deanb

I'm tempted to go pick this game up. So are like some of you on PS3 and some of you on 360 and the Crew is like a combined effort, or you all on one console, or maybe even it's a case of different console, same crew, but no interaction? Also roughly what times have you guys been playing? (GMT)

So Ethans already covered the first part. I Newegg'd the components and it was much cheaper than that. Well obviously at the point where I specifically ID the parts as i3 and GTX660 I wasn't talking the Titan as costing $900. But at the start: Well yeah the GTX770 and i7 version of the specs cos there is no Titan version in Logical Increments. As I've said, I'm not a Yank so I only have limited scope on what US prices are like, hence , for the fourth time of my saying this, I'm using Logical Increments as a ballpark guide. If you can get the i3/GTX660 Pc cheaper than their suggested price range then good on you. It's still not a cheapo streaming box price. It's a new OS and a new controller. It needs real world testing as far as I can tell. I do believe that Valve themselves have said that they value real-world testing very much. They also probably want to see how much people like their hardware packages. I've said nothing against real world testing, I understand the need for real world testing very much. But in which "real world" do people stream games to a $1400 PC? Or even to a $700/$900 PC? I understand that even before founding Valve they many of them were already MS Millionaires, but how warped is their view point of monetary reality where they seem to be under the impression that folks just have $1400 for a streaming PC lying around? At what point do they think it'll be useful to know if thier OS and games will run on one of the absolute best PC builds around, instead of checking if it'll boot up and run to an acceptable level on a poopy cheap HTPC build with integrated GPU, no SSD, n such?

Right. We've covered that point, why'd you imply otherwise before? Also as mentioned I'm just having to go off the Logicial Increments site to base the costs off (Since it links to the stores it uses the prices off). A GTX Titan over here is about £800, which minus VAT is £665, and in dollars is $1000 alone. So $1400 for a PC seems about right if a GPU is about $1000, but if they're significantly cheaper in the US I wouldn't much know. For the GTX770 and i7 4770K build, those are about $750 alone, not including 16GB of RAM, hybrid hard drives and the boring bits. You seem to be missing the grand scheme of my "I've no idea what Valve seem to be aiming here with going with relatively high end parts to beta test with, when it would be the expected result that high end will run the games and OS fine." If these machines run fine it tells us nothing more than hey, 14K/7K worth of parts works as you'd bloody well hope that much cost of parts would work. If they don't run the games on Steam or the Steam OS, then it's a major revisiting to the drawing board.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/10/04/samsung-galaxy-gear-review-what-am-i-supposed-to-do-with-this/ Since a fair few of you seemed interested in the Gear, here's a review.

As I'm not American I'm just having to go off the Logical Increments, and that puts it between $900-$1400. Which is quite a bit more than even the priciest console. ...did you miss the part about the i7s and titans? Unless I'm a bit out of the loop, that is top of the line at the moment right? I don't know of any Core i9's or anything to yet replace the Titan, which is so flagship it doesn't even have a number. The i3 build isn't exactly low-end. Low-end is Pentium and Celeron. And I've certainly not claimed to know what they're doing, in fact:

The low end build is still Core i3s n GTX660's, putting it in the $900 dollar range. I understand, becuase it's essentially a PC and Valve couldn't really even stop them anyway, that other OEMs will be building "Steam Machines", but you'd think when Valve are beta testing they wouldn't just dive in with some of the highest specs they could think of. Kinda pointless really, I'd expect those kind of specs to be able to run pretty much anything. What you really want to know is what's the bare minimum to be able to run at least 95% of the Steam library without much of a hitch. That's why you'd want to do a beta test.

http://www.hardscrabblefarm.com/ww2/britain.htm A gold mine. The Terns? I'm gonna guess a balls up in writing it up if it was written down as a "Tems"? heheheh Well...

I don't get those specs at all. A quick look at http://www.logicalincrements.com/ puts you in about the $1395 for those specs. That's almost three times the cost of the Xbox One. And you also need an extra PC to actually play the games to stream off (or a spare copy of Window to replace Steam OS). I don't understand what they're going for at all here. One would assume they'd have had a nice low powered PC of thin-client like capabilities that you would stream your games to, but those specs would, despite the fact Steam OS runs a marginal amount of Steam games, be the PC that's built to run the games. If only through brute force. "I don't care you're built for Windows 8, I have nearly 20GB of RAM and more power in a single GPU core than you're able to make use of on Max, now kindly run OpenGL not DirectX or I'll steal your lunch money". Also here's the announcement, though on my phone it never opened the link properly: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse#announcements/detail/2145128928746175450 It's kinda disappointing they're not going with anything even vaguely rigid, but a totally open ended upgrade path that we already have that's kinda one of the big turning off points for console gamers that prefer it if things go "1" "2" "3" "4" and so on, and get confused if it get's a "U" added on, never mind messing in the PC world of "GTX" and "4470" and 740 being less than 660.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.sarahnorthway.rebuild2 It is/was on sale. It's kinda alright. Could really do with a major revamp in the design department though: The cutest citiy: Not so cutest zombie attacks:

http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/reboot-getting-relaunched-by-rainmaker-entertainment/ Reboot reboot! Edit:

So some of you follow me on Twitter, apparently didn't see me post this, though Hot Heart did: I'd only just bought the book, right here in the app, and as mentioned I don't own any other eReaders or such so yeah, I'd already hit my limit at zero downloads. After going through my Amazon account and deregistering my old and crummy phone and a secondary Note Amazon had decided I owned, it still didn't work. So on bus back from work I ended up finding the email for my purchase, and the follow up "oh woops" email. Turns out despite having my current card details it had used my expired card details to buy the book, processed my order without a hitch, put it in my library then gone "oh woops". So I had to load up their wonderful mobile optimised site to pick my currently active card, and hey presto it works. And promptly downloaded the book over 3G cos there's no "download over wifi only" option all the other apps considerately put in. I should repeat all of this is after I made the initial post, which was purely based on "I don't own an ereader and I find the real books to be usually much cheaper". Based on what happened after my initial post I'm kinda just reinforced on the whole "yeah let's not bother much", at least for anything that's not a good deal like Tenshis freebie book, or the QI book for 20p (which so far remains the only eBook I've read in full). Few of you already aware I've generally never had much fun with thier App store and MP3 store. Both of which I only really used cos hey free shit. I'd certainly never spend money on the Amazon App store, it's a total pile of wank and unusability and that's just to get at the one app a day.

FDS has pretty much hit the nail on the head. To get into eBooks they're generally much the same price as a paperback, and with the cost of the initial outlay of getting an eReader I'm generally on the free and cheap books and reading them on my Note. Also should be noted I posted to the forum about my purchase moments after it was made, so at this point I hadn't even come across the whole "You've gotten this on another device, please purchase another copy" crap. Which is not really an eBook issue but more of a "amazons digital content strategy sucks giant donkey balls" issue.

They're 99p on Amazon Kindle store in UK, so figured I'd have a looksy what the fuss was about. Though I don't really do the whole ebook thing. (or books at all of late. I used to devour libraries )

http://www.vulture.com/2013/09/breaking-bad-walter-whites-transformation-in-one-gif.html Gif of Walter White through the seasons.

Go on then. Explain to a British chap, whose used to a budget generally being someone showing the UK what a red briefcase looks like, what's going on, why, and how in the US.

http://www.doctorwho.tv/whats-new/article/50th-anniversary-to-be-simulcast-in-over-75-countries-and-cinemas#list To be "simulcast" in 75 countries. So you can watch it at the same time as us brits. And given it's BBC America, I assume ad-free too.

I watch it now and then when it's on the TV. Out of all the talent type shows we've got these days it's certainly the better one. It's just kind of...pleasant. It's a show where at the end of the day, even if you lose, you still get you cake and eat it. (though it's an undercooked cake, that;s why you lost).

That's not Arwen, it's Evangeline Lilly. Known as Kate from Lost.

New trailer. Looking good. Cumberbatch as Smaug is sounding great too.

Cover art. For comparison here's the old placeholder cover art: Also, cos at first blush it does look a bit like Masterchief from Halo 5 teaser:

I bought some socks and http://deanbowes.com/

Quite well put together just for matching the beat.

Yeah it's all looking quite good. Kinda hoping the Bolin-Esta stuff doesn't continue remaining so largely separate sideshow and builds into the story more somewhat (especially given it's Korra's cousin). In fact now they're in the boat somewhat hoping that we're going to see more of the world than Republic City and South Pole.