Posts by Commswonk

UK energy minister rejects 'waste of money' smart meters claim

Re: I think it *will* be a ghastly mess

Richard 12 wrote: They use cellular data.

That's probably fine for uploading metering information but I cannot see how the technology could be used for downloading price data (etc) in the short term, i.e. to take account of demand. While a celluar system can easily be demonstrated as controlling a domestic meter on the bench I can't see that upscaling to control up to >50 million meters, even with lots of cells around the country, unless of course the data can be downloaded in advance for later enactment against a clock; That, of course, would require the meters to have real - time information available, in which case the question arises - from where?

Re: He,y meter manufacturers.....

"You have a domestic crematorium!!!?"

Brilliant; have an upvote.

Re: Backhanders

Not sure that it's entirely fair to blame just the Conservatives; don't forget it was the Labour Party (when in Government) that ran up the white flag when faced by the global warming / decarbonising enthusiasts; IIRC it was Milliband, E who was the Energy Secretary that started dumping supposedly eco - policies on an unsuspecting electorate.

Re: Smart?

I sincerely hope you are wrong, but have a horrible feeling you might not be. While many appliances might not care too much if they are disrupted (after all power cuts because of faults are not entirely unknown) how many washing machines are going to start from where they left off? What is going to happen to half - cooked food? Depending on the duration of any cut fridges and freezers are going to start to warm up, which is going to have the unintended consequence that they will all demand power when service is restored rather than randomly switching on and off under the control of their own thermostats; any widespread disruption is bound to be followed by an entirely artificial peak when switched back on again.

I also wonder about the practicalities of switching off a large number of consumers at the same time. With >50 million smart meters in service (supposedly) exactly how are they going to be addressed and controlled? There have been one or two planning applications submitted near to here by Arqiva, with the stated purpose of being for smart metering over radio systems using (IIRC) cellular technology. Exempting those properties where someone is on home dialysis or other medical support that requires an uninterrupted supply of power could be quite some challenge.

On the plus side if we can classify all this as a "governement IT scheme" there is very little prospect of it working, although "not working" could result in our all having to sit in the dark.

I suspect an epic fail ahead. Once again political dogma meets technology, with the usual results.

Oh for crying out loud...

Rudd added: "We discussed in earlier questions energy security and fuel poverty. Smart meters will be a very good way for people to reduce their bills and use less energy, therefore creating fewer carbon emissions. Smart meters are an important part of that."

I really would love to know how. We (i.e. Mr & Mrs Commswonk) don't heat the house if we don't need to, we don't put the washing machine on if there is no washing to do, and we only turn the cooker on if there is a meal to prepare. Mrs Commswonk does tend to put unnecessary lights on but even then the additional load is marginal.

If I feel so inclined I can read either or both of our meters without difficulty. How are we to reduce bills in any meaningful way? Sit and shiver? Wear clothes that are in sore need of washing? Exist on uncooked food?

If variable pricing is to be the order of the day then we could, I suppose, become nocturnal and sleep during daylight (when it would be reasonable to assume energy prices would be "high") while using the C/H, washing and cooking during the hours of darkness when energy prices may be lower.

The trouble is that smart metering has become totemic in the cause of reducing energy consumption; it is an article of faith, and as such must not be challenged; those who do will soon be burnt at the stake as heretics who refuse to confess their sins and repent.

And of course if (when) it all goes wrong (as defined by not achieving meaningful savings on a household level) it will be our money that will have been flushed down the drain.

Grrr.

BT and Openreach: Splitsville or not? We'll not find out till Feb – at the earliest

Re: Ok suppose Openreach is sold off

Steve Davies 3 wrote: give it to TT

Please no, no; anything but that. Such limited problems (well so far anyway) that I have had with our BB service have not been attributable to OR and I cannot imagine TT making anything less than a complete hash of it.

Having said that There is no easy solution apart from a joint ownership of BT, TT, Sky and all the other LLU suppliers. Then there is no one to blame but themselves for problems with the service. Then see how the likes of TT and Sky like it has a lot of appeal because they would only have themselves to blame for anything that any one, or any combination of the three, didn't like.

Non - BT ISPs have become too used to blaming OR for all sorts of ills; very easy to do of course when there is a regulator to which one can moan. IMHO they should remember the old adage of "be careful what you wish for..."

Bloke sues dad who shot down his drone – and why it may decide who owns the skies

Aye, there's the rub...

promacjoe2 wrote if we do not make laws now, it will get way out of hand very quickly.

Much as it is doing in respect of the wretched IoT, which seems to be racing ahead with goverment support, at least in the UK. OTOH legislation introduced with undue haste is likely to result in so many anomalies and loopholes that any law thus enacted is either useless from the outset or becomes so very shortly therafter, bringing the law (and the Law, if you see the distinction) into disrepute.

Technology is moving so fast that any legislative limitations on its use are likely to be so far behind it that the exercise becomes pointless to the extent of being futile. Note that I said technology is "moving", not progressing or developing because some "developments" are not inherently advantageous to the human species (or even others, come to think of it) if only because we seem to be too willing to be its slaves, not its masters.

Trying to write a law covering drones that would provide proper discrimination between snooping (actual or potential) and Jeff Bezos' plan to use drones for Amazon deliveries could prove very troublesome... which is not to say that I necessarily see any serious merit in his plan either; gimmickry dressed up as an essential to modern life.

Re: "250 grams (1 pound)"

Bother; I was hoping to be the first to point out this error. Whose maths failed; FAA or El Reg?

Edit: that's odd; the original to which I was responding seems to have vanished... perhaps I am the first after all.

UK universities unveil £28m hub for Internet of Things

Oh no not him again...

Ed Vaizey, digital economy minister, said the project is part of the government's ambition to make the UK a "world leader in the adoption of Internet of Things technologies".

I would far rather that the UK was recognised as the place where it was determined that other in a very few specialised cases the IoT was a waste of time and money, and that the tale of "The Emporer's New Clothes" has a clear modern parallel.

The universities involved could finish up being tainted with the accusation that they conspired to foist a whole load of vulnerabilities on to a public that is not equipped to realise that it is being comprehensively conned. Or simply gullible, depending on how cynical you want to be.

A third of UK.gov big projects will fail in next five years, warns NAO

So, now the National Audit Office has recognised that about 30% of these projects are going to fail what precisely is being done to prevent these projects from failing?

Probably very little or nothing, for the simple reason that they cannot identify which 30% is actually destined for failure. It's akin to "X% of the advertising budget is wasted, but we don't know which X% it is".

Comcast's Xfinity home alarms can be disabled by wireless jammers

Re: I wonder if there are any relevant standards

AC wrote: We need a bonfire of red tape. The only standards we need are the ones of the Bullingdon Club and the market barrowboy.

Are we to conclude from this that you want the "red tape" that results in your actually getting 50 litres of fuel for your car (or 500 for your heating system) rather than 45 (450) litres because the vendor has rigged his metering because there is no "red tape" to discourage the practice?

Yes there may well be excessive regulation, but I would suggest that minimum standards for security alarm specifications / electrical safety / etc are by no means "excessive".

Your comment was, IMHO, not so much offensive to anyone as simply ill - considered.

Be careful what you wish for... in case you get it.

There's a quote that covers this...

It was, I think, H L Mencken who said "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Having said that I don't think it is fair to single out the American public as being uniquely gullible. The trouble is that some companies have adopted it (along with "never give a sucker an even break") as a mission statement.

It is all too easy (and lazy) to operate on the basis that because "it" uses WiFi "it" must be good, when in many instances (this one being a prime example) it clearly isn't. But how is the poor consumer to know? The tech savvy readership of this august organ may well be able to identify snake oil at 100 paces, but we are, in overall terms, a tiny minority of the public. I have never been an alarm emgineer, so I wonder if there are any relevant standards that should offer a degree of protection to the unknowing buyer.

Let's add "Internet of Toys" to the existing list of things that IoT stands for.

Re: Even the simplest wired alarm system gives an alert on fault conditions.

@DropBear: Sadly I think you have confirmed the point you were trying to oppose. The engineer may well have spotted the problem, but someone higher up the corporate foodchain crushed his point underfoot. It is not so much "forgetting how to do things properly" as deliberately avoiding doing them properly.

Oh puhleeze...

I hope nobody is actually surprised by the discovery that a radio - based (alarm) system can be rendered inoperative by jamming; the concept is almost as old as radio transmission itself. Fully effective defensive measures are between extremely difficult and impossible to implement, although a means of determining that jamming is present is fairly straightforward to the point of being almost trivial, or certainly should be in the case of an alarm system operating over a fairly small area. Once hostile action has been detected then that fact can be used to initiate an alarm, irrespective of what the sensors might be trying to relay.

Once again the concept of an IoT has been found wanting... very badly wanting, or at least this implementation of it has been.

IT security is a safe job? Tell that to Norse staff laid off this week

Too many chiefs, not enough indians?

...the senior vice presidents of sales, products, and marketing left the firm towards the end of last year as part of a management cull.

Quite why US companies need serried ranks of senior VPs has always escaped me; the idea seems an excellent way of draining corporate resources, i.e. the income generated by the lesser beings elsewhere in the company.

I'm not saying that there is no need for people to be "in charge" but "senior vice presidents" are almost certain to want more than simple Heads of Departments, and by "more" I don't just mean salary, but also all the other accoutrements that they feel their status warrants.

</cynic>

Researcher criticises 'weak' crypto in Internet of Things alarm system

Re: sim card in alarm system

...Log into my IoT home security cameras...

Since you have mentioned your IoT cameras don't you think it is time to clear out the old pizza boxes... and that wallpaper...ugh.

Re: Bah!

...feel free to mock it as an example of how you can fool most of the people most of the time...

Res ipsa loquitur just about covers it, I think, even if I am not a lawyer.

Re: For not at all simple homeowners

In other words the overall system security has been outsourced to someone else.

Brilliant.

Not...

Re: sim card in alarm system

Phone home owner; all well and good. Phone police? Don't think so; ISTR that the police will not now take calls from "automated" burglar alarms because of the number of false alarms. I think remote alarms have to go to an "alarm company".

Which raises the question "if the home owner gets an automated alarm call what are they going to do about it?" Ring the police and risk getting short shrift anyway? It would have to be a text to the home owner in any case; a voice call could be frustrated by the user yakking away on their phone, which looking at a large percentage of the population at any given time is all too likely.

Re: Bah!

And in what universe does a remotely controllable burglar alarm make any sense, especially one controlled over the bleeding world wide web?

The universe of marketing, for starters. And the universe of politicians who start drooling uncontrollably if the words "digital" or "apps" are used. Not, it must be said, in any universe where common sense has a place.

It serves to prove that you really can fool most of the people most of the time.

What?

1: To be able to remote control the alarm system remotely...

I blinked at this several times before remembering that we were advised that El Reg staff were going to have a break to, er, celebrate the New Year. Notwithstanding this linguistic horror you are nonetheless forgiven.

2: That means a lot of legacy products, compared to the two to three year product lifetime we are seeing on general IoT products.

Well that's another reason for having nothing to do with the stuff, then. Two to three year product life? I expect anything vaguely falling into the description "hardware" to have a much longer life than that. Two to three years falls into the category of "taking the piss".

Five key findings from 15 years of the International Space Station

Re: The fragility of the human body...

They look a bit more like artery forceps, but I haven't the foggiest idea what they might be there for.

MPs slam mandarins over failed GP IT system

Let's be honest...

...this is not really news.

"Government IT procurement a success" says Public Accounts Committee really would be news.

UK digital minister asks for input on strategy, lauds 'sharing economy' biz success

Re: So the British government wants to help digital businesses???

Chronos wrote: These three need a prerequisite: 2.5: Take the TPS away from the Direct Marketing Association, make Ofcom run it and make it mandatory, backed by the ICO and some fairly serious fines.

A very good point; have an upvote once this is posted. The TPS is so weak that it shouldn't count as a regulatory system of any description.

Watching television yesterday evening I was regaled (again) by an advertisement for on - line bingo; other ways of parting with one's cash by on line gambling are all too readily available. I may be in a minority but IMHO that is a digital business that should never have been allowed to get off the ground; personal debt is at eye - watering levels in the UK and offering people an easy way of increasing it seems beyond immoral.

Of course HMG gets tax income from the activity so there is little chance of the situation changing.

Re: Is it just me...

No; mb is millibits. Millibytes would be mB. You're right about Ed Millibytes though.

Re: So the British government wants to help digital businesses???

It might be better if the government concentrated on helping the customers of digital businesses.

Here are a few suggestions:

1: Give the ICO new and more effective powers and make sure it uses them in respect of

2: Protection of customer (personal) data against theft, loss and / or misuse

3: Protection of homeowners / renters against persistent disregarding of TPS protocol

4: Making owners / directors of UK companies who use non - UK call centres that flout the TPS protocol personally liable for any abuses.

5: Ditto owners and directors of UK call centres that flout the TPS protocol personally liable for any abuses.

Having typed that I have to admit to wondering what a "digital business" actually is. For most businesses digitisation is no more than a means to an end; a room full of PCs does not a digital business make - our house insurers have computers but they are not, IMHO, a "digital business". Digitisation is little more than an enabling tool. Yes there is a need for businesses to develop those digital tools but they should not be worshipped as gods. A screen full of pointless Apps does not a digital business make either.

Politicians are all too easily mesmerised by technology, and I suspect that this is an example.

Is it just me...

...who is wondering why the SoS for Fun has posed this question rather than the SoS for Business, Innovation & Skills? The subject would seem to be a better fit for his department than the DMCS.

I wonder if either actually knows the difference between Mb and MB. And that mb doesn't mean Mb. (mb is another favorite hate of mine!)

Watch out, er, 'oven cleaners': ICO plans nuisance call crackdown in 2016

Re: Combi boilers...

This one rather annoys pisses me off as well. I got (note past tense) seriously hacked off at the implication that there was some sort of legal requirement to get the work done. For some unaccountable reason "press 9 to be removed from our list" never seemed to work, so I bit the bullet on one occasion and pressed 2 instead to try to speak to someone. Having establised contact I forcefully demanded the removal of my number and so far that seems to have been effective. (Note "so far"...)

Given that there is little or nothing to be had "free"* these days I often wonder if I (well we actually) could ever actually finish up saving money. Three score years and 10 is getting uncomfortably close and I suspect that I (we) would never actually finish up in profit. Oh and we have very little south - facing roof so solar panels are out as well.

A bank/building society/financial advisor can be penalised for mis - selling an investment, and age is a relevant factor. I wonder if the same applies to unnecessary boiler and solar panel sales as well?

*<pedant>Does anyone else on El Reg actively hate the expression "for free"? If something costs nothing then it is free not "for free". Grr. </pedant>

Assessing the UK’s Government Digital Service

Every time a politician uses the word "digital"...

...I remember this from Scott Adams: http://dilbert.com/strip/1999-01-15

Just change the box at the top of the first box to read "politicians". IMHO that is exactly how politicians react if anything "digital" crosses their paths.

Dear Santa: Can gov.UK please stop outsourcing?

Re: Law against offshoring

In the context of councils outsourcing, that housing benefit is of course payable by the councils.

I don't think that is true; I think housing benefit is paid for by central government, with councils just acting as agents. It remains, however, a hidden cost of offshoring if that offshoring results in a UK resident being unemployed.

Re: The bizarre logic of outsourcing

While I was writing my previous post Terry 6 wrote: Or to put it another way, outsourcing is A telling C what they think B does, without actually knowing what B does, how they do it or why they do it like that. Or how often this might have to be adapted, or how or why. And C entering into a contract with A based on what A told them the job was.

I have worked for Department B; Department A was a contracts branch remote from B and awarded the contract to organisation C. The best bit was that A repeatedly refused requests from B to provide a copy of the contract, so at best we had a rather hazy idea of what was and was not covered by the contract.

To be fair most of it seemed to work all right despite C being taken over by another company with resultant changes in the personnel in C with whom we were dealing. And then I retired...

...which is what I am going to do now. Commswonk needs his sleep and it is Christmas Day tomorrow.

Re: The bizarre logic of outsourcing

Possibly if it coincides with a necessary large capital spend on new hardware and software licencing at the same time, then the short term costs would favour the outsource.

Trouble is that there will be no way of knowing if your preferred bidder (or any of the others) may have to incur similar expenditure; they won't be under any obligation to disclose the information. If the winning bidder is to incur serious up - front costs on your behalf then you are going to have to pay for it one way or another, and just how much you are going to have to pay per month / quarter / year will be a function of the length of the contract, and of course the longer the contract the harder is it to get anything meaningful from the crystal ball to work out what future requirements might be. If your contractor has to pay out for new hardware then you will end up paying what it is costing them plus a percentage on top.

Equally avoiding public sector pension costs would on paper favour an outsource.

True, and by repute public sector pension costs are somewhat excessive, but I suspect that that is because of the spiralling salaries of local authority C levels, (and their equivalents in the Civil Service) not the more modest remuneration paid to "front line" staff (horrible cliche). And the saving won't be as much as you might want because the outsourcing company's employees will be entitled to pensions on retirement as well.

On top of that your winning bidder may well have to take on your now redundant personnel under TUPE; once upon a time they were (I hope) loyal to you. It is more than likely that they will transfer with the feeling that they have been royally shat on; they may or may not develop a loyalty to their new employer, but not much of that loyalty will creep into work they do for you. Sooner or later people realise that the only person who will look after their interests is them themselves, not any employer. It can be quite a painful realisation so the sooner it happens the better, and they can look after their own careers rather than expecting hoping that their employer has their interests anywhere in the corporate priority list

In related news I heard on the steam wireless earlier today that Capita are being penalised for not delivering the goods on the contract to carry out recruitment for the Army; the Army is finding itself short of personnel as a result.

Re: Law against offshoring

"Apart from that, its a stupid idea. Why wouldn't you use the best/most cost effective supplier? Why spend more than you have to?"

Superficially the above is perfectly correct, with the possible exception of calling the idea "stupid". Firstly the "best" supplier may not be the "most cost effective", and neither might actually be determinable from the pile of tender submissions. Bean - counters always look at the bottom line, which means that whatever the organisation is it always finishes up with the cheapest bidder; somehow bean - counters (and others) always seem to believe that notwithstanding being the cheapest service offered it will somehow also be the best.

Of course there are limits to what can be offshored. The refuse collection company's HQ may well be in the Cayman Islands, but it seems improbable that the refuse collectors will be. Call centres are probably the easiest function to offshore (along perhaps with first line IT support) but even then there are perverse effects: let us assume that Big UK Company A outsources / offshores its Call Centre, and it employs (for the sake of argument) 100 people. That's 100 people in the UK not being employed and having to be paid out of work benefits, healthcare costs (to which they are not contributing) and perhaps housing benefit. From the company's perspective it is a good deal, but from the viewpoint of UK plc it most certainly isn't. Similarly even if the outsourced functions are dealt with by UK - based personnel (for the simple reason that UK streets cannot be swept by people living in Mumbai) if the company awarded the outsourcing contract is based outside the UK then the Treasury has little or no prospect of seeing any Corporation Tax flow into the coffers from it; we've seen more than enough of Stabucks / Amazon / Facebook / Google / and so on making money in the UK from UK citizens but because of various tax laws being able to pay little or more likely no UK Corporation Tax.

As a result we all lose out on a macroeconomic level even if the company that has outsourced some function is rubbing its hands in glee at the savings it (thinks it) has made.

As I said in a post in a different thread yesterday I am not a fan of outsourcing, and some of the reasons are clearly outlined above.

There's an epidemic of idiots who can't find power switches

On the plus side...

How many fewer IT support staff would be needed if Id10t problems didn't exist? Surely the last thing needed is a bunch of IT - savvy users.

No £160m for you: BT to receive termination notice from Cornwall before Christmas

I may be old fashioned but...

why is BT involving itself with in - house IT, HR, and document management? Should it not concentrate on the T in its name, and make sure that the UK's telecom provision is properly engineered and maintained?

Mind you I never was an enthusiast for out - sourcing...

City of London cops in Christmas karaoke crackdown shocker

What I want to know is...

... will the perpetrators finish up in Sing Sing?

'Powerful blast' at Glasgow City Council data centre prompts IT meltdown

Re: If the amount of kit in your data centre changes significantly

Okay, imagine a room three metres wide, three metres long, three metres high.

That's nine cubic metres by my reckoning.

Eh? 27 cu. m, Shirley?

That's GCSE physics mathematics surely.

Kids' TV show Rainbow in homosexual agenda shocker

Re: Interesting theology from this 'pastor'

"Otherwise you and I would be nothing but bags of chemicals and water, possessing a meaningless existence within a meaningless universe. Were this true, you wouldn't be posting your thoughts here."

And there was me thinking that was the precise reason why we post our thoughts on here. Ah well; live and learn.

Re: Here we find a Daily Mail Journo in training.

"Yes, American English is deeply ironic."

An oxymoron, surely?

Expert welcomes UK’s digital health recommendations

Eh?

"This will be a powerful and impactful step to improve people’s take up of digital health and new technologies," Lane Fox said. "It could open the doors to new digital tools and technologies and it could transform health and social care services. In addition, it would mean the NHS taking a wider leadership role in the national effort to eradicate digital exclusion."

A nice piece of "management bollocks" in the run - up to Christmas. Bullshit baffles brains, etc.

Apart from anything else I want the NHS to concentrate on healthcare, not "taking a wider leadership role in the national effort to eradicate digital exclusion."

The latter makes about as much sense as taking medical advice from a paperclip. (Which gives a clue to the age of my PC!)

Boffins teach cars to listen for the sound of a wet road

Red herring?

I have stated before that I am firmly of the view that "autonomous cars" won't be able to work properly without real time data being transmitted to them from the roadside for a variety of purposes. (OK; then they aren't strictly autonomous </pedant>)

If my belief is correct then "surface wet/icy/fuel spill" can be included in that data.

Having said that don't some cars automatically switch on the wipers if they detect rain; perhaps that's special rain that wets the glass but not the road, but it's going to be bloody scarey for the contents of the car if it keeps going in wet conditions without switching the wipers on, particularly if the car decides something "doesn't compute, Captain" and requires the driver to take over.

Brown trousers anyone?

NAO slams £830m e-Borders IT project as ‘not value for money’

and that's before Cameron welcomes a small town's worth of Syrians

Plus of course the ones nobody actually welcomes but who prove impossible to remove, even if they're found in the first place.

Cui bono? I'd really like to know. Or perhaps not...

Bank fined £1m after outsourcing faults led to improper transfers

Re: Meanwhile

At least the bank doesn't seem to have turned turtle...

Hate your broadband ISP? Simply tell your city to build one – that'll get the telcos' attention

Commswonk's Golden Rule

It doesn't matter how fast your down/upload speeds are, it's never enough.

Ofcom spins out Wi-Fi checker app just in time for Christmas

Re: Bumpkins

I posted a comment similar to Lusty's on a previous thread and I got a few downvotes for my pains. The point made is valid nonetheless; just because you don't agree with a sentiment it doesn't mean its originator is a troll.

Apart from anything else a mile from a local town is not really in the depths of the countryside, at least not compared to some people. There are small villages in Northumbria* with FTTC B/B, but there will be villages elsewhere without - at the moment it's all a bit random. (Actually it isn't, but that's another story.)

Perhaps you are simply "lucky"; there will be others only a mile from their local town who don't get anything like 75 Mbps. (And your ISP is... BT I assume)

It's perfectly simple; if you live in a remote location then your chances of fast B/B are less then if you live in a conurbation, although like most rules there will be exceptions to this.

*No, I don't live there.

Protection at last: Operation Emergency UPS succeeds for Telecity

Re: UPS War Story

The trigger circuit for the generators and their supply to the building were in the same trench\duct as the mains power feed...

There but for the grace go we all..

Not sure that I would have used the term "trigger circuit", but that's a small detail. You have nicely illustrated the concept of a Single Point of Failure and it is arguable that someone should have spotted what could happen. Did anyone advise the contractors that there were supply cables somewhere in the vicinity of where they were going to dig, and if not why not? And did the contractors have a formal Permit to Work? With the U/G cables in the car park being external to the premises then the cable may have been the property and responsibility of the DNO and they tend not to look favourably on people digging up their cables without checking with them beforehand to find out where the cable runs were. At the same time I'm not sure that they would have allowed the output from the generators to use the same trench at the time of installation.

Always the remember the Rule of Ps: PPPPPP. There simply must be other El Reg subscribers who know what this means.

(For the avoidance of doubt I am not having a go at kmac499 as there is no reason to suppose that he was in any way responsible; the points are rhetorical.)

Nuisance call blocking firms fined £170,000 ... for making nuisance calls

My current pet hate

is the numerous calls telling me that all UK C/H boilers "must" be upgraded to be energy efficient by sometime in 2016. Now that may well be the point at which grants for replacements may cease to be available, but "must"? IANAL but to me that claim is simply fraudulent, as it implies a legal requirement to replace a working boiler. Needless to say pressing "9" to be removed from the company's list is ineffective, unless of course a number of different companies are using esactly the same recorded message, which is of course entirely possible.

I haven't the courage to press whatever number to "sign up" because it is all too likely to result in a barrage of other calls I don't want. Given that the total number of unwanted sales calls (including the slient ones) doers not seem to have diminished it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the ICOs efforts - such as they are - are wholly unsuccessful. So many of the numbers from which calls are made (where there are numbers disclosed) are either overseas or clearly spoofed, so I am at a loss to know how to even report them with any chance of the ICO being able to trace them even if he/they/it could be bothered to do so.

As an aside (i.e. OT!) we don't want a more efficient boiler as it all likelihood it would require a complete rebuilding of the C/H system, and no grant is going to cover that. Simple mathematics point to the conclusion that any saving in gas would take too long to recover the money spent up front, or in other words we might not live long enough to see any financial benefit; three score years and ten beckon...

Apart from that modern boilers have a reputation for not being all that long - lived themselves. :(

Telecity fails with car park net rescue plan. In fact, things got worse. Again

Re: Telecity's DRUPS fetish

This time looks like some stupid contractor caused an phase-to-phase short because of lack of a simple phase sync check.

Take the "r" out of contractor and the sentence still makes perfect sense, and could also be correct.

Fingers crossed tomorrow morning for Telecity's third repair shot

Re: Design

IIRC there are, but the "1 cycle of 50 Hz" might be a bit ambitious. If the shaft speed (and therefore the diesel engine speed) is 3000rpm* in 1 cycle of 50 Hz - which equates to 20 mS - the engine will have turned once so assuming it will have "fired" in that time might be a bit much. Having said that 3000rpm is rather too fast for a "big" engine so 1500rpm** might be more likely. Bigger engines still will not run above 500rpm*** or thereabouts without self - destructing, but they are so big that electric starting isn't an option - they commonly used compressed air and are certainly not fast starting; even a "flywheel start" is probably not practicable.

I have a vague recollection that systems like that where there is a very fast run up require not only the cooling system being kept warm but the lubricating oil being pumped more or less continuously to ensure that all the bearings are coated; conventional lubrication where the engine just pumps its own oil will not distribute it fast enough to prevent a catastrophic failure.

* 2 pole alternator; let's not worry about 3 phases for this discussion.

** 4 pole alternator; ditto!

*** I know; 500rpm is not much good if you want 50 Hz. :)

Re: Design

A diesel generator is not a UPS, it takes time to start and needs synchronising with what is powering the place before it can take over. If it isn't then you can get very strange waveforms appearing at the outputs of transformers.

Well it can be if the diesel engine is part of an integrated design; I know of systems (and not recently) with an AC Motor, a DC motor driven by BIG batteries, and alternator (all on a common shaft, or at least shafts coupled in line, plus a diesel generator. The incoming AC drives the motor which it turn drives the alternator plus the DC motor; if the incoming supply fails the battery supplies the DC motor until the diesel generator self - starts and then takes the load and drives the AC motor again. ISTR other systems whereby instead of a DC motor there is a BIG flywheel and a clutch between the "common" shaft and the diesel engine in which the flywheel (with a large mass) drives the common shaft for long enough for the engine to start. The start and run - up time (after which the clutch couples the two shafts) can be as short as a few seconds if the system design includes keeping the engine coolant warm so that it isn't starting from true "cold". Getting it in - phase with the incoming supply isn't required because, er, there isn't one.

OTOH if they are trying to engineer a "no - break" changeover between one supply and another derived from a generator in the car park then getting the phases in sync can be rather important. If that is the case then It sounds as if they have IT people trying to solve a problem that requires electrical engineers to correct. If they are not employing electrical engineers then I can foresee this rolling on until such time as they do may well turn out to be true. Synchronising a generator in one place with an incoming supply in another isn't impossible but it can be messy.

I don't want to be gratuitously critical but I found this article (and that which preceded it) a bit unclear for possibly the same reason - perhaps written by an IT guru rather than a power systems specialist. Articles about electrical problems should not have the word phase in them other than in reference to supply phases; "stage" is much better because it cannot be confused with electrical phase.