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England got a lot more of than Americans did during the group's formative years. Between 1962 and 1965, The Beatles were featured on 53 BBC radio programs, including their own series, Pop Go the Beatles. They performed originals and covers and chatted with BBC hosts. The Beatles: On Air-Live at the BBC Volume 2 has just been released. Kevin Howlett produced both that and the newly remastered reissue of the first volume, which was originally released in 1994. For reasons he explains to Fresh Air host , Howlett had to search for many of these recordings, and they weren't easy to find.
Howlett has written a new companion book called The Beatles: The BBC Archives, which includes transcriptions of the band's BBC radio and TV interviews as well as fascinating internal memos about the Beatles and their music.

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Interview Highlights

On the challenges of his project working in the BBC archive
My quest to restore the BBC archive [of the Beatles] goes way back to 1981 when I joined the national pop network in this country, BBC Radio 1, as a young rookie producer. I was 24 years old. The management knew I was a Beatles fanatic, I was a child in the '60s growing up with the Beatles, and they gave me this task. What a dream thing to be handed. They said, "Can you investigate what programs the Beatles performed music in and what songs they did?" And the BBC's written archives are a wonderful place where they kept every single piece of paper relating to the Beatles' performances, so when I wrote the book it was a magnificent source of material: memos, contracts, audience research reports — so that was fine, you could find out all of the information.
But then finding the music on the tapes? That was a completely different matter. Some of these recordings come from transcription discs, LPs that were distributed by the BBC to other countries for broadcast. Some come from producer listening copies. There were some producers at the time that thought maybe it is worth keeping this material, and in some of these cases, listeners who taped off the radio.
On The Beatles' audition for the BBC
The very first thing that Brian Epstein did when he took over the management of The Beatles was to fill out an application form for the variety department of the BBC. This, again, reminds us that there was no rock business as we know it. This was show business and they would be on with all sorts of other acts, radio ventriloquists even, that kind of thing.
So he fills out the application form. They're invited to do an audition and they turn up at the Manchester Playhouse and they perform four songs. The producer Peter Pilbeam selected them for broadcast. That was quite something because some other very popular Liverpool groups — they all failed their auditions with Peter Pilbeam, but he passed The Beatles and in the book, you can see Peter Pilbeam's comments [on the back of the application] and he says, "Not as rock-y as most, more country and western with a tendency to play music" — one of the great understatements, I think. He also makes a comment about the vocalists and he said, "John Lennon, yes. Paul McCartney, no." But Paul did sing on the first broadcast, so he must've changed his mind about that.
But, well done, Peter Pilbeam, because this is well before they were signed to Parlophone Records by and a long time before they released their first single, "Love Me Do," in the U.K. So the BBC was very quick to see the potential of this group.

The Beatles On NPR

On how The Beatles changed the tone of the BBC
I think it's important to put yourself back in that era, and this is the year [1963] before it all happens in America and internationally, this is for The Beatles, make or break time. And what they were doing was revolutionary and shocking: the choice of material, the way they were allowed to be themselves on the air and be so witty and irreverent, all in a very good-natured way, but the culture clash of the cheeky lads from Liverpool with the trained actors who might be presenting programs with them.
So [the BBC's] light-years away from The Beatles, they're not music experts and they do these wonderfully corny links and you can hear The Beatles having such a great time and giggling away at some of these links. It was just radical to hear that on the BBC. In those days if you presented a program, you had to submit your script two weeks in advance and someone would go through it with a blue pencil altering your grammar. There was no spontaneity on the BBC. But because The Beatles were recording for the Popular Music Department, which was live music, they were allowed to be more natural in what was called "The Announcements." So they are themselves [and] that was quite shocking. BBC was a very formal institution.
On reading the audience research reports from the BBC shows
Going through the written archives, I loved looking through all of the audience research reports. There would be a listening panel and a TV panel, people selected to make comments on radio and TV programs broadcasted by the BBC. And they're all kept in the written archives and you read through these reports and there are some facsimiles of them in the file of documents that comes with the book. The one from a program called From Us To You broadcast on Easter Monday in 1964 and you read through and a security guard says, "The Beatles were vastly overrated, their performance was decidedly amateur and their entertainment value — nil." Somebody else says, "Noisy, boring, waste of time."

Dive on in: Fabien Cousteau and the urge to live under the sea

Next spring, Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the legendary Jacques, will lead a 31-day mission, living in an underwater lab and exploring the mysteries of the deep. And you're invited to come along.

Fabien Cousteau (pictured) is planning an undersea living expedition similar to one his famed grandfather undertook in 1963, but going deeper and one day longer. The Aquarius lab will be home base for 31 days.

(Credit: Kip Evans/Mission Blue)

Half a dozen half-naked men are sitting around, talking, drinking, and smoking in Starfish House, 33 feet below the surface of the Red Sea. It's 1963. Among them is ocean explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau -- still clad in his silver diving suit -- commandant of the first undersea village.
That scene comes early on in "World Without Sun," the Oscar-winning documentary released in 1964. It provided moviegoers with a window into the underwater world of oceanauts living and working for a month in "inner space."
Now, 50 years later, Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the famed ocean explorer, is planning a similar expedition but going deeper and one day longer. And you won't have to wait for the movie to come out -- you can watch Mission 31 unfold in real time.
Next spring, Cousteau and five others will dive down to Aquarius Reef Base, an undersea lab 63 feet down in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. They plan to make the school-bus-size lab their home for 31 days, while exploring the deep and conducting scientific research (yes, there's a documentary in the works) -- all the while broadcasting the mission live.

Fabien Cousteau on his grandfather's shoulders in 1970.

(Credit: Mission 31)

"We're in a whole new generation," said Cousteau, 46, a filmmaker and ocean explorer like his grandfather. During the last half of the 20th century, film and TV audiences became immersed in the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau, who was 87 when he died in 1997. "The Internet was in its nascent stage at the end of his life, so he never got a chance to reach out through that medium," he said.
Though time has advanced and so has technology, one thing hasn't changed much. "The reality is that we've explored less than 5 percent of our ocean to date," Cousteau said. So there are still a lot of stories to tell, and discoveries and adventures to be had, he said. "In essence we're hoping to continue on where my grandfather left off."
But it's not just by symbolically going deeper and one day longer than the 1963 expedition, he said. "There's a human-ocean connection that hadn't really been fathomed -- or certainly not enough -- that we need to emphasize now."
During the expedition, the aquanauts will conduct scientific research on how climate change, overconsumption, and pollution are affecting the health of the ocean. The aquanauts themselves will become specimens too, participating in experiments on the physiological and psychological effects of living under the sea -- and without sun -- for a month.

Immersion program
Cousteau describes Mission 31 as "an underwater classroom," where he and his team will share their discoveries with viewers -- through daily Skype video calls with students around the world, live reports on the Weather Channel, and real-time updates on social media.
"I think there's a way to wow today's generation in a way that [my grandfather] did, maybe by engaging them in a more real-time sort of way with more alternative kind of media," he said.
The 50th anniversary of his grandfather's experiment in undersea living, known as Conshelf Two, comes at an opportune time for updating our knowledge too, he said.

Get Cousteau talking about the changes he's witnessed during his time in and around the ocean and he'll take an Aquaman-like dive into the scientific research as well. Caused "just by the actions of one species," the changes are both fascinating and scary, he said.
And he has a couple of decades' worth of firsthand knowledge to draw on. Cousteau grew up on the decks of the Calypso and Alcyone, the ships that transported his grandfather and crew on many of their expeditions.
"You go to the Florida Keys, for example, and it's a shadow of its former self," he said. But take someone, say a 12-year-old, diving in that area for the first time? "They've never seen how it was, how it was supposed to be, which is this fireworks display of life that I grew up with, when I was 12 years old."
The point of Mission 31 is more than going deeper and longer than Conshelf Two. "We're also showing the wonders of the undersea world in a way that most people will never get a chance to see," Cousteau said.

Fabien Cousteau describes Mission 31 as 'an underwater classroom,' where he and his team will share their discoveries with viewers in real time.

(Credit: Carrie Vonderhaar)

In October, an international panel of marine scientists released a report saying that increased carbon emissions have led to a "deadly trio" that threatens the world's oceans: waters are acidifying, warming, and losing oxygen. Pollution and overfishing are adding to the stress too. And things are worse than previously believed.
"The health of the ocean is spiraling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought," Alex Rogers, scientific director of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, said in a statement. "The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth."
The findings go beyond even the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that preceded it by a week, which said that the ocean is bearing the brunt of global warming.

Daily life in the deep
In addition to the mysteries of the underwater world, viewers may find life inside Aquarius just as compelling. What happens when you pack six people who don't know each other well into a school-bus-size space for a month? Aquarius, the world's only operating undersea lab, is about 43 feet long and about 9 feet wide inside. There are six bunks, a shower and toilet, hot water, a refrigerator, a microwave, air conditioning, and an Internet connection. The longest mission Aquarius has hosted was 18 days, with a typical mission lasting about 10 days.
Cousteau has assembled a team of people with science and engineering backgrounds, three women and three men, ranging in age from 19 to 46. For most of his team, including Cousteau, it'll be a new experience living as saturation divers, enabling them to stay underwater for the length of the mission. The 1963 expedition in part was an early, successful effort in saturation diving -- a technique that allows divers to safely explore the deep for a much longer period of time compared with surface-based diving.

What will their daily life aquatic look like? The aquanauts aim to have a routine, keeping hours similar to most landlubbers. "We're just going to be doing it down at three atmospheres and beyond," Cousteau said.
Their days will be spent diving six to nine hours -- conducting scientific experiments and filming -- doing broadcasts, and receiving supplies as well as VIP guests. (Expected celebrity visitors include adventuresome billionaire Richard Branson and "Her Deepness," oceanographer Sylvia Earle.) The evenings will likely be spent filling in logs, doing stress tests and lab work, and enjoying a little downtime.
Doesn't quite sound like your ordinary workday? They'll also have cooler tech toys: underwater robots and motorcycles.
Thanks to its scientific advisory team, Mission 31 will have access to autonomous underwater vehicles that can be used to help study, among other things, the effects of ocean acidification on coral. There's also an ROV (remotely operated vehicle) that can take very high-resolution video in deep water, detailed enough to capture the bioluminescence of sea creatures.
The underwater motorcycles are basically propulsion vehicles, streamlined so aquanauts can hover or zip around more quickly and while carrying more gear. Picture the speeder-bike chase scene in "Return of the Jedi," Cousteau said.

Fabien Cousteau just inside Aquarius Reef Base.

(Credit: Mission 31) 

 

A monthlong mission takes extensive planning (though maybe not quite as much as producing a science-fiction blockbuster). That includes preparing in case something goes wrong.
"This is a very serious endeavor," Cousteau said. "Physically you have to be in very good shape. It's very much like going into outer space." In fact, many astronauts become aquanauts at Aquarius to train for space missions. Aquarius has hosted 18 NASA training missions.
Before the launch, the team will train by doing things like simulating emergencies, he said. That includes the aquanauts having to find their way back to the habitat after taking off their masks about 200 yards away and being spun around to lose their orientation. They don't expect to have to use that training, but it's necessary, Cousteau said. "We need to know that everyone's prepared because of the parameters that we're working under, which are very extreme, very difficult."
Those parameters include living in navy-style quarters. ("You're stacked like sardines in there. That doesn't bother me," Cousteau said.) Without sun. And being away from friends and family for a month, though the Internet will help the aquanauts stay connected.
"Ultimately, psychologically, I think if you really put your mind to it, anyone can stick something out for a month, but it's certainly not going to be easy," he said.
Maybe just as tough to withstand: subsisting on astronaut-type food, because of limited space at Aquarius. Starfish House -- which, to be fair, was the headquarters of an undersea village -- had a chef de cuisine, who served dishes like bifteck saute marchand de vins.

"We're really, really, really hoping that someone will have mercy on us and bring us down some decent food once in a while," Cousteau said.
Mission 31 had been set to launch this month but Cousteau decided to postpone it until spring, in part because science and film permits got held up because of the US government shutdown last month.
Funding for the expedition, projected to cost $1.8 million, is coming from corporate sponsors and private donations. There's a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo that runs through December 6 with a goal of raising a minimum of $100,000. (For $10, you get a shout-out on Twitter and Facebook. For $25,000, you get to dive down to the mission as a VIP guest.)
"People can peep in whenever they want to see what we're up to day and night," Cousteau said. From time to time though, they might shut off a few of the cameras to give the aquanauts a little privacy.
"We want everyone to be part of this adventure," he said.
During the 1963 expedition, oceanaut Pierre Vanoni kept a diary. In the companion book to "World Without Sun," one passage makes clear what he thought about his own undersea adventure.
After three weeks at Starfish House, Vanoni wrote that he became aware again that time was passing: "I fear I may rise to the surface next week without having seen and experienced absolutely everything."

Microsoft Worried About PCs Still Using Windows XP

It's time to let that tried and true OS go for good.

Microsoft has a huge challenge on its hands over the next six months: to not only sell customers on the greatness that is Windows 8.1, but to convince them that Windows XP is too old and too unsafe to use. As we've seen since the launch of Windows 8 last year, Microsoft is pushing consumers and businesses alike to ditch the old but popular OS for something a bit more spit shined like Windows 7 and Windows 8. Unfortunately, upgrading doesn't appear to be happening fast enough.
According to Microsoft's own numbers, around 377,000 PCs in New Zealand alone that are running Windows XP will be made vulnerable after April 8, 2014. Even more, those individuals and businesses could affect others who have already upgraded. Personal information could be put at risk as well as business trade secrets, customer account data and more. As reported earlier this week, hackers could reverse engineer fixes made to the newer platforms and see if the exploits work on Windows XP.
The time to upgrade, if it hasn't taken place already, is now. "We're well and truly at the stage where businesses and personal computer users need to upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8 – both to protect against risk, and to get the benefits of running a modern operating system," says Dean Edwards, Windows Business Group Manager at Microsoft NZ.
"For businesses, upgrading an operating system takes time," Edwards adds. "Depending on complexity, small businesses could take three to six months to upgrade, and larger businesses can take six months or more. We are really worried that some New Zealand companies are cutting it too close to the end of support date."
Earlier this week, a spokesperson for Microsoft said that the company will not guarantee updates of its anti-malware signature and engine after the Windows XP end of support date of April 8, 2014. More specifically, the rep said that running antivirus software on out of support operating systems is not an adequate solution to help protect against threats. Instead, a well-protected solution starts with using modern software and hardware designed to help protect against today's threat landscape… modern software like Windows 7 and Windows 8.
"In addition, Microsoft recommends best practices to protect your PC such as: 1) running up to date antivirus, 2) regularly applying security updates for all software installed, and 3) using modern software that has advanced security technologies and is supported with regular security updates," the rep added.
So how disruptive will it be for businesses to upgrade to Windows 7 or Windows 8? "We had 1,100 computers running XP in all our offices and branches, and migrating them to Windows 8 caused little disruption to the business," said Dave Veronese, CIO of House of Travel. "It was something we delayed doing for so long, but we've already noticed the benefit of using more up to date software and would highly recommend upgrading for the advantages of the new operating system."
In a chart recently provided by Microsoft, the number of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) mitigated by Windows XP's built-in DEP were surpassed by the CVEs that could bypass XP's baked-in protection in 2011. By 2012, that bypassing number of CVEs appears to have doubled. Now imagine that number after April 2014.

Harley Davidson India to export Street 750

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AP

Pune: Harley Davidson India will begin assembling the Street 750 at its facility in Bawal, Haryana, from the second quarter of 2014 and also plans to export it to Europe.
India is the only country outside the US to be making the new bike, which is built on the completely new ‘Street’ platform, and this will be the first HD product to be exported from the facility.
The first Harley Davidson member in the sub-Rs-5-lakh segment, the Street 750 will be unveiled at the India Bike Week in Goa in early January, following which it will be showcased at the forthcoming Delhi Auto Expo.
In Pune to inaugurate HDI’s 11th dealership in India, Anoop Prakash, Managing Director HD India, said commercial deliveries of the Street 750 will begin by April or May of 2014, adding that the Made-in-India bike will also be exported to Italy, Portugal and Spain. Total shipments of the model (US and India) are pegged between 7,000 and 10,000 units.
To enable assembly of the Street 750, Harley Davidson will increase its investment in the Indian facility by around 35 per cent. At present it assembles nine of the 11 models it sells in the country and says it expects sales at the end of 2013 to touch 4,000 units since the 2010 launch.
India is already on the global sourcing map of the American heavy bike maker, and locally assembled motorcycles already have some Indian content. The plan is to increase this with time, Prakash said.
Another revenue stream for Harley Davidson is merchandise and accessories. “Globally this accounts for around 18 per cent of total sales, including 5 per cent for riding gear alone, and this is more or less also the case in India,” he added.
HDI will inaugurate two new dealerships in Goa and Mumbai over the coming weekend, and plans to add three more next year to take the total to 16. Amongst the locations being considered are tier-2 and 3 towns including Surat, Coimbatore, Guwahati and Kozhikode.

Web giant's practice of combining user data from its different services violates data protection law, the agency says.

Google 'spins invisible web' with user data, Dutch watchdog says

Google's practice of combining user data from its different services without user consent violates Dutch data protection law, the country's privacy watchdog said Thursday.

A 2012 overhaul of Google's privacy policy gave the company the right to "combine personal information" across multiple products, including payment information and location data. However, the Dutch Data Protection Authority found that the company does not adequately inform users of the practice in advance nor seek their consent.
"Google spins an invisible web of our personal data, without our consent. And that is forbidden by law," DPA Chairman Jacob Kohnstamm said in a statement. The finding won't immediately result in any enforcement measures, but Google has been invited to a hearing to determine if such measures are necessary.
Google raised the ire of privacy advocates in January 2012 with a privacy policy rewrite that would grant it explicit rights to "combine personal information" across multiple products and services. The simplified privacy policy, which would replace 60 privacy policies for different services, would only improve the user experience, Google argued.
Opponents of the change sued, saying the move was designed to increase the company's advertising effectiveness. EU officials asked that Google delay implementing its new policy until the privacy implications can be analyzed, but the Web giant declined, saying it had it extensively pre-briefed privacy regulators on the changes and that no objections were raised at the time.

The controversial changes led to lawsuits from the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy, among others.
After a months-long inquiry into the legality of the changes, French privacy watchdog Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL) asked Google in October 2011 to amend the policy within four months to better inform users on how their data would be used and set more precise limits on how long data would be retained. In April, the CNIL announced "coordinated and simultaneous enforcement actions" with five other European countries because Google had not implemented any "significant compliance measures."
Google, for its part, has maintained that its privacy policy isn't illegal and that the company has consistently cooperated with investigators.
"Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler, more effective services," Al Verney, a Brussels-based spokesman for Google, told Bloomberg. "We have engaged fully with the Dutch data protection authority throughout this process and will continue to do so going forward."

Steve Ballmer's replacement needs to make this phone call

If Microsoft's outgoing chief executive had listened to Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's incoming CEO would have a much easier go of it.

Ray Ozzie (left), at that time the chief software architect at Microsoft, and CEO Steve Ballmer speak at the D: All Things Digital conference shortly before Ozzie's departure from Microsoft in 2010.

Once Microsoft's board of directors announces the name of the company's next chief executive, get ready for nonstop kibbitzing. "Sell this business. Buy that startup. Hire! Fire! Go mobile. Go big. Go east. Go west."
Something like that. When it comes to offering free advice, there's no shortage of tech analysts and know-it-all columnists eager to retail today's conventional wisdom for prime time. And given that we're talking about Microsoft, seemingly everyone is going to have an opinion about what the new boss ought to do.
Amusing, but all part of a sideshow. The person soon to inherit Steve Ballmer's job will know how to tune out the talking heads while the more immediate need is to pick up the phone to talk to the super-smart people out there who can help. When that time arrives, the first call ought to go out to Ray Ozzie. It's too late for the outgoing boss, but the incoming boss at Microsoft ought to listen carefully to what Ozzie has to say.

Peering into the future
For years, Ozzie tried to steer Microsoft into a post-PC future, predicting the emergence of Internet services and Internet devices.
But his prophecies fell Cassandra-like on deaf ears.
For those not familiar with his resume, Ozzie made a big mark with his invention of Notes, a 1990s-era collaborative groupware application that was revolutionary for the time. IBM later paid more than $3 billion to buy Lotus in order to get the program -- really big money in those days -- as well as to bring along Ozzie. Without Notes, Lou Gerstner would have never bothered with Lotus, which was getting clobbered in the market by -- you guessed it -- Microsoft.

Ozzie subsequently launched a startup called Groove that Microsoft acquired in 2005. He took over for Bill Gates as Microsoft's chief software architect the following year. Before his official move into the job, Ozzie tried to get Microsoft to modify its Windows-centric view of the world in a 5,000-word memo outlining Microsoft's shortcomings as well as the potential opportunities in the Internet 2.0 age. It's worth a read. The headline was Ozzie's insistence that Microsoft get involved in the shift toward services and service-based software, riffing on what we now refer to as cloud computing.

Products must deliver a seamless experience, one in which all the technology in your life 'just works' and can work together, on your behalf, under your control. This means designs centered on an intentional fusion of internet-based services with software, and sometimes even hardware, to deliver meaningful experiences and solutions with a level of seamless design and use that couldn't be achieved without such a holistic approach.

Reading that passage in 2013, you wonder why the message landed on deaf ears. But Microsoft was a big bureaucratic company and not everyone necessarily was ready to pull in the same direction.

Even when we've been solidly in pursuit of a common vision, our end-to-end execution of key scenarios has often been uneven -- in large part because of the complexity of doing such substantial undertakings. In any large project, the sheer number of moving parts sometimes naturally causes compartmentalization of decisions and execution. Some groups might lose sight of how their piece fits in, or worse, might develop features without a clear understanding of how they'll be used. In some cases by the time the vision is delivered, the pieces might not quite fit into the originally-envisioned coherent whole.

By 2010, Ozzie had had enough. Before clocking out, however, he gathered his thoughts for another long memo, this one optimistically titled "Dawn of a New Day." It's politely written but still a blunt indictment of a "PC-centric/server-centric" Microsoft that inexplicably dawdled over while Google and Apple went on to capture big leads in technology's hottest growth businesses.
"Certain of our competitors' products and their rapid advancement and refinement of new usage scenarios have been quite noteworthy," he said, noting that "their execution has surpassed our own in mobile experiences, in the seamless fusion of hardware and software and services, and in social networking and myriad new forms of Internet-centric social interaction."
Ozzie also put Microsoft on notice: stop making things hard on users.
"Complexity kills. Complexity sucks the life out of users, developers and IT," he said. "Complexity makes products difficult to plan, build, test and use. Complexity introduces security challenges. Complexity causes administrator frustration."
Again, he proved prescient. Microsoft eventually grokked what Ozzie was talking about and pledged itself to a future that was going to be all about devices and services. Two years after Ozzie had left the company.

Firefox OS fan Geeksphone plans high-end Revolution

The Spanish company's new Firefox OS phone will include a "high-performance processor" and can run Google's Android operating system, too. The company hints it could use an Intel processor, too.

Geeksphone is working on a new Firefox OS phone called Revolution, but it's not ready to share details.

Geeksphone, the first Firefox OS phone maker, announced on Wednesday a new high-end smartphone called the Revolution.
The Spanish company didn't disclose details such as price, features, ship date, and appearance. But judging by the wording on the Geeksphone Revolution Web page, "a creation with a powerful heart," we can expect a faster processor than what's in the company's first models, the low-end Keon and midrange Peak.
"We are...confident that we will surprise everyone by its very high performance," Geeksphone co-founder Javier Aguera said in a statement. "And it's very competitively priced."
The phone will run not just Firefox OS, but Android, too, and customers can order it with either. Geeksphone offered Android phones before it began its Firefox OS foray.

Update 12:33 a.m. PT November 29: Based on a forum post from Geeksphone, it looks like the Revolution might use an Intel processor.
"This is what we are working on, but now with 4.8" screen," the post said, offering a link to a video showing an Intel-based Firefox OS phone outperforming one using a Qualcomm ARM processor. The phones use 3.5-inch screens in the video, and the Intel-based model outperforms the Qualcomm model in boot time and some other computing tasks.

Geeksphone is working on a new Firefox OS phone called Revolution, but it's not ready to share details.

Technically, it's not Firefox OS on the Revolution, but instead the Boot2Gecko software that Mozilla uses for the project's name. It's the same bits and bytes, but a different label: "Firefox OS is a brand currently not available for independent manufacturers not associated with carriers. Geeksphone will work with Mozilla once this option is made available," the company said.
The company bet big on Firefox OS, Mozilla's open-source, browser-based operating system. Mozilla hopes Firefox OS, along with an Android version of Firefox, will extend the clout it has with personal computers into the mobile market, too. Currently, Apple and Google dominate mobile operating systems, and Mozilla doesn't like those companies' controlling ways.
A third carrier joined the Firefox OS push Thursday: Telenor, which is based in Norway but also does business in Asia and eastern Europe. It already was committed, but now it's actually begun selling Firefox phones.
"I am pleased to see that our customers in Serbia, Hungary, and Montenegro will be able to enjoy mobile phones on Firefox OS, providing them with high-quality Internet experience before Christmas," said Rolv-Erik Spilling, head of Telenor Digital, in a statement. "Through this launch, we are one step closer to connecting the next billion customers to the Web."
Geeksphone is a small manufacturer; the more prominent sales push for Firefox OS is coming from carriers -- Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom to start with -- that have a strong retail presence. So far they've brought Firefox OS to markets such as Brazil and Poland; in more affluent markets where iOS and Android have a stronger presence it's a harder sell.
The company is in the process of designing an upgraded Peak model called the Peak+ that isn't shipping yet. Customers who ordered the Peak+ will be able to switch to the Revolution at no cost, Geeksphone said.

Incredible remote-control A380 takes to the skies

The 16-foot-long model is powered by four small turbine engines, and wowed a crowd at a recent model-airplane show in Switzerland.

 

A model Airbus A380, built by Peter Michel, taking off at a model-airplane show.

 

 

Soaring over the airshow, the A380 looks as it should -- its double-decker fuselage wowing the crowd watching from below.
But while Airbus' A380 is the world's-largest passenger plane, this aircraft doesn't even have a pilot, at least not one on board. In fact, this is a remote-control scale model of an A380. Built by Peter Michel, the model, made to look like a Singapore Airlines A380, took eight "months, 5,000 working hours, and a whole lot of Styrofoam and lightweight balsa wood" to take air. Plus what appears to be some very cool scale-model jet engines

According to information provided with the video, the plane is 15.8 feet long, has a wingspan of 17.4 feet, weighs 156.1 pounds, and has a 2.6-gallon fuel tank that burns through 0.3 gallons a minute. Powering the plane are four Jetcat turbine engines.

Dive on in: Fabien Cousteau and the urge to live under the sea

Next spring, Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the legendary Jacques, will lead a 31-day mission, living in an underwater lab and exploring the mysteries of the deep. And you're invited to come along.

Fabien Cousteau (pictured) is planning an undersea living expedition similar to one his famed grandfather undertook in 1963, but going deeper and one day longer. The Aquarius lab will be home base for 31 days.

(Credit: Kip Evans/Mission Blue)

Half a dozen half-naked men are sitting around, talking, drinking, and smoking in Starfish House, 33 feet below the surface of the Red Sea. It's 1963. Among them is ocean explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau -- still clad in his silver diving suit -- commandant of the first undersea village.
That scene comes early on in "World Without Sun," the Oscar-winning documentary released in 1964. It provided moviegoers with a window into the underwater world of oceanauts living and working for a month in "inner space."
Now, 50 years later, Fabien Cousteau, grandson of the famed ocean explorer, is planning a similar expedition but going deeper and one day longer. And you won't have to wait for the movie to come out -- you can watch Mission 31 unfold in real time.
Next spring, Cousteau and five others will dive down to Aquarius Reef Base, an undersea lab 63 feet down in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. They plan to make the school-bus-size lab their home for 31 days, while exploring the deep and conducting scientific research (yes, there's a documentary in the works) -- all the while broadcasting the mission live.

Fabien Cousteau on his grandfather's shoulders in 1970. 

"We're in a whole new generation," said Cousteau, 46, a filmmaker and ocean explorer like his grandfather. During the last half of the 20th century, film and TV audiences became immersed in the undersea world of Jacques Cousteau, who was 87 when he died in 1997. "The Internet was in its nascent stage at the end of his life, so he never got a chance to reach out through that medium," he said.
Though time has advanced and so has technology, one thing hasn't changed much. "The reality is that we've explored less than 5 percent of our ocean to date," Cousteau said. So there are still a lot of stories to tell, and discoveries and adventures to be had, he said. "In essence we're hoping to continue on where my grandfather left off."
But it's not just by symbolically going deeper and one day longer than the 1963 expedition, he said. "There's a human-ocean connection that hadn't really been fathomed -- or certainly not enough -- that we need to emphasize now."
During the expedition, the aquanauts will conduct scientific research on how climate change, overconsumption, and pollution are affecting the health of the ocean. The aquanauts themselves will become specimens too, participating in experiments on the physiological and psychological effects of living under the sea -- and without sun -- for a month.

Immersion program
Cousteau describes Mission 31 as "an underwater classroom," where he and his team will share their discoveries with viewers -- through daily Skype video calls with students around the world, live reports on the Weather Channel, and real-time updates on social media.
"I think there's a way to wow today's generation in a way that [my grandfather] did, maybe by engaging them in a more real-time sort of way with more alternative kind of media," he said.
The 50th anniversary of his grandfather's experiment in undersea living, known as Conshelf Two, comes at an opportune time for updating our knowledge too, he said.

We're also showing the wonders of the undersea world in a way that most people will never get a chance to see."
-- Fabien Cousteau

Get Cousteau talking about the changes he's witnessed during his time in and around the ocean and he'll take an Aquaman-like dive into the scientific research as well. Caused "just by the actions of one species," the changes are both fascinating and scary, he said.
And he has a couple of decades' worth of firsthand knowledge to draw on. Cousteau grew up on the decks of the Calypso and Alcyone, the ships that transported his grandfather and crew on many of their expeditions.
"You go to the Florida Keys, for example, and it's a shadow of its former self," he said. But take someone, say a 12-year-old, diving in that area for the first time? "They've never seen how it was, how it was supposed to be, which is this fireworks display of life that I grew up with, when I was 12 years old."
The point of Mission 31 is more than going deeper and longer than Conshelf Two. "We're also showing the wonders of the undersea world in a way that most people will never get a chance to see," Cousteau said.

Fabien Cousteau describes Mission 31 as 'an underwater classroom,' where he and his team will share their discoveries with viewers in real time.

 

 

In October, an international panel of marine scientists released a report saying that increased carbon emissions have led to a "deadly trio" that threatens the world's oceans: waters are acidifying, warming, and losing oxygen. Pollution and overfishing are adding to the stress too. And things are worse than previously believed.
"The health of the ocean is spiraling downwards far more rapidly than we had thought," Alex Rogers, scientific director of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, said in a statement. "The situation should be of the gravest concern to everyone since everyone will be affected by changes in the ability of the ocean to support life on Earth."
The findings go beyond even the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that preceded it by a week, which said that the ocean is bearing the brunt of global warming.

Daily life in the deep
In addition to the mysteries of the underwater world, viewers may find life inside Aquarius just as compelling. What happens when you pack six people who don't know each other well into a school-bus-size space for a month? Aquarius, the world's only operating undersea lab, is about 43 feet long and about 9 feet wide inside. There are six bunks, a shower and toilet, hot water, a refrigerator, a microwave, air conditioning, and an Internet connection. The longest mission Aquarius has hosted was 18 days, with a typical mission lasting about 10 days.
Cousteau has assembled a team of people with science and engineering backgrounds, three women and three men, ranging in age from 19 to 46. For most of his team, including Cousteau, it'll be a new experience living as saturation divers, enabling them to stay underwater for the length of the mission. The 1963 expedition in part was an early, successful effort in saturation diving -- a technique that allows divers to safely explore the deep for a much longer period of time compared with surface-based diving.

Drinking responsible for half of all UK's lost work phones

Here's a sobering fact: out of all the work smart phones in the UK that go missing, over half do so while the owner is out enjoying an alcoholic beverage. That's according to a report by cloud security firm Trend Micro.
Over a quarter (27 per cent) of smart phone users have had up to three work devices lost or stolen, with 52 per cent out drinking at the time. As if the hangover wasn't enough to deal with without having to explain to the boss how you lost your work mobile.
The report shows not only that cybercriminals are targeting mobiles, but also there's a "culture of carelessness" that us Brits have towards work devices.
The report surveyed 2,500 adults throughout the UK. It was conducted with help from the Centre for Creative and Social Technology (CAST) at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Vision Critical, a market research firm.
It also revealed that of UK workers who lost their work device, 26 per cent did so on the Tube, and 22 per cent in a bar (though we're not alone in this last one). 31 per cent of UK workers use Wi-Fi hotspots regularly, but 56 per cent say they 'never' or 'rarely' check how secure they are before doing so.
Unsurprisingly, we're much more careful with our own belongings. Just 11 per cent of respondents had lost their own smart phone. And 44 per cent are more concerned about losing their own content like photos and videos than the company's info. Just 3 per cent worried about losing corporate data.
It all adds up to a rather worrying picture of UK workers. Though I would argue the problem is with the companies themselves not communicating how important it is to not lose company data, and the ramifications for all concerned. Not to mention making sure their workers aren't disaffected, but that's another debate entirely.

BlackBerry Z10 Porsche Edition debuts at grand price

Harrods is selling the Blackberry Z10 Porsche Edition for more than 1,000 pounds.

 

 

Your BlackBerry Z10 might be all well and good, but it's not going to impress your oil-baron, airline-owning friends, is it? What you need is the Porsche P'9982 BlackBerry phone, which takes the internals of the Z10 and wraps it up in a Porsche-designed body. BlackBerry couldn't tell me the exact price, but it did say it'll cost well more than a grand.

The bulk of that money is, of course, going on the Porsche name, but you do at least get some good materials for your money. The body of the phone is constructed from stainless steel, while the glass-weave back panel is coated in "genuine Italian leather."
A special edition version with crocodile leather will also be available, but expect to pay even more for that one -- presumably because it's more dangerous to get the skin off the crocodile in the first place.
 Read more of "BlackBerry Z10 Porsche Edition is over £1,000 at Harrods" at Tech era.