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Europe
That Legendary Greek Reliability
2004-07-30
Via Drudge...
ATHENS, Greece - Nearly 50,000 telephones at Olympic sites and parts of Athens went dead for more than 10 hours Thursday, officials said.
"Aris? Aris? Can you hear me now?"
The outage follows a July 12 electricity blackout across southern Greece that raised concern over the stability of public utility networks ahead of the Aug. 13-29 Games.
I had my $ on a strike, but we have the French for that!
The phones went down during attempts to upgrade the system, officials said.
"Some 48,000 fixed-line phones stopped working during work to improve a telephone switching center," Christos Malapanis, an official at the Greek Telecommunications Organization, or OTE, told state-run NET television.
Upgrades can be tricky, just ask Fred about his server.
Fred! You nailed the Greek telephone system too?
I confess. It was me. I dropped a line of code, see? And... Poof! No more ringy-dingy!
Company officials told The Associated Press that sites affected included the Olympic Village, which opened last week, a media village, and four other games facilities. A back-up network kept about half the telephones working at the affected sites, the officials said. OTE and Greece's Public Power Corporation are both Olympic sponsors.
Like Jerry Glanville quipped (my all-time favorite NFL quote) - "It stands for 'Not For Long' if you keep making calls like that!"
Posted by:Raj

#8  Aris, TNX for the acronym jokes. (Well, I appreciated em!)
Americans have them too: An oldie: The US Color television standard is called NTSC (after the National Television Standards Committee). It requires extremely phase-stable transmission circuits, or the hue will shift; so it's sometimes known as Never The Same Ccolor.
Newer one: One type of personal interface called PCMCIA led to the translation: "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms."
Yah, geek humor. So sue me.
Posted by: Old Grouch   2004-07-31 12:38:48 AM  

#7  Bull, shipman. He stalked me across threads, even ones that had nothing whatsoever to do with either Olympics or Greece or anything whatsoever.

That's not recurring joke, that's bullying -- trying to stop me from participating in any thread whatsoever so as to avoid his comments. He's nothing but a little trollish jerk.
Posted by: Aris Katsaris   2004-07-30 9:41:18 PM  

#6  Cut us a little slack Aris
Raj was indulging in that time honored American hourmor form.... the recurring joke.

Posted by: Shipman   2004-07-30 7:29:04 PM  

#5  Aris, Raj is right about the Olympic venues;
out of 36 or so planned venues, only about 23 were going to be usable for the Games, meaning at least a dozen were totally scrapped.
And I haven't read any reports that the venues left are finished.
But then, as you judged, I'm too stupid to Google...LOL
Posted by: GreatestJeneration   2004-07-30 5:21:20 PM  

#4  Yes, there were quite a few reports. And in this forum, we *always* take media opinions (especially BBC) as factual unbiased information, right?

And the accusation of trollery comes first and foremost btw, which btw is worse than a mere accusation of ignorance. If you had been an informed rather than an uninformed troll, that might have made you less annoying, but not any less of a jerk.

"Within budget"? Sure, nothing hardly ever gets built within budget. You are actually trying to make *that* a supposedly standing point?? The Olympics are an international affair but I think that whether too much is being spent on them and too little on other issues is something for the Greek people to evaluate on election-time. Which perhaps they did, since they voted in a different government.
Posted by: Aris Katsaris   2004-07-30 5:14:37 PM  

#3  within schedule - s/b within budget (preview is your friend). The point still stands.
Posted by: Raj   2004-07-30 12:53:42 PM  

#2  all the jokes of raj only the more infuriating for their utter stupidity and ignorance.

That's quite a rebuttal, isn't it? The fact is, there were numerous reports that specualted about the stadiums not being built on time or within schedule whilst being threatened with strikes by the people building them, so it's a big leap to accuse me of ignorance based on that.

Stupidity, on the other hand...
Posted by: Raj   2004-07-30 12:51:59 PM  

#1  DEH is the "Dimosia Epixeirisi Hlektrismou"- (Public Electricity Company), while OTE is the "Organismos Tilepoikinonion Ellados" -- (Organization of Telecommunications of Greece).

A common joke was that in truth they stand for "Den Exoume Hlektrismo" ("We have no electricity"), and "Oute Tilefona Exoume" ("Nor have we any telephones.")

As a sidenote, linguistic jokes are hard to do in translation.

------

And as a secondary issue, it's only the mass transit I'm worried about.

The stadiums were never an issue -- I knew they'd be completed in time which made all the jokes of raj only the more infuriating for their utter stupidity and ignorance. Electricity and telephones -- pfft: They were working to updade the system and had a glitch or a blunder. Unproffessional, sure, but also *TRIVIAL*.

I'm worried about the tram on the other hand, because it's not a self-contained system, it affects traffic throughout the city. And having been only introduced to public use a week or so ago, it seems there are still glitches with the traffic lights that normally ought to give it right of way. This has led to traffic jams and delays, and I've no idea whether they'll fix it in time.
Posted by: Aris Katsaris   2004-07-30 11:28:13 AM  

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