Alright, so they have taken them to court
..but will they follow through?
Posts by Tony
208 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Mar 2008
Feuding iPhone fart-makers raise legal stink
Sony plans movie+game dual-media Blu-ray Discs
Thursday 12th February 2009 20:06 GMT 
@Ian
'The PS3 is dead, live with it'
I think you may be jumping the gun a little there mate. However when I see Sony come out with rubbish like this I do wonder how much time it has left.
It is a real shame as it is the technically superior console by far. They just didn't count on MS and their botomless pockets. They pushed the X Box out before it was properly tested (same old microsoft) and just bit the bullet when half of the first generation died on it's arse and replaced them. By doing so they reached the market well ahead of Sony and got the foothold.
They outright bribed developers where possible to develop exclusively for their machine and the limitations of the X-Box actually worked in their favour too- As they had the bigger market share from the start not many developers would want to develop exclusively for the PS3 (even if MS werent offerring them truckloads of cash), which means that very few of them have been pushing the envelope on what it can do. This means that the code library available to make future developments better doesnt grow much either. It is more profitable to develop a game on the X-Box and port it to the PS3, selling to both platforms, then develop a game that pushes the PS3 and not be able to port that to the X-Box.
Add to that Sony's total loss of the plot when it comes to marketing and it does start to look like it's days are numbered.
Is the PS3 the 21st century Betamax? By far the superior standard but out-marketed and destined for oblivion...
Thursday 12th February 2009 16:29 GMT
Awful idea
Really, really awful idea.
As others have mentioned most movie franchise games are awful anyway.
Quite apart from that, the target market would be pretty small. It relies on people wanting both the movie and the game at the same time and even then the only real way to get this to fly would be to make it a lot cheaper than buying them seperately.
When I buy a film I generally only get one that I want to keep and watch over and over, whereas when I buy a game I play it through and then either lend it to my mates or trade it in. So if it was a film I wanted to keep I would be stuck with a game I had completed and didnt want any more and if it wasnt why would I pay extra for my game to get it?
The costs of producing these special versions for the incredibly small number they would sell would simply not be worth the effort.
Someone at Sony needs their head examined.
Jacqui Smith ecstatically ignores more scientific advice
Thursday 12th February 2009 19:12 GMT
@Chris W
Chris, you say that you have worked in a halfway house-
How many people did you meet with an ecstasy addiction there?
You say that you see evidence of the problems caused by drugs in your city centre-
How many people would you estimate you see in your city centre causing a problem on ecstasy?
It's a rhetorical question as I'm pretty sure the answer is 'none' and 'none'.
I don't think anyone would say that all drugs are harmless. In fact that is actually kind of the point. If they insist on criminalising recreational drug use then at the very least the system by which they do so should be based on the actual social harm that the substance is causing. Otherwise it sends out a message to society at large and children specifically that crack and heroin are no more dangerous than ecstasy, which is blatantly untrue.
Thursday 12th February 2009 13:49 GMT 
A few points
The illegality of a substance and the level of that illegality does not stop people from taking it. Fact.
'Why is that a fact?' I hear you cry (after putting down your copy of the daily mail). Well.. millions of ecstasy tablets are taken every weekend in the UK, despite it already being erroneously classed as one of the most serious drugs you can possess. Furthermore if you look at other countries with harsher penalties for drug possession than our own, drug use is still prevalent.
So, taken that prohibition of a substance does not prevent it's widespread use, what does it actually achieve?
It ensures that all the money from the lucrative business of supplying that substance is controlled by criminals. They pay no tax and they protect their business with extreme violence. Many make no distinction between who they sell to (so it is as easily available to young teenagers as adults) and are involved in many other types of illicit activities, funded by the money they make.
It ensures there is no control on quality. The aforementioned dealers want to make as much money as possible so there is a financial incentive for them to mix the substance(s) they are selling with whatever crap they can get away with to make more cash. Users also have no idea of how much to take, as the drug they have bought could be 1% pure or 100% pure. This means that people actually have little control over what they are taking, particularly as our caring sharing government refuse to let people actually get their purchase tested before they take it.
It means that there is a lack of proper information available to anyone wanting to minimise the risks when taking a drug. For example the government has frequently told people that the biggest risk of ecstasy is dehydration and to drink more water then usual. In fact drinking too much water is one of the biggest causes of ecstasy-related deaths.
It actually causes the 'gateway drug' effect that many like to throw around as a reason for keeping less harmful substances illegal. People who experiment with drugs like cannabis and ecstasy and find them relatively harmless are already breaking the law and buying them from a dealer who may well sell other things. In their mind the government has said that crack is no worse than ecstasy. They've tried E's and it was fine, so why not give crack a go?
It criminalises millions of people that are (in most cases) otherwise law-abiding. People that are active, contributing members of society face arrest and potentially imprisonment for doing something that in most cases has little or no negative impact on others.
It discourages people that take a substance and do develop a problem from seeking help. The possibility of arrest and the social stigma attached to drug use means that people often do not seek help until the problem has become very serious, possibly life-threatening.
So in conclusion - What does the current drug classification system do?
1) It costs us all money as the billions made from taxing these substance could fund a decrease in other taxes.
2) It puts our children at risk by creating a black market that is as available to them as anyone else and ensuring they can't get proper information on the risks involved.
3) It puts anyone using the drugs at risk as it means there is no control over what they are taking.
4) It puts non-users at risk by encouraging and financing armed criminals and gang violence. It also means that billions of pounds is spent on policing the law and prosecuting offenders, meaning that those resources are not spent on tackling other types of crime.
The 'war on drugs' cannot be won because it is a ridiculous political battle against our own citizens and human nature. It is time to end the war and seek a peaceful, diplomatic solution before it costs any more lives.
Ex-eBay CEO to bid for Schwarzenegger's California job
Tuesday 10th February 2009 10:09 GMT
Positive Feedback (last 12 months): 0%
Feedback
- Item was described as 'Utopian Paradise', however upon opening the box I found that I had been shipped a 'Fascist State'. Tried contacting vendor and was told that the listing made it clear that the item could differ from the one advertised. Avoid.
Blizzard of smut cuts off Council websites
'Bart Simpson' punts Church of Scientology
Parallel importer jailed for up to nine months in Microsoft case
Wednesday 28th January 2009 19:54 GMT
'Grey Imports'
Surely in a free market you should be able to buy goods wherever you damn well please, provided you pay what is being asked for them.
I am sick and tired of getting shafted. International companies are obviously still making a profit when they sell goods in other regions or they wouldn't do it. They just think that it is fair game to sell them at a far higher markup in the UK because we are able to pay more. Where the companies concerned have a sufficiently large market share like Microsoft, this amounts to price fixing and should be illegal. It should be MS in the dock not this bloke.
Red Dwarf finally returns to Earth
User-generated reviews - blessing or bull?
Tuesday 27th January 2009 11:28 GMT
It's always wise to remember
That people are idiots.
For example the best selling 'newspaper' in the UK is 'The Sun'.
So if you believe what the majority of people say about a product you are basing your analysis on the thoughts of a group that predominately think that the Sun provides an acurate and intelligent view of the world.
On the flipside though, 'experts' can also be idiots.
Take the reviews for 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'...
Veteran movie mag 'Empire' gave it 4/5, 'Total Film' gave it a still respectable 3/5.
The average user review on the Total Film site gave it a far more realistic 2/5.
So what conclusion can we draw from this? The public at large are in essence a bunch of semi-literate idiots... But often still know what they are talking about better than some self-proclaimed 'experts' !
Kanye West blames Gmail hijack for bisexual porn hoax
Tuesday 27th January 2009 06:42 GMT
Mail servers are down
Oh when my mail servers are down
I'm tellin you all my mail servers are down
Oh when my mail servers are down
I'm tellin you all my mail servers are down
Man I promise, I don't like the penis
I have no idea why they insist I'm so heinous
All I said was 'don't know how I'll get by'
And they took that to mean I wanna sleep with a guy
Please I beg you won't you gimme a break
You know all those messages posted were fake
Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease! Let me be great!
Why is cyberspace filled with such hate?
Man I'll admit that I was a bit curious
But your insinuations are leavin' me furious
I've had enough - I can't take no more
Cos when I access my blog all I get's 404
They even messed with my myspace account
And put up a post sayin' I'm comin out.
I really can't take it- the nightmare never ends
Cos they've added all the village people on as my friends
Oh when my mail servers are down
I'm tellin you all my mail servers are down
Man I promise, I don't like the penis
I have no idea why they insist I'm so heinous
All I said was 'don't know how I'll get by'
And they took that to mean I wanna sleep with a guy
(repeat)
Yes, I know it doesnt scan and some of the rhyming is decidedly ropey.. But then having just looked up one of KW's songs to parody the above actually seems an improvement. He actually rhymes 'insecure' on one line with 'secure' on the next. Genuis.
Stop'n'search gets touchy-feely
Monday 26th January 2009 15:07 GMT
@ PR excercise
'How does stopping and searching thousands of innocent people, inducing annoyance, antagonism, and possibly a little bit of fear in them (it would scare me!), work as a POSITIVE public relations move exactly??'
Because they will be thousands of BROWN people. And seeing the police stop and search thousands of brown people makes Daiy Mail readers feel far more safe and secure. Obviously they would prefer that the police just rounded them up and took them to special camps, but one step at a time.
Scotland's porn laws: Can we talk about this like grown-ups?
Goat hangs self in Canadian zoo
Govt uses Obscenity Law to stuff up cartoon sex loophole
Tuesday 20th January 2009 13:30 GMT
@Sarah Bee
'I know for a fact that Gordon Brown subscribes to our RSS feed. Apparently he's obsessed with the comments, and we believe he even posts under a variety of psuedonyms.'
Why did I immediately think of 'amanfrommars' ?
Nah - On reflection his posts are positively intelligible compared to what I would expect from our dour grey overlord.
Mom stole daughter's ID to shake pom-poms
Royal laptop theft 'will expose picture'
Jacqui calls Vodafone man to run massive snoop database
NASA will give away old Shuttles for free
It's Sadville: The Movie!
Thursday 18th December 2008 14:01 GMT
Pffft!
What's next?
A movie about people that leave inane comments on Youtube?
Or perhaps a tense courtroom drama about someone unjustly accused of downloading 3 dollars worth of songs via bittorrent?
They aren't just scraping the barrel - they have scraped all their way through and started digging.
More execs quit Phorm
Internet gambling mogul surrenders $300m in guilty plea
Wednesday 17th December 2008 13:35 GMT
Wait... What?
Surely if gambling is illegal in the states where these people were playing then the crime is being committed by the individual in that state that is placing the bets, not the site that is running a perfectly legal internet business?
By this logic if (for example) someone in the UK accesses images from a US site that contravene the new 'extreme porn laws' but are perfectly legal in the US then we can extradite US citizens to the UK and force them to stand trial for failing to police our internet users for us? Yeah... Right.
Why the hell do we not tell the yanks to get stuffed (I'm being polite here). They do NOT own the internet whatever they may think.
Royal Navy completes Windows for Submarines™ rollout
Virgin Media opens bandwidth choke for 50Mb launch
Tuesday 16th December 2008 19:28 GMT
@Annoymouse Cowherd
If you say so.
Yes - I am a VM customer. I have downloaded >6Gb of video using UTorrent in the past 24 hours (it's still running in fact), my housemate has been downloading too and we have both been browsing as well, so I'm pretty sure I am being throttled right now. I just paused my torrents and ran broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk which reports my current downstream speed as 9064Kb/sec.
I then tried the thinkbroadband.com one and that reported my speed as 10379.98 Kbps
I'm sure you know best though.
Tuesday 16th December 2008 11:25 GMT 
Let the flaming begin...
I know it's not a very popular view and one you don't hear very often.. but I'm generally happy with my Virgin Media service.
We're on the XXL 20Mb service, actually getting roughly 15-18 in speed tests that we have run. We do (fairly regularly) hit the bandwith cap and get throttled - Which takes us down to about 8-10Mb for a few hours... Which is still faster than any other net service I have had running at full speed. I'd obviously rather not be throttled at all, but I can't complain too much, we are slurping down shed-loads of high-quality video.
Presumably if they run a similar level of throttling on the 50Mb service if we did hit the cap we'd be throttled back to 20-25Mb/s for a couple of hours, returning to full speed once we got outside of peak hours. That's still pretty fast.
I agree that their customer service is a joke, but that's only if you let them fob you off with talking to call-centre bozos in India. Kick-off and demand to speak to someone senior in the UK. We made a fuss and they ended up giving us a different number in the UK to call and now we just ring them if we have a problem and it is sorted right away.
For those that say it's too expensive.. I just checked the BT website and they charge £25 for 8Mb and (I think) you have to have a landline too, so £35 + landline charge seems pretty reasonable for >6x the speed...
I've said my piece, so get it over with and flame me.
Apple more closed than Microsoft
Man trademarks ;-) emoticon
Friday 12th December 2008 16:14 GMT
Yeah right.
Surely to trademark something you have to actually prove that you own it in some way - Either you developed it yourself or you paid someone to develop it for your company?
It's like me trying to trademark the symbol '&' and demanding royalties from anyone that uses it!
Incidentally I think he might find that he is counter-sued by LG as 'his' emoticon looks an awful lot like their already trademarked logo:
http://www.pclaunches.com/entry_images/0807/24/lg-logo.jpg
That would be a fun lawsuit!
;-)
Public support for ID cards dips to 55 per cent
Apple files 3D-interface patent
Friday 12th December 2008 09:54 GMT
Been done before
Yet another stupid patent - I have seen several demos that already do exactly what Apple are proposing here. One student thesis springs to mind that looked exactly like the first picture in this article... Only it wasn't just a 3d line drawing of a concept - It was already a working interface. At best Apple have missed the boat here, at worst they are blatantly trying to 'patent squat' on concepts already developed by others.
Either way I'm not surprised that the US patent office granted the patents - They grant patents on vague ideas with no details of the mechanism for actually achieving the concept described and without checking if the idea is even original. They are just a mechanism for American companies to attempt to profit from others work.
Bollywood to remake The Italian Job
Raids net police £1m in pirate game and movie discs
Wednesday 10th December 2008 15:23 GMT
@Dave
'"Street Value" is the cost of the item AS SOLD ON THE HIGH STREET!!! It is NOT the price the pirated material would be sold at.'
Absolute tosh. By that definition if I painted a second rate copy of the Mona Lisa and police raided my house they could say that they 'siezed paintings with a street value of millions of pounds'.
Street value is the actual value of the goods siezed if they had reached the street and been sold end of story.
Aussie convicted over Simpsons sex pics
Israeli Linux fan squeezes Windows refund out of Dell
Judge throws out case against journo bugged by police
Cisco shares dip after reports of holiday shutdown
Wednesday 26th November 2008 12:11 GMT 
@AC 01:31 GMT
Well, I am sure that HP will be very grateful for the massive number of orders that you will make between 29th December and 2nd January and I'll bet Cisco will by sat at home crying into their eggnog at missing out!
I'm not sure why this is such big news at all. In my experience most people that work in offices with the exception of critical staff take that period off voluntarialy anyway. On the occasions when I have worked over the holiday period there is nothing to do as no-one is ordering anything (apart from the time I was working at a wine company).
All Cisco are doing as far as I can see is saying 'Almost no-one will be at work and those that will won't be doing anything, so we might as well shut the offices and save ourselves some cash'. It seems like common sense given the current climate. Surely investors should be more concerned about companies that are happy to waste cash and energy than those that are looking at ways to save them?
(Real estate) developer sues Apple over Jesus Phone browser
Wednesday 26th November 2008 12:08 GMT
Idea...
Let's get ourselves down to the US patent office and patent the 'apparatus and method of granting stupid and vague patents with no real substance, which serve no purpose other than to stifle creativity by leaving genuine innovators open to vacuous lawsuits'.
That way in future we can sue the US patent office for creating these stupid situations.
Indonesian HIV/AIDS patients face microchip tagging
Tuesday 25th November 2008 13:07 GMT 
Um...
So let me get this straight - If you get caught smuggling a relatively small amount of drugs into Indonesia, you automatically get the death penalty. But if you deliberately infect people with a fatal disease (which is basically murder) you 'could face six months in jail or a $5,000 fine' ?. That is just messed up.
As for tracking chips... Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I pray that Jackboot-Jacqui doesnt read this article or we may pretty soon find that there is 'overwhelming public support' for us all to be fitted with them. After all... we are all potential criminals.
Boffins crack secret of dolphins' aquatic prowess
Tuesday 25th November 2008 12:26 GMT
Wow!
What a truly amazing use of (no doubt) all the research money they were given.
Dolphins are stonger than we previously thought. Wow.
I can think of so many ways this research will benefit mankind. I am so glad that whoever funded this didn't decide to give their money to reseach a cure for cancer or to develop safe renewable energy technology.
Can I suggest a topic for their next project?
How about : 'Bear defecation and it's relationship to arboreal density.'
Lords told to listen to science on cannabis
Tuesday 25th November 2008 11:52 GMT
So....
The governement lowers the classification of cannabis. Useage goes down. Also further research into the drug is published and indicates that it is if anything even less harmful than originally believed. As a result the government wants to raise the classification again.
I think the police should get down to the house of commons with some of those 'drug swab thingies', as I for one would like to know exactly what they are on!
El Reg seeks top net neologism
Tuesday 18th November 2008 14:49 GMT
@MJ
'If anyone can define 'wibble' for me, go ahead.'
okay:
wibble –interjection
1. An exclamation popular with 16th centuray Genoise noblemen. Usualy used while standing on a bucket with a live frog pinned to the shoulderbraid, as was the style at the time. (You will note that this is largely misquoted elsewhere on the web).
2. An exclamation denoting mental distress, as would be utterred by a crazy person.
Source: Oxford English Dictionary, E. Blackadder edition.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
