h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

EST should be 5 hours behind BST.
So it should be 7.48 pm there, now.
Someone's late pulling ou the plug.

It went off like five minutes I posted, so I know now!

It was 10:30am!!!

It was?
I was around online at about 9AM, and saw the message stating DNA was offline, on my h2g2 Conversations sidebar embedded into Opera - but that was probably there from about midnight, since that page doesn't automatically refresh like the Conversations page does.

(That's GMT)

You would have got the downtime page the first time it refreshed after it went up, and because the downtime page has no refresh, it would have sat there all night.

According to my calculations, the site was down for approximately four hours, from 12:50am onwards.

Yep. That's what I meant.

Let's hope that the new SSO and the forthcoming new DNA solve all the issues.

I pay for this az.

But you are right it is difficult to complain, when the complaints for the bbc are handled by the bbc! I have an ongoing complaints issue (relating to news coverage) which I don't even get a reply to, thats how they deal with complaints at the bbc, they just don't reply! They can get away with that because of the way they manage themselves, due to the unique way they are funded.

Oh joy.

How do you pay for it, Kaz?

Grey Desk mentioned I could pay for a BBC tv license if I wanted to. I did pay for a tv license when I lived in England which was for, um, tv. I didn't have to pay to listen to BBC radio. And it would seem that people in England don't have to pay for the h2g2 service either. Please correct me if I am wrong.

az

All bbc services are paid for from the tv licence. Even if you never watch terrestrial tv, you have to have a tv licence. Its actually a licence to own a tv, not one to watch bbc, although all the money goes to the bbc.

Yet I could have listened to BBC radio without any license at all. And I am assuming that people can access h2g2 without having paid a tv license - or am I wrong?

az

sorry, I am mis-spelling licence!

az

The money comes solely from the licence on having a tv, it funds all bbc services. There is no fee for radios, internet usage etc.

Well of course you can access h2g2 without a licence. You're a case in point az

GreyDesk,

Do UK people need to have a BBC tv licence to access h2g2?

az

Actually there was a time when you did need a licence to listen to BBC radio. That was donkeys years ago before the rise of television. The licence for radio services was phased out in the early 1970s.

azahar, up until some time in the 1980s, the TV licence explicitly included a radio licence; before that, it was illegal to have a radio in your home unless you had at least a black-and-white TV licence. Before the advent of the TV licence, in the hey-dey of the valve radio, the radio licence was a one-off payment that was required for every new receiver, and took the form of a 2" long metal (later plastic) badge that you nailed on to the back of the cabinet.

Also, it's still illegal to have a silver teaspoon in your house (or pretty much any other form of metal cutlery ) without a TV licence, as the current wording states a licence is required for the ownership of apparatus able to *receive* TV signals. (As opposed to *display* TV signals... )

Simulpost!

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Oh, come now! I mean, honestly.

Do people in the UK have to have a BBC television licence to access h2g2? This is my question.

az

Nope.