Posts by AndrueC

Re: Hmm

Strangely compelling viewing as well. Not a bad way to make a living.

Re: Dig deeper !

Isn't there a mission planned, or perhaps completed, to unearth the remains/core of the lump that fell at Tunguska?

There have been several. None have found anything yet.

http://burro.case.edu/Academics/USNA229/tunguska.pdf

Re: 10,000 tons

I should think it was pretty clear from the context, data being from NASA and all.

Pity it wasn't 'tonnes'. Mind you there's not a lot of difference - especially if it hits you on the bonce.

Re: Freesat is on a different frequency

Ahem. It's not always the case that..

That's true. I wasn't aware of the Babe Station difference but if I remember correctly C5 used to be broadcast on two frequencies as well. Or was it C4 HD? Something to do with lack of capacity on the old Astra 2D satellite meaning they had to use Eurobird. Then when another broadcaster (the BBC?) lent them some of their 2D capacity the contract on Eurobird continued.

The reason Freesat can't use capacity on Eurobird is because it covers all of Western Europe (maybe into Eastern as well?). Broadcasting unencrypted on it means writing a big cheque to the rights holders. With Astra 2D the footprint is more or less restricted to the UK so rights holders don't charge as much.

Edit:Wow. Obviously I'm too busy working to keep up with these discussions. I posted almost the same thing as someone else an exact hour later.

Re: We can't annoy the farmers!

"this is a budget for growth .... if you are a french cow"!

But bad news for the Romanian horse industry :)

Re: This

> You can do those things with css in a browser, it doesn't need an app.

Not many do though. So the gist of Jason 7's argument "Your browser is crap, mine isn't, nyah, nyah" is not appropriate. It would be more appropriate to say "Reliance on specific apps for web services just reinforces the fact that web designers rarely bother to design their sites for optimum use on a small mobile device".

For what it's worth I don't like the idea of 'apps'. Never have. Even the terminology stinks. I fundamentally agree that a web browser should be all you need. That was supposed to be what made 'the web' so wonderful. I've been working with computers since the early 80s so I thought we were making progress and moving away from dedicated applications.

Unfortunately the proliferation of different browsers, the corruption of (or failure to adhere to) good standards and possibly developer laziness mean that ship seems to have sailed for now. My experience is that in a lot of cases a dedicated 'app' offers a better experience than using a generic browser. Things shouldn't be that way - but they are, and I don't think it's because 'your browser is better than mine'.

reinforces the fact your web browser isn't a proper grown up one with all the features.

What web browser features can fix the fact that my 46 year old eyes struggle to read text on my phone or that my fingers (not fat fingers either) sometimes hit the wrong link? I mean, yes, I can zoom in but the page layout doesn't always lend itself to that. It either mucks up the text(*) or else I have to zoom back out to navigate or to reach a button.

Do any browsers support orientation detection? Properly, I mean, not just re-flowing the text. A dedicate app will often adopt an entirely different layout in horizontal mode than vertical mode. Putting buttons along the top instead of down the side for instance.

Perhaps all of that could be done in a browser if HTML supports it but how many web designers actually do bother to think about that kind of thing? It's second nature for a phone developer but the most you can really expect a web page to do is flow properly so that page items aren't obscuring other page items.

(*)I don't mean corrupted, merely that the way it ends up being wrapped is unhelpful. Harder to read and/or puts hot links close together so it's a bugger to tap on the right one.

Re: This

Other than off-line access, I don't see the point of separate apps for web sites.

Often it makes them more readable by having a better layout. Having bigger text and bigger buttons and being able to adjust properly for vertical/horizontal viewing can make life a lot easier - especially if you are over 40 and your eyes are starting to go.

> but the one with two tails was Hale-Bopp in 1997

Ah, my mistake then. I thought I had the year right but obviously not. I'm very good at time but anything more than a month ago gets a bit hazy :)

Re: U nit

I hate 'Kft'. It seems to me that if people want to stick with ancient non-metric systems that have more than one unit for length that's their hard cheese. If they want the convenience of having only one unit to measure the same type of quantity they should go metric. They should prolly also be banned from using decimals. Make them use fractions like wot their grandpappy did. That'll learn 'em :)

> It's a minefield trying to find a decent provider who doesn't throttle

Nah, it's easy. Look for a package that costs more than £30 a month. IDNet, AAISP, Zen.. It's only a minefield if you are also looking for the cheapest ;)

Re: A nice lady rang me up the other day...

Virgin fibre at end of garden? You mean you have an actual VM node outside your house? Or were you not aware that VM's offering is no more 'Fibre to the premises' than BT's? Both services terminate the fibre some distance from your property then rely on copper to connect to your premises.

VM's uses a coax loop which is good because it can carry more data but bad because it's shared by multiple properties.

BT's uses twisted pair which is bad because it is more bandwidth limited but good because you're not sharing it with anyone.

VM's system also has issues with upstream signalling and that's why they can't compete with FTTC on upload.

Re: Unlimited until...

The exchange might have the bandwidth but I bet each cab is substantially less.

Hmm, that's a good point actually so I'll correct what I posted. You could be impacted by other users in your immediate neighbourhood. But it's unclear I think. Everyone has to use the cab to exchange link (even LLUOs) and BT at one point stated that they would guarantee the bandwidth from cab to exchange. But they have also put a 'best efforts' figure on it. With FTTP on demand being released this year I assume they are confident that the cab to exchange link can easily be upgraded.

Looking here shows the cab to handover as being 'Direct fibre multiple GigE links' so that's a lot of capacity.

Didn't realise it was such a contentious issue

Was that supposed to be some kind of geeky, engineer in-joke? It's not bad if it was :)

Re: Unlimited until...

In throughput as seen at your premises, no. HD streaming as offered by Sky and BBC is only a few megabits a second so barely raises a sweat for a 76Mb/s connection. Even broadcast quality HD streams are only a dozen Mb/s so again would not bother your connection.

However this article is basically about congestion and the impact on it of HD streaming. That isn't down to your specific circumstances. It's down to the local and/or national usage patterns. You have to realise that if BT know that 1,000 people have 76Mb/s connections on your exchange they won't have allocated 76Gb/s of backhaul (76Mb/s * 1,000). That would be 1:1 contention and you're not going to get that on a residential service.

No BT will have provisioned somewhat less than that. The trick for them is to decide how much less. It's very much a black art. Just working out the current requirements is tricky. Then you have to account for growth patterns and spikes in usage. This is where ISPs control their profit margin. You never want to have spare capacity but equally you have to accept that for large parts of the day the network will be underutilised. It's a nightmare shared by road planners.

You wait untill everyone in your street starts streaming HD on a few devices. Contention is the bane of all networks...

Since the poster appears to have FTTC other people on the street are not the problem (setting aside minor crosstalk impact). It's other people on their exchange (ie; anyone else in the town) that matters. And of course everything from there on back to the ISP. And the ISP interconnects.