collins

Chill out.

Restored Vulcan takes to the skies

What are they up to at Reeds Rains?

What's happened to the website you linked to? It seems that The Vulcan Operating Company has had their website/domain pulled out from under their feet by those sneaky estate agents at Reeds Rains!

Is this just me with some dodgy dns?

Giants carve up broadband punters

There ARE still some good little ISPs out there

I'm with Be* and have nothing but praise for them, they're fast, inexpensive (i won't describe them as cheap) and are not afraid to communicate with their customers.

Unfortunately only time will tell with their service as parent company O2 launch their offering on Be*'s network.

ISP bosses told to get real on broadband speeds

re: @Peter Redding - Joel and Anonymous Coward

So Peter has his units wrong and was therefore hoping for even faster downloads. I think you are missing (some of) the point.

He'll be happily downloading at 435KBytes per second (which is a good speed for package) and then, after an unspecified amount of downloading , it drops to a much lower speed.

It's the throttling to this slower speed that he's (also) moaning about, and I think this is the bigger issue.

The FUP rears its ugly head again.

AppleStore shut for 'update' - new kit coming?

New AppleTV

Looks like they've finally upgraded the hard drive in the AppleTV.

There is a shiny 160GB version for £269.