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[oldravendale]

Fascinating stuff, Adrian. Thank you.

 

[allegheny1600]

balancing act...



vs




trouble is, it's mighty difficult to tell one from the other, particularly from the far end of a bit of fibre optic or copper wire.

While I agree that it’s very difficult to tell one from the other, my method is to observe the individual’s post count.
Not guaranteed of course as folk like Stationmaster Mike and Olddudders Ian among others, have a lot of REAL railway experience to draw upon and they freely give such information out.
But there are plenty of folk on there who basically talk a lot of rot and their post counts rise too rapidly however, there are still some who are very entertaining.
Hopefully, the “ignore” button will return soon and I can get back to my less infuriated reading!
As to being a mod on there, I is one (but only in a very small area!)
Would it be remiss of me to say the crew and the majority of folk over there are great!?
Cheers,
John

 

[Nick C]

They were also maintaining a copy of every hour of TV made - an impossible situation now, I suspect

Copies are still kept, but generally by the broadcaster rather than (or possibly as well as) by central archives. It's a legal requirement in many countries (I'm not sure if we're one of them), to allow past broadcasts to be reviewed for compliance purposes (e.g. if someone complains that the football player swore in the post-match interview, the authorities can check what was actually said)

Part of my day job involves designing and building systems to store such information - these days, all digital and a combination of cloud based and local storage - we've only recently (last 5 years or so) got to the point where it's faster to send the full-quality content over the internet, rather than sticking it on a disk and sending it by motorbike courier...