Posts by Ian Ferguson

Made for tablets

Angry Birds Space seems designed for the iPad, whereas the first game was designed for the iPhone.

Not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation. The original's levels were clutter free and simplistic; Seasons, Rio and Space have got progressively more complex, graphically speaking.

It's good fun, and marginally more of a puzzle game than the original. My main complaint is the lack of content - only two groups of levels - although I hope Rovio continue their strategy of releasing more levels for free.

It's also irksome to be presented with a third group of levels ('Danger Zone') that cost another 69p to unlock. I'd really prefer one upfront cost. Not to mention that the 'eagle' feature has also been monetised - a few eagles are gifted on completion of the golden egg levels, but they'll run out pretty quickly if you want to gain the 'feathers', and you'd need to buy more at an extortionate cost.

All considered though, it's still fun at a minimal cost.

Same as pilot's watches

I have a pilot friend who wears a £1k Breitling watch. He would argue that he needs the accuracy. I would argue that a free crystal LCD watch from a packet of 80s cereal would provide as much accuracy as a precision-engineered mechanical watch.

It's purely a fashion thing, no more than your Abercrombie & Fitch shirt or Alienware PC.

16 'incidents'

Is this bad? Compared to what?

No clue is given as to whether the system is more or less accurate to the old paper system. Given that it removes large portions of human error, I'd hope that it works out as more accurate as it beds in. Teething troubles are always expected.

Unless they logged errors with the old system with the same tenacity over a similar time period, this is pretty meaningless.

Well... duh

"numerous owners of the new iPad report putting it next to their laptops and finding the signal strength to be notably less on the iPad"

Bigger/multiple antenna = better signal strength. Hardly news.

Also, using mobile data costs more than using wifi shocker, news at ten.

No local pornographic services

Thank god for that, I was expecting to have to find some way to block a localised Isle of Wight Babestation. *shudder*

So if I've got this right, an Anonymous hack led to the ending of a vital information leak to the opposition activists, by making Assad abandon the account that was being spied on? Way to go Anon, another feather in your cap.

When will people learn

not to trust PayPal an inch. It's not just their T&Cs to be wary of - but their unbelievably minimal, bottom line driven customer service.

His only hope is publicity. Negative publicity is the only thing that has saved myself and many others from PayPal resolution hell.

These problems are exactly why the TLD explosion is a stupid idea. It was ICANN's responsibility to manage addresses, and they've failed.

Fairly mediocre selection of games if you ask me. Whizzy graphics but little to no gameplay value.

Top iOS games to me would be Super Crate Boy, SpellTower, Tiny Wings, Orbital, Beat Sneak Bandit, Minotron, Drop7, Reckless Getaway, DrawRace2 and Quarrel. Not to mention Infinity Blade II and Angry Birds.

Loving it. Most inventive gameplay mechanic I've seen since Braid.

Still none the wiser

From their website:

"CBOSS (Convergent Business Operations Support Systems) is a transnational corporation and one of the world leaders in the development of innovative convergent IT solutions for end-to-end automation of telecommunications companies, delivering a competitive edge to telecoms across the globe."

Could mean anything, frankly.

Any business that relies on booth babes is not going to be taken seriously by me or anyone other than chauvinist dinosaurs. It hardly gives off a modern 'world leader' image.

What?

"Kairuku was more than a foot taller than the modern Emperor penguin"

...

"In reality, Kairuku was around 4-feet, 2 inches tall or so"

How does that class as giant? And what's the last time you saw a 3 foot tall Emperor penguin?

Instead of gimmicks designed to pull in higher ticket prices, I wish they'd realise that cinema is no longer a premium experience, and drop ticket prices to bare-minimum levels to compete with home entertainment.

Surely nobody seriously believes this seat-vibrating tech will become 'a new standard'. It's incredible enough that 3D has kind of taken off, and that's with a truly astonishing combined effort from Hollywood, cinemas and home entertainment manufacturers.

Ah crap

Seems I got off lightly then, as I've done just this in a Taipei train station.

Hopefully my mitigating circumstances of not understanding written Traditional Chinese would have saved me...

Still, seems harsh.

Meaningless

without comparison to what other manufacturers pay Chinese workers.

Coming soon:

El Reg dating. Prerequisites are sarcasm, an amusing or insightful screen name, lots of free time during the day, technical knowledge of the latest Smart TV systems, and a wildly flunctuating sense of humour/outrage.

Have I missed something

When did it become tradition to give gifts on Valentine's day, beyond a slap up meal out and a bunch of roses, and particularly from her to him? (him-to-him possibilities acknowledged and excluded)

I hope you have 'Ten gadgets to give on Easter' and 'Ten gadgets to give on St. Andrew's day' lined up.

Journalistic standards

Could we have an objective article on Greenpeace's leaderboard, rather than Lewis Page's rather narrow-minded anti-environmentalism?

How am I expected to recommend my non-techie friends and family use Android phones while this kind of shit can go down?

I'm all for open rights, but I'm even more for my family's banking details not being stolen. For now I'm only recommending iPhones.

At last

It gobsmacked me how many times I was asked to sign receipts in the States as recently as this Christmas - and virtually every cashier had the bad habit of handing my card back to me before I'd even signed.

In fact, thinking about it, the signature is long worn off my card, so not a single one checked it.

About bloody time - and the yanks like to think they're light years ahead of us... (Romney's anti-Europe comments recently are frankly offensive - a lot of them seem to think we're still in the dark ages over here)

Not sure how this would work - I guess they'd have to scale down the technology considerably.

After trying Kinect at other people's houses, and barely being able to get it to register us by standing right at the back of the room, I concluded that my house is just too small for it. I think it's designed for massive empty American living rooms, like in the adverts, not for a standard British room.

That's nice...

...for residents of upmarket urban areas in London, Birmingham, etc.

I do wish they'd spend more time and R&D finding ways of getting even basic broadband to rural areas, and reducing contention ratios in residential areas.

Fantasy World Dizzy

Loved this one (played the PC version). Completed it multiple times, although I was never aware of that cowpat cheat.

However... I could never find the 30th bastarding coin. Collected 29 coins, and one more was marked on the map on the old oak tree screen, but could never figure out how to get it. I suspect it was a bug with the PC version.

Doubt I'd have the patience for such a relentlessly pixel-perfect-movement punishing game nowadays.

Cause and effect

"They are no longer working on Google projects"

This doesn't necessarily mean that they were booted out because of this. They might have finished their contracts and moved on. It's a convenient lazy catch-all PR phrase that avoids blame and investigation.

Bah

There's no way in hell I'm paying for Sky. The only TV I watch these days is iPlayer (and occasional 4oD) stuff. Rarely anything live except for F1 races.

If I could pay for just the Sky Sports F1 channel and nothing else, I'd reluctantly stump up the cash, but that's it. I have no interest whatsoever in the bazillion other channels they bundle in, and I refuse to pay for such dross.

It'll be a streaming site for me, or friends/pubs with Sky.

Did anyone else first read the headline as 'Death Star Explosion...'?

Concept?

Holy crap that's gorgeous.

Is it a concept, a prototype or the actual model that will go on sale, though? If it's going on sale in 2015 I think it's safe to say it's the former. Let's hope they don't have to make many changes.

GoPro

Also a great advert for the GoPro camera that took most of the footage (visible near the end of the film) - not only did it survive the fall and continue filming, it functioned without problems at the high altitude - and that was in the stock casing, not something fancy!

YES!

Yes! Yes!

Are they accepting requests?

1. Woolly Mammoth

2. Dodo

3. Sabre-toothed tiger

4. Quagga

5. Steller's Sea Cow

6. Giant Ground Sloth

7. Great Auk

I could go on...