
Take THAT anti-smoking fascists!!!!!!
At last! Research that is not sponsored by the "you smoke?? You ARE SCUM!!!!" brigade.
The one with the smokes in one pocket and the cakes in the other, thanks!
508 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Nov 2007
On which hype will win!
In the blue corner, the reigning champion......."STOP TEH TERRIRESTS!!!"
And the challenger, in the red corner......"SAVE TEH EARHT!!!!"
Should be an interesting fight, Bob!
It certainly will Jim!
(the glittery one that looks like Elton John's dressing gown, please...)
Government employees stand outside pubs and take our umbrellas and jackets away as we come out for a smoke in the rain??
As far as energy efficiency and carbon footprinting goes, they'd do better to introduce videoconferencing for all their pointless "summits" that never achieve anything of worth, rather then flying themselves and all their entourage halfway round the world to debate the shape of bananas.
Damned "people of dubious parentage" that they are.
His name is "Abu-jihaad".
If you drop the "Abu-" and one of the "a"'s, then his name is "Jihad".
What more proof could an ***unbiased*** court possibly require that he is obviously a "VERY NAUGHTY TERRORIST!!!!!" and must be immediately incarcerated without any further form of trial for the next 10 years??
Students are taking easy subjects.
*yawn*
But where's the incentive to do otherwise?
If you do a soft subject, don't have to work hard, and at the end of it, you get a low-paid job, if you get one at all.
If you do a hard subject, you have to work hard, and at the end of it, you get a low-paid job, if you get one at all.
The surest way to a highly paid job is to go to Eton/"old school tie" school of your choice, after which you can join daddy's company as an "executive consultant".
</rant>
Alright, alright I give up!!!! ;-)
Regards Jon's response though, a lot of punters are very unaware as to how the system works, and will believe whatever the phone shop / phone call with a "special offer" etc tells them. They *ARE* told in some situations that, for example, a special offer can be "held" for them if they get, and hand over, a PAC - without committing themselves. They don't know any better, just like people still open attachments on e-mails from people they don't know because they really, honestly believe that it contains pictures of Paris.
As far as automating the call backs etc - that would be great, and could be implemented if we were only looking at the 4 (5?) networks - but a lot of customers of O2 / Voda are still contracted to Service Providers - intermediary companies that handle the billing etc, a relic of the days when Cellnet and Vodafone were the only networks. When O2 introduced per-second billing back in the day, we struggled to get them to accept THAT, so I reckon the chances of getting it done effectively are about nil... these SPs are the real barrier because a UK port can involve the customer, the phone shop, the current SP, the current network, the receiving network and the receiving SP. With all these (potential) parties, the odds on errors occurring increase. Of course, if you're going from T-Mobile to Orange at the Orange Shop, it's a lot easier.
Darren - don't they have a minimum contractual length in Ireland to prevent swapping every couple days? Wow!
@ Andrew Heenan
I don't consider 5 days to be a cast-iron rule day - I simply contest the 2 day proposal, followed by 2 hours. Both of these, in my experience, wouldn't be suitable. I'm sure that 4 days, for example, so that it can be advertised as "within the same week!!!!!!!!" would be feasible.
My argument is that in order to reduce to 2 days / 2 hours, the process would need to be changed greatly. Reducing the time for the switch is going to lead to reductions in each area of the process, and see a likely increase in errors.
@ Matthew Revell
Although the slam couldn't "force you to use the new SIM" - the port process happens as follows:
* old telco switches off your SIM and proceeds to route calls to your number to the new network.
* new telco switched on your SIM some hours later.
After your old telco switches off your SIM, you're stuck. When you figure out your SIM isn't working, that's all you know. Unless you have previously received anything to indicate a new telco is providing your service, all you know is that your phone doesn't work. So, although they can't force you to use the new SIM (if you have it), your old one can become inoperable.
Regards the contract - yes, you would be able to get out of it in a legal sense, but it is a LOT of messing about, both on your part, and on the part of the telcos involved. Especially if you've ported previously (e.g. started on O2, ported to Voda, now been slammed to Orange as O2 need to get involved again). I don't want any of that!!
The only part that happens before the 5-day wait is the punter requesting the PAC from his current telco. The confirmation and attempt to retain etc take place during the 5 days, and form (IMHO) the most valuable part of the process - during the period I was with O2, I did come across a number of occasions where this part of the process stopped someone from porting where they had been misinformed by their new telco (both porting out from us, or porting in based on misinformation at a retailer).
Example: someone is thinking of leaving Voda, but they don't know where. They request a PAC from Voda, and go to Phone Shop X to talk about options. Phone Shop X informs them that they'll take the details down in case the customer decides to port to O2 (because that month O2 are offering the best incentives). The customer does so, on the basis that they are not taking an obligation, and that someone from O2 will call them to discuss further.
In the current process someone from Voda would contact them to confirm their wish to leave, and attempt to retain. This confirmation takes place within the 5 days.
Under the new process, assuming that the rest of the process doesn't change apart from the timescale reduction, Voda now have less than half the time to confirm and attempt to retain. Low-spending customers won't be contacted, because Voda will be targetting high-spenders. Any low-spender in this position will now be ported to O2, and not know anything about it, because there hasn't even been enough time to get his welcome pack & SIM from O2 in the post. Customer is now in an 18-month contract and doesn't know what to do. Retailer X certainly isn't going to help, they have their commission....
I'm amazed.
Vodafone actually have a valid objection to this.
I was involved at one of the networks in setting up the current 5-day transfer some years ago, following the debacle of the original system that took week after week after week with no-one having any real idea what was going on. The current system is a huge, huge improvement.
Attempted slamming is a problem under the current system, and under the previous one. But, it can't actually occur (without fraud where someone impersonates the customer) because:
* the customer has to request the PAC from current provider, which is then provided by the customer to the new provider within a 30-day validity period.
* the current telco **HAS** to have contact with the customer in order for the above to happen, and has the opportunity to attempt to "retain" the customer by making offers etc.
* the customer takes the PAC provided by his/her current telco to the new telco, and sets up a new account with them.
* the number is ported 5 business days following.
At any time during the process, the customer can cease the process. Because the customer MUST have contact with the current telco in order to initiate the process - no one else can do that "on their behalf" the way energy companies, landline companies etc can - it's pretty good at being proof against slamming fraud.
If the Ofcom-proposed reduction of timescales comes in, you can guarantee that they will "remove the burden of initiating the transfer from the customer" - duplicating the way things work in the energy and landline markets where customers are suckered into "just sign here to confirm I've given you a quote" and find out when they start getting bills from a new network what's happened, and that they're now in a new 18-month contract. It can be remedied, but it's a pain - both for the customer and the telcos involved (especially O2 and Vodafone who have a lot of their customers through intermediaries).
I hate to agree with Vodafone, but, well, in this instance I have to. OK, so they're only doing it to avoid costs and pain, but even so...
"Mike Crawshaw et al probably complain about their computer users not liking change, yet they are guilty of the same crime when they reject changes in the business model. It doesn't help that they add an unhealthy dose of xenophobia."
Erm.... I'm Canadian, my Mom is English, my gf is Indian, one of my best friends is Pakistani.... so much for Xenophobia.
I like change. Change keeps me interested because it forces new ways to do things, and prevents stagnation. I do, however, despise badly-thought out change that is purely for the sake of itself, to keep various project managers in employment and increase profit for a company at the cost of service.
So there. Nah.
Don't you just feel for them? After all, all they wanted to do was dump expensive, mostly competent (ok, that can be argued with some of the banks that offshored customer service...) domestic staff for half-trained, working for nothing people in other countries to bump up the profit margin.
Yep, it's a real shame that it might affect them.
*snigger*
"In the limited circumstances where audio recording is justified"
These "limited circumstances" would obviously be "everywhere, all the time" because WE HAZ TO STOP TEH TERRIRESTS!!!!!!!!!!!! and if you oppose it on the outmoded grounds of freedom of speech and personal privacy, you're obviously a terrorist too. Won't somebody please think of the children!?!?
"Bought my first Mac in 1991, been using them ever since.
Number of virus infections: er, none."
Same here - except a Windows-based PC since 1996... I've never owned a Mac, nor do I intend to - they're not suitable for what I need. The vast majority of malware is avoided if you excercise some common sense and resist the BS, whether it's "double-click this .exe to see nude pics of Paris!!!!!" or "send me your bank details and I'll put £15,000,000,000,000" in your account!!!!".
It's the USER being targetted, not the OS in the case of these social engineering tricks. And many Mac users simply aren't as cautious as they might be, because they're used to not having to worry about such things, as they've not previously been targetted.
(cotton buds to some....)
Otherwise I, as a complete f**ktard, might have an uncontrollable urge to ram them into my eyes! They're potentially lethal, and the government has a duty, nay, a sacred trust, to protect me at the expense of everyone else having dirty ears due my own stupidity.
Gah!
The UK population had the option to "pull out of the ID card project"....!!!!
"Anyone wanting to open a bank account, apply for student funding or buy alcohol or cigarettes will be forced to buy an ID card."
But they're not compulsary, right?
"In order to serve you better, please bend over and drop your trousers, or we'll be forced to beat you with iron bars."
Because as soon as they get here, they will register for an ID Card (they have to, it's the RULES!), as they are foreign nationals. This will immediately trigger alarm bells within our super-efficient borders apparatus, and they will be swiftly removed from our shores without any undue problems, and at no cost to the UK taxpayer. Preferably back to France.
No, really, that's what the ID Card programme will do! Gordy Broon said so!
</pissed off rant from a Canadian living in the UK, who will have to carry a frikkin' ID Card by the end of this year>
The man's a tool. I'm no Diana fan, and I'm sick to death of hearing more about her every time I turn on the news 10 years on.
But this guy? Christ. Everything he has done for the last forever has been based on "I was once Princess Di's butler, don't you know?" - I had the misfortune to accidentally (whilst channel-hopping a few days ago) hit on "American Princess". Where Paul Burrell uses his "intimate knowledge of how a princess should behave" etc etc to turn American trailer-trash kids into princesses. Or something. (If you happen to fancy turning your brain into cheese one evening, try it.)
Admittedly, I wouldn't waste the time to go to his website and send abuse. But I'm grateful that all the "Di-Hards" (sorry, couldn't resist...) are doing so, as it keeps them the hell away from me!
With a little help from the God-Blessed U S of A for Step 4.
Here's how it will work.
1. Receive report of dodgy site with Bomb Instructions / Jihadist Literature / Slight Criticism of "Tony" Brown and his cronies.
2. Check facts (optional)
3. If site is hosted in Britain, send Men In Suits round to detain author.
4. If site is abroad, invade that country. They're obviously enemies of our precious freedom if they allow material like this to be hosted, and need British / American Democracy (God Bless it!!!!) bringing to them so they can toe the line the way all True Patriots do.
5. ???
6. Profit!!
To the interfering nannies telling us what games we should play (the new PC-DVD "PhotoShop Flower Arranging" is recommended apparently).
With a large stick, preferably with nails in. Then they can compare video game violence (look! it's on the screen! It's not REAL!!) to the real thing (look! I'm bleeding out all over the floor! It's REAL!!)
issues "enforcement notices" against the HMRC, the NHS, the DVLA, oh sod it - the entire damned Government, who are doing more to abuse our data than every private company in the country put together - THEN people might start to take them seriously.
In the meantime, they're a joke. Just like the "New & Improved Chastity Belt - as recommended by Paris Hilton!!!!"
Ignoring completely the charge of lashing them to the mast (you know how these greenie-types like to exaggerate...) - these 2 men illegally (without permission) boarded another vessel on high seas because they personally disagreed with the activities that the vessel was engaged in, and were attempting to interfere with these activities. They weren't acting on behalf of a government to protect territorial waters or enforce a court decision, they were acting as private citizens to interfere with a mission sanctioned by the government owning the vessel. Sorry guys, but you had no right to do that, and your detention is perfectly justified until the appropriate authorities come to sort you out.
Just be thankful you're not being forced to take part in Japanese TV in the meantime...
I'd be applying for a job there!!
As a smoker, I can appreciate the fact that non-smokers don't want to work in a smoking environment.
But, as Danny above stated, these people were aware that it was a smoking environment when they started there. Tough cookies. They shouldn't have gone there. If only we could get away with this in the UK.*
(*OK, maybe not sacking them. But at least telling them that if they don't like it, they know where the door is)
Like there aren't enough muppets playing with their mobile phones all the way through the film already....!
I'm surprised Manchester Utd Promotions Ltd (didn't they once play football there rather than selling stuff and promoting hair gel?) didn't get in on this one...
OK SVII - I can accept quite happily that not all FB users are "drooling herd beasts" (I like the expression - can I keep it?) - you seem articulate and pretty well-informed, for example. I'm well aware that we're talking "generalities" here, and no generality is 100% accurate. The list I made *is* entirely common sense - that's the point!! And yet... =;-)
However - the majority of people around me day-to-day, everywhere from conversations in the office to walking past people in the street to conversations on the train, I hear conversations that reinforce my opinion. "Did you get that ninja I sent after you" is one I hear over and over without actually engaging these people in conversation. These ARE the people that will probably say that ID cards are a great idea...
I tried social networking (not FB, MySpace) for a very brief period a couple years ago. It took me 3 days to decide that the downsides (mainly the idiots on there) were not worth the upside (which I found rather limited). The point you make about "depends who your friends are" does work to a degree, but only so far. It's hard to ignore rampant idiocy all around you, no matter how sensible you are yourself. Or it is for me, anyway - perhaps that's why I despise these things so much? The fact that I (during my putting my toes in the water stage) was deluged with friend requests and mails from people I had never heard of / didn't want to talk to, spam, "webcam shows", stupid pictures (not, unfortunately funny ones), "news" broadcasts etc was enough to make me say "is this worth it to talk to people when I can do so without the BS?" And the answer was a resounding "no". Add in the recent privacy issues, and the "no" goes to bold, capitalised, underlined.
I'll continue to arrange my social life via phone and occasionally e-mail, you continue to organise yours via FB. I'll revise my opinion that not all FB users are, to use that phrase again, "drooling herd beasts", if you revise yours that not everyone who despises the concept is not doing so out of "a swaggering sense of superiority", but rather an intolerance for the things that you are able to ignore "with a smidgen of effort".
Fair?
"I do find the Facebook-bashing hilarious. I don't know how people can muster the massive swaggering sense of superiority about it, when it's just a means to an end - the end being more contact with the people you like, some online, some offline. What's pathetic about that? I find it's a pretty good way to organise and augment my social life, myself."
And here was me under the impression that "the end" for FB was:
* to invade the privacy of users (Beacon)
* to ignore data retention legislation (inability to delete accounts)
* to target users with malware (Secret Crush)
* to target ever-more invasive advertising at all users, based on what is effectively spyware (in end result, rather than process).
* to reduce the general intelligence of the popuation by making "hur hur I sent a ninja/teddy bear/giant marshmallow after you hur hur" the height of wit.
* to keep people in their houses at night tapping on keyboards rather than making the streets untidy (in line with Gordy Broon's anti-social behaviour initiatives - there's probably a governmental subsidy coming FB's way if it meets central gov-set targets...)
Silly me... it's really there for the benefit of its users to organise their busy social lives because they don't have time to pick up the phone / send a text / send an email?
(PS: Joe Harrison - I agree with you on YouTube. There's a lot of utter shite on there, but there is the occasional gem.)
Is much more fun in real life than on FB. Or at least, I assume it is, not having a FaceBook a/c.
Scenario 1:
*Beep*: "FreakBoy123 wants to be your friend!"
<DELETE>
*Beep*: "FreakBoy123 still wants to be your friend!"
<DELETE>
*Beep*: "Why you no want be friends with FreakBoy123?"
<DELETE>
*Beep*: "You no love FreakBoy123?"
<DELETE>
Scenario 2:
Bob: "Want to go for a beer after work tonight?"
Me: "No. You're a tosser. Fuck off and never speak to me again."
Which is more fun? Personally, I like the personal touch of (2).
(PS: Politicians on YouTube? Go guys, down wid da kidz, booyakasha*!)
*Gesundheit.
"For all those feeling smug about how he shouldnt have done what he did...
The only details he gave were those available from the telephone directory and one of his cheques.
Still feeling so safe?"
Don't forget your cheque also has a sample of your signature....!!
Hang about - the USAF has hundreds of pilots with 5 or more kills* on their books??? I didn't realise the US had fought anyone with an air force anytime recently**....
* "ace" is a term to describe a pilot with 5 or more confirmed kills, normally air-to-air.
** shooting down the kites of small children in Afghanistan surely can't count!
I'm diabetic.
I go into Tesco and pick up some biscuits, they are clearly and unambiguously labelled with sugar content on the packet. The information is factual. In the same way as, on a desktop pc, the (e.g.) RAM or HDD size is.
I would not expect a Tesco employee to be able to answer "I am a diabetic, which digestive biscuits do you recommend?" for a number of (I hope) self-evident reasons.
I would expect someone from whom I am potentially buying a £1,000+ piece of kit to be able to recommend one based on my stated requirements rather than just trying to flog me the one with the best set of flashing lights.
Firstly, I appreciate your taking the time to make comments here. That took guts.
To take your last point....
"I ask you to drop your prejudice and try one of our store to see the improvement for yoursleves. Pc World is the uk's number 1 Pc supplier and frankly unless you build yourself there is no-one in the retail sector who is better on service or price . . "
Adam, I have. Over and over, during a period of over a decade. I have been in your shops. I have spoken to your staff. On every occasion, I have been disappointed / frustrated. Every. Single. Time.
(Except once, when I ran in, grabbed a flash memory stick, went to the counter, clapped my hands over my ears and shouted "LALALALAAAA" while the till-monkey tried to sell me insurance costing more than the stick, paid (£4 more than Maplin for the same item, I found out later that day) and ran out as fast as my legs could carry me.)
PC World IS the #1 PC supplier in the UK.
* highest number of dedicated outlets (high visibility)
* aggressive marketing indicating that prices are lower and support is better than it actually is
* the British public is woefully ignorant regards pc technology.
I accept that you have neither the time nor the money to train your staff - but that ain't my problem. I am not going to come to PC World to make my expensive purchases when I can get them cheaper elsewhere, with a better after-sales service. The only time I will set foot in your stores now (aside from hiding from the rain etc!) is if there is a specific item I need right now, and Maplin is shut. Or if I'm particularly bored and want to see staff squirm when I say - "nice laptop. Only £1,500? Yeah OK. But can I get XP with that?"
("There is no-one...who is better on service or price." Hehe. Good one.)
Early this year, I needed a new laptop, so I went into PC World to see what they had to offer. All the "on-shelf" models came with Vista, so I asked a friendly-looking staff member if it was possible to get one of a particular model with XP instead. "Nope, sorry" says she. I was the third person to ask for XP that day, but they weren't able to sell with XP any more.
So PC World were thus without a £1,200 sale, and had one more laptop to keep on the pile of surplus stock. Nice to know I made my little contribution towards toppling them out of the 100. =:-)
As someone who worked for a number of years in the mobile industry (one of the networks), I say that Ofcom needs to either get some balls, and power with which to back them up, or give it all up as a bad job.
For years, Ofcom has done nothing all that much apart from:
1. Introduce things the market needed anyway (e.g. make all mobiles "07" prefixes).
2. make "suggestions" which the mobile industry as a whole ignores (e.g. How long ago did Ofcom start up about roaming charges, especially as regards data?)
Although in many ways the UK mobile phone user is spoiled rotten for choice and services (compare to the US market!), the way in which these are delivered is still pretty lame and expensive, and needs something to give the industry a kick up the jacksie. I'd personally really like to see (for example) O2 forced to support delivery reports on SMS, something which they still don't do*, and a method whereby when SMS fails (e.g. a multiple-part text delivers parts 1 & 3 but part 2 doesn't arrives for 2 hours, as happens quite a lot) the sender can reclaim the cost of the entire message from the network.
*If you use an O2 phone, you can get delivery reports by adding "*0#" (without the quotes - of course this uses up some of your characters.... ) at the beginning of your message. But just switching on delivery reports on your handset will not work.
"customers unhappy with the number of system failures in the previous release."
System failures like the Ribbon.
"customers had been hacked off with the amount of crashes experienced"
Crashes like the Ribbon appearing.
"Crashes are one of the most frustrating experiences customers have,"
Apart from the Ribbon.
"Shaffner also acknowledged that customers had been slow to adopt the latest version of Office, although he didn't mention why that might be. Google Apps anyone?"
And the Ribbon.