as a helpful guide, my newly invigorated AppleTV h/w version 2 , running Software 5.0 , which has on-device Apple ID sign up for 'content partners' , really surprised me with the breadth of partners available. The days of narrowcast internet-only TV are approaching!
I think having played with the ATV menu's that the series 7 of Mythbusters (through Discovery Channel partner) was £58 (fifty-eight quid). This was a 'whole series purchase' only. I think BBC and C4 were present on the partner list but I use FreeSat PVR with a humungous local archive instead so didn't look what Apple/BBC think is a 'reasonable' price. (just checked on iTunes and my reference Mythbusters S7 £58 is available at £1.89 per episode, interestingly Mythbusters S6 (2009) is £43 for the series , S5 (2008) £25, S4 (2007) £22, whilst S3 (also 2007) is down to £19 for the series) There's some long-tail in the pricing...
Of course Auntie will form a committee to report in a few years what they should charge - but I guess it'll be £1.49 per pop
I agree that a few years ago a BTS was a work of art, now, with the resources of a research centre (yes, including an idle anechoic chamber that we can fit a helicopter in) , with a cupboard filled with USRP software defined radios, 14 at the last count, the ones with the standard crappy 64MHz xtal - (we have the 52MHz better xtal on order )
Seriously, one of our USRP chassis ran OpenBTS on GNURadio perfectly with the stock 64MHz. The hardest part of the setup, funnily, was to find a connector for the US power supply.
DIY stuff here <http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/OpenBTS>
SOTA for GSM is now $1k h/w and 2 days typing.
The USRP presents a GSM air interface to standard GSM handsets and uses a software PBX (Asterisk) to connect calls. OpenBTS consists of a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (plus we used an RFX900 transceiver daughterboard) connected on a USB port of a Debian (BackTrack5) Linux box running Asterisk, GnuRadio and OpenBTS.
I met the Nokia head of product security recently, the actual malware/bug/threats numbers from my post are exactly accurate (really!). Due to it's long and glorious history symbian has accrued nearly six hundred threats, and Apple/Android devices have a handful each - though I'm more suspicious of the Android market process. Windows Phone 7 has to-date around a 1% and declining marketshare, no criminals in their right mind would target such a wimpy cross-section. I admit that should there ever be any attempt to fuzz my device it would rapidly expire in a cloud of outrageous data loss.
Mr Nokia security said that all phones are more or less safe anyway 'till MS retire XP, the cash cow of the phishing internet, then all hell will break loose in the mobile sector. I do hope to be using something a trifle more hardened by then! if there is anything resilient on the market
(I just built a legally compliant DIY GSM basestation in 2 days last week for around $1000, it worked rather amazingly, so we're *all* screwed until GSMA deprecate A5 and move to 3G/UMTS @900MHz?)
so MS will definitely be having a great 2012? I bought the WinPhoSeven because it's immune to the 596 bugs/exploits in Symbian, to the handful of bugs/exploits in iOS and Android both, and I didn't know at the time about the killer SMS of dooom.... but anyway , as a 'failed' product my hTc Mozart WinPhoSeven is entirely average as a phone but was insanely cheap!
roll on WinPhoEight, I'll need a new cheap internet access device or two in 2012
Quoting from 'pedias: Among them was the <B>Oh-My-God</B> particle observed on the evening of 15 October 1991 over Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Its observation was a shock to astrophysicists, who estimated its energy to be approximately 3×10^20 eV (50 J) —in other words, a subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of a baseball (5 ounces or 142 grams) traveling at about 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph).
more at <http://www.cosmic-ray.org/reading/flyseye.html#SEC10> but since this observation there have been another fifteen or so 'baseballs' observed. There's a vague possibility of dark-matter particles having a higher real-world momentum when they transit via terra.
in 1978, we managed to blag a Marconi broadcast video camera and a video recorder together the size of a Fiat cinquecento. I think the tapes - in the seventies - were well over twenty quid each, we certainly only had one tape at Springfield Place. Who have them now?
With tachyonic hindsight the Beeb *should* have filmed every DrWho, not wiped the tapes, true - but who could ever tell Auntie what to do!
by amongst others, "The Walls" a 1963 short story by Kieth Laumer, where your whole living room becomes a TV. (four twenty foot TV's with a ceiling on it) (one TV would prob. need a door through it)
The TV content concept is UUGC (ultra high levels of user generated content) actually then becomes the online social network of looking at other people looking at you.
Ray Bradbury probably got there first (1953) . He had a wall TV based soap opera "The Family" in Farenheit451 which resonates with the UHDTV concept.
I've been buying apps that link to hardware. Initially for research - just what is a Microsoft HealthVault? and how does Google Health work??
In search of data to create my own ePHR (electronic personal health record) , I bought a few input devices (typically €129 on the Apple Hardware Store from people like Withings), and I only bought this hardware because it came with iPod/iPhone/iPad Apps.
Research has started! (Google Health will soon be closing.....leaving an M$ monopoly?)
In Milan has just installed NFC terminals, not seen anyone use them yet. There's a free expresso or 4 chicken nuggets available should anyone dare to try. MITM will probably also be quite rare. Yes I do happen to have a 13Mhz USRP and frame antenna in my pocket....
I've just suggested to my team that we might contribute
Thanks Bill for finding this, we do have a few SpecAnals lying around, they're nearer €75k and are unused between lab tests. I'm a bit concerned about plugging & leaving them into a real antenna (I have a 25MHz to 2GHz discone outside the lab), as summer is thunder & lightning season!
I used to use an atomic clock controlled HP spectrum analyser attached to a long wire antenna to listen to international shortwave radio during the 1980's when I worked in a faraway desert where shortwave receivers were forbidden, HZ. I wrote to Swiss Radio International with a screen-shot informing them that their 17MHz transmitter was a whole 100Hz away from their published frequencies.
Always buy a spectrum analyser with (now digital waveform) demodulator and loudspeaker!
I was so happy the iPad2 was released, price was irrelevant
as I immediately bought an iPad One - 32GB WiFi model which was retailing for €599, I chose the white boxed RFB Model bringing it to a decent €419 (around £361/$583) It's an entertaining beast, in my opinion well worth buying with the 180 euro discount! I probably will buy the RFB iPhondleslab Two the week that numero trois is available!!
I do my technologically neutral tethering from my Android HTC Google Nexus One running OTA 2.3.3 Googlebread with dark small icons, that seems to work as well. The kids have snappily mastered all of this tech!
We got our coffee in the form of "Double Ristrette" when I slaved away at antimatter in the 80's.
No matter what late nite experiments, a couple of swiss ristrettes - similar to an italian expresso but with less liquid and higher density ions - would allow the cern brains to wake up and do fizziks. I never saw the synchrotrons actually make the stuff, but I admit they could have piped it in from the Prévessin site. probably
I've got many docks around the house, one was the gadget show recommended 2009 iPod bed vibrator alarm clock - all buttons of which have stopped working, but it does still recharge the iPods. The nice pink cheap clock/radio/iPod dock is still a clock/radio but all iPods inform me that this accessory is not compatible with charging the iPod. (it was when I bought it - but that's apple-evolution) The sony (last years model) dock works well- time is off by a few minutes- whatever I set it to, and for Android I have the Nexus One desk-stand from HTC, which switches on the N1 built-in dimmable green clock function & bluetooth's the audio down a 3.5mm to a Sony DAB used as a line-in in case of music need. sometimes/often the N1 falls out of its dock as it's only held-in by a gnats' todger. Whilst on the subject the N1 HTC car-dock is pretty good, phone rarely falls out, and allows reasonable streaming 3G UK & NPR radio stations whilst driving around southern europe.
Quote/ Google Reported Attack Diagnostic page for bbc.co.uk/radio3 at 15h33 BST on Thursday
What is the current listing status for bbc.co.uk/radio3?
Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this website may harm your computer.
Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 2 time(s) over the past 90 days.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 15 pages that we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 4 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time that Google visited this site was on 2010-09-09, and the last time that suspicious content was found on this site was on 2010-09-09.
/Unquote
My quick & dirty analysis of bbc.co.uk/radio3 is that content was aimed at me by BBC.co.uk and BBCimg.co.uk
and by REVSCI.net and by QUANTSERVE.com and by SCORECARDRESEARCH.com.
Now I wonder which of the 5 content servers is compromised?
REVSCI.net is "audience Science"
QUANTSERVE.com is "ad impressions" <------I guess BADverts come from here!???
activated the smart card - for which purpose you needed the Sagem TNT. Then 30 seconds later 'threw-away' the Sagem terminal , placing the now valid card in a generic Viaccess3 RX.
Sagem were *that-bad*, that their equipment had a life measured in minutes! The last one I tried to repair had an (unrepairable) 1.8/3.3/5/7/12&28volts psu inside . At least this HD PVR has an external 12V power block!
For personal viewing enjoytainment I voted Humax Freesat HD PVR as I found Freeview had quite poor bitrates from the overstuffed muxes, and that's before the HD started
I rooted this ipod for Cydia sourced Apps (so I could demo the BT for controlling a Lego robot!) just on Sunday, I'd done hard resets and cleaning ready for the jailbreak, so the iOS4 went thru smoothly at 6am today.
with supermarket points (Esselunga in Varese, Italy) similar robots are on the market at £400 - Samsung claims that theirs is more algorithmically intelligent than a Roomba, but is that £400 better?!
The difference with the normal vacuum/Dyson is that you have to be bothered to get it from under the stairs, then do a half-hearted job for 20 mins - whilst the Roomba will wander around for a whole hour, 60 minutes of quietly nearly vacuuming/sweeping everything many times. And you just have to press a button.
my Roomba 520 is going great after 2 years - but I think I have to buy some new rubber brushes.
is "DishPointer Pro" on Android or iOS , uses the camera and the compass to work out exactly where in the sky is Express-AM1 or Skynet 4E or Intelsat 805. It allows an instant site survey , which way do I point the dish?, what elevation? - is there a big tree or building in the way? (YES, quite often!) = move dish.
NASA/NSA presumably have better systems but theirs will have cost a bit more than twelve quid!
more details at http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/productivity/dishpointer-pro_blgo.html
My 3yr old is always searching for Doctor Who on the "Google Sky Map" augmented reality App, so that will get some votes too.
On my ff 3.6.3 homepage /newsnow.co.uk/ totally appeared in Korean? Some screwed codepage? Lots of boxes and other junk. Resolved by forcing ff to use a working font like lucida and ignore the HTML page fonts request. Only happened on my iMac, I had recently noticed some false font "duplicates" in 10.6.3. I did the 900meg combo update.
just had the nexus1 for a day , found that I'd overcomplicated my home & work WiFi by using channel 13 (purely as most ppl use channel 1). The google HTC being 'american' couldn't scan up to ch13, so I've had to drop every router down to ch9. Also having probs in that I can't access the airport_express wifi extender operating as a clone on the faraway airport_extreme basestation. The phone is ignoring the co-channel extender and is trying to connect only to the remote BTS. I've downloaded a heap of android wifi apps to try and troubleshoot. HTC h/w is great, I like the replaceable battery - bought a HD2 car charger (HTC Car Charger For HTC HD 2 / HD 2 / BlackBerry 9700 Bold / 8900 / Storm / Storm 2 / 8520) for 3.99 from Play so that I can top up the battery whilst driving. It's a s l o w phone to charge. My wife still prferes iPhone 3G over HTC Desire/Nexus1
for the (near) future policy based radio services. My nexus 1 has user replaceable firmware - in a telephone!, if the cognitive or local policy driven 'white space' can get around to updating part of that firmware over the air - today you're in Amsterdam so an LTE VOIP call on 900MHz will cost you 1euro whilst joining the fray on the open 2.4GHz 802.11n will be free - but have a bit-error-rate of 1x10^5. Choice, following local laws.
Tomorrow in NY the "phone" will have to reconfigure itself to CDMA, or download the new Apple widget which allows data transit on the AppleTube? Rules:Encryption is allowed and you should avoid all domains ending in .cx (could be a local policy update from the NY pilot channel hive)
Semantic is a label attached to the data, suggesting its relevance, authenticity, origin and other attributes. I'm sure that accurately OWL3 programmed spiders using post-Bayesian rules could categorize much of the existing data. labelling it 'mostly harmless', perhaps?. LOLCatz would be labelled/taxed & only available in short legal doses, in those countries that permit it.
The Web has a bit to go before it gives ubiquitous, always on, customer access. At the same time as critical virtual service delivery - mainly due to expensive real people being re-sized to server based. If today's cashpoint ATM's are switched off there may be food riots in some countries after 3 days; in 20yrs the WWW will be more important than that, I'd appreciate a LOT of research to get it to be a stable resilient semantic system for the mesh network radio topology, probably post IP protocols anyway. beta version in 2016???
that would be the same trick proposed by the universities of Boston <http://smartlighting.bu.edu/> & Pennsylvania paper at http://smartlighting.bu.edu/research/May808_slides_Little_FSO_Commun.pdf
could replace ALL streetlights in world with active LED's - save trillions in CO2 , dollars etc and have a nice comms channel that's 'better than wifi' - bit noisy during daylight due to the wideband noise source that is occasionally seen in summer.
when Liz Kershaw was hosting a program, invited emails from the listeners discussing best Clash gig vs. best Oasis gig or some such nonsense. I wasted ten minutes of my life describing how Joe Strummer's trousers fell down at Leeds University in '77 and he came out with the quote "me B****ing trousers have fallen down, has any w*****r got a safety-pin?", which was hilarious in a Punk concert. (as was the number of ubiquitous pin devices subsequently hurled stageward) I didn't realise until the BluePeter Kittengate drama that Liz wasn't live - just pretending - and had presumably recorded all her years' 6Music shows one Tuesday in January and so never got my email. Close 6Music down!!!!
Radio 3 recently has been playing some good stuff
BBC should employ Steve Allen of LBC early breakfast show on Radio 2.
the app will help me work out what all the strange shaped boxes in my loft are. I have accidentally amassed a collection of fruit from '84 onwards. The fatmac 256 (expanded to 512 of course) actually has a working 5 megabyte hard-disk inside, must have cost $10000 extra when it was first bought..next to that..under the box of lego....we find a nesting group of LC2's.....
in a Alicante MediaWorld store. It was a no name (that I can remember) Generic Satellite Receiver, I have it DISEQC on Hotbird FTA + UK FreeSat, it includes a Digital Terrestrial Rx - whose channels (12 here in Italy) just get added to the Satellite list and a front USB socket for MPEG-2 Streamed recording. I dump to 16GB USB stick and 1 hour of VIVA music was around 1.2GB. My PC & Mac see the file as a Streamed Media, plays well with VLC. Cost 129 euro, around 110 quid.
I haven't played with the 'timed' recording modes, just pressed the basic PVR instant button on the remote - which takes about 5 secs to start. nice piece of kit!
Bragg - halcyon days of yore , concert in Manchester, "OK Guys & Gals," he spake, "Get your illegal recording devices ready as the next track is a new one", an ecstasy of fumbling as our myriad subtle Walkmen were primed.
>>>BANG<<< "Help save the youth of America" or some such entertainment, I've lost the tape now - but he was always forward looking! 20 years ago at least!!!!!
if I recall correctly , Germany was about to slap a TV license style tax on Smart Mobile Phones, partly on the basis that they could theoretically watch some form of streamed ARD or ZDF and partly on the basis that nearly everyone has a mobile phone. Don't mention this to.. oops
a pair of yellow ear defenders looking like 1970's headphones. these were for a local gunclub. a microphone slightly amplified background conversations but when a firearm was discharged the "bose" style noise cancelling system muted the speakers. well it did when the gun went off on the right, as that's where the single ambient microphone was pointing. when a bang happened on the left side of the wearer these headphones AMPLIFIED it! I'm sure the MoD have done 360 degree tests with these shiny new variety, hope so.
but 'Channel' Five is now at 28.2 Astra 2D 10773 MHz Horizontal DVB-S 22MSPS 5/6FEC Transponder 45 S-ID 6335 VID 5400 AID 5401 (for those using generic FTA boxes) slightly ahead of the official launch.
I helped build some of the earlier CERN high energy magic machines..
It was nice to hear the SPS getting a mention on radio4 this am, nobody reminded us how the LEP - large electron positron 27km biggest experiment since...yes, you've heard it, anyway how LEP couldn't circulate a beam at first try as some joker had stuffed an empty beer bottle up the vacuum tube! I presume LHC had an obstacle patrol!
I once dumped n x 10^9 antiprotons at 3.5GeV/c into the wrong place, wasn't no black holes that I noticed, but it did snow a lot that year!
will also be simlock free and open, cost is €469 for 8GB from Vodafone.it and TIM.it. Preregistration is available on the afore sites, however you'll need a Codice Fiscale (Italian Tax financial traceability number issued by the dreaded Guardia di Finanzia). The Contract iPhone 3G's from the two ops will be authorised at home via iTunes 7.7 , as they can't work out how to do it in-store. Demand is huge. Lots of sheeple complaining about the typical two thousand four hundred US dollar cost over the 24 month contract time. network d/l limited to between .6 and 1GB/month, but the two ops haven't got much data experience. The third Italian operator, 3 (tre), is hopping mad at not being involved in fridays debacle/free-for-all and intends launching a 3 branded iPhone 3G for €90 euros , with a minimum top up of around €10/20 per month, to undercut the others. 3 actually knows about data networks!
last fascinating fact for those who wish to spend dosh, look up the Apple UK refurb store, go to iPod, and refresh the "refurb iPhone" tab every few days. Rumour has it that once world+dog has bought 3G , then they'll release the mountain of 'refurb' 2G and iPod touches which are mysteriously stockpiled in Milton Keynes? (I made the MK bit up)
Germany is rolling out the incompatible DAB+ as it sounds better than (UK) (ancient) DAB. UK (ancient) DAB will one day evolve to DAB+, with, as has been mentioned, the requirement that you throw away your current or soon to be purchased UK DAB. UK DAB is not future compatible with DAB+.
Did we mention yet that France, and other bits of the EU quite like the DVB-H (digital video broadcasting to a hand-held). Here in the research centre we test each week some US product for XM/Sirius Rock & Roll Satellites, but 'nowt clever for the EU.
SWITZERLAND is switching off soon their 558KHz Analogue Radio Canton Ticino Canale Uno (medium wave) transmitter. CH will use RDS FM until the digital EU wastelend has sorted itself out. In Italy RAI tried DAB 5 years ago , then stopped! Now there are a handful of DAB stations (Rome's "Radio Radio") and quite a few DAB+ that I'm unable to decode. I just bought a 70 Euro Audiola (cr@p) car-radio with a USB and an SD card slot and I drive around europe with 2 gigs (FAT16) of Radio4 podcasts and music per slot. Forget broadcast, go timeshift.
hasn't been mentioned for a while. There was a US lab where they managed to interstitially adsorb and store more hydrogen inside a metallic or graphite nanostructure lattice than as cryogenic liquid hydrogen. The lab blew up one day, unfortunately. Did I tell you that I met Stanley Pons, nice chap, mine's the furry arctic coat with the excess of neutrons...
when the LTE or WiMedia has (if/when) evolved to Cognitive Radio based on Software Radio technologies, then there will exist a set of local/metropolitan policies that will be inherited by devices from the Cognitive pilot channel or similar enforcement mechanism. As ALL devices will in future feature an SDR this Policy inheriting behaviour is needed to avoid unwanted emissions from the ever increasingly flexible hardware. M$ hasn't invented this, they're just talking about it?. Paris!
My colleagues here in Italy just brought the engineers over from Germanland to install their solar winter-DHW / summer-swimming pool heating system (and another team from Austria to install the screw fed wood pellet backup system) C4 Granddesigns seems to feature many roving tuetons?, so maybe it's not (yet) common in the UK, but theoretically possible. (For ballpark comparisons they also got a team from Germany to drive over 1000kms with an entire Lawn in rolls, rotavate, lay and water to perfection, for less than the cost of local Italian gardencentre quotes)
As for superinsulation, at work we've started screw/glueing full facade 80mm polystyrene tiles, later rendered, to the outside of most of our buildings. I also haven't found a way to do it on a domestic scale yet, but in theory this might be nice! (gvnmts wouldn't like the missing consumption VAT I suppose) you might be able to heat the whole superinsulated house with a single Pentium 4?
living in Italy , Europe's most power starved economy - no natural resources beyond a few wet alps, we each get maximum 3kW for our house. (You can pay a lot extra to get 4.5kW) My MCB in the power meter trips off after a few seconds of more than 3kW peak. *A home UPS is essential* , not to power the whole home, but to keep the small family infotainment server room going, ADSL WiFi Airdisk Apple TV etc. Having electronics connected directly to a wall socket, then losing 220V is a very unhappy experience for, in cost order of previous failures : Sony 17"LCD, Mac Mini HDD, LaCie 250GB external HDD, iMac DV. The UPS gives me a pleasant 15 minutes of beeping, time enough to reset the MCB or switch everything off safely if it is Enel's fault. (all eventually repaired except the Sony)
I see the need to cover my roof with PV, tenthousandpounds for a couple of kilowatts peak , with hopefully a 25 year lifetime if I use certified modules, I already have wood heating installed, with gas backup, I suppose I should go solar thermal for an extra 2 grand. Maybe I'll build the envirotard stuff instead of buying a new car?
Why , I ask myself, does Italy historically have hardly any investment in Solar , whilst it seems that every German village is covered in PV, plus many people I know in Germany have installed salt water under-garden thermal heat pumps. In Italy the 3kW available won't even drive the heat pump! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-coupled_heat_exchanger>
is there a reason why everyone with a house in the UK can't install 80 metres of 35mm tubes, or a few hundred PV tiles, microgeneration could certainly lighten the drain to Sizewell during the winter? Currently the UK, and most other neighbours of France are importing as much juice as is possible.
Of course, reading the expert prediction from EC DG Transport and Energy(2003) document : "European Energy and Transport Trends to 2030" says "Oil prices decline from their high 2000 levels over the next few years, but they then gradually increase to reach a level in 2030 no higher than that in 2000 (and 1990)" (Oil was an average of U$D 28 per barrel in 2000) <http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/energy_transport/figures/trends_2030/1_pref_en.pdf>
so that's allright then!, for my amusing quip at the end I should ponder where I can get a PV powered ökologischesalzwasseruntergartenthermischewärmepumpen?
this BECTA fuss might explain my surprise at discovering the latest M$ Office for Mac on sale at thirty-five pounds via a link on the OU website. The dvd arrived in minimal packing (a jiffy bag) and seems to work on a Macbook Pro just as slowly as Open Office does, high marks for compatibility there!
My kids are being taught ubuntu @ home and Windows @ school, we currently prefer Pages for creating stuff, and I suppose may drift in the direction of Google Apps eventually
oh, did I forget the OU link..? it ended-up at http://www.software4students.co.uk/
and I had to register with my daughter's school's name & postcode, then collected my 80% discount! I have , of course, no connection to M$ or the above 'real but dodgy priced ' software bunch, but I did notify the EC competition branch about how unhappy I was with OOXML
quote :
Date: 14 April 2008 16:06:07 GMT+02:00
From: Infocomp@ec.europa.eu
Dear David,
Thanks for your email. We can inform you that in the course of the ongoing investigation into the interoperability issues related to Microsoft's products the Commission made enquiries with the EU's and EFTA's national standardisation organisations about possible irregularities in the OOXML standardisation process.
You will understand that as this is an ongoing investigation on which the Commission has not yet drawn any conclusions we cannot comment any further.
well, at present it seems to do so in Italy, <http://www.ngi.it/eolo/bts.asp>
the root address at www.eolo.it (only in Italian, sorry) explains how you can get up to 12megs via an external 5GHz antenna. My friends use the 2 meg service and only complain that their 600 euros per year unlimited data contact has to be paid up-front when signing the contract. Of course this almost WiMax wouldn't be needed if T*l*com It*lia would actually deliver DSL to non-metropolitan customers.
in keeping with El'Reg's excellent technical hive knowledge I will reveal that the Eolo network uses about 8500 client Alvarion BreezeACCESS VL LOS/NLOS dishes with wideband OFDM at 5,4-5,7 GHz point to point to 62 usually mountain-top Motorola BTS with fibre connectivity at 10Gbit/s to the NGI backbone via Cisco 12410 routers with 4Gbit/s to the Internet. All allegedly independent of Telecom Italia.
for those who like Antenna Pr0n, try <http://www.ngi.it/eolo/fotogallery/images/bts_campodeifiori/3.JPG>
1.JPG, 2.JPG & 4.JPG for images of Italian pre-alps, lakes and yes, Antennas!
a friend drove from Calais to Italy in their diesel Fiat something-or-other at 40km/h with the engine management system screaming "safe-mode" at them! (the garages in EU were temporarily closed due to summer holidays or something)
the cause of the safe-mode was that the urea holding tank inside the diesel tank had run-out, this was refilled in Italy , as is usual during a routine service, and I'm not buying an ...insert name of wee containing vehicle... to have similar fun!
I've bought a couple of them, of course, I then have to select/configure like mad(*) to get rid of every access point, profile, link, bookmark, service that might accidentally start the 3G service. (*)Including changing model identity code, flashing firmware, updating and downgrading!
then you have a nice modern GSM/WiFi phone with a switched-off 3G, which I could optionally re-awake should someday I find A REASONABLE (CHEAP) EU WIDE ROAMING DATA TARIFF.
/Yes, mine's the flat 'cap; ee, tha's reet, ah'm from Yorkshire!
I remember when the UK blamed the dropping of projects on 'unforeseen movements in the value of the Swiss Franc' ...
Jodrell's a bit old ~(who isn't), so might make a few quid in scrap value, but I have friends who were hoping that the UK would do a bit more than just help design the forthcoming future International Linear Collider (31kilometres of vacuum and a bit of radiofrequency and magnets) <http://www.linearcollider.org>
some STFC background at <http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/33012> also note the 25% cut in University PP and astrofizz funding!.
We should lobby the Chancellor, not AD he'll be replaced soon enuff, but Ed Balls who's dad is actually a genuine CBE MA DPhil FIBiol, and thoroughly nice chap.
come to think of it, are there ANY MP's who aren't former journalists or lawyers and understand that a bit of mildly expensive blue-skies research might get you something useful later on...?
/global warming penguin icon to represent the inevitable carbon tax in the budget tomorrow!!
there actually is a widely quoted BBC R3 bitrate for the digital PCM feed to the Analogue FM transmitters (with slope polarised antennas no less) , but I last heard the discussion a decade ago , so can't remember the details...it was better than 128k DAB
as I work at a sometimes european test centre for the US satellite digital audio radio service, I have been following with interest the activities of Delphi and Worldspace in europe.
“The satellite digital radio (SDR) standard that was approved by the technical committee of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in November 2006 is the core of the technology that Worldspace is implementing in its satellite radio communication networks in Europe,” the broadcaster said.
“It combines terrestrial repeaters and satellites and permits the most efficient use of the spectrum allocated for satellite radio (1479.5 to 1492MHz), thus maximizing digital capacity while maintaining excellent service quality, even in difficult reception environments such as urban city centers.”
There are currently 2 Worldspace satellites in orbit, with a third in a garage in Toulouse quote "launch of its mobile service beginning in Italy in 2009. It will use MPEG-4 accPLUS v.2 technology"
MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC Profile @ L2, Enhanced aacPlus?, anyway you can start here to dig out details <http://www.worldspace.com/maintenance/index.html>
Delphi receivers hope to offer 40-50 channels within the 12.5MHz bandwidth EU SDARS. Meanwhile DAB seem to be a working system in Switzerland, but RAI in Italy trialled for a couple of years and switched everything off, there are some commercial multiplexes, but DAB market penetration is Zero. I couldn't find a DAB signal in the south of France. In Italy FM reception is *so* bad, that it's unbelievable - hardly any working national chains, Radio Monte Carlo 1 and Virgin Radio being two of the only channels that automatically allow RDS synchronisation to work. Even they peter-out in the Apennines and require the usual manual tune once per kilometer. I look forward to EU SDARS, it's great what you can stuff-inside the shark's-fin on a BMW!....that'll be sat patch up. sat in-fill vert sideways, gps, gsm, 3g, tv etcetera....
well, the GSM network in an emergency can give millions of failed call attempts; the UK Access Overload Control (ACCOLC) of GSM is fine when 'the first responders' have the access keys. in 7/7 they didn't have, ACCOLC was ruled out by Gold command, but accidentally ruled in by a more local commander. GSM confusion! 3G was open and working OK all day long.
Runners were used to convey medical communications. Runners were used to convey Fire Brigade communications. Runners were used in Olympia @ 2000BC, so what's new!
The covert kit for Motorola is a bit of aquarium tubing that goes behind the ear, up the sleeve etcetera - on sale on eBay.
Whilst talking to the Spanish Ministry of Interior Program Directorate about their national emergency radio system SIRDEE , (considered possibly as an EU reference Model for an Integrated System) SIRDEE is TETRAPOL FDMA, the equipment is by EADS Telecom/MATRA, Telefonica owned infrastructure, the hands-on-control INDRA, the O&M Telefonica, operational use FF.CC.SS.EE also connected to FRONTEX/ Schengen for the South Border immigration Pressure. There are about 120K SIRDEE user organisations, 60 base networks to cover Spain, 54290 terminals in the 52 provinces with a QoS time availability of 95%. SIRDEE was conceived as a Voice+occasional data system (like TETRA) but hasrapidly evolved from
600 "voice queries per-day to a database-control-room in January 2005" to currently an
end-user (PC Plod) direct data query terminal function of over 11000 data queries per-day,
with now a 4 seconds response using SIRDEE network, for for example, FRONTEX related queries to the Schengen DB & the Delinquency Traffic DB. What this all means is that UK Airwave TETRA was imposed, and has shit data rate but may get better when it is paid for, or use GPRS/Crackberry. SIRDEE was competitively chosen , has lower O&M/terminal costs for a bigger area, and delivers better data on the beat, and this extra data capacity is being heavily used , especially for anti-trafficking
actually the Machine Operators (who do extensive shift-work) are the ones usually driving the sports cars. (It helps that with a 431K CERN number plate you can get a tax-free sports car!)
I have done machine experiments at 3am with <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Feodorovich_Orlov> Yuri didn't drive a sports car.
I prefer Ferney Voltaire to St.Genis-Pouilly (what will happen to the protons in November when the Swiss/EU border is dissolved??) (they currently have to pass the Douanes every 45microseconds!!)
Vista will *NOT* be the next standard. (unless MS is paying for voting again)
Standards are open, such as the unified POSIX architecture - large Sun Workstations, the current Mac Mini et al running Leopard etcetera.
Vista is such a pile of absolute total f***king sh*t that I am banning it from my laboratory as a security risk, never mind the lack of useability, and s l o w.
I've mentioned before - and I'll say this again, I am a Microsoft Partner with hundreds of ISO images VLP of their products in my cupboard. Mosty excellent and creative pieces of software. The VLP ISO XP SP2 image is used nearly every-day, and all of our new shiny Vista ISO discs are left on the shelf, untouched, gathering dust, unloved and totally in need of recycling to make ashtrays or something.
'ELLO POLLY!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!.....This Vista is no more! it has ceased to be! it's expired and gone to meet 'Steve Balmer! 'it's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'it to the OEM chain 'it'd be pushing up the daisies! It's metabolic DRM processes are certainly 'istory! it's off the twig! it's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! VISTA IS AN EX-OS!!
I have a couple of new Vista - I think they are 'Dull' XPS 2 x 2.20GHz Core2Duo laptops with 2GB ram each, came from Dell Canada, tax free, long story.
Nice shiny screen, very bright - after 5 minutes unuse the screen dims to 50%, and for a week I couldn't find how to make it bright again other than after a restart. the GUI is filled with hundreds of clickable things, most of which won't go away or do what I expect, it will NOT connect to my home 802.11n WPA Wifi using 802.11b/g compatibility, it will only try and connect to a neighbours WEP network, even when I put the Vista on top of the Wifi router. I went as far as loading the driver dvd for my Wifi. Still no connection. When I found an old 802.11g+ Wifi router and plugged in a subnet of my 802.11n then finally Vista connected. It popped up a screen, amongst many others, which mentioned that there might be problems with my Vista. of the 2 firewalls installed, both were off.
After reading the page several times I realised it might want me to do something, I downloaded a few KBxxxxxxx.exe which 'were necessary on my system', these ran and stated that 'your system does not need KBxxxxxxx', so all clear then!
And it is dog-slow. of the 2GB ram, I was informed - running only a diagnostic program that 750MB is free. Ubuntu would do the h/w justice!!! Vista Personal Ultimate is ME2. Where's the ice?
I bought Ashes to Ashes ep 1 and the complete series 1 of Life on Mars,
it is excellent quality, "near DVD" quality when viewed on a 20" iMac at work.
The actual format of Ashes to Ashes is .m4v which is Raw MPEG-4 Visual bitstream. It is DRM'ed, with a fairplay wrapper around the video , before I could play I had to authorise my iTunes and I was advised that I am only allowed a total of 5 PC/Mac's with this authorisation. I can however watch on any number of synchronised VidiPods, iPhones (my count is currently zero)The raw video dimensions are 640 x 360 (widescreen) hence slightly lower than DVD quality, but certainly watchable on the iMac and I'll try at home on the bigger flatpanel TV with iTunes running on XP/Media edition (cheap good upscaling silent vid card)
The BBC progs could be better and could be cheaper, it will need to be cheaper to get me to buy stuff other than the excellent stuff!
the audio is only in stereo, and filesize is 675 megabytes for 1 hour of video.
I think the AppleTV shows will be anamorphic hence better pixel fill, and rumour has it that apple is re-coding all their iTunes videos for anamorphism. (I have an AppleTV but haven't had the time to plug it in yet. on the whole I prefer to own rather than rent, but price could change that)
Register
81 posts • joined Wednesday 23rd May 2007 07:47 GMT
Page:
one hundred
posts?
so I can start doing steganography with html font colour space encoding yet? Some random IEEE paper
Re: Two points
as a helpful guide, my newly invigorated AppleTV h/w version 2 , running Software 5.0 , which has on-device Apple ID sign up for 'content partners' , really surprised me with the breadth of partners available. The days of narrowcast internet-only TV are approaching!
I think having played with the ATV menu's that the series 7 of Mythbusters (through Discovery Channel partner) was £58 (fifty-eight quid). This was a 'whole series purchase' only. I think BBC and C4 were present on the partner list but I use FreeSat PVR with a humungous local archive instead so didn't look what Apple/BBC think is a 'reasonable' price. (just checked on iTunes and my reference Mythbusters S7 £58 is available at £1.89 per episode, interestingly Mythbusters S6 (2009) is £43 for the series , S5 (2008) £25, S4 (2007) £22, whilst S3 (also 2007) is down to £19 for the series) There's some long-tail in the pricing...
Of course Auntie will form a committee to report in a few years what they should charge - but I guess it'll be £1.49 per pop
Merry trolling!
have a merry xmas!
I agree that a few years ago a BTS was a work of art, now, with the resources of a research centre (yes, including an idle anechoic chamber that we can fit a helicopter in) , with a cupboard filled with USRP software defined radios, 14 at the last count, the ones with the standard crappy 64MHz xtal - (we have the 52MHz better xtal on order )
Seriously, one of our USRP chassis ran OpenBTS on GNURadio perfectly with the stock 64MHz. The hardest part of the setup, funnily, was to find a connector for the US power supply.
DIY stuff here <http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/OpenBTS>
SOTA for GSM is now $1k h/w and 2 days typing.
The USRP presents a GSM air interface to standard GSM handsets and uses a software PBX (Asterisk) to connect calls. OpenBTS consists of a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (plus we used an RFX900 transceiver daughterboard) connected on a USB port of a Debian (BackTrack5) Linux box running Asterisk, GnuRadio and OpenBTS.
er no.
I met the Nokia head of product security recently, the actual malware/bug/threats numbers from my post are exactly accurate (really!). Due to it's long and glorious history symbian has accrued nearly six hundred threats, and Apple/Android devices have a handful each - though I'm more suspicious of the Android market process. Windows Phone 7 has to-date around a 1% and declining marketshare, no criminals in their right mind would target such a wimpy cross-section. I admit that should there ever be any attempt to fuzz my device it would rapidly expire in a cloud of outrageous data loss.
Mr Nokia security said that all phones are more or less safe anyway 'till MS retire XP, the cash cow of the phishing internet, then all hell will break loose in the mobile sector. I do hope to be using something a trifle more hardened by then! if there is anything resilient on the market
(I just built a legally compliant DIY GSM basestation in 2 days last week for around $1000, it worked rather amazingly, so we're *all* screwed until GSMA deprecate A5 and move to 3G/UMTS @900MHz?)
well I bought a WinPhoSeven this year
so MS will definitely be having a great 2012? I bought the WinPhoSeven because it's immune to the 596 bugs/exploits in Symbian, to the handful of bugs/exploits in iOS and Android both, and I didn't know at the time about the killer SMS of dooom.... but anyway , as a 'failed' product my hTc Mozart WinPhoSeven is entirely average as a phone but was insanely cheap!
roll on WinPhoEight, I'll need a new cheap internet access device or two in 2012
examples of 'cosmic ray particles'
Quoting from 'pedias: Among them was the <B>Oh-My-God</B> particle observed on the evening of 15 October 1991 over Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Its observation was a shock to astrophysicists, who estimated its energy to be approximately 3×10^20 eV (50 J) —in other words, a subatomic particle with kinetic energy equal to that of a baseball (5 ounces or 142 grams) traveling at about 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph).
more at <http://www.cosmic-ray.org/reading/flyseye.html#SEC10> but since this observation there have been another fifteen or so 'baseballs' observed. There's a vague possibility of dark-matter particles having a higher real-world momentum when they transit via terra.
when I was a marconi apprentice
in 1978, we managed to blag a Marconi broadcast video camera and a video recorder together the size of a Fiat cinquecento. I think the tapes - in the seventies - were well over twenty quid each, we certainly only had one tape at Springfield Place. Who have them now?
With tachyonic hindsight the Beeb *should* have filmed every DrWho, not wiped the tapes, true - but who could ever tell Auntie what to do!
predicted in the 60's
by amongst others, "The Walls" a 1963 short story by Kieth Laumer, where your whole living room becomes a TV. (four twenty foot TV's with a ceiling on it) (one TV would prob. need a door through it)
The TV content concept is UUGC (ultra high levels of user generated content) actually then becomes the online social network of looking at other people looking at you.
Ray Bradbury probably got there first (1953) . He had a wall TV based soap opera "The Family" in Farenheit451 which resonates with the UHDTV concept.
Apps with hardware
I've been buying apps that link to hardware. Initially for research - just what is a Microsoft HealthVault? and how does Google Health work??
In search of data to create my own ePHR (electronic personal health record) , I bought a few input devices (typically €129 on the Apple Hardware Store from people like Withings), and I only bought this hardware because it came with iPod/iPhone/iPad Apps.
Research has started! (Google Health will soon be closing.....leaving an M$ monopoly?)
mcdo 's
In Milan has just installed NFC terminals, not seen anyone use them yet. There's a free expresso or 4 chicken nuggets available should anyone dare to try. MITM will probably also be quite rare. Yes I do happen to have a 13Mhz USRP and frame antenna in my pocket....
I've just suggested to my team that we might contribute
Thanks Bill for finding this, we do have a few SpecAnals lying around, they're nearer €75k and are unused between lab tests. I'm a bit concerned about plugging & leaving them into a real antenna (I have a 25MHz to 2GHz discone outside the lab), as summer is thunder & lightning season!
I used to use an atomic clock controlled HP spectrum analyser attached to a long wire antenna to listen to international shortwave radio during the 1980's when I worked in a faraway desert where shortwave receivers were forbidden, HZ. I wrote to Swiss Radio International with a screen-shot informing them that their 17MHz transmitter was a whole 100Hz away from their published frequencies.
Always buy a spectrum analyser with (now digital waveform) demodulator and loudspeaker!
I was so happy the iPad2 was released, price was irrelevant
as I immediately bought an iPad One - 32GB WiFi model which was retailing for €599, I chose the white boxed RFB Model bringing it to a decent €419 (around £361/$583) It's an entertaining beast, in my opinion well worth buying with the 180 euro discount! I probably will buy the RFB iPhondleslab Two the week that numero trois is available!!
I do my technologically neutral tethering from my Android HTC Google Nexus One running OTA 2.3.3 Googlebread with dark small icons, that seems to work as well. The kids have snappily mastered all of this tech!
coffee
We got our coffee in the form of "Double Ristrette" when I slaved away at antimatter in the 80's.
No matter what late nite experiments, a couple of swiss ristrettes - similar to an italian expresso but with less liquid and higher density ions - would allow the cern brains to wake up and do fizziks. I never saw the synchrotrons actually make the stuff, but I admit they could have piped it in from the Prévessin site. probably
some docks don't work
I've got many docks around the house, one was the gadget show recommended 2009 iPod bed vibrator alarm clock - all buttons of which have stopped working, but it does still recharge the iPods. The nice pink cheap clock/radio/iPod dock is still a clock/radio but all iPods inform me that this accessory is not compatible with charging the iPod. (it was when I bought it - but that's apple-evolution) The sony (last years model) dock works well- time is off by a few minutes- whatever I set it to, and for Android I have the Nexus One desk-stand from HTC, which switches on the N1 built-in dimmable green clock function & bluetooth's the audio down a 3.5mm to a Sony DAB used as a line-in in case of music need. sometimes/often the N1 falls out of its dock as it's only held-in by a gnats' todger. Whilst on the subject the N1 HTC car-dock is pretty good, phone rarely falls out, and allows reasonable streaming 3G UK & NPR radio stations whilst driving around southern europe.
I'll probably get another dock for xmas...
I'm in EU and google warns me!
Quote/ Google Reported Attack Diagnostic page for bbc.co.uk/radio3 at 15h33 BST on Thursday
What is the current listing status for bbc.co.uk/radio3?
Site is listed as suspicious - visiting this website may harm your computer.
Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 2 time(s) over the past 90 days.
What happened when Google visited this site?
Of the 15 pages that we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 4 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time that Google visited this site was on 2010-09-09, and the last time that suspicious content was found on this site was on 2010-09-09.
/Unquote
My quick & dirty analysis of bbc.co.uk/radio3 is that content was aimed at me by BBC.co.uk and BBCimg.co.uk
and by REVSCI.net and by QUANTSERVE.com and by SCORECARDRESEARCH.com.
Now I wonder which of the 5 content servers is compromised?
REVSCI.net is "audience Science"
QUANTSERVE.com is "ad impressions" <------I guess BADverts come from here!???
SCORECARDRESEARCH.com is 'Market Research"
Many people bought a Sagem French DTV/SAT system
activated the smart card - for which purpose you needed the Sagem TNT. Then 30 seconds later 'threw-away' the Sagem terminal , placing the now valid card in a generic Viaccess3 RX.
Sagem were *that-bad*, that their equipment had a life measured in minutes! The last one I tried to repair had an (unrepairable) 1.8/3.3/5/7/12&28volts psu inside . At least this HD PVR has an external 12V power block!
For personal viewing enjoytainment I voted Humax Freesat HD PVR as I found Freeview had quite poor bitrates from the overstuffed muxes, and that's before the HD started
iPod Touch 32GB OK
I rooted this ipod for Cydia sourced Apps (so I could demo the BT for controlling a Lego robot!) just on Sunday, I'd done hard resets and cleaning ready for the jailbreak, so the iOS4 went thru smoothly at 6am today.
My Roomba came 'free'
with supermarket points (Esselunga in Varese, Italy) similar robots are on the market at £400 - Samsung claims that theirs is more algorithmically intelligent than a Roomba, but is that £400 better?!
The difference with the normal vacuum/Dyson is that you have to be bothered to get it from under the stairs, then do a half-hearted job for 20 mins - whilst the Roomba will wander around for a whole hour, 60 minutes of quietly nearly vacuuming/sweeping everything many times. And you just have to press a button.
my Roomba 520 is going great after 2 years - but I think I have to buy some new rubber brushes.
best augmented reality app
is "DishPointer Pro" on Android or iOS , uses the camera and the compass to work out exactly where in the sky is Express-AM1 or Skynet 4E or Intelsat 805. It allows an instant site survey , which way do I point the dish?, what elevation? - is there a big tree or building in the way? (YES, quite often!) = move dish.
NASA/NSA presumably have better systems but theirs will have cost a bit more than twelve quid!
more details at http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/productivity/dishpointer-pro_blgo.html
My 3yr old is always searching for Doctor Who on the "Google Sky Map" augmented reality App, so that will get some votes too.
I got the broken ff fonts
On my ff 3.6.3 homepage /newsnow.co.uk/ totally appeared in Korean? Some screwed codepage? Lots of boxes and other junk. Resolved by forcing ff to use a working font like lucida and ignore the HTML page fonts request. Only happened on my iMac, I had recently noticed some false font "duplicates" in 10.6.3. I did the 900meg combo update.
(Nexus.froyo fun next week??)
wifi woes
just had the nexus1 for a day , found that I'd overcomplicated my home & work WiFi by using channel 13 (purely as most ppl use channel 1). The google HTC being 'american' couldn't scan up to ch13, so I've had to drop every router down to ch9. Also having probs in that I can't access the airport_express wifi extender operating as a clone on the faraway airport_extreme basestation. The phone is ignoring the co-channel extender and is trying to connect only to the remote BTS. I've downloaded a heap of android wifi apps to try and troubleshoot. HTC h/w is great, I like the replaceable battery - bought a HD2 car charger (HTC Car Charger For HTC HD 2 / HD 2 / BlackBerry 9700 Bold / 8900 / Storm / Storm 2 / 8520) for 3.99 from Play so that I can top up the battery whilst driving. It's a s l o w phone to charge. My wife still prferes iPhone 3G over HTC Desire/Nexus1
Timbl's semantic web will be ideal
for the (near) future policy based radio services. My nexus 1 has user replaceable firmware - in a telephone!, if the cognitive or local policy driven 'white space' can get around to updating part of that firmware over the air - today you're in Amsterdam so an LTE VOIP call on 900MHz will cost you 1euro whilst joining the fray on the open 2.4GHz 802.11n will be free - but have a bit-error-rate of 1x10^5. Choice, following local laws.
Tomorrow in NY the "phone" will have to reconfigure itself to CDMA, or download the new Apple widget which allows data transit on the AppleTube? Rules:Encryption is allowed and you should avoid all domains ending in .cx (could be a local policy update from the NY pilot channel hive)
Semantic is a label attached to the data, suggesting its relevance, authenticity, origin and other attributes. I'm sure that accurately OWL3 programmed spiders using post-Bayesian rules could categorize much of the existing data. labelling it 'mostly harmless', perhaps?. LOLCatz would be labelled/taxed & only available in short legal doses, in those countries that permit it.
The Web has a bit to go before it gives ubiquitous, always on, customer access. At the same time as critical virtual service delivery - mainly due to expensive real people being re-sized to server based. If today's cashpoint ATM's are switched off there may be food riots in some countries after 3 days; in 20yrs the WWW will be more important than that, I'd appreciate a LOT of research to get it to be a stable resilient semantic system for the mesh network radio topology, probably post IP protocols anyway. beta version in 2016???
flashing lights
that would be the same trick proposed by the universities of Boston <http://smartlighting.bu.edu/> & Pennsylvania paper at http://smartlighting.bu.edu/research/May808_slides_Little_FSO_Commun.pdf
could replace ALL streetlights in world with active LED's - save trillions in CO2 , dollars etc and have a nice comms channel that's 'better than wifi' - bit noisy during daylight due to the wideband noise source that is occasionally seen in summer.
I gave up on 6Music
when Liz Kershaw was hosting a program, invited emails from the listeners discussing best Clash gig vs. best Oasis gig or some such nonsense. I wasted ten minutes of my life describing how Joe Strummer's trousers fell down at Leeds University in '77 and he came out with the quote "me B****ing trousers have fallen down, has any w*****r got a safety-pin?", which was hilarious in a Punk concert. (as was the number of ubiquitous pin devices subsequently hurled stageward) I didn't realise until the BluePeter Kittengate drama that Liz wasn't live - just pretending - and had presumably recorded all her years' 6Music shows one Tuesday in January and so never got my email. Close 6Music down!!!!
Radio 3 recently has been playing some good stuff
BBC should employ Steve Allen of LBC early breakfast show on Radio 2.
What UK radiostation has playlisted Gorillaz?
Lofty
the app will help me work out what all the strange shaped boxes in my loft are. I have accidentally amassed a collection of fruit from '84 onwards. The fatmac 256 (expanded to 512 of course) actually has a working 5 megabyte hard-disk inside, must have cost $10000 extra when it was first bought..next to that..under the box of lego....we find a nesting group of LC2's.....
just bought something similar
in a Alicante MediaWorld store. It was a no name (that I can remember) Generic Satellite Receiver, I have it DISEQC on Hotbird FTA + UK FreeSat, it includes a Digital Terrestrial Rx - whose channels (12 here in Italy) just get added to the Satellite list and a front USB socket for MPEG-2 Streamed recording. I dump to 16GB USB stick and 1 hour of VIVA music was around 1.2GB. My PC & Mac see the file as a Streamed Media, plays well with VLC. Cost 129 euro, around 110 quid.
I haven't played with the 'timed' recording modes, just pressed the basic PVR instant button on the remote - which takes about 5 secs to start. nice piece of kit!
Billy
Bragg - halcyon days of yore , concert in Manchester, "OK Guys & Gals," he spake, "Get your illegal recording devices ready as the next track is a new one", an ecstasy of fumbling as our myriad subtle Walkmen were primed.
>>>BANG<<< "Help save the youth of America" or some such entertainment, I've lost the tape now - but he was always forward looking! 20 years ago at least!!!!!
Don't mention the Germans
if I recall correctly , Germany was about to slap a TV license style tax on Smart Mobile Phones, partly on the basis that they could theoretically watch some form of streamed ARD or ZDF and partly on the basis that nearly everyone has a mobile phone. Don't mention this to.. oops
tested similar
a pair of yellow ear defenders looking like 1970's headphones. these were for a local gunclub. a microphone slightly amplified background conversations but when a firearm was discharged the "bose" style noise cancelling system muted the speakers. well it did when the gun went off on the right, as that's where the single ambient microphone was pointing. when a bang happened on the left side of the wearer these headphones AMPLIFIED it! I'm sure the MoD have done 360 degree tests with these shiny new variety, hope so.
C5 is FTA as of yesterday
it comes up on some systems as "service 6335"
but 'Channel' Five is now at 28.2 Astra 2D 10773 MHz Horizontal DVB-S 22MSPS 5/6FEC Transponder 45 S-ID 6335 VID 5400 AID 5401 (for those using generic FTA boxes) slightly ahead of the official launch.
.....the coat with the parabolic hood please
I helped build some of the earlier CERN high energy magic machines..
It was nice to hear the SPS getting a mention on radio4 this am, nobody reminded us how the LEP - large electron positron 27km biggest experiment since...yes, you've heard it, anyway how LEP couldn't circulate a beam at first try as some joker had stuffed an empty beer bottle up the vacuum tube! I presume LHC had an obstacle patrol!
I once dumped n x 10^9 antiprotons at 3.5GeV/c into the wrong place, wasn't no black holes that I noticed, but it did snow a lot that year!
iPhone PAYG in Italy
will also be simlock free and open, cost is €469 for 8GB from Vodafone.it and TIM.it. Preregistration is available on the afore sites, however you'll need a Codice Fiscale (Italian Tax financial traceability number issued by the dreaded Guardia di Finanzia). The Contract iPhone 3G's from the two ops will be authorised at home via iTunes 7.7 , as they can't work out how to do it in-store. Demand is huge. Lots of sheeple complaining about the typical two thousand four hundred US dollar cost over the 24 month contract time. network d/l limited to between .6 and 1GB/month, but the two ops haven't got much data experience. The third Italian operator, 3 (tre), is hopping mad at not being involved in fridays debacle/free-for-all and intends launching a 3 branded iPhone 3G for €90 euros , with a minimum top up of around €10/20 per month, to undercut the others. 3 actually knows about data networks!
last fascinating fact for those who wish to spend dosh, look up the Apple UK refurb store, go to iPod, and refresh the "refurb iPhone" tab every few days. Rumour has it that once world+dog has bought 3G , then they'll release the mountain of 'refurb' 2G and iPod touches which are mysteriously stockpiled in Milton Keynes? (I made the MK bit up)
DAB isn't DAB+
Germany is rolling out the incompatible DAB+ as it sounds better than (UK) (ancient) DAB. UK (ancient) DAB will one day evolve to DAB+, with, as has been mentioned, the requirement that you throw away your current or soon to be purchased UK DAB. UK DAB is not future compatible with DAB+.
Did we mention yet that France, and other bits of the EU quite like the DVB-H (digital video broadcasting to a hand-held). Here in the research centre we test each week some US product for XM/Sirius Rock & Roll Satellites, but 'nowt clever for the EU.
SWITZERLAND is switching off soon their 558KHz Analogue Radio Canton Ticino Canale Uno (medium wave) transmitter. CH will use RDS FM until the digital EU wastelend has sorted itself out. In Italy RAI tried DAB 5 years ago , then stopped! Now there are a handful of DAB stations (Rome's "Radio Radio") and quite a few DAB+ that I'm unable to decode. I just bought a 70 Euro Audiola (cr@p) car-radio with a USB and an SD card slot and I drive around europe with 2 gigs (FAT16) of Radio4 podcasts and music per slot. Forget broadcast, go timeshift.
cold fusion
hasn't been mentioned for a while. There was a US lab where they managed to interstitially adsorb and store more hydrogen inside a metallic or graphite nanostructure lattice than as cryogenic liquid hydrogen. The lab blew up one day, unfortunately. Did I tell you that I met Stanley Pons, nice chap, mine's the furry arctic coat with the excess of neutrons...
Cognitive Radio
when the LTE or WiMedia has (if/when) evolved to Cognitive Radio based on Software Radio technologies, then there will exist a set of local/metropolitan policies that will be inherited by devices from the Cognitive pilot channel or similar enforcement mechanism. As ALL devices will in future feature an SDR this Policy inheriting behaviour is needed to avoid unwanted emissions from the ever increasingly flexible hardware. M$ hasn't invented this, they're just talking about it?. Paris!
@I would like CHP at home, @Less glamour but...
My colleagues here in Italy just brought the engineers over from Germanland to install their solar winter-DHW / summer-swimming pool heating system (and another team from Austria to install the screw fed wood pellet backup system) C4 Granddesigns seems to feature many roving tuetons?, so maybe it's not (yet) common in the UK, but theoretically possible. (For ballpark comparisons they also got a team from Germany to drive over 1000kms with an entire Lawn in rolls, rotavate, lay and water to perfection, for less than the cost of local Italian gardencentre quotes)
As for superinsulation, at work we've started screw/glueing full facade 80mm polystyrene tiles, later rendered, to the outside of most of our buildings. I also haven't found a way to do it on a domestic scale yet, but in theory this might be nice! (gvnmts wouldn't like the missing consumption VAT I suppose) you might be able to heat the whole superinsulated house with a single Pentium 4?
Home UPS
living in Italy , Europe's most power starved economy - no natural resources beyond a few wet alps, we each get maximum 3kW for our house. (You can pay a lot extra to get 4.5kW) My MCB in the power meter trips off after a few seconds of more than 3kW peak. *A home UPS is essential* , not to power the whole home, but to keep the small family infotainment server room going, ADSL WiFi Airdisk Apple TV etc. Having electronics connected directly to a wall socket, then losing 220V is a very unhappy experience for, in cost order of previous failures : Sony 17"LCD, Mac Mini HDD, LaCie 250GB external HDD, iMac DV. The UPS gives me a pleasant 15 minutes of beeping, time enough to reset the MCB or switch everything off safely if it is Enel's fault. (all eventually repaired except the Sony)
I see the need to cover my roof with PV, tenthousandpounds for a couple of kilowatts peak , with hopefully a 25 year lifetime if I use certified modules, I already have wood heating installed, with gas backup, I suppose I should go solar thermal for an extra 2 grand. Maybe I'll build the envirotard stuff instead of buying a new car?
Why , I ask myself, does Italy historically have hardly any investment in Solar , whilst it seems that every German village is covered in PV, plus many people I know in Germany have installed salt water under-garden thermal heat pumps. In Italy the 3kW available won't even drive the heat pump! <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-coupled_heat_exchanger>
is there a reason why everyone with a house in the UK can't install 80 metres of 35mm tubes, or a few hundred PV tiles, microgeneration could certainly lighten the drain to Sizewell during the winter? Currently the UK, and most other neighbours of France are importing as much juice as is possible.
Of course, reading the expert prediction from EC DG Transport and Energy(2003) document : "European Energy and Transport Trends to 2030" says "Oil prices decline from their high 2000 levels over the next few years, but they then gradually increase to reach a level in 2030 no higher than that in 2000 (and 1990)" (Oil was an average of U$D 28 per barrel in 2000) <http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/energy_transport/figures/trends_2030/1_pref_en.pdf>
so that's allright then!, for my amusing quip at the end I should ponder where I can get a PV powered ökologischesalzwasseruntergartenthermischewärmepumpen?
Mac Office for 35 quid
this BECTA fuss might explain my surprise at discovering the latest M$ Office for Mac on sale at thirty-five pounds via a link on the OU website. The dvd arrived in minimal packing (a jiffy bag) and seems to work on a Macbook Pro just as slowly as Open Office does, high marks for compatibility there!
My kids are being taught ubuntu @ home and Windows @ school, we currently prefer Pages for creating stuff, and I suppose may drift in the direction of Google Apps eventually
oh, did I forget the OU link..? it ended-up at http://www.software4students.co.uk/
and I had to register with my daughter's school's name & postcode, then collected my 80% discount! I have , of course, no connection to M$ or the above 'real but dodgy priced ' software bunch, but I did notify the EC competition branch about how unhappy I was with OOXML
quote :
Date: 14 April 2008 16:06:07 GMT+02:00
From: Infocomp@ec.europa.eu
Dear David,
Thanks for your email. We can inform you that in the course of the ongoing investigation into the interoperability issues related to Microsoft's products the Commission made enquiries with the EU's and EFTA's national standardisation organisations about possible irregularities in the OOXML standardisation process.
You will understand that as this is an ongoing investigation on which the Commission has not yet drawn any conclusions we cannot comment any further.
Best regards,
Infocomp)
-----Original Message-----
From: David [mailto:xxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 12:22 AM
To: REDING Viviane (CAB-REDING); COMP INFO4;
WiMax works
well, at present it seems to do so in Italy, <http://www.ngi.it/eolo/bts.asp>
the root address at www.eolo.it (only in Italian, sorry) explains how you can get up to 12megs via an external 5GHz antenna. My friends use the 2 meg service and only complain that their 600 euros per year unlimited data contact has to be paid up-front when signing the contract. Of course this almost WiMax wouldn't be needed if T*l*com It*lia would actually deliver DSL to non-metropolitan customers.
in keeping with El'Reg's excellent technical hive knowledge I will reveal that the Eolo network uses about 8500 client Alvarion BreezeACCESS VL LOS/NLOS dishes with wideband OFDM at 5,4-5,7 GHz point to point to 62 usually mountain-top Motorola BTS with fibre connectivity at 10Gbit/s to the NGI backbone via Cisco 12410 routers with 4Gbit/s to the Internet. All allegedly independent of Telecom Italia.
for those who like Antenna Pr0n, try <http://www.ngi.it/eolo/fotogallery/images/bts_campodeifiori/3.JPG>
1.JPG, 2.JPG & 4.JPG for images of Italian pre-alps, lakes and yes, Antennas!
safe-mode
a friend drove from Calais to Italy in their diesel Fiat something-or-other at 40km/h with the engine management system screaming "safe-mode" at them! (the garages in EU were temporarily closed due to summer holidays or something)
the cause of the safe-mode was that the urea holding tank inside the diesel tank had run-out, this was refilled in Italy , as is usual during a routine service, and I'm not buying an ...insert name of wee containing vehicle... to have similar fun!
I like 3G phones
I've bought a couple of them, of course, I then have to select/configure like mad(*) to get rid of every access point, profile, link, bookmark, service that might accidentally start the 3G service. (*)Including changing model identity code, flashing firmware, updating and downgrading!
then you have a nice modern GSM/WiFi phone with a switched-off 3G, which I could optionally re-awake should someday I find A REASONABLE (CHEAP) EU WIDE ROAMING DATA TARIFF.
/Yes, mine's the flat 'cap; ee, tha's reet, ah'm from Yorkshire!
STFC =
Scientific Technology Funding Crisis....... (again)
I remember when the UK blamed the dropping of projects on 'unforeseen movements in the value of the Swiss Franc' ...
Jodrell's a bit old ~(who isn't), so might make a few quid in scrap value, but I have friends who were hoping that the UK would do a bit more than just help design the forthcoming future International Linear Collider (31kilometres of vacuum and a bit of radiofrequency and magnets) <http://www.linearcollider.org>
some STFC background at <http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/33012> also note the 25% cut in University PP and astrofizz funding!.
We should lobby the Chancellor, not AD he'll be replaced soon enuff, but Ed Balls who's dad is actually a genuine CBE MA DPhil FIBiol, and thoroughly nice chap.
come to think of it, are there ANY MP's who aren't former journalists or lawyers and understand that a bit of mildly expensive blue-skies research might get you something useful later on...?
/global warming penguin icon to represent the inevitable carbon tax in the budget tomorrow!!
@Bit Rate of FM
there actually is a widely quoted BBC R3 bitrate for the digital PCM feed to the Analogue FM transmitters (with slope polarised antennas no less) , but I last heard the discussion a decade ago , so can't remember the details...it was better than 128k DAB
satellite radio for europe
as I work at a sometimes european test centre for the US satellite digital audio radio service, I have been following with interest the activities of Delphi and Worldspace in europe.
“The satellite digital radio (SDR) standard that was approved by the technical committee of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in November 2006 is the core of the technology that Worldspace is implementing in its satellite radio communication networks in Europe,” the broadcaster said.
“It combines terrestrial repeaters and satellites and permits the most efficient use of the spectrum allocated for satellite radio (1479.5 to 1492MHz), thus maximizing digital capacity while maintaining excellent service quality, even in difficult reception environments such as urban city centers.”
There are currently 2 Worldspace satellites in orbit, with a third in a garage in Toulouse quote "launch of its mobile service beginning in Italy in 2009. It will use MPEG-4 accPLUS v.2 technology"
MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC Profile @ L2, Enhanced aacPlus?, anyway you can start here to dig out details <http://www.worldspace.com/maintenance/index.html>
Delphi receivers hope to offer 40-50 channels within the 12.5MHz bandwidth EU SDARS. Meanwhile DAB seem to be a working system in Switzerland, but RAI in Italy trialled for a couple of years and switched everything off, there are some commercial multiplexes, but DAB market penetration is Zero. I couldn't find a DAB signal in the south of France. In Italy FM reception is *so* bad, that it's unbelievable - hardly any working national chains, Radio Monte Carlo 1 and Virgin Radio being two of the only channels that automatically allow RDS synchronisation to work. Even they peter-out in the Apennines and require the usual manual tune once per kilometer. I look forward to EU SDARS, it's great what you can stuff-inside the shark's-fin on a BMW!....that'll be sat patch up. sat in-fill vert sideways, gps, gsm, 3g, tv etcetera....
Tetra
well, the GSM network in an emergency can give millions of failed call attempts; the UK Access Overload Control (ACCOLC) of GSM is fine when 'the first responders' have the access keys. in 7/7 they didn't have, ACCOLC was ruled out by Gold command, but accidentally ruled in by a more local commander. GSM confusion! 3G was open and working OK all day long.
Runners were used to convey medical communications. Runners were used to convey Fire Brigade communications. Runners were used in Olympia @ 2000BC, so what's new!
The covert kit for Motorola is a bit of aquarium tubing that goes behind the ear, up the sleeve etcetera - on sale on eBay.
Whilst talking to the Spanish Ministry of Interior Program Directorate about their national emergency radio system SIRDEE , (considered possibly as an EU reference Model for an Integrated System) SIRDEE is TETRAPOL FDMA, the equipment is by EADS Telecom/MATRA, Telefonica owned infrastructure, the hands-on-control INDRA, the O&M Telefonica, operational use FF.CC.SS.EE also connected to FRONTEX/ Schengen for the South Border immigration Pressure. There are about 120K SIRDEE user organisations, 60 base networks to cover Spain, 54290 terminals in the 52 provinces with a QoS time availability of 95%. SIRDEE was conceived as a Voice+occasional data system (like TETRA) but hasrapidly evolved from
600 "voice queries per-day to a database-control-room in January 2005" to currently an
end-user (PC Plod) direct data query terminal function of over 11000 data queries per-day,
with now a 4 seconds response using SIRDEE network, for for example, FRONTEX related queries to the Schengen DB & the Delinquency Traffic DB. What this all means is that UK Airwave TETRA was imposed, and has shit data rate but may get better when it is paid for, or use GPRS/Crackberry. SIRDEE was competitively chosen , has lower O&M/terminal costs for a bigger area, and delivers better data on the beat, and this extra data capacity is being heavily used , especially for anti-trafficking
/mines the Sombrero , Paris isn't in Spain
@sports cars at 3am
actually the Machine Operators (who do extensive shift-work) are the ones usually driving the sports cars. (It helps that with a 431K CERN number plate you can get a tax-free sports car!)
I have done machine experiments at 3am with <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Feodorovich_Orlov> Yuri didn't drive a sports car.
I prefer Ferney Voltaire to St.Genis-Pouilly (what will happen to the protons in November when the Swiss/EU border is dissolved??) (they currently have to pass the Douanes every 45microseconds!!)
/don't need a coat, the skyshine keeps me warm
Vista a standard?
@eugene
Vista will *NOT* be the next standard. (unless MS is paying for voting again)
Standards are open, such as the unified POSIX architecture - large Sun Workstations, the current Mac Mini et al running Leopard etcetera.
Vista is such a pile of absolute total f***king sh*t that I am banning it from my laboratory as a security risk, never mind the lack of useability, and s l o w.
I've mentioned before - and I'll say this again, I am a Microsoft Partner with hundreds of ISO images VLP of their products in my cupboard. Mosty excellent and creative pieces of software. The VLP ISO XP SP2 image is used nearly every-day, and all of our new shiny Vista ISO discs are left on the shelf, untouched, gathering dust, unloved and totally in need of recycling to make ashtrays or something.
'ELLO POLLY!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!.....This Vista is no more! it has ceased to be! it's expired and gone to meet 'Steve Balmer! 'it's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'it to the OEM chain 'it'd be pushing up the daisies! It's metabolic DRM processes are certainly 'istory! it's off the twig! it's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off it's mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! VISTA IS AN EX-OS!!
well...
"Heinrich Kieber, a 42-year-old former employee, stole data ... (from) ... LGT Treuhand AG..."
and is now believed to be in Australia
from the Wall Street Journal
(there was some comment on Radio France that the BND german secret police might have brought Heinrich under a witness protection program)
Vista hardware requirements
I have a couple of new Vista - I think they are 'Dull' XPS 2 x 2.20GHz Core2Duo laptops with 2GB ram each, came from Dell Canada, tax free, long story.
Nice shiny screen, very bright - after 5 minutes unuse the screen dims to 50%, and for a week I couldn't find how to make it bright again other than after a restart. the GUI is filled with hundreds of clickable things, most of which won't go away or do what I expect, it will NOT connect to my home 802.11n WPA Wifi using 802.11b/g compatibility, it will only try and connect to a neighbours WEP network, even when I put the Vista on top of the Wifi router. I went as far as loading the driver dvd for my Wifi. Still no connection. When I found an old 802.11g+ Wifi router and plugged in a subnet of my 802.11n then finally Vista connected. It popped up a screen, amongst many others, which mentioned that there might be problems with my Vista. of the 2 firewalls installed, both were off.
After reading the page several times I realised it might want me to do something, I downloaded a few KBxxxxxxx.exe which 'were necessary on my system', these ran and stated that 'your system does not need KBxxxxxxx', so all clear then!
And it is dog-slow. of the 2GB ram, I was informed - running only a diagnostic program that 750MB is free. Ubuntu would do the h/w justice!!! Vista Personal Ultimate is ME2. Where's the ice?
DRM
I bought Ashes to Ashes ep 1 and the complete series 1 of Life on Mars,
it is excellent quality, "near DVD" quality when viewed on a 20" iMac at work.
The actual format of Ashes to Ashes is .m4v which is Raw MPEG-4 Visual bitstream. It is DRM'ed, with a fairplay wrapper around the video , before I could play I had to authorise my iTunes and I was advised that I am only allowed a total of 5 PC/Mac's with this authorisation. I can however watch on any number of synchronised VidiPods, iPhones (my count is currently zero)The raw video dimensions are 640 x 360 (widescreen) hence slightly lower than DVD quality, but certainly watchable on the iMac and I'll try at home on the bigger flatpanel TV with iTunes running on XP/Media edition (cheap good upscaling silent vid card)
The BBC progs could be better and could be cheaper, it will need to be cheaper to get me to buy stuff other than the excellent stuff!
the audio is only in stereo, and filesize is 675 megabytes for 1 hour of video.
I think the AppleTV shows will be anamorphic hence better pixel fill, and rumour has it that apple is re-coding all their iTunes videos for anamorphism. (I have an AppleTV but haven't had the time to plug it in yet. on the whole I prefer to own rather than rent, but price could change that)
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