* Posts by Thomas 4

1519 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

El Reg takes man for romantic weekend for two at Intel chip factory

Thomas 4
Trollface

"which is rated even more highly than the average Andrew Orlowski story on The Register"

Not exactly a glowing endorsement then.

Red Cross: 600m videogamers may be war criminals

Thomas 4

Uh-huh

So the Red Cross are against me killing people in online gaming but are cool with RAMPANT ANIMAL CRUELTY?

I shall now say something that has never been said before and will never be said again: Where are PETA when you need them?

Taxpayers to cough more for multi-billion pound failed NHS IT project

Thomas 4
IT Angle

Holy shit

So the contractors could, in fact, spend the entire time playing on a colossal Doom LAN, be paid £2bn to do so and it won't matter a damn because the project's been scrapped?

I'm seriously in the wrong line of work.

Rainbow Islands

Thomas 4

Oooo

I remember Rodland - you played some sort of pixie girl with giant pink hair if memory serves....

Thomas 4

Just out of curiousity

Did *anyone* managed to find all the different coloured gems? There was always *one* I was missing and it was bloody aggrivating.

One thing I regret about this game and Bubble Bobble was that I never had the chance to try multiplayer.

Retailer reveals Nokia Lumia 710 UK debut date

Thomas 4
Coffee/keyboard

Jesus Christ, that's even fuglier than the UI

...and given it's running Win Phone 7 .5, that's one hell of an achievement.

Mythbusters cannonball ‘myth-fires’

Thomas 4
Thumb Up

Ditto

Exploding science is the best kind of science. Looking forward to this episode.

Oedipal shower romp wins crap sex award

Thomas 4
IT Angle

As an audiologist

I can safely say that I have never had to put a set of headphones on a vagina. I have however, heard rumours of female colleagues experimenting with the vibrating bone conductor though....

ICO smacks Welsh council with record £130k fine

Thomas 4
FAIL

Your criticisms have been taken on board

....and will be heaved over the side the next opportunity we get.

Thieves plunder apartment for Facebook booty

Thomas 4

What's the problem?

Just wait for the crims to start bragging about their shiny new gear in Twitter.

Japan, Russia in plan for elephant to birth CLONE MAMMOTH

Thomas 4

Slightly confused

Are we talking about the Dire Wolfs from Battletech with dual PPCs and an LRM40 rack?

Good luck hunting one of those.

Thomas 4

Apparently

A team did manage to successfully clone a mammoth but then the scientists got one-shotted by a pissed off giant.

Thomas 4

Know what else isn't funny?

9. Psion palmtops

Facebook disses Effin Irishwoman

Thomas 4
Pint

Yeah.

I laughed my ass off at the limerick. XD

Geek seeks cash for Top Trumps-style CPU game

Thomas 4
Boffin

Fuck yes

This is so unbelievably geeky - I MUST HAVE ONE!

HP CEO to reveal fate of WebOS in two weeks

Thomas 4
Mushroom

Seems familiar

"We need to have another operating system"

"We need to have another operating system"

"We need to have another operating system"

WHY? Seriously, what is this new magical operating system going to do that WebOS was incapable of doing?! Or are you just going to buy up another perfrectly good OS to torpedo *that* as well?!

Jesus Christ, please tell me HP managers aren't allowed to breed otherwise the overall intelligence of the human race is going to drop a few notches in a couple of generations.

PROVEN: Violent video games mess with your head

Thomas 4

I have no strong feelings one way or the other about this test.

It's probably because I play a lot of violent video games and therefore have no empathy any more. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to torture small children and cute fuzzy animals.

Fahrenheit 451 published as Bradbury finally succumbs to ebooks

Thomas 4

Read them on an iPhone 4

They set fire to themselves. Most convenient.

Hands on with Star Wars: The Old Republic

Thomas 4

A caveat on Light Side/Dark Side

Certain equipment has restrictions depending on how far you've gone with either Light/Dark conversation choices (for example, one of the equipment vendors in Dromund Kaas would only sell me a set of gloves if I met the Dark I criteria). I also believe that later dialogue choices also have Dark / Light options, again, once you've met specific ranks.

Ravens' secret sign code probed

Thomas 4

Interesting

So it's like Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, with 3 twitches and a nod for "Timmy's fallen off a cliff" & 2 twitches and a croak for "Oh boy, free lunch!"

The TARDIS through the ages

Thomas 4

Why the rage at the end?

After all the American Dr Who movie featuring Paul McGann was a fantastic, well scripted film that paid all due care and homage to the series.

(Your new sarcasm detectors are in the post, sorry about the overload.)

We need IT to stop NHS flushing away cash - ex-Health Sec

Thomas 4
IT Angle

Wow, this is a really good idea!

Maybe we could implement it on a country-wide scale and call it a National Program for IT 2, because the first one worked out really well, didn't it.

Jarmageddon: Marmite spill sparks biohazard threat

Thomas 4

It's all a conspiracy

MarM1te.

Do I need to spell out the connection?

Virtually indestructible robostarfish penetrates tiny cracks

Thomas 4
IT Angle

Heh...

Now the next time the girl in your life accuses you of having wandering hands, you've got someone to pin the blame on.

13 MILLION gamers in ID theft scare after Nexon breach

Thomas 4

Why can't this happen to more deserving companies...

...like UbiSoft, for example.

Ice Cream Sandwich

Thomas 4

It could be worse

It could look like Mango.

Moviemakers on a quest for their real-time 3D Holy Grail

Thomas 4
Boffin

Reminds me of another blast from the past

The "Driller" and "Total Eclipse" games for the 8-bits, using one of the first true 3D engines at the time, called Freescape. The movement in the games was glacial at best and it a long time for the character to turn around....

....but's from slow, small scale stuff that comes the likes of Skyrim and Battlefield. I'm not saying that 3D today is awesome (because frankly Avatar was fine in 2D for me and Conan 3D got on my nerves after a while) but it's only by building on existing technology that we get new technology.

Climategate: A symptom of driving science off a cliff

Thomas 4

Very poor reporting

So does chutney cause cancer or not?!

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

Thomas 4

Very well

By analysing Twitter, we can deduce that stupidity travels faster than the speed of sound, using a set of particles known as morons.

Fragged, fragged and thrice fragged! 20 years of id Software’s Doom

Thomas 4
Thumb Up

Yup, I remember that one

'twas in Doom 2. It was a Spider Mastermind and a CyberDemon (I think, it's been a while). I liked the level where you had a Baron of Hell giving a lecture to a room full of soldiers. Walk in, Baron spots you, carnage ensues.

Good times.

Thomas 4

The id legacy

Hmmm, I dunno if I can really see Doom and it's ilk with the same hint of nostalgia.

Wolfenstein 3D, for me at least was an exercise in frustration - no maps, no easy way of finding hidden sections of wall aside from just spamming the use button everywhere and the shared ammo system for every weapon meant that once you had the next one up (e.g. machine gun to chain gun) you never used it's predecessor again.

Doom 1 was good for the reasons stated in the article, although sadly I never got to play deathmatch. Doom 2 was a mixed bag for me. It seems like the level designers had a lot more fun this time around, with lots of evil tricks (e.g. a plasma rifle beneath a huge slab of falling rock should you attempt to pick it up, turning the demons against each other). That said, there were some glaring issues with it - certain levels were nothing more than meat grinders without much strategy or design involved. Only one new weapon was added and some of the new creatures were just downright annoying (the resurrecting, flame spamming Archvile springs to mind).

It wasn't until Doom 3 that I genuinely felt The Fear, playing with the sound up and lights down. It seemed like more thought had gone into creating a realistic space environment, harking back to Doom 1 and then a lot more thought had gone into making afforementioned environment as laundry soiling as possible. The business with the endless keypads and numbers was a bit much.

WinPho sceptics cut Lumia 800 sales estimates in half

Thomas 4
Meh

I'm not convinced

Nokia used to have some amazing phone diversity and were always ready to try a different riff on a design. If all they can do now is crank out generic blackslab after generic blackslab, either due to Winphone restrictions or other factors, they are doomed. The Nokia name won't be enough to carry them against Samsung, Apple & HTC.

Erotica 2011 stands firm against rise of the sex machines

Thomas 4

You

...weren't the only one...

Pro-game MP rewrites Modern Warfare censure motion

Thomas 4

One to watch

This isn't the first time Tom Watson has spoken up on behalf of games. I vaguely recall his name being mentioned in the Manhunt 2 debacle with a pro-gamer view.

It's strange to find an MP that actively champions a cause I have an interest in.

Engineers seek funds for world’s largest Tesla coil

Thomas 4

All well and good

...but how is it at frying Allied tanks and people called Tanya?

Poll: One in six interrupt bonking to answer mobile

Thomas 4
Unhappy

I'm about to spend tonight on the couch as I post this,

Nuclear power will let NASA Mars rover beat 1970s Soviet record

Thomas 4

Question

Inherently unlikely I know, but would this thing be emitting any sort of external radiation at all? It would be shame if any Martian sand-plankton got fried as soon as Curiousity scooped it up. I'm just curious* as to how they get the heat circulation without the issue of radiation.

*sorry.

Superhero oil-burping algae will save the world

Thomas 4

True

...the other angle is the economic one. Once the bacteria enters mainstream production, the price of oil will nosedive spectacularly. For countries whose currency is closely linked to oil values, such as the USA and Middle East, the effect will be much like a European country suddenly discovering it can't actually pay back its loans.

Interesting times await ahead but I wish I could see them from a less invested point of view.

Man sues boss for 'condemning him to eternal damnation'

Thomas 4

I worked with this guy once

You should have seen the kerfuffle that happened when I had Iron Maiden on the radio.

-.-

Punters hate copyright, says Steelie Neelie

Thomas 4
Thumb Up

Fascinating read

Neatly hits the nail on the head.

Brussels: Water cannot be sold as remedy for dehydration

Thomas 4
FAIL

"Dehydration is a disease"

This is the most prepostorous bullshit I've ever heard and this is coming from someone that used to read the Daily Mail.

A close second is the fact that it took them 3 years to arrive at this conclusion.

US nuclear aircraft carrier George Bush crippled by toilet outages

Thomas 4
Coat

Indeed.

A really piss-poor piece of engineering; the engineers did a crap job and are probably not flushed with success right now.

Couple rewarded for naming newborn after Elder Scrolls Skyrim hero

Thomas 4
Unhappy

The thing is

If the child was given this name in Scandinavia, he could probably get away with it without too much hassle.

In middletown America? It's just asking to get the shit kicked out you. Poor bastard - a bad name can ruin a guy's life. Trust me on this.

PETA claims anti-Mario campaign was a joke

Thomas 4
Thumb Up

@Silverburn

Damn straight. I've got a packet of veal cutlets in one pocket and a slab of venison in the other.

Swedish college girls now twice as slutty as in 2001

Thomas 4

All well and good

...but eleven partners at once? You'd end up getting shagged to death before the coffee got cold.

Oo

Kindle Fire gets root access

Thomas 4

Pfff

And that link is supposed to pass for an IT news website?

Stripper nicked for 'nicking knickers' with kids in tow

Thomas 4

I agree

It seemed a bit pants to me.

Reg man the most-flamed recruiter in the UK?

Thomas 4
IT Angle

Another article from Dom?

Yay! Another chance for a FotW!

Samsung pulls Galaxy Tab Android 3.2 update

Thomas 4

It's not a bug

It's an energy saving feature designed to draw customers that have been having issues with iOS 5.0.1.

;)

Irish woman doesn't go down after scrotum ripping assault

Thomas 4

Wow

Real balls-up for justice there. It's nuts she only got a suspended sentence. He's going to have trouble in the sack for quite a while.