Posts by Gene Cash

Pretty much the only FPS I've played

HALO: CE gave me one thing: A STORY. I don't play games to play games. I want a *reason* I'm in there putting holes in aliens. HALO gave me that, and gave me a reason to shoot those little bastards. It also gave me a reason to slog through the library. It kept me engaged.

As a game, my reflexes suck, so I don't do multiplayer, but I still want a decent challenge from the AI. HALO gave me that too. It also gave me a HUGE sandbox, with enough varied stuff I could keep trying different things. All the physics worked and there was no "rails" to ride on. You could try carrying different weapons, and sneaking instead of frontal assaults, and other things.

It even had controllers large enough to fit my paws, until they went to the small ones, but I found a bunch of large ones on eBay.

For some reason, I loved the one where you played as a marine, with the cool heads up display and finding the audio tapes. I can't remember the name, and nobody else liked it, but I did.

And as an added shock, local LAN multiplayer was actually fun with my friends, so we played that for a LONG time. We never did XBOX Live. I did for a short while on Halo: Reach, until I got banned for "cheating" because my ISP was so shitty it kept dropping my connection. When that happened, the XBOX went on a shelf and has stayed there.

Is that the "fat rover" angle?

Yes, I've already got my coat...

Appropriate

I'm reading this wearing my Bletchley Park "Enigma" t-shirt I bought from El Reg a while back.

Pimpin' da ISS...

Did they put in some LEDs and UV-glow fluid while they were at it?

Apple & Amazon

They're both dicks and I won't be buying either product.

(My Xoom sucks enough as it is, and it doesn't even have Amazon DRM)

Could you actually buy an unlocked iPhone?

I don't think you had the option to buy an unlocked iPhone... I believe it was an AT&T-locked phone or nothing, so I think they have a pretty good chance at winning.

Seven antennae? Really?

So I have a Xoom with Verizon's 4G here in the States. Since a) it's datacapped and b) android market throws major temper tantrums if you turn off background data, and c) Ice Cream Sandwich doesn't really do "wifi only", I pulled the sim out just to see how it coped.

Since then, it's gone from "must recharge every day and a half" to happily running for nearly a week on a single charge.

As a data point, before I rooted it, it wouldn't even last a day. After I rooted it and got rid of the "Dungeon Defender" & "Cordy" shovelware, the battery life got a lot better, as Dungeon Defender appeared to be constantly running in the background AFAICT, even though I never played it. Fuckers.

U3

Sandisk... aren't they the dickheads that put that U3 shit on USB sticks? Where you need a real Windows PC (virtual one won't do) to get rid of it? Or has that changed?

Fuck 'em. I hope they drown.

Quoth the rover...

"OOHHH SHINY!"

Hm... 10.0.7ESR is working fine here...

But then that is precisely I'm on the ESR track, to avoid this sort of flavour-of-the-day breakages. I need to actually get work done around here.

"patent troll versus Black Mamba"

That should be the new test for patent validity.

Is this how the Germans get all that work done?

They don't have any cell phones any more?

On the good side...

They're launching X-37B again, so at least the USAF is keeping the ball rolling. And Space-X is launching in October. And we have 2 working rovers on Mars, including one that weighs a ton and carries a hell of a laser.

So it's not all doom and black roses.

(IMHO, there should have been just 1 or 2 of these model shuttles, then the "lessons learned" should have been rolled into something better (like the X-37B!) if NASA kept to its R&D charter like it should have.)

frogsaustralia.net.au? really?

I guess there's an anorak for everything.

Rocket car

Shouldn't Richard Hammond be driving that?

BBC Sport

Hell, I'd just like to be able to pay my fair share for BBC Sport, as they produce an absolutely incredible program (at least for MotoGP)

I wish I could show you guys just how crap American TV is, with 30% commercials and very little content. You'd fall over in shock.

You think American beer is bad, the TV is much much worse. Discovery Channel is about the only thing halfway watchable.

Icon for what I'd like to do to NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, /CNN, ESPN, SpeedTV, MTV, VH1, etc

Yup

Just had a stopwatch & timer app try to add the "full internet access" permission. Needless to say, it'll sit in manual update hell until Satan starts throwing snowballs. The developer put up a note saying "there is nothing sinister about this update"

"The Mars-invading laser-toting nuclear-powered space truck Curiosity"

Brilliant. That's what I come to El Reg for...

Good job

Nobody else, including Spaceflight Now and space.com covered the laser self-test targets. Good on ya.

Tom Baker Y-fronts?

Dude. That's pretty f--king WRONG. That's almost as bad as goatse.

Icon for slapping my hand over my eyes as fast as possible.

"clear message to all companies under an FTC privacy order"

Yeah, that would be "Don't worry about it, bro!"

Successful lock-in

And they wonder why they can't get people to migrate off XP/IE6...

It's the carriers, not Google or the handset manufacturers

My Verizon Xoom 4G edition was delayed a year and a half getting ICS from the wi-fi version. They're identical hardware other than the added cell radio. Are you telling me it takes a year to write/test cell drivers?

I hear the Xoom w-if already has Jelly Bean. Any guesses how long before I see that from Verizon? If at all? I am not holding my breath.