Extra Large

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We have just cancelled the BT phone and broadband and switched to cable. We chose a package comprising of medium TV, medium phone and extra large broadband. We went for the extra large broadband because I couldn’t resist the temptation of 20Mb!

I have a problem though, if anyone can help, what’s wrong with small, medium and large? Why does it have to be medium, large and extra large? Was there a small that is now sadly extinct? Is the title extra large supposed to trick me into buying something that I would have done without if it had only been large? And what size will the 50Mb broadband be?

Bemused

Graeme

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Sorry, I just had to say it……”Super sized”.

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I assume you, with “20Mb”, mean 20 Mbps, or 20 Mbit/s?

“what’s wrong with small, medium and large?”
Nothing, in general, I think, if all agree about the sizes. Also, with “small” in the equation large doesn’t seem large enough … but if it had been clothes … I think it is better to present the expected speed or range, instead of using some “blurry” adjective.

“Why does it have to be medium, large and extra large?”
Good question, but if you don’t want to redefine a product all the time, due to technology advancements, (possibly confusing customers even more) you will have to use another word for the next product/service. Otherwise: “Oh, I see, I have the ‘old’ Medium on 5 Mbps, it’s due for renewal but then I’ll get the ‘new’ Medium at 8 Mbps.” Now we see why this is going down the wrong path; MegaLarge, ExtrAordinaryLarge (Exa-band), YottaBand (a.k.a. silly-fast).

“Was there a small that is now sadly extinct?”
Could have been one, certainly happened elsewhere. But isn’t that a question to your cable guy? BTW, I don’t know how the definitions go in the English speaking world but cable/fibre/ADSL are all broadband to me, if some basic speed levels (up/down) are reached etc. Now that can be discussed, and has been discussed (the speed), but to me it isn’t broadband vs. cable (whatever people mean by cable). One ISP here earlier had 0.25; 0.5; 2; 8; 24 and later removed (not “small” but) 0.5 Mbps, and changed to ranges: 0.20-0.25; 1.5-2; 6-8; 12-24 Mbps. So any product can be removed, but if they have chosen some blurry adjective scheme, it will look odd.

“Is the title extra large supposed to trick me into buying something that I would have done without if it had only been large?”
It worked, didn’t it. But that is something you’ll have to ask yourself.

“And what size will the 50Mb broadband be?”
We really don’t want to know what they plan to call that, do we?

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You’re quite right Argus, 20Mb means 20Mbps. 20Mb is the cable company sales blerb! The actual is 7Mbps to 17Mbps depending on which speed test site I try. Prior to this 8Mbps was the “up to” figure quoted by the phone company and I was advised that my phone line “should” be able to give me 6.5Mbps. The actual figure was somewhere inbetween 3 and 4Mbps. But then I’m old enough to have owned and used a 14kbps modem so I’m well happy!

Regards

Graeme

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When I first tried “computer communication” (and I don’t remember when that was) the then-current modem speed was 300 baud. I had almost forgotten what it was like to sit there and be able to keep up with reading the text on your screen as it came in on the modem!

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And we thought that to be rather fast!!

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And since one could not read any faster than it already came then, well, it was fast enough.

I have not used that slow modems/connections (300 baud) but think I remember 2,400 & 9,600 bit/s etc.; it can be difficult to remember which it was, probably the latest at the time.

Somehow discussing old and even older technologies reminds me of the “Four Yorkshire-men” sketch (Monty Python). A “paraphrase”:

“You had broadband? Lucky you. We had to get up 4 o’clock in the morning and p*** on the line to even get 1,200 bit/s at noon.”

“Ooohh, you had a line? A line, lucky you, ay. We had to use pigeons and punch cards. It could take a week to transfer 500 words, and if you were unlucky the pigeon dropped the punch card (how do you resume that connection?) or came back home without finding the recipient. That was what we called a bounce back then.”

Anyhow, reminds me of telex and teleprinters; I have used them a bit. Remember that it happened that one took the incoming paper tape, 5-bit punch tape, while still receiving the message and connected it to another machine’s reader and after some time connected it to yet another machine’s reader, then stepped back and watched the wonder. One machine receiving and two (or more, perhaps) sending before the first message had been fully received. One only had to watch carefully if the first machine “choked” in receiving, since it could break the paper tape if the other machines kept on reading.

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[indent]

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… the incoming paper tape, connected it to another machine’s reader

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[/indent]Oh man, Argus, have you jostled up another memory! From 1961 to 1964 I was a staff sergeant crew chief of an army teletype communications center near Orleans, France. Our transmitters which are in the foreground of this pix were too far away from the receivers to do what you described. A long bank of tape receivers is over against the far right wall out of sight behind the transmitters. By the way, the lady soldier you see there is NOT my Billie although this is where we met in 1961. Time flies but I still have a little keyring PUNCH I carried around to fix tape with.

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Thanks for the story, Al.

> “keyring PUNCH”

Nifty!

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I was gonna take a picture of mine but it’s packed away somewhere in the attic. My wife is a very protective lady and didn’t want me to lose it – it’s the only one either of us had. No bigger than a fingernail clipper with a small hole at the end of one wing and a stud for punching at the end of the other. Can’t find one on the web to show a picture, but I came across this and realized I have no recollection of “the code!”

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Another little trick one could do if one wanted to alert someone or really drive them was to take the tape of a short message and glue the ends together, say to get around 3 inches in diameter, and adjust so that CR and LF code came at the right place, then also prepare it with a little too many BELL codes , and then put it in the reader. Now that’s a real loop! (but with no end condition …)

Of course I never did something like that … Better know who it is on the other end, perhaps an angry Staff Sergeant or some senior manager.

No, I don’t remember much of the code either, some perhaps. But it is there somewhere, I guess. As you know, there have been different character encodings. But I never had to bother with that.

A quick check gives the following, which seems logical:
“WWW figure shift . letter shift B A U D O T figure shift . letter shift N E T”

That is: http://WWW.BAUDOT.NET, as one perhaps would have guessed.

With part of the subject of another scuttle thread in mind; the operation I mentioned in my other post could really be called “this just in”.

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Ooohh, those BELL CODE loop tapes were strictly taboo in the US military organizations and was a commanding officer punishable offense if you got caught! For example, if you ran one of those on the circuit that led to Washington, DC where all the equipment was automatic, it set off all kinds of alarms at their end, as if it were a “national emergency” so you were in great danger if you did so. However, on some of the smaller, more local circuits such as the sub-station in Orleans which was right down the road from us, the operators would sometimes “go to sleep” on duty late at night. If there was message traffic for them that needed immediate attention, I would “turn my back” and pretend not to know that one of my soldiers was running a bell tape to wake them up. They couldn’t make it stop unless they turned off their terminal or called us on the phone to ask what the was the matter! Ah, the good ol’ days…

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“They couldn’t make it stop unless they turned off their terminal or called us on the phone …”

It would be like standing at an eternal railroad crossing … Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding …

But as I mentioned it could be a short, but never ending , message. Perhaps some Q code, that got a short spin in the reader.

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I’m 24 and old enough to have had a 14.4kbps modem….

does that make me *gasp*… old?!

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