Posts by Clive Galway

Second explosion rocks Japanese nuke plant

Not unless

The quake was so big it ripped the earth a new one !

(Date line that is)

Mistake?

"At 11:01am on Monday morning, according to Kyodo News (2am in the UK, 10pm Saturday in New York)"

Eh? How can it be monday in one place on the earth and saturday in another? Or am I missing something?

Dragon Age II

@Whats DA:O ?

Dragon Age: Origins - the first game.

Been playing since Tues and this game is FAIL

BTW for future reference, a free demo of FlyVPN gave me a US IP and allowed me to unlock my copy on the 8th.

You really should have compared it against DA:O, because that is where it falls short. If there had been no DA:O, then yes this game may be worth 80%, but IMHO compared to DA:O a score of ~40% (Which is what the user rating is on metacritic at the moment) is probably more accurate.

Why?

- The whole thing is pretty much set in Kirkwall, a city that feels like a quake level. It feels a lot less open than DA:O. At no point do you ever set foot in a city or town other than kirkwall, you just port instantly to the other locations in the game.

- Character customization is very limited. No longer can you use multiple weapons for each companion, they are limited only to the weapon type they started with (One handed or two handed). You cannot even equip a one handed sword and shield to a companion that started off with a two hander. Forget about bows, there is only one companion who can use them (Sebastian), or you if you choose that route. The PC is the only character who can use multiple types of weapon.

- WAY too many items are for Hawke (The PC) only. Including the Blood Dragon armour DLC. If you are not a warrior, the BD armour DLC is utterly useless. Also, many items for sale in the shops are equipable by Hawke only. WTF??

- Companions get no specializations, whereas Hawke gets two (Lvl 7 and 14). A major step down from DA:O

- Combat is WAY too easy, even on hard. You must use Nightmare level to get anything approaching a challenge. Even then, I have not spent any level up points for the last 5 levels and I am still hosing everything with ease.

- The graphics suck on the PC platform. Very low poly.

- JRPG style weapons which look ridiculous.

- OTT animations with mages shooting fireballs through their legs. Just plain silly.

- No overhead view, so targetting AoE spells is a real ballache at times.

- Map re-use: Many maps (eg caves etc) are re-used over and over, but sometimes they don't use the whole map so they just place unopenable doors to block off certain bits. The whole map still shows up on your minimap tho, so it just confuses you.

- The storage chest is inside a house that removes all companions from the party when you enter it, so it is impossible to gear your party from the storage chest, you have to dump everything on Hawke, leave the house and form the party, equip them, go back into the house and dump the surplus gear back in the chest. What a pain!

So overall a major step down from DA:O. Lots of stuff that we loved has been ripped out, leaving a lowest common denominator bullshit game.

Anti-religious campaigners smack down census Jedis

I can't believe with over 100 posts no-one has said this...

But surely putting down "Jedi" or even "Non Religeous" is not describing many people's views.

As someone who is not only atheist but also has a major problem with the indoctrination of our children in faith schools and other such issues with our allegedly "Secular" society, then the correct answer is "Secular Humanist".

If you don't know what that is, I suggest you visit http://www.secularhumanism.org/, or the site of one of it's most vocal proponents, http://richarddawkins.net/

'Wrong amount of snow' caused Heathrow chaos

Hang on a minute...

If 6cm or 10cm fall, surely that is still only one pass of a snowplough to clear it? Surely depth (To a certain point) has no correlation to the area one has to clear?

HTC 7 Pro WinPho 7 smartphone

@ Desire Z

There is no Android equivalent AFAIK. Once I see a decently specced 5 row keyboard android phone, I will buy it.

Anonymous security firm hack used every trick in book

Email transcript @ arstechnica

Priceless!

"Jussi" should be for the high jump IMHO - revealing usernames and passwords like that via email. If it absolutely had to be done ASAP, he should have called him. Even if it was really Greg, having that info sittting in his mailbox is a bad idea.

I am also quite surprised that some of the grammar did not raise eyebrows; "no i dont have the public ip with me at the moment" sounds very suspect. Unless of course Greg normally says things in such odd ways.

Anyway, you reap what you sow fellas !

Storm brews over Chinese synchronised goldfish

Magnets

Fu dismissed the claim, splendidly insisting that if he used magnets "the fish would stick together".

Not if each magnet was so weak that it did not attract the ones to each side.

Notice how close the fish are to the bottom and that it is a smooth bit of plastic.

Basically, each fish is moved with a magnet under the bottom of the tank. When moved to the side, they will naturally turn to face the direction of movement. Either that or two magnets per fish to allow rotation as well as translation.

Three jailed for phone box thievery

"Sophistcated"?

I don't see how the crime was at all sophisticated. They either used brute force, had keys or picked locks. None of these strike me as original or clever.

Disabled dude demands EA improves gaming access

PC controls

C'mon, many people who plays PC versions of most console ports will tell you that there is a problem here... The other big offenders are often "Games for Windows" games.

IIRC, the latest GTA game wouldn't even let you use a HID compliant controller, so it was either an XBOX joypad (Or XBOX steering wheel) or nothing.

I kind of sympathise with the above comment ("What about the device maker?") but think that it shouldn't be the device maker, but a responsibility of the OS. MS made a great advance with the HID compliant system in the past, so it should extend the idea and let you remap HID controller mappings on a per-application basis.

Having said that, there would still need to be effort from the game manufacturers. For example, many games do not allow you to map an analogue input method to an analogue scale (eg allowing analogue handbrake in many racing games is not common) so that needs sorting out too.

I suppose apart from disabled people, there are probably not that many people who care too much, but for me I hate the interface to ruin a game. If I have to stop playing to look at the keyboard to find a key - that's game over to me. Hell, even moving my fingers from WSAD to hit 1,2,3,4 or something annoys the hell out of me. That's why I use XMouse (highrez.co.uk) to program mouse wheel u/d/l/r to 1,2,3,4 (you need a tilting wheel.) Great for battlefield - all 4 weapons / gadgets available through one roll or tilt of the mouse wheel ;)

Galileo euro-satnav 'driven by French military', says sacked CEO

@ATM relies on GPS?

I can see at least two uses for this.

GPS is the best way to get ultra accurate time at a reasonable cost. I can see many reasons why an ATM would want ultra-accurate timekeeping. The next best way (at reasonable cost) would probably be NTP, but who wants to connect an ATM to the internet?

Also, if the ATM is physically moved as part of a theft, knowing it is moving, and where it is could potentially allow it to phone home and let police track it.

Angry Birds to catapult onto TV

Pathetic

That a game with no plot and no dialogue whatsoever can be licensed as a TV series.

WTF?!?!

iPhone 4 gets slide-out keyboard

Hell, it might even start tempting me...

... if someone doesn't get their arse in gear and make a decent android phone with a dedicated number row.

WTF is it with all these android phones with 4 rows but cant seem to find enough space for a dedicated number strip? And a 5 row qwerty on android? Forget it.

WLTB replacement for my HTC Touch Pro :(

X2 triplex super-copter to be offered as Army 'Raider' craft

Making use of cheap tech

Is that a cheapo GoPro video camera I spot in the cockpit of the filming chopper @ 0:57 in the video?

Another huge ice discovery made in Asteroid Belt

Refuelling

"Proof-of-concept missions have shown that there's no technical obstacle to sending up robotic refueller craft, but the costs of lifting payload up through Earth's thick atmosphere and deep gravity well are so vast that the economics of satellite refuelling from the mother planet are dubious."

Cost of refuelling existing satellite: x

Cost of putting a replacement satellite in orbit *without fuel*: y

Cost of putting a replacement satellite in orbit *with fuel*: x+y

Ergo, surely this statement is wrong. It will always be cheaper to refuel an existing satellite.

In fact, if you had a standard refuelling system and one mission refuelled several satellites, you could make it even more efficient.

Battle of the US super-soldier robot suits hots up with XOS 2.0

Maybe suitable for combat use sooner than you think

How about a small (heavily armoured) wheeled trailer with a generator on it trailing behind?

Any terrain (ie maybe stairs) that was unsuitable for the trailer could potentially be picked up by the XOS and carried.

Add a heavy weapon such as a minigun and maybe ammo feeding from the trailer and you could have a pretty mobile heavy weapons unit with only one person.

Ten... iPhone 4 accessories

Why is this an iPhone roundup?

Only 40% of the items (The first 4) are iPhone specific. Getting sick of most of the roundups being Apple-centric, and this one isn't even mainly iPhone-only items, yet it deserves an iPhone title?

Sort it the hell out. Don't you get it? Many of your readers HATE Apple products and to see such an amount of articles specifically aimed at them (Like the rest of the press seem to do) is annoying. I used to read El Reg specifically because it didn't fawn over anything Apple, but now if anything it seems worse than other sites / rags.

CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

@ Charles Manning

"For example consider a hypothetical case where someone invents a new way to make parachutes twice as fast and half the cost, but there is glitch whereby one in a thousand parachutes fails to open"

"The numbers even work for parachutists since doubling the number of people in a group way more than doubles your chances of survival".

Wrong.

Assuming say normal parachutes fail to open one in 2K, as a parachutist using the new type, you still have doubled the chance of suffering from failure regardless of the size of group you jump in.

An HTC named Desire. OK, two HTCs...

"Full QWERTY" Desire Z

No it isn't.

It's 4-row, not 5 (ie no seperate number row).

Still waiting for a replacement for my Touch Pro in this respect :(

It's alive! Duke Nukem Forever breaks out of vapour trail

I would post a comment but I...

... Don't have time to play with myself

Cyber-jihadists deface home of teddy bears' picnic

Maybe one of the teddy bears...

... was named Mohammed?

Doc develops RSI-reducing rolling mouse

Just a joystick?

I don't see how this can replace a mouse.

A mouse is a relative input device - this looks more like a joystick, which is absolute.

The device *could* be relative (ie if it is sprung to the center) but then you would not be able to pick it up to recenter.

Sumo scandal gets iPad relief

"pachydermally portly pashas of push-and-pull pugilism"

I too applaud this excellent example of alliteration.

However, "pashas" is maybe a little too obtuse for my liking, and is only a puny two syllables.

Protagonists?

Proponents?

Practitioners?

I think I like the last one best.

BT ad banned for 'misleading' customers over broadband speeds

Bandwidth was not what was indicated at anyway

I remember the advert - the non BT customer was not able to view the listings website because "every man and his dog is online".

The plain fact of the matter is that the amount of bandwidth required to load a site like that *in a reasonable time* is significantly less than 2 meg probably, so the difference between and 8meg and a 20meg service would be pointless for that application.

In fact, if every BT customer had 20meg, then the peering probably wouldn't cope and it would be *more* likely to result in scenes such as those depicted, not less.

It would kind of be like a car company advertising a sports car as faster for getting through traffic jams.

Ten unlikely iPhone insurance claims

RE: RE: Advert

"Articles are what we pay for. Adverts are what we get paid for. This is not a difficult distinction."

So TheReg paid for this article? Or was it a no cash deal - article for ad?

Anyways, not that I really care.

I would be more curious as to which of these were paid out.

For example, I would not consider losing it skydiving or in a baloon "Wacky". Dropping it from a thousand feet or twenty will probably have much the same result and is "Accidental Damage" in my book.

Android's UK phone sales quadruple

"If I go back over to Apple, I can tell at a glance which phone is going to do that best for me."

Yeah, should you choose the iPhone with the slide-out QWERTY keyboard or not? Flip or slider? Trackball or touchpad? Capacitive or Resistive? Why with iPhones, there's so much choice!

Ten Essential... Gaming Mice

XMouse

Sorry, but since owning my first Logitech Freewheel mouse, I won't go back to any mouse that does not allow you to switch the wheel from ratchet to free wheel mode. Freewheel mode is great for windows in general (Web pages and documents) but for games (esp FPS), the wheel is often woefully underused - scrolling through weapons with a wheel is not efficient in PvP.

I have never experienced decent drivers with any mouse I have bought (Only Saitek, MS and Logitech so far) and I generally do not use manufacturer drivers - I instead use XMouse as this lets me reprogram wheelup and wheeldown.

So, for example, my BF2:BC setup for the wheel is

up: rifle

down: pistol

left: gadget 1

right: gadget 2

Using XMouse, you can also set ScrollLock to disable these mappings, so that in the game browser, wheel up and down still scroll through the server list.

I can also heavily recommend the Logitech MX620.

What I like about it is that it has a seperate button (By default a "search" button) right next to the LMB. I reprogram this as my MMB because trying to click a wheel is a pain, and I need to middle click a lot. This is also great for shooters as they typically feature one shot keys such as throw a grenade or stab with a knife (Like BF2: BC) and it's lovely to have a 2nd LBM for these...

Google hails Pac-Man with retro gaming homepage

Speccy controls

Nah mate, your standard speccy config was QA, OP and SPACE IIRC.

ZX, /' and ENTER was the Elite (As in Braben and Bell) layout.

German boffins develop sharkskin paint for ships, planes

Err. no.

"Or it might save just as much money to simply not bother painting the plane at all and save carrying half a ton of paint around the world?"

You don't think they paint planes purely to make them pretty do you? It's a *protective* coating.

That's why he said it weighs nothing - because you need paint anyway and it isn't heavier than normal paint.

Apple voids warranties over cigarette smoke, users say

Apple just admitted to faulty hardware didn't they?

"She said that the computer is beyond economical repair due to tar from cigarette smoke! She said the hard drive is about to fail..."

Err, excuse me, but aren't hard drives hermeticaclly sealed? How could a hard drive clog up due to cigarette smoke?

Microsoft and Armani fashion a phone

"Unique Design"...

... my ass.

It's an HTC Kaiser with a bling kit.

Not going back to a 4 row QWERTY after my 5-row touch pro.

Mozilla gets orientation-friendly with Firefox 3.6

Pointless

My mobile already does this - changing orientation changes the device resolution, and the application automatically redraws. Why does it need to be supported by the application, this is a function of the OS.

Man jailed over air traffic control IT kit eBay scam

What kind of moron...

...steals that much kit from such a controlled environment as ATC?

Furthermore, who came to the £58K total? The same people who calculate the "Street Value" of drugs?

You would be hard pressed to find a laptop costing £2K, I bet they were probably worth more like £1K each.

So he stole between 27 and 58 laptops? Holy cow! How does someone get that many laptops out of a supposedly secure ATC centre?

Windows Mobile 6.5 ships today

Liking 6.5

Been using 6.5 on my touch pro for a couple of months and it is much nicer.

AFAIK there are multiple 6.5 development threads - a stable and a feature rich version. Stuff is tried out in the feature rich one and some stuff is merged with the main branch, so you may see radically different versions.

The main improvements for me are the finger scrolling built in is very nice, it seems to work in pretty much anything, including pop-up menus, which are also now big and finger friendly. You can also use left and right swipes to switch tabs. This being at the OS level, old apps suddenly become much more finger friendly.

Anyone interested in giving it a go should head over to xda-developers.com - if there is a version of 6.5 for your phone you will most likely find it there.

I agree in part with what some people are saying about 3rd party UIs such as SPB and PointUI, but you cannot really expect them to re-write all the apps you use (ie outlook etc) so they are finger-friendly. With WM going the way it is, they have less and less to code, leaving them to concentrate on the main homescreen (The WM 6.5 one still sucks).

I use PointUI, and have certainly noticed that when you do have to go outside the PointUI interface and use the default WM apps, the difference is not as big as it used to be. The new version of pocket outlook is just as usable as PointUIs kinetic scrolling version and has all the options in it you don't see in PointUI's visually flashy remake.

Yes, WM has taken way too long to get to where it is, and unfortunately needed to be shown a couple of lessons in usability by apple, but ultimately I think it is still better than the iPhone, and getting better every day, but at least with a WM phone you can do what the hell you want with it, rather than the limited choices apple bestow upon you. Now I couldn't lay the same comparison to android, but it's not android phones taking all the damned market share because of iSheep now, is it?

Helpdesk Heroes or unappreciated geeks?

Sometimes they tell the truth...

Over phone:

"We were trying to install <software>, but the machine ate all the disks"

Conversation ensues where I am trying to figure out how the hell they can be making any sense but they are adamant it is "eating" disks.

I trot on down there to discover that there was a slight gap below the 3.5" drive that user had mistaken for the floppy slot. I open the cover to find a stack of 3.5" disks at the bottom of the case.

ALK CoPilot Live 8

Why does no-one seem to care about electronic compass?

I am still astonished that I have not yet heard of one satnav app that supports e-compass.

Why?? Satnav apps are next to useless in "Walking" mode without it. Hell, even when driving, it often thinks you are going in the wrong direction due to it having to extrapolate direction from movement vector. Roundabouts are particularly affected too - a true, accurate heading in real-time would greatly improve the reliability of these apps.

When are app developers going to use the e-compass hardware that exists on most android phones to orientate the map to the real world?

Apple iPod Touch 3G

Epic FAIL

The author is clearly delusional. Please stop them from writing piffle like this in the future, it is diluting otherwise good content with nonsense.

As has been said before, ONE button (Even the wii uses more than that, this is no project natal) and tilt sensors make for a horrid experience, and touchscreen is pointless for most games.

Database containing 1.8m UK postcode locations leaks online

Great!

Been waiting for this to happen. Also, could someone please do the same for the UK border data (County borders and such). I put in a FOI request for those but was denied. Crown Copyright is an abuse of power - ALL information held under it should be in the public domain. The US release theirs under the TIGER scheme, but we have no such equivalent, unless you are an educational institution.

I find that kind of ridiculous: Bye-laws can vary by county - but given a lat long you cannot know (without paying), which county you are in and thus which bye-laws you are subject to.

Vote now to name El Reg space plane

Spacecraft name

Personally I think we should call it A4

The americans wouldn't get that one though, I suppose.

Maybe if the launch pad had a huge countdown board with the words "PC LOAD LETTER" flashing in bright lights?

Boffin predicts pee-powered cars

Possibly the best drunk driving excuse ever...

"But occifer, I ran outta fuel and was jusht trying to fill up the tank... *hic*"

NASA reacquires original Moon landing footage

So sick...

... of all the remakes coming out these days.

Sheesh, better CGI (than the first time) and an upscale to HD is *not* a justifiable reason to remake such a classic as "The Moon Landings".

Intel powers netbook via thin air

Surely...

...If this tech were placed under the tarmac of roads, any time a car was on the road it would be charging.

I see a number of benefits that come out of that:

* maintains cerntralized power generation (More efficient surely?)

* you wouldn't need such big batteries in leccy cars. Just a bit in case a cell or two was out or to drive off the network for a bit.

* almost impossible to run out of fuel on the motorway

* could maybe use the motion of the car to extract more energy (Moving faster thru the field or something)

* taxing would probably be smarter and could be based upon energy used for each trip (A function of distance AND speed) without the need for cameras etc

* Just park as normal to charge.

* Low size, low power bolt on pickup and motor for a bicycle may be feasible (The flat pickup could fit in the space in the frame and doesn't look heavy) to provide assisted power for hills etc.

In fact, if the road powering cells are smart, then surely an autopilot system of sorts (Maintaining a good distance from the car in front) would be easy as it would automatically pass less power to the car behind if the car in front slowed.

And why limit it to roads? Do the pavement too. Power for laptops, run a net conn to it to, mobility scooters could get power from it, street sweepers, all kinds of uses.

Dutch company augments mobile reality

Nice!

I have been holding off on upgrading my phone until HTC release a phone with a keyboard plus e-compass. I just don't understand why they didn't start putting them in earlier - GPS without e-compass is a pain to use whilst on foot.

GPS-guided wreckers flatten wrong house

OK, I don't get it...

Surely if demolishing a house like that, it is going to be pretty damned obvious that it is lived in.

I look at that rubble and I don't see a lot of evidence. Surely you would see TVs, computers, washing machines, fridges - those kinds of things are pretty resilient structurally. Sure you would break em real quick but an american sized fridge is still going to be a huge lump of white metal.

Had it been chock full of the usual stuff people have I think the workmen would have stopped once they saw the first household appliance or two fall out.

Furthermore, surely if a house was going to be demolished, electric and gas would be disconnected at least a day or two before the event. I would doubt it is something the contractors would have done, so if they really got the wrong house, surely the gas would still be on?

Something tells me there was sod all in the house and he is trying to milk it. Maybe he did know it was going to happen and didn't stop it for insurance purposes.

Apple wants to swipe your iPhone

Prior Art - Finger Friendly Friends

I use this on a daily basis on my HTC phone.

This is a commercial product not included with OS.

http://www.jotto.no/fff/

Features a DRMWYP keyboard (Designed for fingers - just click anywhere in the area of a button and it works it out from the possible combinations) and allows a swipe from right to left to delete

Website seems down at the moment though :(

BOFH: The Christmas party

Paintballs in the freezer...

Is a myth, because:

1) The paint in paintballs contain too high an oil content to freeze in a freezer.

2) If you had high H20 content balls, H20 expands when frozen, so they would not fit down the barrel.

3) The gelatine shell becomes extremely brittle at low temperatures, so they would shatter in the barrel.

Brits decline to 'think outside the box'

Another day, another Grauniad-like mistake

The numbering of the points is 1-0 twice. I guess you are missing a one before the first 0 through to the second 9, and a two from the start of the second zero.

Championship Gaming Series runs out of quarters

I *really* want e-sports to work

But they just don't get it.

Not once have I ever seen an e-sports program done right. They just have some random people playing a game, demonstrating zero teamwork typically (In FPS at least, I haven't watched things like e-football) and they never show the tactics and battle lines (EG they will play on a map you don't know, but give no indication of how it is laid out and where people are)

If they would only try and use a tactical shooter (Maybe BF2 or even better BF2:Project Reality) and have coverage that actually shows the ebb and flow of the battle, then it could be interesting. As it is, all we get to see is run and gun combat on a small maze level.

Plus they always seem to only use live commentary by people who have little to no skill. THAT JUST WONT WORK!! You need to record a "timedemo" (ie log xyz of each player, not record video) then go back and edit it and commentate on that. This will also enable you to render everything in uber-high quality, maybe even mess with the models (Map players faces onto models' faces for example) and get whatever angles you want.

Honestly, I could do better, I *have* done better than any of the "professional" e-sports channels out there.

The one that did show promise was the one that used Total War, but they screwed up cos they got non-gamers to do it. If they had gamers (Or people who were interested in that historical period and the tactics employed in it) play it, it would have been a much better show.

I have hope though. Google for "DarkFall" - this is an FPS/MMO hybrid coming out soon, and the devs are building relationships with e-sports networks. A game like this would lend itself very well to e-sports and, being a persistant hardcore PvP world (You can kill anyone anywhere and take their posessions) with city building and seiging, it could lend itself very well to an ongoing story where death has consequences, thus generating some emotional buy-in.

BlackBerry Storm is a little too consumer for some

Lies

"RIM charge us for every SIM card number registered on their network, and they charge us more for an Enterprise connection than for a Prosumer connection - this is why the cost suddenly jumps from £10 to £26 when moving to a BES handset."

Do RIM charge you PER MONTH? No. So why is it an extra £16 a month?

Like those bastard ISPs who charge a monthly fee for static IPs, which they pay NOTHING for.