Posts by Clockworkseer

Predictably, the leftpondian response has run the gamut from "goodgood" to "how dare the UK do something like this, this justifies the revolutionary war!"

We'll ignore the fact their Senate Committees can do more or less the same thing.

I kind of feel sorry for Mr Rain (and not just because he's died.)

He has had the misfortune to die more or less at the same time as someone significantly more famous than he is, so he'll get shoved to the back of the line.

(see also; Farrah Fawcett/Michael Jackson, Mother Theresa/Princess Diana, Lauren Bacall/Robin Williams)

Given as I am to paranoia, aliens were never on my list of "reasons to shut the facility down."

To me it was much more likely someone had seen something military or government or somesuch that they really shouldn't have, and the closure was more cleanup.

Vodafone

Vodafone never really got fully over that billing fiasco. It doesn;t help that one of their most recent "innovations" is one of those fully voice-driven IVR systems where it asks you to say what you want to talk about.

To be fair, it did seem really apologetic when I called it an idiot machine because it didn;t understand what I was going on about.

The problem is, rather than me being able to run through the menu and find what I want (or not) it makes its best guess as to what it thinks I want. Which doesn't help where the thing you need to deal with is complicated enough that it isn't neatly pigeonholed into what it's been told to expect.

It's also made it exponentially harder to talk to an actual human being. the only way I could find to actually get through to anyone human was to tell it I wanted to complain, which puts you throught to a human fairly quickly.

all the bad points of an IVR combined with all the bad points of a speech recognition system.

Malicious Compliance

"Yes, we agree our old objection no longer applies, but as this is a new request, you must now jump through all our usual hoops again."

Like most things, the power can be used for good or evil (see also: filibustering.)

ESO

Equipment Smarter than Operator

"British cities that have tram networks (London, Edinburgh and Nottingham)"

Y'all forgot Sheffield.

To be fair, everyone else does.

"Option to install apps from Store only"

And next version, it will be "Option to be able to install non-store apps."

and then a version after that, the option will move to Advanced Developer Settings (like Android/iOS) and hidden from regular users.

Eventually... well, you get the idea.

I worked for one of those Computer recycling schemes back around the early 2000's, that took old civil service (employment service mostly) desktops and reloaded them for the "Computers within reach" scheme they had back then, were if you were on certain benefits, you could get a computer for £60 or thereabouts.

My oddest memory is of finding a floppy disk in one of the drives in one of the 486's that we got sent (that we never used as we'd moved onto pentiums by that point) that had some anonymous civil servants complete set of musings, monographs, etc on how much he liked women in stockings, paying particular attention to a lady he spent some time with who may or may not have been his wife (in fairness, no way to tell either way.)

Very little of it was actually 100% smutty, but it was just so well and articulately written that it bordered on art. Nameless civil servant, I salute your dedication to your interests, and occasionally wonder if you ever missed the disk you lost.

Also, they're ony technically going to hire them. As per BT usual form, they'll probably go via an agency, and get contract workers with worse pay and conditions than those on actual BT contracts, shovel them in, and see who sticks. They might hand out a few BT contracts a year to "top performers."

Certainly wouldn't be the first company to create the market leading product, then sit back and coast on that success, only to notice too late that they aren't the only game in town any longer. Probably not the last either.

Avast also breaks proper installation of Windows Subsystem for Linux, so that new shiny bash shell they've been touting doesn't work right.

Unnamed Retailer

But from the description, may be a very Direct supplier of Sports goods?

The last shoes I picked up from there where while Karrimor still meant something.

For my sins

I'm with Vodafone, both for mobile and home phone/BB. My experience with their customer service has generally been "godawful" with interspersings of helpful. The last couple of times I've spoken to them I've ended up speaking to a UK callcenter, which accelerated things tremendously, the overseas ones generally being neither use nor ornament. I haven't had a recontract go without incident since I've been with them. The most recent one they managed to overcharge me because there was a part month involved, and some parts of their billing system don't seem to be able to handle parts of months very well.Fortunately, in this instance, they were swift. The previous recontract they managed to completely forget to set me on a 4g tariff, despite me getting a 4g phone, and forget the discount they'd offered me (because nobody ever notes things down.) I'm mostly still with them for asorted obscure financial reasons, but I must admit, the last month or two, they have taken a significant upturn in my satisfaction with them.

Now they just have to work the bugs out of this new billing system they have.

Although you apparently can use it in a case of the Zombie Apocalypse..

From the T&C's

57.10 Acceptable Use; Safety-Critical Systems. Your use of the Lumberyard Materials must comply with the AWS Acceptable Use Policy. The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live combat. However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization.

There are other strands to the BT/OR issue, that aren't just to do with OR, and acccess to infrastructure.

I'm willing to bet that at least 50% of most customers (by which we mean end users) complaints as regards Openreach are based on some variation of the following scenario "We'll tell OR that this needs [activating/repairing/doing.] We'll let you know when they decide to do something. They say it's delayed. We can't get any information as to why, when it''ll be sorted, how you get it sorted. they will only speak to us, not you, and we can't push the issue with them." The complete lack of any accountability from OR for delays, timescales, information, anything.

Admittedly, this is at least somewhat down to the service providers, who seem to, as a general rule, be unwilling to try and hold OR accountable for their actions (convenient scapegoat ahoy) and hide behind the "we don't have any access to OR" rules, which leaves consumers feeling utterly powerless, when the company that's actually going to do the work isn't even contactable. At least with other utitlities where they subcontracted out, generally the contract means they actually have a measure of control. If the ISP's have any control, they mostly seem to be declining to exercise it, because it's no skin of their nose if OR screw up, as they can just go "not us, guv."

Divesting BT of OR may or may not help with issues of infrastructure access, investment and upgrading, but it probably won't fix the other issues with the system.

Depends on the hardware

I have an old compaq laptop that I make attempts every so often to throw linux at, alas, it seems that the new shiney open source nvidia drivers don't really handle some of the mobile nvidia graphics chipsets very well, so I have to faff arund with grub just to get the livedisk to boot, and then faff with blacklisting modules when I get the thing installed (and even then, it mostly just seems to break on loading X)

Couple of things that bother me

I must admit, as a taxi user, Uber does worry me for a couple of reasons.

1) Surge Pricing. Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that cab companies will make you pay more at christmas/new year/etc. But all of those changes are well advertised, I know they're coming and when, and can plan accordingly. Uber, as far as I understand it, I won't know whether someone's chosen to up the price until the journey is calculated at the time. Kind of buggers up planning a tad.

2) Insurance, safety etc. Proper insurance and safety stuff is part and parcel of getting the private hire plates/taxi plates. Is the safety training and insurance part of the whole Uber deal, or can any tom dick or asshole with a car and a phone sign up?

Otherwise, booing a taxi through an app and knowing what it'll cost before it starts is a great improvement.

Hopefully better than Anywhere

Anyoen remember BT Anywhere? The last dregs of BT's mobile strategy previous to the EE thing.

"We'll give you a substandard phone for a large payment, and tell you you get inclusive calls. What you'll actually get is a small minutes allowance like a much cheaper normal mobile contract, and set it so that it switches to our VOIP when you're near one of our public wifi hubs."

Gods that sucked.