If there is one thing that has gotten this site more hits than any other topic, it is the billing problem described here when moving from one country to another with an XBox Live subscription. After two years of inaction from Microsoft, it’s time to take it the top! continue reading »
Heart Internet in a Nutshell
So yes, another new look and a new opportunity to rant. The rant this time is directed at my old webhost Heart Internet who have displayed some shocking customer service to add to 5 years of very mediocre service and thus finally pushed me to finding a far better host for less money!
So lets take the rants one by one: continue reading »
Is that there is no reason for the DRM to even exist in the first place.
That lovely, big, cuddly, megacorp Microsoft is getting on my nerves recently. I am not one of those moron’s that hates Microsoft because I think it’s cool (though I could probably register high on many other moron measurements). I like a lot of Microsoft products, I have defended them in the past and I have praised them in the past. But these days they seem to have lost all coherence in some of their divisions.
I have bitched sometime long ago about the lack of content for all those poor people who have payed through the nose for a copy of Vista Ultimate (especially if they paid retail price… ouch!). For all those extra pennies paid for the ‘Ultimate’ version, what have they got in terms of value? A couple of very crappy games, video desktops, sound themes and disk encryption that about 0.0001% of the world might actually use.
But their latest loss of interest focuses it seems on Windows Home Server, which, as you might know I am in the process of resurrecting at home. Don’t get me wrong, the core product is superb. It runs on just about any old hardware thrown together, its backup and restore features cannot be beaten by any product on the market, and the remote RDP stuff is great.
But what could have been its crowning glory is the add-ins feature. They make it sound so simple! Drop in community written add-ins for extra functionality! Simply download to the \Software\add-ins directory and its ready to install in the WHS console. Yeah…. not so much!
I am yet to come across a useful add-in that doesn’t require some seriously hackery to install. For example, the add-in that probably 90% of users look for as soon as they get WHS is a torrent add-in. The most popular (in fact pretty much the ‘only’) is the uTorrent add-in. Let me give a brief synopsis of the installation procedure for that.
- Create a new admin account
- Download utorrent add-in
- Download Windows Resource Kit
- Download anyservice installer
- Download uTorrent
- Download uTorrent web gui
- Log on as your new admin account
- Install WRK
- Install uTorrent
- Configure uTorrent to use only ‘real’ paths instead of network WHS shares
- Extract and install the webgui
- Using a combination of WRK and the anyservice installer, create a custom service that runs uTorrent
- Configure service to run as the new admin user
- Registry hack for the service to run the correct .exe
- NOW you can drop your add-in into the folder and install it
- Finally spend several hours fixing permission issues and the like for the whole thing to actually work
This is actually one of the least technical installs! There are power saving add-ins that should be inbuilt functionality which require a combination of registry hacks and sysinternals to stop core processes from loading for christ’s sake!
The product has been out for a long time now and there are no ‘offical’ add-ins, the SDK is cursory at best. The problem here is that the product is SBS2003 with the appropriate apps hacked onto the top. But as I have said the apps hacked onto the top do a good job. The problem is that the add-ins are crippled by the fact this is SBS2003 with hacks, as there is absolutley no thought given to the under-the-hood framework needed to make this extendable. The apparent user friendliness (Microsoft’s supposed forte) of the WHS console is completely isolated to that part of the OS alone. Developers of add-ins are forced to hack their way through a mountain of unneccesary limitations and ’should-have-been-removed’ remnants of the business product to get anything to work through an add-in.
Just look at that routine for installing the uTorrent add-in… how many steps would your parents or grandparents get through before throwing the thing out of the window?
OK, hopefully I am now back with a bitch bang. No really it’s a bitch and moan about Netgear drivers, but it’s also one of those rare situations where I can also offer a solution. continue reading »
Seriously, why are companies not falling over themselves to produce fully functional iPhone headphones? The stock ones are as terrible as ever, but I am forced to use them fairly frequently. The main reason is that they act as a hands-free kit for the phone as they have the click button and microphone that enable me to make and receive calls. With normal headphones, every time a call comes in I am forced to fumble around, rip the headphones from the phone and then eventually accept the call (extra dangerous when driving!).
Why are the OEM Apple iPhone headphones so bad? Well for one thing, the sound quality is the usual tinny/baseless quality as normal ipod headphones, but the other thing is that they absolutely refuse to stay in anyone’s ear for more than 5 seconds. It’s not just me, I have asked maybe 6 or 7 people to test them for a little while and they all report the same thing… it’s like they were designed to actually repel ears! When driving, it’s almost to the point where I cannot look left or right at junctions without one or both buds falling out. So I have a choice of either not looking left and right (dangerous!) or fumbling around after the junction trying to find them again after they have fallen out (just as dangerous!).
When not using them I have a wonderful set of Sennheiser PMX70’s which are truly the best sounding headphones I have ever had the pleasure of popping in my ears. Unfortunately the band around the back of the head is really uncomfortable when lying down, reclining in a chair or generally sitting in any relaxed position. So I would like to get the OMX70’s instead as they would essentially cut out the only bad part of the headphones… the band, yet still stay in my difficult ears.
But of course then I would still be in the situation of having no hands-free iphone function and checking out the alternatives is a depressing alternative.
V-Moda were out of the gate early with some fully iPhone compatible headphones, but reviews are mixed. The sound quality and build quality seem to have a lot of question marks raised about them. They have the mic and the click button for full control of calls and music; the most thorough review I have see is Macgirl’s and I would be prepared to take a chance on them if they were so seemingly expensive for a dubious sound/build quality.
Errmmm and thats it! I cannot find a single fully-compatible alternative to these.
So here is the challenge for readers, and manufacturers. Tell me of some fully iphone-compatible headphones.
By fully compatible I mean:
For Bonus Points:
If you are a manufacturer, get in touch about a review and i will give them as fair and objective test as I can, and guarantee to sing your praises from the hilltops if they are suitably boombastic!
Two things stand out to me about the pirate themed mmorpg so many have been waiting for.
1. How much potential it had
2. How bland the final gameplay is.
This is very standard fare by anyone’s standards. There are so many things that could have been done well, nay properly! I am going to keep the rant brief and thus assume that people have a general knowledge about the game and mmorpgs in general.
Here are 5 reasons the game simply sucks at this moment in time:
Well I got this on rental and its a good job I did.
The main thing that was so special about the MoH series used to be multiplayer…. its freaking awful now! It cant be just me when late sunday evening there are only 90 players online and 4 games!! The games are too short, the games take too long to find, the games are only 4 v 4, and when you are actually playing it is disconcerting to know some kind of auto aim is on. I accidentally fired my sniper rifle when pointing a good 5 metres wide of my target… yet I got a headshot. I thought it was some kind of lag-fluke and experimented a little. Dissapointed to see that aiming vaguely in the area of anyone with a sniper rifle will in fact kill them.
Add to the fact that the other 7 players on the server are probably armed with the rocket launcher and its incredible blast radius of about 10m …. the game lacks any sense of skill or achievement. The single player is better, but the use of save points is pretty terrible and makes some of the more difficult missions just a royal pain in the ass.
Having said that I LOVE the flexibility of the cover/peeking system. By far the best i have ever seen. Overall though…. meh 6/10
METHOD 1 Break one of its most innovative and fun components continue reading »
Nine years in the making and it felt like 20! But at last Team Fortress 2 was released and the game that truly baptised me in Multiplayer gaming had a worthy and enjoyable successor… at least on the PC.
On the Xbox 360 it is a giant steaming turd. I have much to rant about and only a short amount of time so here we go:
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