Things that remind you of WDTWTF members
-
@Gąska said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Zerosquare nowadays it's more likely to be a vintage telephone (when was the last time you saw a landline phone at home?) and a modern gramophone (bought during the vinyl revival of early 2010s).
I know a grandpa who set up his own pbx system in his house with rotary phones. Kinda funny.
-
@Arantor said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
no visual alterations may be made to the front of the property,
No point-to-point WiFi available?
-
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
come up with a consensus of choice of entertainment.
Kind of glad I wasn't there. Or maybe not.
I guess it depends why you would be glad you were not there.
Not sure. Think I could handle being girl-swarmed?
-
@Tsaukpaetra said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
come up with a consensus of choice of entertainment.
Kind of glad I wasn't there. Or maybe not.
I guess it depends why you would be glad you were not there.
Not sure. Think I could handle being girl-swarmed?
Considering I was the only nerdy one, I'm not so sure you'd want to be swarmed by most of the other girls.
-
@Gąska said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Arantor I think I know a way you could save $50 on your phone bill.
In France, it's almost impossible (for regular home customers, of course business is different) to get an internet connection that does not include a landline.
But that doesn't mean you have to actually have a phone plugged into it, some people will just never bother with it. I would do the same, if not for a few (mostly elderly, but not only) relatives who still mostly use it. Though I also find that for lengthy talks, almost all mobile phones are crap (you can plug in headphones, but having an old-style landline phone also works).
-
@Arantor said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Gąska said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
it's more likely to be a vintage telephone (when was the last time you saw a landline phone at home?)
Ooooh, pick me! We have one of those. For irony points we even got one that explicitly looks like a retro rotary phone.
My ISP thinks I have one. I think they even print the phone number on the bill somewhere. There's nothing plugged into it, though, even if I might still be able to find a landline phone somewhere in the Heap of Olde Electronics .
@Gąska said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Arantor goddamn, and I thought Poland is behind the times.
: Did you just say ?
-
@topspin we keep the landline because we have family that occasionally calls and using something made this century is difficult.
-
@Arantor said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
I'm personally waiting for someone to decide that the windows should be replaced because they're authentic sash windows in the front which was drafty as fuck and nothing can be changed on them without the council signing off on it.
You can get double glazing that externally looks the same as sash windows (same proportions of dividers, same widths of frames) and that'll usually be enough for the council. You'll still need to get their approval, but if the aim is to preserve the visuals while making the property much more energy efficient then that's not too hard to come by. (That's what we did; the expensive part for us was that parts of some of the windows are stained glass so we had those encapsulated within the replacement glazing units. It looks better than it ever did when original, is hard to spot that anything was done from the street unless you know exactly what to look for, and is much warmer.)
-
@Arantor said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@topspin we keep the landline because we have family that occasionally calls and using something made this century is difficult.
I keep mine mainly because my brother calls on it every week (he gets free calls at the weekend). Of course, I've got a speakerphone hooked up to it.
-
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
come up with a consensus of choice of entertainment.
Kind of glad I wasn't there. Or maybe not.
I guess it depends why you would be glad you were not there.
Not sure. Think I could handle being girl-swarmed?
Considering I was the only nerdy one, I'm not so sure you'd want to be swarmed by most of the other girls.
I'm sure I could adapt so long as abuse isn't involved...
-
@remi said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
In France, it's almost impossible (for regular home customers, of course business is different) to get an internet connection that does not include a landline.
Are VoIP lines considered landlines? To me, "landline" is associated with POTS (you know, that copper-based network telephone companies like to pretend they're not responsible for).
-
@Zerosquare I'm not sure, because I'm a bit hazy on exactly how those things work and interact...
AIUI as an individual consumer, and this may sound like obvious stuff to everyone here:
If you want to get access to internet in your home (and excluding 4G), you have to go through an ISP, who will connect your home either through the good'ol copper network (POTS, which is being phased out progressively nowadays) or through optic fibre (FTTH, i.e. a brand new physical network that's progressively being laid out everywhere). There are no real other options -- you might get some exotic e.g. wireless link for remote areas but it's still physically plugged into one of those 2 networks at one end.
With POTS you could, in the past, get your phone and ADSL from different providers (just using a filter on the line to split signals), though you could not get ADSL without having a phone line (because the one responsible for the physical line was the historical phone operator who wouldn't open/maintain a line if it wasn't associated to a phone contract!). If you wanted to get telephony without using the landline, you'd have to go full internet-phone (Skype or similar). Now we have what was called "dégroupage" (ungrouping?) where your ISP gets the full control of your phone line and you have a "box" that has one output for your landline. In theory the ISP could probably sell their contract without a phone number, but since it's still the same POTS where everything is associated to a phone number, and historically people wanted to keep their phone when switching to this "dégroupage" thing, you still always have a landline.
When fibre (true fibre, FTTH) started, ISPs wanted to entirely replace ADSL so since ADSL always included a landline, they always include a landline (which is obviously VoIP now) with fibre -- even though, at that point, it shouldn't be mandatory anymore. And I think (from memory) that a couple of the small niche ISPs package it separately, but I don't think any of the major ones do. But I guess ultimately it doesn't cost them much to offer that service, and people are still used to getting it, so it's probably going to be yet a few more years (decades?) before that slowly phases out.
(my guess is that the phasing out of landlines will come through the ISPs offering mobile contracts, as many (and all big ones) already do, combined with automatic transfer features i.e. when you're home and get a call (on either your mobile or landline), you can pick up either phones and answer it -- so effectively, the line between your landline and mobile line is getting blurred)
So to answer your question, I guess that in my mind and when I wrote the previous post, yes, I was considering VoIP as a landline. But whether that was the opinion of the other persons involved...
-
@Zerosquare said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
Are VoIP lines considered landlines?
The backbone telephony network is all really VoIP anyway, and has been for decades. Almost all of that's fibre too. The days of physical copper lines being traceable from exchange to exchange are long gone, and that's why the whole thing with tracing a call taking time is just so much BS; the tracing information is generated in its entirety during the call setup phase (including all the bandwidth reservations required; that is different to normal VoIP, but it's really just a QoS matter).
-
@remi said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
There are no real other options -- you might get some exotic e.g. wireless link for remote areas but it's still physically plugged into one of those 2 networks at one end.
There's also cable, which is coax-based. A certain ISP in France used to market it as fiber, because "it's FTTLA!". (The other ISPs sued for deceptive advertising and won, so now the term "fiber" may only be used to refer to FTTH connections.)
-
@dkf said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
The backbone telephony network is all really VoIP anyway, and has been for decades.
Are you sure? It's been digital for decades, sure. But I don't think it has been IP-based for that long.
-
@Zerosquare said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
There's also cable, which is coax-based.
True. But as you say yourself:
A certain ISP in France used to market it as fiber, because "it's FTTLA!".
In other words, at the other end of the cable (not the end in your home ), it's plugged into the fibre network. Well, I guess maybe not because it's probably a gross over-simplification to talk about a "fibre network" as if there is a complete second network next to the POTS one, when you get to backbones I imagine that things have been either shared, or more generally much more complicated, for a long time...
But the way I see it is that to the end-user, it's not very much distinguishable from a FTTH, apart from using a different physical plug format in your home, and not having true FTTH speeds. In fact, AFAIK, when a building that used to be connected through coax, gets connected to the new FTTH networks, the ISP actually turns off the coax thing (though that part is probably as much marketing strategy than actual technical constraint, of course).
There are satellite ISPs as well, for really remote locations (not that there are that many in mainland France...), but again at the other end of the link it probably plugs into the same overall network as an FTTH link would.
So from a consumer's perspective, I still think that old school copper vs. fibre networks are the only two alternatives, even if the link to their home uses another media.
-
@Zerosquare said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@dkf said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
The backbone telephony network is all really VoIP anyway, and has been for decades.
Are you sure? It's been digital for decades, sure. But I don't think it has been IP-based for that long.
I'm pretty sure it is, because the TCO's lower that way. Converting the control systems to treat the backbone as IP+QoS let them avoid one or two generations of investment in replacement of the link hardware itself.
-
-
@Gąska said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
(when was the last time you saw a landline phone at home?)
(looks in kitchen) 1 second. (Ok, technically it's now voip)
edit: when I move, I won't bother getting another one. But I've had this number for 25+ years now. And it's useful for using with various vendors because THEY CAN'T TEXT ME!
-
@dcon said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Gąska said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
(when was the last time you saw a landline phone at home?)
(looks in kitchen) 1 second. (Ok, technically it's now voip)
edit: when I move, I won't bother getting another one. But I've had this number for 25+ years now. And it's useful for using with various vendors because THEY CAN'T TEXT ME!
Thay can't? There used to be text-to-speach-over-the-phone services available. Not a thing anymore?
-
@MrL said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@dcon said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Gąska said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
(when was the last time you saw a landline phone at home?)
(looks in kitchen) 1 second. (Ok, technically it's now voip)
edit: when I move, I won't bother getting another one. But I've had this number for 25+ years now. And it's useful for using with various vendors because THEY CAN'T TEXT ME!
Thay can't? There used to be text-to-speach-over-the-phone services available. Not a thing anymore?
I've never gotten a voice text before... I'm pretty sure I've gotten a "can't text to <my number> email" too.
-
@dcon one of the fixed phone line providers here used to support sending SMS to/from landlines when used with a phone that supported the feature.
The same functionality would convert the messages received to voice if you didn't have a phone that supported SMS
-
Decades ago my mobile provider would convert short emails sent to an address based on the phone number to an SMS sent to that number.
I was sad when they stopped doing that, but given the potential for abuse it is more than understandable.
-
@Zecc said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
Decades ago my mobile provider would convert short emails sent to an address based on the phone number to an SMS sent to that number.
I was sad when they stopped doing that, but given the potential for abuse it is more than understandable.
Mine still does!
-
-
@remi said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
AFAIK, when a building that used to be connected through coax, gets connected to the new FTTH networks, the ISP actually turns off the coax thing (though that part is probably as much marketing strategy than actual technical constraint, of course).
When we switched our house from copper to fibre, the contractors taped the ends of the cables together and used the coax to pull the fibre through the buried conduit up to the house. Rolled the copper up on a reel and took it away with them. Hey, there's good scrap value there!
-
-
-
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@DogsB said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
Want!
The lamp, the cat, or both?
-
@dkf said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Zerosquare said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@dkf said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
The backbone telephony network is all really VoIP anyway, and has been for decades.
Are you sure? It's been digital for decades, sure. But I don't think it has been IP-based for that long.
I'm pretty sure it is, because the TCO's lower that way. Converting the control systems to treat the backbone as IP+QoS let them avoid one or two generations of investment in replacement of the link hardware itself.
I think carriers used to run mostly dedicated ATM and MPLS links until the mid-noughties, as opposed to just using public IP networks. So almost VoIP.
-
-
@error there's a typo. Last s should be z.
-
@Zerosquare said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@DogsB said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
Want!
The lamp, the cat, or both?
Both
-
@topspin said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
Does it make a difference if I use the largest one for work?
-
@topspin I am in this post, except I have 6, connected to 3 different computers, and I use 3 of them for work.
-
@HardwareGeek said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
I use 3 of them for work.
-
@Watson said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
When we switched our house from copper to fibre, the contractors taped the ends of the cables together and used the coax to pull the fibre through the buried conduit up to the house. Rolled the copper up on a reel and took it away with them. Hey, there's good scrap value there!
That's how they do it here as well.
-
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Zerosquare said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Karla said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@DogsB said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
Want!
The lamp, the cat, or both?
BothYes
-
@Watson said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
When we switched our house from copper to fibre, the contractors taped the ends of the cables together and used the coax to pull the fibre through the buried conduit up to the house. Rolled the copper up on a reel and took it away with them. Hey, there's good scrap value there!
I've heard that here as well, and it's how I would do it if I had to pull a new cable through myself. I don't know for sure what happens to the old cable afterwards, and most people are glad to get rid of it anyway, so it's not like there's anything wrong with the installer taking it away.
In our case the old cable was aerial, and it's a long way from the street to the house, with trees in the middle. So when we got FTTH we spent time to dig a new trench from the street to the house (including making a trench in the concrete slab around the house for the last few metres!), and told the installer to pull the fibre through that. Which means he didn't touch the old copper wire.
So I still have that old cable, and the bit that partly annoys me is that it's still connected to the "public" POTS in the street, and I'm officially not allowed to touch anything on that network (legally, it's always been that the cable belongs to the utility company up to the connection point inside my house, so the part from the street to my house, even though it's inside my property, doesn't belong to me!). So I rolled it up and made a neat bundle that I stashed at the bottom of the pole in the street, to avoid interfering with that. Of course I could officially ask the utility company who's in charge of the POTS to come and disconnect it, but it's likely they don't give a fuck and would never bother (or would try and make me pay for it).
So there are about 100 m of copper wire available in the street, if anyone ever cares about it.
-
-
@LaoC said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@dkf said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Zerosquare said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@dkf said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
The backbone telephony network is all really VoIP anyway, and has been for decades.
Are you sure? It's been digital for decades, sure. But I don't think it has been IP-based for that long.
I'm pretty sure it is, because the TCO's lower that way. Converting the control systems to treat the backbone as IP+QoS let them avoid one or two generations of investment in replacement of the link hardware itself.
I think carriers used to run mostly dedicated ATM and MPLS links until the mid-noughties, as opposed to just using public IP networks. So almost VoIP.
I don't think they're using the public network, even now, but all the protocols are IP-based. I guess it's all a matter of what you call VoIP.
-
@BernieTheBernie said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Arantor said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
is a heritage site
Don't. Just don't!
I didn’t know it when we moved in, it was only afterwards when I had a rather heated exchange with the landlord on the subject of getting good internet.
-
@Arantor I meant: Do not buy or rent "heritage" houses.
-
@BernieTheBernie said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Arantor I meant: Do not buy or rent "heritage" houses.
Bit late for that…
Technically “heritage” isn’t the case. The street has a preservation order on it, under “Grade II” designation.
is that the scale of grading runs, in increasing importance, Grade II, Grade II*, Grade I.
So the whole street is Grade II, and that covers the front of everything on our side of the street. I did once upon a time look up exactly what this entails but basically “no exterior alterations” is a useful if reductive summary.
-
@BernieTheBernie said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@Arantor I meant: Do not buy or rent "heritage" houses.
My family has a holiday home that's right in the middle of a city covered by what must be the highest degree of heritage protection in France. I'm not familiar with all the details but basically, you can't change anything on the exterior (and repairs have to be done with the same materials and in a very restrictive range of styles, colours...), and even internal changes are (in theory... because who's going to check??) complicated.
It's a huge pain, but OTOH the charm of the place comes from the fact that the whole city looks old, so in a sense I understand the reason.
The only good part is that since the whole city is protected, you don't need to explain that status to contractors (if they're from the region), they know the rules better than you. And you also don't have to worry about picking e.g. the colour for your blinds ("you can have them in any colour, as long as it's
blackthe council-approved colour").(the house was bought by my grand-father to use as storage, because at that time this city was literally a ruin, with buildings falling over and killing people! It was in such a bad state that it was one of the first place in France to get that special protection status.)
-
@remi said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
the house was bought by my grand-father to use as storage, because at that time this city was literally a ruin, with buildings falling over and killing people!
Ahem. Polite people prefer to use the term "legacy codebase".
-
@Zerosquare said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@remi said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
the house was bought by my grand-father to use as storage, because at that time this city was literally a ruin, with buildings falling over and killing people!
Ahem. Polite people prefer to use the term "legacy codebase".
status: awaiting the time when today's codebases can be considered legacy-er, because at least for the most part the current legacy codebases don't (usually) look people or make buildings fall over....
-
@Luhmann said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
@HardwareGeek said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
I use 3 of them for work.
Well, 3 of them are connected only to the work-owned laptop that I use only for work. How much I use it is a different question. (Tangentially, last night I unplugged my phone charger, and suddenly the work laptop stopped sending any video through the USB3 docking station, which was plugged into the same power strip as the charger, to the 2 external monitors. Even after moving the docking station to a different power outlet, I still can't use the monitors. )
-
@Tsaukpaetra said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
the current legacy codebases don't (usually) look people
If your codebase, legacy or otherwise, looks people, something is wrong.
-
@Arantor said in Things that remind you of WDTWTF members:
is that the scale of grading runs, in increasing importance, Grade II, Grade II*, Grade I.
There's also Conservation Area, which is effectively a lower grade than Grade II (and what I'm in). And the grades can apply to either just the exterior of the building or to the interior as well; the latter's not very common and is usually just applied to those buildings where you'd expect keeping the inside looking really nice would be a Good Thing.
(Getting better internet is probably possible, but would require your landlord to grow a pair and sort out the paperwork with the council, who would be largely fine providing the results of the work can't be seen after they're finished.)