´óÏó´«Ã½

The that Pakistan bowlers threw delivered three no-balls to order for a betting scam gets commentators talking about the significance of the story.

that it comes at a time when Pakistan wants an advantage over England:

"The test-match series against England held special appeal for many Pakistani fans. When British Prime Minister David Cameron accused Pakistan of 'looking both ways' on the export of terrorism in the region while on a visit to India last month, the nationalist-minded among them hoped that revenge would be exacted on the cricket field. And when news channels could relay only the misery of those whose lives had been swept away by the floods, cricket became an attractive distraction."

why he thinks cricket is so important in Pakistan:

"In Pakistan, we are generally averse to public displays of hedonism, except when it comes to food (in private, of course, all bets are off). But success, or failure, in cricket provides most Pakistanis with an opportunity to express themselves in ways that would normally risk censure. When our cricket team wins, people literally dance on the street. When they lose, the effigies start burning.
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"The hot and cold of public affection breeds a certain kind of fatalism in our elite athletes, not to mention the super-rich. When the going is good, squeeze every ounce of good fortune lest it run out tomorrow. That attitude has a lot to do with the poisonous tolerance for match-fixing that has engulfed Pakistani cricket since the 1980s."

International sports lawyer [subscription required] why the police are involved in investigating possible match fixing:

"The Fraud Act 2006 added the offence of fraud to the list of criminal offences covered by the Gambling Act 2005.
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"If the police feel they have enough evidence, players and anyone else involved can be charged with fraud. A prosecution on conspiracy to defraud charges would need to show evidence that the protagonists on the field had contact with a fixer and profited from the enterprise.
Ìý"Any evidence gathered by the News of the World would, in principle, be admissible in court. But because there is no suggestion that the News of the World placed any bet on the back of the deal, and so no bookmaker was defrauded, it makes establishing a complete case harder."

the story as manufactured:

"The 'wrongdoing' - three no-balls - was actually 'bought' by the NOTW for £150,000. This wasn't for any actual betting coup, as erroneously reported in some places, but to show that large amounts of cash might persuade players to make errors, however inconsequential.
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"The events splashed over Sunday's NOTW were manufactured by the paper to make this point. It may have been done with noble intention - to highlight that cash can influence cricketers' behaviour. Yet the conceit that anyone could profit by massive sums from individual no-balls is not substantiated by any credible evidence."

[subscription required] that the bet News of the World would have set up can't be made:

"The only bookmakers who offer markets on elements of the game open to so-called micro-manipulation are those in India, where bookmaking is illegal and designed to avoid tax and service the black market. You wouldn't get a price on Mohammad Amir bowling a no-ball in his third over at Ladbrokes."

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On Tech Brief today: The ultimate God mode, burned geeks and crashing cars with code.

• Many video games put you in the position of a god, be it a benign or despotic one, but German developer has a good claim to making a game with the ultimate God mode. It has created The which translates the Old Testament into a browser-based multiplayer game. :

"In the beginning, there was... Chapter 1, The Heroes, which will be the first release of the game, and sounds a lot like Age of Empires (it looks a lot like it too), as you control Abraham and his descendants on their journey to the promised land. There's even a 'hero' system for levelling up and transferring skills, as Abraham begets new characters like Isaac and Jacob."

• Continuing the theme of ancient and modern is a list of the top ten lost technologies . It includes Roman concrete, Greek fire and less well-known ones such as Nepenthe. If all of them had been saved doubtless we'd be jetting to work in our flying cars by now:

"The world has never been more technologically advanced than it is now, but that doesn't mean that some things haven't been lost along the way. Many of the technologies, inventions, and manufacturing processes of antiquity have simply disappeared with the passage of time, while others are still not fully understood by modern day scientists."

• Flying cars have obvious risks but the growing amount of technology in contemporary cars might spell problems too. that they may be the route by which viruses take to start causing mayhem in the real world:

"The idea would be to launch a worm that would spread on the Internet (in any of a number of well explored ways) looking for vulnerable smart phones. Smart phones have GPS devices in, so the worm, having infected the phone, could ensure it was only operating in some geographic area of interest (eg the US, or a particular city). The worm could then check if it was on a smart phone that happened to be plugged into a car, and if so compromise the car. It could then use whatever wireless opportunities were available to compromise any other cars within the attack range."

• Star Wars may have happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away but that has not stopped Bradley Lewis engaging in a kind of retro-futuristic archaeology by trying to create authentic light-sabers, :

"Brad tracks down the pieces of equipment actually used to build the original props - or, when they're unavailable, very close replicas, that he further customizes with a metal lathe in his garage - and puts them together with loving attention."

• The Burning Man festival is ground-breaking in art and technology and now it is doing the same with mobile networks. that an open-source mobile network based around OpenBTS is being set up for the duration of the event:

"Burning Man has become a brutal, but great test vehicle. There are not too many places you can go where tens of thousands of people show up, all of them with cell phones, in a hostile physical environment - lots of heat and dust, with no power and no cell service."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

Two British actresses, Archie Panjabi and Julia Ormond were winners at the Emmy awards in Hollywood. Mad Men again won the award for best drama, report the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and .

Former England cricket captain why it took a newspaper, the News of the World, to expose the Pakistani betting scam.

The Mark Thompson has said the ´óÏó´«Ã½ could waive the 2% licence fee increase agreed for next April, but the arguments are "finely balanced".

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ reports Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he would ask the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to provide better value for money. He said he could not rule out a reduction in the licence fee: the ´óÏó´«Ã½ "has to live on the same planet as everyone else".

Next year's licence fee negotiations will be a "moment of realism" for the ´óÏó´«Ã½, said director general Mark Thompson in his MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. But he said any loss of funding would damage the UK's capacity to produce high-quality TV programmes, which were popular in Britain and round the world. He criticised Sky for failing to invest in British talent and content and suggested it should pay to re-transmit PSB channels. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ reports.

The controller of ´óÏó´«Ã½ One, Jay Hunt, is seen as the favourite to take over as Channel 4's chief creative officer, .

the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s newspaper review highlights the papers' focus on Lord Mandelson's intervention in the Labour leadership election.

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• ´óÏó´«Ã½ | Mad Men wins top Emmy for third year running
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Commentators discuss the results of a report that says the body set up to advice governments on climate change, the IPCC, needs stricter checks to prevent damage to its credibility but is "successful overall".

[subscription required] that the IPCC did not get more criticism:

"Enormous and expensive policy changes have been based on the flawed work of these scientists. Yet there is apparently to be no investigation, blame, suspension or withdrawal of papers, just a gentle bureaucratic fattening of the organisation with new full-time posts...
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"Frankly, the whole process, not just the discredited Dr Pachauri (in shut-eyed denial at a press conference yesterday), needs purging or it will drag down the reputation of science with it. One of the most shocking things for those who champion science, as I do, has been the sight of the science Establishment reacting to each scandal in climate science with indifference or contempt."

Canada's the response too timid, asking for more to be done to change the IPCC:

"It is hard enough for lay people to understand climate change. To describe it with scientific accuracy is a monumental task, involving studies of forests and deserts, diesel and manure. And because climate change is perhaps the greatest public policy challenge of our time, it needs a peerless research infrastructure to match. Many of the IAC task force's proposals - to codify conflict of interest guidelines, on how to choose lead authors (the senior scientists who take the lead in drafting IPCC chapters), to explicitly say that a range of scientific viewpoints has been considered, and to create a strong executive committee to guide the IPCC's work - are all overdue. But the task force shied away from bolder moves that would boost public confidence."

The the report shows it is time to move on from "Climategate":

"Climategate has succeeded in demonstrating that scientists are not infallible and that they can be idiosyncratic and petty. But the clear weight of scientific evidence and the expert consensus show that global warming is undeniably getting worse.
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"The challenge now is for the world and its leaders - prone as they are to procrastination and denial - to muster the political will to act."

The the report extremely damaging:

"We have argued that a conservative case for preserving the planet's scarce resources should support much of the action demanded by concerned scientists, regardless of whether the case for man-made global warming can be proved. But it becomes difficult to keep an open mind on such issues if the findings of a purportedly scientific document cannot be trusted."

the case of Harvard's evolutionary pschyoclogist Marc Hauser, who was reported for fraudulent evidence his own graduate students, to argue there isn't a conspiracy within science:

"Here we have a case where a single investigator could not keep his own graduate students from blowing the whistle on misconduct. And a case where the home institution - Harvard University, the very bastion of academe no less - acted on the report of the lowly whistle-blowers and launched a thorough investigation of a faculty heavyweight. And somehow, some in the climate-skeptic camp would have us believe that the whole climate science community, involving hundreds of scientists and all their graduate students and technicians, have been falsifying data and no one, not even a single student or technician, has come forward with a substantive and actionable complaint."

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On Tech Brief today: face patents, rogue choppers and spinning beyond the grave.

• Earlier this week up to four million Gmail users found their accounts were being used to pump out what appeared to be spam messages. But, far from being hacked or infected with a virus, the error was a Google problem .

"At least if your home or business computer is spewing out spam you can pull the cable out of the back of your PC. When web email services like Gmail go wrong you don't have that option."

• However, it's not all bad news for Gmail. Yesterday Google rolled out a free voice call service to its users. . that within the first 24 hours more than 1 million calls were made

"The rapid adoption isn't too surprising, since Google says there are hundreds of millions of Gmail users globally (although the feature is only available to US users for now), and a 'significant percentage' of them already take advantage of the service's video chat capabilities."

• Yesterday's Tech brief reported on facebook suing a website for using 'book' in its name. Now, it seems it also has the word face in its sights, .

"Face is a pretty generic word and Facebook doesn't actually use it on its own, only in combination with book. If Facebook doesn't get face, maybe it will have better luck with like. It has at least 14 applications to trademark that word as well."

• The lights have gone out on a "critical chapter" in Silicon valley, . AOL is officially moving out of the "legendary HQ buildings of Netscape Communications". AOL bought Netscape in 1998 and moved into its offices. More than a decade later Netscape is no more and AOL is a shadow of its former self. Kara quotes AOL's Brad Garlinghouse.

"For good or bad, those buildings are full of ghosts and we need a new space to start a new chapter."

• The second of Asimov's laws of robotics says that a robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, unless that order will endanger humans. Fine in theory. But what happens when those instructions are corrupted? the "software error" that sent a military robot helicopter straying into restricted airspace near Washington DC.

"Robot planes and choppers lacking instructions from their human masters will normally circle where they are when comms go down, and control is almost always restored shortly thereafter - as in fact happened with the rogue Fire Scout. The difference here is that the MQ-8 failed to follow its built-in failure protocol, instead continuing on course."

• And vinyly, on the company - called And Vinyly - that promises to keep people spinning beyond the grave. The firm offers people the chance to press their ashes in to a vinyl recording. The main challenge, according to founder Jason Leach is choosing the music.

It's difficult to think of what to put on your record because you want it to be the best album you can imagine"

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

The the ´óÏó´«Ã½ director-general Mark Thompson is expected to fight back against the Corporation's critics when he gives the keynote MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival this evening.

The Mark Thompson is expected to contrast the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s £2 billion a year spending on UK-produced programmes with Sky's policy of spending heavily on sports rights and movies.

X Factor contestants will no longer have their performances tweaked using sound filters, after the practice led to viewer complaints, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ reports.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s newspaper review highlights the papers analysis of the return of the former Polly Peck boss Asil Nadir to face justice.

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Commentators discuss accusations that several MPs have verbally abused expenses watchdog staff.

the behaviour makes it clear what some MPs really think:

"They swore, they intimidated, they threatened. These MPs must think that they were elected to be masters and not servants. They must think that the right to do what they like is a recompense for the time-consuming and humiliating business of soliciting the public's vote.
Ìý
"They are entitled to what they ask for, therefore, and no one is to question it; a justified expense is by definition one that they claim."

the affair has highlighted that MPs still have too much power:

"One MP who reportedly complained to Ipsa did so accompanied by three of his staff: why does a backbencher need three subordinates? This aggrandisement of the MP's role is a notable development of the past 25 years, and is partly responsible for the belief that took root in Westminster that the world somehow owes its inhabitants a good living. It doesn't. MPs should be reimbursed for the legitimate expense of being away from home, for travel and for subsistence, on the production of receipts and within agreed limits."

that the new level of bureaucracy MPs complain of is no different to what most people have to deal with:

"Is this not exactly the type of thing which goes on at government agencies throughout the United Kingdom?
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"Have you ever tried getting through to a human being when pursuing an urgent problem at, say, 'The Identity and Passport Service' (as the old Passport Office now insists on calling itself) or at the Ministry of Agriculture?
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"Farmers have for years done battle with the Rural Payments Agency, an arm of Whitehall so obtuse and abstruse that some smallholders have gone bankrupt and even committed suicide while awaiting their dues. MPs, with their expenses watchdog, have only been getting a taste of what modern British officialdom is like."

There is some defence of MPs coming from that enough mild mannered MPs have complained to make him conclude the fault lies with the watchdog. In addition, David that the the expenses watchdog, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) was created without much thought:

"The hypocrisy of MPs, which has accompanied the expenses scandal at every turn, is stomach-turning, indicative of latent amorality and fatuous arrogance.
Ìý
"The continued deceit, self-entitlement and bullying mask an important issue. The solutions to the expenses crisis were rushed by a government that produced half-baked policies like trailer-trash pop out kids... Neither a general election nor the new system has proved cathartic; what will? Scrapping IPSA and starting again (with a little thought this time) would seem the sensible option."

Labour's Denis MacShane told the ´óÏó´«Ã½ he was one of the MPs implicated. [subscription required] that power has shifted from MPs to civil servants, turning MPs into "petty clerks":

"[T]his weakening of MPs' status comes with a price. We are seeing the slow transformation of the Commons into a bunch of worried, uncertain MPs firmly under the control of the Civil Service. Most of Ipsa's staff, along with an increasing number of Commons officials, have jumped ship from the Ministry of Justice and other Whitehall departments. They bring with them a Whitehall mentality that has no understanding - and often an open dislike - of the rough and tumble of politics. They want MPs to move in Civil Service-approved grooves."

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On Tech Brief today: fast cars, oil-eating robots and shoes from the future.

• . The Buckeye Bullet was clocked on Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats at speeds averaging 307 mph. And it might have gone faster on a later run if they hadn't had a technical hitch, they say on their blog:

"Our last attempt yesterday was all set to be the best run yet, everything was looking great, but midway through the first mile, we busted our clutch. Too much torque from our motor ripped apart the half inch steel teeth that keep the motor connected to the gearbox. After a late night of trying to disassemble the motor and reinstall another type of clutch, we decided to call it: our last record will stay the best."

• Who owns the word book? Well, it depends where you use it, :

This begs the obvious question: Would Facebook sue a social-networking site for priests named Goodbook? Or a librarian-networking site named Librarybook? Barry Schnitt, a Facebook spokesman, pointed out that 'we have no complaint against Kelly Blue Book or Green Apple Books or others'."

• . It says the devices are changing people's habits and, contrary to expectations, people are reading more:

"Among early adopters, e-books aren't replacing their old book habits, but adding to them. Amazon, the biggest seller of e-books, says its customers buy 3.3 times as many books after buying a Kindle, a figure that has accelerated in the past year as prices for the device fell."

• The deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico has highlighted the need for better technology to deal with spills on that scale. An estimated 4.9m barrels of oil leaked into the waters of the Gulf over the course of 87 days, with only 800,000 barrels being captured. Now, : swarms of oil absorbing robots:

"The Seaswarm robot uses a conveyor belt covered with a thin nanowire mesh to absorb oil. The fabric, developed by MIT Visiting Associate Professor Francesco Stellacci, and ... can absorb up to twenty times its own weight in oil while repelling water. By heating up the material, the oil can be removed and burnt locally and the nanofabric can be reused."

• Cheating at school used to involve writing answers on the palm of your hand or trying to get a glimpse of the class swots answers. But . Two schoolgirls from Stockholm have been taken to court for trying to bug their teachers. And they would have got away with it, if they had not revealed all on Facebook:

"The girls, who attend a middle school in the capital, planned to listen in on a meeting the following day at which teachers would decide their grades. They were hoping to glean information that would enable them to get their grades improved."

• And finally, it seems sportswear manufacturer Nike has been catching up on the Back to the Future trilogy. . Next up the hoverboard and then, just maybe, a flux capacitor:

"The shoes appear to boast a charging system and lights in addition to the lacing component, and while so few patent apps ever lead to a real retail product, we're really rooting for this one."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

Tobacco firms have denied claims in a that they are using websites such as YouTube to get around a ban on advertising cigarettes. a study in New Zealand found a number of pro-tobacco videos "consistent with indirect marketing activity by tobacco companies or their proxies". The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s Jonathan Fildes reports several tobacco firms signed up to a voluntary agreement to restrict direct advertising on websites in 2002.

Richard Desmond, the new owner of Channel 5, is in talks with Endemol to buy the rights to Big Brother, . But it says no announcement is imminent. This week's final drew 4m viewers, well up on last year's.

Wolf Mankowitz, who wrote the screenplay for a James Bond film, was himself suspected of being a spy, according to new papers released at the National Archives in Kew. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ and [subscription required].

The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s newspaper review looks at speculation in the papers over the mystery of the murder of MI6 employee Gareth Williams, whose body was found at his flat in London.

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Commentators discuss the report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), which said the Budget has hit poorest families the hardest.

The if the Budget is regressive, it is because of Labour's legacy:

"[I]t's plain that Labour's labyrinthine and unaffordable system of benefits and tax credits has created a vast new class of state-dependent families, desperately vulnerable to spending cuts. For them, the worst cruelty has been that the system has locked them into poverty, draining incentives to work or to move up the pay scale."

the Labour legacy, but in a favourable light:

"The poorest 10% of households will lose 5% of their income as a result of all the changes to come between now and 2014, while the top 10% will lose less than 1%.
Ìý
"To the extent that the rich do lose out over the coming years, it will be because of changes bequeathed by Alistair Darling when he was chancellor. Indeed, Labour tended to play down just how progressive its budgets were, while the coalition has bragged on, falsely, about its commitment to fairness. As the IFS makes plain, the big losers from the budget will be poor working families with children and those dependent on state benefits: the same people, in other words, who lost out in the Thatcher budgets of the 1980s."

The that defending the "progressive" nature of the Budget was ill advised:

"This sort of finessing, designed to present the Budget in the glow of good publicity, is exactly the sort of trick that used to seduce Gordon Brown every year. The better course would have been to accept the verdict of the IFS, with a rider about the impact of growth to come, and to look at other countervailing policies to ensure that the burden of reducing the deficit is fairly shared throughout the population."

the coalition government should aim to be fair rather than progressive:

"Fairness is a better battlefield to fight on. Is it fair to expect the minimum wage office cleaners, dustbin men, burger flippers and night security guards who work long hours getting up whilst those on welfare sleep, to pay higher taxes to support those who don't work? Effectively transferring income from the working poor to the workless poor. What is fair about higher taxes for the lower paid"

the argument on using the word progressive to describe the Budget, saying it just needs to be redefined:

"Take the left's language not its metrics. I'm all for raids on the left's linguistic territory; there's no reason why Labour should have a monopoly on the words 'fair' or 'progressive'. But the right's definition of it must be different from the left's. It can't all be about redistribution."

The the IFS report will not be the last word on the matter:

"Gordon Brown was a great redistributor according to this kind of analysis, and yet income inequality got worse during his reign. His measures no doubt prevented it deteriorating even further but a better solution is to get more of the 5m working-age people on benefit back into work. Cutting public spending will always tend to bear down on poorer people, but does anyone seriously think that Britain could continue with public expenditure close to 50% of national income? The strongest riposte from the government is to stress that there is nothing fair in saddling tomorrow's taxpayers with today's debts."

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On Tech Brief today: Harvard drop out comes good, mysterious radio signals and bikers get a power boost.

• Yesterday, it was reported that a number of iTunes accounts linked to PayPal have been targeted in a scam. Several users complained that they have been cleaned out. The initial explanation was that the victims had been targeted in a phishing scam; using e-mail and fake websites to lure people into revealing details such as bank accounts or login names. But :

"Comments on the earlier article from (indignant) users say that they're sure they haven't been phished for the details of their PayPal accounts - and that someone has somehow been making unauthorised (by them, at least) purchases from the iTunes Store."

• Six years ago fresh-faced, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook. Six years later, with more than 500m users and a small name change, :

"Common stock in Facebook is trading as high as $76 a share as investors scramble to get a piece of the company before it files for an initial public offering, which analysts say could be the biggest technology IPO since Google's $1.67bn flotation in 2004."

• For the last 20 years a "a mysterious radio station in Russia" has been broadcasting a monotonous signal with little to no variation. Now, :

"Over the past week or so, the output of one particular station that broadcasts from near Povarovo, Russia, increased dramatically. The station has a callsign of UVB-76, but is known as "The Buzzer" by its listeners because of the short, monotonous buzz tone that it normally plays 21 to 34 times per minute. It's only deviated from that signal three times previously - briefly in 1997, 2002 and 2006."

• Pac-Man fans have long been able to play the classic game on everything from old Ataris to Xbox consoles and Android phones. Now, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, a : a Sequoia AVC-Edge DRE voting machine:

" We could have reprogrammed it to steal votes, but that's been done before, and Pac-Man is more fun."

• Finally one for gamers, who cycle and live in Portland, Oregon. . Let's-a go.

"Unfortunately, the bananas, star and speed arrows don't actually confer the same powers they do in the game, but we did smirk to see that all of the bikers do faithfully avoid the banana peel, and hit the rest of the symbols head on."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a BT commercial for misleading customers over broadband speeds. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ reports an episode in the 'Adam and Jane' romantic saga showed an estate agent struggling to link to a webpage, while Jane loaded the site instantly.

Regional newspaper group Johnston Press has posted its first rise in operating profit since 2006 . The group, which includes the Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post, said the decline in advertising revenues had continued to ease.

Josie Gibson has won the final series of Big Brother, but there's been far less media interest than in the past. The is all the way back on page 25 of the newspaper in the showbiz section.
Former housemates are now assembling for the Ultimate Big Brother before it leaves Channel 4 for good.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ newspaper review shows that several papers lead with the conclusion by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that the coalition's first Budget was regressive.

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• ´óÏó´«Ã½ | BT broadband advert banned over speed claim
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• ´óÏó´«Ã½ | Newspaper review

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• Read Tuesday's Media Brief

Commentators consider the meaning and implications of the declining popularity of language GCSEs.

The of the absence of any foreign languages in the top 10 most popular GCSE subjects. It insists there is a point to learning languages:

"No doubt there are many who would question the need to learn a foreign language. After all, English is so widely used around the world that it is possible to do business almost anywhere without being conversant in another tongue. But while there are compelling practical reasons for seeking mastery of a foreign language (whether they be to advance one's job prospects or facilitate travel for pleasure), this is not merely a utilitarian matter. Learning a language broadens the mind, teaches the rudiments of grammar and gives a student a greater understanding of his or her native tongue."

The the drop in language learning will makes the UK more inward looking:

"A suspicion that the web is more Anglosphere-wide than worldwide fuels a feeling that others are under more pressure to learn our language than we are to master theirs. Within a learn-to-earn educational philosophy, it is then a short step to deciding that our priorities should lie elsewhere. This is a dangerous line of argument, even in its own terms. If the weave of the web is working in favour of English, there is an awfully long way to go. Three in four of the world's people speak no English, which is a lot of people to give up hope of trading with. More profoundly, to forgo familiarity with foreign languages is to forgo the chance to see the world from a foreign point of view."

The that apportioning blame at inward looking children is wrong:

"In many ways, today's younger generation is more internationally aware than any before. No; most of the blame must be placed squarely on the last government for making foreign languages optional after 14, before the supposed quid pro quo - foreign language teaching in primary schools - was anything like in place. Nor has the new Government given any hint of wanting to reinstate compulsory language study to GCSE."

The [subscription required] schools will start employing fewer language teachers:

"It was probably inevitable that enrolment in languages would drop after the previous Government scrapped the requirement for a compulsory language at GCSE. French also feels less relevant these days than Spanish and Mandarin, which have seen small rises in applications. Yet a fall of almost 50 per cent in those signing up for French since 1999 gives cause for concern. Whatever the merits of particular foreign languages, they are among the most demanding subjects in the curriculum. It is important that all pupils have the opportunity to study a foreign language if they wish to: schools must retain teaching capacity as enrolment dwindles."

Political blogger that if he had been elected as MP (he failed to get selected by the Tory party to stand) he would have made languages a priority, but not necessarily French:

"We have never been great linguists in this country, and many take the attitude that we don't need to learn a language because everyone abroad speaks English. That's an incredibly 'Little Englanderish" attitude and one which hampers people who do business abroad. The ability to converse with people in their own language can open many doors. "Perhaps, however, we are also guilty of being too conservative in our teaching of languages. Maybe instead of sticking to trusty old French and German we should be encouraging schools to offer more courses in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin and Russian."

the fall in language learning to the increase in students taking religious studies, which, he concludes, is because it is easier:

"...GCSE religious studies exams are so easy that an average 8-year-old frozen in suspended animation in the 1950s could, upon being awoken, walk into an exam hall and achieve an A* within 20 minutes.
Ìý
"I'm not doing down religion teachers, who do a wonderful job, nor any hardworking pupils, but the exams are clearly not stretching them. It was recently revealed, after all, that a religious studies GCSE paper asked pupils to 'name the two people' standing beside the baby in the nativity scene. Another asks why Christmas is 'an important festival for Christians'."

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A bumper Tech Brief today, including stealth job advertising, mapping the web and the supercomputer in your pocket.

• We've on the UK law firm ACS:Law which has sent thousands of letters to people it claims have downloaded illegal content. Many of those that have received letters protest their innocence. Now, the consumer group that the firm is to face a disciplinary body.

"The move follows a decision by the solicitors watchdog to pursue a complaint lodged by Which? in May 2009 that while acting on behalf of a number of copyright holders, including Reality Pump and Topware Interactive, ACS Law engaged in 'bullying' and 'excessive' conduct."

• On Monday, eight tourists were killed in Manila after a gunman took their bus hostage. Within hours, a game called Bus Hostage by Policeman had . And just as quickly, commenters told the developer exactly what they thought of it.

" The game drew flak not only for its 'awful graphics' and 'sucky gameplay.' but also for 'making fun of' an event that claimed innocent lives."

• Earlier this month Russian hacker BadB - real name Vladislav Horohorin - was arrested on a trip to France. him as "a disembodied criminal flitting from one server to another selling stolen credit card numbers". His arrest, Mr Kramer says, shines a light on the shadowy world of cyber-criminals.

"Law enforcement groups in Russia have been reluctant to pursue these talented authors of Internet fraud, for reasons, security experts say, of incompetence, corruption or national pride. In this environment, BadB's network arose as 'one of the most sophisticated organizations of online financial criminals in the world'."

• Two things we have all got used to: the ever increasing power of gadgets and the fact that there seems to be a phone app for everything these days. Now researchers at MIT and Texas Instruments have created an Android app that can help solve simulations from a supercomputer, . Their motivation, supposedly, is that supercomputers are still a previous resource.

"Researchers have to book time on them and they aren't available for computations that need to be done quickly. Supercomputers also can't be carried into field experiments. Having a device in hand that could help solve a problem quickly can be handy."

• The web loves to speculate on the next gadget from Apple. Now, a patent which suggests that the Cupertino based firm plan a touch-screen iMac desktop computer with swivelling display.

"Imagine having an iMac on your desktop one minute and a gigantic iPad the next."

• Finding a job that fits your skills exactly can be a difficult task. But, , UK newspaper The Daily Mail seems to have hit on a clever ruse to find the ideal candidate for the role of search engine optimisation expert. They hid the job advert in the robots.txt file. Mr Coles explains:

"For those who don't know, the robots.txt file is how you tell search engines which pages they can and can't crawl on your site to include in their index. In the past it was worth occasionally checking out newspapers' robots.txt files as they listed the URLs of stories that they've had to withdraw for legal reasons (or joke Polish editions). Sadly, they don't seem to do that so much these days. "

• The Nmap project recently rose to prominence after it was revealed that a developer for the project harvested and published the personal details of 100m Facebook users. Now, of the top million web sites on the web, sorted by their icons.

• And finally, Maria Popova - known as - highlighted . Tech Brief particularly likes the one showing how a sewing machine works. No words needed. Just enjoy.

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

WPP chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell says "mild expansion" is replacing the "fear phase" that gripped markets last year. The world's largest advertising group reports a 36 % increase in half-year profits to £244m reports the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

The that the Church of England says the ´óÏó´«Ã½ should appoint a religion editor to act as a "trusted guide". It praises the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s religious output in a submission to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Trust review of Radio 3, Radio 4 and ´óÏó´«Ã½7.

The Harper Collins has accused the ´óÏó´«Ã½ of using licence fee money to gag a book by Top Gear's secret driver The Stig. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ says the book breaches confidentiality obligations.

The over "TV trickery" on ITV1's X Factor. It claims Autotune has been widely used, both to improve and worsen singers' performances.

The editor of music magazine Future Music tells the ´óÏó´«Ã½ that sound engineers say Autotune is used in 99% of recorded music.

In his blog, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ arts editor Will Gompertz asks in his blog what's the problem?

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Newspaper review shows some papers carry pictures of one of the miners found alive in Chile after being trapped underground.

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• Will Gompertz | ´óÏó´«Ã½ | Who cares about autotune?
• ´óÏó´«Ã½ | Newspaper review

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Commentators react to Iran's unveiling of an armed aerial drone - a day after the start-up of its first nuclear power plant.

that Iran's increase in weapons will lead to an Israeli strike on Iran, supported by permission by the US to fly over Iraqi airspace taken by US aircrafts:

"For the Obama administration, the prospect of a nuclearized Iran is dismal to contemplate - it would create major new national-security challenges and crush the president's dream of ending nuclear proliferation. But the view from Jerusalem is still more dire: a nuclearized Iran represents, among other things, a threat to Israel's very existence... I am not engaging in a thought exercise, or a one-man war game, when I discuss the plausibility and potential consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran. Israel has twice before successfully attacked and destroyed an enemy's nuclear program. In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak, halting - forever, as it turned out - Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions; and in 2007, Israeli planes destroyed a North Korean-built reactor in Syria. An attack on Iran, then, would be unprecedented only in scope and complexity."

In response Jeffrey Goldberg's argument, saying it ignores the context:

"[T]he whole discussion of an Israeli or American strike against Iran seems to take place in an historical void, as if we have not just lived through the brutal, griding experience of a war chosen and sold on shaky grounds. I would hope that the lessons of Iraq will not be so easily forgotten.... When offered the hope that an air strike would quickly take out Iran's nuclear facilities without significant retaliation, we should remember that it is at least as likely that the attack would escalate to war, leading the U.S. to be dragged down into a new hell of occupation and regional conflagration."

"Bombing a sovereign nation is a de facto declaration of war. Our Constitution requires the Congress, not the President, to declare war. Simply because we have launched a number of wars without a Congressional declaration does not mean the Constitutional requirement has been suspended... This is not an argument for 'doing nothing', the standard retort of the eager bombers. We have at least a year, and probably more, to weigh Iran's nuclear capabilities and intentions, and to rally regional and global opposition to them."

The British press takes the new weapons less seriously; at the unveiling ceremony:

"There was, for one thing, the odd disjunction in the presidential rhetoric, with President Ahmadinejad insisting that his cruise missile had a 'main message of peace and friendship' while simultaneously claiming that it was an 'ambassador of death'. One hopes that radar will be able to discriminate between its approach in friendly messenger or murderous ambassador mode. Then there was the fabulously amateurish nature of the stage setting from which he made his announcement, with its wrinkled backdrop and its lumpy am-dram cardboard clouds, propped in the foreground to conceal the rigging that was holding the weapon up. Even the thing itself looked a little risible - a garage-built Thunderbird scattered with rose-petals. It was all very mouse-that-roared.
Ìý
"How entertaining you find this joke depends, of course, on how close you live to Iran. It probably loses quite a bit of its comedy anywhere within the 620-mile range of 'The Striker'."

[subscription required] of the unveiling, pointing out the contradictions:

"He was standing next to the bomber at the time, you see, and he'd had it scattered with rose petals. No, really. Rose petals. As if he wanted to sleep with it. Where have all the flowers gone? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nicked them to decorate Iran's answer to Trident. We're talking rose petals, here. On a thing created to drop bombs. He'll be making it wear a nightie, next."

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On Tech Brief today: Pranksters cash in, Apple mulls an iPhone kill switch and the most boring film ever?

• , sometimes in an inconsistent fashion. The latest developer to be booted out of the store is Nate Weiner, developer of Read it Later, an app that allows you to store web pages and read them offline. He had submitted an update to his app, that had been successfully accepted and distributed before. In a blog post, he copied the letter he had been sent by Apple that suggested the reason that it had been blocked was because

" If that is true, then outside of games, almost every single popular application in the app store would be affected. The Facebook app, Twitter app, Evernote app, Google Reader apps, and any other application for a web-based service that requires an account would be rejected."

• In related news, for "an elaborate series of measures to automatically protect iPhone owners from thieves and other unauthorized users". However, he warns, that the patent also includes functions that would allow Apple to identify phones that had been "jail broken" to run unauthorised software:

" The application, which was filed in February and published Thursday, specifically describes the identification of "hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or removal of a SIM card" so that measures can be taken to counter the user. Possible responses include surreptitiously activating the iPhone's camera, geotagging the image and uploading it to a server and transmitting sensitive data to a server and then wiping it from the device."

• The file-sharing landscape seems to be constantly in flux, as record labels and authorities play a game of cat and mouse with sites for posting links to copyright videos and music. the landscape has largely remained unchanged:

" This suggests that the ecosystem is more stable and conservative than most think it is. Up to a certain degree this is true, but it's not entirely invincible. Four out of the five websites have been dragged to court and two of them have suffered serious damage."

• A message board that was originally set up to allow people to post images from Japanese animation and cartoons but has since morphed into a focal point for web pranks and hacktavism may not seem like an obvious business opportunity. But, :

"Many in the internet business have been watching 4chan with interest. The steady growth of its traffic and the viral spread of its content, after all, represent the kind of social success that web businesses require."

• Last week we reported on plans to immortalise the Google twins on the silver screen. :

"The Google story is about two big nerds who made a great product, then got rich. Good luck sexing that up, Hollywood."

• And finally; keeping with the Star Wars theme of a few recent posts, we present you . Impressive. Most impressive:

"Lots of companies have tried to cash in on Lucas' money machine since the first Star Wars came out in 1977 by paying homage to the film and its characters in commercials, including a certain evil Sith lord who you wouldn't think would make the best pitchman. But it turns out he is."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Commentators look at Australia's inconclusive election result.

the nation has sent a message to its politicians on their absence of policy:

"Neither leader managed in the campaign to spell out a clear vision about how they intended to make the reforms in tax, productivity and infrastructure that will help deliver future prosperity. As The Australian has said often, both parties are complacent about the resources boom, happy to let China Inc do the heavy lifting and ducking the tough calls needed to ensure future generations reap the benefits of our mining wealth."

that reform is needed in Australia to deal with the increasing prosperity of China, but with this result, paralysis may set in:

"On the one hand a minority Labor government would probably bring us stability. On the basis that the Coalition in opposition would not be mindlessly obstructionist of the things that really matter. But it would be at great risk of being pulled to the left by a de facto coalition with the Greens in the Senate.
Ìý
"In contrast, at least with a Coalition government it would be simply unable to 'do anything'. Unfortunately, do anything good as well as bad.We need firm reform-focused government. We are not going to get it."

Adelaide's quick action to resolve who will run the country:

"It is not necessarily the ideal recipe for stable government and, at a crucial time with the world's economy still on a knife edge, any democracy needs to have a government capable of making key decisions without being held to ransom by independents - all of whom, quite rightly, have differing agendas on a whole range of issues and have to get the best deal for their electorates.
Ìý
"This electoral dilemma is something we are going to have learn to live with, but it needs to be solved and solved quickly. It must not be allowed to drag on for weeks, as some are predicting."

After having a similar result in May, UK newspapers have also been commenting on the significance of this.

The the differences between the UK's election result and Australia's may mean Australia may have to return to the polls:

"Like Britain, Australia has not had a hung parliament for years nor a coalition government since wartime. Unlike Britain, however, the arithmetic is equally frustrating for both sides. The Labor and Liberal/National parties have won almost the same number of seats. They each need only two or three more to clinch a majority. But there is no third party to woo. Rather there are three re-elected independent MPs, a newly elected Green MP and a fourth independent whose win is yet to be confirmed. Of little electoral consequence until this weekend, they are all now relishing their power, suggesting that they will be swayed by whatever is most beneficial to their constituents. Talks may descend to bargaining over pork barrel politics. The prospects for a stable coalition are not bright."

The a coalition wouldn't work as well as it says the UK's does:

"Australian eyes are already straying across the oceans to Britain, where a coalition government seems to be managing well enough. But the parallels are limited. The handful of MPs who can make a difference in the lower house there are from very different points in the political spectrum. There would be no coherence in a Labor-led coalition or minority government with, or supported by, independents whose leaning is toward the right.
Ìý
"But, equally, a bargain between the much-strengthened Greens and the Liberals would be very hard to strike, given their fundamental differences on environmental matters."

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On Tech Brief today: Google: the Movie, Star Wars remakes and a vain German robber gets caught out by his e-mails.

• It sounds like the plot of a movie. A computer virus infects vital systems and ends up causing a plane crash. Now, that is what happened two years ago when a Spanair passenger plane crashed at Madrid Airport in 2008, killing 154 people:

"The Spanair central computer which registered technical problems for planes was not functioning properly because it had been contaminated by harmful computer programs."

• on the news. He says that he is unable to confirm whether a Trojan was responsible, but he says that there are several well-documented cases of infections attacking critical infrastructure:

"The network congestion caused by Slammer dramatically slowed down the network traffic of the entire Internet. One of the world's largest automatic teller machine networks crashed and remained inoperative over the whole weekend. Many international airports reported that their air traffic control systems slowed down. Emergency phone systems were reported to have problems in different parts of the USA. The worm even managed to enter the internal network of the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant in Ohio, taking down the computer monitoring the state of the nuclear reactor."

• on the story of a Hawaiian gamer who is suing the maker of the online game Lineage II, saying that he is addicted to the game and is "unable to function independently in usual daily activities such as getting up, getting dressed, bathing or communicating with family and friends"@

"Craig Smallwood, the plaintiff, claims NCsoft of South Korea should pay unspecified monetary damages because of the addictive nature of the game. Smallwood claims to have played Lineage II for 20,000 hours between 2004 and 2009. Among other things, he alleges he would not have begun playing if he was aware 'that he would become addicted to the game'."

• People always say that news stories about them portray them incorrectly. Now, , a bank robber in Germany seems to have let vanity sometimes get the better of him:

"[He] contacted the press and the police to correct the 'errors' in their reporting on the crime, noting that they got 'his age, height, mode of escape and accent wrong.' Of course, e-mailing that info made it easy to track him down, and a few hours later he was in custody."

• The rivalry between Facebook and Google continues, but this time it has moved to the silver screen. Later this year, . Hot on its heels will be :

"Michael London's Groundswell Productions has teamed with producer John Morris to acquire movie rights to the Ken Auletta book Googled: The End of the World As We Know it. They will use the book as the blueprint for a feature film that tells the story of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and the fast rise of the juggernaut web business that made them billionaires."

• And if that weren't enough for film fans, there is now a new Star Wars film on the horizon. Well, a remake. Made by fans. Brought together on the internet. :

"It's made up of all the highest-rated scenes voted on by the fans. We have a fully-edited version of the movie produced, but we are working through the legal issues in order to bring that to everyone as soon as possible. "

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Commentators discuss the war in Iraq after the last US combat brigade left Iraq on Thursday.

about the validity of the departure:

"They are leaving behind 50,000 men and women - a third of the entire US occupation force - who will be attacked and who will still have to fight against the insurgency.
Ìý
"Yes, officially they are there to train the gunmen and militiamen and the poorest of the poor who have joined the new Iraqi army, whose own commander does not believe they will be ready to defend their country until 2020. But they will still be in occupation - for surely one of the the 'American interests' they must defend is their own presence - along with the thousands of armed and indisciplined mercenaries, western and eastern, who are shooting their way around Iraq to safeguard our precious western diplomats and businessmen. So say it out loud: we are not leaving."

In the speed of the withdrawal:

"With tens of thousands of troops, and many more private contractors, still in Iraq, anyone who thinks this is 'over' is mistaken.
Ìý
"But it's hard not to feel some satisfaction about today's milestone anyway. As recently as March - just five months ago - there were more than 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, many of them serving multiple tours. This morning, there are 50,000, and none of them is serving in a combat capacity.
Ìý
"In, say, 2006, this point seemed all but unreachable."

that just because it isn't entirely accurate to say US troops have left Iraq, doesn't make the move meaningless:

"It is a little bit immature to demand an all or nothing military situation. What Obama has done is stay true to US commitment to get combat units out by September 1. That should reassure Iraqis - and Arabs and Muslims in general - about US intentions.
Ìý
"That consideration is the true significance of Thursday's last convoy. It is a symbol of a turnaround in US policy, a repudiation of the Bush administration doctrine of preemptive war. 'Preemptive war' is a euphemism for the rehabilitation of aggressive war, which the world community attempted to abolish in the United Nations charter."

[registration required] that the Iraqis have little to celebrate about the US withdrawal:

"True, the civil war that threatened to tear Iraq apart has abated. Iraqis have adapted to living with the lower levels of daily violence that still bedevil parts of the country. Thanks to their newfound democratic freedoms, Iraqis can think and say what they want; they can vote in elections; and they can join political parties. But they are neither comfortable with their present nor secure about their future."

Ex-ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005 that the US needs to keep a relationship with Iraq:

"Too often in the past we have tired of an international undertaking when our military role has finished and 'our boys have come home.' We should not underestimate the effect that a continued demonstration of interest and concern can have on Iraq's future. It is important that not only Iraq but the region as a whole understand that this long-suffering country continues to enjoy strong American support. A properly endowed U.S. government civilian presence in Iraq can help preserve the gains of the past seven years and help avoid a repeat of the instabilities of the past."

The the war shameful, without any winners:

"Toppling Saddam - supposedly part of George W Bush's 'war on terror' - only allowed Al Qaeda to take root in Iraq.
Ìý
"Meanwhile, the reputations of President Bush and Tony Blair - our own warmongering leader, who lied about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction - are in ruins...
Ìý
"No, the departure of the last Allied combat troops from Iraq was not a victory parade. It was an ignominious end to an equally ignominious and almost certainly illegal military adventure."

The director of the Iraqi Association, a charity for Iraqi refugees in Britain
that the Iraq war was worth it:

"There are now hundreds of newspapers and magazines available on the streets of Baghdad and other cities. This is something that has not existed for 50 years. Before the war there were restrictions on communications. Now Iraqis can enjoy satellite television and can surf the internet. There are web cafes everywhere now. There is a much better quality of life.
Ìý
There is real hope for the first time. I would like to live there in the future, in fact. I am even thinking of retiring there with my family."

In the same article, an anti-war campaigner whose soldier son died in the war, :

"Iraq was no threat to us whatsoever. So why invade? What gives us the right to go and take over another country? We are all aware Saddam Hussein was a bad person. So we were supposed to be improving the lives of the Iraqis. But life in Iraq hasn't got any better. It's got worse. Nothing has been achieved there which is very disappointing. There is still no stability despite thousands of innocent Iraqis being killed during the war."

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On Tech Brief today: PlayStation hacks, crowdsourced cars and a homage to FourSquare:

• Earlier this week, it was revealed that the secretive North Korean government had taken to Twitter. Now, it seems, .

"Seoul has already blocked access to the Uriminzokkiri site, but Pyongyang has started putting different addresses on its Twitter page so users can bypass the block. The communist state has even put programs on the Uriminzokkiri homepage which users can download to help them break the block and enter the site, which is Pyongyang's official internet mouthpiece. "

• Last year, we reported on . After he released the code for his hack, that he had exploited. Now that someone else has hacked the console.

"Scepticism remains advisable here. The PS3 has been a fortress of hacker unfriendliness, so we'd rather kick back, relax, and wait for some braver souls than us to do the testing."

• Facebook may be the biggest social network, but more nimble start-ups have stolen a march on it by launching services that allow you to tell your friend when you are at a particular location. One of the best known is FourSquare. Not to be outdone, Facebook has just announced its Place feature, which has .

"On the left is the logo for Facebook's newly launched geolocational product Facebook Places, on the right is the logo for the current leader in the space Foursquare. Notice anything interesting?"

• Finally, ever wanted to design your own car? Italian car-maker Fiat gave people that chance by opening up its design process to the internet. called the Fiat Mio.

"Submissions include an idea to have wheels that rotate 90 degrees to allow for easier parallel parking; cameras instead of rear-view mirrors and inter-vehicle communication to avoid collision."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

On the day A-level results come out in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, commentators ask what should be done about university funding.

The that the government is being inconsistent in its aim for social mobility:

"In a twist of the knife, this comes a day after the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, made a speech announcing the Coalition's intention to improve social mobility in Britain. As Alan Milburn, the Government's new reviewer of social mobility, noted in a report last year, the alumni of the elite universities have a firm grip on the top professions, from the law to the Civil Service to Parliament. Mr Willetts might argue that attendance at a 'less competitive university' is no long-term handicap to a bright student, but the facts suggest otherwise.
Ìý
"Mr Clegg says that promoting social mobility is a 'long-term business'. But this Government's short-sighted decision to squeeze the higher education sector at a time of burgeoning demand will surely not speed up the delivery of the fairer society he describes."

The the A-level candidates a betrayed generation which started school when Tony Blair came to power:

"For 13 years, Labour cynically raised their hopes, tinkering with the exam system to cast a rosy light on its own record, while promising to find university places for half the nation's school-leavers.
Ìý

"Yet behind those ever-improving grades lay a deeply disturbing reality: Britain was slipping ever further down the international league tables - from 4th place in science just ten years ago to 14th today, from 7th in literacy to 17th, and from 8th in maths to a miserable 24th."

that male students, who end up with worse A-level results than their female counterparts, should avoid A-levels and opt for apprenticeships:

"Society needs to get over this obsession with A-levels as the gold standard if we want to give boys the chance to succeed in this new job environment. Rigging A-levels won't help. They need training to help them operate in the workplace, not qualifications that prepare them to fail."

that universities should be allowed to manage their own numbers without interference from the state:

"Higher education should be one of the UK's strengths in the 21st century. In a competitive system, some applicants will always be disappointed. But restoring universities' autonomy would end the bizarre and unhappy spectacle of tens of thousands of people with the ability and desire to learn being turned away."

that to clear the university logjam the UK needs to copy the US funding system:

"In the past we have copied good things from America's best universities - and if we want the only long-term solution to our funding problem we need to adopt US money-raising methods. We need to build up endowment funds that aid poorer students and liberate the number of spaces at a college from what the Government thinks it can afford...
Ìý
"Americans are generous. It is an American tradition to make your pile, then to use it generously. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett do on a grand scale what many Americans on more modest incomes do as well.
Ìý
"We lack that culture and the tax rules that encourage it - and we should change that."

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On Tech Brief today plenty of questions: is the web dead? Are Google planning an iPad competitor? And could a fish-shaped musical instrument be the future of computing?

• . In a piece that is currently Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff argue that the rise of apps on smartphone's is gradually displacing the web.

"Within five years, Morgan Stanley projects, the number of users accessing the Net from mobile devices will surpass the number who access it from PCs. Because the screens are smaller, such mobile traffic tends to be driven by specialty software, mostly apps, designed for a single purpose. For the sake of the optimized experience on mobile devices, users forgo the general-purpose browser. They use the Net, but not the Web. Fast beats flexible."

• But not everyone agrees. and remodels the articles main graph, which appears to show the slowing of web growth.

"Without commenting on the article's argument, I nonetheless found this graph immediately suspect, because it doesn't account for the increase in internet traffic over the same period. The use of proportion of the total as the vertical axis instead of the actual total is a interesting editorial choice."

• :

"Anderson is right in a technical sense when he says that the web is "just one of many applications that exist on the Internet, which uses the IP and TCP protocols to move packets around." But he also gets it wrong when he conflates the demise of the web browser with the demise of the web itself. "

• In May this year, Google announced that it would stop selling its own brand Nexus One phone. However, its failure doesn't seem to have put them off developing new hardware. powered by its Chrome operating system.

"Our source tells us that Google is building a Chrome OS tablet. It's real, and it's being built by HTC. No surprise there, since HTC churned out the Nexus One for Google."

• Finally, , a fish-shaped musical instrument that, its inventors say, could one day influence computer interfaces.

"The instrument resembles a large flute, except with water flowing through it instead of air. It has 12 holes, each of which spews out a water jet. The chords are played by blocking one or more of the water jet holes with the fingers."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Commentators give their reviews of the coalition government's first 100 days.

The [subscription required] the coalition for making an "impressive" start at tackling the deficit:

"[T]here is a reason that the Lib-Con coalition has the best rating after 100 days for any government, with the exception of the first Blair adminstration, since 1979. A majority of the country agrees that paying off debt is the country's most pressing issue. The nation had a sense of a crisis unfolding and now has a sense of a government getting a grip. That remains the overwhelming question on which the coalition should be judged. It is still very early to pronounce but, so far, at least it should be judged well."

The that even though the paper opted for a Liberal-Labour coalition, as it turns out they are impressed with David Cameron's leadership:

"In the past 100 days there has been much adjustment to new circumstances that reflects well on those who have undertaken it. Mr Cameron reacted more skilfully to the post-election realities than anyone. He has been a good learner about new politics - and a good teacher. The machinery of government has been run better under him than by Gordon Brown. Future party leaders of all parties should study Mr Cameron's work as a coalition premier so far."

[registration required] for the results of Mr Cameron's "shoving back of the state" experiment before making a final conclusion:

"The combination of a recession and unusual election outcome has triggered a radical experiment in British government. If its logic is followed through, Britain (or at least England) will become much more like the US, with a reduced public sector but many more philanthropic and voluntary "good government" bodies. Whether it does will depend on whether the public really wants a smaller state to match its grudging willingness to pay tax. But if the era of Britain's big government is truly to be over, another issue matters more: just how far the coalition's liberal anarchists are willing to go."

that she is briefing the Queen for David Cameron's performance review, where she suggests he is all style and no substance:

"Where one might feel just a flicker of anxiety is in relation to policy. Education appears to be a dog's dinner. The war on welfare looks about as destined for success, and as well planned, as the war in Afghanistan. And the economy, even before half the population is moved out to shanty towns, is looking "choppy". The big worry, Ma'am, is that the mass cull might kill the very thing it's meant to cure. It's a little too early to say, but I think we'd have to end this performance review by saying that the signs aren't looking good...
Ìý
"David Cameron looks like a prime minister. He sounds like a prime minister. He acts like a prime minister. It's just such a shame that so many of his policies stink."

the coalition of being inconsistent:

"David Cameron has talked of 'momentous decisions' on public spending, yet highlighted ideas such as replacing council gardeners with volunteers. He has spoken of 'decentralisation', yet personally overruled Crispin Blunt and Anne Milton on social events in prisons and subsidised milk. He has talked of 'transparency', yet abolished the Audit Commission, one of the few organisations to have successfully pinpointed success and waste in the public sector. In fact, this decision embodies the contradictions in the Coalition's early days: is it really good husbandry to save that £50 million a year, while protecting the NHS, which spends £50 million every four hours?"

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On Tech Brief today: Nasa's new humanoid will travel robot-class into space, the Facebook fakes that keep popping up and why the secret to looking for love is all in the lens.

• Nasa's latest humanoid robot is due to join a space mission on 1 November, :

"The humanoid Robotnaut 2 (or R2 for short) resembles you and me a bit and is specifically designed to operate like you and me, a bit. It consists of a head and torso with two arms and two five-fingered hands. Advanced control and sensor technologies allow R2 to operate as an assistant to the station astronauts."

R2 is also a sociable chap - he has his own with over 12,800 followers.

• Meanwhile wants a few fewer friends. He's been keeping a close eye on Facebook's "people you may know" generator and found that quite a few of his recommended profiles were serial spammers:

"Searching for the name 'Elma Fewell' yielded a few doppelgangers. Checking incremental Facebook IDs yielded even more... I also found five Sueann Dehart accounts and a Janiece Duval. All of the profile pictures are of attractive young woman (and one of Kim Kardashian). Several of the photos appear to be of Ukrainian models, based on a reverse image search."

All the profiles contained links to spam websites.

• There were five men in a boat: not the start of a bad gag but a scientific experiment into how access to technology affects the mind. :

"Behavioral studies have shown that performance suffers when people multitask. These researchers are wondering whether attention and focus can take a hit when people merely anticipate the arrival of more digital stimulation."

Sorry, where were we?

• Finally, if you're a dating disaster, it might just be your handset rather than your halitosis that's the problem.

Dating website OKCupid asked its 11.4m users to rate profile pictures taken at different times, using various cameras and mobile phones.

Those rated the least attractive were taken by mobile phones, :

"[T]he general pattern is that more complex cameras take better pictures. Interchangable lens cameras (like digital SLRs) make you look more attractive than your basic point and shoot cameras, and those in turn make you look better than your camera phone. "

The light-hearted survey also concluded that iPhone users had the most sexual partners by the age of 30, and Android owners the fewest. Is there an app for that yet?

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

Commentators discuss Tony Blair's announcement that the reported £4m advance and all royalties from his forthcoming autobiography will go to the British Legion's charity for injured soldiers.

that whatever the motive behind Mr Blair's decision, it will have been influenced by the public's perception of him:

"The destruction of trust continues to dog Blair and colors views of all that he does."

, saying that the former PM is well aware of the damage that the war did to his reputation:

"Despite Blair's optimistic nature, cumulatively the attacks must demoralise him, and his police security detail remains high. Did not Robert Harris's thriller, The Ghost, envisage a Blair-like ex-PM holed up on Martha's Vineyard writing his memoirs, facing legal investigation and worse?"

, whose son John was killed in Iraq, describes the donation as "blood money":

"I think this donation is because of a very big guilty conscience for the 179 deaths in Iraq."

Mr Blair's donation, rejecting the cynical views of others:

"I prefer to take at face value that he has taken this decision as his way of honouring the courage and sacrifice of all those who have fought in Blair's wars."

whether the move will encourage other politicians to be as similarly philanthropic when penning their own autobiographies:

"Not that this will be popular with other politicians who may find themselves pressed to make comparable gestures when it comes to the proceeds - if there be any - of their own memoirs. How about it, Gordon?"

for the former Labour leader's decision:

"Whatever may have driven him to it, however, one truth is inescapable: for once in his lying, war-mongering, money grubbing career, the former prime minister has done something decent."

On Tech Brief today: secret messages, DIY drones and pylon people.

• Two of the biggest names on the net are squaring up to do battle. There have been plenty of rumours that Google is piecing a new social network, possibly called google.me. .

"The most visible evidence of this fight is Google's sudden shopping spree. On Friday it bought Jambool, a company that runs virtual currency systems for social games, including those played on Facebook. This month Google paid about $200m for Slide, a major developer of Facebook applications with a wealth of talented engineers. And shortly before that it invested $100m in Zynga, the largest maker of social games. "

• Earlier this year, the arrest of 10 alleged spies in the United States thrust the art of steganography into the limelight. Now , which can be used to hide messages in digital images. It is aimed at people in countries where the web is censored and will allow them to download stories from blocked sites, while seeming to visit "uncontroversial sites such as Flickr".

"In the prototype, stories from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ news site are used, but in principle any web content could be hidden. Collage can hide as many as 15 news articles in just seven medium-sized Flickr images."

• - an invaluable resource for those interested in the electricity pylons. But for some, the giant structures are an unsightly blot on the landscape. Now, . The giant human-shaped pylons have been proposed to carry electricity cables across Iceland's landscape.

"The figures can be placed into different poses, with the suggestion that the landscapes could inform the position that the sculpture is placed into. For example, as a power line ascends a hill, the pylons could look as if they're climbing. The figures could also stretch up to gain increased height over longer spans."

• , via its Street View cars. Then last week,, although the firm later denied the reports. .

"Designed to provide a vehicle to project cyber-offensive and defensive capabilities, and visual / electronic surveillance over distance cheaply and with little risk. "

• And finally, Star Wars fans rejoice: . Unfortunately, there is still a long time to go, as the release date is far, far away. October 2011, to be precise.

"Why wait? Lucas doesn't appear to have said, but the wait gives him plenty of time to make the tweaks and adjustments he always seems to make when any of the movies have been re-released on tape and disc. "

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

On Tech Brief today: Pretenders to the iPad throne, the return of an anti-hero and jargon translated.

• Apple's iPad has done quite well. But its time in the sun is about to be over-shadowed by the pullulating mass of tablets soon to be unleashed on unsuspecting gadget fans. Harry McCracken has gathered information on the 32 that will be coming your way and coins a splendid word for them: :

"Starting later this year, the iPad will be confronted by an army of other touchscreen machines, from potentially worthy opponents to shameless wannabees."

The 32 he mentions have a few features in common to be considered as an ipadversary:

"I considered only devices with touchscreens-and only screens that are at least 5″. I didn't include any product which definitely has a physical keyboard, although some of the upcoming Windows slates which we know almost nothing about will reportedly have them. (If so, they'll be Tablet PC offspring more than iPad counterparts.)"

He's also well aware of the perils of predicting what is going to make it on to shop shelves.

"I've attempted to gather some basic facts on each device, and to indicate when the information I mention is speculation or rumor rather than confirmed fact. I'd be amazed, however, if all of these products reach the market in exactly the form detailed here."

• It is not just net life and web culture that has given birth to new words, the business world has a jargon all its own. Now you can unpick what these phrases mean with the help of .

"We want Unsuck It to reflect our passion for clear, direct language, using words to communicate rather than obscure."

• Now for a term that sounds like a neologism or a euphemism, but isn't: imp slapping. Gamers with long memories will recognise it as the way the eponymous anti-hero of the Dungeon Keeper game motivated his minions to dig deeper and create an underground lair for such a diabolic figure. :

"So you know how you wanted Dungeon Keeper 3? You've got it! But you haven't. German game Dungeons is to DK as those Czech UFO games were to X-COM: an unofficial tribute-sequel made with more modern tech, most of the same ideas and some canny side-stepping of the IP."

Alec Meer is careful with his enthusiasm:

"This is brilliant. The fact of it is brilliant. With EA lending the license to Chinese MMOs, it seemed we'd never see the like of DK again. We will. Wonderful news - just hope they take the concept further rather than simply repeating it."

• If Tech Brief can wax lyrical for a moment, the Earth is girdled with light in the form of the fibre-optic cables that cross the ocean floors and carry all our data hither and yon. And that's not all they could do. :

"According to Sydney University scientist John Yuzhu You, undersea cables could be used to monitor currents, salinity, seismology and ocean temperatures. As water moves around a cable, it generates an electromagnetic current that could be measured by voltmeters at cable landing stations, You explained."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

ITV chief executive that "a lot needs fixing" at the broadcaster. He's moving it into pay-TV but can't envisage viewers having to pay for its main channel ITV1 reports the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

Sales of men's magazines continue to plunge, according to ABC sales figures. Zoo was down 28% year on year, Loaded 26% and Nuts 22% - though the decline slowed in the six months to June .

The how the big magazine publishers fared in the latest ABC sales figures.

the 100 biggest-selling magazines in the six months to June according to ABC.

Hugh Laurie has been named as the highest-paid actor working in TV drama in the US, for his role as Dr Gregory House, in House. Piers Morgan is the third best-paid performer in reality television. The figures were compiled by TV Guide magazine.

More voices have joined the debate over the closure of the UK Film Council. Steven Spielberg's studio has written to the chancellor expressing concern .

But the screenwriter Julian Fellowes says the UK Film Council should be closed, even though his films Gosford Park and The Young Victoria are cited as two of its successes. .

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ newspaper review reports that some papers are exercised about spending by the Department for Local Government and Communities under Labour. They were revealed by the new coalition secretary of state, Eric Pickles.

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On Tech Brief today: How big is your social network, game aids jail break and the tell-tale touch screen.

• Social networks. We are all on them, all the time. But society, even an online one, is nothing without knowing how you compare to your peers. Marketing firm has cooked up a way to see if yours is bigger than theirs by turning them into nations on a map. .

"The firm also provides commentary on trends with its humorous names -- for example, the 'Former Kingdom of MySpace', the 'Receding Glaciers of AOL and Windows Live,' the 'Rising Island of Google Buzz' and the 'Land of Defunct Social Networks'."

• For those that get engrossed in them there is nothing casual about games such as Solitaire, Desktop Tower Defense and Bejeweled. .

"Five inmates recently escaped from a police precinct in Cagayan de Oro City, snatching up the officer's keys where he'd left them while playing a quick few levels of . Apparently, the convicts had no trouble getting the keys and gaining their freedom - although four of the five were recaptured shortly after."

• Touchscreen devices bring out the obsessive in all of us as we endlessly polish the screen to remove the smudges. It turns out that the mania for a smudge-free screen has an unforeseen advantage. .

"While smudge attacks might sound trivial, the researchers said the threat was genuine because it was so easy to analyse the patterns with just a computer and camera. Although the experiment focused on Android handsets, the researchers said smudge attacks could be used against other touchscreen devices, including bank machines, voting devices, and PIN entry systems."

• Is nothing safe from the wily hacker? No. Not even the tyres on your car. Since 2008 wireless sensors have been mandatory on new cars in the US and .

"The tire pressure monitors are notable because they're wireless, allowing attacks to be made from adjacent vehicles. The researchers used equipment costing $1,500, including radio sensors and special software, to eavesdrop on, and interfere with, two different tire pressure monitoring systems. The pressure sensors contain unique IDs, so merely eavesdropping enabled the researchers to identify and track vehicles remotely. Beyond this, they could alter and forge the readings to cause warning lights on the dashboard to turn on, or even crash the ECU completely."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

what next for Channel Five after the "bloodbath"? that Channel Five is losing up to 80 staff, including seven directors, and moving out of its Covent Garden building, as part of £20m cuts.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has received 3,701 freedom of information requests for info "held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature". . The ´óÏó´«Ã½ is not obliged to publish information related to its creative output.

the government is right to cut its advertising budget and jobs at the Central Office of Information.

What impact will the 50% cut in government advertising have? On yesterday, former director general of government information Mike Granatt and veteran adman Dave Trott discuss the issue.

According to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ newspaper review many papers express serious concern about the UK economy after a downbeat outlook from the Bank of England.

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On Tech brief today: "surrender monkeys", spiderbots and the whiteboard girl.

• On yesterday's Tech brief we dedicated the whole blog to reaction to Google and Verizon's proposal on net neutrality. Today, the story continues and it does not get much better for Google.

:

"Principles are easy to discard, it seems, when one's in search of the next gold mine "

• Jeff Jarvis - author of What would Google do and along term ally of the firm - also .

"I am baffled by the Google-Verizon agreement on nonnet-nonneutrality. I'm mostly baffled by why Google would put its name to this."

He particularly objects to the two firms seemingly categorising new services and the mobile web as being exempt from their network neutrality proposals:

"So ol, grandpa internet may chug along giving us YouTube videos of flaming cats, but you want to get that while you're out of your house? Well, that's the nonnet. I can hear the customer "service" rep explaining this to us: 'Oh, no, sir. That's not offered on the internet. That's on the schminternet.' You want something new? Anything created after 2010? 'Schminternet, sir'."

• In a piece not a million miles away from the net neutrality debate, . He points out that many of the things that we accept as part of having a mobile phone would not be tolerated elsewhere.

we're still largely buying a device for a particular carrier and then living with that carrier for two years. It's an absurd situation that we'd never tolerate with our computers."

• Elsewhere, it's bad news for a UK start-up that hoped to challenge some of the Silicon Valley behemoths. Plastic Logic, a spin out form Cambridge University, designed to rival the Kindle. Now, .

Plastic Logic had already delayed the Que several times after showing early versions of the product for years. Starting at $649, the Que was priced well above the iPad and many notebook computers, not to mention all other e-readers on the market. And that was before a recent spate of price cuts that has pushed the price of the Kindle, Nook, and many other devices below $200. "

• Gabriel Perna at International Business Times picks up on research at the University of Utah, seemingly inspired by Spiderman. The researchers have designed a wall climbing robot that can "swing like an ape from tree to tree".

" The robot, called ROCR (the last three letters are for oscillating climbing robot), has two claws, a motor and a pendulum-like tail and can scale an eight foot wall in 15 seconds. "

• Finally its hoax over. Yesterday, the internet by emailing her colleagues a set of 33 photographs of her holding a set of whiteboards with various messages on them, many directed at her boss. Many were sceptical of the story and today :

"The Chive (which gets around 5.6 million unique visits a month, according to Google) is part of a network of viral sites run by brothers Leo and John Resig, who have a storied history of manufacturing Internet hoaxes, most notably the $10,000 Donald Trump tip and the infamous 'virgin text messages her dad that she lost her virginity.' Both hoaxes ended up punking various mainstream media outlets including Fox News, Gawker and Jay Leno."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

and the , Channel 5 is set to announce the departure of its chairman and chief executive Dawn Airey, following the takeover by Richard Desmond. Staff have been called to a meeting this morning to hear restructuring plans.

A police advertisement encouraging the public to report suspected terrorists has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority because it could cause "serious offence" to law-abiding citizens, reports the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

the ´óÏó´«Ã½ cuts announced by Mark Thompson still don't go far enough.

The new Apple Store in Covent Garden is "designed to offer... the most beautiful retail experience in the world" . He analyses the iPad maker's influence.

Samsung is challenging Apple's dominance of the tablet computer market, and others will follow, .

The impact of the recession and the squeeze on government finances is a common theme on many front pages, according to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ newspapers review.

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On Tech Brief today: The tech world debates Google and Verizon's proposals on net neutrality.

• Perhaps today Tech Brief should be called Tech Grief as it is all about adverse reaction to Google and Verizon's proposal on . This is the principle that ensures that all data is treated equally by the people that provide your net link.

The firms to overcome US problems with net neutrality occasioned by a court case that hobbled official efforts to police what ISPs can do to the data you want to see.

Among the seven proposals are calls for laws to stop data discrimination, demands that ISPs tell consumers about their services and fines for ISPs that break laws.

but few web commentators like it all. :

"The future is inarguably a wireless one -- and although the framework specifies that the US Government Accountability Office should issue an annual report on "whether or not current policies are working to protect consumers", the proposal gives no guidance on how, when, or in what way wireless broadband might ever be included in the wireline guidelines. Equally -- perhaps more -- concerning to those who want a flat-internet future is the proposal's clear statement that its "open Internet" strictures would only apply to current technologies and internet useage patterns."

• Over at TechCrunch, Nicholas Deleon is also worried about wireless. While the rest of the proposals seem "benign" the ones dealing with wi-fi and mobile could, he fears, :

"The internet you know and love, the one that has worked fairly well so far, will remain in place, but ISPs will be allowed to offer "additional, differentiated online services" as they see fit. So, you can subscribe to the ISP of your choice--provided you even have a choice, since it's not unusual to see towns and cities with only one viable broadband provider--and be able to access the internet as you do today. But, in addition to that, and destroying the very idea of an open internet, ISPs will be able to offer, say, an "Internet Plus" option."

• Veteran tech commentator Dan Gillmor also has worries about what would result from a :

"...the game is on to create a parallel Internet. It'll still be packet-switched. But they won't call it the Internet anymore. That's an end game we should not encourage.

• Over at Ars Technica it was the unstated get-out clauses in the proposals that :

"The Google/Verizon manifesto claims to preserve "transparency" on the 'Net, but the only really transparent thing about the plan is that it is packed with so many loopholes, a deep packet inspection powered P2P blocker the size of an M1 Abrams tank could roll through it without disturbing a telco executive's nap."

• :

"But then, skepticism is the correct reaction to an "open" internet proposal developed by two massive corporations behind closed doors."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

Mark Thompson has said he is likely to scrap pension top-ups for senior executives, which have angered staff facing heavy cuts to their own pensions. It could cut his own earnings by 20%. He also said the ´óÏó´«Ã½ will respond in early September to staff concerns over pension cuts.

Channel 4 wants to make "household names" of Britain's Paralympians in the build-up to the London 2012 Games, . It's launching new programmes and will train sports people with disabilities to present its coverage.

Ofcom has recommended the liberalisation of local cross-media ownership regulations, which could enable a single company to control newspapers, a TV licence and radio stations in one local area. But it still has concerns.

The Plymouth Herald used "Roy of the Rovers" style cartoons to illustrate Argyle's winning goal, after the home club restricted access to photographers.

The latest evidence at the Charles Taylor war crimes tribunal at The Hague is analysed in the papers in the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s newspaper review.

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On Tech Brief today: Frash on a phone, a bus goes whoosh and cash goes bang.

• All those iPhone owners keen to get Flash working on their handset can now rest easier. Well, a little. Renowned coding whizz Comex (he of the Jailbreakme tool) .

"... once Frash is installed the iPhone user is able to tap on (reasonably basic) Flash animations in a web page to see them rendered in all their animated glory. Most of those embedded animations are advertisements of course, so you might be happier missing them. But enabling Flash is, for many people, about choice rather than utility, not to mention shutting up all the whining from those people who don't have an iPhone."

• Gaming has a vocabulary all its own. FTW, gib, frag and noob are neologisms that owe their currency, in part, to games and gaming. Microsoft's for the Xbox 360 might be about to add a visual element to this if a patent filed by the Redmond behemoth is to be believed. .

"[W]hen the user kills another user's character, that victorious, though speechless, user would be able to tell the other user that he had been 'PWNED'."
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"In another embodiment, a user may be able to speak or make the facial motions corresponding to speaking words. The system may then parse those facial motions to determine the user's intended words and process them according to the context under which they were inputted to the system."

• School may be out for summer but the work of Paul Stender may make some children wish they were back in uniform. Mr Stender has added a jet to the humble school bus. From a Phantom jet fighter no less. It can do the school run in a trice as it can reach speeds in excess of 360mph.

"I built the bus for two reasons. The first is to entertain people because, come on, it's a jet bus. The second, is to keep kids off drugs. Jets are hot, drugs are not."

• Games are full of random destruction and explosions that amuse the child in all of us. In serious an explosion can be costly. Very costly. In Eve cash can be converted to game time in the form of objects known as Plex. Steal a Plex and you get game time for free. . Plex and all.

"At current prices, the 74 PLEX destroyed would have sold for a total of over 22 billion ISK, or they could have fueled an EVE subscription for six years and two months. The huge cache of licenses represented approximately $1,295 US worth of game time that someone purchased."

• Robots. Soulless, metal creations that understand nothing of human life and emotion. Until now. .

"Nao can also work out where his human companions are looking, follow their gaze and memorise different people's faces. Using a neural network brain, he can remember interactions with different people. This understanding, plus some basic rules of what is good and bad for him learned from exploring his environment, allows Nao to indicate whether he is happy, sad or frightened with what is going on around him."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

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I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ could receive a 23% increase in funds over the next six years, if current trends continue. A DCMS source said talks on the licence fee beyond 2012 would not start till next year. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ said it had a £2bn efficiency drive and was cutting the pay of top executives by 14.5%.

´óÏó´«Ã½ laptops and mobiles apparently worth £241,019 were lost or stolen over the past two years, a freedom of information request has revealed. The computer security firm which made the request said it was "shocking". The ´óÏó´«Ã½ said it took theft very seriously but that theft of portable items was inevitable in all large organisations.

that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ is preparing "significant concessions" over its controversial pension proposals. Unions have begun balloting for strike action.

Clint Eastwood and over 50 other actors are urging the government to reconsider the closure of the UK Film Council. Mr Eastwood has written to the Chancellor George Osborne, . that it's "simply unacceptable" for the quango to pay 8 executives more than £100,000 a year

Friends and Top Gear are the most-repeated shows on digital television. 51 episodes of Friends are shown each week and 44 of Top Gear. Because Top Gear is twice as long, it tops the "hours" chart - 44 hours of repeats a week.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s newspaper review says that Fleet Street is having fun with David Cameron's decision to overturn his health minister's proposals to stop free milk for under-fives.

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On Tech Brief today: a new way to beat the bots, BlackBerry Torch bares all and the frustrations of wireless mice.

• Are you human? If you've ever struggled to read the sequence of letters and numbers in those messy boxes that often appear at the end of an online form, a computer may well have decided that you are not.

Now a company called NuCaptcha has come up with a more legible alternative in the form of video, .

"NuCaptcha's technology substitutes a brief video display of characters for the usual smash or squiggle of letters. It's definitely easier on the human eye, and its creators say it's also much more secure.
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"Moreover, if humans find NuCaptcha as legible as machines find it illegible, it should help increase signups while decreasing spambots for web services and applications."

Captcha is a refreshingly simple acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

• Brands getting involved with social media are "asking for trouble"

"We don't spend enough time imagining what might happen when we open our doors to real conversation with real people. Instead, in our little insular marketing twitter-sphere, for instance, we can read hundreds of micro blog statements such as 'can social media drive sales?', '5 ways to measure the effectiveness of social media'... etc."

Sounds like it might be time for a little less conversation.

• It didn't take long for newbie smartphone the BlackBerry Torch to get its kit off.

The Crackberry crew has of the device being dissected - and the results.

"[M]ost internals are either integrated or soldered down, but this undressing does afford us an opportunity to take a look at the biggest novelty in this new BlackBerry, namely its slider mechanism. It's impressively thin, rated for 150,000+ cycles..."

• , tried a wireless mouse out and he reckons they are simply not reliable enough.

"I have dabbled with wireless mice, but a series of horror stories involving death, destruction (only of my avatar fortunately) and severe gamer rage put pay to that brief foray. "

In other words, an average evening chez-Tech Brief.

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

The Time Warner is buying Shed Media, maker of Super Nanny, for £100m.

Tessa Jowell and David Miliband have suggested the ´óÏó´«Ã½ should become a co-operative to give licence-payers "a democratic voice" in an . The Tessa Jowell has already floated the idea of introducing more co-operatives and mutualism to Britain when Labour was in power.

The that the Taxpayers' Alliance has criticised the use of Foreign Office "anti-terrorism" funds for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to produce an Afghan version of Woman's Hour.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s newspaper review says Naomi Campbell's appearance before the special court for Sierra Leone at the Hague features on many front pages.

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Commentators discuss the "Giving Pledge" - a promise made by 38 billionaires to give at least 50% of their wealth to charity through a campaign started by investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

the significance of the pledge:

"The Giving Pledge wealthy may well increase American philanthropy in the long run, and yield more funding for worthy causes, but many of the letters and pledges obtained at Warren Buffett's behest refer to charitable commitments already made. And some wonder, with merit, whether increased funding for a few causes held dear by a giving circle of the super-wealthy will actually carry real, measurable impact across the society at large."

The is waiting for the money to materialise:

"Half of one billionaire's fortune is a lot of money; half of 10 billionaires' fortunes is 10 times that. And the written statement of intent can usefully concentrate even a billionaire's mind. For all that, the proof of the pledge is the action. As described by Buffett and Co, the pledge is a moral commitment, not a legal contract. It's worth keeping an eye out to see whether, when the time comes, moral pressure is quite enough."

Syndicated US columnist , among other publications, the money needs to come sooner:

"Other than making the billionaires feel good about themselves, what's the purpose? These inventors, venture capitalists, hedge fund founders and descendants of famous industrialists already give to charity. They can sign the pledge and still enjoy their money until they die. In the meantime, our schools are deteriorating, social services are being cut and jobless families are losing their homes.
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"I'd be more impressed if these inspirational and successful people pledged to commit their wealth of talent and financial resources to actively working to solve the nation's myriad problems instead of just promising not to spend everything before they die."

that the money from billionaires will mean those who already wield enormous economic power can determine social priorities too. He has an alternative idea:

"If the rich really wish to create a better world, they can sign another pledge: to pay their taxes on time and in full; to stop lobbying against taxation and regulation; to avoid creating monopolies; to give their employees better wages, pensions, job protection and working conditions; to make goods and use production methods that don't kill or maim or damage the environment or make people ill. When they put their names to that, there will be occasion not just for applause but for street parties."

the UK tax system for the lack of British philanthropists on the list:

"Perhaps the reason we have fewer philanthropists in this country is because most of them feel they have paid more than their fair share already. The 'rich' have become hate figures, forced to hand over around two-thirds of their income in assorted taxes...
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"The incontrovertible fact that the wealthy create jobs and pay for a disproportionate amount of public services through their taxes has been forgotten. If entrepreneurs felt more valued and didn't have more than half their wealth confiscated at gunpoint, maybe we'd have a few more philanthropists in Britain, too."

The the billionaires to select their causes wisely:

"Since these people are captains of industry, and are used to making hard-nosed evaluations of their investments, we can expect they'll pick wisely - far more wisely, we suspect, than the bureaucrats more usually tasked with the role of wealth redistribution.
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"All this should serve as a reminder of how much public good can come from individual initiative and the honest accumulation of wealth. Remember it the next time someone you know gives vent to their anti-billionairist hate."

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On Tech Brief today: Sat Nav victory for Brian Blessed, the great algorithm competition and how new digital book software was born in just seven days.

• "Gordon's alive" - Brian Blessed's performance with extra gusto from cult film Flash Gordon could now change to "Gordon's arrived". That's thanks to a Facebook campaign calling for Brian Blessed to become the voice of Sat Nav. It's claimed a victory after over 25,000 people spurred the man himself into action, .

The actor, renowned for his performances in I, Claudius and Flash Gordon will now join the ranks of John Cleese, Homer Simpson and Snoop Dogg, all of whom have lent their voices to Sat Nav manufacturer Tom Tom.

"Richard Gardner from Manchester started the campaign to get the Yorkshire born actor and comedian to voice driving directions in April 2008. After attracting a handful of members, the campaign really started to gain momentum earlier this year, and subsequently has more than 25,000 supporters.."

to express his delight.

• A universal phone charger that will be able to recharge lots of different handset models is to be introduced in Europe in 2011 .

Ten brands including BlackBerry makers RIM, Apple, Samsung and Motorola have signed the agreement - something similar is also underway in the US but no deadline has been set.

"A universal charger means consumers don't have to get a new charger with every mobile phone. As a bonus, it will be easier to borrow a charger when in need. And if all that isn't enough, there's the green aspect. One-size-fits-all means fewer chargers will wind up in landfill, less pressure on recycling of the electronic waste, and fewer resources consumed in manufacturing chargers."

Tech Brief will be keeping its phone charger under lock and key in the office from now on.

• An interesting competition for the electric-car-loving algorithm experts among you (don't be shy) .

The challenge is to come up with algorithms designed to make electric cars more economical.

It won't make you a millionaire but a $100 Amazon gift certificate to the most efficient entry each month.

"We're hoping that with your help and intuition, we can improve the efficiency, longevity, and range of electric vehicles. "

• on the success of "one week I one tool", in which a group at the US Center for Digital Humanity spent a week designing and building a digital tool from scratch.

They posted teasers about the project online but did not reveal the result of their work until the seven days were up:

"They put together a great open-source tool: Anthol­o­gize, a Word­Press plu­gin that helps you take online con­tent like blog posts and col­lect, edit, design, and for­mat them into a book -- for either dig­i­tal or print. Solid soft­ware, with obvi­ous util­ity for lots of peo­ple, not just aca­d­e­mics."

And it's open source too - which makes it a free for all. Bookbinding is certainly a lot less fiddly these days...

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

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I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

Radio listening is at an all time high, with record figures for Radio 4, Radio 1, Radio 5Live and 6 Music according to Rajar, the organisation who collect radio listening figures. Chris Evans has lost a million listeners in three months but is still beating Terry Wogan's record, reports the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Bill Nighy and Pete Postlethwaite are among more than , urging the Government to rethink its plan to close the UK Film Council. They say it earns Britain £5 for every £1 invested.

The Disasters Emergencies Committee will run a TV and radio appeal to help those devastated by the Pakistan floods, as explained in the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Editors blog by Jon Williams, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World News editor.

The that Ofcom has asked the Competition Commission to investigate the subscription market for first-run Hollywood films. It says BSkyB "has the incentive and ability to distort competition." Sky says "Ofcom is yet again seeking to intervene in a sector in which consumers are being well served."

The [subscription required] that News Corporation is saying it won't increase its offer for the remaining BSkyB shares.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s newspaper review says there are more gloomy financial predictions in several papers.

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• ´óÏó´«Ã½ | Radio 2 host Chris Evans loses one million listeners
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Commentators discuss model Naomi Campbell's appearance at the war crimes tribunal of ex-Liberia President Charles Taylor.

The president of Human Rights First that Ms Campbell's testimony at The Hague matters to future conflicts:

"We may never understand what makes a human being like Charles Taylor capable of planning and executing such brutality. But by targeting the enablers of atrocities, we can make it more difficult and expensive for would-be perpetrators to carry out their crimes, and we may thereby help prevent violence against civilians.
Ìý
"Though the British supermodel may not have intended to bring the issue of genocide's supply chain into the spotlight, if leaders can begin to address the underlying issues her testimony raises, she may help ensure that The Hague won't have to hold a future trial for genocide in southern Sudan."

dismay at the decision to ban photographers, saying the law should treat everyone equally:

"Ms Campbell has been granted special privileges that are usually only afforded to witnesses whose testimony will expose them to the risk of serious personal harm. That debases the reputation of the UN's international courts. After all, Ms Campbell's desire to avoid bad publicity is hardly analogous with the bravery of those Bosnian Muslims who risked their lives to testify against Slobodan Milosevic."

the ruling not to photograph the model hypocritical:

"There is a rich irony that a lady who has made a fortune out of being photographed, and indeed may not be much good at anything else, should have obtained an order preventing photographs being taken of her. But then that is how the minds of some superstars operate.
Ìý
"They crave publicity on their own terms - for their minor defects to be airbrushed out in carefully staged photographs (I am not referring to La Campbell here) and for their often quite minor achievements to be praised to the skies by sycophantic journalists. It has to be admitted that for much of the time the media collude in this charade.
Ìý
"But if you take a snap in public of these same preening stars which does not match up to their carefully cultivated image, they are likely to cut up nasty. Naomi Campbell has form in this respect."

that the photography ban is pointless:

"It is worth seeing is that these proceedings are televised, so we are going to see her testimony...
Ìý
"What we are not going to see this motorcade with police outriders tearing in and out of court. Quite what that achieves, I fail to understand...
Ìý
"These sorts of applications are for witnesses in war crimes trials who fear for their life and are therefore allowed to give evidence anonymously. Of course that is absolutely impossible now... A lot of this testimony has been fought out in the media already."

"After she punched a camera person for asking her about the case, you'd think it's the photographers that we all had to worry about."

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On Tech Brief today: Facebook's new app for Android, Microsoft turns tease and "conservative" e-mail service launched by the son of former US President Ronald Reagan.

• We've been hearing rather a lot about airbrushing this week, including an airbrushing for me. a cautionary tale of, well, how not do to it.

Moved by a TV documentary, Carl Stevens contacted a South African orphanage and asked whether he could pay for its resident children to attend a World Cup game during the tournament.

The orphanage agreed, but things went awry when Mr Stevens asked to see photos of their trip,

"Amina Madien, Al Noor's director... stalled for more than a week, offering Stevens several excuses. Finally, she sent him the pictures - five of the worst Photoshop jobs he had ever seen, Stevens said."

Ms Madien said the money had instead been spent on several field trips but not to the stadium itself. She also apologised to Mr Stevens, who said:

"She meant well... (I'm just the) wrong person to send Photoshopped pics to."

Tech Brief fears that anyone would have been the wrong person to send these particular gems to - .

• about an updated Facebook app for Android phones.

She cites changes to the notifications bar and the fact that Android Facebookers no longer need to leave the app and go online in order to deal with friend requests and event RSVPs as big improvements, although the Facebook Chat instant message facility is still missing.

"These upgrades are the first significant attention Facebook has paid to its Android app since its launch last fall. All things considered, we're very happy with the improvements. Facebook for Android has become a pleasure to use rather than the out-and-out hassle it was before."

The changes arrived a week after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg downloaded the app for himself, Ms O'Dell reports. Coincidentally, no doubt.

• Microsoft meanwhile is busy with of a new device.

"Here's a hint for you: "Don't be so touchy...flat is where it's at...."

• that it is rolling out a multiple sign-in option for Gmail. Users can sign in to a maximum of three accounts although it will mean that some services won't work:

"Enabling multiple sign-in will disable Offline products like Offline Gmail and Offline Calendar, as well as any browser bookmarks you've set to link to your accounts. If you use Offline Gmail, make sure to sync your offline mail before enabling multiple sign-in so you don't lose any messages in your outbox. If you would like to continue using Offline Gmail, Offline Calendar, and browser bookmarks linked to your accounts, do not enable the multiple sign-in option."

• On the subject of e-mail, there's a new provider in town, and its aim is to inject a few traditional conservative values into the apparently fluffy world of electronic communication.

Its founder is Michael Reagan, son of former US president Ronald, .

"The ace up Reagan's sleeve isn't some snazzy search features, in-browser chat, or cloud-based storage... For only $39.95 per year, you can purchase your very own email handle @Reagan.com, and 'put your name next to the name of the Greatest Conservative of all, my father Ronald Reagan,' he boasts."

If that sounds like a bargain, beware the small print - the company says it is not obliged to supply support, software updates or bug fixes.

"Watch your back, Google," warns Fast Company - tongue firmly in cheek, Tech Brief suspects.

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

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I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

The government's Central Office of Information is to cut 40% of its staff as it cuts back heavily on advertising. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ reports 287 advertising and marketing jobs will go.

The [subscription required] the Government's advertising cutback will have a big impact on traditional media.

ITV's chief executive Adam Crozier set out his five-year turn around strategy, including a return to pay-TV, but the analysts remain unconvinced.

The Advertising Standards Authority has rejected more than a thousand complaints about the first TV commercial to offer advice on abortion services. The "Are you late?" campaign for the Marie Stopes charity prompted a further three thousand complaints via petitions and postcards reports the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and the .

The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s newspaper review says several papers focus on David Cameron's revelation that council house tenants may not be able to expect a "home for life".

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On the second day of bank profit results, as Northern Rock and Lloyds follow HSBC's profit leap, commentators look at the relationship between government and banks.

the decision was taken not to nationalise wholesale and that means banks profits have to be tolerated:

"The Government could have opted for some kind of radical social experiment in the political allocation of credit, but instead opted to stick with the existing, market-based system, warts and all. Despite the manifest failures of the old system, this was in every respect the right decision...
Ìý
"You cannot have politically directed credit, however well intended. To do so risks not just pork-barrel politics but, more to the point, the possibility that governments would end up bankrupting the country in pursuit of freely available credit for all. Wasn't it too much mispriced credit that caused the crunch in the first place?"

that it is the government's responsibility to get out of the recession, not the banks:

"I carry no brief for British banks. They seem to have no concept of the venom felt towards them by a public that rightly attributes its misery to their greed. Millions of people are losing their jobs, savings and futures because of the actions of spivs and gamblers who pass for certain bank employees. For these same people this year to pay themselves grotesque bonuses out of the savings (or dividends) that properly belong to others is obscene. Only the craven sycophancy of Labour and coalition ministers to their banker friends allows this racket to continue....
Ìý
"But that is not today's issue. This is how to get out of the mire. The government is just not clear what it wants, whether it wants banks to take bigger or smaller risks."

[subscription required] while arguing the government can't leave banks alone again:

"[T]o blame greedy bankers for unemployment, business failures and cuts is a classic case of shooting the messenger when it is serious thinking about the message that is required....
Ìý
"That message is as simple as it is controversial - financial markets can make disastrous mistakes and cannot be relied on to correct their own excesses. That, in turn, means that governments must sometimes override the judgment of financial markets and the autonomy of bankers."

that the profits show that buying the shares was unnecessary for the government:

"There are a lot of questions about whether the original nationalisation of these banks was really that necessary. At the time there was all this talk about throwing tax payers money at the banks to bail them out. It turns out in fact that they have been profitable investments and they are good businesses for the most part...
Ìý
"There was all this nonsense in the media about these banks being bust. They weren't bust at all. They had a cash problem which would have been dealt with by loans from the Bank of England."

why the news coming out in the same week about banks' contribution to the economy as the UK's biggest exporter is ignored:

"[W]e find it hard as a country to celebrate success. Our attitude towards the financial services industry is ambivalent at the moment for obvious reasons. But once our banks are back on their feet and the nationalised ones have been sold back at a profit to the private sector, then maybe we can be rational about this industry and try and understand its significance."

• More reactions to Monday's HSBC profits

On Tech Brief today: Scary robots, the trousers of doom and piracy meets the sewing circle.

• Some robots are useful, some achieve an almost human empathy and some are simply terrifying. .

"The Telenoid R1 robot is designed to add an element of realism to long-distance communication by recreating the physical presence of the remote user. The robot's actions mirror those of the remote user, whose movements are monitored by real-time face tracking software on the user's computer. Users can also transmit their voice through the robot's embedded speakers."

That may be what it is designed for, but Tech Brief can only think that it will be more responsible for inspiring nightmares in young and old.

• A good graphics cards can make your games look better and, it turns out, stop you being exposed to excessive amounts of radiation. Scientists in California are using graphical processing units (GPUs to you and me) .

"The approach uses GPUs - NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPUs in this case - to reconstruct an accurate image of a tumour with fewer CT scans. CT scans are used to generate the image of tumours prior to cancer treatment -- image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT). The problem is that repeated CT scans during a therapy regime raises the cumulative radiation dose, which worries physicians and patients."

Using GPUs means patients are exposed to about one-tenth of the radiation they would get if traditional imaging techniques were used.

• Piracy is not just a problem for the music, TV and film industry.

"Monique over at Inside Number Twenty has recently discovered her charts being "shared" without her permission and has done a few sums to see what the actual financial costs are to her and to the other businesses associated with hers. The results make sobering reading. No wonder designers are shutting up shop, as Jen Funk Weber reports - not merely because designs are being "shared" (read "pirated"), but because people are downloading free charts rather than paying for a designer's work."

• Continuing the fabric theme (or should that be thread?) comes the story of Micheal Learmonth who is being stalked by some shorts, or as our American cousins insist on saying, pants. .

"That's when the weirdness started. In the five days since, those recommendations have been appearing just about everywhere I've been on the web, including MSNBC, Salon, CNN.com and The Guardian. The ad scrolls through my Zappos recommendations: Hurley, Converse by John Varvatos, Quicksilver, Rip Curl, Volcom. Whatever. At this point I've started to actually think I never really have to go back to Zappos to buy the shorts -- no need, they're following me."

The reason they kept showing up was the behind-the-scenes recommendation engines that many web retailers now use. If this is the future, Mr Learmonth does not like it.

"As tracking gets more and more crass and obvious, consumers will rightfully become more concerned about it. There's a big difference between serving an auto ad to someone who's visited Edmunds.com in the last month and chasing them around the web with items once in their shopping cart."

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

ITV's chief executive Adam Crozier has announced a move into pay-TV. ITV will launch HD versions of ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 as pay channels on Sky. It made a pre-tax profit of £97m in the first half of the year, as ad revenue rose 18%the ´óÏó´«Ã½ reports.

The Virgin Media has made a formal competition complaint about Project Canvas, saying the video-on-demand service could become the "National Health glasses" of the television world.

The that Katie Derham tells Radio Times that young female newsreaders are not dim.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ newspaper review says the UK visit by Pakistan's president following the row over David Cameron's remark on the country exporting terror is covered by many of the day's papers.

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• ´óÏó´«Ã½ | ITV to launch HD channels on Sky
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Commentators react to banks' half-year results, which began yesterday with HSBC reporting a 26% rise in profits in the UK.

that banks being risk-averse by making loan applications so difficult to apply for is selfish:

"[I]t is deeply disturbing that the same bankers who made such terrible mistakes are now using these as an excuse to deprive money from British small businesses which were completely innocent. Such behaviour borders on the immoral.
Ìý
"It is a great irony that the Government, which did so much to rescue these ailing banks is now being hampered by the same institutions as it tries to kickstart the economy...
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"Until there is a wholesale reorganisation of commercial banking and the restoration of proper lending arrangements, the chances of a durable, strong economic recovery will be thwarted.

The for banks to be forced to lend:

"The argument goes to the heart of the continuing contradiction between the narrow corporate self-interest of the banks and the needs of the wider community. Two years ago governments, and the taxpayers, were forced to intervene to save the banks from themselves and their economies from collapse not just through direct grants, but loan guarantees, additional money supply and low interest rates. The banks in turn have used these advantages to concentrate on rebuilding their reserves, reducing bad debts and raising extra capital through share offerings.
Ìý
"Fair enough. Any economic recovery requires a healthy financial sector. But the banks have not just used profit to rebuild their own balance sheets but to pay out a staggering amount in dividends to their shareholders and bonuses to their staff. This is insupportable."

In contrast, that the Chancellor George Osborne should not be pressuring banks to lend money to risky businesses when it would do a disservice to depositors:

"[T]here is also a quasi-moral issue, best captured by Ronald Grierson, one of the few surviving close colleagues of that great banker Siegmund Warburg. In late 2008, when the then Labour Government was haranguing the banks in exactly the way George Osborne is now, Sir Ronald wrote the following marvelously terse letter to the Financial Times: 'A bank is a bank and if the security of its depositors is not its main concern, it should be required to adopt another name. Members of the public are entitled to take this for granted.'"

The the government to encourage a recovery of banks' profits, so that the public stakes become more valuable, rather than to "hamper it in a populist spasm":

"It is tempting to conclude that those profits should be paid to the taxpayer and that stringent regulation should be enacted now to prevent a recurrence of the financial crisis of 2007-09. That view is a serious error.
Ìý
"In the US and on the part of the Lib-Con coalition in the UK, there are discouraging signs that government has got its priorities wrong. There is no urgency in legislating for tighter financial regulation. There is, however, a pressing need to get the banks strong enough to lend again. Recovery since the first half of last year is not a sign that the banks are exploiting businesses, consumers or taxpayers. It is a welcome but early and as yet fragile improvement from the worst global recession since the 1930s."

The a week of "banker bashing" as the rest of the banks are due to report their profits. It accuses politicians of being immature:

"What is depressing about the anti-bank rhetoric is not only that it is playing politics with an important industry, but also that it exposes confusion at the heart of public policy. Ministers want the banks to strengthen their balance sheets to avoid another bubble; they also want them to lend more freely. They cannot have it both ways. And a vibrant banking sector is vital to the recovery - and to the public finances."

that George Osborne's plea to get the banks to start lending more is wrong and shows why governments shouldn't run businesses:

"It wasn't long ago that the politicians were telling the banks they were lending too much. Taking too many risks. Giving companies and householders loans that they might be unable to repay. They told the banks they had to 'strengthen their balance sheets' - that is, start making some money and put in their vaults so that they wouldn't need another bailout if things turned bad again. But now, as soon as they start making a profit, the rhetoric screeches into a u-turn. You just can't expect people to run a business when you are pushing them in contradictory directions.
Ìý
"Banks are in the same line of work as every other business, which is to make money for their shareholders. This is exactly what they are doing, and since the government is the biggest shareholder in UK banks, you would think our politicians might be pleased."

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Today on Tech Brief: the Australians who don't want broadband, a Wikileaks mystery and why voice calls deserve to die.

• Keys, wallet, phone, change. There's only so much you can keep in your pockets. Now, , the two largest US mobile carriers are planning a venture to merge at least two of those: wallets and smartphones. Verizon and AT&T are planning a service that will allow people to pay for goods with a wave of their phone.

"The trial would be the carriers' biggest effort to spur mobile payments in the US and supplant more than 1 billion plastic cards in American wallets. Smartphones have encroached on tasks ranging from Web browsing to street navigation and now may help the phone companies compete with San Francisco-based Visa and MasterCard, the world's biggest payments networks."

• If you were offered a free, high-speed fibre-optic internet connection to your home would you take it, .

"Not if you live in Tasmania, where the Australian government's ambitious new National Broadband Network is getting underway with its first fibre deployments. The government-created NBN Co. has the right to dig up streets and trench along rights-of-way, but to install that 'last-mile' connection to a home or apartment it needs permission - and Tasmanians have been slow to offer it."

• Ever since the whistle-blowing website leaked more than 70,000 classified military records, news sites have been awash with news on Wikileaks. Over the weekend, about a "mysterious file" that has appeared on the site:

"Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the new file added days later may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization's founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it."

• Separately, - noted for his work with the Tor online security project - at Newark International Airport:

"Appelbaum's interviewers demanded that he decrypt his laptop and other computer equipment, the source said. After his refusal to do so, they confiscated it, including three cellphones. The laptop was returned, apparently because it contained no storage drive that investigators could examine."

• It seems the site is also looking for ways to fund its operations. that the site has signed up for Flattr - the "online tip jar" created by one of the founders of infamous file-sharing site The Pirate Bay:

"In case it's passed you by to date, Flattr allows users to top their accounts up with an amount of money every month. Whenever they see a Flattr button on a website they like, they can click it. On the first day of every month, each user's payment is divided up between all the sites they 'Flattr-ed' over the past four weeks."

• It seems the art of conversation is dead, at least , who says that with the increase in social networks and texting, phone calls are becoming more and more of a rarity:

"This generation doesn't make phone calls, because everyone is in constant, lightweight contact in so many other ways: texting, chatting, and social-network messaging. And we don't just have more options than we used to. We have better ones: These new forms of communication have exposed the fact that the voice call is badly designed. It deserves to die."

• And finally, it seems Facebook has been having a bit of fun at the expense of net pranksters. Last week, the social network launched its Questions service. For people like . So, the self-styled internet guy from LA, typed his favourite tried and tested poser: "How is babby formed?" But, it seems, Facebook was one step ahead:

"For internet troublemakers like myself this question is a great way to test any new Q&A service. I was the first user to pose such a question on Quora and when Facebook introduced its own questions product I did the same."

And for those of you wondering what the video shows, here's .

If you want to suggest links or stories for Tech Brief, you can send them to on , tag them bbctechbrief on or e-mail them to techbrief@bbc.co.uk.

I'm the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

An Adam Smith Institute report says the licence fee is 'obsolete and unfair' and should be scrapped. It says subscription and overseas sales could give the ´óÏó´«Ã½ "the global presence of a Hollywood studio, but with a wider range of output" the ´óÏó´«Ã½ reports.

The report's author David Graham set out his thinking in the [subscription required].

ITV's new leaders, Archie Norman and Adam Crozier, are expected to announce new programme investment and a possible return to pay-TV when they present its results this week and the [subscription required].

The the former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has "sparked fury" by applying to be vice-chairman of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Trust. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ Trust and the Culture Department said they did not comment on recruitment matters.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ newspaper review says several papers anticipate the expected news that Britain's five biggest banks are back in the black.

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• ´óÏó´«Ã½ | TV licence fee should be scrapped, think tank says
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Commentators discuss the relationship between Pakistan and the UK before the president of Pakistan's visit to the UK on Tuesday.

[subscription required] David Cameron's words on Pakistan a "blast of honesty":

"It is no good Pakistan taking offence at the Prime Minister pointing to what he and the ISI know to be the truth.
Ìý
"What Mr Cameron said was not an indiscretion or a 'gaffe'. It was part of a policy of telling the truth, as a calculated way of bringing awkward issues closer to the point of decision. Many people seem to believe that diplomats, including prime ministers, should in all circumstances avoid giving offence to other nations, even when there is an open sore in existing relations. Mr Cameron has taken the opposite line."

that "this wasn't 'plain speaking'. It was very complex, loaded, meaningful speaking":

"Mr Cameron was in Bangalore, India by now, and talking about Pakistan. He suggested that Pakistan 'looks both ways' when it comes to the global struggle between democracy and Islamism, which it does, and suggested that this was something Britain has issues with, which it should. The sense of gaffe came not because what he said was wrong, but because he seemed to be saying it in a manner that presumed that, because he was speaking in India, Pakistan just wouldn't notice. As though Pakistan didn't have a TV...
Ìý
"It's a decent rule of thumb in politics that you can always afford to annoy the people who need you the most. British Conservatives need David Cameron, so he annoyed them to agree with America. Israel needs British support, so he annoyed them to agree with Turkey. Pakistan needs Britain in Afghanistan, so he annoyed them to agree with India."

that David Cameron risks alienating the UK's greatest ally in the war in Afghanistan:

"No doubt Mr Cameron and his advisors think that this policy will pay dividends because, at the very least, it is generating lots of headlines and helping to raise Mr Cameron's international profile. But at what price? This country's overwhelming national security issue to resolve the Afghan conflict, and I fail to see how our prospects in the war will be improved by causing serious offence to one of our major allies in the war."

In contrast that Pakistan is the problem, not the solution:

"[T]he problem here doesn't lie in Kabul or the Hindu Kush. Afghanistan is a sideshow. Pakistan, a nuclear state with a population seven times bigger than its troublesome neighbour, is the main event.
Ìý
"Where (with help from the CIA) were the original Taliban recruited, trained? Where are the masters of 9/11 still hiding? Where did virtually every bomb plotter of the last nine years do his ignition course? Which country is still fighting a desperate battle to keep its own fundamentalists at bay? Which country has seen more of its troops die in the 'war against terror' than Nato? And its citizens slaughtered in huge bomb blasts? Which country, if it became a failed state, would be the biggest disaster of the lot? Pakistan ticks every box."

why the there has been such outrage, arguing Mr Cameron didn't say anything new about Pakistan:

"Mr Cameron cannot and should not be faulted for being merely what he is - an exceedingly ambitious Conservative politician. And though he is seeking to cast himself in the mould of Mrs Thatcher he neither has a Ronald Regan to boost his morale nor the ruse of a Cold War to mask the ambitions of his party's militarist worldview. The trouble lies elsewhere, and it really lies with the obsequious Indians and fawning Pakistanis who act hurt when they are rapped on the knuckles by those they seek to play sherpas to."

The David Cameron to repeat his thoughts about the "ambivalent relationship of certain forces in Pakistan towards the Taliban in Afghanistan":

"This week, Mr Cameron must make use of his meeting with Asif Ali Zardari to deliver a more nuanced version of those off-the-cuff words. Given the strength of the outcry in Pakistan over his remarks in Bangalore, and the numerous calls on the President to cancel the visit, he must express appreciation for Mr Zardari's decision to come at all. He must reassure his guest that his strictures were reserved for rogue elements within the Pakistan establishment, especially in the military and the intelligence service, the ISI, not for the civilian government that Mr Zardari represents and which the Islamist extremists detest and desire to overthrow."

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