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

Ok Lil, you get the Pizza, and I'll go down the off licence and see if I can get some decent beer and a few bottles of caffine based, heavily carbonated, soft drink.
As for the infrastructure in the UK the core networks for all network providers are fibre, and with lots of indications that they're moving to WDM (wavelength division multiplexing) and dense-WDM in order to get more out of the installed base, due to the high growth rate of data trafic. The subscriber lines are still copper, unless you pay through the nose for a high bandwidth link.
Not sure about why no fibre to the home, or what if any of fibre to the kerb. The usual reasons given are cost, complexity of equipment.
There was a short lived trial of data over mains power cabling, but that has been closed and the companies aren't continuing with it in the UK.
It's a real shame Ionica went down the pan as they had fixed radio access which could have been good - if they could get the bandwidth out of it.

Ionica was \cheap/. I wouldn't worry about my H2G2 addiction if I still had ionica, I had 2 lines! They seem to have gone bust by squandering their investment money on stuff that didn't pay off. I've no idea what. The phones worked fine, and they understood customer service. (see previous bt rants)

Fibre to home would cost a lot of money, we all know that. However, BT have an >enormouse< amount of money and the gov. say they are committed to getting the UK online. Whats the hold up?

The most important question tho., is what are buffalo wings? If the US have flying cows, why can't we have flying pigs??? I demand an investiagtion!

H&K
Z

Ionica going bust was to do with them telling their bankers that they would have loads of subscribers, which they didn't get and so the roll out was delayed, less subscribers and so on. That and something to do with trying to get a rewrite of the software that controlled the main stations (nortel I think) to get more bandwidth, which again came at the wrong point.
Seems like a classic case of trying to get everything too quickly and failing. As you say Zed, they did seem to be able to do most things well except expand.

Buffalo wings if I remeber correctly should be spicy chiken wings, why buffalo though I don't know.

Phil's right, buffalo wings are spicy chicken wings, finger food extremely popular in bars (pubs), and usually served in baskets with celery and blue cheese dressing. You can get them in batches of 10,20, 30 etc., and in strengths from mild to nuclear. And you can get them to take out.

USA -- the latest technology in finger food!

In spain and other places they call such things 'Tapas', and serve many, many different kinds.

But they never, ever attempt to pass them off as snails feet or fishes ears. They just call things as they are, only in spanish.

Celery & blue cheese - ew!

H&K
Z

uurrrgg Celery, the devil's own veg. An ambonimation in the food world. I am commited to eradicated.

Talking of being commited, I am taking a 4 day holiday from the Internet, to be taught about intranets, so don't take my absence as a addicts going straight.

Keep talking

Chris

No worries mate. Have fun!

H&K
Z

We seem to have stopped talking, have we ignored Phil's advice or has everyone but me managed to kick the habit?

I think we're all in denial ATM, waiting for the fear to surface, like a random and expensive shark...

H&K
Z

*twitch* I Seem to have some nervous problem

*twitch arm flies and spills Zed's drink*

Over 4 days, with no H2G2, hey i coped, artichoke rabbit, this is not a daffodil, where was I, oh yes i coped, no problem, I can give up any time,

arrrrrrggggggg, 4 days on a USA keyboard @2"" wots going on where am I, 4 days of Intranet, 4 days of it!!!!!!!!!

More drink anyone?

Chris

You were offline for FOUR DAYS? No wonder it's been so quiet around here.

Hey, what's wrong with an American keyboard? Are you Japanese?

If you drink Mexican beer, I have a case of Corona here under my chair.
Lil

I realise the topic of this conversation has strayed a bit, but I'll throw in my two cents anyway.

Here in British Columbia, I recently got an ADSL line installed in my apartment. It's a 2.5 mB/s connection and I'm currently getting almost exactly 2.0mB/s. I'm paying CAD $39.95/month for it (unlimitied bandwidth). That's about USD $26/month, or about 16 pounds/month. Pretty good deal, despite recent connection problems, (which seem to be all fixed now).

Is there any ham & pineapple pizza left? I'm rather partial to ham & pineapple.

Oh yes. And I'm an H2G2 addict. There's just no denying it anymore.

Denial is good. Denial is fine. I've never heard of h2g2. What is this denial? I don't know what you're taliking about.

Do I know you?

@ok heres whats wrong with US keyboardss@ or that should have read "ok heres whats wrong with US keyboardss", @ and " are transposed, the ~ is in the top left somewhere instead of next to the enter key, The ¦ key is somewhere else as well, THERE IS NO £ (pound) sign, myself and my team mate rebeled against ther excersises using the $ sign instead we used the &#8364; (Euro) sign.

But I'm back from the city and the States based training company, and logged on 4 time in less than 12 hours so "Do I have a problem?"

Chris

(in case this is out of order and thus incomprehensible this is in regard to the tv licence thingy)

over here we not only have to have licences for tvs, but if you don't have a tv you have to licence your radios. i am serious.

span
another hopeless h2g2 addict

Yipe. Pay for a radio license? i suppose you could add to that the places that have coin-operated electricity/heat. I'd never even heard of such a thing until I spent a week in London on vacation. Now that's just plain wierd.

apparently there's a superloo somewhere in small town NZ which is
a) considered a tourist attraction
b) coin operated
c) time sensitive - ie if you don't get out/put more coins in in time you get cleaned with the rest of the superloo.

oh i bet there's a queue for that one.

span

OK, so I do a bit of h2g2 now and again. I can handle it...
Oh, what's the point in denying it? I too am hopelessly hooked - I mean, I'm writing this at 5:15am on Sunday morning, for Chrissakes. h2g2 has screwed up my sleep patterns!
I'm going up to Bradford on Friday to spend a few days with my parents. I'm looking forward to it a lot, but I am seriously worried about missing my h2g2 fix. So if any West Yorkshire researchers know of a good Internet cafe in Bradford or Leeds, please let me know!