Posts by Rob

Roger,

I think that was the point. His grammar and spelling aren't that good. They're behaving like everyone on the internet...

OOh.

Wow! Thanks Sony! Now you're giving me more stuff you can't sell in the UK, I simply *must* rush out and buy a PS3 right now!

When are they going to learn that in order to sell more here, they have to stop screwing us for the price of the base unit. People like to buy bits at a time, not get charged more and get everything at once.

I'm going to single handedly point the finger of blame for our nation's credit card problems at Sony. They won't sell stuff in bits and only sell huge expensive packages, therefore forcing people to put it all on their credit card. Ha! If the government can force Sony to drop the price, our credit problem goes away. I'm a genius!

Whatever it is

...that they're smoking, it's the same thing that makes them charge us folks in the UK a vast sum of money. $250 or £500. There's something wrong with that maths but I can't quite put my finger on it...

I believe that's

Nmbr Prtblty FTW!!!!!!!

Badger Parade

At least the badgers have the badger parade to highten awareness...

Excellent

Can I be the first to congratulate the Reg for marking this as "Warning: No IT angle".

Hopefully that will stop all the moaners from continuing their incessant complaints about these articles containing no IT news. If it's spelt out they can't whinge can they...

Or can they?

Just one final comment

The main complaint about reverse engineering here seems to be that the EULA normally says that reverse engineering the product is breaking the EULA and means you lose all rights to use it.

The big problem here is that in most countries, the EULA wouldn't pass legal scrutiny and often try and include important sounding phrases to scare people off. Often there is no legal basis for these restrictions and even if the user "agrees" to them, they were not legally binding in the first place and the user cannot be bound by something that doesn't confirm to the law.

No fanboyism

I'm a Sony fanboy, but I don't see how fanboys can argue with figures. The Wii is a great console, end of story. It's good to see the PS3 outselling the 360, but i'm not surprised that's the case in Japan. Microsoft are still struggling to produce games for a very different eastern market, whilst Sony and Nintendo obviously know what they're doing in the land of the rising sun.

Quick comment..

I've actually had to use Choose and Book and can honestly say that, as a patient, it seemed like a reasonably good system. I was given a number of hospitals and various appointments to choose from and was able to select the one most convenient to me. The biggest problem wasn't really with the system - it was the fact that all the appointment options were months away.

What about home users?

A lot of the comments here pretty much seem to deal with the corporate environment, which is fine and afterall, does need protecting. But what about the home users? They can't wait around for someone with specific admin access to come along and whitelist the programs they want. They are the admin themselves.

As always the home users are the ones who are going to be the big problem here. More often than not, they are the God of their own computer, regardless of how much actual knowledge they have and they're the ones propogating the mass of virii.

All these solutions seem to do is take a large database of known quantities and let users interrogate it in one form or another. In a real home environment these options aren't really practical. The only reason AV vendors get away with it is because as older virii drop out of use they get dropped from the database to keep the size down. Then they get reinstated if there's a new outbreak.

At some point...

... these people might actually wake up and realise that they don't need these waste of space sites at all. There are other ways to keep in touch with your friends you know!

Hmmm.

Anyone think this should be where the government should be stepping in to help us all go green? Incentives and tax-breaks on green energy supply etc.

A sad day for gaming...

Never played Manhunt and couldn't give a toss about MH2 specifically, but it's a sad day for gaming if some nut-job is able to tell me that I can't buy an 18 rated game, because a mother fears it might encourage her 12 year old son to attack his mates.

Parents: grow up and take responsibility for your kids yourselves!

All you NASCAR defenders...

I fear you have been baited by the Reg with the (fairly) obvious "Let's see how many narky responses we get with this statement.." manouvre.

No Rick, you've misread

"Ok so let me get this right utube opens its website after Youtube and they are claiming damages? This is asinine, this sounds more like a cyber-squatter then anything?"

uTube.com has been operating since 1996. But after YouTube.com opened, their (uTube's) visitor numbers shot up due to stupid people being allowed to use the internet and caused them (uTube) bandwidth problems and heavy charges. This is pretty much the main source of their complaint.

PSP Support

I agree - back off the PSP as owner of a psp gaming website (http://www.psp-online.org plug-fans!) . It's a fantastic gaming platform and there have been some truely unique games for it. The BIGGEST problem is that the majority are just cut down ports that no-one wants. Sony needs to stop treating the PSP as an extra bit to add on to the PS3 (that no-one's bought) and start treating them as seperate consoles with features unique to each. Only when they unhook the two will they both survive. I've lost count of the amount of games with unlockable features where you have to buy both the PSP and (in this case) PS2 version of a game in order to unlock stuff. I've bought the PSP version, so I don't want to have to unlock the 308GTS on my PS2 thanks (Outrun 2006!).

Unhinge them both and drop the price of the PS3. I'll be out to buy one like a shot if they dropped the price tomorrow.

The best bit about all this..

Is that Webster Phreaky cited Wikipedia as his source for the official spelling... Of all the dumb things to do citing Wikipedia as your source has to be fairly high on the list... You may as awell say "My little sister told me it's spelt like this, therefore it must be true..."

Minimum levels

"I don't get why there isn't mandated minimum software levels for publically used computers, especially in schools."

It's a very easy answer: cost.

You can draw up minimum levels that are required to be safe but unless the school/local authority/government etc can afford those costs, then it aint gonna happen.

You honestly think Microsoft is going to give in to cries of "But we need the latest stuff to protect the children!" and make their more secure OSes cheaper? If you can't afford it - you can't have it. I don't know of many schools that can just afford to splash out on the latest thing on a whim.

Visiting Mars...

Yes we have the capability to get there technically, but y'see the problem lies in us. Literally. The human body is not yet capable of surving a trip there and back.

Astronauts in high earth orbit (think ISS) for six months lose massive amounts of bone density and suffer all sorts of problems. On our current tech, the trip to Mars is about 3 and a half years (give or take), That's seven years there and back. Plus you wouldn't just be popping there for a visit - if you're going you're going for a year on surface at least. Say you want a decent scientific study done when you get there at 3 years surface time. That's a 10 year trip out and back with all that time planet side. Ove half of that is done in the vacuum of space and then the planet itself is pretty hostile. We'd be damn lucky to get anyone back at all and if we did they'd probably hve to spend the rest of their lives in orbit due to the lack of bone structure they'd have.

We are the limit to our journey to Mars and until we can combat muscle/bone loss and radiation absorbtion on a massive scale there's no way we can go.

Hmmm. Nice.

As well as requesting nested comments to comments, I particularly enjoy being able to comment on the lack of nested comments, as a comment, to the report about comments that have been commented so far.

So Reg? Any comments?

pah

She's neither beautiful or exciting, and provides nothing to my otherwise excellent life. I vote we lock the bitch up and throw away the key. After all she is about as big a drain on society as a very big drainy thing and offers no benefit to mankind at all. Even her porn is shit and I didn't think it was possible to make boring, unwatchable porn...

Of course not.

Of course they don't have complete control of the high street game stores. There are many other places where you can buy video games, from Woolworths, WH Smiths, HMV, Virgin Megastores etc. Not to mention the many many independants out there.

They're a long way from crying Monopoly at Game any time soon.

I was surprised...

I was surprised by the number of rebuttals in this comments section that come dangerously close to be FoTW material themselves...

Come on Reg readers! Pull yourselves together, lest the idiots like this win!

WGA

"Can he remove 'Window Genuine Advantage' validation as a community service penalty? So that I can get the security fixes, that I SHOULD BE ENTITLED TO, without the invasive WGA?"

Sorry, but you agreed to the EULA like the rest of us. If you want those security fixes you have to jump through the necessary hoops. You're NOT entitled unless you can prove to Microsofts satisfaction that you're a genuine licensee.

If you want to drive a car you (at least in the UK) have to own a license and on occasion you may be asked to produce it for inspection. WGA is no different to having to produce various documents for your car tax. If you want to be legal you have to provide the necessary info.

The colour thing...

The Speccy produced 15 colours (if you include black) however, there were only 8 true colours as the other 8 were 'dimmed' versions of the original 8.

Hence you had cyan and a sort of smingey darker cyan etc.

To this day, if you run MSPaint on XP and count off the first 8 colours, on the bottom row of the pallette (switch the black and the grey), those were the ones supported by the Speccy. The 8 colours directly below were the 'dimmed' versions. (you have to sort of ignore the darker of the greys as the 'grey' was actually the dimmed white - but you know what I mean ;) ). It was basically bright primary colours and then secondary darker versions.

It's obvious...

"How do you know which allow use?"

Well it's obvious isn't it. Did you pay for the service? No, then shuffle somewhere else. Is there a sign up saying "This is intentionally open for you to use"? No? Then sod off.

I fully understand people wanting the stupid to be punished by the opportunistic, but that doesn't change the fact that they are stealing bandwidth. Just because the person that pays for that bandwidth is an idiot, it doesn't ACTUALLY mean they have to suffer at a more wiley opponents hands. After all - there will always be someone cleverer than you, no matter where you go.

Oh I dunno...

She's obviously physically fit and brainy too to be a NASA space-jock...

A sweaty, fit, clever bird who's strapped down? How many of us wouldn't enjoy being in that room for 4 hours?

Dave Gorman

For an excellent example of a powerpoint presentation that works well, watch Dave Gormans Googlewhack adventure. The presentation is used heavily to help him tell his story and is probably the most entertaining use of powerpoint (or whatever it was he used) i've ever seen.

When the subject matter is interesting and the isage is right - they can be useful tools. It's just that often people are using them wrong.