What makes you grin? Antidote to grumpy thread

[myglaren]

7 hours ago, Wack said:

I bough this from a charity shop a few weeks ago , plugged it in to test it and I love the ring , so 1960s , only scammers call us on this number so it's like a scammer alert 

Shame that BT are discontinuing landline phones.

https://www.efax.co.uk/blog/bt-2025-switch-off-how-will-it-impact-you-and-your-business

 

 chucked mine out years ago, sick to death of spam calls.  Hate phones at the best of times so a good excuse.

[somewhatfoolish]

Yeh but no; you will be able to plug your steam-powered phone into your router and pretend it's still the 20th century.

[PhilA]

18 hours ago, Fumbler said:

I need to get another old bell phone. I currently have an AT&T 2500 clone that somehow made it to our shores. It's built so damn well it's unbelievable.

Yeah, they were proper slam the handset down after a heated phone argument type equipment.

 

I need to hook up my payphone to the landline again. Make the kids pay to use it. 

[New POD]

14 hours ago, JeeExEll said:

Young lad started working with us a few weeks before Christmas. First time really living on his own. He asked about how to make a pan of veg soup using a bought veg-broth soup mix so I explained the basics.

Add some more chopped veg, stock cube and a little cornflower and some cooked meat of your choice. Let it simmer.

Silly cunt put in 2 frozen breaded haddocks from Asda.

He ate it too.

Years ago I wascworkingwith a graduate manufacturing engineer doing assembly work instructions. He only ever ate ready meals made in the microwave. 

One day he asked for advice on cooking a proper meal for a new girl friend. I pointed out that there were work instructions available in the library.

Or recipe books as they like to be called.  

I saw him about 10 years later.  He was married to said girl, and reckoned he now owned 50 recipe books at least. Said he was addicted to cooking from scratch.  Hadn't bought a ready meal since he bought that first book. 

 

[Saabnut]

15 hours ago, myglaren said:

Shame that BT are discontinuing landline phones.

https://www.efax.co.uk/blog/bt-2025-switch-off-how-will-it-impact-you-and-your-business

This worries me! Currently I rely on my landline, there is no mobile coverage at all at my house, and my internet is via ISDN via the copper cable. Said copper cable runs for 3/4 mile from the next door neighbours, has literally dozens of repairs and is unburied for most of its length, parts hung on a field fence, parts just lieing on the ground and parts probably grown in with grass. I cannot see them putting in 3/4 mile of fibre cable, trenching it in for 1 house with 1 occupant.

[AnnoyingPentium]

25 minutes ago, Saabnut said:

This worries me! Currently I rely on my landline, there is no mobile coverage at all at my house, and my internet is via ISDN via the copper cable.

We're the same. My mobile coverage is patchy at best and my internet is ISDN as far as I know. Thus being the joys of living in one of the most rural parts of East Ayrshire, however.

[cort1977]

I think the copper will still exist in many places, the change is you will have to have a router to talk to the exchange and plug the phone in to that.

I think this will mean the end of being able to use the old rotary phones though?

[iainrcz]

I'm an idiot, so this is funny.

[Dyslexic Viking]

14 minutes ago, iainrcz said:

I'm an idiot, so this is funny.

Is this real? If so, they should be glad it was not an elephant.

[iainrcz]

I'm guessing it is. If not there is someone out there as sick as I am.

[somewhatfoolish]

The veracity is questionable if only because of the suggestion that being raped might cause bum cancer.

[PhilA]

2 hours ago, cort1977 said:

I think the copper will still exist in many places, the change is you will have to have a router to talk to the exchange and plug the phone in to that.

I think this will mean the end of being able to use the old rotary phones though?

Depends on who set it up and how nostalgic they were feeling.

By default our remote voice kit is tone only, but I enabled pulse dialing and tested it works just fine. All our customers can use rotary phones with it.

Phil

[horriblemercedes]

I'm suspicious. Everything I've done today has gone really well. I've been productive, made measurable improvements on my To-do list and kept up with work and organised quite a bit for the coming weeks, which I can't usually do. On top of that, I'm feeling strangely healthy. What is the day hiding? When is it going to pounce and ruin all of that?

[Ghosty]

 

Whoops.

[Stanky]

2 hours ago, Ghosty said:

 

Whoops.

That is some elite trolling right there. Imagine knowing you've built a swastika into a car part fitted to what I suspect were hundreds-of-thousands of GM products and no-one else has realised. You'd die of an overwhelmng buildup of secret knowledge for sure

[mintwth]

5 hours ago, Saabnut said:

This worries me! Currently I rely on my landline, there is no mobile coverage at all at my house, and my internet is via ISDN via the copper cable. Said copper cable runs for 3/4 mile from the next door neighbours, has literally dozens of repairs and is unburied for most of its length, parts hung on a field fence, parts just lieing on the ground and parts probably grown in with grass. I cannot see them putting in 3/4 mile of fibre cable, trenching it in for 1 house with 1 occupant.

That might be where Starlink, OneWeb and the likes step in. Satellite constellations for telecoms and internet.

I did hear that some people in Australia are already switching to satellite internet because the speeds are better than they can get over their landlines. 

[myglaren]

I saw it on the Northern Echo so it will be in most local rags.  Thought I had seen it on the Beeb.

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/19823041.bt-face-angry-backlash-campaigners-axing-landline-phones/

[gm]

back in the bad winter of 2011, did Knockhill cancel the Stages Rallye ?

did they bollocks ! looks like a lot of fun, the little 205 is going well

 

[cort1977]

28 minutes ago, mintwth said:

That might be where Starlink, OneWeb and the likes step in. Satellite constellations for telecoms and internet.

I did hear that some people in Australia are already switching to satellite internet because the speeds are better than they can get over their landlines. 

It's definitely a thing in remote parts of the States like idaho.

[Remspoor]

The BT switch off.  This is what the BBC say about using older phones. Simply Don't Panic Mr Mainwaring

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58233420

[Saabnut]

15 minutes ago, Remspoor said:

The BT switch off.  This is what the BBC say about using older phones. Simply Don't Panic Mr Mainwaring

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58233420

Yes, everything will be fine. Except it won't. In that article it says 2% of homes cannot currently access 10Mbps broadband, but offers no solution. Mobile is not an option for me. Starlink would be great, but at £100 a month is not practical. Still, we will see what happens.

[TheOtherStu]

4 hours ago, Dyslexic Viking said:

Is this real? If so, they should be glad it was not an elephant.

I think the fact that all the men have tested positive for arse cancer makes me chinny chin chin.

[GMcD]

6 hours ago, cort1977 said:

I think the copper will still exist in many places, the change is you will have to have a router to talk to the exchange and plug the phone in to that.

I think this will mean the end of being able to use the old rotary phones though?

Fibre to the premises here. Fibre cable connects to a Huawei Modem. Has a couple of ethernet ports for your own router and a traditional BT connection for a phone.

My 8746g rotary works fine with it. Not sure what would happen if I had an alarm, or other phones wired in.

[Fumbler]

7 hours ago, cort1977 said:

I think the copper will still exist in many places, the change is you will have to have a router to talk to the exchange and plug the phone in to that.

I think this will mean the end of being able to use the old rotary phones though?

Not if we go in the same direction as the US has done

 

[Remspoor]

45 minutes ago, Saabnut said:

Yes, everything will be fine. Except it won't. In that article it says 2% of homes cannot currently access 10Mbps broadband, but offers no solution. Mobile is not an option for me. Starlink would be great, but at £100 a month is not practical. Still, we will see what happens.

I do not have connection to the internet via cable either. I use 4G connection via a route in the house. Mine you I am in the Spanish countryside. Still the connection can be a bit flaky. Speed is meant to be 20Mbps it has got as low as 0.17. Mainly because Spain.

Generally it is good enough to stream TV, Netflix, Prime WhatsApp. To day my watched a live stream of a funeral of a long time friend.

[Jamie]

[High Jetter]

If landlines cease to be, what happens to alarm monitoring during power-cuts?

[Wack]

1 hour ago, Jamie said:

Is that real , 37k a week for farting , I should be a millionaire by now 

[PhilA]

3 hours ago, Gerrymcd said:

Fibre to the premises here. Fibre cable connects to a Huawei Modem. Has a couple of ethernet ports for your own router and a traditional BT connection for a phone.

My 8746g rotary works fine with it. Not sure what would happen if I had an alarm, or other phones wired in.

Depends on the REN capability of the device. Most of ours are about 2.2 so you can fit two regular old phones and one fifth of a third before they won't ring properly.

A lot of alarm panels get really stroppy because the exchange provides you a very stable -48V supply when the line is picked up, with a quiescent of about -20V. A lot of these modern ones sag and only punch about -45V when picked up and the alarm goes into freak out mode that someone's tapping the line.

Also faxing can be a real crapshoot if they haven't got things set up right for it to work.

 

TL;DR:- it kinda works but some alarms don't like it, especially older ones

[MrBD]

This does worry me a bit too, not least because we don't have a mobile signal here at all (well you get one bar the odd time to trick you into using it, then it drops out mid call) and my internet is in the 5Mb/s range, so I would be shit out of luck.

Not to mention the years of giving people that as the main number. Still though we have an astonishing lack of scam calls here, one "microsoft" call about 5 years ago (i hope i didnt jinx it..)