Posts by Andy Worth

All it proves....

....is that people will buy any old shit, if it's pushed in front of their faces. It certainly says something when people can't even be bothered to download it when they could get it for free.

Every time.....

Every time there's a story about Blu-ray/HD-DVD there are scores of comments from people crowing about how HD-DVD is region free, and every time they are just as pointless. HD-DVD is not region free, it has region encoding built into the spec.

From memory, DVD players used to be able to be sold without being region locked, but then eventually legislation was passed to say that every player sold had to be region locked. Of course, you could still "hack" a large number of them, but that meant playing with firmware or somehow invalidating your warranty in a lot of cases. If HD-DVD won the format "war", very soon you'd find that the region encoding would be forced on, and it would be naive to believe otherwise.

As for not counting PS3's in Blu-Ray player stats, well that's ridiculous really. Granted, some people may never use their PS3 to play Blu-Ray films, but I think as the media prices drop a little, more will be tempted away from SD DVD's.

Either way, HD formats will never be the "runaway success" that DVD's were.

"military" band

What Ofcom have to remember, when demanding back the military bands, is that the military have more guns than they do :)

@ Mark Davies

"When is somebody going to challenge the Tory party's complete lack of IT understanding?"

Probably if/when they get into power and can be blamed for IT screw-ups on the same level as the ones circulating various government departments at the moment.

Re:How do people fall for this??

Perhaps because they are stupid and/or greedy? Sometimes people are blinded by the dollar signs appearing in front of their eyes.

Sony - lol

I seem to remember when the rumour appeared, Sony denied it and someone here said "that meant it would probably happen". Just made me chuckle at the way Sony work.

Re: @Andy Worth

The main point I was trying to get across is that I take issue with people who just naturally expect me to answer my mobile at any time of day or night. I still have a life after all......

@ Charles Manning - I'd never drive and take a dump at the same time, come to think of it, I'd never shag and take a dump at the same time.....it may be some peoples bag but it doesn't turn me on....

@ Rob Haswell - I'd hazard a guess at driving.....after all we're all law abiding citizens here aren't we and it's the only one (as far as I know?) that there is a law to prevent ;)

@ Paul Smith - I still don't see it as being much more distracting as talking to a passenger. After all, if you're looking at their other "signals" then you're not concentrating on the road, so all you should be paying attention to is their voice, much like on a phone call. I guess we can agree to disagree on this one until some valid unbiased research proves one way or the other. My reasoning though is that in 16 years of driving I've had two (minor) accidents, both happened when I was distracted from the road by my passenger. I'm not trying to defend mobile phone usage while driving (after all you can choose not to answer your mobile), I'm just saying that it's just one of many evils that distract drivers from the task at hand.

Erin Brockovich

I can only assume is the lead attorney? Actually, joking aside, if they've been doing it then they deserve a good roasting.

Dear OLPC

My am name is Prince Olobu Cashsteal and I must inform about you for the amount 20 million dollar US available. In order complete transaction financial I ask only for amount of......

blah....got bored.

"Alternatives"

Been using both alternative codecs for a while now, much preferable to the bloatware that is Realplayer/Quicktime.

Re: ...and the risk indeed!

To be fair, I still haven't seen a scientific study proving that wanking doesn't give you hairy palms/make you go blind - but there you go. I'm sure you're one of these people who believes that mobile phones blow up petrol stations as well just because someone says it does, and there's no absolute proof that it doesn't (many more sparks are caused by clothing static, particularly with man-made fibre like nylon).

It's true, there might "possibly" be a health risk associated with using mobile phones, but then living in a country where only around 1 in 5 people eat a proper diet, with a high proportion of smokers and drinkers, masses of road traffic and about a million other things a day that might kill you, it's really probably not worth shitting your pants over.

Personal thought

Well, personally I think that any invasive reporting software like this should have an official "spyware" title attributed to it, and in their privacy statement the very first line should have to be "THIS IS SPYWARE". It'll never happen though, and companies will be allowed to continue to dump invasive software onto your machines with the minimum of warning (or by hiding the warning in a huge document, somewhere, that they know no-one will read properly).

Of course, personally anything that suggests it is going to install software on my PC would be a case of "I'm shopping elsewhere" but there you go.

Lol

Transformers was "alright" as far as films go, I mean I didn't claw my own eyes out rather than continue watching it, but it only got the acclaim it did because it's "Transformers". What I mean is that as a film it was slightly above average at best, but there were a lot of sweaty-palmed nerds jizzing into their socks over the film a year before it was even released.

300 was better, but I'm not sure about best movie of the year. Then again I haven't watched anything in 2007 that made me go "Oh wow!".

Minority Report

Oh just to be pedantic....In Minority Report he doesn't use a stolen eyeball to access the secure area, in fact he uses his OWN eyeball after they have been removed and swapped. He then proceeds to drop his eyeball which rolls down into some sort of grate.

It's a shame.....

Despite all the great equipment they sell, they don't seem to have anything available that claims to prevent you from being ripped off.

It actually annoyed me......

I've lived in MK for the last 11 years, with a couple of years in Northants stuck in the middle there somewhere. I remember when I used to bother with the NTL cable tv service and I saw the (at the time) new cable broadband being rolled out in various parts of the country. I contacted NTL who told me that the cable in our area was "too old" to support cable modem.

I lived in a house in one of the shittest areas of Wellingborough (of which even the best parts are barely adequate) and had 20Mb cable, which I DID get reliable speeds from. I move back to a much newer place, only to find that the infrastructure still forces me to use DSL, which just does not compare favourably to my old cable connection.

I have no idea if this WiMax shit will work, and I doubt very much that I'll be involved. But I just wanted to have my tuppence worth about how shit the infrastructure here is.

Re: Kudos

Sorry, but being dressed up as a fucking Smurf gives someone every right to be patronising. She probably expected that given that he was painted blue and wearing stupid clothes that he might have some kind of sense of humour, but evidently he went out of the house and forgot about what he was wearing.

Sorry but if I dress up in a stupid costume (say for example as a giant chicken), I'd expect a healthy amount of patronisation and sarcasm. Just because the bloke is short shouldn't change his expectations of how people will react. In fact, it'd be more prejudice NOT to take the piss, given that you would out of a person of average height in the same costume.

In other words, I completely agree with "yeah, right"

Why?

Well you see, I understand that they print the bible on a chip "because they can", but why then print it onto a 7m by 7m poster? Doesn't that really defeat the object?

In my opinion, it could only be akin to removing your cock from your trousers and slapping it in everyones face who passes by.

@ Andy

I have to agree with my fellow Andy here - very selective sensitivity. I wonder how many women he's asked if they want to see his hot rod? I just dread the fact that the UK is fast following the trend of becoming a "sue-culture".

Lol at punchlines

I gather we're all HAPPY that XP is not as crap as Vista?

Oh and the version we've seen is a release candidate, so a step past a beta afaik.

Rubbish......

.....is exactly what this game will be. Some would say that arrangements might have been made for the censors to make a fuss about it, just to get the game some publicity. The only way they'll get people to buy it is to make them feel "rebellious" doing so, as no-one would buy it on its own merits.

I see your lips moving...

....and all I hear is "Blah Blah Blah". Seriously I see all the 360 vs PS3 vs Wii arguments and it makes me laugh. I've played all three consoles and all three have their own benefits, and drawbacks.

The 360, first of all, while they fixed the overheating problem in the later generation, most people still own the original ones, and are still experiencing the issue. It sounds like a jet engine (even the new model - which is a HUGE oversight from MS) and does not come with a built in HDDVD drive - meaning you have to have an extra bit of kit dangling off it to play them, and is missing wireless networking, unless you spunk another £50 on the kit. On the plus points it has an excellent, wide selection of games (some of which are excellent), is "middle of the road" in pricing and very good graphically.

The PS3 has, at the moment, still some issues with the variety of decent games available (although it IS improving at the moment). It is also still (at this time) missing Blu-Ray 1.1 support, although that has been promised this month, and is the most expensive of the three. I also wouldn't buy the crippled 40GB version. On the plus side it has some refinements that the 360 doesn't - such as just whispering in comparison, built in wireless networking and Blu-Ray player, and the decent games are beginning to come. It also, in theory, has more potential graphically than the 360, although not many developers have managed to take advantage of this yet.

The Wii has, by todays standards, poor graphics, no HD player, and I would say very limited scope for improvement. The range of games for it, in MY opinion is pretty poor, as I could never stand most Nintendo games. However, the console was never aimed at the hardcore gamer - it is more of a family console, and is the cheapest of the three, being affordable for more people. Really the Wii is aimed at a different market to the other two.

So the arguments of "which is better" are pointless as the result depends entirely on what you want out of your console. I'm sure Sony won't be too upset by still selling half a million PS2's a month though, considering they make a tasty profit on each one. I seem to remember it took quite a long time for the PS2 to REALLY take off when it came out, as no-one could write games properly for it at first. Oh, the same with the original Xbox as well - which survived mostly due to Halo in its early days.

Morons...

I hope that the people responsible are someday under real armed assault and desperately in need of a SWAT team, who will be unfortunately busy raiding my gran's house due to reports of Semtex in her cookie jar.

This is a seriously stupid past-time and will get someone killed eventually.

Another thought.....

Of course it could be that the said lackey who was supposed to send the CD's forgot to do so, and when repeatedly chased about them, said that he had sent them but would send them again, to avoid getting a knackering from his boss for not doing his job.

Backfire of the year that isn't it? :)

Well

It's easy not to have a "single documented case" of a successful attack if said documents "disappear".

Common Sense

But personally I see it as common sense not to send millions of peoples personal records by post, regardless of security procedure. If anyone asked me to do it, I'd be seriously questioning the procedure.

We shouldn't be worried...

The aliens might be more advanced, have better weapons and a much higher level of technology...........

but we've got Chuck Norris.

Skewed results

Only accepting one vote from one IP address? Well that kinda blows the result as many big companies use a proxy server. I don't know the average usage from where I work for example, but there's probably at least 50 people who look at the site.

Wii searches

Yes, the word Wii indeed was the most searched for word, closely followed by the words "why", "is", "the", "so", and "shit".

Damned right!

Ebay SHOULD be liable for fake goods sold through it. They make huge money from commissions on sales through the site yet claim they have no responsibility for it. Perhaps if more places take this stance, Ebay will be forced to do something about the widespread corruption going on through its site. At least they should be liable to have to take "reasonable measures" to ensure user safety.

Cult?

From the sound of it, the Wiki admins sound almost like a cult, terrified of anyone who threatens their beliefs. It certainly looks like a dreadful abuse of power, and not so much like they have a slightest interest in the truth, but more like their own version of it.

Sod em.

Copying?

So, they've lost the data, they'll pay £20 grand to get the disks back.....why not just make a copy and then give them back? I'd put money on them not having any sort of copy protection.

Actually, how many times do you think the data could be returned before they twigged?

Vista

I don't know many people who have obtained Vista (outside of a company) and use it, unless it came pre-installed on a new PC. Even then a fair few people switch back to XP, which probably explains why the piracy rate is so low.

shenanigans

Such a great word....

As for this story, he's obviously hiding something, whether it be on a personal level or a government one I guess we'll never know. I do suspect that he was "ordered" to wipe that data though, in the "wipe it or we'll kill you, your family and everyone who's ever known you" sense.

Umm, yeah

Is it just me, or are the two keyboards not even remotely similar, aside from the fact they are both QWERTY style keyboards? Are this other corporation going to claim they invented the QWERTY keyboard as well? If not then they should shut up, as they are stealing someone elses design just by using that layout.

Twats

Religions are THE least accepting of other peoples beliefs. Most non-religious people accept that people can believe what they want, but deeply religious people are very unaccepting of that principle in general.

Turkey have one of the worlds worst records in human rights, and yet are "offended" by a book about religion that does not pander to the beliefs that they hold. Does that seem hypocritical to anyone else?

P A R T Y?

Our office parties are normally pretty good. There will be somewhere between 600 and a thousand people turn up, lots of gorgeous ladies dressed to the nines, and dodgems. Damn I'm looking forward to it already!

Fanboys.......

I have got an N95, and do you know how many of its features I ACTUALLY use? Probably about 3, aside from standard phone calls and text messages. It was a huge mistake going for the most feature packed phone instead of sticking with the make I've always liked (Sony Ericsson).

From what I can gather (from the people I know who have "similar" phones) very few people will actually use the "additional" features of an N95 or an i-phone, so bragging about them is just pointless willy waving. And yes I am aware that is ironic considering I own one, just blame it on a moment of madness.

Reasonable point

It's a good point that HDDVD players are bought specifically for watching films whereas most Blu-ray players (with PS3's) are bought by gamers. It'll be interesting to see where actual movie sales (rather than the number of players on the market) go AFTER the christmas period as I think that'll in fact be a better indication of what people are buying.

Christmas will skew the figures but early 2008 I think the figures for actual numbers of movie discs being sold will be a more true indication.

And is it just me...

Or on that graphic, does Samsung actually appear to be "marginally" higher than Sony Ericsson?

Perhaps......

.....he was just feeling lonely because no-one can be bothered to hack Macs in general?

Quality/quantity

When it comes down to it, more people will buy the format that has the most titles. At the moment, every shop I look into has a larger selection of Blu-Ray discs than HDDVD's, even though Toshiba have paid off a couple of production companies not to make Blu-Ray's (which I am surprised has not yet been brought to court under "unfair competition" laws). Whether this is indicative of the market in general I do not know, but I know a whole handful of people who buy Blu-Ray's and no-one who buys HDDVD's.

People had better hope that Toshiba can keep throwing money at HD-DVD's until the cheap players come out. Simple fact is that people buy a PS3 for gaming, and have a ready-made Blu-ray player there, so some people buy the discs. At the moment, the players are too expensive for most people to buy JUST as a player. Until that balance shifts (with cheaper players) Toshiba need to keep feeding money into HDDVD, otherwise it'll lose.

It reminds me of the great VHS vs Betamax wars of the eighties.

And to those who say HD-DVD is a better format, not really. From a publishers perspective, region coding and DRM are desirable things, and they have a greater capacity than HDDVD.

At the end of the day, if HDDVD wins, I'll buy a player, but for now I'll stick with my Blu-Ray's as it looks like the pendulum is swinging that way.

Computers don't lie

Well, they don't. They rely on people to lie to them.

Officially denied...

So the "PSP Phone" won't happen, maybe, perhaps, not, possibly.

Made me chuckle

Just found it amusing that the only person who doesn't find it ridiculous to pay this much (at time of reading the comments) chose to remain anonymous......probably for fear of ridicule from the rest of the sane world.