As it's illegal in the US to argue over the accuracy of DNA evidence. Despite the flaws in traditional DNA profiling, and stuff like this, you are not actually allowed to point any of this out in court as part of your defence.

Because a universal microcontroller (such as Freescale s08 series) is cheaper than a dedicated keyboard chip.

In the UK it's one of the commonly used texts - my final GCSE project I compared 1984, Brave New World and Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers ;)

People don't hate the US because of this. They hate you for hundreds of other reasons, chief among them being that you don't know what all those other reasons are and why people might not like them.

If you can't make the 5.25's work, you can drop in a standard 3.5" floppy drive, the connectors may be the same or you may need an adapter - when I last pratted about with old tech like this I had some systems that had a small PCB to plug a 1.44Mb floppy into a system designed for 5.25" drives. The pinout is probably somewhere on the web, you could DIY it if needed. Even IBM XT's had BIOS settings to allow 720k (low density 3.5" floppy) disks to work, so you can transfer stuff between the Epson and a modern PC.

Having worked for an ex-public-now-privatised company in the UK I can confirm that privatising things which are public services is a really bad idea - no-one can really afford to duplicate the infrastructure (for example, lay a complete new rail network to compete with the existing one) so there is always a bottleneck with whoever owns that. Splitting it up would cause chaos, so instead you get agreed pricing from the regulator which then means everyone is just going to end up at roughly the same price anyway.

On the public transport issue, I could buy & run a Range Rover for less money per year than commuting by public transport, and my commuting times would be about 1/4 of what it would take by bus & train. That's including the fact I live on a main bus route and only ~5 miles from the nearest train station. When my lodger's car broke down he got the bus to work (15 miles) it took him nearly two hours on a good day. It takes him 30 minutes in his car or 20 on his motorbike and costs a lot less too. In what world does that add up?

Or just try any local small business that deals with or consults on electronics & design - they don't have to have anything to do with cameras to know how to nail a PCB together.

Yes and no, true thermal cycling does cause marginal components to fail but by leaving the thing on all the time rather than the half of the day you're actually using it you're halving the "useful" life of the thing anyway.

There is a balance between leaving it on 100% of the time and switching everything on and off every time you walk from your desk to the coffee machine and back.

Cast your mind back to 2004 when BT announced they would roll out 21CN (ADSL2, VoIP, etc. and replacing the entire UK core network with IP), they were due to be rolling over more than 10,000 customers per day by now onto this new network, and be finished in plenty of time for everyone to watch the 2012 Olympics in HD video-over-broadband.

Guess how many they've done so far...

Of course, if you read their website now the original goalposts have been burned and some new ones installed much further apart and in a different place on the pitch: http://www.btplc.com/21CN/Theroadto21CN/Keymilestones/Keymilestones.htm

Sort of true - except (at least round here) all exchanges have lightning protectors on every single line from the outside that short any voltage spikes to ground and (mostly) protect exchange equipment. A direct lightning strike on a street or cable can still do damage and you'll probably have to change all the subs interface cards and re-cable the street in question, but the exchange itself is likely to survive.

Granted a decent EMP blast near enough would kill it, but then I suspect if you're close enough for that to be a problem, it wouldn't be a priority :p

From TFA:

"If terrorists managed to gain remote access to a facility's command-and-control system, they could, for example, cause the generators to overheat and explode."

If you can make a generator explode on command, you really are doing it wrong. Backup generators may be able to be remotely started, stopped, switched in/out and checked but you should not be able to do the equivalent of burnouts with them.

Additionally, the article states that catastrophic failures would start to creep in after ~2 days of no human maintenance. WTF? Most exchanges and data centres I've been in are ghost ships 350 days a year aside from upgrades and config changes, how is it that such critical hardware can't tick over by itself for a month or so without going nipples skyward?

Hell, the average telephone exchange, if you nuked everything around it, would be giving dialtone and DSL to the skeletons for at least a week, probably more depending on how much diesel is in the tanks.

Oregon Scientific Action-cam, either ATC3k or ATC5k. Takes AA batteries, records to SD card, will survive being strapped to a 4x4 (on the outside) and raced off-road all day. Lots of example videos on YouTube.

The point is they wouldn't have left before the cops got there, the cops were waiting and could've gone in at any moment from the time they walked out of the first shop. You catch them then, they make an excuse like they forgot to pay and were about to go back into the shop and apologise. You catch them after you've videoed them congratulating each other as they walk onto the bus home, and you've got them properly.

Sure some CCTV is crap, usually due to owners re-using tapes non-stop for years. Certainly that's not the case with modern well-run stuff (even better, with DVR). The favourite test locally is to use a camera on a hill to read the time from the clock tower on the civic offices 3 miles away in the city centre.

I also live in a small UK town with lots of CCTV cameras. However, I have worked on those cameras and in control rooms and have seen how they do work and can work, if they're allowed to.

Sure, if no-one's watching (or there aren't enough people to watch effectively) then they're useless. If the video is so bad you can't see what's going on, they're useless.

BUT when the CCTV guys have a direct radio link to the police (and even better, local businesses too), when they have the staff to watch the cameras and catch people committing crime on video which conclusively shows them doing it, then the criminals are f**ed. The best lawyer in the world can't get you off when the police have video of you committing the crime. It also means the police don't even have to catch you doing it - they can walk past you an hour later in the street and slap the cuffs on before you know what's going on.

I would be wary of saying I'm pro-cctv, but with an effective police organisation behind it it's a very effective tool in the fight.

Case in point: The control guys spotted a gang of kids going into a shop, so they radio the shop security and tell them to stand back and just watch. Shop security backs off and watches them stealing stuff. CCTV tracks them out of that shop and into the next, same deal, kids are now getting well pleased with their haul, repeat for a few more shops then off to the bus station to catch the bus home with all their swag. As the bus pulls up, cops stroll out from three different directions and grab them, and all their gear, before they've even realised. No running, no chasing, no throwing the stash away, no arguing. In court, on video, case closed.

London's cameras have a good deal going on with car number plate recognition software, as soon as you drive a stolen/dodgy car into London it's just ticking down the minutes till a police car happens to appear from a side street and pull you over for a chat. No high-speed pursuit required.

Good shooting Sir - If anyone needs a look I think I have one in my loft. Next question!