Dial-up modem goes up in smoke

US police called to a flat in Janesville, Wisconsin found a man barbecuing his modem.

The 39-year-old told police he was fed up with the modem operating too slowly and that he thought grilling it might speed it up.

He had set up the family barbecue in the living room, applied charcoal and meths, and was toasting the modem over a slow fire.

The man's wife told police that this had not been the first time her husband had been upset with a slow modem, and that he had smashed them or tossed them out of the door before, according to Channel3000.com.

However, it was the first time he had thought about using fire as a way of increasing bandwidth, she said.

Police doused the coals with water and told the man's wife to make sure he went to bed. No one was injured, but police said the man's bandwidth experiment had resulted in the death of a healthy 56k modem.

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