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Lords a-leaping – politicalbetting.com

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  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598
    stodge said:

    Have the wasters, nonentities and no-marks in the PCP got their 54 letters in yet? This is getting boring.

    What's your problem?

    November 1990 was so exciting because it went on for so long - the Howe sacking, the resignation speech, would Heseltine go for it? If this place had existed then....

    While I would much prefer the voters giving Johnson the denouement he so richly deserves with at the same time the helpful by-product of condemning the Conservative Party to an extended period of Opposition, MPs seeing their majorities and career prospects evaporating in front of them may well decide out of motivated self-interest the man who got them elected now has to go.

    Stretching this farrago out over several days will provide useful entertainment.
    Disagree.

    The longer it goes on, the more likely they'll lose momentum. And a vonc trigger is by no means the end game – the vonc must be won.

    Get the letters in you ditherers, put up or shut up.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Roger said:

    Farooq said:

    Roger said:

    Massive day for Starmer.

    Land enough blows on Johnson and more letters will go in.

    Or does he row back, hoping they keep the man who will shortly be the most unpopular PM since polling began?

    He needs to pulverise him with wit. Not his forte unfortunately.
    Why? I'm fucking sick of comedians in politics. Give me sensible people like Starmer or Hunt.
    The killer line can destroy in a way nothing else can and wit makes a line more memorable. People don't enjoy watching someone being beaten up.

    During the first Starmer attack dog PMQ's his most memorable effective and oft repeated line was one about Ant and Dec. Not even particularly funny but the only one that stays in the memory and the laughter brought everyone on side
    It’s tricky if you’re not a natural wit, jokes just end up sounding like they were designed by your team rather than actual off the cuff zingers. My problem with Starmer’s wallpaper stunt was that it was obviously thought up by someone else and it was cringey as fuck, not its hilarity quotient.

    Thatcher was a stranger to humour and it didn’t do her much harm, until she went off the deep end.
    Thatcher could be very, very funny. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t mean to be.

    Wasn’t her Desert Island Discs a notorious flop? Maggie lacked a ‘hinterland’. Quite sad.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,848
    IshmaelZ said:

    Tip for SKS

    Focus on claim Bojo tried to go and see queenie while infectious and Dom C stopped him. NOT a party claim so not vulnerable to the Wait for S Gray to report counter.

    That really would kill him stone dead

    Yep. He tried to kill the Queen basically. That's at least as serious as partying in lockdown.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    That would have been about 1994, so you’re probably a handful of years older than me.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    IanB2 said:

    Thread:

    For those who still care about UK/EU relations, the EU side admits to being “charmed” by @trussliz last week. She will now meet @MarosSefcovic in Bxl next Monday. Despite - or because of - the madness in Westminster, things are looking up for UK/EU 1/

    https://twitter.com/mij_europe/status/1483731805626904585?s=21

    An interesting thread. A bit more realism in the Brexit process would be welcome; delivering the outcome will be a real test of her political skills however.
    Truss is one for Any Deal is better than No Deal. Anther notch on her bedpost, and leave the consequences for later.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    IshmaelZ said:

    Tip for SKS

    Focus on claim Bojo tried to go and see queenie while infectious and Dom C stopped him. NOT a party claim so not vulnerable to the Wait for S Gray to report counter.

    That really would kill him stone dead

    Spot on.

    This is the absolute killer point. Johnson was willing to risk killing the elderly monarch out of pure laziness and selfishness.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598

    Heathener said:

    Incidentally, it's not just the cost of food. It's also the quality. I've really noticed some rubbish especially in fruit and veg.

    Like many people I take evasive action to avoid some of the creeping increases - some ready meals (my staple fare) remain cheap, but you have to avoid lazily sticking to what you usually get as the price nudges upwards. I do notice some sneaky unadvertised cuts in quantity, though tbh it's probably healthy to eat a bit less.
    Nick I think PB should club together to buy you a cook book.
    I find it baffling - and inordinately annoying - that a super-bright open-minded guy like Nick can’t be bothered to teach himself to cook. Ready meals are full of shit, and cooking should be something we all learn.

    I’d be up for making a donation to the Nick Cook Book Fund.
    There are good quality ready meals available from a supermarket near you. It's not just cheap meat, salt and sugar any more.
    There are better quality ready meals available – yet it's all varying degrees of shite.

    Learn to cook. FFS.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,335

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    2.5p for next day delivery
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598
    Eabhal said:

    Heathener said:

    Incidentally, it's not just the cost of food. It's also the quality. I've really noticed some rubbish especially in fruit and veg.

    Like many people I take evasive action to avoid some of the creeping increases - some ready meals (my staple fare) remain cheap, but you have to avoid lazily sticking to what you usually get as the price nudges upwards. I do notice some sneaky unadvertised cuts in quantity, though tbh it's probably healthy to eat a bit less.
    Nick I think PB should club together to buy you a cook book.
    I find it baffling - and inordinately annoying - that a super-bright open-minded guy like Nick can’t be bothered to teach himself to cook. Ready meals are full of shit, and cooking should be something we all learn.

    I’d be up for making a donation to the Nick Cook Book Fund.
    There are good quality ready meals available from a supermarket near you. It's not just cheap meat, salt and sugar any more.
    Yup. And for me, a really useful tool for counting calories and keeping portion size down. Whenever I cook I end up eating enough for three people.
    At least you can cook.
  • Scott_xP said:

    Sandpit said:

    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.

    I am partial to the opening seconds of Duran Duran Girls on Film, featuring a 35mm camera with motor wind
    The buzzing sound of a dot-matrix printer is something you don't hear anymore. Or a room full of them.

    Or the clack-clack of a typing pool with manual typewriters (I am just about old enough to have heard that.)
    The sound of popping wine corks (or the crack of a screw top being opened) in a Whitehall office about to become a memory..
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540

    Roger said:

    Farooq said:

    Roger said:

    Massive day for Starmer.

    Land enough blows on Johnson and more letters will go in.

    Or does he row back, hoping they keep the man who will shortly be the most unpopular PM since polling began?

    He needs to pulverise him with wit. Not his forte unfortunately.
    Why? I'm fucking sick of comedians in politics. Give me sensible people like Starmer or Hunt.
    The killer line can destroy in a way nothing else can and wit makes a line more memorable. People don't enjoy watching someone being beaten up.

    During the first Starmer attack dog PMQ's his most memorable effective and oft repeated line was one about Ant and Dec. Not even particularly funny but the only one that stays in the memory and the laughter brought everyone on side
    It’s tricky if you’re not a natural wit, jokes just end up sounding like they were designed by your team rather than actual off the cuff zingers. My problem with Starmer’s wallpaper stunt was that it was obviously thought up by someone else and it was cringey as fuck, not its hilarity quotient.

    Thatcher was a stranger to humour and it didn’t do her much harm, until she went off the deep end.
    Thatcher could be very, very funny. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t mean to be.
    Every Prime Minister needs a Willie
  • NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758
    I wonder if Boris will crack mentally? He's got away with things all his life and reached the pinnacle but it is turning to ashes. He is totally inept at the craft of politics (as opposed to a limited but effective projection of a persona for campaigning). He is like a boxer being pummelled on the ropes.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    I was very surprised to read yesterday that HYUFD is only 40 years old!! I imagined him as an elderly major-type. Funny how such a young man can write like an old codger.
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,704

    Chris said:

    I still think the strangest thing about Johnson is the fact that so many people insisted he was a clever man pretending to be a stupid man, rather than a stupid man pretending to be a clever man pretending to be a stupid man.

    He’s a lazy man who thinks he’s pretending to be lazy.
    Extraordinarily poor self-awareness is his key personality trait.
    The Guardian long read on Cummings and his feud with Johnson was interesting on this. It basically said that Johnson is stupid and lacking in self awareness most of the time, but occasionally when his interests are threatened he focuses and becomes intelligent and self aware. Cummings is the opposite - forensic and reflective most of the time, but prone to occasional bouts of stupidity under pressure.
    Of course I wish the fate of the country wasn't tied up in the tiresome soggy biscuit game that these two over-privileged wankers are engaged in.
    Seems to me he's just hugely lazy....
  • NorthofStokeNorthofStoke Posts: 1,758
    It is sobering to think that at the last election we were faced with the two must unsuitable candidates for PM in modern history. Chance? A symptom of the rotten state of our party politics? If the latter what the hell is to be done about it?
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Roger said:

    Farooq said:

    Roger said:

    Massive day for Starmer.

    Land enough blows on Johnson and more letters will go in.

    Or does he row back, hoping they keep the man who will shortly be the most unpopular PM since polling began?

    He needs to pulverise him with wit. Not his forte unfortunately.
    Why? I'm fucking sick of comedians in politics. Give me sensible people like Starmer or Hunt.
    The killer line can destroy in a way nothing else can and wit makes a line more memorable. People don't enjoy watching someone being beaten up.

    During the first Starmer attack dog PMQ's his most memorable effective and oft repeated line was one about Ant and Dec. Not even particularly funny but the only one that stays in the memory and the laughter brought everyone on side
    It’s tricky if you’re not a natural wit, jokes just end up sounding like they were designed by your team rather than actual off the cuff zingers. My problem with Starmer’s wallpaper stunt was that it was obviously thought up by someone else and it was cringey as fuck, not its hilarity quotient.

    Thatcher was a stranger to humour and it didn’t do her much harm, until she went off the deep end.
    Thatcher could be very, very funny. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t mean to be.
    Every Prime Minister needs a Willie
    Pure Maggie!

    One of my biggest guilty secrets is that I loved Maggie. She was addictive. Mesmerising. Terrifying. Monstrous. Disgusting. Evil. Otherworldly. Like that big snake Harry had to deal with in the second film.

    She was the best thing on the telly back then. And that’s when telly was still good.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited January 2022

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    300 baud acoustic coupler, and also those expensive GPO/BT modems which gave you 1200 baud downstream and 75 baud upstream. Much of my first few years of work was dominated by battles with BT, trying to get at least something usable, when 9600 and then 14.4K modems were already cheaply available in the US but were illegal to use here. Thank God for Maggie who swept away all that BT monopoly nonsense, it really is hard for anyone who didn't experience the pre-Thatcher years to understand how spectacular the improvement was.
    Doing IT stuff in other parts of the world, can sometimes bring back memories of 1980s British Telecom - when it takes a month or two to get a line installed, and you’d better be damn grateful they were kind enough to do it!
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    I wonder if Boris will crack mentally? He's got away with things all his life and reached the pinnacle but it is turning to ashes. He is totally inept at the craft of politics (as opposed to a limited but effective projection of a persona for campaigning). He is like a boxer being pummelled on the ropes.

    He looked pretty shaken on Sky yesterday but I’m not sure if that was him attempting to look like he thinks someone who actually feels shame would look.
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,004
    Sandpit said:

    AlistairM said:

    MaxPB said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Wise policy by employer. Information security is a huge problem for all organisations.
    It's not difficult to set up a secondary WiFi system for other devices. Most places do it.
    No employer I’ve ever worked for (quite a few now) has ever allowed personal devices to connect to WiFi
    Every (recent) employer I have known have two WiFi networks. One for the work laptops to use and the other a free public WiFi for visitors, personal phones etc. I pay £6/month for 3GB of data but as I am entirely WFH I rarely get through half of that as I am on my home broadband. My 12yo daughter I recently upgraded to 10GB for £8/month as she got through the 3GB with her bus journeys to get to school.

    As for how much people spend on phones for me it seems crazy. The reason so many people have iPhone 13 Pro Max Plus 1TBs is that they are not paying up-front for them but instead spending large amounts each month. I spend around £150 to £200 every 2 years for a new Android phone probably equivalent in capability to a year or two old flagship iPhone.

    My daughter's birthday is approaching and she is very keen to get an iPhone for her birthday (she has a 2 year old Android but still pretty decent). I personally detest all Apple devices due to their vast overpricing. I've set a budget for it for her which is probably only enough for a rather tired second hand X or 11 which is of course, not what she wants. She can have a very decent brand new Android for the same price. Up to her now what she wants to do!
    The cheapest new iPhone is the SE2 which, at £389, is cheaper than the £499 first iPhone was back in 2007.
    True, but look at the specification of Android phone you can get for £389.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    Has Sean recovered from his stomach pump last night?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    I was very surprised to read yesterday that HYUFD is only 40 years old!! I imagined him as an elderly major-type. Funny how such a young man can write like an old codger.
    I must admit I thought he was a lot older.

    I have no idea what he does as a job, but I get the impression that he'd be rather good at it.
  • Scott_xP said:

    Sandpit said:

    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.

    I am partial to the opening seconds of Duran Duran Girls on Film, featuring a 35mm camera with motor wind
    The buzzing sound of a dot-matrix printer is something you don't hear anymore. Or a room full of them.

    Or the clack-clack of a typing pool with manual typewriters (I am just about old enough to have heard that.)
    I have, bizarrely, inherited a dot matrix printer for a Commodore (most likely 64, google suggests). I wasn't aware she owned it and also - who keeps that but not the Commodore itself?

    Is there any prospect of it (a) working and (b) being able to connect it to a modern PC? PB crowd wisdom requested...

    She also left an disc drive for it, but I know the belts go in those so that's probably a bit much.
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,704

    It is sobering to think that at the last election we were faced with the two must unsuitable candidates for PM in modern history. Chance? A symptom of the rotten state of our party politics? If the latter what the hell is to be done about it?

    Hope that things can only get better? If it's Sunak vs Starmer, they will be.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited January 2022
    DougSeal said:

    I wonder if Boris will crack mentally? He's got away with things all his life and reached the pinnacle but it is turning to ashes. He is totally inept at the craft of politics (as opposed to a limited but effective projection of a persona for campaigning). He is like a boxer being pummelled on the ropes.

    He looked pretty shaken on Sky yesterday but I’m not sure if that was him attempting to look like he thinks someone who actually feels shame would look.
    I think he has realised a) the game it up and b) he can't actually do the job and doesn't really enjoy it. But now he is trapped, in that none of it is in his own hands.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    I was very surprised to read yesterday that HYUFD is only 40 years old!! I imagined him as an elderly major-type. Funny how such a young man can write like an old codger.
    I must admit I thought he was a lot older.

    I have no idea what he does as a job, but I get the impression that he'd be rather good at it.
    He’s certainly loyal.

    Hope his employer is not a Franco-type.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    300 baud acoustic coupler, and also those expensive GPO/BT modems which gave you 1200 baud downstream and 75 baud upstream. Much of my first few years of work was dominated by battles with BT, trying to get at least something usable, when 9600 and then 14.4K modems were already cheaply available in the US but were illegal to use here. Thank God for Maggie who swept away all that BT monopoly nonsense, it really is hard for anyone who didn't experience the pre-Thatcher years to understand how spectacular the improvement was.
    And yet BT have starved the nation of fibre optic investment to chase idiotic sports rights deals for TV channels they've now decided they don't want. Somewhere around £3bn has been spent on sports rights by BT over the last 5 years which could have been invested in ftth. Allowing BT to maintain their consumer facing business as well as own the network was an historic failure and now the UK is a fibre laggard across the world and people are just hoping that some altnet will post a leaflet into their letterbox because BT seem to be in no rush.
  • Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    I was very surprised to read yesterday that HYUFD is only 40 years old!! I imagined him as an elderly major-type. Funny how such a young man can write like an old codger.
    He doesn't write like this 'old codger'
  • ApplicantApplicant Posts: 3,379

    It is sobering to think that at the last election we were faced with the two must unsuitable candidates for PM in modern history. Chance? A symptom of the rotten state of our party politics? If the latter what the hell is to be done about it?

    The same could also be said about the last two POTUS elections - so it's not just us.
  • Roger said:

    Farooq said:

    Roger said:

    Massive day for Starmer.

    Land enough blows on Johnson and more letters will go in.

    Or does he row back, hoping they keep the man who will shortly be the most unpopular PM since polling began?

    He needs to pulverise him with wit. Not his forte unfortunately.
    Why? I'm fucking sick of comedians in politics. Give me sensible people like Starmer or Hunt.
    The killer line can destroy in a way nothing else can and wit makes a line more memorable. People don't enjoy watching someone being beaten up.

    During the first Starmer attack dog PMQ's his most memorable effective and oft repeated line was one about Ant and Dec. Not even particularly funny but the only one that stays in the memory and the laughter brought everyone on side
    It’s tricky if you’re not a natural wit, jokes just end up sounding like they were designed by your team rather than actual off the cuff zingers. My problem with Starmer’s wallpaper stunt was that it was obviously thought up by someone else and it was cringey as fuck, not its hilarity quotient.

    Thatcher was a stranger to humour and it didn’t do her much harm, until she went off the deep end.
    Thatcher could be very, very funny. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t mean to be.
    Every Prime Minister needs a Willie
    Pure Maggie!

    One of my biggest guilty secrets is that I loved Maggie. She was addictive. Mesmerising. Terrifying. Monstrous. Disgusting. Evil. Otherworldly. Like that big snake Harry had to deal with in the second film.

    She was the best thing on the telly back then. And that’s when telly was still good.
    It is notable there have been many films or television dramas about Mrs Thatcher, probably more than any Prime Minister except Winston Churchill. There are two dvds right next to me. I can't help feeling Boris will be next (we've already had When Boris Met Dave, of course). His life and career are almost like Greek myths (says someone for whom the classics are contested by three-year-old thoroughbreds).
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    I was very surprised to read yesterday that HYUFD is only 40 years old!! I imagined him as an elderly major-type. Funny how such a young man can write like an old codger.
    He doesn't write like this 'old codger'
    No. Indeed not. You’re the real deal.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 3,335
    Scott_xP said:

    My problem with Starmer’s wallpaper stunt was that it was obviously thought up by someone else and it was cringey as fuck, not its hilarity quotient.

    And yet it lingers.

    Perhaps the definition of an effective stunt
    Was it that bad?

  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392
    I hope Rishi and his family are happy with Bozo & Nut Nut's choice of wallpaper.

  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. NorthWales, age can be tricky on the internet.

    Decades ago, I was mistaken by most users of another place as being most likely in my 50s or 60s. I was a teenager at the time.
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    edited January 2022
    MaxPB said:


    And yet BT have starved the nation of fibre optic investment to chase idiotic sports rights deals for TV channels they've now decided they don't want. Somewhere around £3bn has been spent on sports rights by BT over the last 5 years which could have been invested in ftth. Allowing BT to maintain their consumer facing business as well as own the network was an historic failure and now the UK is a fibre laggard across the world and people are just hoping that some altnet will post a leaflet into their letterbox because BT seem to be in no rush.

    That is also true. It's part of a whole bigger picture of confusion about what regulatory bodies are supposed to be trying to achieve.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673
    Carnyx said:

    Vlad said:

    Farooq said:

    Vlad said:

    Bring back


    iSam!
    Charles!
    Eadric!
    David Herdson!
    Leon!
    Alistair Meeks!

    If they want!

    Whoa - has Leon gone?
    Libel, banned, everyone was happy.
    Now unbanned, but has returned with a second account. So we can look forward to his tedious wittering in stereo,
    You seem to dislike him? What did he do? I only lurked sporadically so I am unaware of the "granular backstory"

    Did you compare penii and come off badly? What?!

    This site is brilliant!
    Charles, your new identity is very unconvincing.

    “Penii” was the tell, as the only previous citation was a post where Charles explained that his Aunty Gladys explained the concept of the Crown-in-Parliament to him using borrowed members from the Hunterian collection.
    FPT - for heaven's sake it's penes. Not penii.
    Not everyone would be happy at all, Leon is a top top poster , hopefully he will be still here. He is like the Doctor he will regenerate in any case..
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Scott_xP said:

    Sandpit said:

    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.

    I am partial to the opening seconds of Duran Duran Girls on Film, featuring a 35mm camera with motor wind
    The buzzing sound of a dot-matrix printer is something you don't hear anymore. Or a room full of them.

    Or the clack-clack of a typing pool with manual typewriters (I am just about old enough to have heard that.)
    I have, bizarrely, inherited a dot matrix printer for a Commodore (most likely 64, google suggests). I wasn't aware she owned it and also - who keeps that but not the Commodore itself?

    Is there any prospect of it (a) working and (b) being able to connect it to a modern PC? PB crowd wisdom requested...

    She also left an disc drive for it, but I know the belts go in those so that's probably a bit much.
    Have a look here for a starting point. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Dot-Matrix_Printer
    Most models have manuals and service books available to download, and a bit of googling for the model number will probably find someone who’s managed to get a more modern computer talking to it.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    I hope Rishi and his family are happy with Bozo & Nut Nut's choice of wallpaper.

    I seriously doubt it, have you seen the work of their designer? It's chintzy and awful. Proper nouveau riche stylings.
  • StuartDicksonStuartDickson Posts: 12,146
    malcolmg said:

    Carnyx said:

    Vlad said:

    Farooq said:

    Vlad said:

    Bring back


    iSam!
    Charles!
    Eadric!
    David Herdson!
    Leon!
    Alistair Meeks!

    If they want!

    Whoa - has Leon gone?
    Libel, banned, everyone was happy.
    Now unbanned, but has returned with a second account. So we can look forward to his tedious wittering in stereo,
    You seem to dislike him? What did he do? I only lurked sporadically so I am unaware of the "granular backstory"

    Did you compare penii and come off badly? What?!

    This site is brilliant!
    Charles, your new identity is very unconvincing.

    “Penii” was the tell, as the only previous citation was a post where Charles explained that his Aunty Gladys explained the concept of the Crown-in-Parliament to him using borrowed members from the Hunterian collection.
    FPT - for heaven's sake it's penes. Not penii.
    Not everyone would be happy at all, Leon is a top top poster , hopefully he will be still here. He is like the Doctor he will regenerate in any case..
    Already has. “Vlad” - an attractive lesbian lover of a well-known Caledonian personality - had their stomach pumped last night.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    Everyone is obsessing now about getting high-speed broadband fibre to rural areas, just as Starlink is about to go live.
  • It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    Retro computing is a thing now as retired techies try to recapture their lost youth.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    MaxPB said:


    And yet BT have starved the nation of fibre optic investment to chase idiotic sports rights deals for TV channels they've now decided they don't want. Somewhere around £3bn has been spent on sports rights by BT over the last 5 years which could have been invested in ftth. Allowing BT to maintain their consumer facing business as well as own the network was an historic failure and now the UK is a fibre laggard across the world and people are just hoping that some altnet will post a leaflet into their letterbox because BT seem to be in no rush.

    That is also true. It's part of a whole bigger picture of confusion about what regulatory bodies are supposed to be trying to achieve.
    Agreed, having Ofcom be in charge of investigating Tim from Leicester complaint about someone swearing on TV as well as regulating the broadband infrastructure means it does neither very well.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 20,392

    It is sobering to think that at the last election we were faced with the two must unsuitable candidates for PM in modern history. Chance? A symptom of the rotten state of our party politics? If the latter what the hell is to be done about it?

    To be pedantic, we were faced with three unsuitable candidates. According to Jo Swinson, anyway.
  • Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Or a cassette tape sounding like a demented bumble bee for several minutes to load one computer game on a Spectrum.

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    NEW: Tories facing wipe-out in Red Wall, losing 42 of 45 seats if election tomorrow, according to new poll.

    It suggests that Boris Johnson’s leadership is the biggest block on people voting Conservative.
    https://twitter.com/channel4news/status/1483742671218819081
  • DougSeal said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Wowsers.

    Boris Johnson partygate crisis: Poll gives Labour 32-point lead in London

    Exclusive: Eight Tory MPs could lose their seats in London if bombshell poll is replicated at next General Election


    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/yougov-poll-labour-lead-london-boris-johnson-party-downing-st-plan-b-b977489.html

    Not that surprising given London, especially Inner London, was Remain central. The only reason most Tory MPs in Remain seats in London in 2019 held their seats was to keep out Corbyn, wealthy Remainers see Starmer as much less of a threat.

    Tories doing a bit better in Outer London though were a few areas like Hillingdon, Bexley and Havering voted Leave on 25% than Inner London, where every borough voted Remain and the Tories are on just 18%. That suggests the Tories could not only lose Wandsworth and Barnet in May but even lose Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea on a really bad night
    Last Starmer interview I read said that there was no question of Rejoining in his mind. We were OUT, end of.

    What that suggests is that, in his mind, apart from a few committed Europeans like myself banging on about it, he doesn't expect the EU to be an issue at the next, and indeed next but one election.

    So whether an area was Leave or Remain in 2016 will be immaterial. The issue will be the Governments overall competence.
    For Remainers the best policy is to sit tight for a while. The economy is clearly on a lower growth path post-Brexit and people will increasingly notice. Wait for about five years and there will be a clear majority for rejoin, or at least for EEA membership. That's the time to organise a vote to make it happen. In the meantime, just sit back and let Brexit fail on its own. Don't create a stabbed in the back myth for Brexiteers by hastening its end.
    Yes, pretty soon we will see that the lying bunch of chancers weren't suddenly competent at trade and foreign policy, but screwed that up too.

    Lib Dems will push for SM membership, but not Rejoin in the short term. The SNP, PC and SF will be for their nations to Rejoin as independent states.

    Ultimately the biggest obstacle to Rejoin will be the break up of the UK. Without Scotland and NI the hurdle to Rejoin gets a lot higher.
    Or being completely surrounded by EU states may change the calculation for a lot of people.
    Hmm. Strange definition of completely surrounded given that our largest border by far will continue to be with the sea. And being completely surrounded by EU countries doesn't seem to have made the Swiss more pro-EU. Quite the reverse in fact.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    It is sobering to think that at the last election we were faced with the two must unsuitable candidates for PM in modern history. Chance? A symptom of the rotten state of our party politics? If the latter what the hell is to be done about it?

    Hope that things can only get better? If it's Sunak vs Starmer, they will be.
    Or Truss vs Starmer.
    Or Hunt vs Streeting.
    Or Javid vs Reeves.
    Or Wallace vs Phillipson.

    Pretty much any feasible combination, really.

    There's reason to hope that the 2016-2022 spasm in which Marxists and game show hosts were elected to the leaderships of major parties was an aberration. Even the Lib Dems managed to resist the temptation to go with Layla Moran and have their most credible leader since Nick Clegg.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Alan, I remember cassette tapes taking 30 minutes on an Amstrad.

    I used to read during the loading time.
  • CD13CD13 Posts: 6,349
    edited January 2022
    What a hoot to see Boris and Dom acting in character. The first a lazy, good-for-nothing and the second a right nasty bastard.

    Even more amusing to see some taking Cummings' word as sacrosanct. After his trip to Barnard Castle, he became Tom Pepper, known in Tyke-land as being kicked out of Hell for being a bigger liar than Satan.
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,004

    Scott_xP said:

    Sandpit said:

    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.

    I am partial to the opening seconds of Duran Duran Girls on Film, featuring a 35mm camera with motor wind
    The buzzing sound of a dot-matrix printer is something you don't hear anymore. Or a room full of them.

    Or the clack-clack of a typing pool with manual typewriters (I am just about old enough to have heard that.)
    I have, bizarrely, inherited a dot matrix printer for a Commodore (most likely 64, google suggests). I wasn't aware she owned it and also - who keeps that but not the Commodore itself?

    Is there any prospect of it (a) working and (b) being able to connect it to a modern PC? PB crowd wisdom requested...

    She also left an disc drive for it, but I know the belts go in those so that's probably a bit much.
    You can, amazingly, still buy brand new dot matrix printers. There are still niche uses for them such as multi-part forms. No idea about the C64 printer but if it uses an old parallel or serial interface then you can get a USB adapter. Maybe there is a generic Windows driver for dot matrix printers?
  • Sky

    Around 12 letters handed to Graham Brady this morning
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    edited January 2022

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    Retro computing is a thing now as retired techies try to recapture their lost youth.
    I know. I found my BBC Model B in the attic, had the power supply capacitors replaced by a friend, used it for a day or two and then noticed how rose-tinted my glasses were :D I sold it on ebay a couple of days later

    I still have a soft spot for Turbo C and write the occasional C program just for the fun of it
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    AlistairM said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Sandpit said:

    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.

    I am partial to the opening seconds of Duran Duran Girls on Film, featuring a 35mm camera with motor wind
    The buzzing sound of a dot-matrix printer is something you don't hear anymore. Or a room full of them.

    Or the clack-clack of a typing pool with manual typewriters (I am just about old enough to have heard that.)
    I have, bizarrely, inherited a dot matrix printer for a Commodore (most likely 64, google suggests). I wasn't aware she owned it and also - who keeps that but not the Commodore itself?

    Is there any prospect of it (a) working and (b) being able to connect it to a modern PC? PB crowd wisdom requested...

    She also left an disc drive for it, but I know the belts go in those so that's probably a bit much.
    You can, amazingly, still buy brand new dot matrix printers. There are still niche uses for them such as multi-part forms. No idea about the C64 printer but if it uses an old parallel or serial interface then you can get a USB adapter. Maybe there is a generic Windows driver for dot matrix printers?
    Indeed so. Accountants use them for cheque printing, and industrial control systems use them for printing logs and alarms in real time. I last installed one only a couple of years ago.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    Sandpit said:

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    Everyone is obsessing now about getting high-speed broadband fibre to rural areas, just as Starlink is about to go live.
    Starlink is an abominiation that will ruin the night sky for everyone.

    I'll get my hat and coat horse.... ;)
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594

    The Big Dog surely can't survive today....

    Are you sure that these moves by disgruntled MPs aren't in fact, a leverage play?

    Johnson is finally listening to his MPs. Wouldn't they be foolish to dump him now? On labour's agenda? When they have never had more leverage?

  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    edited January 2022
    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    1995 seems quite late for playing with fax machines.

    When I was at University, I worked for telecomms company Plessey (who had a very cool logo below) and already in the mid-1980s they had a product called Dataplug which was iirc a 9600 bps modem.

    Here is a reference from 1990 to the second generation of the product, which was already remaindered:
    http://www.verycomputer.com/19_8c104a9fe66d9172_1.htm


  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Sandpit said:

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    Everyone is obsessing now about getting high-speed broadband fibre to rural areas, just as Starlink is about to go live.
    Starlink is never going to be able to replace low latency fibre, it might be a good option for some people but I'd rather have a full fat gigabit connection from Hyperoptic.
  • El_CapitanoEl_Capitano Posts: 3,870

    Mr. Alan, I remember cassette tapes taking 30 minutes on an Amstrad.

    I used to read during the loading time.

    I trust your reading matter was that fine magazine, Amstrad Action.
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,394
    Scott_xP said:

    NEW: Tories facing wipe-out in Red Wall, losing 42 of 45 seats if election tomorrow, according to new poll.

    It suggests that Boris Johnson’s leadership is the biggest block on people voting Conservative.
    https://twitter.com/channel4news/status/1483742671218819081

    Funnily enough, I think that Boris's focus on Levelling-Up was a huge opportunity for the Tories to consolidate their position following the Brexit breakthrough. Whoever succeeds him needs to double-down on that, don a hard-hat, and get themselves to as many building sites in the North as possible. The success of Ben Houchen (Tees Valley Mayor) and the Hartlepool by-election are indications of how this could play out if the Tories resist the temptation to revert to type. And, let's face it, a less-than-scintillating London lawyer-type like Keir Starmer is not terribly well-placed to counter it.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059
    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    1995 seems quite late for playing with fax machines.

    When I was at University, I worked for telecomms company Plessey (who had a very cool logo below) and already in the mid-1980s they had a product called Dataplug which was iirc a 9600 bps modem.

    Here is a reference from 1990 to the second generation of the product, which was already remaindered:
    http://www.verycomputer.com/19_8c104a9fe66d9172_1.htm


    I was sending faxes to the Employment Tribunal as late as 2010. You got a receipt which was useful in case there was any argument about meeting time limits, which they have only relatively recently sorted out.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    Boris’ ratings have collapsed in the Red Wall. His rating is now at minus 35.

    More Conservative 2019 voters also say he is doing badly rather than well (minus 2).

    And he has lost the support of Leave voters, with 37% saying he is doing well and 57% that he is doing badly. (4)
    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1483742671617339396/photo/1
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Capitano, no, I was quite young at the time.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    1995 seems quite late for playing with fax machines.

    When I was at University, I worked for telecomms company Plessey (who had a very cool logo below) and already in the mid-1980s they had a product called Dataplug which was iirc a 9600 bps modem.

    Here is a reference from 1990 to the second generation of the product, which was already remaindered:
    http://www.verycomputer.com/19_8c104a9fe66d9172_1.htm


    Yeah. I wasn't on NetFax, but the whole project seemed odd. I was working on Internet Appliances (loads more stories in that...), and a few people were working on a Fax device. It felt a little like Elon Musk starting a horse-breeding company.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    MaxPB said:

    Sandpit said:

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    Everyone is obsessing now about getting high-speed broadband fibre to rural areas, just as Starlink is about to go live.
    Starlink is never going to be able to replace low latency fibre, it might be a good option for some people but I'd rather have a full fat gigabit connection from Hyperoptic.
    Agreed, but it will be good enough for the vast majority of rural households currently on 2mb connections. In the US, there are still an awful lot of people on dialup, or with a choice of one slow and expensive broadband provider.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    MaxPB said:

    Sandpit said:

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    Everyone is obsessing now about getting high-speed broadband fibre to rural areas, just as Starlink is about to go live.
    Starlink is never going to be able to replace low latency fibre, it might be a good option for some people but I'd rather have a full fat gigabit connection from Hyperoptic.
    I do suspect that OneWeb might have a better business model than Starlink.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,080
    edited January 2022
    DougSeal said:

    MattW said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    1995 seems quite late for playing with fax machines.

    When I was at University, I worked for telecomms company Plessey (who had a very cool logo below) and already in the mid-1980s they had a product called Dataplug which was iirc a 9600 bps modem.

    Here is a reference from 1990 to the second generation of the product, which was already remaindered:
    http://www.verycomputer.com/19_8c104a9fe66d9172_1.htm


    I was sending faxes to the Employment Tribunal as late as 2010. You got a receipt which was useful in case there was any argument about meeting time limits, which they have only relatively recently sorted out.
    Yes. I still have fax capability - unused recently :wink: .

    When he was getting enthusiastic about computers in the early 1980s (his first CAD system was in around 1984 on a 14" colour monitor and a PC-AT compatible with a 20Mb hard disk) he turned up one day with a thrown-out Philips Computer that had a teleprinter rather than a monitor, and the disk drive was in a unit the size of a tea trolley - in the belief that he could make it work.
  • ChameleonChameleon Posts: 3,886
    edited January 2022
    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1483742692345630725

    [Red Wall voters +- on politicians]

    Based on those stats, and the Con membership survey, the next PM market looks as good as sewn up, providing Sunak gets into the final 2. The submarine chancellor looks to have avoided any blame.
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,394

    IshmaelZ said:

    Tip for SKS

    Focus on claim Bojo tried to go and see queenie while infectious and Dom C stopped him. NOT a party claim so not vulnerable to the Wait for S Gray to report counter.

    That really would kill him stone dead

    Spot on.

    This is the absolute killer point. Johnson was willing to risk killing the elderly monarch out of pure laziness and selfishness.
    Would have been, had he gone. But he didn't. Doesn't really matter as Boris is a goner anyway. The parties before the Duke's funeral were the nails in the coffin according to John Curtice and I think he's probably right.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,848
    MISTY said:

    The Big Dog surely can't survive today....

    Are you sure that these moves by disgruntled MPs aren't in fact, a leverage play?

    Johnson is finally listening to his MPs. Wouldn't they be foolish to dump him now? On labour's agenda? When they have never had more leverage?
    This is more Cummings' agenda than Labour's. I think Labour would be happy to see him struggle on.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,848

    Mr. NorthWales, age can be tricky on the internet.

    Decades ago, I was mistaken by most users of another place as being most likely in my 50s or 60s. I was a teenager at the time.

    I'm not shocked by that. Morris.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. kinabalu, it's true, I've had an air of wisdom beyond my years for a long time :D
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,128

    Scott_xP said:

    NEW: Tories facing wipe-out in Red Wall, losing 42 of 45 seats if election tomorrow, according to new poll.

    It suggests that Boris Johnson’s leadership is the biggest block on people voting Conservative.
    https://twitter.com/channel4news/status/1483742671218819081

    Funnily enough, I think that Boris's focus on Levelling-Up was a huge opportunity for the Tories to consolidate their position following the Brexit breakthrough. Whoever succeeds him needs to double-down on that, don a hard-hat, and get themselves to as many building sites in the North as possible. The success of Ben Houchen (Tees Valley Mayor) and the Hartlepool by-election are indications of how this could play out if the Tories resist the temptation to revert to type. And, let's face it, a less-than-scintillating London lawyer-type like Keir Starmer is not terribly well-placed to counter it.
    SKS is not the only person in Labour. There are Northerners who will have the advantage of not being Londoners, if that is in fact important.
  • BurgessianBurgessian Posts: 2,394

    Heathener said:

    Incidentally, it's not just the cost of food. It's also the quality. I've really noticed some rubbish especially in fruit and veg.

    Like many people I take evasive action to avoid some of the creeping increases - some ready meals (my staple fare) remain cheap, but you have to avoid lazily sticking to what you usually get as the price nudges upwards. I do notice some sneaky unadvertised cuts in quantity, though tbh it's probably healthy to eat a bit less.
    Nick I think PB should club together to buy you a cook book.
    I find it baffling - and inordinately annoying - that a super-bright open-minded guy like Nick can’t be bothered to teach himself to cook. Ready meals are full of shit, and cooking should be something we all learn.

    I’d be up for making a donation to the Nick Cook Book Fund.
    There are good quality ready meals available from a supermarket near you. It's not just cheap meat, salt and sugar any more.
    Saw this in my coffee break - sympathy appreciated! I wouldn't normally chat about my private life but since you kindly ask - I've had some gentle tuition from Cyclefree and other friends and can now make an omelette and enjoy some pasta dishes, and occasionally do.

    But it's a trade-off. I've three paid jobs (the animal welfare day job, translation and Council exec), an unpaid job (CLP chair), and diverse fun interests (movies, computer games...). I enjoy them all, and although I also enjoy good food I'm OK with passable food. I give most of my income away (lingering traces of my communist past - to each according to need and all that) so I'm reluctant to give up the revenue as someone will lose out if I do, and nudging 72 I'm puzzlingly healthy - no issues whatever. I optimise by never spending more than 10 minutes on making a meal unless I'm in company, and eating it while doing something else. I know it's a bit odd and I don't urge it on anyone, but it works for me.
    Sympathise. Ever since I was a child I've been struck by the disparity between the time it takes to cook a decent meal and the time it takes to consume one. OK, if you actually enjoy the process of cooking, but I resent the time it takes and the hassle. Once in a while, fine, but every evening?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    If you are Rishi Sunak looking at this polling you might ponder that history is littered with potential prime ministers who waited for the perfect moment which never quite came. Inflation biting, tax rises coming: is he going to be this much more popular than his rivals for long? https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1483742692345630725
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,911

    IshmaelZ said:

    Tip for SKS

    Focus on claim Bojo tried to go and see queenie while infectious and Dom C stopped him. NOT a party claim so not vulnerable to the Wait for S Gray to report counter.

    That really would kill him stone dead

    Spot on.

    This is the absolute killer point. Johnson was willing to risk killing the elderly monarch out of pure laziness and selfishness.
    Would have been, had he gone. But he didn't. Doesn't really matter as Boris is a goner anyway. The parties before the Duke's funeral were the nails in the coffin according to John Curtice and I think he's probably right.
    Yup, that felt like the Millie Dowler phone hacking moment - when something comes out that you know deep in your guts that the British public simply won't stand for.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Tip for SKS

    Focus on claim Bojo tried to go and see queenie while infectious and Dom C stopped him. NOT a party claim so not vulnerable to the Wait for S Gray to report counter.

    That really would kill him stone dead

    Spot on.

    This is the absolute killer point. Johnson was willing to risk killing the elderly monarch out of pure laziness and selfishness.
    Would have been, had he gone. But he didn't. Doesn't really matter as Boris is a goner anyway. The parties before the Duke's funeral were the nails in the coffin according to John Curtice and I think he's probably right.
    The irony is that he wasn't there, he was at Chequers

    Ultimately everything from Paterson to wallpapergate, to partygate has caught him up
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,128

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    I was very surprised to read yesterday that HYUFD is only 40 years old!! I imagined him as an elderly major-type. Funny how such a young man can write like an old codger.
    I must admit I thought he was a lot older.

    I have no idea what he does as a job, but I get the impression that he'd be rather good at it.
    About 7 generations younger than some of us.
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089
    Sandpit said:

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    Everyone is obsessing now about getting high-speed broadband fibre to rural areas, just as Starlink is about to go live.
    For all its strengths in terms of bandwidth, Starlink has ~55ms latency, which is quite significant v. the 12-14ms of fibre. I think we should still be focused on getting ubiquitous optical networks to "rural" areas, many of which are not all that rural. While that may seem irrelevant today, it feels like a limitation we regret in a decade if we just abandon the rural fibre rollout.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,608

    MaxPB said:

    Sandpit said:

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    Everyone is obsessing now about getting high-speed broadband fibre to rural areas, just as Starlink is about to go live.
    Starlink is never going to be able to replace low latency fibre, it might be a good option for some people but I'd rather have a full fat gigabit connection from Hyperoptic.
    I do suspect that OneWeb might have a better business model than Starlink.
    Backhaul, rather than consumer - two different markets. Though Starling is definitely going to be doing backhaul as well. Think solar panel powered 5G towers in Africa etc....

    The main thing that OneWeb has going for it, is second to market.

    A lot of stuff in space tech is about *not* giving a monopoly to company/country X (ha!) - quite a bit of money is spent doing that.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited January 2022

    IshmaelZ said:

    Tip for SKS

    Focus on claim Bojo tried to go and see queenie while infectious and Dom C stopped him. NOT a party claim so not vulnerable to the Wait for S Gray to report counter.

    That really would kill him stone dead

    Spot on.

    This is the absolute killer point. Johnson was willing to risk killing the elderly monarch out of pure laziness and selfishness.
    Would have been, had he gone. But he didn't. Doesn't really matter as Boris is a goner anyway. The parties before the Duke's funeral were the nails in the coffin according to John Curtice and I think he's probably right.
    Yup, that felt like the Millie Dowler phone hacking moment - when something comes out that you know deep in your guts that the British public simply won't stand for.
    Quite a good example, because like the notation many have Boris being at the party before Duke's funeral, the report by the Guardian wasn't true.

    However, the underlying culture encouraged by the leadership was.
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,136
    MattW said:



    1995 seems quite late for playing with fax machines.

    Japanese people love to fax. It's their favourite thing apart from soy beans. Recently the minister Taro Kono tried to get the ministries to stop sending faxes. Then he tried to run for LDP leader. Needless to say he lost the leadership run, and has since been demoted.

    I have a kind of half a design for a fax-based cryptocurrency wallet system. Crypto is bringing a lot of old-school tech back, for example safety deposit boxes, since nobody knows how to secure a computer.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    Heathener said:

    Incidentally, it's not just the cost of food. It's also the quality. I've really noticed some rubbish especially in fruit and veg.

    Like many people I take evasive action to avoid some of the creeping increases - some ready meals (my staple fare) remain cheap, but you have to avoid lazily sticking to what you usually get as the price nudges upwards. I do notice some sneaky unadvertised cuts in quantity, though tbh it's probably healthy to eat a bit less.
    Nick I think PB should club together to buy you a cook book.
    I find it baffling - and inordinately annoying - that a super-bright open-minded guy like Nick can’t be bothered to teach himself to cook. Ready meals are full of shit, and cooking should be something we all learn.

    I’d be up for making a donation to the Nick Cook Book Fund.
    There are good quality ready meals available from a supermarket near you. It's not just cheap meat, salt and sugar any more.
    Saw this in my coffee break - sympathy appreciated! I wouldn't normally chat about my private life but since you kindly ask - I've had some gentle tuition from Cyclefree and other friends and can now make an omelette and enjoy some pasta dishes, and occasionally do.

    But it's a trade-off. I've three paid jobs (the animal welfare day job, translation and Council exec), an unpaid job (CLP chair), and diverse fun interests (movies, computer games...). I enjoy them all, and although I also enjoy good food I'm OK with passable food. I give most of my income away (lingering traces of my communist past - to each according to need and all that) so I'm reluctant to give up the revenue as someone will lose out if I do, and nudging 72 I'm puzzlingly healthy - no issues whatever. I optimise by never spending more than 10 minutes on making a meal unless I'm in company, and eating it while doing something else. I know it's a bit odd and I don't urge it on anyone, but it works for me.
    Sympathise. Ever since I was a child I've been struck by the disparity between the time it takes to cook a decent meal and the time it takes to consume one. OK, if you actually enjoy the process of cooking, but I resent the time it takes and the hassle. Once in a while, fine, but every evening?
    I quite like cooking, but if it's just for myself then I find there're other things I'd much rather be doing. If I'm cooking for several people (say Mrs J and the little 'un) then it's much more enjoyable. I just put a YouTube video on my mobile and watch it as I cook.

    I think cooking for one is much harder than for several family members.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    🚨NEW Westminster Voting Intention

    📈9pt lead for Labour

    🌳Con 32 (=)
    🌹Lab 41 (-1)
    🔶LDM 11 (=)
    🌍Grn 4 (=)
    🎗️SNP 5 (+1)
    ◻️Other 8 (+1)

    2,166 UK adults, 14-16 Jan

    (Changes from 13-14 Jan) https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1483754288123949057/photo/1
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,564
    Sandpit said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Sandpit said:

    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.

    I am partial to the opening seconds of Duran Duran Girls on Film, featuring a 35mm camera with motor wind
    You watched that video for the bit about the old film camera?

    That’s like saying that @TheScreamingEagles watches his favourite video hub, to compare hotel furniture. ;)
    It's a Nikon.
    I think there's a 'Blad in there somewhere, too.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited January 2022
    Boris official online campaign officer going into bat for him...the spin being it is a BBC / Guardian / Mirror trap to junk the Tories most successful asset. The Tory MPs surely not buying this.

    https://order-order.com/2022/01/19/whats-the-plan/
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,059

    DougSeal said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    Wowsers.

    Boris Johnson partygate crisis: Poll gives Labour 32-point lead in London

    Exclusive: Eight Tory MPs could lose their seats in London if bombshell poll is replicated at next General Election


    https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/yougov-poll-labour-lead-london-boris-johnson-party-downing-st-plan-b-b977489.html

    Not that surprising given London, especially Inner London, was Remain central. The only reason most Tory MPs in Remain seats in London in 2019 held their seats was to keep out Corbyn, wealthy Remainers see Starmer as much less of a threat.

    Tories doing a bit better in Outer London though were a few areas like Hillingdon, Bexley and Havering voted Leave on 25% than Inner London, where every borough voted Remain and the Tories are on just 18%. That suggests the Tories could not only lose Wandsworth and Barnet in May but even lose Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea on a really bad night
    Last Starmer interview I read said that there was no question of Rejoining in his mind. We were OUT, end of.

    What that suggests is that, in his mind, apart from a few committed Europeans like myself banging on about it, he doesn't expect the EU to be an issue at the next, and indeed next but one election.

    So whether an area was Leave or Remain in 2016 will be immaterial. The issue will be the Governments overall competence.
    For Remainers the best policy is to sit tight for a while. The economy is clearly on a lower growth path post-Brexit and people will increasingly notice. Wait for about five years and there will be a clear majority for rejoin, or at least for EEA membership. That's the time to organise a vote to make it happen. In the meantime, just sit back and let Brexit fail on its own. Don't create a stabbed in the back myth for Brexiteers by hastening its end.
    Yes, pretty soon we will see that the lying bunch of chancers weren't suddenly competent at trade and foreign policy, but screwed that up too.

    Lib Dems will push for SM membership, but not Rejoin in the short term. The SNP, PC and SF will be for their nations to Rejoin as independent states.

    Ultimately the biggest obstacle to Rejoin will be the break up of the UK. Without Scotland and NI the hurdle to Rejoin gets a lot higher.
    Or being completely surrounded by EU states may change the calculation for a lot of people.
    Hmm. Strange definition of completely surrounded given that our largest border by far will continue to be with the sea. And being completely surrounded by EU countries doesn't seem to have made the Swiss more pro-EU. Quite the reverse in fact.
    Unless you are a very strong swimmer the sea border thing is not really relevant. Spain's longest border is also with the sea, ditto Italy's. Unlike those countries, you won't easily be able to leave the rUK without entering EU waters or airspace unless you take a very narrow corridor over Cornwall. The landlocked position of Switzerland is ameliorated by the fact it is in the Schengen area. That is an element of EU integration we didn't even subscribe to when we were in, so its absence from the EU has no practical day-to-day effects.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    Sandpit said:

    You watched that video for the bit about the old film camera?

    That’s like saying that @TheScreamingEagles watches his favourite video hub, to compare hotel furniture. ;)

    I listened to the track for a sound that millennials can't identify...
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    Carnyx said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    Sandpit said:

    @Sandpit in 2018 the average monthly phone bill, according to OFCOM was £45.60 per month. It’s probably higher now.

    We’ve had this debate before and how some networks separate the phone payment plan and the phone plan, but not all by any stretch of the imagination.

    So your “couple of quid” is actually £5, which is not insignificant.

    Maybe it’s just mine that’s a tiny phone bill then!

    Tesco Mobile charges £7.50 for unlimited calls, SMS and 2GB/month data. If you prefer 10GB data, it’s £11 a month.
    https://www.tescomobile.com/shop/sim-only-deals/sim-only-contracts
    2GB of data is nowt. Even 10GB is fairly low.
    I work in IT, and use about 500MB/month of data on average.
    Yeah but I bet you don’t watch Tik Tok or YouTube for hours a day.
    ... while not in range of a wifi you can use.

    Who the hell needs to do that in this day and age?
    My girlfriend uses many gigabytes a day listening to Spotify at work because they’re not allowed to have personal devices on WiFi
    Does she not know there’s a download button on Spotify?
    You can’t download the entire Spotify catalogue
    I have a hundred hours or so of playlists downloaded, for commuting and office listening over a couple of weeks.

    This is fascinating, today’s youngsters have apparently never known mobile data scarcity, so they are running through hundreds of gigs of data a month.

    How much energy could we save, if they all stop doing that? And the crypto mining of course.
    I’m 30 in a few weeks. Data hasn’t been scarce for at least 5+ years. Its there to be used.
    I’m 44, and remember when GPRS was a new thing, and Blackberry made millions from their data compression algorithms and corporate device management software so that people could check their emails.

    I use the mobile data for Signal, iMessage, email, sat nav, google and occasionally PB.
    Acorn (well, Pace at that time...) had a project to make a fax compressor. You attach the unit to your fax machine, and it would compress the data before sending, to allow another unit to decompress it at the other end.

    We were doing the work for a client, but AIUI there was an argument over patents (not at our end), and by the time that was nearly resolved, faxes had gone right out of fashion.

    I've a working unit in the garage. Not a prototype; a fully boxed unit with manual.

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Edit: this is it: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/46352/Daytona-Netfax-NFX101/ Oddly, I know who the donor of that unit is from his description. ;)
    Very cool. Today’s kids can I guess add a modem handshaking noise, to the long list of things they won’t ever have heard.
    Can you guess the age of a person by the speed of their first modem? Mine was 14.4k...
    I was very surprised to read yesterday that HYUFD is only 40 years old!! I imagined him as an elderly major-type. Funny how such a young man can write like an old codger.
    I must admit I thought he was a lot older.

    I have no idea what he does as a job, but I get the impression that he'd be rather good at it.
    About 7 generations younger than some of us.
    I see what you did there... ;)
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    edited January 2022

    Boris official online campaign officer going into bat for him...the spin being it is a BBC / Guardian / Mirror trap to junk the Tories most successful asset. The Tory MPs surely not buying this.

    https://order-order.com/2022/01/19/whats-the-plan/

    Is that where @HYUFD

    is getting his instructions from ?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,128
    o/T but for @JosiasJessop and any other PB cartophiles - a sad story about an Ordnance surveyor

    https://www.nls.uk/media/ruoc4x1q/cairt40.pdf

    Near Holborn Head is "is a small
    monument indicating the position from whence the
    late Captain Slater is supposed to have fallen. The
    horse's foot marks, and a riding whip found the
    next morning at the brink of the precipice, led to
    the conclusion that such had been his untimely
    end, for no traces of him were ever discovered."

    But there was more to it ...

    (The National Library of Scotland has a really good map section on its website, including E&W Ordnance maps as well as the primarily Scottish stuff.)
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,608

    It's surprising how fast tech can go out of fashion.

    Not just tech. In 1900 the big issue was the projected exponential increase in the need for horses in cities (because of population changes). The problem was what to do with all the horse poop.

    By 1910, no one was using horses....
    I met a chap, once, a long while back, who was methodically building a Dreyer Table as his home project......

    1910 retro computing.

    Apparently, the original manual included instruction for what to do if all else failed, went something like

    - Switch off the power.
    - Wait for the machine to stop.
    - Move all the controls to the start/0 position.
    - Check all the plugs by plugging them and plugging them in again.
    - Switch the power back on.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    Heathener said:

    Incidentally, it's not just the cost of food. It's also the quality. I've really noticed some rubbish especially in fruit and veg.

    Like many people I take evasive action to avoid some of the creeping increases - some ready meals (my staple fare) remain cheap, but you have to avoid lazily sticking to what you usually get as the price nudges upwards. I do notice some sneaky unadvertised cuts in quantity, though tbh it's probably healthy to eat a bit less.
    Nick I think PB should club together to buy you a cook book.
    I find it baffling - and inordinately annoying - that a super-bright open-minded guy like Nick can’t be bothered to teach himself to cook. Ready meals are full of shit, and cooking should be something we all learn.

    I’d be up for making a donation to the Nick Cook Book Fund.
    There are good quality ready meals available from a supermarket near you. It's not just cheap meat, salt and sugar any more.
    Saw this in my coffee break - sympathy appreciated! I wouldn't normally chat about my private life but since you kindly ask - I've had some gentle tuition from Cyclefree and other friends and can now make an omelette and enjoy some pasta dishes, and occasionally do.

    But it's a trade-off. I've three paid jobs (the animal welfare day job, translation and Council exec), an unpaid job (CLP chair), and diverse fun interests (movies, computer games...). I enjoy them all, and although I also enjoy good food I'm OK with passable food. I give most of my income away (lingering traces of my communist past - to each according to need and all that) so I'm reluctant to give up the revenue as someone will lose out if I do, and nudging 72 I'm puzzlingly healthy - no issues whatever. I optimise by never spending more than 10 minutes on making a meal unless I'm in company, and eating it while doing something else. I know it's a bit odd and I don't urge it on anyone, but it works for me.
    Sympathise. Ever since I was a child I've been struck by the disparity between the time it takes to cook a decent meal and the time it takes to consume one. OK, if you actually enjoy the process of cooking, but I resent the time it takes and the hassle. Once in a while, fine, but every evening?
    If you strip out the time I spend working and sleeping, that leaves me with roughly 8 hours a day. Of that time, I reckon I probably spend around one hour a day cooking - i.e. one eighth of my available time. Add in the time spent acquiring the food to cook, and clearing up afterwards, and you're easily up to about 20% of your life just on the process of feeding your family. (Considerably more during lockdown when there were 105 meals a week in our house needed preparing (3 meals a day, for 5 people, 7 days a week) - that was exhausting!)
    But most animals spend most of their waking hours in the process of obtaining the calories they need to stay alive. They don't even have the option of making things delicious.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    No.10 spokesman: “The story about Boris crying is completely untrue”.
    https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1483755610382417927
This discussion has been closed.