Bugger Virgin

Just a note to say that my current ISP is freeking crap, and I have been getting intermittent connections for about a month now. As a result, I am moving to a new ISP - this means that I may not have a connection for a whole week during the change around - so if I am not answering pms or questions on posts etc - there is a reason.

I am now officially off line. Am writing this from my phone. Just in case anyone is trying to contact me, or wondering where I am.
Don't know when I will be back, not too long i hope.

Having connection problems with an ISP is a nightmare, I've been there a few times over the years. You have my sympathy!

Good luck Chris. I hope we see you back very soon

Hope to see you soon again!

I wish you a speedy return also

I occasionally get problems with Orange (ne Freeserve) and I know from bitter experience that there's no point in calling an ISP's support line. They know less than my mother about computers and just follow a script. E.g: If it was working last night and now I can't get online because their logon server is refusing the connection, why should I need to reinstall the broadband modem driver?

tales I could tell regarding the support line!
Don't get me started!

I have been just a few days without the internet.
It is amazing just how reliant I (perhaps I could say; all of us) have become. I was born in a time before computers, and until recently (in my time span) they were huge, steam driven things in Sci-fi films. Now, I start biting my nails and hallucinating after a day without internet..... However, after a day or two of cold turkey. Things started to get interesting - I started talking to my (flesh and blood) family, feeding the cats, getting some work done.

The cuss cards are finished!

Thank you Rupert Murdoch and your band of cretinous half-wits.

EEeh, it takes me back. In the late '80s, I used to manage a VAX 11/780 - a proper computer with reel-to-reel tapes in its own air-conditioned gallery. It had 40 users who shared 16MB of RAM, 256MB of hard disk and exactly 1MIP of computing power. The terminals were all hardwired into the back of the computer.

I'm firmly convinced that computers today are bloated playthings. Why is it that I need 2GB of RAM just to load Windows 7 and have it work with anything approaching "speed"? It's an operating system, that's all. It is NOT the star of the show. I remember Guy Kewney ranting in Personal Computer World when CP/M 2.2 came out in about 1981, about how it took a whole 17KB. He wanted to know exactly what it needed all that space for.

Perhaps the really crazy thing is that despite living in a wonderful technological heaven, no one's any happier. It's due to what philosopher Alain de Botton calls "Status Anxiety". We don't have the 20MB/s broadband the neighbours have, therefore we're failed. We don't have the latest preposterously named iPhone our friends have, therefore we've failed. The thing is, it doesn't matter. None of it. As Tony Wilson once said: "It doesn't matter that you're richer than me. I'm lucky, my brain works."

Ahem. Here endeth the rant...