Telly, and the wireless

As of April 2012 the BT Tower is also a major transmitter for five of the UK's DAB muxes.

BBC National DAB 12B at 800W

D1 National 11D at 800W

London 1 12C at 800W

London 2 12A at 710W

London 3 11B at 800W

http://www.ukfree.tv/dabtx.php?tx=TQ292819

http://www.radiocentre.org/latest-industry-news/london-gets-dab-signal-boost

Good news

I think it's perfect that finally at least SOMEONE is interested in iCITY. Let the Americans populate the former Olympic grounds while the rest of the world just keeps on basing their UK activity around Shoreditch.

It will be a few years before the Americans realise they willingly chose the short straw. At least iCITY won't be empty for a while.

Shrug

It is telling that less than two years ago an announcement such as this would have sparked massive for and against Flash flamewars. Now the general response is either good riddance or a collective shrugging of shoulders.

The death by a thousand cuts.

Not the first TB drive

The opening sentence is a bit confusing. This is HGST's first external Thunderbolt drive, not the first ever external TB drive. Other manufacturers such as Seagate have been making external TB drives for a while now and LaCie even has a whole line of Thunderbolt drives. http://www.lacie.com/uk/more/?id=10149

Referendum is not very likely

Interesting analysis. However, the chances of there actually being a referendum are very slim. The keyword is the 'if the Conservatives win the next election'. Considering the Conservatives haven't won an election in 21 years, did not win the last election (that is why we have a coalition), and are currently not doing very well in the polls, the chances of the Conservatives winning the next election are not very big.

Especially not if you consider that voters generally have more important things to worry about than the EU.* It's the economy, stupid. Parties in power look less interesting than parties in opposition to the general voter, especially if they were in power during poor economic times. Britain's economy is in a terrible state and looks to be for another few years, with a Triple-Dip Recession, one of Europe's worst debt + deficit positions and a loss of Triple-A status likely.

Then, even if the Conservatives were to win the next election, there is a chance they won't actually hold the referendum and find some reason to kick it in the long grass.

* Lord Ashcroft: "So we’ve got a Europe policy – now all we need is a Tory government" - lordashcroftpolls.com/2013/01/so-weve-got-a-europe-policy-now-all-we-need-is-a-tory-government/

Disappointed...

Disappointed that I haven't seen any of the cheesy puns around this story use the obvious “iWay to sell” headline.

Obviously the use of 3G will steadily decline in favour of 4G, just like it did with the gradual transition from 2G to 3G.

The spectrum allocations will gradually have to be adapted to that change in use too. Fortunately, at least in Europe, there is now a trend to allow technology-neutral allocations of the spectrum. That means that operators can decide for themselves when and how much they allocate to which technology, based on the actual use by their subscribers.

Another little blessing is that the EU has been pushing for at least one chunk of spectrum (800MHz) that can be used for LTE across all member states. That means that the dangers of LTE frequency fragmentation, which are a headache for handset manufacturers, remain limited in Europe. Manufacturers will make sure their future handsets at least support 800MHz.

It appears largely shut down at the moment though

I was a very enthusiastic user of it when it was working as I commute about an hour and a half per day in total deep underground. Probably about 8-10 ten stations on my route had it, meaning I could continue to send and receive emails and iMessages throughout my journey. Very useful to catch up on personal email after a day at work.

The last two weeks or so it appear to be shut down on most stations. My work Blackberry hasn't picked it up at all and my iPhone only once.

Anyone know if Virgin is restructuring it at the moment?

The Unarchiver

Instead of StuffIt Expander I would recommend The Unarchiver. (http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/the-unarchiver/id425424353). It is free and supports an enormous number of formats, including very obscure or old ones such as ARJ or Amiga disk images: http://unarchiver.c3.cx/formats

AAPT?

Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists?

American Association of Physics Teachers?

American Association of Pharmacy Technicians?

American Academy of Personal Training?

American Association of Psychiatric Technicians?

How can you question the financial benefits of having one regulation?

I have two clients impacted by the various differences of data laws in their different markets. The EU is fortunately largely aligned, although my clients say there is still room for improvement. The difference between Europe and the US is expensive, doing business within the US is even more costly as some things vary even from state to state.

The cost of doing business because of all these variations are immense. One client of mine even decided not to offer some services in some countries (and two US states) because of the hurdles of this not being aligned.

But does it support IPv6?

Does it? Or will it be provided in a firmware upgrade?

I think it comes with DAB+ too

This device is said to support DAB and DAB+ as well.

Samsung announces mobile device with DAB

"Samsung are to release a new device which has a built-in DAB+ receiver. The Galaxy S Wifi 5.0 also has a TV receiver and will use the Android platform when it’s released in April."

http://radiotoday.co.uk/2012/02/samsung-announces-mobile-phone-with-dab/

MS Office to update in April?

Interesting comment from Michiel Leenaars who expects Microsoft to announce ODF 1.2 support in April.

https://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/240930/spreadsheets_come_to_odf_as_version_12_wins_approval.html

MS Office 2007 and later currently support ODF 1.1 for reading and writing. As the technical details of the ODF 1.2 standard were fixed over a year ago (the rest taken up by proofreading, legal review etc.) many office suites already support 1.2

Appears to support DAB+ as well

The excellent WohnOrt have done some digging and it turns out that this set support DAB+ as well as the old DAB. http://www.wohnort.org/DAB/

Quite handy if you would also like to use it in Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Czech Republic, Malta, Hong Kong, Malaysia etc. etc.

Not a big deal

Considering the problem is not that it is a vendor-prefix but that it is a vendor-prefix from another vendor (out of the control of the MS team that builds the IE engine) this can be easily solved. The IE team can just use the exact same implementation as the Webkit team but call it -MS-text-size-adjust.

h.264

Of course h.264 is an Open Standard. Everyone can download the spec for free and build their own implementation. Distribution of your implementation is not always free and can incur some costs, depending on use type. However, price has nothing to do with being Open or not, Free as in beer has. H.264 is not always Free as in beer.

Download the h.264 spec at: http://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-H.264-200305-S!!PDF-E&type=items

Sun ODF Plugin for MS Office, was free, now $90

Oracle also recently bumped the price from the superior ODF Plugin for MS Office from free to $90.

A shame since it is a lot better (more standards compliant) than MS Office own implementation that is only included in their last versions of MSO. If you are on an older version you're out of luck.

http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/

How do her camps work?

[quote]In her view, it is now Apple, Adobe and Google who are less committed to web standards - Microsoft, Opera and Mozilla are fully onboard.[/quote]

I am puzzled what metric she uses to decide who is "commited to web standards" and who isn't.

It can't be ACID3.

Chrome, Safari and Opera score 100 and Mozilla's latest preview is around 97 currently whereas IE is stated to be at only 55.

It can't be HTML5 video tag support.

Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera support already and IE is stated to support it in the future.

It can't be HTML5 video codec support.

Firefox and Opera are in the Ogg Theora camp while Apple, Google and Microsoft are in the h.264 camp.

It can't be general HTML5 support.

All the major browser developers have now pledged support for it.

So, which reason does she have to put Microsoft, Opera and Mozilla in one camp and Apple, Adobe and Google in the other?

No problem...

I don't see the problem and actually welcome this move.

As it stands now, 10.4 users will still be supported by Mozilla well into the second half of 2011 if not later. By that time most PPC users will have either upgraded to 10.5 anyway (My five year old G4 runs 10.5 just fine for everyday work and is my main computer).

Besides, by that time, 10.4 users will have become such a small number that it is not worth it to have all other users suffer from a lack of innovation. 10.4 lacks many of the modern frameworks and APIs that it would be a shame if Firefox could not make use of those because a hand full users still hangs on to some ancient OS.

Market forces and the network effect

I think you underestimate the power of market forces and the network effect.

An ever increasing number of local, regional and national governments are in the process of switching to ODF as the only allowed format for user editable documents. From smaller countries such as Denmark and The Netherlands to massive countries such as Brazil.

These organisations globally buy millions of seats for Office applications for their staff. If Microsoft's offer doesn't pass the compliance and interoperability tests in procurement procedures they will have lost a big sale.

Now, these governments exchange documents with suppliers in the private sector who in turn will need to adapt to their big customer's office format. All these private companies need an Office suite whose ODF implementation is compliant and interoperable. MS will simple not be able to continue their half-hearted low quality implementation of ODF if they want to continue selling to these customers.

I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years time MS is in the same situation with ODF as they are with HTML now. The power of Internet Explorer to set the web standard is gone, even though IE is still the most used browser. IE is now chasing tail lights of other browsers that do follow the W3C standards...

Firefox has had SVG support for years

The article suggests Firefox doesn't support Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). That is incorrect, Firefox has had SVG support for years. They just weren't able to land all the improvements to SVG they were hoping to include in time for Firefox 3.6.

Apple has already pledged support for this

"The ITU is a slow moving beast, but while its endorsement probably won't make any difference in the short term it might make hold-outs like Apple take note of the direction the rest of the industry is taking."

Eehhmm... you haven't really been paying attention, have you? Apple was in the first group of companies to pledge their support for this universal standard months ago.

Granted, it is relatively easy for them as they have already been using USB for data transfer and charging on all their mobile devices for years now. As opposed to my @£$%"% Nokia which has a USB connection for data but refused to be charged with it.

10 initial manufacturers, from Apple to TI.

"Several major mobile manufacturers, including Nokia, Apple and Research in Motion, have signed up for the universal charger initiative led by the Group Special Mobile Association (GSMA), according to Reuters.

[...]

The 10 cellphone manufacturers beginning Micro USB adoption in Europe are Apple, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG , NEC, Qualcomm, Research In Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments."

Europe Gets Universal Cellphone Charger in 2010

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/tag/microusb/

DAB+

@RotaCyclic

I am aware of that. However, first of all the error correction mechanism in DAB+ is much more advanced. You are much less likely to come across that "bubbling mud" sound that is so characteristic for the old DAB standard and the receiver will be able to turn weaker signals into a good audio signal. That means better reception indoors, in moving vehicles and further away from the transmitter.

Secondly, because MPEG4 (HE-AACv2 in this case to be precise) is much more efficient a 64kbit stereo stream will sound better than FM or 192Kbit MPEG1-level2 (which the old DAB uses). Personally, I even find 48Kbit HE-AACv2 very good and certainly good enough for stereo music in noisy environments like cars. And that is for stereo music, you can easily halve that bitrate for mono spoken word.

So, the error resilliance of DAB+ is something no broadcaster can and will change. Of course, if they really want to they could drive bitrates down to 24Kbit or worse but I think that is unlikely:

* Three high quality DAB+ channels can fit in the space of a single DAB channel and getting rid of inneffiencent analogue broadcasts creates even more capacity. The current issues (low bitrates) are due to lack of capacity, that is not likely to be the case after 2015.

* Broadcasters and Ofcom know all too well that one of the main selling points of DAB should be audio quality and that it's failing in the current situation.

The answer is DAB+, not DAB

@Neil 44

The report mentions that World DMB Forum profile 1(http://www.worlddab.org/public_documents/WorldDMB_Digital_Radio_Receiver_Profiles.pdf) would be the standard for all radios (including in-car ones). That means compulsory DAB, DAB+ and DMB-A compatibility. Therefore the market is actually huge, not just UK+Denmark but also almost all of continental Europe, Australia, several Middle-Eastern and Asian countries and possibly China. Even without China the market is well over half a billion people.

With a market that size and countries like France making the inclusion of digital radio a legal requirement in cars from 2012, expect the vast majority of cars to come with digital radios as standard within a few years.

And yes, basically the report makes way for the gradual migration from DAB to DAB+ in the UK. Finally the quality we've been promised years ago, MPEG4 HE-AAC encoding, much better error correction and many additional services.

Nonsens, ZFS is very useful for just about anyone

Considering one of the major benefits of ZFS is the use of checksums to guarantee data integrity I would say ZFS is more useful to the average Joe than, let's say, a battery in a notebook.

Let's take a very cautious assumption that 95% of ordinary users do not like to lose their data. That would mean that 95% of ordinary users benefits directly from ZFS, whether they have a single 60GB hard drive or a 500TB storage solution is irrelevant.

Too bad it doesn't tell us about security

The problem with Secunia's reports are that they punish companies that disclose and fix their bugs. The best way to become Secunia's "browser with the least flaws" is not to disclose any of your security issues and certainly don't patch them (as that is a disclosure as well).

Sure, a handful of issues may be discovered outside your test labs but those will always be fewer than those from browsers that are open about security.

The central issue is that Secunia has no data about the amount of existing security issues. It only has data about the amount of issues that are in their database. There is an unknown 'dark number' of issues that nobody knows the exact size of, and certainly not Secunia. They can only take a stab at it, a rather unreliable one.

One can only hope that browsers developers ignore Secunia (as most fortunately do) and keep vigilant about their security.

The Reg is off by 25%

The Register:

"The cost of the electricity produced is even worse than this figure indicates; wind farms' average output over time is around 30 per cent of their capacity, whereas nuclear stations typically run at 90 per cent. Thus, it costs more than six times as much to build a given level of power production using windfarms as it does using nuclear."

The original article in the FT:

"The comparison is made even worse because offshore turbines might generate power for about 40 per cent of the time, whereas modern nuclear stations operate at about 90 per cent of capacity."

Interesting error, is The Reg campaigning for nuclear?