Posts by Enrico Vanni

Pot - kettle

I've lost track of the number of times I've typed 'theregsiter.co.uk".....

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.

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?!....

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.

@ 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....

Captures the mood of the silent majority very well..

There is no truth in the rumour Jade Goody's family have been the first to sign up (who mentioned moneygrubbers?!!)

Whacky Jacqui does it again

"Jacqui Smith said failure by the more than 30,000 registered sex offenders to supply online identities or supplying false identities would attract up to a five year jail term. "We need to patrol the internet to keep predators away from children in the same way as we patrol the real world,"

In other words "We need to be flailing around making it look as if we have the power to stop things simply because it is our will. In reality we have neither the resources or brains to achieve anything useful".

Also, If sex offenders are required to supply details of their on-line identities then it means the authorities do not have the ability or wherewithal to find these out for themselves, so what is the likelihood of someone supplying false identities being caught for having done so?

PFI = more government borrowing

It has often been said that socialist governments and their policies generally fail when they run out of other peoples' money to spend. Well, well, well.....!

@Ogden Freen (is that your real name?)

There isn't a scientific consensus in support of AGW. The IPCC is a political group (with a tiny minority of the world's scientists as signatories to its propaganda, sorry, reports).

Plus, since when did consensus automatically equate to truth? There used to be a consensus that the world was flat (based on all the available evidence at the time.....)

PS. In case you hadn't noticed, the majority of fossil fuel moguls are now tacitly in favour of the AGW scare (because there's money to be made from carbon exchange and they pull the strings).

Only thing that can be said....

Bwaahahahahahahahahahaha!