The slow death of 2G and 3G

[TigerTedd]

2 hours ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

Off on a tangent, I can't help but think the art of precise and elegant coding is getting lost.

When you think of what used to be achieved on 48kb or 64kb of ram (I had a commodore c64, mates had ZX Spectrum) compared to what is needed these days to create even simple programs....

The thing I always wonder about coding is that to code you have to type commands in to a programme of some sort. That programme will have been written with more code. Somewhere along the line there is some code that translates those key strokes into letters, and those combinations of letters into commands. This is all probably built in old code that was first written at the dawn of time when the first keyboard was invented.

We’re building code on top of code on til of code, and that original layer was probably written 50 years ago. We’re really, really reliant on that code being good. 

it feels like when you build a big shiny city on ancient foundations. The foundations might have been well built in the first place, and lasted for eaons, but eventually they’ll crumble. And if we could build it all from scratch, we’d probably do it differently. 

[TigerTedd]

This kind of thing makes me wonder. You often see ads and posters and things from the 50s. They had such high hopes for the future and were really innovative back then. You see old films like back to the future, and everyone’s expecting us to be flying round in hover cars and wearing tin foil by now. We went to the moon in 1969 and a few times after, and then everything just seemed to plateau. We should be living in the Jetsons by now.

it’s unfair to say there’s been no progress since the 80s, of course there has. But a lot of it is standing on the shoulders of giants. For example, a lot of ‘innovation’ these days is just inventing the next match three game for phones, or another app. None of which would be possible without the invention of the smart phone and App Store.

If it wasn’t for a few individuals like Tim Bernard-Lee, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, (and even Elon Musk) I feel like we’d just be happy to tread water.

I don’t know if there’s a political thing here, that governments need to take the lead on innovation, and for decades there’s not been much of a focus on it.

Governments have started to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century thinking more about renewables and infrastructure upgrades. But that’s mostly been dragged on by the innovations of private individuals.

The same with big companies and corporations. happy just to stick with the status quo. Why did it take Elon Musk to popularise the electric car? Why hadn’t one of the big companies already jumped on that? Why did it take Netflix to popularise streaming, why hadn’t Blockbusters already jumped on that? Why did it take Apple to invent the smart phone, why hadn’t Nokia jumped on that? Etc, etc. 

I don’t know. I just feel like, apart from a few individuals trying to drag us into a brave new world, the vast majority of governments and powerful organisations are happy just to tick along with the status quo.

If i ruled the world, I’d be taking all the best bits from all the best sci fi novels and films and say, ‘That’s where we want to be, not in the year 2525, not hoping someone else will do it, or aliens will come down and just give us the technology, but within my lifetime. Now let’s make a roadmap of how we’re going to get there.’

Edited December 1, 2022 by TigerTedd

[FindernRam]

On 29/11/2022 at 12:29, JoetheRam said:

Assuming it's Kingsway...

01332 290617

https://www.google.com/amp/s/customerservicecontactnumber.uk/currys/amp/

I tried that once. Rang out for ages then cut off. Next time it bounced me back to an auto system and I never did get to speak to a human.

My issue was a screwed up installation, which I ended up fixing myself!

[ketteringram]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63798292

Not just me then .

[Reggie Greenwood]

On 01/12/2022 at 09:15, TigerTedd said:

This kind of thing makes me wonder. You often see ads and posters and things from the 50s. They had such high hopes for the future and were really innovative back then. You see old films like back to the future, and everyone’s expecting us to be flying round in hover cars and wearing tin foil by now. We went to the moon in 1969 and a few times after, and then everything just seemed to plateau. We should be living in the Jetsons by now.

it’s unfair to say there’s been no progress since the 80s, of course there has. But a lot of it is standing on the shoulders of giants. For example, a lot of ‘innovation’ these days is just inventing the next match three game for phones, or another app. None of which would be possible without the invention of the smart phone and App Store.

If it wasn’t for a few individuals like Tim Bernard-Lee, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, (and even Elon Musk) I feel like we’d just be happy to tread water.

I don’t know if there’s a political thing here, that governments need to take the lead on innovation, and for decades there’s not been much of a focus on it.

Governments have started to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century thinking more about renewables and infrastructure upgrades. But that’s mostly been dragged on by the innovations of private individuals.

The same with big companies and corporations. happy just to stick with the status quo. Why did it take Elon Musk to popularise the electric car? Why hadn’t one of the big companies already jumped on that? Why did it take Netflix to popularise streaming, why hadn’t Blockbusters already jumped on that? Why did it take Apple to invent the smart phone, why hadn’t Nokia jumped on that? Etc, etc. 

I don’t know. I just feel like, apart from a few individuals trying to drag us into a brave new world, the vast majority of governments and powerful organisations are happy just to tick along with the status quo.

If i ruled the world, I’d be taking all the best bits from all the best sci fi novels and films and say, ‘That’s where we want to be, not in the year 2525, not hoping someone else will do it, or aliens will come down and just give us the technology, but within my lifetime. Now let’s make a roadmap of how we’re going to get there.’

If I recall correctly Blockbusters had the opportunity to buy Netflix in its early stages and declined to do so. Maybe an urban myth though ?

[alexxxxx]

On 02/12/2022 at 16:51, ketteringram said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63798292

Not just me then .

I've found sometimes to get a reliable signal you need to turn off 5G as if you're getting a poor quality signal it's incapable of anything.

 

[ariotofmyown]

On 02/12/2022 at 18:12, Reggie Greenwood said:

If I recall correctly Blockbusters had the opportunity to buy Netflix in its early stages and declined to do so. Maybe an urban myth though ?

I saw a great talk once from a guy who had been at Netflix for years, which I think of whenever someone laughs at how Blockbuster didn't evolve so failed.

Back in the early days of DVD rental by post, Blockbuster went big on it at the same time as Netflix did (or whatever Netflix was then).

Blockbuster had an amazing offer and Netflix thought it wasn't sustainable. To prove this, people at Netflix signed up for loads of account over a period of time. Blockbuster assigned their customer numbers incrementally, so Netflix could easily work out their growth and base size.

They could then calculate that Blockbuster's offer was not financially viable, so Netflix kept their prices higher. Eventually, Blockbuster weren't making any money and went under.

Maybe if they had got this right, they might have moved into streaming one day!