Posts by ElectricFox

A new Register unit of measurement?

To put that figure into perspective, there are nearly six times as many people living on Easter Island (or Rapa Nui, if you prefer) than were actively testing the Windows 8 version of Firefox.

"Entrants also need to be careful that the logo is one that can be pronounced in other European languages, not just in English."

Probably why they didn't choose a Glaswegian:

"Jimmy in Flight", or JIF for short...

Factual

I used to love it in the early days, when they put religious programming under the "Factual" category!

DRM has done a lot of damage to purchasing digital music.

See the icon -------------------------->

BBC2 and BBC4 “spread too little money over too much,” and one of the two spectrum-hogging channels could go.

BBC4 is one of the best channels that came out on freeview. Especially when you compare it to the trash that's on BBC3...

One for all and all for one!

Fact is, it should be an all or nothing implementation. Who will hold you at knife-point and decide whether to steal your phone, or not, based on whether it can be remotely bricked? They might realise it's not worth stealing a NZ$24 phone, but a shiney touchy black mirror; they'll take it and flog it for whatever it's worth. Make them all lock-down-able ; or else don't bother at all.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YOU MEAN THE VALUE OF BITCOIN CAN FALL?

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Personally, I'd have nominated Eadon for his enthusiasm alone...

Is it just me, or do those crocodile clips look like heavy duty jump leads?

Dear Esther

Don't know about you guys, but I'm still hopelessly stuck in the caves level in Dear Esther. Now that's a hardcore game...

"You don't want to be left with all the cards at the end of the game."

Brilliant line!

Adverts

Interesting that this article doesn't bring up the thorny issue of advertising. I never took out a Sky subscription after sharing one in a student flat. You're paying extortionate fees for advert-riddled television. Many parents will only put BBC children's TV on for their kids, because they're all too aware of the power that adverts wield over young impressionable kids. Whatever the BBC decides to do; please, for goodness sake, don't introduce adverts and kill the golden goose.

Christmas shopping in town? See the icon... Fighting your way through crowds of people trying to find presents based on what's on offer in meatspace. I also increasingly find that staff in shops know bugger all about what they're selling. I bought all my stuff online with zero hastle.

Working out how much this will cost in electricity per hour, and factoring the cost of the hardware is easy enough. Unfortunately, the value of bitcoin is so volatile, and the algorithms to mine new coins gets increasingly difficult (though I believe the latter is reactionary to the evolution of technology, and the number of people employed in mining, so it's not possible to predict). Therefore, there's no way of estimating, or guaranteeing when, or indeed if you'll ever get your money back.

I could see bitcoin mining installed in place of electrical heating (radiators, swimming pools, etc), then you could argue that the energy is being put to better use than heating a resistive element....

A great article. I can only dream as I was at the beginning of IT becoming an MS word subject. There are 2 points you make that I would argue with however:

"pointless subject like French"

Modern languages are considered one of the hardest humanities subjects to learn, and are probably one of the more useful "soft" skills to someone pursuing an unrelated career. The few British employees that speak fluent foreign languages as a side skill are generally well respected for this in companies, especially those dealing with international trade. Modern languages are probably the only formal training kids get in grammar these days as my English was entirely dominated by poetry and Shakespeare.

"The current ICT syllabus is designed on the basis of inclusiveness, dumbed down so that any child can learn it and so that ICT can be taught by someone with no qualification in the subject."

All school subjects seem to teach to mediocrity, and I've been taught many other subjects by teachers that hadn't studied that subject past gcse, but they were bright people and could pick up what they needed to know to teach. I feel that kids are streamed into abilites to late, and should be allowed to specialise into subjects that interest them more at an earlier age. I think they should bring back the 11+ system to bring back vocational schools and subjects. There may even be an argument for permanently. The amount of teaching time I had wasted on disruptive kids because the lessons were too easy/hard/not interesting to a 14 year old was pretty shocking.

Again, other than that, thanks for a great article!

There was one terrible puzzle in Alone in the Dark which I can't believe was left in. Spoiler alert...

You have to remove the wedge from some beer barrels in the cellar to uncover a secret passage to the caves under the mansion. If you go into this passage from the cellar, you get eaten by a zombie worm. However, when escaping the caves at the very end of the game, you have to do it through this passageway. If you didn't clear the barrels half way through the game, you get stuck on the final "run" out of the mansion and have to play half the game again to put it right.

That aside, what an epic game. Tres bien fait!

I know you're in Spain for Lohan

But what's the IT angle on this?

Well thank god the Register's forums are here to take up the slack!

How useful!

Your car automatically avoids that plastic bag that just blew in from your peripheral vision and steers into a concrete bollard instead....

My major fear

Is that very small quantities of our GDP are being put into science and engineering research to develop alternatives to fossil fuels. I fear the social disorder from sky high energy prices (gas, electricity, diesel, petrol) than I do any of the environmental concerns of fracking.

Fracking, tax cuts, drilling the arctic: it's only postponing the shortages, not addressing the root cause.

Nuclear because....

</rant>

They're here!

Hmm, looks like an alien seedship to me. Good job they got it out of that field before it spawned more experiments! Great story.

Display

This is where I think the Wii U got it wrong: a massive screen on one controller only. By putting a small cheap(ish) screen on each controller, you can have a private window for sociable strategy games played competitively around one big screen. I can see this being a real plus for bringing many popular board games to the television where you don't spend forever faffing about with little pieces.

Regarding the trackpads, I suspect Valve has put a lot of testing, polish and thought into this, and dismissed many other possibilities that they were researching in favour of them. Finally, regarding cost, because this is all open source hardware, you can bring your own controller round to a mate's for a gaming session on a PC, or any number of steam consoles that will be released next year.

He made such a long lasting cultural impact.

1-Up

"Metro-friendly"

aka Micky Mouse edition...

What happens if the premises floods or burns down taking all your data with it?

"[or]else new music producers should be bold and vote with their feet."

Like many potential customers already do with the industry already.

Overpriced music

little of this going to the artists

DRM

128 kbit/s mp3 downloads

...

...

"Wrestling back a Microsoft splitter is "incredibly painful"

Indeed, it is painful for the (ex)customer.

I always used to wonder why the French used the same word for "electronic chip" as for "fleas".

[The grammar Nazi is also interested in etymology....]

We know it's finally out when we hear it shout:

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!

Steam Box

I, for one, am waiting to see what Valve do with the Steam Box. I think it's a pretty good platform on the PC, though I rarely pay over £10 for a game. On the plus side, they'll probably have a lot of support for alternative games from indie developers rather than the overdone fps, racing and sport games. I've bought quite a few of these and have often gone over to friends' houses, logged into my account, download a 150 Mbyte game and have a good multiplayer session.

If the PC Steam client is anything to go by, the Steam Box will be download only, no trading and the same sort of DRM on Steam. A lot of people (myself included) accept this on their PCs, so this is how it will likely break out into the console market.

I expect Valve are watching the Xbox180 quite closely.