Posts by Greg J Preece
1991 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 08:25 GMT
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Posted in Top Ten Arcade Classics
Time Crisis LIVES!
I'm a Time Crisis nutjob, personally - I love light gun games, and every time you think Sega, Taito or someone else are catching up, Namco release a new one that once again blows everything else out of the water. I love them so much I own every single one - I even bought a special gun so I can play the PS2 versions upscaled on my PS3.
I was quite astonished just last month to find an original deluxe edition Time Crisis machine hidden away on the top floor of an amusements in Blackpool, in the same room as deluxe editions of House of the Dead 1, Virtua Cop 2, and GUNBLADE! There's one no-one's mentioned. Gunblade absolutely ruled. (It's out on the Wii now - bloody faithful port, too.)
When I was a bairn - unfortunately not far enough back to play some of these - I played a lot of Daytona USA, Outrun, Terminator 2, Gunblade, X-Men, and Galaga. Actually, surprised Galaga/Galaxian didn't get a mention.
Posted in iPhone 4 gets slide-out keyboard
Seconded!
In fact, my first thought when seeing this was "my, doesn't that make it look like a Nokia..."
The product itself, though, is copper-bottomed genius.
I did once get this fine example:
"What's the flag with the dragon on?"
"That's Wales."
"Aaah, Wales! That's in Scotland, right?"
"Not quite."
I wonder what would happen to...
...TOR?
Not the first people to get those two mixed up
If you ever play Resistance, watch with mirth as the cities of England keep swapping places in the FMVs.
Posted in AMD joins Intel mobile Linux push
Score!
The more the merrier. Currently trying to get MeeGo dual booting on my Nokia - should be fun for some development.
Re: Maemo Version
Is it optified? I'd like to try it out, but if it's going to take up all the root space, no ta.
Though I suppose I could optify it myself.
Like the recent ones?
About how fast it's suddenly gotten?
Or how twonks like you pick holes in a piece of software that hasn't been released yet?
Errrrr
"Well now the browser you was demanding is here whilst Firefox is throwing paper aeroplanes, doodling on its exercise books and making fart noises at the back of the class. Happy now?"
That'd be the Firefox that came 3rd out of the 5 majors, then? And both IE and FF in that test were pre-release. Quit pretending like Firefox aren't doing development when we get an article on El Reg every other week about the latest FF4 build.
Posted in Top Ten Retro PC Games
See, I didn't like most of that list
Doom was crap, C&C was too basic and slow, Diablo was tedious, Black and White was just annoying.
For me, I'd have inserted The Terminator: Future Shock, a healthy dose of Mechwarrior 2, Civilization II, and some Wing Commander/Independence War/Tachyon: The Fringe.
Nothing says rebellion against the system
Like a lawsuit!
Sony?
Apple owning Sony?
*Shudder*
Trying to imagine an Apple-designed Playstation. I could make an awful lot of jokes about that, but I think i'll just *shudder* again.
Posted in Vanquish
What do you expect?
These jokers gave a Halo game 100%. HALO!
I have never seen anyone give a game a 100% review, ever. Not even HL2, which proudly advertised its 96% score on its advertising posters.
But Halo: Reach? Man, that's a masterpiece...
Posted in Vanquish
Hells yeah!
I remember playing Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, and always running the mech right on the redline. I think I pressed the "override thermal shutdown" button more than the fire button!
Posted in Tesco's iPhone app gets barcode reader
Err, dude?
"and the likes of National Rail"
National Rail have an Android app now. The cheeky sods are charging £3.50 (and it was £5 originally) when their site already has a mobile interface, but it's there. Came out in the summer, I believe.
Posted in Vanquish
Length?
I've heard from other places that the game is only 4 or 5 hours long, a la Medal of Honour. Is that true?
Pity there isn't a PC port. I really don't like playing this type of game with thumbsticks.
The ICO has developed a spine??
Gonna have to clean my monitor after reading that.
£20 says they slap their wrists and do sod all else.
You've missed my point
JAU was quoting stats showing OSX having a much larger market share, but I was making the point that that might be amongst the consumer sector, not necessarily Java developers. The devs I know are just an example to go with it.
And yeah, all Linux baby. For most mainstream development it's just plain better, though I will admit that modern Windows systems are much improved.
Amongst developers?
"I can't find more up-to-date details but one article citing statistics from December 2009 shows OS X having five times the share of Linux."
Amongst developers, or everybody? Because in the Java dev world, almost everyone I know runs Linux.
Though it will be two laptops for one of our team, who recently got a Mac so he could do some iPhone stuff, but still codes Java with the rest of us. Good ol' Apple. Less functionality is better for you. Diversity is bad. Be the same as the rest. Jooiiinn uuussss....
Posted in Jobs' Lion to marry Mac OS X and iOS
Finally, eh?
"It's about time there was a central place to go to browse and download software. Sure, there's google, shareware.com, versiontracker, but the sheer convenience of the iPhone/iPad app store has been great."
You mean like on...erm...*cough*...
...Linux?
This always bugs me
"Mobile phones can harbour on average 18 times more living bacteria than a flush on a gents' toilet."
Yes, but are they the same kinds of bacteria. This is the same claim that pisses me off in Dettol adverts - "there's more germs on your chopping board than on your bog seat." Yes, but they're not the same fucking germs, are they!?
"If you put virus on a surface, like an iPhone, about 30 per cent of it will get on your fingertips,"
How about if you put it on a Surface? I'm more likely to share one of those touch devices than a phone, mine, company or otherwise.
Posted in Microsoft's fear of an OpenOffice
Web 2.0 means nothing to corporates
It's all well and good saying that OpenOffice and its like are dead because trendier alternatives exist, but that in turn means sod all in a corporate environment. We all know that there are large sections of large companies still managing their data via macros in Excel 2003 (if they're lucky) and surfing the net in IE6. These people will be using Office for a looooong time to come, so why shouldn't OpenOffice try and pilfer them? And why shouldn't Microsoft worry about said pilfering?
Especially if you're the sort of cynical git who thinks that people might eventually swing back toward keeping hold of their own data.
Posted in Opera Mobile for Android: Nearly there!
My Bad
"He is getting confused with Opera MINI, which Is out for Android, and a different product."
This man is correct, I was not.
Posted in Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac'
@Michael Xion
"The uni I work for just got quotes to replace a PC lab. Due to the specs required for win7, the individual machines are actually more expensive than an equivalent iMac."
WHAT?
Sorry mate, that has *got* to be bullshit. I'm no Windows fan, but Win7 runs nicely on everything I have that used to run XP (they all still dual-boot Kubuntu). This desktop cost half what a basic iMac costs, and it runs Win7 just dandy. My laptop cost £500 three years ago - it's not even that nice - and it runs Win7 just dandy.
Either Apple are suddenly selling iMacs for half what they were before, or someone at your Uni's been bullshitted mate.
Posted in Opera Mobile for Android: Nearly there!
Beta's been out for a while
And it's not bad, either. Always loved Opera Mobile, though the Mozilla/Firefox implementations on Maemo are superb.
Posted in Opera Mobile for Android: Nearly there!
Well isn't that strange...
"Opera Mobile browser will be available in Google's Android Marketplace within the next month and the upcoming Opera 11 desktop browser will include Firefox-like extensions."
After listening to the Opera crown harp on about how extensions only slow down a browser, bloat it up, etc, and how they're totally unnecessary in a piece of software as perfect as Opera, the company go and add extensions.
Huh. I wonder if some opinions will now radically and rapidly shift to "extensions r teh awesome."
Written, oddly enough, in Opera.
Why does one kid get so much more?
"The school has now agreed to pay $175,000 (£110,000) to Blake Robins, one of the students, $10,000 (£6,300) to Jalil Hassan and $425,000 (£268,000) to their lawyers."
Is there a reason why one kid gets £110 000 and the other only gets £6300? That seems a bit off. Is there some background reason I'm unaware of?
Posted in Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed
KNetworkManager
Not had time to play with Maverick on my laptop until today, so I hadn't noticed the new KNetworkManager. That thing is SWEET! Took them long enough to make a proper network manager, but this time they've really got it right. Nice and clear, easy to use, and optional levels of detail for the techies amongst us. Absolutely love it - a small but superbly done upgrade.
Posted in Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed
That's new
"Free software purists may decry the move, but Canonical clearly doesn't care and is ultimately more interested in a free desktop that allows the users to install any kind of software applications they'd like than it is in satisfying the militantly free crowd."
It's not long since Ubuntu refused to even prompt users to install MP3/DVD capabilites on or after install, as that would corrupt their pure OS. It's good to see they've finally wised up and realised that the end user doesn't care one iota about "free as in free" software, however much we might - they just want a system that works out of the box. And if Ubuntu's primary goal is to spread Linux to the end user, this is a reality they had to accept.
Posted in HMRC systems downed by upgrades
Great month to pick
Gee, when should we do the massive IT upgrade guys? The month with the tax deadline in it? GOOD IDEA!
A possible solution
If the USPO are this slack, how about we get together and patent patent-trolling? "A method whereby patents are filed for no basis other than to attack commercial competition."
The concept of being able to sue MS and Apple for suing others appeals to me.
I've been thinking this
They've already got more major version numbers than every main player except Internet Explorer. WTF? Can you really see six or seven versions worth of difference between Chrome 1 and the current release?
You pay them??
The shopkeepers pay this bunch of goons to get people to watch their CCTV. They get you to watch it for them, and YOU PAY THEM for the privilege?
Seriously? There's a members fee for sitting on your arse doing someone else's work?
Are these people fucking stupid??
Event Horizon!
Not that scary really, but great fun to watch.
You! Won't! Take! My! Crew!
Posted in EU sues UK.gov over Phorm trials
I agree!
How dare those bastards attempt to protect us from illegal wiretaps by bringing a corrupt government to task? That's OUR corrupt government, damn it! Johnny Foreigner shouldn't put his do-gooding nose where it's not wanted.
Thanks!
Been needing to edit some videos for upload. The basic editors were too basic, Cinelerra was too monstrous for a beginner, but I didn't know about Kdenlive. And, conveniently, I'm a KDE user. I'll give it a shot. Thanks!
Posted in Star Wars set for 3D rehash
TWO! THERE WERE FUCKING TWO!
"only two, maybe three Terminator movies, depending on your PoV of T IV"
TWO! There were only ever TWO Terminator movies. God help anyone in my vicinity who tries to claim otherwise.
When you start making gay/wonderbra jokes with walking killing machines, you have officially fucked up the franchise.
Posted in Nintendo 3DS misses Xmas launch window
Didn't they say this ages ago?
I seem to remember Nintendo saying the 3DS would be launched in March when it was first announced. That's certainly the month I've had in my head since I found out about it.
Posted in Star Wars set for 3D rehash
Oh God, no
I think I would rather clean Jabba the Hut's toilet bowl than pay good money to see The Phantom Menace at the cinema again, 3D or otherwise. I'll wait until 2014 when the second trilogy will likely rock up.
Posted in OpenOffice files Oracle divorce papers
Nice one!
This is why there was no point in worrying about MySQL and OpenOffice - you can't kill open source. If you shut down the project, someone will fork it. If you act like an arsehole, you lose control.
Nicely done, OOo.
Brand new, dude
Brand new phone, no protector on it, just doesn't drag properly. Though it does, rather weirdly, seem to be improving...
Posted in Moms stand firm against antenna madness
And then for your phone to reach the mast...
...it has to jack up its own power level, pumping more of that horrible, baby-killing radiation into your head.
And then, when enough people have brain cancer, the phone companies will TAKE OVER THE WORLD!
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!
Hope they've fixed the drag issues
Got an X10 (the big one) last week on the company contract. Nice phone, except for the major issues I have with dragging. Unless I put a LOT of pressure on the screen, dragging is seriously hit and miss. Even dragging to unlock can take several attempts, as you apparently let go halfway through. It's the only real flaw I've found with the phone, but it's a bloody big one!
*Sigh* This again?
"People have moved through from DVDs to digital downloads and digital streaming."
No. They. Haven't.
Sure, the iPlayer might be awesome for catching up on stuff, and people might spend all their time on YouTube, but for actually owning/watching something, huge swathes of the population quite plainly continue to buy optical media. Look at the size of the Blu-Ray section in HMV sometime.
"We offer full HD 1080p Blu-ray quality streaming instantly, no download, no delay."
No. You. Don't.
I have a 13Mbps connection, and that is waaaay above average in this country (and yours, I'd imagine). If you can stream Blade Runner to me at 1080p, without visible/audible compression or loss of features, on that connection, I will be impressed. I doubt it will happen.
In the meantime those of us with a clue will buy optical media and wait for the infrastructure to improve. Which, naturally, means we'll be buying PS3s.
IDIOT.
Posted in Sony PlayStation Move
Had a play with this at the weekend
The accuracy was fantastic. The augmented reality stuff was sweet. The games were shit.
Painting? Feckin' PAINTING?? Get out of my face. The Americans get Razing Storm and we get Start the Party? A patched version of Heavy Rain, maybe, but I think I'll wait a bit before buying one. The list of games that will support it is impressive, but they should have had a few more proper games at launch...
Missing the point!
Forget all this holiness, religious debate and BT engineering. What I want to know is - is the old bugger paying the congestion charge?
Posted in Halo: Reach
GOOD LEVEL DESIGN??
Deep storyline??
Dear God man, are you ill? The level design in Halo was so crap even Bungie got bored of it - how about the "level" at the end of the game that makes you play the same room over and over? That is the laziest piece of level construction I have *EVER* seen.
And storyline? Two warring factions disturb an ancient enemy? And you've never heard that before? You need to read more, dude.
Errrr...
Um....
Someone wanna tell him? (Her?) (It?)
Have to admit
For various reasons I've been asked to scrub up on iOS development. I nearly screamed like a little girl when I opened the coding manual and saw the keyword "malloc". Noooooooooo!
