Posts by Steve Kennedy

Caption this: WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

comp

HAL comes out of his shell

El Reg celebrates Back to the Future Day

maybe NSFW

Doc Brown's makeshift Parkinson's head band was maybe slightly intrusive

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Yoga

She hadn't really understood the concept of a Lenovo Yoga laptop

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Competition

The wearables team didn't quite get the brief for designing a heart rate monitor for men

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Once again the Register takes the pithhhhhhhhhh out of its readers

WTF is... 802.11ac?

5GHz in UK

In the UK there are 3 sub bands in 5GHz known as Bands A, B and C.

A and B are license exempt (20omW EIRP for Band A, indoor use only, 1W EIRP Band B indoor and outdoor, Band C is lightly licensed and can be used for say fixed links between buildings).

I believe the Ofcom regulations only allow for 20MHz channels in 5GHz bands, so currently it would be illegal to use 802.11ac, there's also not enough channels to support the higher speeds of 802.11ac.

T-Orange: It is possible to have too much spectrum

UK01

I'm sure UK01 would be interested in the spectrum and may now well be in a position to fund the purchase of spectrum if it became available (note UK01's parent is Mundio Mobile) and it is my understanding that UK01 will be able to offer national services with a UK roaming agreement coming into force early next month.

Opaque Wi-Fi laws 'damage UK economy, social inclusion'

Open Wireless or not

If you offer any kind of networking you are a Electronic Communications Network in the eyes of the Communications Act, if you offer it to 3rd parties then you can be a Public Electronics Communications Network (PECN), it doesn't matter if you charge or not, you're still a PECN and then have obligations under the Act which you have to comply with and if you don't you can be committing a criminal offence.

If you break WEP/WPA keys you are likely committing an offence under the Computer Misuse Act.

Steve

New mobe operator slash Wi-Fi hotspotter launches in UK

UK01

UK01 have a low power GSM network, it's a REAL GSM network - the back-end infrastructure is the same as one of the big 4 (i.e. Vodafone, O2, Orange and T-Mobile), however running a small network allows them to be very flexible with their services. Currently roaming may not be there, but that's not due to UK01, but due to the current operators not wanting it.

This announcement just shows they now have the ability to install real-estate (phone boxes have telephone lines), so they can use IP/DSL for back-haul, installing street-ware is expensive and difficult - phone boxes are already there.

Installing localised GSM bubbles can be useful for various communities who'd normally used fixed line calls and buy calling cards.

In-building GSM is another route to market, so in the office the phone goes on to the UK01 network as though it's a PBX extension.

Slim Devices Transporter high-end digital audio player

It REALLY is high end

As the author I'd just like to point out it really does work and IS high end. The benchmark was against a DAC1 and it performed better.

Also the internal clocks are extremely accurate, you may just be able to see in the monitor in the background some graphs, they compare the internal clock against an external one, and though both clocks were syncing at th esame time, the external clock was full of sideband "clicks" too, while the internal one was completely steady with no sideband issues.

The guy in the photo is Sean Adams the CEO and he is very dedicated to making this an extremely high-end product. The DACs and the linear PSUs came from the community who suggested they were the best of breed.

The Transporter has 4 digital inputs (optical, co-ax, bnc and XLR) and these can be connected to external devices (CD transport etc) which can then use th einternal DACs.

There are still some software bugs (mainly cosmetic) which will be ironed out before it is actually launched, and they are constantly trying to improve the sound.

Sorry if it sounds like an advert, but it's very difficult to have a play for an afternoon and not make it sound so. All I can say is I did see it working, it was playing lossless stuff and sounded very good.