gareth.halfacree.co.uk

Reading the Metro this morning on my way to work - hey, it’s free - I came across an interesting article regarding our old friends Davenport Lyons.  It seems that the lawyers have backed down in the case of at least one couple accused of illegally sharing an Atari computer game - in this case, Race ‘07.

Ken and Gill Murdoch received the usual “give us £500 or we’ll sue” extortion letter from the firm but denied any wrongdoing, claiming that - and forgive me for quoting direct here - “their internet IP address may have been hijacked by illegal downloaders.“  No, seriously - that’s what the article says.

Although Davenport Lyons has since dropped the case, it took the intervention of Which? Computing magazine on the Murdoch’s behalf to get them to do so.  Sarah Kidner, editor of the magazine, decried the “heavy-handed tactics” employed by the firm but then shot herself in the foot by saying that “consumers need to be aware of the dangers of having their computer address copied by hackers” - again, I’m not making this up.  The editor of a computing magazine, for chrissakes.

Lazy tabloid journalism aside, the article should at least offer hope that Davenport Lyons really don’t have the balls to back up their claims of copyright infringement - as I’ve said all along.

In a brave attempt to rid myself of some of the cruft I’ve gathered over the years, I’ve recently had a somewhat brutal clearout.  As well as all the rubbish that I’ve collected, I’m planning to get rid of the vast majority of my old gaming equipment - including my beloved Commodore C64 collection.

Accordingly, I’ve put a page on this ‘ere site called - surprisingly - For Sale, which contains - again, surprisingly - a list of all the items I’ve catalogued.  The page will be updated just as frequently as I can bring myself to, with the easier-to-catalogue stuff getting added first - which means that the C64 with its two large boxes filled with games will likely be last.

If you’re interested in any of the items you see, make me an offer either via e-mail or through the comment link on the page.

I’ve been on a massive clearout session of my old computing stuff with a view to finally decluttering my life after twenty-some years of being an unrepentant hoarder, and I spotted an old brochure lying in the bottom of a box.

Just think - for under £3,000 you can get an ‘ultimate games machine’ with a Pentium 200MHz CPU, 32MB of RAM, and a whole 3GB of hard-drive space!

Let’s compare to my mobile phone shall we?  ARM 266MHz, 16GB of usable space, 64MB of RAM…

I wouldn’t mind, but this was only 1996…

Just a quick update to reassure people that I’m not dead, and to test some new software I’ve put on my ‘phone. With the ability to update the site from anywhere, I’ll really have no excuse not to do so more often!