Posts by david

Police, Cameras, Inaction!

Terrorists with cameras

"...he advised me that under Terrorism s44 he had good reason to stop me as I was taking a photograph of a police vehicle...."

Maybe terrorists don't know what a police vehicle looks like...

Glasgow tube gets phone coverage

About time

Hong Kong has had Mass Transit Railway (MTR) coverage for nearly 15 years. Many cities in China and Asia with underground railways already have coverage too.

One of the excuses used by London Underground and Gov't to resist introducing coverage was that a mobile phone could be used trigger a bomb. Indeed so, but it's not the only way as was demonstrated in 2005.

Paris on the phone? - she doesn't use public transport.

Chinese net censors unblock BBC, Wikipedia

try going there for an unrelated business trip

They have basically stopped/limited/reduced/delayed/increased the price etc. of issuing visas to China even for short trips unrelated to olympics...

Personally I will avoid the TV olympics circus like the plague and won't notice if the hacks go on strike.

Bosch, Siemens: Vorsprung durch kinder und technik

China (and India) has eaten our lunch and is moving on to dessert...

I agree with Mark_T - China (and India) have loads of engineers - China claims to produce 500,000 graduate engineers a year.

No point in the compaines whining about not enough engineers. Why would anyone want to be one? The pay is lower, and then after 20 years you realize everything you know is obsolete... Then you get outsourced. (Ok, Ok it's interesting etc...)

I'm a CEng in telecoms, I gave up on the UK years ago. I live in Hong Kong, China and am in Bangalore, Inidia (though it doesn't feel like a high tech centre believe me) as I write this.

Want to stay in engineering - get into defence. Oh, that's not gonna work either they're buying US and Israeli technology.

Sorry for the UK - you're screwed

MPs get £2k home cinema on taxpayers

who pays the TV licence?

taxpayers pay the TV tax?

Should Europeans pay to receive phone calls?

Its about time - think about it...

Calling party pays is the reason calls to mobiles cost so much in the UK.

The operators have no reason to reduce termination charges - its not their customers who have to pay them! (but you do - if you ever call another operators' mobile).

Looking at the comments, it seems that many think it is a really bad idea. Do you not wonder why it costs 50p a minute to call a mobile from a fixed line yet only 5p from the same mobbile network?

If the customers of the operator are the ones paying the outrageous termination charges then it would introduce proper serious price competition - not this cheap calls on same Orange/O2/Voda etc. netwrok nonsense.

In fact the call charge arbitrage opportunities spawned a whole industry of inserting traffic into mobile operators networks with banks of 'fixed mobiles' to bypass the termination charge. If there is that much money in it - it's too high.

In Hong Kong I pay about £10 a month for 1800 or 2500 minutes (I forget exactly) of calls (incoming and outgoing). That is for all calls to any other mobile or fixed network and there are no other call charges.

Electric cars may not be solution to all world problems

Electric cars pollute too - the pollution is not at point of use...

Given the overall inefficiency in production, transmission and storage of electric - particularly in battries... The overall efficiency of electric cars is probably much worse than petrol, diesel or lpg.

Remember it likely still uses electric from a coal or oil power station - thus pollution somewhere.

As for ethanol - presently, it consumes more energy to harvest, make and deliver than it produces. Also, vast amount of land (i.e. where we grow food and rainforests) would be needed to make any meaningful contribution to our energy needs. Though - we could use it in planes when the oil does run out.

Oil is just too useful to burn more than you need on the drive to work. Apart from the CO2 story... (which might not be causing global warming, checkout - An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change, The Sunday Times 11/2/2007)

Let's hope the boys at ITER get their fusion reactor going before the lights go off... www.iter.org