Re: Question

Well at least it does work with some browsers over 10 years old. It's not difficult to design a web site which will work with any browser, though maybe Mosaic that doesn't even support tables would make things a bit difficult. For that matter does it do forms?

Anyway I'd rather have a straightforward web site that works with any browser and platform (and isn't specially tailored to IE6 on Win95) than one stuffed with vast amounts of javascript, css and other unnecessary bloat.

Re: Yahoo! Groups!

"I use Yahoo Groups. The interface sucks and sadly, nobody has worked on it in ages."

That's why it's stable. They don't keep tampering with it every few weeks like farcebook. I'm on a number of groups and they work well as mailing lists. I don't use the web site much except to look for archived posts.

Re: Wanna put your toaster and fridge online?

Well if I could tell the fridge what to get out of the freezer and defrost before I got home...

Re: Bad and good

I use PlusNet and have had reasonably good service. There are the occasional DNS issues but it's good value. I happen to have an Orange PAYG SIM for my dumb mobile, which is OK if you don't need their customer services and you can put up with stupid texts about magic numbers or dolphin something-or-other which I delete straight away. You can't even reply STOP to them.

@Eadon

That is certainly true for new products, but the majority of advertising is from big corporations for products we know enough about to find them if we're interested. But the quoted statement still holds - if the product is no good you might sell a few on the back of a big promotion but it'll fall flat on its face when disappointed customers start tweeting and blogging what it's really like.

Distractions

Yes there are lots of distractions but some are easily avoidable. I know very well that if I'm listening to a radio programme and typing a reply to El Reg at the same time I won't remember what was on the radio. The same applies to having a phone conversation or texting whilst driving: you're thinking about what you're saying or typing whilst driving on autopilot. It's not just a visual distraction - it uses a lot of your mental capacity so less is available for driving. And it's not just plain reaction time that suffers. You end up gazing straight ahead and not glancing sideways or using your mirrors, observation suffers and you don't perceive hazards until too late.

Business conversations are likely to be far more distracting than a simple "I'm stuck in a traffic jam". In fact I think the law goes too far with handhelds. It should be OK if you're stopped with the handbrake on and the gearbox in neutral or park. As it is you must remove the ignition key before using the phone.

Spam?

I've been with PlusNet for a long time and their spam filtering is pretty good. I also have my own rules-based and Bayesian filters. It's not a big problem. But you can usually change your username without ditching your ISP. The latter could be inconvenient if you're running a web site inside the ISP's domain.

Re: OK, I didn't know

The word "album" is a carry-over from the 78 era when sets of records were sold in books which had hard covers and record sleeves for pages. So they were a bit like photograph albums. I'm not aware that 78s were sold in boxes though it's entirely possible. Box sets really came in with LPs.

Re: Silver Linings

"The problem with replacing it with fibre is, iirc, the pstn service is still provided over the copper "

Well no, the idea is that you have VoIP but over a managed network not the public internet. If you want to use legacy hardware you can have an interface in the premeses. The real problem is that it relies on having a power supply in the premeses, whereas copper powers your phone from the exchange allowing you to make emergency calls during a power cut. With most people now owning mobile phones that's less of a problem than it used to be.

Re: The evidence is to the contrary

"And it would be wrong to assume that a lot of TV viewing is elective - much of it is little more than looking at scenery out of the train window."

I don't waste a good train journey by "looking at the scenery" I'll have you know. I'm observing the railway and its environs!

Anyway the big advantage with broadcast tv is that you can record it and keep the recording indefinitely. You can't do that with iPlayer unless you record it in analogue on your VCR or use special software.

Re: Every one already?

@Heyrick: "This problem was solved eons ago on the railways. Red, being the most important signal, goes at the bottom. Cannot be obscured by a heap of snow, unless the snow rises to the level of the signal in which case it is unlikely the line will still be in use."

There's one slight problem with doing that. Road vehicle drivers can be red-green colour blind so position is crucial. Train drivers must have good colour vision.

Interestingly LED signals on railways save more cost because three colours can be incorporated into one aspect, much like searchlight signals but without the mechanical filters. Also incandescent lamps were expensive because they had dual filiamnets for redundancy plus the necessary current detection and switchover circuitry. No doubt there is still some proving for LED signals but you don't need to duplicate the LEDs because they're not all going to fail at once.

Re: LED lighting instead of fluorescent 'haz mat'

"The biggest problem with compact fluorescent bulbs is that the need for them to fit standard lampholders, which means that the "replaceable" part contains all the electronics to drive the tube. "

But that was never necessary. I have several lamps and luminaires that use replaceable tubes such as the Thorn 2D (which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year) and Philips PL. In some cases these have adapters which fitted into standard BC lampholders. In the early days CFLs used heavy chokes rather than electronic ballasts but there is no reason why they couldn't have been incorporated into the light fittings. Chokes are vastly more reliable that cheap electronic ballasts which have a habit of going fut long before the tube fails. In fact I've used chokes from old Philips SL lamps to ballast PL lamps in simple lampholders.

What is very sad is that governments have forced people to switch over to compact flourescent lamps instead of waiting a very short time for LED alternatives to become readily available.

Re: Best application is drenched over three slices of Canadian bacon

That, and the fact that they eat beaver tails. Yummy!

Ditto First Great Western, but for download versions of their pocket timetables. I've put some of their QR codes on a web site for the benefit of local passengers. The only problem is I don't know if they point to the old timetables or the new ones as I haven't got a smartphone. The poster on their web site hasn't been updated. I need an OSX/RISC OS/Linux program to decode them.