Things that annoy you beyond reason...(Vol. 6)

[nonsequitur]

SCEtoAUX said:

Europa1 said:

Maybe swap U-47 for U-9?

U-571 for me. Best war film ever made...

The one with Jon Bon-Jovi ?

[RizzoTheRat]

I'm at Circe du Soleil (in the interval!). Despite signs everywhere about not taking photos I can't believe how many people have been taking pictures, often with flash on. Impressed how quickly the front of house staff have been running about telling them to stop though.

[George Smiley]

The bullst theory that women are some how disadvantaged.

For 20 years every senior manager has been female
I now put on the BBC, its 2 female presenters, cutting to an on the road reporter (female) who is interviewing the CEO of British Oil and Gas (female).

This will be followed by the sports, female presenter, you no longer get two men on screen its 2 women or a man and a woman. Then its Victoria Derbyshire, Now the weather is on, a woman presenter. I'll get pissed off so will put the radio on, then its womans fking hour.

[anonymous-user]

Sky.

My mobile was on a 2 year 'swap' update deal with Sky mobile (part of a TV/Phone/wifi bundle), and so after 2 years they e-mailed me suggesting I should 'upgrade' - I wasn't really bothered (it's just a 'phone), but after multiple e-mails from them , I took a look and set up a swap for a new Xperia. Except that 2 year deal isn't really a 2 year deal, and it appears I still owe them £58.

Lying shysters.

I agree to send my previous Xperia back to them as part of the swap, and that was valued by them on-line at, surprise, surprise, £58. New phone arrives along with pre-paid packaging to send my old one back to them, which I duly do.

Got an e-mail yesterday telling me that my old one wasn't actually worth £58, because it had a scratch on the case edge. E-mail explains my options are to give them £28, or they would re-instate my old agreement so I would have two agreements, and bills, running concurrently, for a minimum of the next 12 months.

Lying, fking snidey money-grabbing tts. Over a barrel.

Then the the aholes send me an e-mail offering insurance to cover my new phone - seems really great value at £8/month damage cover, an additional £5/month for theft, and a compulsory £75 excess. Erm, no thank you, you money-grabbing tts.

I abhore Sky.

[Etypephil]

George Smiley said:

The bullst theory that women are some how disadvantaged.

For 20 years every senior manager has been female
I now put on the BBC, its 2 female presenters, cutting to an on the road reporter (female) who is interviewing the CEO of British Oil and Gas (female).

This will be followed by the sports, female presenter, you no longer get two men on screen its 2 women or a man and a woman. Then its Victoria Derbyshire, Now the weather is on, a woman presenter. I'll get pissed off so will put the radio on, then its womans fking hour.

In all fairness to the BBC, it does also feature male homosexuals, some are also disabled, and from ethnic minorities; a hat trick.

[ChevyChase77]

George Smiley said:

The bullst theory that women are some how disadvantaged.

For 20 years every senior manager has been female
I now put on the BBC, its 2 female presenters, cutting to an on the road reporter (female) who is interviewing the CEO of British Oil and Gas (female).

This will be followed by the sports, female presenter, you no longer get two men on screen its 2 women or a man and a woman. Then its Victoria Derbyshire, Now the weather is on, a woman presenter. I'll get pissed off so will put the radio on, then its womans fking hour.

Ahh and the women's football (England v Germany) with an all female punditry team.

[V8mate]

had ham said:

Sky.

My mobile was on a 2 year 'swap' update deal with Sky mobile (part of a TV/Phone/wifi bundle), and so after 2 years they e-mailed me suggesting I should 'upgrade' - I wasn't really bothered (it's just a 'phone), but after multiple e-mails from them , I took a look and set up a swap for a new Xperia. Except that 2 year deal isn't really a 2 year deal, and it appears I still owe them £58.

Lying shysters.

I agree to send my previous Xperia back to them as part of the swap, and that was valued by them on-line at, surprise, surprise, £58. New phone arrives along with pre-paid packaging to send my old one back to them, which I duly do.

Got an e-mail yesterday telling me that my old one wasn't actually worth £58, because it had a scratch on the case edge. E-mail explains my options are to give them £28, or they would re-instate my old agreement so I would have two agreements, and bills, running concurrently, for a minimum of the next 12 months.

Lying, fking snidey money-grabbing tts. Over a barrel.

Then the the aholes send me an e-mail offering insurance to cover my new phone - seems really great value at £8/month damage cover, an additional £5/month for theft, and a compulsory £75 excess. Erm, no thank you, you money-grabbing tts.

I abhore Sky.

Consider yourself fortunate that you have a market's worth of choice.

There'll be none of that once Corbyn Telekomski is the only permissible communications organisation.

[George Smiley]

Now on Radio 5live, female presenter.

I am not against females at all, its just seeming as if the male demonisation has reached a level we are worthless.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

George Smiley said:

Now on Radio 5live, female presenter.

I am not against females at all, its just seeming as if the male demonisation has reached a level we are worthless.

Don't be so melodramatic.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

[redacted]

[nonsequitur]

ChevyChase77 said:

George Smiley said:

The bullst theory that women are some how disadvantaged.

For 20 years every senior manager has been female
I now put on the BBC, its 2 female presenters, cutting to an on the road reporter (female) who is interviewing the CEO of British Oil and Gas (female).

This will be followed by the sports, female presenter, you no longer get two men on screen its 2 women or a man and a woman. Then its Victoria Derbyshire, Now the weather is on, a woman presenter. I'll get pissed off so will put the radio on, then its womans fking hour.

Ahh and the women's football (England v Germany) with an all female punditry team.

They think it's all women...It is now!

(Sorry Kenneth).

[Shakermaker]

[redacted]

[ChevyChase77]

We have some rather scummy neighbours.

I saw the women in B&M yesterday knowing full well I've seen her park her car in disabled spaces in supermarkets before. I come out of B&M and there it is! Her car in the nearest disabled space to the store.

I also saw her daughters car in Tesco disabled space a while back - and when I was walking in the shop there she was walking out.

[anonymous-user]

[redacted]

[Clockwork Cupcake]

[redacted]

[AstonZagato]

[redacted]

[nonsequitur]

ChevyChase77 said:

We have some rather scummy neighbours.

I saw the women in B&M yesterday knowing full well I've seen her park her car in disabled spaces in supermarkets before. I come out of B&M and there it is! Her car in the nearest disabled space to the store.

I also saw her daughters car in Tesco disabled space a while back - and when I was walking in the shop there she was walking out.

Truly awful parking. Next time you see them, give chase, Chevy.

[TheInsanity1234]

V8mate said:

Consider yourself fortunate that you have a market's worth of choice.

There'll be none of that once Corbyn Telekomski is the only permissible communications organisation.

I was under the impression that Corbyn wasn't planning on creating a government monopoly over the internet, just that he would provide a free baseline of FTTP broadband to all, and then if anyone wanted faster internet/more bandwidth, they could go into the private sector and pay for better speeds etc. Same concept as the NHS as it were, a nationalised health service, but they won't prevent private competitors from setting up a higher quality service that'd cost you money, just ensuring that everyone has access to free at the point of use healthcare!

Nothing to do with state control, just changing the expectation on basic human rights. It's now 2019, I'm pretty sure the UN believe that every person should have a right of access to the internet, I'd have to do some googling on that.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

TheInsanity1234 said:

I was under the impression that Corbyn wasn't planning on creating a government monopoly over the internet, just that he would provide a free baseline of FTTP broadband to all

And when the government control the infrastructure, at a level above the ISPs, then how do you think that's going to go with respect to RIPA / Snooper's Charter / ECHELON / PRISM / etc?

[captain_cynic]

had ham said:

5G will mostly render fibre/cable broadband worthless. However infrastructure roll-out across the UK (for both wavebands) will take a bloody long time, as the requirements are much more significant than the current 4G network. 5G will utilise Millimeter waves where range is reduced vs 4G microwaves, and it is effectively 'line of sight', so hills/buildings, etc, present a problem, so far more (albeit much smaller) antennas are required.

Quite an undertaking!

I heard the same argument over 4G... and over 3G which never killed landline broadband... They all failed for the same basic reasons.
1. Limited frequency bandwidth.
2. Congestion.

As its using a radio, it needs to be limited to a frequency band not in use (3500 MHz) which has a limit of how much of that frequency it can use without interfering with (or being interfered by) other radio transmissions on higher or lower frequencies.

The amount of MHz is important because GSM works by dividing the available frequency into channels, anything from 10MHz to 100MHz each. Carriers tend to use larger numbers of smaller channels because of congestion. Each connected device is assigned a channel for exclusive use for a limited period of time, this is called Time Division Duplexing (TDD) usually 1 ms as channels need to be shared across every device connected and you're not going to get much through a 50MHz in 1 ms and about 10% of that time is required just for signal synchronisation.

Point in short, there's a limited number of channels that have to be shared amongst everyone. It's like a Tesco with limited parking, you put a time limit on cars parking there in order to service more customers.

Beyond this, high wireless speeds are achieved by a process called Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) where a device will use multiple channels to increase the available bandwidth. You can get more data through 4 x 20 MHz channels than 1 x 20 MHz channel, the kicker is that you require 80 MHz which probably wont be available most of the time as you'll have more devices making requests than channels available, hence congestion.

Going back to the car park analogy, you've got 10 bays but 30 cars wanting to visit. So 20 cars will have to wait until parking space is available.

Now for the technical stuff.
The UK is planning to use Band n78 which is on the 3500 MHz frequency... This is not millimetre wave which is above 6 GHz (actually mmW does not start until 30 GHz) and not really useful for mobile devices as it's easily blocked by walls, hence we're standardising on a lower frequency. The band has a maximum range between 3300 and 3800 MHz which may not all be available, so a maximum of 500 MHz to be shared out.

UK carriers will be using one of three divisions 40 MHz (EE and O2) 50 MHz (Voda) and 100 MHz (3). So respectively there can be a maximum of 12 (40 MHz), 10 (50 MHz) and 5 (100 MHz) channels to be shared amongst all devices... and 1000 devices connected to and making requests of a single LTE cell is a small number and almost all of them capable of MIMO.

Wired broadband does not have these problems as you have a single dedicated line, so you can use all the bandwidth available (1000's of MHz) and it's exclusive to your use.

Now speeds, "5G" maximum speed is 2 Gbps, but that's in a lab. Because of interference due to the atmosphere, buildings, other radio sources, et al. the expected usable speed is about 150 Mbps... and due to congestion you'll almost never get that. Fibre is capable of speeds in the Tbps (terabits per second) range with commercially available fibre of 10 Gbps being common place.

With our usage of the internet increasing significantly, wired connections are not going anywhere. Think how often you need to connect to Wifi because you cant get a signal or it's too weak... That Wifi is connected to a wired internet connection... otherwise it'd still be useless.

To stay on topic, people who think wireless will replace wired just because a fancy new marketing term comes out (yep, there are no more G's defined by the ITU, it's all marketing) annoy me beyond reason... mostly because its an argument made by people who have no idea about the technology involved.