Posts by Tony 179 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Nov 2007
Having had to deal with both BT and HP support centres, I don't think anyone will see a difference. At the moment, neither seems able to provide a consistent level of service.
@ Christoph
Yes , it is the same HP. And it's the same BT that allowed the monitoring of broadband use without telling users it was happening (Phorm) and maintained that it was not illegal.
You think that there is a link?
I remember it well.
On one late night flight back from the States, I sat in the cockpit on the jump seat for about 1 1/2 hours. I'd been learning to fly on a Cessna (only a couple of hours) and the pilot was quite happy to show me the whole works. For a while I was running through the navigation equipment for them, picking up the coasts of Greenland and Iceland. It was capped off by a good view of the Northern lights.
Pure magic - a bloody shame we can't do it any more.
attempting to give a damn...........................
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service will not start, unable to give a damn
damn not given
About 2 months after I first started work (aged 15), I was handed a paper bag with a £1 note in it, and instructions on the back to go to the hairdresser to fetch a packet of condoms for the manager.
Thinking it was one of these initiation stunts, I queried it; my supervisor suggested that I check it out with the person concerned. To my surprise, it was actually true; the guy was too embarassed to go out and buy them himself.
After that, it became a semi-regular occurance; as it happened about every 4-6 weeks, there were lots of comments about weekend activities.
On one occasion, the hairdresser was closed; I had to go to a local pharmacy instead. As I was buying the 3 pack of nu-form, the manager's wife who was shopping there, saw me and told me in no uncertain terms that I could put them back! (I still bought them anyway!)
OK, I'll say that it's a good thing that he can stand up and admit that things are not what they want them to be. i.e. Vista is full of bloat and has a poor track record.
However, it's easy to say that things will improve, and another thing entirely to actually achieve that improvement. So far, we've yet to see anything that would actually instill confidence that the situation will improve.
Can I suggest Steve, that instead of getting one of your tame techs to install a PC for you, that you take a shot at it yourself. Then, when you find something that doesn't want to play ball, you then phone the support line and speak to a cubicle dweller who is not a tech and only reads instructions from a series of set menus. You might then begin to really understand what many people have been saying for a wee while now.
You really should have a "computer says no" icon
"Seriously. 20-something million people makes us as big as, what, 1/3rd of London?"
No, it makes you 3 times the size of London. About a third of the size of the UK
Whilst that cesspool on the Thames seems big (particularly if you live in a village of 560), it's only just over a tenth of the population of the UK. Which is why people that live outside of the M25 get a tad miffed at the many comments from those inside that seem to indicate that nothing exists north of Watford or west of Reading.
And what about the allied PoWs and civilian internees? No-one actually knows the number of dead, but it is considerably more than than those killed by the 2 bombs concerned. There is also a little matter of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the 30s - again, no-one actually knows the number of dead; I've heard quotes in the millions.
The issue of the article is to note the passing of a scientist who contributed in no small part to the advancement of knowledge. What his discoveries were used for (and will be in the future) is not necessarily within his control.
We should be asking are we providing the education and support to allow future generations of scientists the opportunities to make their own discoveries.
Similar story; a C & A store in London (I think) had a problem with women going into the cubicles provided as changing rooms and pinching clothes by putting them on under their streetware. They put a surveillance camera up in the rafters as the cubicles had no ceiling panel, so that they could watch out for thieves.
It only came to light after some time; the male security staff were inviting other male staff to join them. The store manager became suspicious and installed a spyhole camera in the video room to watch the sudden influx of men. He described it as being a bit like a daily stag party, with fags and booze lying around everywhere.
I was told that the surveillance camera had been in place for almost 2 years!
Clearly you are missing the point; if we can get all of the terrorists to apply for a passport, then we will have their details on record. Once they do something very naughty, then we will be able to locate them really quickly with the secret RFID tag hidden in their passport, and so we will be able to arrest them toute suite. Simple!
And for all those that don't realise, irony does not mean something made of iron!
Actually, I've noticed that there are several stations (More4, Virgin1 amongst others) where they already use the American practice of running ads immediately after the opening credits. It is reeeeeaaaalllyyy annnnnoyyyying.
Mind you, I spent a weekend watching Italian TV. There was actually an ad break during the closing credits; it returned in time for the last 5 seconds of names of people that ran and fetched the coffee for the non-entities that are listed after the people that actually did any work. Then it went to another ad break
Can we have an icon for gouging out of eyes?
3 of the units were Sony Ipela systems with data sharing boxes (approx £4500 each). They are used in the "regional centres". The 2 outlying sites have Polycom VT700s (approx £1700 each) and we are going to put another one of these in the new site in France.
We tested them with a 4 way call about 2 months ago; UK HO, Germany, Scotland and Hungary. They also allow us to use the data sharing function for all participants to look at various things, organise training etc. Well worth the dosh.
Hey Sony and Polycom; any chance of some freebies for promoting the products??
We implemented a video conferencing solution using a mixture of products at 5 sites across Europe (3 in the UK) and there will be another site added later this year. The cost is just over £17k with another £2k to come. The total savings in reduced travel costs have been around £75k in the last 12 months with about another £30k in saved time. We expect the savings to be at least 50% more in the next 12 months.
I've seen the Cisco telepresence product - and it is ice cool (yes, I want one) but even at the lower price, it is still too expensive. The quality of the smaller units is still more than good enough for what we need.
The only problem is that we don't get the frequent flyer miles anymore - but at least we don't have to spend hours waiting in line at Heathrow.
We too had a number of HP servers, laptops and of course printers. But thanks to the rather poor service from them and their re-sellers, we are also moving away as fast as possible.
45 minutes on the phone to their support desk - 30 minutes of which were being passed between departments, each time having to give name, address, product and serial number etc. 10 months on, and the problem still remains unsolved but they keep closing the support ticket as they don't allow it to remain open. They want us to keep opening a new ticket for the same problem to make their completion stats look better.
We've bought some boxes from Dell that are a slightly lower spec, draw less power and create less heat, but actually perform much better and are quieter. Their support used to be quite poor, but I have to say that they have made enormous efforts to improve and it shows.
To my mind, HP are now doing what IBM did back in the 80s - trading purely on the name. They need to seriously look at what the customer wants, not what they want to sell to the customer.
I'm not surprised about this - in fact should anyone be surprised that this is the case?
It's also worth pointing out that you can have the best policies, strategy documents and processes, but it doesn't matter a damn if the staff don't know about it or follow the procedures as laid down.
I remember a big campaign on promoting this when the law took effect; discussions, presentations etc. up and down the country, TV programs about it, plus numerous consultants to draft the appropriate policies.
Flavour of the month politics - when we are bored with it, we move on to something else and pretend that everything is OK.
Back in the early 1980's, I used to listen to the sports programme on BBC Radio Bristol. One weekend, there was a problem with what sounded like someone having a conversation that started to overlap the presenters. Eventually, they stopped the radio broadcast and we could hear someone having a phone conversation coming out of the radio.
It turned out that BBC RB sent their signal across the city to a mast on the outskirts; something went wrong in the exchange and some poor chap called Harry ended up with his phone calls going out on the transmitter.
It was made worse because he answered the phone with his telephone number; so of course all these sad people started to phone him up - he couldn't understand what was going on. When he was told that he was being broadcast, he burst into a quick refrain of "Rosemary". About half an hour later, he started to get calls from people asking him to sing a bit more!! This all went on for about an hour.
Eventually, they managed to sort the problem out - no more Harry. The presenters were a bit snotty about it; they then started to get complaints that Harry was better than them, so they quickly dropped the subject.
However, the bosses at the Beeb saw the funny side - later that year they did a Christamas concert and Harry was asked if he wanted to take part - they dressed him up in a mounties uniform and he had to serenade one of the female presenters! The whold incident was referred to as "Radio Harry" and was the subject of a great number of local jokes for many years after.
Actually it's not quite as simple as "a few guys, couple tins of paint and a brush". You have to remember, the bridge is over water, it's a long way up and the wind blows right up yer kilt! It's a real swine if you climb all the way out and then realise you to need to take a p***
As someone who has travelled over the road bridge a few times, I can assure you that anyone who is crazy enough to climb up and paint those things earns their pay.
There is a huge surface area (I estimate 6.0 sq Kilometre for 1 coat and at 30sq m per tin around 200,000 tins, but I could be miles out). I doubt that there is any single component small enough to be painted with a single tin of paint.
You can't just apply with a brush - the wind would blast it off before the paint had dried. Apart from that, it rains occasionally!
I remember reading the Bruce Schneier book "Security & lies" - part of the pre-sales blurb had the phrase "system administrators who read this book will quickly lose the will to live".
I think you may have to start putting the number for the Samaritans at the top of the page whenever you have yet another one of these reports of yet more gevernment data loss.
Yes they are pretty disgusting!
>>wonder where we would be today if Guy Fawkes had been a revolutionist rather than a terrorist<<
Actually, the two terms are interchangeable; it is merely a matter of perspective and generally depends on who wins.
"Whoever wins, writes the history books". (and then Hollywod re-writes them!)
>> drive around in a car that has number plates<<
I remember reading a number of articles that highlight how many people drive without a licence, without tax or MOT. I believe this was about 1 in 6?
I lived in a big city a few years ago, and the police were having problems with "community vehicles" - those that were being driven by maybe up to a dozen different people over the course of a week.
It seems that if you are reasonably honest and law abiding you will be the one they come for; if you take a chance and don't do what you're told, the chances are that you'll get away with it!
>>early part of 20th century, maybe a bit before<<
In fact trade unions started quite a bit before that. The Trade Union Act legalised the formation of a trades union and that came into force in 1871.
The most famous case of a union was that of the Tolpuddle martyrs in 1834 - although after the court case in which they were all sentenced to transportation, there were massive public protests at which some 35 other trade unions were present.
I think there should be a "non-IT" anorak icon
In some areas, the sewers are not that big - this is made worse by years of **** and **** and other noxious substances being washed down the various drains, along with other decaying matter which solidify, and then reduce the size of the aperture. Shoving a fibre cable along a narrow pipe makes it narrower - just wait for all the drains to start backing up and houses filling up with sewage.
But just how look how fast you can surf the pron sites - makes it all worthwhile!
A couple of comments from the beeb that made me smile:
"Police found the abandoned vehicle. It was empty"
"the biggest carry-out this Christmas"
I also note that the criminals waited until all the police were tied up dealing with the anti drink/driving campaign before pulling the heist. Clearly very public spirited as they are trying to remove temptation.
If enough of us got really worked up, we could chuck these toerags out. However, it requires that we actually do something other than puff impotently on websites such as this. As George Mikes said "Other countries have revolutions, the English have satire"
Or as the Governator put it in "Red Heat"
"Pud dee politishuns up against dee wall and shute dem"
James Belushi - "No; the lawyers wouldn't let us"
"Shute dee lawyers furst"
I think that you will find that the "Postal Worker" was one of the senior engineers for the GPO telecommunications division (what became BT) by the name of Tommy Flowers.
I understand that he offered the plans to the War Office before outbreak of hostilities - they couldn't see a need for such a device. Despite that, he built one himself and spent approx £2000 in the process (a 3 bed house at the time would have been about £350).
After the (don't mention the war) a greatful Government awarded him the princely sum of £75 for his sterling efforts; although he also later received an MBE. (Just shows that they are as consistent now as they were then)
According to some sources he also worked on the development of ERNIE; thanks to him, I've won about £600!
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