My MEP...
... has said he will raise this matter in the EU parliament.
305 publicly visible posts • joined 23 May 2007
The USAF will want the best aircraft, not refurbished second-hand 'rubbish' aircraft. If the new 747 (a 30+ year old design) obviously doesn't tick all the right boxes & a squeaky clean & new A380 does. It does not take a rocket scientist, to make the correct decision. The USAF chose Airbus A330 for the KC-45 tankers, OK so they will be made in Europe but they will be assembled & maintained in the USA by Northrop-Grumman.
Don't we want the world biggest Superpower to have the biggest (A380) & best that it can afford? Hey, ABL probably won't work anyway but try it on a European platform rather than a 30+ year old US platform.
When I was working as a telephone engineer back in 1982, I asked a customer what the whirring noise I could hear from their desk. The manager came in puffed out his chest & said "Oh, that the 10Mb Winchester Hard Disk." To which I said, "What on Earth do you need all that memory for?" I'd just bought a ZX81 with a 32kb ExpandeRam!
I was given a job to install a Plan 107 telephone system on XMAS EVE! The customer (Brit Gas) told me when I turned up at 10:00 that they were all off down the pub "soon, like 12:00!" I looked at want was wanted & said I'd finish it by then. There was much laughter & chuckling at 'the poor BT engineer actually working today!' I finished the job at 11:00 & then joined them in the pub & had free drinks all afternoon! I never worked so fast before; although I have done better than that but...
OK so it's only 12Gb's. I have never filled up my 512Mb SD card on my camera even at 500Kb per picture the new drive will give me 24000 pictures. Enough for a whole holiday. Just think how long that would take to upload to my Flickr account. Last time I took 300 pictures it took twenty minutes, so do the maths. Hopefully by the time it comes out, we'll have ADSL2 at 24MB connection, as standard.
It took THREE weeks for me to churn from Bulldog to BT! Bulldog still insisted I owed them money, after taking six months to upgrade my 1Mb to an 8Mb connection. I refused to pay but I still got churned to BT. If you have a bad ISP, churn to another ISP, then let the try to reclaim the money, for the survive, they didn't provide.
Bulldog in the UK offerered the fastest ADSL in the UK with a 'freephone calls' package. It took them six months for them to Import my number & this was only after an officall complaint to the telecom regulator, Ofcom.
Where are Buldog now then? First taken over by Pipex, who were the taken over by Tiscali.
I'm now back with BT. OK my ADSL is 0.1Mb slower but at least I have a reliable provider but my monthly bill is only just £8.00 lower until 08/08, when my 'contract' can change.
As an Openreach engineer, who actually connects up you, the punter, to the Network; I can say that BT, Virgin Media, Carphone Warehouse, Tiscali, Orange, and Sky, all use different Networks.
[Virgin Media do not use the BT 'last mile' anyway.]
All the non BT companies have their own DSLAM's in the local exchanges. You will find AOL kit next to the Opal kit in an exchange, both CPW! Tiscalli is Tiscilli kit, Orange is Wanadoo kit, Sky is Easynet kit. Vodaphone will be BT kit, when they get there act together.
When I jumper up a customer from the Bar Pair, it doesn't worry me if the equipment side is BT or another Service Provider. The Service Provider is no always BT, even though the 'last mile' from the exchange to you is owned by BT.
Ok so Itel created the x86 processor, which is now the dominant CPU used in PC's & Mac's.
Just as the Benz petrol engine dominate most road vercials now, are the EU trying to say that we must have Motorola & Zilog in the playing field, as well as Deisel engines & Steam power.
The words, 'Horse,' 'Door' & 'Bolted' spring to mind!
I remember installing a Plessey digital PBX exchange in Croydon Council way back when they were 'new'. Someone decided to put the air-con on full as the room felt a bit warm. The next morning, all the air-cons were covered in snow, preventing any air cooling & the temperature was over 50C. The switch didn't crash though.
When I posted an article, saying that the Concorde aircraft was once "considered" as a supersonic replacement to the RAF V Bomber fleet, my article was scrubbed in 15 minutes. When I complained, I was told to put up some proof, which I did, with three 'artist impressions' of RAF Concorde's with three Blue Steel's & the URL's . These were also scrubbed. I then sent an 'artist impression' & URL of a RAF transport version of the Concorde. This was also scrubbed!