The beginning of wisdom...

Qualifications are extremely valuable (not just for the extra money that they might earn you). Undertaking a recognised course with an examination should show that you have been tested to prove your skills and that you can demonstrate the ability to look at a situation and offer a sensible solution to a given problem. It should also show that you have the ability to think critically about your own work; and confirm if what you think you know is correct.

Experience is what you gain as you work in a given area; and it can be highly valuable. However, experience does not always mean that someone is working to the most practical or efficient method. All too often, people find a way that works and then they use that same method whatever the situation. It can be very effective; I've seen experts look at an issue and quickly identify the problem. But equally, I've seen people leap into fixing a problem and just make it worse because they thought that they knew what the issue was without actually bothering to check all of the facts (because they "knew better than anyone else").

Personally, I would be happy to listen to anyone based upon both experience and qualification. But I would still reserve judgement until I was happy that what they said was proven to be accurate. I'm probably biased; I have some qualifications and many years experience; but that doesn't mean that I think I'm always right.

There is an old saying; "The beginning of wisdom is the statement 'I do not know'"

MPs = Hypocrites

>>"Tax is something that is a legal obligation that you should pay. <<

This is true; but no-one is under any legal or moral obligation to arrange their tax affairs for the benefit of the taxman or to pay one penny more than the law requires.

The tax laws are an omnishambles; they have become so complex that most people (including MPs) simply cannot be aware of every single possible scenario. In fact, most MPs now emply specialist advisors who tell them how to avoid paying more tax than the law requires. In particular, most of those on the committee are themselves taking advantage of some of the particular arrangements used by these large businesses to reduce their own tax bill.

Pot = kettle?

Is Delos D Harriman in charge of marketing this?

(FWIW, I really hope that they succeed)

Give us the service...

...and we will pay for it.

I'd be more than happy to pay these sorts of one-off fees. I had to arrange for a leased line install at the beginning of last year and the installation fee for that was more than two grand.

I've been making the point to BT for many years that we need the connectivity now in order for the business to be a global player; and I've been able to demonstrate that we would use the faster connectivity if it were available.

We were getting by, but there is no question that the lack of a modern service offer from BT was starting to adversely impact the business; we had no option but to go to a different supplier this year and already we are starting to see some of the benefits.

I'd bet that there are a lot of other SMEs and even larger firms that could really make use of better connectivity; and once they see the advantages, they would take the same view that the ROI makes the costs of the fees a very small price to pay.

Hoist with own petard

A story that I am assured is true from the mainframe days (late 70s / early 80s).

Someone was leaving the company under a cloud and decided that he would cause a problem for the other people that were still working there (he was not well liked). He got back into the building and let himself into the server room late on the Friday and removed certain key items that would effectively cause the whole mainframe to shut down and would require many hours of work to re-install.

Unfortunately, at the same time, this caused the lock on the computer room door door to freeze as the swipe entry mechanism was controlled by one of the systems that he had disabled. The guy was stuck in the room until security found him about 6 hours later; he hadn't been able to get the mainframe back up and running. The systems manager was called in and it took another couple of hours to get in and do the repairs.

He got a ride in a police car for that little stunt!

About 1997

Had a phone call from a lady who's company had bought a new version of our software. Unfortunately, the manager had messed up the install routine; so it wouldn't run. He had given the job to her of calling us up to get the problem resolved

After about 30 seconds of talking, it was clear that the poor lady had not the faintest clue of how to use a computer. I had to explain to her how to use a mouse to move the pointer around the screen; then once she understood that, I asked her to click on the "Start" button. Unfortunately she interpreted this as pressing the power button; she had turned the PC off.

I had already identified the main problem with the software; they hadn't followed instructions and she just needed to delete the empty licence file and then re-licence. But here things got worse; trying to explain over the phone how to navigate through the directory structure was not easy.

It took a further 45 minutes to talk her through finding the file, deleting it, and then I was able to read out a new licence key to her and talk her through entering the code. Total call time just under 1 hour.

After I put the phone down, I had to go outside and stand in the fresh air - I actually had a headache caused by this.

Some years ago..

... I read the EULA for a piece of proprietary software (because I was bored, OK?). They had probably cropped some of the text directly from another licence and hadn't bothered to read what was there.

I had a meeting with them a few weeks later and remembered what I had seen. It turned out that we were possibly using the software illegally and I felt that they should be aware of this.

The key phrase was something like ".. in cases of lighting..." instead of "lightning". So the agreement indicated that we couldn't use the software if the lights were turned on and they took no responsibility for any problems if they occurred.

Everyone had a good laugh at this, but it did get me wondering, what would happen if a supplier did try to use an error in an agreement to their advantage.

Never did find out.

It is a challenging target

We need to upgrade the national infrastructure; almost everyone agrees with this. Unfortunately, everyone wants to be next to be upgraded (yes me too) but it takes time to get the work done.

Unfortunately, the telecomms networks are in much the same state as the railways were back in the 50s. Too little investment - and in the case of the telecomms, it's more apparent because of the more rapid changes in technology.

BT used to have the staff to do the work, but trimmed back on their workforce a long time ago. They rely quite heavily now on some contractors to do a proportion of the work (many of whom were trained by BT!)

I'm not trying to defend BT; on the contrary, we are in this situation because of their lack of planning. But I can't see that we are going to get the network we need until there is some serious political pressure to make it happen and at the moment, I just don't see that anywhere.

Not working?

Here the interesting thing; I go onto (for example) a Microsoft UK website. The behavioural ad tracking then delivers adverts in French (possibly because the company breakout is in the Netherlands).

That's fine, but then when I use the laptop from someone else's wifi, the ads in French still appear even for several days after.

As my language skills are on a par with my ability to see through walls, adverts in French don't really "couper le moutarde"; but hey, it's their money to waste.

>>Dixons Retail says it's positioned to capitalise on Comet's collapse<<

So rather than offer a better product, they just want to carry on selling the same crap and offer the same awful service to the punters that might have gone to a former competitor.

Nice business model.

Busted!

>>All the “exceeds expectations” rankings this person had received were lowered to “fails to meet expectations<<

I've seen that situation; someone changed the definitions to show a below acceptable score resulting in the person being fired. However, the person had managed to keep a paper copy of all of the forms; these were handed to a legal advisor. Once the company had received a letter detailing the exact information and realised they had been caught out, they quickly agreed to a very handsome settlement out of court. The person concerned is now quite happily enjoying an early retirement with many years still to go and no need to ever work again. (And it was someone working in HR!)

The review process should be a very valuable way of motivating staff; sadly, we have too many PHBs that know bugger all apart from what bonus they should be getting.

Not just London

There are a number of companies that offer phone to pay for parking services up and down the country.

One of the staff had an email that was supposed to be from one of these; had the logo and everything to make it look genuine. The only thing that stopped him opening the attachment was that part of the text was written rather badly and he spotted a spelling error of the company name so it didn't match the logo.

I try not to keep warning people about scam emails (on the basis that people might think I'm crying wolf) but I tend to send a message out at this time of year just to warn people to be on their guard.

Wow!

What a great article; what an amazing story (the best stories are always true).

Many years ago, I had an opportunity to work overseas. I didn't pursure it, so don't know if I would actually have got the job, but I've often wondered how different my life would have been had I gone ahead with the application. I still feel a little regret even after having read other accounts of people that had bad experiences.

Best of luck to him for his future.

Battling Behemoths

In some respects, this is similar to what started to happen in the retail sector many years ago.

The bigger suprmarket chains started to look at how to cut prices and deliver more; scale is key, but also making sure that the technology is used to its maximum capability to deliver efficiencies. However, they also found that they could "persuade" suppliers to do similar things; upscale production, cut costs, deliver more for less.

Those that did well, bought out the smaller players or the ones that couldn't / didn't keep up. Remember names like Fine Fare, International, David Greig, Gateway, Ford & Lock, Victor Value, et al. In most cases, it was simply a quick way to expand, to get more customers and sell more to squeeze the supplier.

To begin with, the winner is the consumer; they get a great deal at a good price funded by squeezed margins. However, there always comes a point where the cuts are too deep and businesses are not making a profit. You can survive for a while, but as a business model, running without making a profit is insane.

It will be interesting to see how far this develops.

Oh no..

I used to deal with a company that supplied some services and they were pretty good. Then they were bought out by the group that is now called Phoenix (TGTINCP - catchy!) and service went through the floor.

They really didn't seem to be that interested any more in the Small / Medium market where they had built their business; they just seemed to want to go after big contracts. A shame as they alienated their good customers and haven't really picked up anything like the business from the bigger outfits that they thought they would.

I stopped dealing with them nearly 2 years ago and they weren't even bothered enough to find out why.