Poor man's Radio 4 solution

Put an O2 pay as you go SIM into a smartphone. Subscribe to one of the stream compression sites or apps and access a 24 kbps Radio 4 mono stream (surprisingly acceptable for speech).

For £2 you will get 25 MB or about 2 hours 20 mins streaming, the SIM covers a vast area of the EU inc Switzerland. If the R4 content is particularly gripping, you can top up again the same day.

Nice... no mention of how the very first Bitcoins were minted though?

There was a recent Planet Money podcast that gave an entertaining layman's explanation of Bitcoin. It went into a bit more depth on how such a digital currency could be bootstrapped from nothing. Basically, at the start, anyone could generate their own Bitcoins once connected to the Bitcoin server, using their own computers. Like the Big Bang of the universe, at the beginning it was fast, then as more coins got generated it got progressively harder until it was easier to purchase them rather than generate new ones. Hence the 'Gold Standard' type concept - you just cannot 'print' new ones, even the founder of Bitcoin cannot.

Apparently there are some as yet unminted Bitcoins to be 'discovered' out there but the computational power and time needed to do it is getting phenomenally rare.

anyone remember Concordski ?

This is the most likely retaliation - carefully crafted spoof servers with plausible yet dangerous designs in them that will publicly embarrass those who think they can use stolen designs

Will Apple though?

make FT and especially iMessage available on non Apple platforms?

recent example: Blackberry Messenger to be opened up.

iMessage

Is Apple sticking, with it's iMessage, to the same dumb decision (now reversed) that BB made in the first place of locking its messaging platform to its hardware?

For example, I want to be able to use iMessage on my Windows work computer to communicate with the missus as it's much more convenient that hauling a beeping phone out of my pocket, unlocking it and dabbing the screen.

In typical Apple fashion, "no can do".

Benefits of science-literacy

Would not a teenage kid doing a science GCSE not have instantly found the sight of these gadgets with their telescopic aerials sticking out utterly implausible? Sales of these were driven by pure corruption we know, but was there no free media in Iraq that would want to expose this?

This tells us more about the state of Iraq than it does about justice for fraudsters.

Virus in the corner of my eye

"It reminds me of the guy in The Diamond Age who got infected by a virus that made him see Indian TV ads in the corner of his eyes 24/7, and he eventually went insane and killed himself"

Talking about Neal Stephenson's book the Diamond Age written 18 years ago.

http://www.stupidamericantourist.com/?tag=the-diamond-age

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

We are one step closer

Just as predicted...

by El Reg commentards in 2011 on the Stuxnet story. So finally some official research.

Now, if ATMs have been easily hacked via their ports by mid level crackers, what chance do these even more publicly accessible systems have? What about remote sensors connected into a serial bus or by Ethernet? Being remote they can be got to quietly.

Then there's wireless... http://www.welivesecurity.com/2011/08/09/hack-wireless-industrial-sensors-in-a-few-easy-steps/

The days when Internet Cafes did not server coffee

It was 1995 when I first tried a web search, not having access to any Uni facilities it was by visiting an 'Internet Cafe' in Liverpool on the main high street drag. It was full of terminals and no coffee to be seen.

After this it was a matter of months before I bought a Win 3.1 PC secondhand and was connected via modem.

Then I drummed up a simple site (with photos via a handheld 'roll over' scanner) to send guests to my Aunt's B&B. in those early days web competition was so thin that it did rather well, majority of customer seemed to be from the US which was several years (maybe 5?) ahead of the UK in home connectivity and general web access.

Anyone else remember upgrading their modem every 4 months?

The £30/month phone bills that could be run up to the ISP were oddly similar to what I pay now for broadband.

Apple will fix this for you...

Competition authorities can only jurisdict on companies with a really serious share of the market.

Way Apple is going, this is not going to be the case anyway.

Apple execs are scratching around for ideas to improve investor confidence/get its share price back.

Hows about OPENING UP a bit then?

No apps can be installed on an unjailbroken IOS device. Something fishy about this article.

Suspect news, frankly

Every time I have been in China, there was simply no practical English language short wave signal anywhere be it city or province. So I no longer carry a SW radio on travels as there is no UK originated content audible on it.

I doubt anyone owns a SW receiver in China these days either.

All in all I find it unbelievable that China jams these non-existent (English language??) broadcasts to a non-existent audience.

And to seal the demise of AM long distance broadcasting, the BBC itself closed down its flagship MW transmitter to Europe that used to allow all Eurocrats to listen in their standard car radios all day any day.

If the UK wants to get a good PR message out to Chinese citizens, how about ceasing with the humiliating hoops they have to jump through to get a simple visitors' visa to the UK?

Double the power needed at the phone end?

So masts might increase in power by 3 DB.

At a given borderline reception point, does not mean that the handset will need to transmit 100% more power to be heard by the mast? So heating the phone up and halving battery life?

Or is TX/RX 4g power asynchronous, so if a phone us uploading far less data t than it's receiving,. at least it's power consumption will be correspondingly lower than the mast's?

Take 2... now I get it

On first glance I thought that 100 kids were building good iClones on their own

Airplay does it how?

So in 2012 Airplay was sending the video through your WiFi twice

http://ipad.about.com/b/2012/08/29/airplay-dumping-wi-fi-going-direct.htm

"The protocol currently flows through a Wi-Fi network to deliver information"

...has it improved since?

Here in my croft where I've decided to site my e-biz, I'm only getting 0.24 MBPS.

There, obligatory post done.

They'll be back for brands later

So the unintended consequence is a softly-softly marketing approach, Google takes no responsibility for the quality but does get indirect exposure.

Once having been educated to like Android and Smartphones, the Chinese consumer will certainly be back for genuine certified branded phones later.

Try before you buy

Have a holiday in China then set yourself some IT tasks that will involve using resources off the Internet while there. After you have struggled with the Great Firewall for a bit you will not be sure of what the 'real' Internet 'out there' has to offer any more. With VPNs in China coming under ever more tight central control, you cannot rely on that either.

THEN decide if you want to take your skills to the People's Republic.

Visas for research data have not been invented yet.

Double bluff...

Actually he was nearly caught accepting cash to aid Chinese intelligence into his employer's network.

Good cover story though.

Moore's law of gravity

No tech company is completely defying this law like Apple thinks it can.

Punters have noticed how much better value for money they are getting in tech stuff these days.

The penny is dropping and consumer behaviour is rational. Some certain iCompanies aren't.

Skpe is p2p?

It seems hard to get details nowadays on this. If a p2p app, capable of becoming a 'node' for other Skype users to find each other and set up connections through, it might explain why Skype hogs resources and why I keep it out of, or disabled on my older machines unless I am actively using it to make a call.

My employer bans p2p programs from running on it's network so it would adiós MSN then.

They have 3 x the spending power...

Individuals in emerging markets may not be paying for a redundant phone wire like I do, along with a hefty monthly broadband bill for a fixed connection.

So all their discretionary income can do toward a handset and data plan.

No so stupid.

no attempt made to investigate then?

Should've let the cat quietly return home... with a GPS tracker attached to it's collar

Wallowing in it here

Innovations all over the place, and older relatives benefiting from science-fiction medical treatments.

Stats can't measure quality of life.

And everyone seems to be more concerned about whether they are moving up or down the pecking order, so they cannot see the real improvements in life in front of their noses. Neither can the economists it seems.

The pressure vessel will explode

Many repressive systems continue for a long time ONLY because a pressure relief valve does exist for those that really value it.

If China really closed down all VPNs this is going to head into a really interesting phase.