Posts by ccomley 14 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Feb 2015
I had a a similar failure on, also a Mannesmann Tally matrix printer as it happens, high speed chap with a parallel interface. But in this case it *was* eventually traced to the printer cable after I realised that the errors were the result of one of the data-bits in each print character being always zero. Half the characters (on average, of course!) were correct, the other half were wrong.
I don't know about Oregon or "the world" but in the UK, the amber light means "STOP", not "get on with it quickly". But, less well known, the red (and amber) lights mean "Stop short of the white line" (or, in the case of temporary traffic lights, the red sign saying "stop before this sign") and if you are already over the line you may continue (with care!) and, indeed, SHOULD continue if you would otherwise block the junction by stopping. So I suspect the incident that sparked this would not have resulted in a ticket if the lady were already over the line when it went amber, and if she crossed after it went amber then the ticket is still valid.
Well, it does depend a bit how you do the accounts. As with the american's moon shots, there were huge amounts of spin-off from the learning processes required to build the Concorde, which the bean counters can never realistically assign to the plane's profit and loss account. But by the end I doubt there were many NEW spin-offs being discovered.
It's also worth remembering that Boeing didn't like it and would press at any slightest excuse to have the plane grounded. And the Paris incident certainly gave them an opening. It worked for them with the Comet, and here they are again...
But yes in reality it became too expensive to run. It's a pity. It was more than a way of crossing the atlantic that most of us could not affort. It was a flag waver. It was something Mr Humble Brit could loo up at and think - we built that! (OK, the french helped a bit! :-) ) It meant that in any discussion in any bar in the world, we had the "top trump" card in at least one category. And to some extent, it still does, even sat on the ground at Filton, the list of "first"s most of which remain and probably will remain "only"s is going to win out over the dull plodding boeings, airbuses, and similar craft which all look the same and never go faster than sound... even if they are more comfortable to ride in and cheaper to get on.
I have a Fon access point, which gives me free access to ALL Fon access points including, in theory, the BT ones. But in practice more often than not my phone finds the BT FON spot then says it can't connect to it. This now happens so much of the time that the delay caused waiting for my phone to try to access the spot is significantly annoying. so I'm turning it off> Fon support people still say it should work. Well, it's pretty much their problem not mine.
I believe you can sign up to services like "the cloud" for free provided you don't mind the odd spammy email about them or one oftheir "Partners". I think it's them I signed up to which gets me a couple of emails a month about Harvester restaurants, which I'm entirely happy to delete. :)
Everyone mentioned in the article probably, and we (Wizards) definitely can offer you ANY service available from BT Wholesale on the BT network including ADSL, ADSL2+, FTTC, and FTTP. AND we can offer services, if they are available on your exchange, from C&W, TT, and Easynet networks.
I apologise if this isn't apparent from our website which, as I mentioned earlier, is in need of an update.
If you want more information, please call!
Yes, of course they do. Truth is, some of the *really* cheap package deals you see advertised on telly may be cheaper than the lowest we could do. But you say the phone service is with BT, and you can save a lot by moving that which would contribute to cheaper low-use broadband. Best way to find out is give us a call, and if you have your last phone bill to hand when you do we can work out how much cheaper that would have been.
The one thing we can't do, and not sure any of the ISPs that are the subject of this article could, is offer you a deal including television service.
Yes and no.
Yes, there are still many Market 1 exchanges, that means, as you say, you can only buy your internet service supplied via BT's core network.
But that does NOT mean you have to buy it from BT.
You still have the choice of which ISP you go to for your retail service.
You can't magically get CN21 or FTTC where the exchange only offers CN20 that way.
But you do choose how your bandwidth is managed, packaged, and supported that way. And you also get to move your phone line away from BT if you want to - that can save you a small fortune. :)
Buying a "resold" BT circuit cuts BT's *retail* operation out of the loop, sales, and support. Yes, your traffic still needs to run over BT's core network and yes, any fault in that network will still affect you as well as all your neighbours, but you can get better service in all other regards.
We're often asked "are you selling the business?"
Well we're not. And we won't. The only time that's likely to happen is if the main folk involved reach retirement age, and the plan then would be to back out gracefully whilst finding the customer base new homes which supply the same sort of service we try to supply, rather than dump the whole thing off on <no name mentioned> and run.
We realised we could make more money out of our business if we ran it differently, automated more processes, used cheap "follow the script" support methods, websites which make it nearly impossible for you to find out how to call an actual person, etc., but we choose not to. And we would design our exit strategy, when the time comes, in a similar manner.
When I first bought a car with "traction control" it was horrible. If the wheels started spinning, the TC just backed off the throttle and kept it off for half a second to a second. It felt like something was wrong with the engine. Nothing you could do could get it to start trying to turn the wheels again until it was good and ready. Now modern TC systems work by momentary dabs of brake to the spinning wheel and letting non-spinning wheels continue to dive, and it all happens so quickly you tend not to even notice it, until the TC system fails and you realised just how much loose gravel there is on that hill there or how slippery the carpark behind Marks is...
In similar vein the bandwidth management tools used by some ISPs are way more subtle these days. I think you'll find that any bit-torrent, emule, or other similar traffic that you may be using to fill up that 90TB store will run flat out much of the time. But at times when the core network is busy, your traffic will be "de-prioritised". That doesn't mean it WILL slow down, but it means it MIGHT slow down at moments when there's enough higher priority traffic to need all the available bandwidth. This really doesn't matter for the sort of process where you're not sitting waiting to launch an app or start reading a document as soon as it finishes downloading.
However, it MAY matter to some, and for them, totally unrestricted service can be arranged. Yes, it costs a little more, but it's their choice.
Sadly, there are still some systems where the newer subtleties have yet to be discovered, and they work on an older model of bulk traffic WILL be slowed down.
Jason7 - you may have mis-understood what Nigel was getting at. The names he mentioned have all been around for many years. Yes, there's always the risk of the fly-by-night cowboy brigade who've worked out they can get a quick profit out of setting up an operation, locking in a few customers, then legging it before the bills need paying. Some of us have been around for over 20 years however. (And yes, that's pre-broadband and pre-dial-up - not all of us started out as ISPs!)
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