Posts by cosymart 451 posts • joined 23 Jan 2010
Tanks are very expensive to purchase, maintain and operate. The Challengers are at least 30 years old technology and for some reason they are never in the right place. The next big battle/war is going to be fought where???? So the next MBT design needs to be capable of what??? Using what technology????? The lead time between concept to ready for action is 10 years+ minimum.
Easier to win the lottery yet the MOD is expected get it right :-)
The only way you can compare reliability is to place many samples of each drive in identical situations for a period of years. The current method of seeing how many complaints/comments each type of drive gets is flawed as we don't know things like sales. Seagates get lots of complaints but that might be because they sell twice as many? So overall they could be more reliable. IMHO :-)
According to the About bit he is still working here but there again this was last updated in 2019....
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I had the task of putting together a procurement request for our very first office PC as one of our suppliers was now setting up an online ordering system. Our boss wanted to be in the forefront of this brave new world so muggins was summoned to the enclave and greeted with the comment "you've got one of these things at home we need one here, get it costed out" List duly drawn up I wondered back in to the enclave and the list was perused prior to approval. "what's this mouse thing?" (From memory the total cost was £2,000 and the mouse £15) You try and explain the function of a mouse to someone who has never seen one or seen anything other than a dumb terminal. I must have been convincing because the purchase was approved :-)
(The shenanigans of connecting the dial up modem using the internal phone system and shared lines etc. are a whole new story)
Getting through interviews is a bit like the advice given to me by an examiner for business studies. You need lots of ticks (not the ones found in the fields). Just download your brain on to the exam paper, the examiner is looking for key words and each one gets a tick the more key words the higher the mark. The HR droid doesn't have a clue about the work but they have a list of key words (job spec) supplied by the dept looking for the minion. Get loads of key word out and Robert is your uncle :-)
"Or they could hire those contractors the same way as they hire, say electrical contractors to do a wiring job."
There are issues with this: 1) The company will need to fully spec the work to be done and 2) The contractor will need to fully spec how they intend to carry out the work.
Might make for interesting conversations on both sides :-)
I can't recall ever writing a letter before that irritating bit of bent wire popped up and said that I was. To be honest I can't recall the bloody thing ever suggesting anything else before it was binned.
Clippy managed to put to death any suggestions of user assistance in any format and in all applications from that period hence. So on reflection it was a good thing :-)
Halifax seems to have a preference for employing the odd wa****r My mother suffered from dementia so I took out a power of attorney so that I could look after her finances. The solicitors gave me the original power of attorney and some stamped/authorised copies. The local Halifax branch nominated power of attorney wonk decided that the duly authorised copies weren't good enough for him and demanded to see the original as "it looks and feels different". I asked if I had to use this branch or would any branch be OK? He said that any branch would be able to set up the changes, so with that I told him to get stuffed and went to the next nearest branch and got everything sorted in 10 minutes.
"I have a vision of a conference room at Apple HQ in which top executives decide what new features to put into the Apple Watch, with the single proviso that they must have nothing to do with showing the time."
The same applies to any mobile phone. Is there any mention anywhere of how good or bad the item is to make a call with? Needs to be renamed as Camera/Communication device with optional phone function.
We had a smart meters fitted to our electricity and gas. The PFY who did the fitting was accompanied by a "supervisor" who spent the whole time sat in his van on the phone. This saga took an entire day. First the PFY got quite excited when his digital meter registered a few millivolts from a small terminated 2 core low voltage wire that passed adjacent to the fuse-board and slapped a "Dangerous Voltage - Do Not Touch" note on it. Secondly he turned off the gas boiler (more on this later). He also decided that because some of the 3 core PVC wiring passed close to a gas pipe the gas pipe had to be wrapped in thick plastic piping for safety. The fitting of the two new smart meters seemed to go quite smoothly until it was noticed that the incoming gas supply had an off switch that was upside down (marked correctly). This gas switch also gained a do not use label. We now have a house with an electrical supply but no gas. 2 hours later a Gas Network fitter arrives to fit a new, correctly orientated gas off switch. PFY then attempts to automatically get the gas boiler to ignite and fails due to having snapped off an igniter lug. A further hour passes and a gas fitter turns up to repair the broken lug and light the gas boiler.
A cautionary tale not to request a free smart meter.
It may not be the people that you work with that are the problem. We had an office that was only manned for part of the day and people were encouraged to leave a message at other times. I would listen to the various messages that rambled on about their requirements, their current lifestyle and sometimes that of their pets but the really important information, the contact number, was tagged on the end in the manner of an inarticulate racecourse announcer in the final furlong.
No, No, No, Yes. Don't be silly they won't remove anything they just won't connect any new copper as it will be all FTTP. If you want proof just take a drive out into the country, most poles now have fibre hanging from them.
Welcome to the brave new world. Lets connect everything up just before the next generation of wireless/mobile hits and makes all this redundant.
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