Re: airplane mode

Nope. As well as the cell tower thing registration being an active function and the phone's radio power being a function of signal strength from the tower, iPhones are no different to any other - all four I've owned have all drained battery faster in low signal situations, such as my house's downstairs where I get 0/1/2 bars depending on exact location and phone orientation! As have all other phones I've had over the years, from fancy Nokia S80/S60 and RIMs to ye old Nokia/Moto/Sony-Ericsson dumbphones. It's how cell radio works, there's no way around it.

Locations with zero signal are somewhat different to low signal - I get that a lot too, as I do a lot of walking in the middle of nowhere with no reception. The iPhones all seem to handle that better than one-bar reception, and also better than my lass's Nexus 4 which drains as fast in no-bars as in a one-bar area. Given the spread of Android devices I'm not going to make any general statement about them from that one anecdote, though.

Re: Thanks Matthew Smith

Me too. Seen this? The lad's back in the game:

http://matthewsmith.elite-systems.co.uk/

I've noticed this too

I blame it on Windows being worse at disk caching than any of the host operating systems, so Windows in a VM gains performance from the host leaving much more of the virtual disk in RAM.

Re: I'm confused though

It's to show that the wings really are as 'clean' as they appear to be, because retinal cells will only survive in a really clean environment. Which is why puncturing an eye even a tiny bit so often leads to blindness with minimal contamination.

Re: How the ribbon was chosen?

Steven Sinofsky, according to http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/30/office_2013_perspective/ - so yes, really.

Re: @Alistair

Or just bang the lot on an SSD (plus a spindle for the backups) and leave it be.

Re: Evil Genius

I have known people for whom the ribbon actually works - I suspect it's that they're following one of the ~sixish workflows that the ribbon is designed to support.

For eeryone else, it's a bag of arse. My own WP work always means chopping and changing between different ribbons, so it's a complete nonsense. So I gave up on Word, except for when adding review comments to someone else's doc (which I think is one of those workflows).

Re: @AC 11:48GMT - Apple seem to manage ok

Apple's EFI is barebones - good at local and network (inc wifi) bootups and handling fully encrypted boot volumes, but very little more. Nothing like a full UEFI - although you can install a third party one if you wish.

Re: Another cog in the Great Green Swindle

$2.5m? That's absolutely peanuts compared to the amount of tax credits big companies are given by the NC authorities to move in and set up shop. And incidentally pay thousands of locals a living wage.

Re: Nice solar array

North Carolina is about 90% trees - it's an amazing place to fly low over, and I've taken a lot of wide-angle tourist photos from mountain viewpoints there, where all you can see is undulating forest to the horizon.

This is (to mix a metaphor) a drop in the ocean in terms of tree reduction.

Re: Marketing nonsense

Nonsense yourself - it's a function of how many photons you can get striking each pixel. Larger pixels == more photons == more data samples == less noise.

Sensor size *with res* is a surrogate measurement for pixel size. It's easier talking about a half inch 8Mpixel sensor than 1.3nm pixels.

The difference is that he *owns* the store, and every lemming in there is another kaching for him.

Re: What's funny...

As to reselling of downloaded software - Germany is leading the charge on this, very kindly:

http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-cannot-block-the-resale-of-its-software-in-europe-7000000189/

Following which, they're currently suing Valve (take on the big boys first!) for not allowing reselling:

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2013/02/02/valve_sued_in_germany_over_used_game_sales

Re: Download, upload, sideload...

The biggest useful thing about consoles is that they're *not* possible to upgrade. This gives the software developers a clear and solid target to aim for, even over a three-year development cycle, so they can squeeze every last drop of performance from it (which is what we're seeing now with the latest Xbox360 and PS3 titles). It also means all users have the same basic kit, removing possibilities of driver issues, out-of-resource issues, and cutting QA down massively. Also enables console-wide services like the Friends system, Xbox Live Chat and so on - although Steam has brought much of that across to the PC too, hurrah!

(On the downside, it also means that otherwise interesting addons (Move, Kinect, erm...) tend to die because without 100% deployment no devs want to really commit to them. Which is why the PSN chat facility is never used - no headset in the box)

I had an amusing call-in to BT once for that:

"Hello, how can I help?"

"Hi, I'm calling about my very noisy line"

"Could you repeat that? There seems to be a lot of noise and it's hard to hear you"

"Yes, that's right"

"Could you rep.... Oh, I see. We'll schedule an engineer and call you back with a date"

"Thanks!"

It sounded like gravel in a washing machine, but the ADSL was still chugging along at about 1mbit/sec (down from its usual 4mbit/sec) which was pretty impressive.

Re: 1.5kw??

You should sit down with a scrap of paper and work out how quickly a cheapy modern ~100W PC would pay itself back...

Re: I had a 2 lb laptop in 1995

The Fujitsu LifeBook series - they were great. Still got a B142 kicking around somewhere, pretty RAM limited these days.

Got an Air in 2007, and that was a bucketload better...

Re: At least it's not win8...

Not really. Pretty much every laptop you can buy over £300 nowadays is overly capable for the needs of 95% of users, so when you've got a choice of hundreds of possible machines that would suit you why not get something pretty?

It sells MacBooks by the million, and it works for Tosh, Samsung and Sony too.

Re: You are missing something

Defensegrid and other games aren't "OS tied" - they're only written to run on that OS. It's an utterly different thing.

Steam Play games = buy a game once, play on all of Windows/Linux/Mac that they'll run on.

I don't know why people bother with tiny form factors when they've got a foot or two of space behind a 46" screen to use up. Use a mini tower and decent quiet cooling, job done.

Re: iPhones

The grilfiend drops her iPhone regularly, and keeps it in her bag with keys, work badge and other scratchy things. No breakage, no scratches. Dinged corners, though. (Her battery lasts six days - it's my original '07 iPhone with the original battery)

I've thrown my iPhone 4 at concrete due to pocket mishaps at least four times, as well as various MTB off-road crashes and other softer impacts. Pitted steel corners, a rough patch on the plastic trim, and one small scratch on the back. (2.5 day battery, unless I use GPS which eats ~15% per hour)

On the other side, I've seen someone drop a 4s on carpet and shatter the front, it was only a month old too. Am I lucky, or are they unlucky? Shrug.

Re: Compatible?

It runs existing Wii games perfectly, apparently.

There are moves afoot to let you move your existing Wii download/VC/Wii content over to it too.

But if you just want a Wii, get one - they're a third of the price of a Wii U (and will also play Gamecube games if you get the older, squarer model).

Re: Missed the boat ?

"Replace"? You might choose to *supplement* your existing setup with a Wii U if there are games for it that you want to play.

I'll get one when Pikmin 3 comes out next summer or so, I expect.

Re: I disagree

Granted (probably - we don't have actual figures, remember!). But the whole market and development methods are different between a handheld and a big 3D AAA title.

And it's the cost of the latter which is putting large numbers of development studios down the shitter. Who's winning? No one.

Re: The flaw in your argument....

> Wireless HDMI

See also Apple's Airplay. Throw your iThing screen to the TV via an AppleTV blob.

Re: I disagree

This would be the Angry Birds made by Rovio, who currently are reckoned to have a market cap somewhere around $6-$9 billion? They just released a new Angry Birds, and:

"Just two and a half hours after its November 8 release, "Angry Birds Star Wars" rose to the No. 1 paid iPhone app and the top grossing iPhone app in the U.S. Apple App Store, according to Ville Heijari, Rovio's SVP-brand marketing."

They don't release actual figures unfortunately, but that doesn't include Android sales which were higher (but worth less).

Big money in them thar handhelds.

Re: As far as I'm aware, "GPS" won't work underground.

C'mon, Rob - you could at least glance at the pictures if you're not going to read the article. They - and the video - confirm that it is indeed surface mining.

Re: Amiga connection

No, REXX was an open language and AREXX was written without IBM involvement or any need for licensing.

I've never heard of Workbench being licensed out (which doesn't mean it wasn't!).

Re: Portable Consoles, maybe..

The 3DS hasn't had poor sales. After a not very shaky start, from Q2 after launch it has consistently sold more units than the DS did in the same time-since-launch, which makes it better selling than the best selling handheld console ever...

Nintendo's Wii was the best selling of the PS3/X360/Wii triumvirate. And every one of them sold made Nintendo money, quite the opposite of MS and Sony. We'll see how the WiiU goes - but it's selling out rapidly so far, and more than the Wii did (because there are more units available!).

That's why Nintendo aren't getting out of the hardware business, and are in a silent battle against iOS/Android for portable gaming. They can't possibly win, but they are likely to hold their own and keep the niche IMHO.

Re: Whatever any PS3 owner does this year...

There's some vague possibility it'll come out on disk at some point - the PSN store game identifies itself as "Okami HD - Download Version" once installed. The implication is there, but whether that'll come to pass is another matter.

Sorry to say that it's absolutely ace. I bought my first PS2 (rather late!) in to play the original, and this remaster is definitely better. It's better than the Wii version too - although I liked the brushwork most on the Wii, the other controls were pants.

Re: 68000 m³

Correction to the correction - a not very radioactive cube of 41m in each side equals about 1 Sellafield.

There was indeed

http://www.reghardware.com/2012/10/16/mike_singleton_dies/

Gollop's remaking Chaos as well, to add another classic.