Posts by David

I will NEVER sign up to Verified by Visa

I'm really pleased to see The Register highlighting the strong public feeling against the scam that is Verified by Visa.

I will NEVER sign up to Verified by Visa: the liability shift that blames the cardholder for everything, the dodgy typo-scammer domain name (and the even dodgier domain registration: just what is going on there with the ever-changing whois records, can we trust such a company with our data?), the shonky phishing-like implementation, no way!

Just as I'd started to have trust in internet shopping, I've since made far fewer internet purchases since some misguided retailers started foisting VbV onto us. Result: it's the realworld high street shops that are getting my money, and the internet retailers are losing out on my potential purchases instead.

If we need increased card security, there must be far more sensible ways of doing it. Many banks now issue card-reader devices which can be used to authorise internet banking transactions: combined with BACS "Faster Payments" wouldn't this be a good way to make internet payments more securely - and it'd really give the finger to Visa and MasterCard for introducing such an idiotic scam in the first place!

It was the radio manufacturers who let us down: too little, too late

Here's a heads-up to all audio system manufacturers:

I've been wanting to spend ${moderate_amount_of_money} (£200 - £300) on a new hi-fi (or at least med-fi) system for at least *the past two years*, but have I been able to? No! Nothing out there meets my requirements. Come on, make an effort!

At some point during the past few years, the middle seems to have completely fallen out of the audio system market. Sure, we can get high-end separates from the likes of Richer Sounds, but walk into any high street electrical retailer (or even a marginal specialist like John Lewis which pretends to have a bit of class) and for the most part all that is available is appalling low-end junk. Several years ago we had many reasonable or good quality brands to choose from, including the likes of Aiwa, JVC, Pioneer, Sharp, Technics, Yamaha, etc. Now it seems to be low-end Sony or low/mid-end Panasonic or an infinite variety of Goodmans conglomerate clones or no-name junk, and that's all there is to choose from. (I should point out one good-value budget exception to the above, the well-reviewed Goodmans Micro 1104, a cracking wee system for what it is, but very sadly, no (essential) wake-up alarm.)

Here are my audio system requirements, surely at least one manufacturer can rise to the challenge:

* Micro or mini format audio system

* DAB/FM tuner with *at least* 40 presets on each waveband

(for a few pennies more, why not just throw in MW and LW as well?)

* Standard DAB/FM aerial connectors to allow connections to a proper aerial (no crappy proprietary connectors or hard-wired useless "pieces of string" - I don't have the best reception where I live.)

* At least 20 W/channel output (RMS)

* Wake-up alarm function (no alarm, NO DEAL!) and sleep timer

* Full remote control for all functions

* 3 or 5 CD multiplayer (no multiplayer, NO DEAL!)

* At least 2 AUX inputs (you never know what will come along next, DAB+ even?)

* (Ideally) auto-reverse *full-logic* cassette deck

(I suppose I could live without the cassette deck, but if it's going to be included, at least make it a decent one.)

These are hardly onerous requirements, yet no manufacturer seems able to meet them. With Panasonic you can have the CD multiplayer - but no DAB, with Sony you can have the multiplayer and DAB (and rootkit CDs) - but no proper aerial connector, <sigh>.

To return to the topic, I think DAB is great. Yes, it's an outdated audio codec, and not exactly audiophile radio, but the choice of radio stations is fantastic. For radio, we can accept a *slight* loss in sound quality as a trade for choice - and it's still better than MW or my poor FM reception. Those who live in Planet London probably tend to forget that most of the rest of us only have the basic BBC stations and perhaps one or two commercial stations to choose from on FM or AM. With DAB, I can listen to Radio 5 Live (Up All Night - DAB's "killer app" for me), the World Service (great for a different perspective), and a wide choice of many other stations, from Chill to TheJazz (will be sorely missed!) and Galaxy and Kiss.

I only bought a stand-alone DAB radio a few months ago (as a short-term fix while waiting for a decent audio system to appear), and even then, only because prices had at last started to become reasonable (£30). I'm sure the likes of Pure have made good money flogging mono-speakered radios for £100, but, get real: £100 for a radio?! The wider market won't support it. And the last time that stereo speakers were deemed a luxury extra must have been in around 1950! Sadly, although still hulking beasts, at least Pure's radios had a reasonably elegant design, but the rest of the DAB radio industry seems to have taken hideous and enormous 1950s design as some kind of standard cue, with the result that almost all DAB radios are huge fugly things, and it looks like I'm far from being the only Register reader who wouldn't touch those models with a bargepole. Black, sleek and compact, those are the inalienable audio design rules.

So, the future? Now that DAB has shown that there is popular demand for broad channel choice - but only once the hardware price becomes affordable - let's quickly move on to DAB+ (just as we left VHS behind for DVD), and let's hope that the hi-fi manufacturers remember the "hi-fi" part and bring back the middle of the audio system market and stop merely churning out infinite clone crap for the sub-£100 market.

Re: Iconography

Yes, the new comment icons are great, but am I the only one to think that the "I'll get my coat" icon looks worryingly more like "Pickpockets operate in this cloakroom"? I'm sure his left hand is definitely rustling around for a wallet, rather than innocently picking up his 'own' jacket..

And surely we need "Happy Tux" and "Harpooned Tux" icons, too, to match their rivals. And daemons, gnus, mozillas, dogcows, rainbow-tickmarks, ...

IGMC.