Posts by pnony

Re: Oh how the might have fallen...

My CDTV—which is basically an Amiga 500 with a CD-ROM drive hacked onto it—has MIDI in and out ports. They've never been used, because the onboard sound was good enough for the time. Unlike the ST and its off-the-shelf bleeper chip which was embarassing by 8 bit standards, never mind their flagship machine.

Re: Tru dat

You probably meant that the other way round: German VAT is 19%, whereas Dutch VAT is 21%. The Netherlands also has a punitive registration fee for new cars, which is perhaps why the roads round here seem to be clogged with rusty old sheds that can be easily overtaken on a bike.

To a first approximation, the Netherlands has 100% 3G coverage, and fairly high 4G coverage as well. There's still a 2G network for embedded systems and hoarders of crusty old kit.

I suppose there must be some parts of the country that have a weak signal. The bottom of a deep mine, or inside a Faraday cage, for example. Merely being a few tens of metres underground on the Metro or in a long railway tunnel such as that under the Noordzeekanaal isn't enough.

Re: Obviously the solution is....

They already broadly exist in the form of e-bikes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_bicycle). Even my dump of a town in the arse end of the Netherlands—think Oldham, but with windmills and even more racial tension—has just had a new dedicated e-bike shop open up. It's a growing market, even though the bikes start at a grand a pop compared to a few hundred for a regular beater.

A killer feature of them is that they're basically motorbikes, but they don't have number plates nor does the rider require a driving licence. This may change as more drunk-drivers discover that they're a good way to get back from the pub despite a driving ban. Under English law, if you're still sober enough to keep it upright, it's legal. Drink-cycling is technically illegal in the Netherlands and attracts a fixed penalty, but so are drugs, whores, and bike theft, and look how much that gets enforced in Amsterdam.

Icon because they use lithium batteries.

Photosynthesis: carbon dioxide plus water equals sugar plus oxygen. In other words, excess humidity is drawn out of the air and turned into food.

Re: I know this one!

Fire off a text message instead: "Oi, mate, I want to send you a picture, what's your email address?"