Posts by David Webb450 posts • joined Wednesday 16th May 2007 17:46 GMT
Joyful commiseration to the Winner, I eagerly await your response to the postmans question "what the heck is in here?" where you have to explain your delivery of such classics as Twilight, Twilight or indeed, Twilight... Did I mention Twilight?
That's your granny, my mother (mid 60's) plays PS3, XBox, sits down for hours on her Android mobile etc. She enjoys Final Fantasy, Assassins Creed, Uncharted, mostly prefers RPG's with a story to them though.
@SB - the Queen does a hell of a lot of work, she's what, 86 years old and still running around the world flying the flag for the UK? Most other public servants want to retire in their 50's and live the quiet life on taxpayer money.
She also brings in a lot of money, you want to impress the royal family of Saudi to sell some "top of the line" Tornadoes? Send in out royal family, much more impressive than sending in Hillary Clinton......
Want to clinch a major deal to bring in billions? Send in the royal family. Want to try for better relations with a major power like China? Invite them to stay at Buckingham Palace with a formal dinner presented by the Queen. It makes foreign dignitaries feel special, much more special than meeting an average run of the mill civil servant called Bob who is looking forward to his retirement in 2 years time and a weekend away in a caravan.
Heck, sending in the Queen is better than sending in the PM, anyone can meet the PM but the Queen....
I'll be sticking with Windows 7, I just don't want to have to get used to the way Windows 8 works, it feels overly complicated, having to go through a billion windows just to add a user (who needs a windows live account) is a pita. Can see it being good for touch screen though but touch screen for a desktop isn't exactly an upgrade over a mouse.
Gnome Locker on Youtube though seems to detest Win 8 on tablets, got his father using it and his old man was all "yeah, if it's the same price as an iPad I'll go Windows on a tablet" so he led with questions where the only answer would be "oh, I'd go iPad". So, if a tablet comes with Windows 8 and is the same as or cheaper than an iPad, get it.
It's a quirk of Japan (a country I adore), until the 1990's it was considered obscene to publish images of the pubic region, this in a country where tentacle porn comes from.
From Wikipedia...
裏本 hardcore pornography; 'underground' pornography showing uncensored genitals. Technically illegal in Japan.
What kind of a country has an underground pornography culture? It's bloody amazing :D
Dodgy Japanese porn isn't dodgy, it's censored to high heaven and back with pixilated pubic areas (Japanese porn laws make pubic hair illegal)... or so I've been told, I have no first hand, wait, bad turn of phrase there... no knowledge of Japanese porn or porn stars or that really amazing video of... umm.... as you were.
That's Hatsune Miku in your picture, who isn't a pr0n star! She's oddly enough (not a she..) an idol in Japan, well, not her exactly because she's really CGI but not a pr0n star! Ignore the rules about the internet, whichever rule it is that says she is a porn star........
"enough to increase the cup's price by a few pence"
That's per cup, I'm guessing Londoners drink more than a cup a day so you end up having to add costs to everything that requires water pushing costs up and up and up, you may think that adding a few pence is meaningless but lets assume you drink 5 cups of tea/coffee a day and it puts 3p on the price of a cup of coffee. Over a year you are paying an extra £18.25 for just your coffee. Add in other stuff that needs water (washing, showers, clean clothing, toilet, brushing teeth) and the few pennies over a year add up very quickly.
Your water company isn't a charity either, they are not going to swallow the costs of desalination, they will stick it on your water bills, living in Cornwall we know pretty well that high water bills are a pain in the arse. Would you be happy to see your water bill rise from £339/year to the average Cornish rate of £543?
So, go ahead, which politician is going to say "ok, we're going to get rid of drought forever! But it's going to up your water bills by a few hundred quid and you'll end up having to pay a few hundred more on stuff you consume over a year, but it's ok, you never need to worry about drought again!"
Your maths also doesn't add up on the pipe fixing, they fix the pipes so X amount of water isn't lost, they could have built 2 plants which cost Y money (and Z up-keep costs) instead, rather than fixing the pipes which costs nothing in the long run and saves money as well as water.
I think I saw something about the app ages ago, it's a practical time/life saver. If they need to work out the correct dosage of medication X to give to a patient they need to work out the math based on their weight, size, age, whatever, with a quick input they get the maths done for them so they can get the medicine in to them quickly. They showed the maths needed to work it out so it was pretty good.
The way I see it, if Sony or MS actually put in place a system which prevented consoles playing used games, piracy would become rampant on the systems, although I'm struggling to find a solution for single player games that would prevent a used game market (can't exactly burn each disc differently with a unique serial number burnt to the disc, can you?).
People want to buy games, they go out and sometimes a new one will be in stock so they trade in a used game reducing the cost of the new one, the publisher gets their full cut and the store sells the traded in game. Fast forward two years, you want to play Game X which is two years old, you now have to go out and find a new copy of Game X because you can't play used, or, you can hack the system allowing you to play Game X because you couldn't find it anywhere which also allows you to play Game Y which is new.
It's a stupid move that means people who would have bought the game new with a trade-in, won't buy the game because they can't trade in so it'd end up in lost sales from people who would have bought the game and of course, more pirates.
My exchange is upgraded for Fibre, my postcode is to get FTTP, but BT won't pull their finger out and actually turn on FTTP in areas that are supposed to get it!
Might be a bit of an own goal for Apple, they bring out the next iPad and say "hey, it's 4G LTE!" and people say "so? I have an iPad 4 and it's 4G so whats the difference?"... "oh, you bought the one that we said was 4G but isn't actually 4G for you, this one is though so umm, buy it?"....
It's all well and good saying that, but what about battery life? My PS Vita will last a few hours playing high quality games but it doesn't really need to be always charged for phone calls, texts and the myriad other features you use a phone for, having PSV play times in a phone would mean you mostly need to have the phone plugged in to a charger which kind of detracts from the "mobile" in the name "mobile phone".
Plus, touch screen controls would be a bit sucky, with a console you never need to look at the controller to push X and then Square, you can feel where they are, with touch screens as a controller you'd be spending a lot more time looking down than you would looking at the TV.
Could they be as powerful though? Maybe, maybe it would be a good thing, cheap as chips GPU processing for laptops would be nice.
PN put my estimated max line speed at 5Mb. BT put my estimated max line speed at 8Mb. I'm currently connected at 13Mb. Does that mean I should pay more?
This film is set in London during the Olympics, the first 45 minutes of the film focuses of a guy called Chuck (Barry Elliott), we have flash backs of his past where he was a tin miner in Cornwall, how he met his first love (Barry – Paul Elliott) down the tin mine and how he proposed to his love under a star covered night on the beach, how they fought against homophobic prejudice but remained committed to their love for each other. After 45 minutes a meteor comes through the Earth’s atmosphere and kills Chuck.
The next 15 minutes is a flashback from the comets (Keanu Reeves) perspective as it flies through space, contemplating loneliness, slowly building up its rage against the inevitable fate that will befall it before deciding to become a homicidal comet.
The next 45 minutes shows us how Barry comes to terms with the death of Chuck and how he came to forgive the comet, they then end up having a weird affair where Chuck confirms his undying love for the comet that killed his first, true love.
The next 20 minutes is a legal drama where Barry and Comet try to get their love recognised so they can have a civil partnership, the judge (Brian Blessed) shouts lots about random stuff before finally agreeing that Barry and the Comet can have a civil partnership.
The end of the movie is the twist, the comet is arrested for the murder of Chuck and attempts to escape the country with Barry, they get on a boat (Kieria Knightly) and sail off towards America, on the way they hit an ice berg, it takes 4 hours to sink, we watch all 4 hours.
Director: George Lucas.
That's actually pretty good, I'd watch it because it has Jackie Chan and Chris Rock in it, win! Though it's over 300 chars, so you may want to make a revision :D
The scene, it’s the future and mankind has destroyed almost the entire planet through a sudden and unexpected mass explosion caused by boob implants going bang, which really surprised the global warming people. Unknown at the time the implants actually contained a weird virus which turns everyone that comes in to contact with the silicone gel into nympho zombies. The film plays out with an unlikely group of (Z list celebs) people who hate each other trying to find a cure to the virus before they end up becoming mindless, sex crazed zombies.
Half way through the film there is a sudden twist in the development, it turns out that the virus isn’t natural but actually made by dolphins so the group of people have to find a way to save the earth from the dolphins, forgetting totally about the zombies who are not mentioned again in the script.
Towards the end of the film there is another twist, it turns out that the leader of the group is actually the son of the dolphin who created the virus in the first place, we then find out the reason the dolphins create the virus was because they were picking up digital TV signals and the constant barrage of BGT and X-Factor and all the other “talent” shows were slowly driving them insane, it then becomes a mad rush for them to get to the TV control centre and turn off the signals so the dolphins can regain their sanity and go back to their fight against the aliens who were invading the oceans.
When they get to the TV station there is a gratuitous sex scene written by the winner of the bad sex awards, during the scene the womans boobs explode, the end.
Director: George Lucas.
I believe the objective is to go for films not made/being made.... it's been in the works a long time with WB having the rights.
I think the problem was price fixing more than anything, Apple and the publishers put in the contract that they can't offer the e-books at a price lower than Apple are paying so there was minimal competition "I can either buy it on my Kindle which only reads e-books for £9.99 or I can buy it on my iPad which does more for £9.99... tough choice". With a change it could easily be "I can buy it on my Kindle for £4.99 or my iPad for £9.99.... tough choice!".
Reading the Reg articles, e-books are not cheaper because of this cartel, they are more expensive so your MS-DOS history doesn't really apply so hopefully we'll see cheaper books. Not that I buy e-books myself, I prefer the real thing (limited edition TP book bought for £20 and instantly the value shot up to £80!).
But $AU220 is only about $US2.50 or something like that, isn't it? :P
No physical harm? What about the mental harm? Shoot the bloody defence lawyers please, in front of their family (can you say that now after Clarkson?)
I'm sure this was a question on QI a few years ago, how many moons does Earth have and the answer was 2 or 3 or so.
"If you claim telling a copper to fuck off as a human right, then I've got some bad news for you. Section 5 of the Public Order Offences Act 1986, to be exact. Trust me on this one."
Actually, not any more. A judge ruled that a copper is quite unlikely to be offended by swear words (they hear them all the time) and as the law in question is using language likely to cause offence then you can't really be charged with it (as the coppers wouldn't be offended).
On topic though, indeed fuck[ing] can be put anywhere in a sentence and it still makes sense, however, if you put it in the wrong place it can make the sentence bad. Hey you going to see Maggie Thatcher fucking? <-- see!
Twilight and it's sequels, films made from the worst books ever naturally produce the worst films ever, it's like evolution, possibly.
I know right, the build up to the end was amazingly well put together, except for the fact you somehow end up wearing clothes you never wore and your armour vanishes, go up, have a chat with the [spoiler] and then sit watching planet [spoiler] with [spoiler], that would have been the perfect place to end the game with a long CS, with the Catalyst firing off and doing it's thing as Shepherd and [spoiler] die together. Then they could have fast forwarded to a couple of years in the future and show the results of your hard work.
Tali on planet [spoiler] wearing a hat as a Geth tends to her garden.
Liara and the Prothean (if you have DLC) exploring old Prothean ruins together.
The 2 Krogans having military drills with Garius whilst Krogan women watch on holding babies
(or cutscenes depending on which chars are still alive and the choices you made through the series).
Since 2007 we have been investing ourselves in the "lives" of our character and his/her comrades, the ending we got was weak, weaker than weak, it's no longer a matter of "oh, I so want to try X in 1 to get Y in 2 so I get ending Z in 3" it's "meh, not even worth playing again, the endings are just so bad".
I've played and completed ME3 and the ending destroyed the entire series for me, totally and utterly ruined any replay experience through ME1-2 to try different scene endings for ME3. For instance, in ME1, don't save the council, in ME2, kill half your crew, does that have any effect on the ending for ME3? Nope, none of the choices you made in ME1-2 actually matter when it comes to the ending of ME3, you get the same 3 "options" all of which suck, it's almost as if BW couldn't think of a way to end the game.
It was supposed to be a final that answers all the questions and closes the story on what has been an epic adventure, it left a bad taste in my mouth and a "what the fuck?" as the only question answered.
Don't get me wrong, the game itself was fun, it's just the ending, that horrible ending that ruined everything I had done over 3 games, 5 minutes worth of gameplay totally screwing over hundreds of hours worth of gameplay, choices, hard decisions....
I had planned (after beating ME3) to work a new ME1>2>3 char going "renegade" to see the effect on how the story ends, now I'm just going to delete ME3 because it has NO replayability factor, none, zero, zilch.
Let it grow and take a cut would probably be the preferred option, saves MS having to bring out their own service, they can just get a licence fee per seat from OnLive, of course, push too hard and you run the risk of OnLive switching to an open source product which is compatible with Office but then if OnLive don't play ball MS can bring out a service for free to strangle it.
XCom had some special moments which even after all these years I can still remember. My favourite char being out on his own looking for the last alien, pretty much the entire map between him and the only person with TU left, an alien spotted him but he couldn't shoot. An aimed shot from across the map, watching each screen flip by as the bullet moved. 10 seconds later (or near enough) the bullet hits the alien killing it, best shot ever!
Though I'm pretty sure it's a Microprose game and not Firaxis, the sequels to XCom were okay though buggy, after spending days building up my team and getting near end game on TFTD to do one of the final missions and it getting bugged totally destroying the game, that was a bitch.
There have been modern remakes to XCom though too, it'll be interesting to see what this reboot brings to the table.
Freedom of speech or whatever, radio jocks over there can say some pretty hideous stuff without any comeback all under the protection of the "founding fathers", it's why Americans come over to the UK to launch libel (hence, tourist libel or whatever it's called) as we believe in free speech as long as it's true, or unless you get a super injunction so people can't say what is true, except on Twitter, Facebook etc.
This is China, go watch the episode of Top Gear when they were in China to figure out the odds of Apple winning this one. A car looking exactly like a BMW, BMW went to the courts and the courts say "nope, looks nothing like the BMW!" even though it was a carbon copy.
Gotta love the Chinese though, any country which puts 2 fingers up at Apple and says "get stuffed" is okay in my book.
Of course a company and decide on an arbitrary "reasonable" amount, except when it comes to Apple who believe that they should be able to dictate the terms applied to them and if they don't like the terms, ignore it and use the tech anyway.
FRAND is there to protect patent holders and people who need to use the tech in question, it protects the patent holders from someone just using their tech (in theory) without payment, it protects people who need the tech because they can't be stopped from using it (if they pay).
Apple have issue with the whole "pay" thing, they haven't put anything in to the system, they have no FRAND patents for essential standards but they probably want to pay the same amount as another company who has 2 or 3 patents considered standard and who (naturally) should pay less under FRAND terms. It's not as if Apple make a few hundred dollars profit per phone so paying $2 or $3 per phone would seriously dent their profit margin.... oh, hang on, they do make hundreds per suck.. err... sale.
I also think I read somewhere that the issue is that they use the FRAND patents first and THEN try to work out a deal so the issue is that if they are using FRAND patents before working out a deal so they can be charged whatever the patent holder wants for that time as they were not working within the FRAND framework.
I thought everyone knew why "Jap" was offensive (if it's used in the Sun to describe a people, it's offensive - fact!). Probably more so in the US simply because of the WW2 propaganda calling the Japanese, Japs as an offensive derogatory term, so it's also offensive in Japan so really shouldn't be used.
However, I'm a commentard, and my brother calls me a fucktard, the Doctor flies around in a tardis and probably eats his beef with mustard, all is well in the world.
I'm older than 7 and will play Pokemon, it fills my inner desire to catch rare animals and engage them in fights to the death with other rare animals thereby making Darwin's theory come in to practice sooner "you better evolve or you're going to be wiped out as a species!". Or something.
Ash is only in the anime though, afaik he doesn't appear in the games, which is good cause I'd use him to catch Misty and have her in a fight to the death against Brock... Go Misty, use "Nag until he quits!" woo!!
So, the same people that are responsible for that Skyrim Dragon patch are responsible for this too? Good to know! I used to fly backwards... till I took an arrow in the knee.
Let's talk about the most important part of PVP, Balance (with a capital B). I just partook in a warzone (got sent in 2nd round, lucky me) the results were as follows:
Number of kills (total) by Empire players........ 152
Number of kills (total) by Republic players ..... 3 (I am not making this up, I have the screenshot!)
As a reviewer, roll a Jedi and then put in a new score after playing with the warzones (I recommend scoundrel, they get to kick the opponent in the nuts)
No, us people in the UK, it's not a matter of English vs American, it's a matter of how the British (ergo the UK) use the term fanny compared to the Americans, not sure many women in the UK would want their car seat playing around with their fanny when they are driving, might be distracting :P
"The seat, currently designed for use in the car industry, contains 360 sensors measuring pressure points, on a scale or one to 256, and uses the data to build a US-style fanny fingerprint of the designated driver."
Maybe the wrong choice of words there for us UK speakers as fanny means something quite different here :)
It should be, but it's not because the topic is anchors and whether or not anchors weigh anything, or maybe I mis-read the entire article but I'm sure it was to do with Anchorage, or cats, or using cats as anchors, would that even work?
As an apt topic...
" though scurvy landlubbers plainly still do"
Wasn't it seamen that suffered from scurvy due to a lack of vitamin C? Some bloke introduced limes because he discovered it prevented scurvy (not knowing it was the vitamin C in it) hence why the yanks call us Limeys, because during the golden age of sailing we had teeth and they didn't?
Merry Christmas :)
I want some of what that guy is on. Look at a country which, like Singapore, is straight-laced. Japan. Their culture puts America to shame, you ever watched a J-Pop video? Great authors? Has he read twilight? People in other countries have their own stars based on their own culture, we have Mr Blobby, they have some other dude dressed in a rubber suit.
Wearing a T-Shirt doesn't promote creativity, it detracts from it, ask Einstein, having to choose what to wear each day is bad for the brain, but looking at Apple, don't all the Apple store drones all wear a uniform?
What about Virgin boxes, do they have net access? They do OD so they should do really? Sky boxes don't have net access but if they did, what percentage would they hold?
Actually I was being general. Record an episode of Neighbours and stick it on the internet and it's copyright theft, take a photo of an episode of Neighbours and stick it on Wikipedia and claim "fair use".
They stick US based "fair use" policy on any image they desire. They do not respect international copyright laws, they ignore them, stick them on servers in the US and claim it's protected under US laws, so I stand by my initial statement, sod em.
This the same wikipedia who ignores other countries copyright laws and places them under US law? Sod em.
From memory, didn't that occur with MSN and it's moticon thingies? You'd have a avatar you designed and if you typed in LOL your avatar would laugh? Bear in mind I haven't used MSN in years but I'm pretty sure that's what happened.
It's not £16m to keep it maintained, it's a £16m contract to restore the ship over 5 years. The actual cost of maintenance is £1.5m per year, your normal anti-BAE (which is steadily heading towards defamation) is going beyond a joke, we all get it, you hate BAE but at least *try* to be impartial, especially on a story that was on BBC News 6 days ago.
Bad idea, putting any form of lock on a device gives hackers a "reason" to hack the device opening it up to piracy as a by-product. Locking out Linux on the PS3 for instance brought about the hacks that eventually opened it up to pirates (and now that it's possible the scene is practically dead as the hackers have what they want so hacked PS3's are stuck on 3.55 firmware forever).
Besides, only Japan gets the really cool H games dammit.
Why not? Sometimes you need to press two or three keys on your keyboard (or move the stick in a direction whilst pressing the jump button) whilst pressing left and right mouse buttons at the same time before quickly opening your menu up and scrolling through to chug down a mana potion or a HP potion, that is why you can't do that on your iPad unless you manage to grow 2 more hands and 15 more fingers.
Several points to make....
1) Respected? Didn't his last MMO whose name I forget, totally flop and get pulled even though he claimed it would be a WoW killer or whatever? I think only Ultima is his success?
2) Consoles get refreshed every several years? The PSP is 7 years old and it's replacement is the Vita, the iPhone is 4 years old, but do games developed for the "newest" iPhone still work on the original? I can buy a PSP game *now* that works on my 1st generation Japanese PSP, I don't have to buy a new PSP every year to play the latest games.
3) Console games give more value for money than phone games, sure, phone games may only cost 99p but how long do you play that game for? A console game may cost £40 but you'll play that game time and time again, even in a few years time.
4) He's obviously not looked at the PS Vita AR videos, I showed my brother today and he was flabbergasted, it's seriously cool and well worth buying a PS Vita for.
5) It's not just Skyrim, there are games out there that require a heck of a lot more controls than a phone/tablet can provide!
6) Immersion, you can get immersed in a real AAA title, you get to use whatever screen size you want, from small 32 inch LCD's up to bloody great massive projector screens on the side of the moon (maybe not, but maybe!)
7) Game companies reject consoles and PC's at their peril, if a console owner or a PC owner reads a statement that suggests their favoured platform is doomed, they will pretty much slam that company and avoid their games, so when they come back with their tail between their legs they may find that they are about as welcome as Clarkson at a Unison meeting.
I think you're reading it the wrong way, it's not read across but down giving a 16 character password at the end, or at least the source code suggests a post of size 16.
It's a great game, it's just a shame Beth suck at supporting their games (they never fixed major bugs in Oblivion for instance the vampire bug - PS3) so rely on their fans to sort out the issues, they claim it's a new engine, which is a lie, try using a Xonar soundcard on Oblivion/Fallout and you'll get CTD's, the same CTD's happen in Skyrim.
I dunno, I want to support the company because I enjoy the games, but on the other hand, should I really support a company that doesn't support it's loyal fanbase properly?
