Posts by Paul Hampson

Sony demos ultra-expensive, ultra-thin OLED telly

Did you...

kidnap this guy and film this in your secret underground bunker - or is this what counts as a "stylish" demo area in the credit crunch era? Liked the rather interesting black radiator though...

Vintage IBM tape drive in Apollo moon dust rescue

Years in hex??

"... nearly 40f years ago ..." - wow! 1039 years ago!!

Qinetiq ships first 'Transformer' war-droid

Just remember...

... not to have a photo of this on your t-shirt

Ballmer eggs on Hungarian student

RE: Dairy based foods?

The only relation seems to be the root of the word... http://www.ochef.com/772.htm

Vendor touts notebook as desktop server replacement

With all those fans...

...does it hover above the desk? That would be an exciting feature!

Teen-mum flick gets filmgoers hungry for hamburger phone

Food Phones...

I remember in my first year of university we (as a prank... can you tell there were 4 engineers in my block?!) dismantled our friends internal phone and built the earpiece and microphone into a banana... worked well for a while before the banana turned to mush.

We then transferred the earpiece and microphone to polystyrene burger box - wasn't particularly ergonomic but it worked...

Network down? Must be New Year's Eve gunfire

They hit a fibre optic?

Now correct me if I am wrong but isn't a fibre optic cable quite small? Even an entire cluster of them is a pretty small and a randomly fired bullet falling from the sky and breaking them- seems a tad improbable!

Cambs cops podcast 999 timewasters

Paying for non-emergencies...

The thing that really hacks me off about the non-emergency numbers is that you have to pay for them! It cost me £2-3 on my mobile for me to report a vehicle which I suspected to be an abandoned stolen (and turned out to be stolen, after waiting 30 minutes in the pouring rain for a pair of Community Support officers to turn up!)...

That 101 number scheme would be better. Especially if it is free...

Digital Switchover: town to lose BBC 2 tomorrow

@A possible use of the spare capacity

According to the comms course I took last year Freeview and analogue use the same frequency band. Digital can be transmitted alongside analogue as it can cope with a lower Signal to Noise Ratio. This is partly why freeview reception is currently rubbish in many areas. When they switch over, they up the digital power and thus you get a much better/reliable signal. So there is no more 'capacity' freed up... though the digital system enables more data to be transferred over the band.