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If Virgin records had a radio station

Erm... they do.

Virgin radio listener here as well. I'm surprised they've kept the high-bitrate streams open for free.. and have continued to support ogg as well.. here's a link for those that are interested.

http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/str eams.html

Here's a index list of each of the virgin radio stations that can be heard,

http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/ind ex.html

Virgin radio listener here as well. I'm surprised they've kept the high-bitrate streams open for free.. and have continued to support ogg as well.. here's a link for those that are interested.

http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/str eams.html

Here's a index list of each of the virgin radio stations that can be heard,

http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/ind ex.html

There is NO standard format for streaming media, well, wasn't until recent times. All we had (and still have) is MPEG subformats, which are licensed to be used in varous containers - WMA, AVI, QT, etc. In fact, first real royality-free streaming format (it is allowed to implement support for them to any commercial/non-commercial vendor and it is also designed to maximum avoid any patents) is Ogg Vorbis/Theora.

For example, I have seen much radios embrase Ogg Vorbis streaming, including quite famious Virgin Radio in UK, check out here http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/str eams.html. Fluendo, as I have seen from GNOME Planet, has successful business plan with supporting Ogg with their rather cheap streaming services. And Ogg also has one supporter under their wing and it is...Real. Yeah, newest Real players (those without bloat) has quite good Ogg support.

So actually if we are talking about past, there was no competition for WMA and Real for some time, so it was quite natural that they were most used for streaming. But times are changing and it is good.

..how Microsoft uses its considerable resources and the law to create such roadblocks.
 
Yeah, there is real sabotage going on constantly. One example of it I found just yesterday:
 
  London based hit radio station 'Virgin radio' used to stream to everyone who was interested, but Microsoft has obviously made a deal with them since and now you can listen online only if you're using Internet Explorer. Previously you were able to listen with Winamp or XMMS (Linux), but now you can't. It recognizes what software you're trying to use for listening and blocks the transmission if it's not Internet Explorer. So, this is an attack against both Linux _and_ Firefox. I wonder how much of this is happening behind the curtains right now.

Don't let their names fool you. Virgin radio is no longer part of the "Virgin Empire", it's a company of SMG Radio.
It used to be a part of Bransons' group, but he sold it. SMG just licenses the use of the name.

see the Virgin Radio website for details on this

Virgin Mobile does not operate their own network either, it's a virtual mobile network operator, which basically means they provide their own branded version of the T-Mobile network. Strange thing is that T-Mobile does offer 3G services, but apparently Virgin Mobile doesn't.

Still, generally Richard Branson does come up with some neat ways to keep his name on the map, so it'd be interesting how this does, and how many others will follow suit.

Virgin Radio was sold off from the Virgin Group back in 1997 I believe. Nothing to do with Branson, except the name.

http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/faq/virgin .html
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/h utchinson/m0074904.html

Unfortunately, at least in the UK, unlimited (3G) data plans seem rather hard to come by with the majority of services having sub 100MB caps or a pay-per-megabyte price structure.

Slightly off-topic but related, Virgin is unusual as a 'major station' in the UK in that it offers its streams in Ogg/Vorbis format. (The BBC did previously but has stopped for an undetermined ammount of time).

I'm not an ogg-head but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of 32 Kbit ogg streams a while ago.

http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/ogg .html

It's surprisingly well hidden at the bottom of the page, whereas the most obvious ones are Real and Windows Media:

http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/ogg .html

*Clicks the AC button*

Virgin Radio have been streaming Ogg Voribs for at long time and in much higher quality than their mp3 stream. www.virginradio.co.uk

Just to make it easier to find, (because it wasn't immediately obvious to a dimwit like me :-) ) here is the page

Virgin Radio have already been streaming Ogg Vorbis for ages, they even have a 160k stream: http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/

it isn't everything. Microsoft still has enough cash to fight this. Our local radio (Switzerland) still broadcasts in .asx. I sent them an e-mail asking them why. They said because their server is sponsored by Microsoft. Now I listen to virgin radio, they broadcast in broadband ogg

Virgin Radio are also one of the few commercial broadcasters who stream in Ogg:

http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/listen/ind ex.html

Another benefit of ogg is that to a degree they are adaptive - during silence and voice the bitrate drops, adding additional savings...

The biggest name to recently add ogg to their armoury is Virgin Radio, which you can listen to here.

As someone who started with a Pilot 1000, and worked my way up through Pilots and Palms to the m505, I bought an IPAQ a few weeks ago, principally for the AV capabilities. My first thought when I started playing with it was "Wow. This is pretty neat". I like the fact that I can listen to the radio station I work for through its Bluetooth connection, browse websites that look vaguely similar to what I'm used to on the PC, and read and reply to my e-mail (though the IMAP support doesn't seen to work for me properly). Colleagues of mine have some of those funky Nokia 7650s with the built-in camera, and the IPAQ does a good job of getting pictures from those those onto the office network. The one caveat with the IPAQ is that if you, like me, like downloading the odd bit of software for your PDA, you'll find much less is available for the IPAQ than Palm OS - and what is available is generally not freeware but shareware or paid-for. I miss Keyring. With the lack of fun dowloadable software, it's almost as if PDAs have grown up. They're cleverer, better, but somehow less fun.

Like Virgin or the BBC Radio 1 2 3 or 4

The only US station worth listening to IMO is WBAI for OTH a 2600 broadcast.

This is exactly what I do right now.

My ISP (Demon Internet) gives you unlimited email addresses at your own domain (albeit a sub-domain of demon.co.uk). This way I can sign up to anything with a unique name, e.g.: unique@myhost.demon.co.uk, and then I can tell where the spammer got my email address from.

Using this technique I have been able to tell that BT sell their customer's email address to sports.com, and Virgin Radio will sell their user's addresses to almost anyone selling junk!

Sure is interesting to find out where the spammers harvest the email addresses from.