* Posts by harryb

4 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Aug 2010

London cabbies to offer EVEN WORSE service in protest against Uber

harryb

Since Uber always pick a route at time of booking, then I can't see why they can't forecast time taken on the route and come up with a fixed price a that point. If they do that then they can work under the existing minicab legislation and can compete with minicab firms on the same basis.

Acorn’s would-be ZX Spectrum killer, the Electron, is 30

harryb

The replacement for the Ferranti ULA was actually made by Synertek and used their standard cell library. As a student fresh out of uni with my head filled with tales of how easy VLSI was I was hired to work on it (along with one other - hi John!)

The fancy production techniques were with the Synertek chip because it could be flipped upside down and then using ultrasound bonded directly to the PCB (plus a blob of expoxy on top).

We spent quite some time working with Synertek on simulation and trying to make sure the chip would work first time. Apart from getting the signals on one pin the wrong way up we achieved it, which was good going in those days.

Shuttle Discovery to bring back PLAGUE RODENTS from SPACE

harryb

Lost the plot...

The plot actually goes something like this...

Male and female astronauts looking for solitude end up errm crashing against the mouse pods in the throes of passion. Plague mice escape into the shuttle and hide. Mice breed and mutate into super plague mice. Mice having nothing to eat so chewing cables in the space station. Space station starts to behave erratically and is in danger of breaking up. Emergency rescue mission planned to rescue astronauts from space station. In the chaos of the rescue the by now very deadly plague mice escape into the rescue craft. Then... cue black helicopters etc.

Panasonic DMR-XW380 Freeview HD DVR

harryb

Sony also suffers from GuidePlus

Sadly Sony TVs also suffer from GuidePlus. I tend to use my PVR (Topfield) to watch TV rather than the TV tuner, so it's not a huge problem.