McPhee

Don't care about the NDA myself. What will they do? Ban my account? The game's shit. I like the concept, but the MMO elements ruin it. It's the usual story; the players who play the most get the best kit and then proceed to shit all over everyone else. They don't have to be any good at the game, they just have to have stupid amounts of free time. I found it rather annoying as a newbie, once I got in to the full game I was pretty much useless! It seriously felt like my character was carrying a spud gun rather than an actual weapon. I can get the drop on people easily enough, but killing them is a different story. A lot of the time I find myself dropping a few rounds in to the back of someone's head to then be killed in one hit by that same guy. Lame. There's also not really a lot of variety in the missions and I'm not keen on the game's setting. Too Crackdown-like, but not as interesting to look at.

That $4 Billion figure isn't really the full story. That's including R&D costs, which will have been sky-high. Cell, Home, PSN, the boomerang controller and the PS3 itself will all have cost a lot of money to make. Factor in the loss they made initially on each unit sold (around $100) and it's not surprising that the figure adds up to $4bn. It's very much similar to Microsoft's first Xbox, they made a huge loss on it but at the same time they put down a lot of the ground-work for future products. Sony aren't loosing money on the PS3 now and that $4bn loss is behind them. They're arguably stronger for it. Cell is the big mistake though, that thing cost billions, caused Sony to have to cut the GPU down on the PS3 and has so far proved useless for anything else. Now that Intel have caught up it was a pretty useless venture full stop.

Got to say, I find you wrong here. Some apps are far better than the web-site, while others are supplementary. National Rail, for example, is far better than any rail website for train times. The UI is slicker, it's faster and it includes more info (live updates to train times and platform information). Nat West is an example of a supplementary app. It won't replace the Nat West website, but it's far faster/more convenient to use than loading up the web site if you just want to check your balance. Talking in general "not just Apple" terms here I do think apps are the future of the web. Currently they're held back by the limitations of the small, portable devices that they appear on, but once they move on to larger devices there's potential for the functionality to match the web-sites but with a slicker UI. I was reading an article a few days ago that was going through a book that Bill Gates wrote in the early 90s. In it he predicts that the web won't be around forever, it's an unstable mish-mash of technologies that have all been adapted to work in ways that they were never designed to in the first place. It does look like that's starting to become the case. It won't happen quickly, but the web could well be replaced by a more targeted, purpose built solution. On the iPad specifically, I don't think it's "the future of computing". It's just too limited. It's not the device Apple needed to release if they want to achieve that goal. They should have come up with something half way between iPad and iMac, instead of the giant iPhone. Doesn't mean I don't think the iPad is a good device in it's own right though, there isn't a single device out there that can compete with it as a portable media device. The battery life is insane and the screen is really good quality. Take the iPad, make it a little thicker, bump up the battery capacity, swap in ARM's new dual core chip and load on Android or MeeGo and I'll be in the queue. A device like that could well be the future of computing.

I'm struggling to remember the whole list. But this is what I have so far;

Battlefield 3. Please. This year.

I got over $4900 this evening on my bounty and then died. Was so annoyed! Completed the story now. The ending... bah! Glad it's done, was really beginning to drag and it definitely sets itself up nicely for a sequel.

It breaks. A lot. Large return/repair rates on them. Build quality is rather shoddy, which is unfortunate because the keyboard is pretty good.

Steal one? Travelling around is a pain without a horse, and catching a new one is much easier if you "borrow" someone else's to do the job If you can't find a horse then steal the fast-travel carriage. I've had no issues at night. Could be people's TVs. It's not just brightness setting, some TVs are really bad at showing detail in dark scenes (which would explain the issues).

It'll easily manage it. Got a similar set-up here but with a Q9505, all running on a 300W PSU. Works fine. When I installed the Quad I checked to see how much power it's drawing from the mains at full load, 310W. A review measured the efficiency of this power supply at 86%, so that means the PSU is supplying around 266W. That's near the limit, but the system will rarely get near full load and won't go over that figure. 400W for Strider's system will easily be enough.

Looks good to me. Amazing value for money with a lot of upgrade potential.

I'll let you know. Certainly don't want any money for the cable and I doubt it'll cost any meaningful amount to post so it's probably a no.

Agreed. Saw it last night as well. The first half was pretty cool, and I was expecting something really good. The second half was utter garbage! Sums up my feelings entirely. Hopefully the next one will be on track...

Grabbing my copy tomorrow. Weather has been too good to be gaming the past few days, but I'm back at work 2moz so chilling out with a copy of Read Dead when I get home seems like a sweet idea. Looking forward to it, I hear ace things!

I've got a spare breakaway cable here. PM me your address and I'll get it in the post tomorrow

Seems fair enough to me. Buying second hand you're getting to use the companies servers without contributing to the running of those servers. Paying some money towards that isn't unreasonable. It could be argued that the initial purchaser contributed to the running of the servers, and thus the contribution for that copy has already been made, but personally I don't think that analogy quite works. By selling the game on it gains a new lease of life and will likely be played for longer than the initial purchaser would have played it alone. The used game market is dying anyways, it won't be long before we're all running downloaded copies of games (ala Steam). We'll have nothing to trade in then...

Aria.co.uk - My current shop of choice. They're just beating everyone else on price these days, no two ways about it. I did make a mistake though. The Athlon II X3 is an AM3 processor. Better to go with an AM3 motherboard and DDR3 RAM; http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/Socket+AM3+(AMD)/Gigabyte+GA-MA785GM-US2H+AMD785G+(Socket+AM3)+DDR2+PCI-Express+Motherboard+?productId=37519 http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/Other+products/G.Skill+RipJaw+4GB+(2x2GB)+DDR3+PC3-10666C9+1333MHz+Dual+Channel+Kit+?productId=37609

WWDC is 7-11 June. The phone will likely be unveiled at that. Nobody knows when it'll launch yet though, but by the middle of July is pretty much certain (probably sooner).

Being happy to build opens doors If you go with slightly older tech you can get something really quite powerful for £400. That would be a good starting point. Gives you £70 to play with, which I'd suggest spending to get an AM3 motherboard, DDR3 RAM and a more powerful CPU. It's also worth shopping around, ATi 4850s have been available cheaper and I suspect it might be possible to get a better price on RAM too.

It's expensive and difficult to chase people for money owed over international borders. That's why nobody wants to give you a loan to work away for a year. You'll just have to save up like most people who do these courses. Maybe take out a loan on the car, save up, pay that off and then start saving for the trip. and sell the car before you go to generate extra income? That's how I'd go about it. Means you could be in excess of a year away from going to NZ, but it'll be worth it.

I think unlimited internet will continue to be part of the goodie bags after that date, the offer seems to be free internet for everyone at the moment. Might be wrong though.

YUV does seem to be the German name for component. It goes by another name, Y Pb Pr, and a search for that on Amazon returns loads of YUV "Komponenten" cables. You don't need the audio though, as the recivier is just passing video. http://www.amazon.de/Home-Theater-HT-400-150-YUV-Komponenten-Kabel/dp/B0013K7FX6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=ce-de&qid=1274201319&sr=1-1 As for surround sound, I'm not sure that Component does surround? Audio is carried over standard stereo RCA cables and I always thought that the only ways to get multichannel sound were through multichannel RCA, optical, coax and HDMI?

Same offer from giffgaff but as PAYG rather than contract It's basically O2, giffgaff are owned by their UK CEO and piggy backs on their network.