I like the sound of that organisation

I know the article was about cloud computing, but it is refreshing to hear of places which run quite well without all the latest IT fashions. I have wondered about trying to run a business without computers and how much more work would get done (i'm sure I would give in very quickly)

This is the real reason engineering is unfashionable

Not because it is hard or difficult for others to understand - but it has far too few women in it and many engineers are not cool.

I know this because I am one of those miserable uncool ones and never had enough casual sex.

Power consumption testing please...

I think I have emailed about this in the past but for many devices I would like to know what its power usage is. Get yourself a cheap Maplin or similar plug in power meter and run the device through it while you are reviewing it.

A single line in the review like - "We found the 'Fab-o-matic 5000'* drew 42W while starting up, 85W under heavy load, 15W in normal use and 2 watts in standby" - obviously you might want to think about a more consistent approach to measuring from device to device.

*Don't think these are available any more, sorry....

Can't they wait until 25th Oct

When the final analogue services get switched off and then leave it alone for a while - as someone in the engineering side of the broadcasting the earache I get from Mrs TWB for missed PVR recordings after a retune - and I have already set my Humax to not auto retune....

If they are JL partners...

I am not sue of the exact set up of JL but I understand all staff are 'partners' and all get a say in the way the company runs (always appeals to me as a bleeding heart liberal/lefty/hippie)

Are these JL staff or are they contracted out already?

It all sounded so promising....

I used to 'lecture' broadcast engineers in display technology about 10 years ago. Then CRTs were still considered best for colour gamut while LCD colour monitors/displays still had somewhere to go. OLED was talked about then as being much easier to manufacture and potentially so much better than LCD - I wonder what went wrong....(apart from me changing jobs and losing interest)

Message to Mark: Run

I really see no long term value in Facebook - if I was Mark Zuckerberg, I'd quietly put the money somewhere safe then go.

For once

Lewis writes something I agree with.

What he did not appear to say was that sadly the World seems to be run by rule makers and those who like working around those rules (lawyers, bankers, journalists, wankers etc)

I wish there were more scientists in power, though there has been one major exception in the past....

Works on my Panasonic

Yippee.......oh, is that it?

Drying out does not always work...

My wife spilled hot tea onto my Macbook a couple of years ago and it instantly died. I tried for several days to carefully dry it out but it would not boot. I did eventually revive it but it required a a strip down and clean (it was dry inside by this point). It also needed a new battery and wifi card.

Great idea

If they get it right this could be a good thing - I may be a broadcast engineer but I dislike messy cables and clutter - probably in a minority here though....

Fewer TV channels

As an old fart who works in TV, I have said for years that I was happy with 5/4 channels - I don't see this desire for loads of them - I can only watch one at a time.

Maybe Ofcom could drop a mux....who needs shopping channels anyway.

Remote support can be bad.

As someone who *could* email or phone everyone I have to deal with at work, I make it a principle to get off my arse and go and see people at work - it has multiple benefits, not just health. Some issues are best seen first hand, and some issues need to be dealt with face to face and it is amazing how much better some people feel if they 'see someone' even when I don't sort out their problems - I just wish more of my colleagues would do this.

Panasonic

I bought the Panasonic model here in a hurry for reasons too boring to mention and generally I am very happy with it, though I find it that it cannot play .mpg files which are direct DTT recordings i.e. they are not transcoded - I wish it had VLC bulit in....

I hope software updates come in time - would be nice to have ITV player and 4OD.

How will it work though?

This was not mentioned in the article at all.

So I put my bin out on Monday night, go to work on Tuesday morning, it fails to be collected, I call the council on Wednesday to alert them.

What is the iPad (or any other device) for here? I do not see the need - the council will still have to make a recollection - where is the saving?

I like iPads think they look nice devices but fail to see how any device could fix the non-collection issue.

No doors - not as bad as you might think

I like the look of it but think it will not catch on even if the batteries were free - people are too set in their ways as the comments above sadly show - we're all doomed anyway.

However, as someone who owned Mini Moke outside and inside London for 15 years - believe it or not, with no doors (I never used mine - they stayed wrapped up in the loft) you stay surprising dry even in the heaviest of rain - it was only when there were severe side gusts did I get a bit damp but with a decent coat and gloves I was rarely cold even through winter.

Saying that, I still don't want one.

Transistor operation

"A transistor consists of three basic components: a source, a gate, and a drain. When a voltage is applied to the gate, electrons flow from the source to the drain, turning the transistor "on". When a different voltage applied, current between source and drain stopped, turning the transistor "off"."

Not the best description of transistor operation....

Yes, for a p-channel MOSFET if you apply a voltage between gate and drain, then current will flow from source to drain, but only if there is voltage applied between source and drain.

For your third sentence, I think you probably wanted to say: if you set the gate voltage to zero, then the current stops flowing from the source to drain.

Saying that by changing the voltage you get the effect is somewhat ambiguous as you do not specify whether you mean increase, decrease, set to zero etc etc

Also as CrazyOpsGuy says, there are far more types of transistors, some are switched on or off by voltage, others are switched on and off by current. The control current and voltage can positive or negative depending on the type of transistor.

Bugger....

And here I was thinking it was time for me to go HD camcorder only to find my laptop (2 year old Macbook) struggles with your youtube sample - maybe it would be Ok with the footage from the camcorder and it is just the youtube decompression required.

Sounds a nice machine though - thanks for the review.

These vulnerabilities?....

...I read about them but I do not read about them being exploited.

I mean it seriously - am I not reading the right stuff of are hackers getting lazy, bored etc? - is it now not worth the effort to exploit a careless user i.e. there is no money (or glory) in it?

@joejack

Your post made me smile as I had a PET from 1979 to around 1988....oh the days of 1 second boot ups....

@Andy Mc

I don't see why it has to be wireless and even if it was why one of the current standards - it could be a closed proprietary system.

Also if it is all done in the electricity meter, why not contain everything in there like is currently done with the rolling dials - provide no way into the device except via the power line or those allowed to do so - tampering with an electricity meter you'll end up in jail (I know an idiot who did) - who is going to have a powerline-data interface in their kitbag and why would it use IP or other well know network protocols?

I suspect I am still naive but I also think it is not impossible to make a secure-enough system - semtexing (sp?) a substation would be much easier thank a hack shurely?...

Call me naive...

But why could'nt the network for the meters be private and completely isolated ie. there is NO connection to any other network of any sort? (yes there would still be safe ways of getting meter readings to customers emails etc)

Re:Not that I want one of these - Agreed...?

I'm a mac user and no fan of MS/Windows but does seem a bit daft.????

(Also I would prefer a wired one but what do I know....)

Engine power

I thought that these high powered engines in F1 cars motorbikes and similar can peak several hundred hp, but you run them for long periods at full power and they overheat, fall apart etc - otherwise surely lorries/trucks/buses would not bother with 8 litre, 250 hp engines?????

Us too...

We still have a load of these and it used to drive our engineers mad having to call Dell up tell them the actual problem and then having to go through the stupid script. A typical over the phone 'diagnosis' to get a warranty part was an hour. Now they are out of warranty our engineers replace the caps themselves - we're getting a 90% or thereabouts success rate.

@Various

@Marvin...

'I keep getting radios for free with other stuff, analogue ones, yet I haven't listened to radio in 7 years' - so? - some of us listen to the radio all the time.

@Pete 2

'Once they stop trying to promote DIGITAL as if it's some sort of feature (instead of just a stealthy way of reducing the quality to the listener) and just make DAB the standard component in products that people buy - which now just happen to contain an FM receiver, then the problem just goes away. Let's face it. Hardly anyone goes out to buy a radio.' - I agree with your first sentence, but not your bit in brackets - quality may be worse, but that is a by product of cramming more and more stations in the bandwidth. I do go out to buy radios - I research and find ones with good reviews and then make sure they function well - if the controls are fiddly I don't buy them.

I suspect too many non-Radio 4 listeners here.....