Cutts

Lol. Yeah, some of it is a bit out of date these days, of course. You can criticize the Queen if you like, only in some circles it might still be considered rude! (Personally, I'm not a big fan of the Crown, but I do like Elizabeth Windsor herself, mainly because she just seems like a nice old lady.)

I just stumbled upon this document, and found it fascinating. As an example of the strong friendship between our nations, it actually brought a tear to my eye. It's so lovely. I also really like how Germany is never even mentioned; the enemy is always Hitler. Enjoy! http://www.hardscrabblefarm.com/ww2/britain.htm

I've seen people spell it Wharf. Trouble with Open All Hours, is that while David Jason is an excellent actor for both comedy and drama, he is definitely less funny than Ronnie Barker was. Without Barker you just can't really do it. Incidentally, I'm really surprised you've even heard of that show, let alone seen enough of it to like it! On the topic of David Jason, have you watched any Only Fools and Horses? As a series it went on for years, so it's a patchwork of good and bad episodes, but it does have some excellent bits. Every "Top 50 comedy moments" show that they put out in Britain will predictably include a number of well known scenes from it: Batman and Robin

Aaronovitch is awesome in this... I love how he starts off his opening question, lulling Jones into a false sense of security, and Jones laps it up; at no point does he suspect it's just veiled hostility, whereas everyone else can see exactly whats coming! Jones is so awful it's brilliant.

Oh. My. God. I WILL be buying this. I don't give 2 shits what it costs. Who is going to group with me!? To be honest dude, I think everyone wants a go on this! You're not going to be short of people to play with. Everyone at work has been creaming their pants about it.

Yeah... The Division looks awesome, but it is an MMO though, so that might put people off.

Presumably they don't like their General Secretary to be compared to a notoriously air-headed cartoon character. While I'm all in favor of freedom of speech its not like any coherent political point has been made here, so I guess they figured it was just pointlessly disrespectful and banned it.

Stargate Universe (managed to make the previous Stargates rubbish by comparison, and I love those) Firefly (you know why) Dollhouse (for the same reason above) The Wire (because McNulty is hilarious) 24 (which apparently IS actually coming back, but should probably really now be called 12) Game of Thrones (because I never want it to go away)

Platform puzzler. You're a spy, you can jump and climb like a monkey, tackle guards then punch them in the face, and rewire buildings so that light-switches zap enemies with power. Its less than 10 quid on steam, or something, or via the guys website... though he wants people to use steam to raise his profile. Hilarious story. Takel knows the score.

(Sorry, this is a bit of a silly one!) So, I have a couple of delicious packs of sausage and fusilli, and the packaging tells me that in an 800W microwave oven, one pack will take 5 minutes. How does that timing value scale up for two or more packs? You see, obviously it's going to take longer than 5 minutes, but how much longer? Do I double the time, or is that too much? Why isn't this taught in schools?

It entirely depends on what the defendant has been charged with. If the charge has a victim, then decide on the basis of the evidence presented. If the charge's "victim" is some abstract sociological concept, like "the state" (e.g. no victim), then you basically have a moral duty to acquit.

Awesome... I've not tried playing it competitively, but it sounds fun! Right now, I'm playing with Vaulters "Hard Pack", which makes the game a bit more of a challenge... it adds cargo destination, increased construction costs, etc to make it trickier, but also adds useful stuff like conditional-orders, scriptable waypoints etc. Lovely.

Seriously - give OpenTTD a go (it's free!). It's not particularly beautiful, and I fully appreciate if it's not your thing. It's not exactly a simulator... at least, not in the sense of driving a train, or in the sense of very realistic simulation; to me it's just a weird toy. But the reason I like it, is being able to sit back for 5 minutes, and just watch all the hundreds of trains I've amassed go scurrying about, busily picking up goods and delivering them! Oh, and the fun of building the biggest mountain you can, in the middle of nowhere, running a road up it, and sticking your company HQ at the top as a big vanity project!

Ah man... I've had the same issue before I think. Back in the day, simply backing up steamapps, reinstalling steam, deleting the fucked game from steamapps and copying the rest back in... worked. Last time I tried it I didn't have such luck. Some games worked, others didn't. What I ended up doing was: Went into my DODS folder, and backed up all my downloaded maps, etc., autoexec.cfg and config.cfg. Uninstalled ALL valve games. Entirely. Checked through the steamapps folder for any mention of any valve games. Load every other game in turn, see if it works. Any that didn't I uninstalled. (backing up any saves I wanted etc.) Then, re-installed DODS and all the stuff I could be bothered to re-install. Finally, carefully put back the downloaded maps back into their places in the DODS folder. It was a massive pain in the arse, but it did eventually solve it. Slightly cut-down solution If you can't be arsed to backup stuff (and its not that necessary, since you can download all the DODS maps from our forums easily) then I'd just Uninstall all source engine games. Go into the steamapps Re-install all source engine games. Do the same for any other game that you can't get to work. Solution that is most likely to work NUKE THE LOT. Essentially, uninstall steam and ALL the games on it, then go into the steam directory and remove anything that might still be hanging around, then finally go and have a very long wank while you re-install everything. I'm afraid that's not great help, but sometimes steam can get into a bit of a mess. i seem to have resolved it for now , will update is anything changes

For the F12/F11 key thing, try editing your autoexec.cfg (alongside your games config.cfg, just create a new text file and rename if you need to (I'm fairly certain you know that anyway)) and add the bind bind "F11" "jpeg" bind "F12" "" (or whatever you want F12 to be) config.cfg has an tendency to revert to what you didn't want it to be. It's really annoying. autoexec.cfg remains under your control though - valve don't fuck with it, so it should always override config.cfg, and it shouldn't get changed without you changing it.

Lol - yeah, that is kinda how I roll on those sorts of things. In most racing games I tend to use a tactic that I and my friends refer to as "Paul's Patented Braking Technique"; used when approaching a corner taking the inside line, keep accelerating and aim your car at the side of an opponent who is taking the racing line, execute a hand break turn into the corner, jam the throttle down, and power slide right into the fucker sending him shooting off sideways (hopefully into a barrier) and using the crash to brake yourself just enough to keep on a nice tight curve, often clearing the corner faster than you might because you didn't lift of the power. Textbook.

Well, I've never played it, but Euro Truck Simulator(scores 6.2/10 on metacritic) is apparently quite a popular one. There's also Euro Truck Simulator 2 (scores 8/10 on metacritic), so it was good enough to spawn a sequel!

Oh I almost forgot... The original has some of the most classic MIDI music ever created: Some high quality MP3 renders of the original MIDI files: Just press play here. And here. Original MIDI files: http://www.transporttycoon.net/music?recording=1

OK, so this isn't new, in any sense of the word. BUT... I'm firmly of the opinion that Transport Tycoon is the finest computer game ever created. For those that don't know it, it was originally a DOS game, with 8bit graphics, where you start with a loan of 100,000 dollars and you have 100 years to build the biggest transport company you can. It has Planes, Trains and Automobiles... and Boats. Of course, today, the original doesn't quite pass muster... hence OpenTTD, a community produced remake (which allows you to import all the GFX and sound from the original if you have it, or provides their own versions if you don't) where EVERYTHING has been made better, and they've added multi-player to it. It also includes its own Free-DLC system, where all the community produced packs of stuff are available. So, I run the game with a bunch of UK Track and Trainsets, but you can get all kinds... there is the American Renewal set, and a bunch of Dutch, German, and Japanese stuff. It's quirky... by default the graphics are still 8bit (but there is an almost-completed side project to create a 32bit base set, for those people who just can't stomach 8 bit... I rather like the old style personally!) Anyway - anyone else addicted to this? I fucking love it. I don't play the game to "win" because its not even slightly difficult to play... I turn all other companies off, and basically play it in a sandbox mode on the largest map size available, with the aim of making the biggest integrated transport system I can. I know that sounds absurdly geeky, but its just so satisfying building a complex set of train tracks, with signal-controlled junctions, then watching all your trains come steaming through... the fun is making it as efficient as possible, so they don't all get jammed up. So guys - check it out... its free... it's a tiny download... you can't afford NOT to have had a go.

Sorry about that... I get irrationally upset about bad mathematics! Anyway, in terms of the consoles, I think they're both gonna be pretty good. They're both pushing some interesting ideas, and perhaps MS has made some odd choices (its too early to tell... a lot of the stuff people are complaining about hasn't actually been made very clear yet). In terms of spec they're pretty similar, and from a devs perspective they look like they're gonna both be a joy to work with. So, possibly Sony are gonna claw back some lost ground from disillusioned 360 owners, but in terms of user experience who cares about market share? They're both gonna sell like hot cakes, and with them being so similar to PC architecture most games are gonna be available on both platforms, no problem. I can't wait for either of them! (Even if it should be THREE.)

Fucking hell. The guy seems to be pretty fucking stupid... I mean his justification is just irrational. I don't think that politics is really an issue here; I just think that guy is just angry and unstable, and could easily do something similar in another place, at another time, for any other 'reason'. Fucking hell. I find I get most annoyed that we give such a large amount of broadcast time to such people... the school shooters, and the Anders Breiviks. While I believe that such things should be reported, I hate the way in which it happens: 24 hour rolling news, invariably showing slow zoomed gray-scale images of the perpetrators face, with reporters almost gleefully exchanging statistics on numbers killed and injured. It's not just the fact it's horrendously tasteless; such footage shows other unstable people that if they wish to they can do the same, and needlessly stirs up an atmosphere of fear and fury in ordinary people. I think the victims and their families should be allowed to grieve in peace, and that ideally the perpetrators face pictures should be kept to small, functional, mugshots only if they need to be shown at all, to reduce any 'glory' they can wring out of the media. Fucking hell.

For your perusal: Daft Cluck, singing Get Clucky (Embedding doesn't work for me)

I expect I'll have at least 2 of each... well, at least one of each at home, and one of each at work (I currently I have 3 360s on my desk and 2 PS3s under it).

I'd like to take a vacation inside your mind for a week or so.... do you have any booking forms?

OK... so the Windows numbering scheme is TOTALLY fucked. It doesn't matter what angle you look at it, there is no way in hell that you arrive at 7 when counting up to "Windows 7". The internal version number: Check it out, if you're running Windows 7. Bring up a command prompt, and look at the version number at the top. Almost certainly 6.1.7601. But whatever it is, it will be 6.1. Vista was 6.0, so they're both a type of Windows 6. If you want to look at the build numbers, though, we jumped up to 6000 for Vista, having previously been on 3790 for the end of the XP/Server 2003 life cycle. So build numbers are kinda crazy and don't really mean a lot. The Windows NT Family History: OK... so here is the NT family history. So 7 is the 6th major release of NT, unless you count NT3.5, but then if you count 3.5 you should also count 3.5.1 (from the perspective of marketing) which would make it the 8th release. (1) Windows NT 3.1 - 3.5.1 (1993 - 1995) (2) Windows NT 4.0 (1996) (3) Windows 2000 (aka NT 5.0) (2000) (4) Windows XP / Server 2003 (aka NT 5.1 or NT 5.2 for the 64 bit version) (2001) (5) Windows Vista / Server 2008 (aka NT 6.0) (2006) (6) Windows 7 (aka NT 6.1) (2008) (7) Windows 8 (aka NT 6.2) (2012) There are other numbering systems as well, though, if you also include the 3 Windows 9x releases, and the dos based 1.0,2.0,3.0,3.1 releases. But anyway, it turns out that there are shed loads of reasons to number Windows 7 as 6, or 8, or 9, or practically any number other than 7, and no way of satisfactorily counting it up to 7. What we learn from this is that MS's marketing department just cannot count.