McPhee

Bit of a bump I know, but I was looking for smething else and stumbled on this thread. Beer doesn't make people fat. Regularly eating fatty foods while consuming alcoholic drinks makes you fat. This happens because the body metabolises alcohol before it metabolises fat, thus with excess consumption of alcohol and fat the fat regularly finds itself being stored rather than being burned. Beer (I'll use Guinness as an example) isn't actually unhealthy. It contains 170Kcal in a pint. That's less calories than you'll find in a pint of Coke or fresh Orange juice. By comparison Vodka and Gin pack about 60 Kcal per 25ml measure + the mixer (44Kcal per 100ml for Coke, 43 for Orange, 33 for Tonic). Your average pub Vodka and Coke contains rougly 192Kcal, and Vodka and Orange, 157Kcal and Vodka/Tonic, 134Kcal (all only single measures!). Beer also contains a bunch of other health benefits, mainly focusing on the heart and blood. Have a read here; http://uk.askmen.com/sports/foodcourt/45_eating_well.html The bad image comes from lazy middle-aged blokes who have grown fat from spending evenings and weekends sat in the pub downing pints of Stella and munching on crisps, chips and pork scratchings. You could replace the beer with any other alcoholic beverage and get the exact same result. In a nutshell, as long as you consume it responsibly and stay away from Lager (or anything that's carbonated for that matter) there's no reason for not drinking beer. It's calorie count is low by volume (roughly the same as tonic water) and there's proven benefits to both your heart and your blood. I know it's a bit of an odd thing to post, and a bit of an incoherrent, badly tought out late night rant, but I've started getting more in to beers (even started brewing myself) and as such I'm noticing misconceptions more.

I don't think there is anything they can do. The problem is some players see support players as inferior, topping the table as a medic is "cheap" and "for the noobz". They ain't about to change that. I just play as support and take the grief, if a few people follow suit you have a good team.

No kidding! BF3 looks genuinely impressive. Visually it's stunning, audably it's as good as (if not better than) BC2 (which was already sublime in this area) and the game looks like it'll be more varied and interesting to play than that other big FPS series. I think DICE are about to bring on the next generation of FPS. Everything since CoD4 has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary, something that looks about to change (hopefully!). Surely IW can't top this shiz?

Looks good. Not enough for me to upgrade though, especially given Apple just cut the 1st gen prices by £100! I'd be surprised if I could get more than about £250 for my 16GB WiFi now (probably nearer the £200 mark). The HDMI dongle reportedly works on the first iPad, iPhone 4 and the latest iPod Touch. Not sure if I'll pick one up or not...

True that. Naw. Bethesda games look sick! Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas still look fantastic on PC; even more so with the plethora of mods designed to enhance visuals. Try these, for example; http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1306005 Skyrim is looking fantastic! OK, the water looked a little dodgy, but hopefully that's WIP (but then why include it in the trailer if it isn't up to par yet?). The scenery, character and creature models look sublime! The mountainous setting is stunning! Cannot wait for it to come out

The Wildfire is end of line now, being replaced by the ChaCha. This is going to be happening a lot over the next few months so high chance of grabbing a bargain on one of last year's higher end handsets (the Desire is already sub-£250 on PAYG!).

Just as well it ain't an MMO then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_of_Heroes It's a strategy game based in WWII. Probably one of the best PC games ever released TBH. It's from the same people behind Dawn of War, only Company of Heroes is better

In fairness Blur and Bond weren't great and PGR was very tired by number 4. It was time. No point in keeping declining studios open when they could be replaced with something fresher, newer and more profitable. The people who worked at BC might even go on to do some great games as part of other teams.

Been meaning to re-play Mirror's Edge. It was a flawed game, but I really liked the concept (it just needed either better gunplay or else no guns). It's a shame the sequel has been cancelled, but not exactly surprising. Hopefully it gets revived some time, or they release an XBLA game focusing on the free-running/time trial aspect with extra levels released from time to time as DLC (i think that could really work tbh).

If it ain't real I don't see it being far from the truth. I'm sure the DNF release will be milked as much as possible. Personally I ain't buying any more CEs after the Fable 3 debacle. It's a cracking CE, but somehow it goes for less used than the retail edition. I'm bored of the game, but unless I want to take <£10 for the game, playing cards and coin I ain't likely to shift it.

Try PingTest.net If you aren't getting any packet loss then yeah, the connection strength of the WiFi doesn't matter. It's only when you drop packets that connection strength comes in to play (stronger connection = fewer dropped packets. It does not = faster connection).

The mods are shite. Was hoping for something worthwhile, but it's all basically character/vehicle skins, rediculously overpowered weapons (1 hit kill, perfect accuracy, instant reload, infinite ammo, no recoil guns) and cheats (god/ghost mode). I was hoping for balanced weapons really, wouldn't mind a larger selection of guns but not if they're going to make combat a bigger cakewalk than it already is. Some texture packs wouldn't have gone amiss either. There's a couple of cloud replacers and a mod that adds all vehicles to the BMD. There's also a mod that's aiming to bring Superman to Panau and other for Ironman. The mods are shite. Was hoping for something worthwhile, but it's all basically character/vehicle skins, rediculously overpowered weapons (1 hit kill, perfect accuracy, instant reload, infinite ammo, no recoil guns) and cheats (god/ghost mode). I was hoping for balanced weapons really, wouldn't mind a larger selection of guns but not if they're going to make combat a bigger cakewalk than it already is. Some texture packs wouldn't have gone amiss either. There's a couple of cloud replacers and a mod that adds all vehicles to the BMD. There's also a mod that's aiming to bring Superman to Panau and other for Ironman.

http://www.getgamesgo.com%2Fcatalogue%2Fgame%2Fjust-cause-2&sref=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.hexus.net%2Fcurrent-bargains%2F198974-just-cause-2-4-99-a.html Just Cause 2, £4.99 at GetGamesGo (Eurogamer). Picked it up last night for £2.49 before they put the price up. Cracking game! It looks absolutely stunning (especially in 3D). Just taking a peek at some of the mods for it now.

I get 2Mbps tops on the landline. Mobile BB with Three tends to be 3-4Mbps. You can bridge the connections, yeah. Tye SIM itself won't limit the number of connections (got mine in a MiFi and can use several devices at once).

Debunked: http://goo.gl/QMET

This: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Original-Broadband-Ready-Preloaded-iPad/dp/B003Z0T3X2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297306004&sr=8-1 Along with this: http://uk.webuy.com/product.php?sku=SUSB3G3 Amazon also do a 1GB SIM, but at £4.99 not such a great deal. The 3GB lasts for up to 3 months, the 1GB for only one month.

So... how many years until the inevitable Call of Duty MMO, followed by the scrapping of every other title/franchise apart from World of Warcraft and Call of Warcraft: Universe, some bizarre crossover where you either play some douchebag 'Spec Ops' guy with a pussy heartbeat sensor who spends his days sprinting everywhere while trash talking everyone for no good reason, or some douchebag fantasy creature that wields magic/shoots arrows/kills enemies with his giant sword but never actually does any of those things because all he actually does is stand around chatting to other virtual characters in the hope that one of them will give him the love he desires now that his IRL wife has left him and his mates have forgotten he exists? My guess, 4.

I've never played an Ace Combat game so... no. I've never really bothered with flight sims. Might have a go at this though and will probably pick up Microsoft Flight (the rebirth of Flight Simulator) along with a stick and maybe some other controllers when it launches (hopefully) this year.

It's 'Bad Company 3' because he's expecting it to be another console game ported over to PC. It's 'Modern Warfare 3' because he's expecting some arcadey mess that promotes Rambo-style gameplay over teamwork. Basically PC multiplayer gaming has been shat on in the past few years. Most games have sported multiplayer modes that are little more than enhanced versions of the ones found on consoles. Compare recent multiplayer FPS games to Battlefield 2 era games and there's a huge difference. The maps are far smaller, player count is way down and there's less incentive to work together. Many feel that this won't change and that the days of expansive multiplayer FPS gaming are over. I'm not sold either way, and TBH I'll probably enjoy BF3 whatever way it goes. I liked Bad Company 2, it sat as a kind of mid-point between a proper Battlefield title and a 'Modern Warfare' style shooter. I'm pretty sure BF3 will be more expansive than that game, it has to be in order to differentiate itself from the competition.

Still got room for another two drives anyway, the two SATA III 6Gbps connectors are perfectly fine. The problem only affects SATA II. You can always install a different SATA card with more ports if you even need more that four (highly unlikely given the price of 2TB drives these days, £60!). I think one of my SATA ports has failed. Been having problems with my computer all afternoon, then it wouldn't boot, tried all sorts and wound up reinstalling Windows (which took forever, far longer than normal). It still wouldn't boot. Then it wouldn't POST. Switched the SSD to a different SATA port and suddenly... IT LIVES! Odd, I thought it was supposed to take rougly 3 years of regular use to kill them? It took Intel months of high-stress, high-temperature testing to kill some boards but mine has failed within weeks? Ever feel like your being lied to?

It's the chipset on the motherboards that are faulty, see here; http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/intel-discovers-bug-in-6series-chipset-begins-recall They're going to recall all motherboards. The plan from there seems undecided yet, but personally I'm expecting a straight swap. I wouldn't be happy with waiting a week or two for them to repair the board and ship it back to me.

General prices. Graphics card and hard drive prices are falling all the time, memory prices are all over the place and there's always new stuff coming out, driving prices down. An nVidia/ATi price war seems to be kicking in to gear at the moment and if AMD's new CPUs can compete with Sandy Bridge then there could be similar stuff going on with CPUs and motherboards. Personally I'd be asking PC Specialist what reason I have to leave my order in place, it doesn't seem that there's much (if any) advantage to doing so. You could ask them to switch you over to the i7 950, an X58 motherboard and 6GB (or 12GB) of RAM (the older i7s use tripple channel memory, you need 3 or 6 sticks of RAM). That should get your system to you faster. It's also possible that they might be able to swap your motherboard for one unaffected by the problems, but you'd need to wait a few days for more details on the problem to trickle through.

Intel have to manufacture new chipsets and ship them off to the motherboard manufacturers, who then have to manufacture new motherboards and ship them out to retail. PC Specialist then have to build your PC. I'd say a conservative estimate, yeah, though I bet you're near the top of the queue for their stock so they might manage it. It's a load of utter wank. Hopefully Bulldozer hits the market soon (and works).

Lame. I'd cancel the order or switch to the old school i7 chips tbh, prices are likely to change over 8 weeks. Last time I buy Intel TBH, got to send my motherboard back come April when the fixed ones are in circulation. Right pain in the ass (though not quite so bad as your delayed order).

CBA to even download the Crysis 2 Xbox demo. I expected it to be crap. It's a tech demo for selling the CryEngine. The single player game should be worth a play through, but the priority is on showing the game engine to it's fullest potential, not on creating the next "Modern Warfare" or "Halo". I'll buy the PC game, but I can't really see the point in an Xbox multiplayer demo.