This post doesn't directly deal with film, but this issue does impact my posting to the forum. So I felt that was close enough..

I posted earlier about my internet outages over the past three days. There is no fiber optic here quite yet. What we have is microwave cellular (I think) which requires line of sight contact between our satellite dish and the access point in town a few miles away (or so I have been told).

We get some high winds out here and eventually the dish on our roof gets jiggled out of alignment. Sometimes the internet connection comes back and then it is gone again. I can either wait a week for a technician to come out with the hydraulic lift (as they won't climb a ladder for 'safety' reasons), or I can climb up on the roof myself and realign the dish to the grain elevator in town which "broadcasts" our internet service. So of course, it is up on the rooftop for me.

Lots of benefits in living out in the country--but reliable internet access is not one of them!

Here is a few pics for illustration. In the middle of the second pic, you can see the top of the grain elevator...Hopefully fiber optic will be coming to our area soon!

I have been a fibre optic user for a couple of years. My speed has dramatically increased. However, my old copper wiring still goes a few hundred yards down the road to a connection box to join the fibre system. Perhaps one day I will be offered a fibre connection direct to my house.

But I am lucky to live in a city that has these facilities, the countryside is quite near me (in north Bristol) where some people in those parts are having problems with their old copper systems and long for the day when fibre gets to them.

Living in the countryside is no doubt desirable but it does have some drawbacks, such as a limited bus service.

We dealt with terrible copper wiring for years, until someone told us that the Electric Plant Board offered fiber optic internet services in our area. We were using AT&T before. The price is about the same for what is much better quality service. We can use multiple devices at once now, and it makes uploading pictures to this site (for example), MUCH faster! :-)

All you need is to connect a few wires to it, each leading to one side of the house, so you can drag at any of them to reposition it from the ground level ;-)

Few things make me as grumpy as when the internet connection fails. At home it is rock solid fiber, but at the cabin we have copper wire with poles. When it is windy and tree falls on the lines we loose the connection.

You are right, it is really annoying to lose internet. Many things like bill paying etc. are now done online so the impact is far greater than just film related fun.

Personally, while the internet has made life much easier for all sorts of things, the way the western world in particular relies on it for just about everything may well be its downfall one day. Its easy to render a country deaf and blind by knocking it out. We also use fibre optic for both our internet and TV and it is very reliable and very fast. Here in the UK we do pay quite a bit for it as well.

Tom,

I have thought the same thing--over reliance on the Internet is a bad thing.

Quote: Greg Perry wrote in post #7

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Tom,

I have thought the same thing--over reliance on the Internet is a bad thing.

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