the reason for my recent absence was not, as suggested, due to my

walking out into the blizzard. quite the contrary, as we floated 'twixt

the dreaming spires of academe on the river cam, it was comfortably in

the mid 20's, while eating in the sidewalk cafes of paris, it was warm

in the upper 20's. i must admit that, while meditating amongst the

temples of kyoto with the mercury pushing the ton on the old currency,

my thoughts did stray to those freezing their arses off on the

riverinna, but the zen master sensed that my mind was not wholly on the

diamond sutra, and applied the friendly board. i thanked him and the

thought evaporated. well i'm not doing this to boast of an os trip

(yearh, yearh) but there were things out there that i thought that

people here may br interested in.



it seems to me that the deal that we have here for micro bits isn't too

bad compare to anywhere other than the states, and perhaps hong kong.

the poms pay a bit more for all types of hardware except modems (which

we seem to pay around the highest prices in the world) and possibly cd

rom drives. software there would be 10-20% more expensive than here, and

the cheap complete systems that are available here dont seem to exist

there. otoh cellular phones are dirt cheap there, they start at $50, and

you can get a motorola digital flip phone for $200. this it because the

service providers are subsidising their sale. a smart move imho, they

are really making a deep impact in the market. i saw some shonkey deals

in the "exchange and mart" (the pommy equivalent of the
"trading post")

offering reconnections to people who were disconnected for non payment,

kits to reprogram phones (change the esn etc), a device to track

particular phones (if the esn is known), and an interesting ad for a

phone that avoided the cellular rates ("not legal to connect" etc etc).

i dont know what it was but it sounded interesting. i looked into buying

a digital phone, but it was just too much trouble (anyone ringing me

would have to call through the uk, although they wouldn't be charged for

an international call, and i would get charged 70c to receive it.).

london isn't a bad place to buy other electronics, i was looking for a

sharp iq9000, i found that it had been replaced by the iq8720, and that

i could have bought for about $400 duty free. so, i thought, it will be

even cheaper in japan, and left it, only to find that it wasn't on the

market there. i bought a minidisk recorder in japan, but the price, in

london, was within a few dollars. the pommy duty free system is

peculiar, you have to pay full price, and get the shopkeeper to fill in

a form which you get stamped at the airport as you leave and put in a

special box. the vat refund is then posted to you. if you do this, get

to the airport in plenty of time, because there is always a queue to get

the documents stamped.



pommy, and european radio stations send out a signal that identifies the

station, the radio in the passat that we hired displayed the station

name instead of the frequency, the stations also send a signal when they

are broadcasting road information that allows a suitably equipped radio

to come up to a preset volume, even override the cassette. most people

over there seem to have teletext tvs, the fact that the stations put out

useful info probably has something to do with it eg channel 4 page 611

has about 40 sub pages of computer jobs - both contracts and permanent.

probably 10-15% of houses have satellite dishes, there are about 4

channels i think. i watched a bit of it at a hotel, one was a 24 hour

news channel (not as good as cnn), and another was 24 hour movies, but

seemed to be more trailers for upcoming shows than movies themselves.

still it makes navigation through strange towns easier, you can find

south very easily.



in paris, there are some shops labelled "auto defense", the first thing

that came to my mind was car alarms, but, of course auto in french means

self, and they sold an amazing range of weaponry. there were brass

knuckles, flick knives, butterfly knives, shirikin, and shotguns. one of

these had a pistol on display. it looked like something out of a bond

movie with about an 8" barrel, a silencer, bolt action, and a telescopic

sight. the blurb with it noted that it fired .22 lr ammo subsonic, thus

making it completely silent. the only use for such a weapon that i can

see is assassination. they also carried a range of bugs, the neatest

being about half the linear dimensions of a sugar cube, complete with a

receiver that fitted into the ear like a deaf aid, the cost was about

$2000.



in japan there were a lot of wide screen high definition tvs on display,

they look quite peculiar. there were also several car navigation systems

that i saw using the gps satellite system and displaying your position

on a dashboard display using maps held on a cd-rom. price about $2600.

sony have gone beyond the micro-cassette with a cassette about 2cm by

1cm by a few mm, record time is an amazing 120min using some sort of

digital technique. fidelity unknown, the recorder is on the large side

for such a small medium, and about $1000. there seemed to be quite a few

dat recorders about, but all were quite expensive. there is a new

generation of minidisk recorder about, just over palm size, sony has

one, and sanyo, dennon, and kenwood all seem to be marketing the same

basic unit, the buttons on top vary, but the mechanism is identical.

there were some video games in the parlours built rather like radar

consoles, (a flat shelf with the controls, and a screen almost upright)

with the biggest rectangular crts that i have ever seen - at least 30".

the japs have what must be the most exotic payphones in the world. they

are isdn connected, there is an lcd screen giving help in both japanese

and english, and 2 rj11 sockets so that you can plug either an analog

modem or an ntu in. great i suppose if you have a laptop. here they'd be

vandalised in minutes.



                        Keith



... Hard DISK? Gee lady, I misunderstood you.



--- PPoint 1.86


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