* Posts by Enrico Vanni

124 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Oct 2008

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BlackBerry Motion: The Phone That Won't Die

Enrico Vanni

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 Global Edition

Same Snapdragon 625 processor, a 4100mAh battery and MIUI 9 - easily capable of getting into 3 days between charges and would appear to be what the BB Motion is shooting at. The Redmi is available for just over quarter the price though!

Corbyn lied, Virgin Trains lied, Harambe died

Enrico Vanni
FAIL

The 'two wrongs make a right' argument.

No pun intended!

...and why couldn't Corbyn have been a bit more organised and reserved a seat? His lack of planning does not justify renationalisation of the network.

Chip company FTDI accused of bricking counterfeits again

Enrico Vanni

All this will do is speed up the obsolescence of FTDI as a company. They missed a trick - they should have licensed their driver to 'compatible' chips. The majority of chips affected by this do not carry FTDI branding.

'Powerful blast' at Glasgow City Council data centre prompts IT meltdown

Enrico Vanni

Accident waiting to happen...

This is Glasgow City Council's Forth Road Bridge. The parallels are there - reduced maintenance, reduction in failsafe capacity and redundancy in a short-sighted effort to reduce costs following the transfer of responsibility of running the system from several expert external contractors to an arms-length quango. - https://www.access.uk.com/

Don't want to upgrade to Windows 10? You'll download it WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

Enrico Vanni

Re: I am not sure of the law in various parts of the world where microsoft operate

Bollocks m8 - no-one can contract out of statutory obligations in the UK.

Jeep Cherokee 2.2: Capable, comfortable ... but just not very Jeep

Enrico Vanni

Re: Hmmm

It's a long, long time since that description could be applied to KIA. 10 year warranties have seen to the reliability and resale jibes. Between them, KIA and Hyundai are taking over the market sector previously owned by Honda.

Microsoft: Free Windows 10 for THIEVES and PIRATES? They can GET STUFFED

Enrico Vanni

Irrelevant. I have already told my 'friends and family' group I support to avoid the free 10 upgrade and stick with 7 for desktops and laptops - I simply had to say 'subscription' and 'remember the pain of Windows 8' and they were convinced. Everything else is now on iOS or Android anyway.

Junk in your trunk is Amazon Germany's new delivery plan

Enrico Vanni
Stop

Insurance

..invalidated? Or at least significant extra premiums for those willing to try this out methinks.

'Leaked' EU digi wish list: Junkets for Eurocrats, sops to copyright and telcos

Enrico Vanni
Go

So, Ansip proposes to end geo-blocking, just as the BBC has blown a small fortune to move their Freesat offerings to a satellite with a smaller footprint to stop the signal leaking all over Europe. Who'dathunkit?!

Google drives a tenth of news traffic? That's bull-doodie, to use the technical term

Enrico Vanni

Re: How many of these are using Google as their address bar?

Coupled with the fact that Chrome browser directs anything that isn't a properly formed URL (or a close enough approximation) typed into the address bar through Google search as well, so even those who think they are not using Google as a glorified address bar actually are (if you see what I mean).

The coming of DAB+: Stereo eluded the radio star

Enrico Vanni

Re: Ever seen a Digital Tick?

Yup. Got one sitting on my desk right now - a Dension DAB+U which is an amazing little device. Plugs into any USB port and then emulates stations as audio files in a FAT32 filing system. Search is done through executing files too.

Enrico Vanni

Re: Wrong way round

There's a reason equipment sold into the UK DAB only market had the DAB+ ability crippled - whereas DAB's MP1 codec is patent expired and can be used freely, DAB+'s AAC requires licence fees to be paid for each unit sold. No point in paying for a feature that cannot be used, but on the other hand this is the big elephant in the room that has stalled DAB+ implementation.

Scotland to get National ID system 'by the backdoor', campaigners mull challenge

Enrico Vanni

League Division Two Politics

When I voted against the formation of a Scottish parliament and was accused by friends and family of being unpatriotic, my argument to them was that we already had a bunch of incompetent politicians running things, and the last thing Scotland needed was all the Scottish politicians who weren't good enough to get seats at Westminster finding jobs with ultimately even more power in Holyrood.

Fast forward 16 years.....

The BBC wants to slap a TAX on EVERYONE in BLIGHTY

Enrico Vanni

Rupert plays the long game...

As I said in another thread, give in to this latest demand to 'privatise' the BBC and you might as well just hand it to Mr. Murdoch as he currently controls the means to secure broadcast TV (either by adopting the system developed by his crack ex Mossad team, or by choosing a rival system that his crack ex Mossad team will compromise). BBC needs a clean transition to web only distribution (which is still many, many years off) so disturbing that process by giving Murdoch control of the current main distribution system will be a mistake we will rue (just like the Anzacs).

The BBC was the first, the Alpha, the origin of broadcast TV in the UK. Do they deserve special treatment - damn right they do.

Don't pay for the BBC? Then no Doctor Who for you, I'm afraid

Enrico Vanni

Sorry, but Conditional Access systems get compromised, all the time. ITV Digital went tits up largely because it could not stem the leak of customers when its CA system could be bypassed with a microcontroller and eeprom - hell the market for pirate stuff was so large that the hack was manufactured en masse in smart-card form factor. Likewise Sky and Virgin Media. The whack-a-mole game was very expensive for the providers, and even when they thought they had made their smart cards secure enough the pirates discovered how to share the decryption keys from one legit card across the 'net.

CA will spell the end for the BBC as an independent body because they will be forced to throw in with the most secure (for the moment) CA provider (which pretends to be independent from Murdoch these days) or if they choose a rival system they will quickly go the same way as Canal+, Multivision, Premiere, Stream TV and the many, many others on the long list of providers whose systems were 'compromised' and were eventually assimilated by the Murdoch empire anyway (which is maybe what this is about all along...)

SCREW YOU, BRITS: We're going through with UK independence ANYWAY – Scotland

Enrico Vanni

Re: A snide and disappointing article

<sarcasm>Brilliant riposte.</sarcasm> SNP tribalism (for that is what it is) means people in Gretna are part of the club and should feel solidarity with their fellow citizens hundreds of miles away in Kirkwall, while their neighbours a couple of miles down the road in Carlisle should be regarded as the enemy. That is exactly how the rest of the UK is interpreting SNP attitude, and they are not wrong. SNP might invoke Westminster every time they mean England, but the Northern Englanders are not as stupid as the tribal Scots and know where the border really ends.

SNP and their '45' have made me ashamed to be associated with the recent news coming out of Scotland. The loud minority spoiling it for everyone else as usual.

Enrico Vanni

Re: A snide and disappointing article

Sorry, but I am with the 'Little Englanders' or, to give them their proper name, British on this one. Nationalism is a poisonous and base cause and is just racism with a different coat on. The SNP play to the left-leaning part of society, yet make out that their needs and wants are so different to, say, the people in the North of England who live in very similar conditions. I can understand how that would cause those people to feel aggrieved by the rhetoric of the SNP - that somehow they do not matter because despite their plight being similar, the SNP cares not a jot about them because they are a few miles 'south of the border'.

Thing is though, most SNP supporters genuinely do not care about the impoverished north of England as they are closet racists anyway.

(PS. I am a native Scot of Italian parentage).

Enrico Vanni

Getting mighty fed up with how the losers of the referendum are carrying on as if they won. The irony of the often repeated mantra 'Scotland has a government it did not vote for' is clearly lost on the SNP when they do things like this.

Who wants to be a millionaire? Not so fast, Visa tells wannabe pay-by-bonk thieves

Enrico Vanni

Who'd-a-thunk it? Contactless cards being read 'contactlessly' pose a security risk? The attack vector is obvious.

Exactly why I immediately sent my contactless debit card back and demanded a standard one.

Our Vultures peck at new Doctor Who: Exterminate or, er ... carrion?

Enrico Vanni

"Mining the exhausted"? I've noticed some blatant 'homage' to other sci-fi ("resistance is futile") but I would also like to think that the reference to something as obscure as The Gemini Man in the Caretaker episode was intentional.

Jony and Marc sitting in a tree ... let's design Apple iThings, BUDDY

Enrico Vanni

Gotta admit that it doesn't bode well when the PR dribble is about the (new) designers rather than the products.

It is becoming very apparent that Apple are shit scared - standing on the edge of the platform fearing failure with the next launch....

Déjà vu: Virgin Media jacks up broadband prices

Enrico Vanni

Could be worse...

You could be getting conned into a two-year broad-band/TV contract with the sweetener of a new European Football Channel (which after one year becomes worthless when said provider loses their right to European Champions League games).....

Dusty pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter laws will do for social media crimes

Enrico Vanni

I can understand why this might seem strange to someone born in the last 20 years who is used to hearing about politician hastily proposing and passing new legislation just to give the impression that some perceived problem is being tackled, sometimes to the extent that the same offence is unnecessarily and wastefully covered by two separate Acts. Case in point being unauthorised use of WiFi connections being illegal under both the Computer Misuse Act and the Communications Act.

Another classic example is Alex Salmond's 'Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act' - a testament to idiotic, ignorant political posturing that actually had the opposite effect to that intended, resulting in fewer prosecutions for Sectarian behaviour than previously were achieved under the Common Law Breach of the Peace.

The END of the FONDLESLAB KINGS? Apple and Samsung have reason to FEAR

Enrico Vanni

Re: @20legend

Are you the sort of person who would buy second-hand underpants if they had a designer lable on? Some things should just be bought new, and those things include items with non-replaceable rechargeable batteries, oh and nether-region covers!

Supermodel Lily Cole: 'I got a little bit upset by that Register article'

Enrico Vanni

Ironic

That celebs who actually contribute something more than their physical image to culture get slated for legitimately reducing their tax input through benevolence schemes, yet Ms. Cole takes money out of the treasury to prop up her do-gooder credentials and that's supposed to be better?

She's a bigger parasite than knuckledraggers on benefits in terms of net cost.

Carry On YouView Regardless, BBC Trust tells the BBC

Enrico Vanni

Re: Project Kangaroo aka SeeSaw

Hahah! Tony's mate! Didn't stop Tony running away with his wife....

Charity: Ta for the free Win 8.1, Microsoft – we'll use it to install Win 7

Enrico Vanni

Irony is pointing out how easy it now is to make Windows 8.1 appear to the end user like Windows 7...

Windows XP still has 27 per cent market share on its deathbed

Enrico Vanni

Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

"Consumers, I think, are likely to continue replacing their PCs and notebooks with the media consumption devices they've always wanted."

Yup. I'm predicting sales of Hudls and Lifetabs will see a sharp increase in the next couple of weeks.

British trolls to face 'tougher penalties' over online abuse

Enrico Vanni

More politician's logic. Something must be done, here's something. Whether this is belying the idea that UK governments still have power when in reality most laws are now dictated by the EU and all parliament has left is the ability to tinker around the edges and enact multiple laws for the same few offences it still has jurisdiction over, or they are just playing to the crowd to bury bad news, this is a complete waste of time.

There's plenty precedent for this though - like clauses in the Communications Act duplicate many parts of the Computer Misuse Act, so this will duplicate other parts of the Communications Act.

The current Scottish Government went one further in the 'duplication of legislation for the sake of being seen to do something' stakes with the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act, which has actually had the effect of reducing the number of convictions achieved for the behaviour being outlawed as previously they would be tried under Breach of the Peace laws, which had a lower test are a greater range of punishment.

Our leaders really are idiots at times and their misuse of legislation like this proves it.

IBM PCjr STRIPPED BARE: We tear down the machine Big Blue would rather you forgot

Enrico Vanni

This might have been a crippled IBM PC, but the engineering stacks up well against the marketplace rivals of the day. IIRC though the PC Junior/Peanut was a good deal more expensive than the BBC (even once you added in the cost of a monitor)/C64/Speccy/Amstrads, and a 16 bit processor (PCJr's USP) pumping through an 8 bit bus didn't impress the lowest common denominator computer buyer of the time.

The first of the proper 16 bit home computers were already in the pipeline (Amiga and ST) and when they turned up a year or so later the rest as they say is history.

Bono bests Bezos in Fortune's 'World's 50 Greatest Leaders' list

Enrico Vanni

Re: Inspiration

The very same Bono who is hated by the Africans he 'helped' by supplying 'free' mosquito nets, thus putting the local pest controllers out of business.

Way to go (idiot).

eBay rejects Carl Icahn's board nominees as 'inexperienced'

Enrico Vanni

Could we stop referring to him as an 'activist investor' and use the correct term - parasite!

What's up with that WhatsApp $19bn price tag? Answer: Voice calls

Enrico Vanni

Virgin Media...

..have been pushing their own version of this (SmartCall App) for a wee while now. Is this just going to turn into another licensed branding exercise? Does WhatsApp have that amount of brand recognition.

Google kills copycat TfL congestion charge payment ads

Enrico Vanni

Great. Now they need to do the same for the fake NHS EHIC card application sites. First three hits on Google for these are still sponsored scam sites.

Micro Men: The story of the syntax era

Enrico Vanni

Re: Superb film

I actually contributed to one of the articles in the Domesday project. Not exactly an epic about news in my home town. Probably the most interesting piece concerned the privatisation of the local bus service.

Still, I can say I was there!

Tim Cook dangles 'new product categories' carrot over $14bn Apple share buyback

Enrico Vanni

Re: sony

and to think there was a time when Sony were thinking of buying Apple!

Buying Sony as a going concern today makes no sense for anyone. The Chinese will one day pick up the brand as part of a fire sale no doubt.

Woz he talking about? Apple co-founder wants iPhones to run Android

Enrico Vanni

Shock horror!

Woz reveals the truth of the emperor's new clothes. He has a point - Apple is a brand, a fashion item. It matters not a jot to most iPhone owners what OS it uses.

Skin it to look like iOS and make it compatible with iTunes and 99% of owners wouldn't notice the difference.

Macs can run Windows these days and the sky didn't fall when that happened.

This is akin to BMW going front wheel drive for some models. Shocking for the purists but makes sense economically as the buyers of those models don't give a toss.

BSkyB sees first half pre-tax profit tumble as sales climb

Enrico Vanni

Re: The solution!

The F1 on subscription TV is a bit of a red herring - all the deals struck in Europe are non-exclusive, with FTA terrestrial channels in the same territories getting rights to half the races live and the rest delayed. The BBC could (if it wanted to) show races they do not have live rights to delayed in their entirety (as RAI in Italy do, often to the benefit of the viewer for far-eastern races that would otherwise be broadcast at silly times in the morning) but choose to show a highlights program instead - a recognition that portions of the product are not worth broadcasting.

I suspect that when the time comes the contracts will not be renewed on the current terms.

Enrico Vanni

Re: Platform and broadcaster lock in

"Sky are all well and good but i absolutely hate the way they lock in their premium channels to their physical platform."

This has always been a bone of contention about Sky TV offerings and is actually against EU regulations regarding conditional access (and Sky still resist change despite an OfCom ruling against them on the matter). Sky say it is to prevent piracy, but that has backfired massively on them as their encryption system is now compromised and it would require replacement of every Sky STB in circulation to lock the stable door again, whereas had they gone down the DVB-CI route as they were supposed to then end-users would only be facing the replacement of the CAM module in their own hardware for the more secure DVB-CI+ versions.

I've seen the future of car radio - and DAB isn't in it

Enrico Vanni

Re: Well....

The Pure Highway > Aux in solution is cack. The receiver is an old, insensitive design that has long been superseded (think of early '90s RDS!) and the antenna it comes with is useless. I had one and ditched it for a Kenwood DAB head unit and a roof mounted, properly grounded multi-frequency amplified antenna with DAB output (ie. to the same standard as most cars now provide for FM). The difference is phenomenal.

Most people's experience of DAB is as an afterthought....

DON'T PANIC: No FM Death Date next month, minister confirms

Enrico Vanni

C'mon people. Stop treating this as some sort of conspiracy and see it as the clusterfuck that it is. DAB was a brave effort, but too little too soon, and in a world where standards matter the intentions of the people who brought it to market, noble as they were, should not be criticised. instead, blame the rent seekers who want something for nothing and push an inadequate standard for their own ends (ie. OfCom).

I can remember when Radio 1 was not on FM at all, and Radio 2 shared its spectrum with Radio 4, so the lack of coverage is not the fault of the technology. DAB could work if it was resourced properly, starting with a switchover to DAB+ (which is no more an issue than when DVB-T digital terrestrial went from 2k to 8k base modulation, rendering many early and unsupported STBs obsolete). Almost all sets sold in the last decade are already dual standard or can be upgraded (although there seems to be an issue with the AAC codec and the licensing of said codec).

REVEALED: How YOU PAY extra for iPHONES - even if you DON'T HAVE ONE

Enrico Vanni

Re: Message to mobile operators

The fact that this news is breaking surely proves that the lure of the new model is waning. 5C is a flop on the market but apple still made their money from it. They won't get away with that twice.

'Best known female architect' angrily defends gigantic vagina

Enrico Vanni

It's been bugging me for ages - the London Aquatic Centre had a familiar shape and I've now realised what it is. It looks like one of those sanitary pads - with wings!

It all makes sense now!!

What's wrong with Britain's computer scientists?

Enrico Vanni
Paris Hilton

Computing Science needs its role model?! Controversial suggestion - Sophie Wilson?!

One of the two people behind ARM - does it for me! She even appeared in a TV drama fergawdsakes!

Cocky Microsoft strokes soft tool in public for 3D printing on Windows 8.1

Enrico Vanni

I just can't excited at all about 3D printing, regardless of the title? Maybe that's the point?!

Win 8 PC sales plunge as retailers, disties shave orders by HALF A MILLION in Q3

Enrico Vanni

Re: PC installed base

Yup, and as more big apps go cloud (365, Photoshop) the need to upgrade desktop kit becomes even less important as the pipe rather than the silicon speed becomes the overriding factor.

Scottish leader splurged £20k appealing disclosure of EU membership legal bungle

Enrico Vanni

Scottish politics is indeed in stasis while this drawn out referendum campaign plods along. I made up my mind long ago (no to independence - I also voted against devolution as I said at the time all it would do is create another tier of government to drain more from the treasury- Holyrood is just league division 2 politics for the ones that weren't good enough to cut it at Westminster.)

BBC announces plans to spend your cash on digital goodies

Enrico Vanni

plus ça change

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/7182/BBC-Computer-Literacy-Project/

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