* Posts by Juillen 1

312 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009

Page:

Ten... PC games you may have missed

Juillen 1
Holmes

Re: A few additional suggestions

Would this be what you're looking for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser_3000AD

Microsoft: Just swallow this tablet ... the rest will take care of itself

Juillen 1

The hardware...

Will get the tech heads perhaps interested. The rest of the world just wants something that works..

From this review, it seems you're extrapolating the possible tech wish of lovely hardware into a prediction that everyone will love it, despite the software really being a bit of a pain in the derriere..

That's not usually the way it works, alas. From all the 'normal people', to quote Avenue Q, I hang out with, they all say they just want something that works and doesn't get in the way. Good hardware spec, bad hardware spec, they'd not know the difference.

However, show them a graphical inconsistency, and they lose patience really quickly.

NZ bloke gets eel stuck up jacksie

Juillen 1

Mighty Boosh..

I think we may have just found their top fan!

http://www.lyricsmania.com/eels_lyrics_mighty_boosh_the.html

Darksiders II

Juillen 1

Mine should be turning up today..

Absolutely loved Darksiders.. The storyline was amusing, dark, yet occasionally light hearted, and engaging..

The puzzles are enough to make you think, without being so tough that you need to go off and ask someone. Watching and thinking was the key.. As for replayability.. I'm on about the 6th run through; it's like picking up a good book and re-reading it again. On the latter run throughs, I'm finding things get easier every time, not by rote muscle memory, but because I find out more things I can do to make my playing style more efficient, and more tactics that give better result.

If this one is even half as good, I think my life will be sunk into it until Guild Wars 2 springs out of the woodwork.. Then I think I'll need a clone so I can be in two places at once.

Assange granted asylum by Ecuador after US refused to rule out charges

Juillen 1

No, I don't have to wonder why.

It's because someone charged of criminal offenses and due to attend a court of law absconds and takes refuge in an embassy.

Embassies can take the choice to harbour a criminal (hes absconding breaks his bail conditions, which is a criminal offense) or refuse them access. By granting him access, they've created a diplomatic incident (using diplomatic power to subvert the justice system of the host country). If the UK shrugged it off and said "Whatever, go for it", then its international standing in the diplomatic stakes would be seriously hampered. With precedent set, any country could run black ops inside the UK, then when they're discovered, give them immunity by have them run back to the embassy without any consequence. I guess you can see where that path leads.

Up until the time Lasange chose to run, he still had a chance. Now he's committed a crime in this country too (demonstrably).

Ecuador is pretty silly to make a stand on this, as by international dealing, this is going to reflect VERY badly on them. Deals they may have struck to their advantage will probably not be offered, as people just don't trust them so much.

The threat had to be made. Ecuador know the deal, and they chose to follow this route anyway, which could possibly lead to them losing their embassy in the UK, pretty much over trying to keep someone from attending a trial which would be their main way of proving their innocence.. They know they're on the wrong side of the justice system, they're just hoping media will portray them as heroes.. Taken in the harsh light of day, I'd say they just look silly.

Juillen 1

Re: Getting him out

That's a pretty sensible thing really.. Given the amoung of shagging around Lasange had been doing courtesy of his media profile, he'd be a pretty strong candidate as an STD infection vector. If the deal is "OK, but protect me from what you may have picked up", but he refused to do that.. That's putting the other person at risk, thus the interpretation into law.

Maybe not rape in the way we perceive it, but I think sexual assault isn't too far from what a court could judge..

World celebrates System Administrator Appreciation Day

Juillen 1

Re: How about some nice ladies finally finding interest in all the work?

Innuendo, scare women? Who do you think is reading "50 shades of grey"?

Most of the gals where I work are far more into the innuendo than the guys! They just don't have an interest in the geeky side of the tech work.

Blizzard faces court battle for 'misleading Diablo III fans'

Juillen 1

Re: Its a MMORPG !

You're really not a programmer are you?

If you can't abstract away the file storage, you've got no business going near commercial coding that uses data storage.

It's a political decision to force people to use the real money marketplace, no more and no less.

Bad move, marketers.

'Inexperienced' RBS tech operative's blunder led to banking meltdown

Juillen 1

Re: Investment in the backbone?

Good idea.. Though perhaps re-examine their renumeration, as their evidenced value to the organisation isn't what it was thought to be..

Though following the chain, and finding out why the outsourcing decisions were made if the first place, who applied the pressure, and finding out why they applied pressure to something as obviously risky (we hear the cries every time there is outsourcing that something like this will happen; well, here we are). And definitely evaluate their value to the company and renumeration.

UK Gov not using six million of its software licences

Juillen 1

Re: How many of those are for current products?

Government doesn't have the hefty grunt to force a buy back clause (if you buy, you buy, and it comes under the same restrictions as any other business).

But, you're essentially correct in that most of those licenses are outdated software (NT4, Windows 2000, and now Windows 2003 is being phased out, along with desktop licenses for Windows 95, 2000 and XP).

The cost to purchase "upgrade protection" and then the upgrade later on doesn't work well with the way budgets are set, so in general, it works out more effective to buy a license, knowing it'll last for about 8 years, then be deprecated.

This does,however, lead to headlines like this, where there are x% of the licenses unused. I daresay in 20 years, there'll be the headline "90% of public sector software licenses are unused" and a lot of wrath from people who don't actually get that this is due to natural deprecation (software stays on the books as an asset).

The licenses that are current and unused will be very small.. I know we're hurting for them here at the mo..

Sony awards PlayStation cert to HTC handsets

Juillen 1

Re: I'm surprised Google hasn't stepped in here

So, gaming is woeful because.. Of a whole load of things that aren't actually to do with a game, just telling people about it, and showing off an 'achievement'?

Personally, I'll take a good game that plays well, and doesn't bother me with any of that stuff over a voice integrated 'achievement every minute' high scored game that just doesn't have an edge.

Trophies and such are irrelevant to a game (though I'm sure it gives people bragging rights). Voice chat.. Easy enough to integrate if you wanted to (but then you'd have a load of people yelling "kill them all" manically on every train)

Why do I want to sign on to most games I play (answer, I don't; I don't want to sign on at all unless it's a MMO)..

Microsoft confirms UK.gov to dodge licensing hike... almost

Juillen 1

Vendors...

Well, I work in the NHS, and we do use Linux. The problem is that 95% of the vendors of clinical systems don't support Linux.

Because these are the things that are used in safety critical things (tracking of patient health etc.), simply saying "We'll try WINE" isn't an option.

Any behemoth organisation will only change slowly, and the NHS has been steeped in Windows for many years. It won't change overnight (though there have been some vendors being a little more enlightened).

This agreement tends to cover things like desktop licenses as well as server, so there's a lot of churn there, and a lot of cash if you need to track it to the exact license count for circa 4k machines (per hospital) for desktop alone.

Covering licensing areas as part of a deal actually lessens ongoing management costs, saving ongoing money. It also strikes a good deal (1% instead of 30% increase).. Again, this saves money..

It's a simple fact that the government needs to buy servers, and a large portion of those are tied into what vendors will supply (usually Windows, with the odd few Linux/UNIX). This looks like a big saving where necessary purchases are made.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Juillen 1

You mean

A triskele, which has nothing to do with a swastika?

'Shame on the register to post wrong informations'

Juillen 1

Re: Restriction of ideas is silly

Given that most of the ideas had already happened before the model T, your argument lacks any basis.

Advancement would always happen (and there's always the theory that it would happen faster).

The idea of the patent was that someone revealed to everyone how something worked in return for a protection for a limited amount of time, just enough to get them established in the market, before everyone else could join. Prior to this, things were always 'commercial secrets', and jealously guarded. Some great ideas probably perished with their inventors becase the knowledge was lost when they died.

Patents were supposed to get around this, which they certainly helped do. Now, however the misuse of them is rife (certainly in things like software, which should never have been patentable in the first place). This is actively slowing down progress massively and at great cost. Which is exactly the opposite of its intent at origin. Which means that it needs to be re-thought to fit in with the world as it is now, not as it was a few hundred years ago..

Part of the deal in anything would be getting time limitations right (software is museum piece at 25 years, a patent term; this is definitely a serious technical abuse of the system).

Juillen 1
Mushroom

This all ignores the elephant in the room

That is the big media stealing the public domain. They have no ethical right to do this, as it was established to enrich culture for everyone, yet through legal technicalities (and outright bribery), they establish a legal bastion to do exactly this.

Everyone is being deprived of what, not long ago was a fully legal right after a timespan.

Now the deal is being changed in a way too heavy handed way.

For example, you agree to pay something, and the vendor says "We'll have it there in a reasonable time. We expect 3 working days". You shell out your money, and you're happy. The system works.

Then a series of vendors get together, and get a legal argument together and say "Well, actually, your goods won't be delivered to you until next month, as we now have a piece of legislation that says that's reasonable".. Then next month they say "Next year, as that's reasonable". Then you get the message next year "Well, technically, infinity years minus one is reasonable as a technical legal definition, therefore you'll never get your goods. No you're not allowed to change your end of the deal".

Very rough analogy, and I know there are legal ramifications to trying to pull that particular stunt, but this is the kind of trick they're trying to play. We've funded their businesses since copyright was created, a few hundred years ago (and of course, before this, by their argument, nobody would ever have created art would they, without protection of Copyright?) under a basic deal. Someone created a work, and for about 12 years, they could do what they wanted with it. It took most of that time for it to travel across the world! So, effectively, you controlled the work until everyone had bought it, and had a chance to buy it under your deal (set price etc) and nobody was allowed to copy it until it was firmly established in the mind of the populace that it was you who created it.

Now, however, with the erosion of the public domain, it's somehow acceptable for a business entity to control this in perpetuity, always controlling how, or even if, a work is available to anyone, allowing selective culling of culture at a whim, and allowing social engineering on a massive scale. Also for attempts to criminalise and control people who 'bend the rules' (I'm all for taking out commercial pirates, but it rankles to have the big brother eye cast over every single person; the law was never created with this level of control in mind).

What we have now is NOT a fair deal. The original one was, at its time, in its context.

So, when the deal is changed, and you have no control over that, and are told to just sit there and take it, people have no clue as to why some people no longer regard that deal as valid, and ignore it?

Everything is a balance, not black and white. This article paints copyright as black and white, which misses the entire point (spurious logic; base an argument on a false premise, and treat the premise as axiomatic, then hope that nobody spots the flaw isn't in the progressive argument, it's in the base premise, in this case that copyright is a fair deal that should be obeyed).

Copyright is no longer balanced. It certainly isn't fair anymore. If one side chooses not to play fair, why should the other?

Hospitals snap up cloudy storage as disk space runs out

Juillen 1
Meh

It's a start.

NHS IT is often the "Poor Cousin". Most of the staff there consider IT as nothing more than magic lights that come on a screen, and everything happens with a wave of a wand. When competing with resources to make sure patients survive surgery, it's hard to justify why you may need a few hundred grand to store documents and databases.

Until, of course, the documents and databases vanish, and nobody has any idea on what to do with the patients in the clinics in the first place.

Still it's one hospital that's managed to present things as they are: If we don't have this, then things will go badly. You won't have the magic lights on the screen and no amount of wand waving will fix that. And overall, this is the best way to go for cost effectiveness.

Yes, it's very "yesterday" for industry, that actually gets to put its profits back into building infrastructure, and has the scope to hire people to carry on the business. The NHS, currently, is fighting to keep the head above water, and with several projects in there that make things like this look small. But it's a hospital trust, and it's doing the right thing. Personally, I give it a round of applause for what it's achieved. Never underestimate the small steps in doing the right thing.

SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?

Juillen 1

Dangerous slide.

All this talk of 'theft' of intellectual property.. Read:

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Professors-Fight-Over/127700/

This details a case (now resolved, and not in a good way), whereby rights are taken back from the Public Domain and placed back in copyright once they had already, by contract (the original law) been given to the public.

US supreme court has essentially said it can take anything back from the public domain anytime it chooses. There is now no truly effective public domain that can be relied on. And if you say it can't happen, this story tells you the effects of it already having happened. With Disney et. al. chasing more extensions, it'll be easy enough for this to happen again.

Now, depriving someone of something is pretty much the definition of theft. In this case though, it's media corporations that are leaning on the government (using bribery/lobbying) representatives to create laws to get the media corporations what they want. They're using the law as a tool to steal from everyone.

Couple this in with the current state that the US keeps threatening to embargo people that don't harmonise their copyright/patent laws with the US standards, and it sets the scene for a globalisation of this practice.

X-Dream Rocker wireless gaming chair

Juillen 1

I'm more worried

By the built in vibrator (that sends shudders down your lower back).

Official: File-sharing is a religion... in Sweden

Juillen 1

@Eguro

-- Omni-theism was born!

Shouldn't that be Om-nomnomnom-ni-theism?

Study finds piracy withering against legal alternatives

Juillen 1

Juries aren't there to make the law. They're there to determine whether a law has been broken or not. Not whether the law is actually just or even ethical (or even enforceable or workable).

You could have a law written to say you had to, say, euthanise every third born child. In a court, even though the law was unethical and mostrous, a jury would still have to convict if someone was shown to not have euthanised a third born.

But hey, nice straw man.

Juillen 1

Yep, they cried that if home taping was allowed, everyone would record and share, and the movie industry would die.

They lost the court cases, home taping was allowed, and it set the scene for the lion's share of the movie industry income these days.

Now, they're doing exactly the same "Oooo.. Copying anything will mean we'll all go bankrupt. Copying is killing the industry.".

Basically, this story just says "No it's not. Do something people want at a price that's a fair deal and you've nothing to worry about. Try extortion, and people get unhappy with you.".

2012 Games Preview

Juillen 1

Guild Wars 2...

That's due out this year, by all accounts.. It's looking great (out of all the games supposedly out this year, it'd be the one I get, if I only got to choose one).

It's PC only, as far as I'm aware, but well worth mentioning..

Rock star physicist Cox: Neutrinos won't help us cheat time

Juillen 1
Headmaster

Neutrino's what?

Oh, you mean neutrinos plural!

Basement-dwelling BOFH to be sent into Spaaaace

Juillen 1

That's exactly how it's meant to look. Ever encountered the word "Sprezzatura"?

Father-of-three attacked teen after Call of Duty jibes

Juillen 1

Avoid the scrotes?

Hmm.. Maybe I'll send a few to hang round outside your house and throw abuse at you.

Hey, time for you to move. Have them outside your work too? Get another job..

They hang round the places where you go to unwind, and throw even more abuse at you? Stay in your hidden hovel, do nothing, close the doors and windows, and have no life..

Or, you could call them out on it, make them face the consequences of their actions, and have a life.

Actions have consequence; I certainly knew that by my teenage years. If I'd kept yelling abuse at an adult, I'd have expected a clout. I didn't throw abuse, and I didn't get the clout. Fair deal as far as I can see.

Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked

Juillen 1

Come on...

The 'Atlas' contains a set of fact. Exact reproduction of these facts in the same format would breach copyright (i.e. taking sentence extracts, and re-publishing diagrams etc.).

The company did not originate these facts, so would have pulled them from elsewhere. Quite possibly many other elsewheres.

So, one programmer uses a reference book to obtain public information as a quick and accurate reference to produce software that does something else, not competing with that first product.

This is simply reducing the formatted facts back to simple facts (the database), which could have been garnered from the original sources (or any other source that collected them).

So, if this case were to succeed, it would essentially say that any compiled source of freely available facts could not be used (without payment) to compile another set of facts. If facts could be copyrighted (which they can't) then I'd understand (in law) how they could think of starting a lawsuit up, but as it stands, I can't.

If the author hadn't put attribution to what he thought was a good source of compiled information, instead of doing the job from scratch, nobody would have been any the wiser. He tried to do the honourable thing and place attribution. For his efforts, he gets a set of lawyers on his tail.

Net effect, something good is taken away by someone with nothing to put it its place. Hopefully this story will pass around, getting the company a good old PR kicking for being idiots.

Ten reasons why you shouldn't buy an iPhone 5

Juillen 1
Holmes

92 mile hike...

Well, on a long trek, I turn the phone OFF. If someone wants to talk to me, they can leave a message on the voicemail, or drop a text.

When I'm feeling like a bit of communication, I'll turn it ON for a few minutes to see if I've got signal, and if so, if I've got messages.

I've gone two weeks with that strategy, got all the messages I absolutely needed, and made all the calls/texts I needed.

It's called 'thinking'. Yes, having a replaceable battery is 'nice', but a bit of forethought about what you need will see you through better than extra hardware.

Amazon revamps E Ink Kindle line

Juillen 1
FAIL

The touch and fire aren't being released in the UK, or Europe..

Amazon's Silk looks creepily Phorm-ulaic

Juillen 1
Facepalm

Apart from the new wi-fi model, none of the other new models are getting an intro to Europe or the UK.. Shame really, as they were looking interesting..

How gizmo maker's hack outflanked copyright trolls

Juillen 1

Really..

I can't be arsed to have tweets and stuff on my screen while I'm watching a movie.. But I'll be damned if someone tells me that I couldn't if I wanted to.

Science, engineering PhDs to drop by a third

Juillen 1

Wide vs Narrow.

Industry partnerships can fund a wide variety of subjects, but yes, they do need to improve their bottom line.

Where they've identified some research areas that can improve their profitability, they'll invest (and some of those are very unexpected).

Universities can afford to do more blue sky science, as there's far less importance on this research being profitable. Though from this, you find the odd one has commercial applications, and then industry picks it up and delves deeper.

Using the different focusses from different groups is the key. Relying only on one group or focus is a bad way to go.. Losing the wider scope is a problem.

Fujitsu strike to hit back-office across UK.gov

Juillen 1

Pay rise..

Got to love it where the Private sector is out striking over a low pay rise, and the public sector is still in and working with a 2 year pay freeze..

Hey Commentards! [This title is optional]

Juillen 1
Holmes

There isn't. I read it as a humorous repartee, where the joke is truly on those that take it seriously.

Quarter of NHS data collection to go in red-tape slash plan

Juillen 1

At last..

Someone's trying to identify the signal from the noise..

BOFH: Beer, shinies, death by fire, rats IN THAT ORDER

Juillen 1
Headmaster

And no..

Copy/Paste between apps on screens. No moving apps from one screen to another. No moving the one mouse and keyboard easily between them (without hitting KVM switches).

Processing power isn't neccessary on Admin desktops; that's what remote screens to the servers are for (what do you mean, you don't have servers doing your heavy lifting?).

Desktop resilience? What? They should be easily swap in/swap out (nothing stored locally; everything on the servers, replicated and backed up).

One monitor, switchable through a rack of server boxes. One admin desktop box with loads of monitors.

Permissions? Remote desktop, and su (or equavalents).

One box, many monitors for admin work.. Works for me!

After convincing the budget holders that it's the way to go, I no longer have to 'retire' the beancounters to make sure that their machine/monitor count matches the head count in the department.

Will the looters 'loose' their benefits?

Juillen 1

@ John G...

I call straw man on that.

The law works (sort of) because it's mainly reasonable. If you had a hand lopped off for littering, I can guarantee you there would be a huge outcry, and possibly even full civil unrest.

This is more equivalent to "You have to pay a fine for littering", and knowing that. Then someone tells you "Because you dropped so much, this is now under this type of offense, and you now have to pay 5 times the amount".

To the average person, they'd look at the offender and go "You ass. Serves you right, having to pay for the clean up.". You knew there were consequences of a particular nature, and you've just learned a valuable lesson; You up the ante, and so do other people.

As a general rule for getting through life without too much hassle, or falling afoul of the law, I find "Try not to be a dick" works for me.

Juillen 1

There's an old law on the books..

From medieval times that states:

If a froup of more than 35 people gather together for the purposes of destruction, they can be considered an army, and hung for treason.

Juillen 1

@Danny 5

The documented circumstances of behavioural change are significant and bounded; premeditated choice also enters the equation to find yourself in a situation where it could happen.

For rioting and looting: If the country were to grind to a halt, and we were all starving to death (literally), the I strongly suspect that I may be part of a mob in the end (after all, civilization is just a few days full feed from anarchy).

However, with no good reason to riot, and choosing to take luxuries (even kids from the riots have been saying "We're just doing it to prove to the rich and the police that we can"), theyr'e showing they're nothing less than oportunistic scum. There were no great modifiers and circumstance to this; it was premeditated choice.

Videogames caused riots says plod

Juillen 1

Oh come on...

This is a copper being more than a little taken aback at all the violence and uproar..

There's no "Video games cause this", this is more "They're a bunch of scrotes who'd love to be violent, just like in some of the video games".. There is, perhaps a truth to this.. And it's because they're violent scrotes, not because the video games caused them to be that way..

Sony distribution centre engulfed by fire

Juillen 1

You can lead a horse to water..

But you can't make it drink.. Or for that matter, learn..

There's a vast swathe now that know they don't have to work, because all their mates are on the dole, and doing ok.. There's no incentive to better themselves, because they'll always be supported, and nobody is allowed to tell them what to do because "It's a free country" and they have their "Uman Rightz".

They have an education that many countries would envy, and yet they choose not to take advantage of it because it's uncool and difficult.

My mum used to work in a local school.. And there was a creep in there of kids choosing more and more not to work, and be disruptive.. Career choices became more "Well, there's the dole, innit?", drug dealer (a lot of them knew the game quite well by that stage, and made a hellish amount of money; turning up in the latest bling), the gals were convinced there was always prostitution, and they'd be happy selling themselves because they thought it'd be fun to be laid and paid for it "And there's always 'Pretty Woman'..".

Life got increasingly hard for the ones that wanted to work in that environment due to bullying.. And the bullies were the ones that got all the attention (because you couldn't tell them off, you had to bribe them). Tell them off, and they try and get you for abusive behaviour and lodge complaints. It became a badge of cool to cause the most disruption and have no comeback.

And people are surprised that this just spirals into later life?

We've sown the seeds of this (as a society) with good intentions. We're now paying the price..

Google's Facebook: It rocks, but who cares?

Juillen 1

Generally agreed..

But, I work at the end of a commute, and I live in another country to a large set of my friends I've had for years.. Not so easy to drop round to someone several thousand miles away..

There's a place for social network sites, same as there always has been; they're a tool.. Use them as you need to.

Apple ordered to pay $8m over playlist patents

Juillen 1

The biggies

Don't mind playing this game. They have war chests to cover the temporary losses, and they'll only recoup that by suing another big company for lots of money for an infringement of 'their' patent.

While this leaks money to the lawyers, it keeps the merry-go-round of IP law going, with a reasonably predictable 'small' quantity of leakage (legal costs).

It does mean that the small companies can be smacked hard with these same costs, which is enough to put them out of business just trying to defend themselves, and it's these same small businesses that could have the "next big idea" that could overturn the biggies in a year. Far better for them to have reasonably predictable outgoing than lose the company when someone comes up with the better idea. If they can cause the new company to fail, they can buy the better idea for peanuts.

NHS told: freeze all Microsoft spend

Juillen 1

The point is..

The plan was to not keep paying for an 'upgrade path', when all the latest upgrades were on the table already.. That's a year's worth of not paying anything to Microsoft..

So that's already helped.. Then there's the whole "bulk contract" thing.. If everyone is under a bulk contract, you can wave a huge sum at them, which is still cheap for the organisation.. Big enough sum that it's hard for a business to walk away from, yet is still a good deal for the buyer.

I'm thinking that the "facts" aren't something you really have on this, just a few soundbites..

Moderatrix kisses the Reg goodbye

Juillen 1
Pint

Into the wild blue yonder..

Good luck out there! May the times be fun, the mischief leave you (largely) in one piece and the gutters be comfy when you wake after the "investigative evenings out"..

Bloke ordered to remove offensive numberplate

Juillen 1

Surely..

If the Government is so worried about not causing offense, then they'd surely redo the OGC logo (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/19/ogc_logo/).

Far worse, and more graphical than this number plate..

Wonder if offense goes into international? Asked a colleague today why he was grinning so much while playing with iSCSI.. Turns out that LUN is cantonese for Penis..

So next time you see a number plate with LUN on it, complain.. Let's see the recall rate on those!

Juillen 1
Gimp

Ridiculous..

Odds on, you can take offense at almost anything. There should be a fair balance between "grow up and get a sense of humour" and "offensive".

If someone wants to make a bit of an ass of themselves by a humourous numberplate, then fine.. We just need a bit of common sense.

If it's a word that's ever appeared in a song title/band name, and been allowed to be published to the world though the mainstream media without being permanently banned as offensive, then surely the word isn't offensive. Same with being broadcast on TV before "the watershed".

There's an excellent one in my area of the world "H1 2 LAY". Gives me a smirk every time, and brightens up the day.

C'mon DVLA. Grow a pair, and a sense of humour.

Dungeon Siege III

Juillen 1
Alert

Story..

Story is usually the mainstay of any RPG (I was actually fond of the storylines in Guild Wars; I largely chose to play it as a single player RPG with henchmen).

DS3 was lacklustre in this, though not offensively so. An innocuous storyline of "fight the evil/misguided person"; you know what you're getting early on.

Then comes the ability to configure it to your play style. It tanked hard on that (no ability to remap keys.. In this day and age? You're kidding right??)..

Saving: This game uses Save Points.. You what? Really?? This is an evil spawn of the days when there weren't the resources to have regular saves when you thought you needed them (i.e. someone turned up at your door inviting you out for a beer; you don't want to have to say "Hang on for 20 minutes while I find a save point for my game").

Graphically.. About 5 years behind the curve. It's pedestrian at best, but hey, that's the icing on the cake stuff.. I can live with that as long as story, configuration comfort and the rest live up (which they don't).

Definitely agree that the looting is just rubbish. There's not the diversity of the high end gear (is there really any high end gear apart from the last purchase point, and to be honest, that's not that great).

It's a braincandy game that's not truly offensive (apart from the consolitis of the save points and lack of key binding config), but definitely not worth the "new game" price. Pitched at around £15, it'd be a fair(ish) deal, but at around £30? Not really.

Has UK gov lost the census to Lulzsec?

Juillen 1
Holmes

@AC

> What possible value could any body derive from the data?

You're joking? Identity theft heaven, all that data, who you're related to, so on, so forth..

Sony preps refreshed PS3 and talks down PS4

Juillen 1

Easy advancement..

Would be to put back the "Other OS" option and put in PS2 emulation.

NHS Trusts in the dark over CfH licence transfer

Juillen 1

Most things..

Are pretty simple. So what if the NHS uses SQL Server. That doesn't stop Libre Office (data connectors, anybody)?

The conversion of Word & Excel to Libre Office would be the interesting bit (not sure how compliant macro conversion is in Excel).

Most docs however are pretty vanilla.

Page: