One further comment from me...

I think it would be true to say that throughout more recent history military aircraft have taken so long to develop that by the time they hit the shelves so to speak they are either outdated or not suited to the job they need to perform at the time they hit those shelves. It would also seem that these days this country, like many others, no longer has the ability (or perhaps skill set) to stand on it's own two feet and develop it's own defence equipment. During the early days of the Cold War we made some cracking aircraft, they may not have all been perfect, and true enough some weren't as good as others, but they were ours, and they pretty much did what they said on the tin. We have now reached an age where technology rules the roost, and developments take 10s of years rather than maybe 5, and therefore the associated costs are huge, and do we ever really get what we want during thes elong development times.

Is there an answer to the multitude of problems discussed in the article and amongst these comments? Well if there is it will surely lie in sorting out the mess behind the scenes, cleaning up the procurement process, actually reading contracts before they're signed and coming up with proper forward looking specifications for equipment before any development orders are issued. As someone quite rightly said here one of the things that does the most damage in terms of cost is the change of specification part way through. It's like ordering a Mini and then deciding you need a Mondeo!

Reading between the lines...

Reading between the lines of SuperTims comments near the top here it sounds like the Eurofighter has the curse of the TSR2 upon it. If you don't know what the TSR2 was, just google it.

The Plague...

Me thinks we're back to our global over-population problem again. Perhaps, just perhaps, the human race has reached plague proportions...too many people and not enough resources to go round.

By the time it arrives...

...it won't look anything like this! It will be as dull as dishwater...

Point missed...

I think the overall point is being missed, and probably muddled by greedy eBay. It's not about stopping joe public selling tickets for event that they can no longer go to, it's about stopping touts buying loads of tickets and denying real fans from paying the normal ticket price. True enough the only real way to stop the practice is for folks not to cough up stupid money for these events. But then people are often stupid, and many have more money than common sense, which in turn leads us to legislation.

Outsourcing...?

...I've never quite got a handle on where the outsourcing benefit comes from. Generally the staff are paid the same wages as internal staff would be, and your probably paying a fixed amount per day for that body. So given that the outsourcing company is there to make a profit and not a charity you're probably paying alot more than you would normally shell out. OK you have no HR costs, but given that many companies don't have any formal HR facilities these days, because their tendered out, I just can't see the cost benefit.

Unless you don't have a guy or two on site permanently looking after stuff I can see little benefit.

I used to work for an out sourcer myself and was charged out at about £400 a day I think back then. So given that I was there full time - this seems a hell of a lot to pay for relatively basic IT support.

What it all boils down to...

So DAB is pants? Well actually I agree but only upto a point, the quality is poor, bit rates are far too low. But the reception problems mentioned have been created by the f**k up the goverment has made of the digital network as a whole. For starters Freeview is shite, the signal quality is piss poor and not strong enough, we're squeezing too many channels (many of which are crap) into not enough bandwidth. DAB of course in many cases is much the same unfortunately. The two go hand in hand, lets face it the British invented television and there are shed loads of people in this country that know how TV and Radio services should be broadcast be they digital or analogue, it's something we're good at. But add into the mix incomptent government ministers who know zip about doing things properly and who are only interested in bodging things and trying to save money in the public purse and you've got what we've got today, crap digital services all round.

As it happens although we are in a poor reception area we do get a good DAB reception without any use of special aerials. However Freeview is shite and the only way I've make it work properly would be by re-wiring the entire house with double screened coax like Sky use and sticking in a good mast head amplifier with some decent boosters spread liberally to distribute the signal, about £100-200 worth of kit and a day or twos work.

Glad...

...we don't have any kids and claim child benefit!

I guess that's the problem with the computer world, once you're data becomes a stream of 1's and 0's ain't nothing going to protect it. The only way to win is not to play the game...

I think...

...Apple have made a huge mistake because of greed with the iPhone. I'm not an Apple fan in anyway shape or form, for me the brand is synonymous with DRM, over inflated prices, limitations and dumbing down in terms of consumer choice. The iPhone is a clear illustration of this, and so is in many respects the new iPod Classic, the the case of that they changed the video out method leaving existing users or new users with large bills for new dicks and cables to hook the device upto the TV - in UK money an extra £70 on top of the £160 or £230 price tag. So ya'll when it comes to anything Apple - it's very much buyer beware, do you're research first and make sure you can use it the way you want to, not the way Apple or some tin pot mobile phone company tell you to...

And the fault lies...

At the end of the day, all this nonsense with the Wii is down to Nintendo, they've had a year to get on top of the fact that their console is a best seller. They should therefore have got their shit together to ensure there were enough consoles to go round. Personally if I was CEO at Nintendo I'd be kicking myself over all those lost sales...and if I was a share holder I'd be jumping up and down going apeshit.

@ Senor Beavis

...but who will supply the flotillas? They might need to be made by all species, phyla, genders, races, creeds, colours* etc. that way they won't be too English, German, French, American, Italian, Indian etc. etc.

Just because...

...9 assertions which aren't supported in a mainstream science are in there. Just because it's not mainstream doesn't mean these points are not right. Merely that they are up for argument.

As for Dimmock, well sorry but the guys a pillock, he wasted tens of thousands of pounds fighting a pointless case.

Why pointless? Well at the end of the day it doesn't really matter whether global warming is real or not, the consequences of doing nothing are too great to take the risk of not doing anything. So it's better to do something to try and eliminate the problem; if we then find out we didn't really need to do anything, then whichever way you slice it we'll end up with a cleaner, healthier environment.

Lets face it the whole global warming issue is one of population, there are simply too many of us on Earth consuming it's resources, i.e. there ain't enough to go round.

All they needed...

...to do was reboot...! As for Solaris what a load of rubbish...get yourself Windows 1.0 running IIS 0.01

They just wanna...

...play Crysis on it...! They're trying to build the worlds most powerful gaming machine...

Can I just say...

WOOF, WOOF!

Sorry!

Personally I think...

...the best thing Professor Steven Weinberg can bring to this conversation is silence...

Don't hold back...

...Raheim Sherbedgia just speak your mind.

Actually I subscribe to another reason for his disappearance...ALIENS!

But over in the US...

The RIAA propoganda machine is in full swing...

http://www.riaa.com/newsitem.php?id=780E8751-0E03-4258-D651-F991B66E1708

What's...

...an iPhone?

"If it proves to be another cultural icon like the iPod I hope you eat your words."

The iPod is only a cultural icon because Apples Marketing department says it is, otherwise, it's just another MP3 player...just the the iPhone is just another mobile phone...

Also see...

If you're thinking of investing on a DVR or PVR you should also check out the Topfield TF5800PVR, it's highly customisable (for the geeks among us) and can be purchased with a 160GB or 250GB drive. However there are reports of folks swapping their installed drive for ones upto 750GB without problems. For more info go here: www.topfield.co.uk

And here www.toppy.org.uk for the support forums / customisation info etc.

I almost purchased one of the reviewed devices until I found the Topfield, what tipped it for me is the lack of PC connectivity and customisations you can do with the TVonics box. But if you don't want those features, I'm sure it's a great buy.

To Office or not to Office...

As mentioned the problem with Office is that in all versions most folks only use a small percentage of the Suites features. So infact for many Wordpad would be quite adequate. Further to this with every upgrade comes the inevitible training issues, but perhaps companies would be more willing to upgrade if Microsoft gave the training free. But any upgrade in office suite or operating system comes at a massive price and despite all the "greater productivity" hype that comes with each release, the reality is that the productvity gains (which are usually not really there) are lost in the additional costs of support and training.

Rascal...

The little wascal has spiwit...

And Microsoft are the biggest bodgers of them all...

It's true there are quite a few folks working in IT that are fairly useless, however firstly can I point out that M$ are the biggest bodgers of them all, we see it every month when they patch up the bodges they've made in the OSs and Office releases.

Further to this most 'bodges' occur because companies can't afford to do the job correctly. Why? Well I'd suggest that M$ or "A N Other IT Company" are simply charging too much, i.e the job needs to be done but the gain is lost by the cost of the IT. This doesn't affect large companies so much, but small companies simply can't afford M$ et al prices. So we end up doing the best we can with what we've got, be that second rate M$ software, or even worse a Pirate copy.

Enter the church...

...the 7th Church of the Apocalyptic Lawnmower...

It costs a minimum of £1000 to believe...and you must mow your lawn daily...

But of course we all miss the root cause of the problem...

...there are simply too many human beings on the earth. Too few resources to spread round amongst our many billions. We do sadly have a situation where we have 'surplus population' to use Scrooges phrase.

For now, because we're a long way off from the technology that will help ease the problem, we should be setting population limits on countries. Limiting the number of children per family to one or two.

Then when we do get the next wonder 'green' technology (if it exists) then we can perhaps relax these rules.

Now you know...

Now you know why Windows Vista is so expensive...

BBC?

Is that the Brixton Broadcasting Corporation?

Manager, Minion or Plebb?

They've cancelled the show because she's filled the Minion position, but she's now looking for a Plebb. So when MTV phone up the secretary can ask whether they want to speak to a Manager, Minion or a Plebb.

They may of course consider a show however called The Plebb...

Currently I'm working on...

Currently I'm working on a DeLorean conversion that will run on household rubbish...

Seriously though the dream of pretty much limitless, polution free energy is some way off yet. The question we should be asking is whether the planet can stand the population growth until we reach a technology point where we have cleaner limitless energy...

Excuse me while I whip this out...

Next they'll be banning the sale of forkhandles without the fork...!