Posts by Enrico Vanni
57 posts • joined Friday 3rd October 2008 09:03 GMT
This product will tank because you will look stupid wearing it.
That is all.
Yup. Just as we have several generations now how can't prepare food and rely on ready meals for their sustenance. Sure it'll happen that lazy buggers will take the easy option - doesn't make it good though.
How many of these machines are running Microsoft's long abandoned java variant? I was surprised to see the option still being offered in Windows 7 installs.
Strathclyde University and the QL
Anyone who did Computing Science courses at Strathclyde Uni. in the late 80's will remember the headache that was the microdrive cartridge very well. I don't know the exact nature of the deal, but it seemed that all the unsold stock of Sinclair QLs ended up at the University, with several labs stocked out with them, plus hundreds more than students could 'borrow' from the library for a term at a time for a small deposit.
Programming assignments had to be submitted fortnightly, and there was always the nervous moment when you popped your cartridge into the lab machine and the damn file wouldn't load because of the inconsistency in the read-head alignment of the machines, or worse your cartridge tape had stretched beyond its usefulness and the program you'd been working on for days was corrupt. We all learned the importance of backups the hard way!
Eventually the Uni. gave up on the microdrives and equipped all the lab QL's with 3.5" floppy drives, before retiring the whole lot a couple of years later.
Not just the BBC. Every public body is the same, all management being arse-covering followers of procedure and protocol to the absolute letter so they can hide behind it in their defence.
Re: Licence agreements
Interesting (but wrong) analogy to chipping cars, and how ironic BMW was chosen as an example, because if anything this is more like the 'Nikasil' engine liner fiasco that that very company was eventually forced to accept responsibility for after initial denial.
BMW used Nikasil as a strengthener in its engines. Then owners in certain territories (including the UK) started suffering premature engine failure. BMW denied there was any issue as the majority of cars with the material were unaffected. When it was established that higher sulphur content in the petrol sold in these regions was the cause of the eroding of the Nikasil plating BMW claimed they were vindicated, until it was pointed out to them that the maximum permissible sulphur content in petrol is laid down in International standards and that BMW were obliged to make sure their car could run on it or state clearly in their literature otherwise.The fuel the afflicted owners had been using was still within those standards and BMW had never bothered to test the car at the extreme levels - just ran it on the nice low sulphur fuel they had available in their domestic market during testing.
Cue u-turn and costly engine replacement program, even many years after end of warranty.
Can't see this one ending nicely though.
Crazy Prices. Considering anyone who can take advantage of the Home User Program can get their own copy of Office 2013 for £8.95 this is just nuts.
The next step in this shift to a subscription business model is to phase out the boxed/download product, which will make the free Office alternatives the only choice for people with more sense than money.
Sky - downmarket brand and service with an upmarket price. Always has been, always will be.
Re: if you want to lose weight
Oh no, not the 'sugar is poison' man.
I suggest you take a look at some of the writings of Prof. John Brignell on this and other matters of junk science and rubbish statistics.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/2013%20January.htm
Re: What's New?
Content is everything.
The fact that old movies get re-sampled to 4k (and 40 years ago someone tried to remaster the Beatles recordings in 'stereo') tells you that.
It's called rent seeking. Putting yourself in the way of progress in order to cream your own living off it.
Re: This isn't news.
IIRC correctly the Timex version had the internals of the casing painted with a metallised coating for this very reason.
The world and its dog has realised that Office isn't a prerequisite for a computer to be useful anymore. General Purpose Packages - so 1990s!
The Genie is Out the Bottle
iPlayer is on every piece of hardware from 3rd party STBs, to tablets, to games consoles, (and if the other channels have any sense they will follow suit). If it was to disappear tomorrow, replaced with the message 'Sorry, you'll need to buy a YouView box' the backlash would be enormous. Even suggesting this move is a shot in the foot for the brand.
Re: Golly
"They were not pushing an idea because the alternative would affect their friends profit margins." I love how this is presented by the APG faithful as an argument that discredits 'the other side' when APG believers are (inadvertently or otherwise) promoting the cause that directly results in massive subsidies drawn from energy bills being paid to David Cameron's father in law to build wind turbines.
"Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold."
That is all.
Re: Win 8 is lighter on hardware.
So it beats XP on security? No shit, so does Vista and 7. It beats 7 on hardware issues? Again, no shit but not something most users are going to care about when whatever microseconds saved as a result are swamped by the cumulative hours wasted on the clunky unintuitive user interface. Just accept it - Microsoft have dropped a bollock on this one.
I feel sorry for....
...those who will buy a new PC in the next 18 months and be lumbered with Windows 8, in the same way as I feel for those friends and family who curse the VIsta their otherwise perfectly serviceable machine came with and (rightly) feel they shouldn't have to spend on a 7 upgrade.
Windows 8 - the bastard operating system with added identity crisis.
Re: Totally agree…
"The only thing that keeps (MS) alive is Excel, everything else is replaceable."
Yup. They're starting the descent from a great height, but Microshaft are on the slide, supported only by 'old school' IT techs who think they are still on the leading edge (your big years were 1995 and 1998, guys, and your favourite product peaked in 2002).
Everyone else has realised Android is the way to go for tippy-tappy stuff.
Re: Modern villains...
William Randolph Hearst is namechecked by the Elliot Carver character in the movie for that very reason!
Oh, and Murdoch went one further than Maxwell in dabbling with Israeli spooks - he turned a group of them into a plc (NDS).
Re: re: advertising
@Test Man. You mean the Italy v England friendly played in Switzerland? I had the benefit of being able to watch that game on both UK and Italian 'terrestrial' TV. ITV pictures were taken from cameras on the opposite side of the stadium from those for the rest of the world which saw normal pitch-side electronic billboards, while UK viewers were treated to real-time electronic overlays superimposed on on static billboards on the other side of the pitch. The fact that the overlays were crap and got switched off a third of the way through the transmission because players were 'disappearing' in close-up shots gave the lark away!
Re: What?
...and the ironic thing was that the bike wheels for Team GB were provided by French company Mavic! Maybe they shipped the cheaty ones to the wrong team?
Re: I don't get it
FB shareholders running the bots?! :-)
Re: Here in the USA
Many years ago my mother succeeded in getting 2 dozen 'Scotch Pies' through customs at Newark Airport for a Scottish convention in the Big Apple, despite this 'ban'. The ape at the desk quizzed her as to the ingredients as the labelling was (deliberately) vague. She feigned ignorance and they let her through. Do all Merkins associate pie with fruit or something?
Re: Just the latest
"Surely it is better to educate people on this". Damn right it is, but the education system of this nation (all sections of it) is broken because it itself has become a politicised target-driven tool to "measure" teachers and educators by and not actually a channel for enlightening the populous.
Just like other creeping nanny measures such as speed cameras, minimum alcohol pricing, smoking bans and labelling of 'unhealthy' foods this is a reaction by government to a minority of the population who they perceive as too stupid to look after themselves (the government's own fault because of their crap education system) so a broad brush approach is used to be seen to deal with them.
Re: *rolls eyes* 3rd place
Wrong!
Every Chinese tablet other than the iPad runs Android, and M$'s licensing strategy isn't going to change that any day soon.
This will destroy the BBC's coverage of World Snooker at a stroke, and damage their viewership of Formula 1 as it'll remove access to in-car streams and timing screens for a lot of people - kicking the F1 fans when they are already down thanks Aunty's sell out of part of the rights contract to Murderous Murdoch.
The BBC - death by a thousand small cuts. Murdoch will get his wish after all (if he can't have it then no-one can, and yes - his intention was always to take over the BBC.....)
I'm a Virgin Media customer who was blissfully unaware of the DDoS attack. Can't remember how long ago I decided to quite VM as my homepage - it might have been around the same time that it became a DigitalSpy rivalling celeb-fest to co-incide with their sponsorship of Big Brother.
What did I choose to replace it with?! theregister.co.uk
Posted in James Murdoch QUITS BSkyB chairmanship
Follow the money....
The writing is on the wall for the NI Empire in the UK at last. The fatal blow will be struck not by the government, but by the nation of Qatar when they underwrite the removal of BSkyB's crown jewels - EPL TV rights. All this charade is just to make the public thing UK politicos are making the correct moral choice when they take the Arab money instead.....
(Pint glass - get used to seeing a lot less of it in the corner of the big screens in pubs....)
Italy have free HD F1 by sat also. Cards are available for the cost of postage only to any address that has an Italian TV license, or anyone can buy and activate a receiver/CAM package at all good Italian electrical stores and major supermarkets (on-line sales available). Erecting the dish is exactly as difficult as erecting a Sky dish (and blokes in white vans with writing on the side are available to do it for you).
Free-to-view for life, perfectly legal thanks to that pub landlady, and if you don't understand Italian the Beeb will provide commentary over your radio or Freeview box.
If after getting all that information you still think paying Sky is an easier option then you deserve everything you get....
Exactly. Nearly £30 a month for 10 races (or make that 9 when the Bahrain one gets cancelled again) - even die hard fans aren't that stupid. The only people who will be receiving the Sky F1 channel on Virgin Media will be football fans who then get it uselessly thrown in with their existing package. The reason I say uselessly is because they'll be too busy watching footie while the races are on.
Utterly pointless move by all concerned.
BBC commentary will exist for all races broadcast on Radio 5 Live, and the pictures are beamed legally into the UK from several free-to-air satellites. F1 fans are intelligent enough to realise there is no need to pay Sky to view F1 in HD this year.
PS. When will Murdoch just f' off and die?!
Tell me this isn't 't a dream...
"I'm sure the SQA would be delighted to offer its Computing qualifications at English and Welsh schools..." ...you mean the qualifications that are about to be abandoned over the next two years to make way for the pig-in-a-poke that is 'Curriculum for Excellence - Senior Phase'? Oh, and NASUWT - STFU (and that is coming from one of your paid-up members). I don't know where to start on how delighted I am to read this news, and I guess I have to thanks Eric Schmidt. I hope this initiative spreads to Scotland (as long as King Alex hasn't shut the borders before then). Here's the rub though - I agree that the question has to be posed as to whether IT teachers are up to this. When I started in the profession 20 years ago I was unique - a Computing Teacher with a degree in Computing Science. Most at the time were retrained maths teachers and many (including my recently retired Head of Department) were bloody good, but almost as many were disillusioned History and Home Economics teachers (I kid you not) who had taken a 6 hour 'retraining' course (one told me the only thing they remembered from the course was 'Shift-Break'!!) Today I am not unique but still a very rare entity. As a result of amalgamating Computing and Business Education Departments into 'Technology' Faculties and having all the staff in the faculty teach IT to the lower school most IT teachers in Scotland are Business Education teachers, and my experience is that they resist any 'Computing Science' content being added to courses because they claim 'the pupils find it hard' (when what they mean is that they find it hard'). Also, statistically (and that is all that matters to Head Teachers) Computing has not produced the same exam passes compared to other subjects (the dreaded 'relative ratings) for several reasons - firstly because the groundwork for the courses is being delivered badly by people who are simply not experts in the subject (said re-trainees and Bus. Ed. teachers), and secondly because Computing is seen as a dumping ground for the less able students (sit them in front of a computer and they won't misbehave). Negative relative ratings (even if by a fraction as to be statistically insignificant) is death to a subject in any Scottish school, regardless of how important it is to the development of our youngsters and their career prospects. A headie would rather have everyone passing in basket weaving and be at the top of the relative ratings than risk their standing on 'hard subjects'.Posted in Amazon cloud double fluffs in 2011
There is a reason why a lot of big companies (tech and otherwise) have their eye on Brazil. Brazil has a growing economy, largely because they don't prostrate themselves at the alter of AGW.
I saw Samsung and Sharp and my first thought was April fool 4 months and 2 days too early.
Pot - kettle
I've lost track of the number of times I've typed 'theregsiter.co.uk".....
Posted in UK lays carbon plan before Earth Goddess
Yeah, and (the alleged) climate change will know in future to stop at the UK borders as a reward for our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.
Oh, and an excess of water up here in Scotland at the moment.....
Posted in Best Buy to shutter all UK megastores
I recently bought a new fridge freezer from what I though at the time was an Internet only operation because (a) they were by far and away the cheapest for that model and (b) I'd never heard of them.
It was 'Best Buy' and I never gave it another thought until this news broke today....
Well done to Lord Shugs...
..for realising that this country has had its fill (and then some) of 'strategists', marketing execs., consultants and other rent seekers and needs to get back to actually making things, thus giving the win to the only creative person in the group.
Helen - in the past she'd probably have won it, but this time the Lord was looking for a partner, not a subservient......
@There's a bee in my bot net
"I was gonna say they could just collect up some dog turds, varnish them, stick on some wire frame glasses and sell them instead!"
aka Steve Jobbies!
(sorry, only Scots will get that...)
Posted in McCanns join CEOP quango row
Hardly a resounding endorsement.....
The McCanns are at best guilty of very poor judgment (and at worst, well, no need to repeat the allegations here). I can understand why they support Jim Gamble though as they are in the same mould - hyping a cause which trades on human emotion, and believing their own press.
Posted in Blu-ray capacity to increase by a third
SACD, DAT....
are two Sony products that failed, not because they lost out to a rival format but because there simply wasn't a demand.
BluRay and 3D-TV are two more roadmaps that lead no-where.
Posted in ICANN condemns registry DNS redirection
So....
..when is someone going to tell Virgin Media about this?!
Perfect Timing!
Bloody marvellous! I got a text message from my network provider yesterday informing me of free 'net access on my mobile for the month of November. It had never even occurred to me to use the service before. Anyhoo, first thing I did with this new found financial freedom was to try and read 'TheReg" and it was an awful experience. This couldn't have happened at a better time!
Dumb and Dumber
It doesn't take an idiot to work out that the sort of people most likely to fall for phishing scams are the same people who don't take password security seriously.
Lack of originality.
Being a secondary teacher, I don't attach any significance to pupils' names except perhaps trying to make the connection between the proliferation of certain names and the 'cultural' influence that led to them becoming so 'common'.
Right now, there are 'Justin's everywhere, although the ubiquity of 'Jordan' is a strange one (for boys as well as girls!)
Myself and my colleagues are eagerly anticipating the spate of 'Leon/Leona's and 'Alexandra's in about a decade's time. 'Jade' came and went, but we expect a resurgence in that one too....
Paris?!....
Posted in People just not that into Blu-ray
No competition!
The biggest problem for increased bluray takeup is the amount of HD content that is being produced that simply won't appear on BD unless Sony loosen their monopoly grip (in terms of both high cost and restricted availability) on the mastering facilities, and that isn't going to happen in the foreseeable future with no competition to drive prices down.
The BBC, for example, are producing childrens' programs (In the Night Garden) and Top Gear in HD and shows like those are big and consistent sellers in the DVD market (without all the hype and marketing required to shift you typically disposable Hollywood blockbusters), but the HD versions will stay in the archives if the BBC and others feel they are being gouged just to join the big blue bandwagon.
Posted in Microsoft bribes Oz to ditch Firefox
Hunting on Safari?
Are the Mac fanbois prepared to mount a legal challenge to this, seeing as there's no IE8 for MacOS and there never will be....?!
Posted in Scotland welcomes back wild beaver
@ Alasdair S
Clatty Pat's (aka Cleopatras) closed in 2006......
"Everyone Should Be Above Average"
Forget the namby-pamby liberalist weasel words about 'teachers saying' the tests are unfair for reasons X, Y or Z. The real reason for scrapping the league table and target setting culture of education is that it has engendered a 'pass at all costs' mentality within school managers as the stats are now everything - even if they are largely meaningless ('relative ratings' being a great example).
Pass-mark thresholds are constantly being dropped so that the necessary percentage increases in annual pass rates can be achieved, and cheating is now rife - particularly with internally assessable elements of courses. A blind eye is turned to all of this by head teachers if it means more passes and better statistics for their establishments, none of them farsighted enough to realise that the whole process is unsustainable.
What does this mean to anyone with kids at school? Well - your son or daughters efforts to legitimately gain passes in qualifications (who's stock falls annually) are devalued by the lazy scrotes who get the same qualifications handed to them on a plate by paid-for tutors or (for the poorer ones) by oppressed teaching assistants (grateful for the work and don't question) who do all the work for them (including in some cases sitting the exam for them - the 'reader/scribe' provision is open to abuse in this way), often in the name of 'inclusion'.
The title? That is the unachievable yet stated aim of relative ratings....
Posted in UK operation patents DVD lockdown
@ readers of Paul Gooderham's comment
Spot the shill!
(Not exactly 'Where's Wally' complexity).
