Logo
I haven't seen that Olympics logo for so long (I'm out of the country) and was genuinely shocked when I thought it was something sexual going on. I forgot all about that humorous logo.
London's Olympic clock claps out
The London Olympics countdown clock has clapped out after less than a day, the BBC reports. The precision timepiece was triumphantly unveiled in Trafalgar Square yesterday, but failed to clear the first 24-hour hurdle and is now stuck on 500 days and 7:06:56. A red-faced spokesman for the Swatch Group said: "We are obviously …
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 16:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
No it does not
It epitomizes something else. It epitomizes the decade we live in.
The affair (clock inclusive) is being delivered under PRINCE2 management guidelines, LEAN supplied and ISO 2000 quality certified. I would not be surprised if it is TOGAF or ZAMAN architected as well. The personnel delivering it definitely is perfromance managed according to the industry best practices and none of them will not even lose their bonus because the scorecard will say that they should not.
Need I say anything more?
How about it being delivered in a BLOODY WORKING ORDER instead of having a certified micromanagerial excuse list when it goes wrong.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 20:55 GMT Paul RND*1000
re: no it does not
I think you may be onto something here. Too much process and complexity, not enough good old fashioned getting stuff done in the simplest, most effective way possible. A metaphor for our times, where even "Hello World" requires several hundred kB and an installer package.
Give me a ZX Spectrum, an old black and white telly and the next half hour free; I'll give them a damn clock which works*. Hell, a 1K ZX81 would be sufficient.
* well, as long as the power supply doesn't overheat and nobody holds down one of the keys, which would screw up the PAUSE 50 statement and cause the clock to be a bit ahead of schedule.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 16:37 GMT Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
Oops... maybe the shape of things to come?
There was a very funny (mock-umentary) comedy on the BBC last night that is set in the delivery office of the London Olympics. They also had an Olympic clock that not only could they not get working, but they didn't actually understand.
Art predicting, rather than imitating life perhaps...
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 23:26 GMT Cpt Blue Bear
Sounds like The Games...
which ran to two series on the ABC here before the Sydney Olympics. The writers seemed to have a pretty amazing knack of predicting the following week's Olympic scandal / screw up / swindle. It's still very funny ten years on.
I must look up the BBC's remake. As long a Ricky Gervais has nothing to do with it I figure it sounds promising.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 17:03 GMT Anton Ivanov
Fixed that for ya
...18 more months about this jumped-up MARKETING jamboree.
If you want to do sports take your son out on the grass and kick some ball. Or get him to try to kick you (I throughly enjoyed helping him polish his karate skills this morning for 30 mins at 8:00 am out on the grass in front of the house). That is sport.
The thing happening in London is not sport. It is marketing and brand placement.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 23:14 GMT AndrueC
Or Sony
My PS3 loses about four minutes a week. The fact it has such a shit clock is bad enough..but the bloody thing has a permanent Internet connection /and the ability to reset the time using NTP/.
So it has access to some of the most accurate clocks on the planet..but it won't synchronize unless I tell it to.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 16:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
web site wont go down....
...because of the huge price of tickets! ouch , those are some high prices.
even worse, if you've got a little baby, who'll be on your lap, you have to pay full price for almost all events.
..and, in another almight f"**k up, key events are limited to 4 tickets...so tough luck if you've got
a bigger than 4 member family... you'll have to ditch the remaining kid(s) somewhere... and enjoy the spectacle hoping they are safe and sound.
I'm not even going to go into the whole financial shenanigans (such as when you put yourself down for tickets, they'll take the money...then work out that you arent going to that event, then give you a refund more than 1 month later. thanks for that VISA you filthy money grabbing wh**es)
oh yes, VISA. you can only pay with VISA. thats nice. real nice. wheres the competition commission and european equality armies when you need 'em?
very disappointed with how much the UK can seriously f**K up some sports
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 10:13 GMT Goat Jam
If it is anything like "Sydeny"
then it'll get worse too.
Assuming that you can overcome all the aforementioned hurdles, you will find it almost impossible to get in to any really interesting event and you will be forced to settle for "Laos vs Belgium" in the Womens Basketball or something equally uninteresting, but hey, at least you get to "soak up the olympic atmos, right?"
Once you get there, you find that the stadium is empty but lo!, the only seats that are in use are around the rim of the stadium, up in the nose bleed zone. You see, the seats down front are all pre booked for *every* event by corporates and VIP's and whether they intend to actually attend the event is completely irrelevant. When they choose not to attend they just sit there empty, even though there are thousands of punters out there who would love the opportunity to use them were they just give the opportunity to do so.
The whole thing is an elitist circle jerk club that is paid for by the likes of you and me but without us having the opportunity to share in in what we have paid for.
Personally, after my experience at Sydney I can no longer bring myself to show any interest whatsoever. I don't even bother watching it on TV.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 17:03 GMT Syed
For Fucks Sake
My old Casio watch from umpty-five years ago had a stopwatch / countdown timer function.
Maybe they can project the image from one of these relics onto a big wall in Trafalgar Square - it would be a whole lot cheaper to boot.
And to re-iterate my previous point from the title -- FOR FUCKS SAKE!!!
also -- Je5u5 Fucking H Christ!!!
and -- What a bunch of incompetent fucktards!!!
and -- CUPID STUNTS!!!
--END OF RANT--
P.S. Can we please have a combined WTF and FAIL icon?
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 17:12 GMT Tom 38
I live in Newham
Before they started "upgrading" Stratford Station (I'll believe what they've done will improve peak hours only when I've seen it), we had a clock counting down to the start - it was there when I moved to Stratford in 2005. They removed it as it is was in the way of the new mall entrance.
@AC: its worse than that, you have to apply up front for your tickets, and if you want to see anything at all, you'll need to apply for multiple tickets, without knowing what ones you will get in the ballot. Eg, if you assume a 10% chance of getting tickets (its probably less), then you might want to apply for 10 different events to maximise your chance of getting tickets.
If you are 'lucky' and win all 10, the first you will know of it is when they take the money from your visa (and only visa) card. If you do get too many tickets, no problem, you can sell them back to the organizers for face value .... 6 months after you've bought them.
Also, if you want to see a particular event, it is worth applying for more expensive tickets, as the more expensive brackets are less likely to be massively over-subscribed (only moderately over-subscribed).
TBH, I think I'll watch it on TV, open the window and I'll be able to hear the stadium anyway, its only half a mile away.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 21:03 GMT Matt West
Sack off Omega
@Syed - You've missed the point entirely. Casio watches are reliable, they don't need to spend millions on marketing. Swatch and Omega on the other hand peddle over-priced, unreliable tat to idiots, thus the need for big stunts like this.
In an ideal world we'd see their now-tainted brands banned from the London Olympics.
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 09:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Reliable?
Matt West is probably like me - wears his ancient, RELIABLE Casio watch having replaced the plastic strap umpteen times just because they WEAR OUT, the battery because they don't last forever, but the watch goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on........ You get the message!
I could also have lent the Olympic committee an old digital countdown clock (which still works) and they could have a TV camera looking at that and project the image onto a big screen.
How much did this failed clock COST?
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 21:04 GMT Cameron Colley
So, Omega don't always make functioning timepieces.
I was about to shell out two grand for one but, apparently, they were involved in the olympic non-countdown in England, so I'll pick up a cheap Poljot instead.
I'm awaiting the amazing service which will be rendered by England's transport network also -- I'm told it's bloody good.
With any luck the olympics will demonstrate how well marketing shit and decades of government theft has turned the UK into a pointless waste of resources.
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 10:07 GMT ShaggyDoggy
Says it all
Still, when they eventually get it restarted, perhaps they can have the actual remining time on there, since I never understood how a 500 day countdown can be showing currently more than 500 days to go.
I suppose we have the Olympic flame going out episode still to come * etc etc
* you read it here first
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 13:12 GMT Chris Hunt
Don't forget the sponsor!
I'm shocked at the title of this story. Surely it should be
"The OMEGA London 2012 countdown clock claps out"
No mention of this cack-handed chronometer should be made without mention of the company that made it - how else are they to be sure of receiving the recognition they deserve?
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 17:49 GMT John 61
Thanks
to my fellow posters for giving me a huge laugh. I hate sport for what it has become. I take my nephews on the park with a football bought from the pound shop. They're quite happy with that. When you think about all the costs involved why didn't they build an enterpirse zone (like the Germans do) and housing? Then again people would benefit from that. I heard a comedian on the radio a year or so ago who said "There's a Bangladeshi community in East London just aching for an Equine Centre" (I forget his name), which sums it up.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
