38 replies to this topic

[eFestivals]

sifi, on 23 August 2011 - 12:30 PM, said:

100k in central London isn't a massive wage these days.  I know that sounds sick, but the average wage where I work is 75k.

There's no amount that would have me work in London today. Some things are worth more than money.  

[Barry Fish]

eFestivals, on 23 August 2011 - 12:56 PM, said:

There's no amount that would have me work in London today. Some things are worth more than money.  

Now that is something we can both agree on   The money is good but not worth it...

[Barry Fish]

eFestivals, on 23 August 2011 - 12:54 PM, said:

I did what I did, then I wised up. It's nothing unusual or strange, even if not chasing every shiny penny is beyond your own limited comprehension.


writing software is in nearly all cases merely re-inventing the wheel. I very much doubt that there's any thing you've ever done in software that hasn't been done previously by someone else, tho perhaps in a different way.

That was certainly the case with what I did, tho I chose a very different path from the obvious windoze, and opened up a whole new income stream for IBM as a result. As far as I'm aware it's not something that lasted for them - tho amusingly it was killed off by the unimaginative programmers, the same ones who are today urging software writers to revert back to much the same idea I implemented about 15 years ago.

The computer world is so short-term in its outlook that it's highly amusing - I can see things going round the same loop with developments now that it's already done twice before. And more than that, it's making all of the exact same mistakes as it made in those two previous cycles, because know-nothing* kids are the ones driving things.
(* 'know-nothing' about the history of computer developments so that they're able to avoid the same mistakes).

Most my job is more about realising the potential of integrating other peoples work...  to form something new...  Rewriting something is seldom worth the effort and is usually only suggested by people looking to make money out of you...

But for you to come out which such a bullshit statement as I have never written anything unique is just plain silliness...

I come across people like you all the time.  People with half a foot in the industry moaning about it from a far.  Usually because you have a dated skill set and have only half relevance to what new things are going on and it pisses you off...  As these new kids get on and do new and exciting things

I worry when I hit your stage

The software industry is a great place to work right now.  You can take an idea from conception to reality so quickly these days...  its a lot of fun...

Edited by Barry Fish, 23 August 2011 - 01:24 PM.

[eFestivals]

Finally, three weeks after moving, I seem to have the BT Broadband service I'm paying for. The whole thing has been a right 'mare, with the order being continually cocked up right thru to my broadband dropping every time I received a phone call.

Things had got so bad with it that I'd given up complaining and planned to switch to Virgin. If it hadn't been for BT complaints department following up on things I'd have moved providers.

So anyway,  BT finally caved in and sent out an engineer at their own cost this morning - who found faults on the line at the exchange, and faults made in my house by the engineer who connected the line up here. Hopefully these are now sorted.

As it happened it turned out that the engineer is an avid efests user, so a gift of an efests mug for him has ensured he's bent over backwards to get everything as good as it possibly could be.

[5co77ie]

glad it's sorted, because I wouldn't recommend a move to Virgin whilst their speeds are as advertised they now have too many users on the service are desperately trying to upgrade lines and have a woeful gain and ping rate - making access as sluggish as the old 56.6 days. I've spent a month complaining - and been told the fix date in my area will be 29th February.

[fred quimby]

eFestivals, on 07 February 2012 - 11:20 AM, said:

so a gift of an efests mug for him has ensured he's bent over backwards to get everything as good as it possibly could be.

*snigger*

70's porn movie in Neils house this morning

BT are a nightmare

[eFestivals]

5co77ie, on 07 February 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

glad it's sorted, because I wouldn't recommend a move to Virgin whilst their speeds are as advertised they now have too many users on the service are desperately trying to upgrade lines and have a woeful gain and ping rate - making access as sluggish as the old 56.6 days. I've spent a month complaining - and been told the fix date in my area will be 29th February.

if for no other reasons I'm glad I've not moved to VM because of the hideously expensive prices they have.

And as I know you're currently getting to discover, there's much more to broadband speeds than just the base broadband speed. It's naff all use having (say) 40Mb download speed if the less visible technical parts are so naff that it makes the whole thing as good as useless for many uses.

As you now know, your 'much faster' VM service is far far slower than my slower BT service (even when it was very poorly configured as it has been for the last few weeks).

[eFestivals]

fred quimby, on 07 February 2012 - 11:33 AM, said:

BT are a nightmare

oh, I know.....

The completely screwed up my order for my house move. It took about 15 hours of talking to them for them to get the order right.

Then they didn't actually fulfil the order when they were meant to. I finally got all my services back 4 days after it should have been done.

And even then they managed to screw up the connections, so that my broadband dropped each time I got a phone call. The customer service answer to that was to tell me that I had to run a test for 48 hours and wouldn't be able to use my broadband during that time. I told them to fuck off with that.

Anyone who might be mild and meek with them would never succeed in getting the faults they've caused corrected. It's only because I'm unafraid to shout at idiots that I've (hopefully) finally got things resolved.

[Paul ™]

5co77ie, on 07 February 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

glad it's sorted, because I wouldn't recommend a move to Virgin whilst their speeds are as advertised they now have too many users on the service are desperately trying to upgrade lines and have a woeful gain and ping rate - making access as sluggish as the old 56.6 days. I've spent a month complaining - and been told the fix date in my area will be 29th February.

Really? Its the one service that I haven't had any problems with VM. We left them for about 10 days back in October to go to Sky but their BB would only give us 1.5mb so quickly got rid of them.

Re-joined VM at a cheaper overall cost with faster BB (30mb service) and shortly its going up to 60mb and can't fault it.. don't think its ever gone down.

Also their TiVo is a pretty nifty bit of kit, and hopefully the Multiroom streaming and their iOS/Android apps will be out soon.

[Barry Fish]

No problem with ping etc here on VM...  I have the 50mb service...

[5co77ie]

yeah I'm reasonably okay now - but then the kids around here are out at school:

when they get home, and the digital tellies go on too:

Edited by 5co77ie, 07 February 2012 - 12:32 PM.

[eFestivals]

Bye again scottie.

"reasonably OK" means that if he's lucky he might get skype to run for 20 minutes before the poor quality of his line has it disconnect.

Even the shit BT connection I had till this morning was far FAR better than that.

[Paul ™]

Have they said what the issue is Scott?

Never seen that pingtest site before, here is mine though.



Edited to change image as tested on IE9

Edited by Paul ™, 07 February 2012 - 01:06 PM.

[5co77ie]

They're taking out the cabling and replacing it with bigger and better cabling and putting in a new exchange apparently. I get a better connection going through my mobile phone!

[Barry Fish]

I would say 5co77ie problems are not the norm...  I have had Virgin media in five different locations...  And I use it currently in three different locations spread across the North West and each location offers great speed and pings etc...

There is clearly something of an issue in your local area.

[Barry Fish]

At a client site and they use Virgin Media...  Keep in mind this is going through their internal infrastructure and not straight out onto the web.

Edited by Barry Fish, 07 February 2012 - 01:23 PM.

[Paul ™]

5co77ie, on 07 February 2012 - 01:07 PM, said:

They're taking out the cabling and replacing it with bigger and better cabling and putting in a new exchange apparently. I get a better connection going through my mobile phone!

Oh dear.. hopefully it gets sorted for you soon mate...

[eFestivals]

Barry Fish, on 07 February 2012 - 01:19 PM, said:

There is clearly something of an issue in your local area.

There is ... and VM say it might get fixed before the end of the month.

Which is a shameful level of customer service, which makes my fun with BT over the last month have BT look wildly competent.

[Barry Fish]

eFestivals, on 07 February 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

There is ... and VM say it might get fixed before the end of the month.

Which is a shameful level of customer service, which makes my fun with BT over the last month have BT look wildly competent.

Only had a few problems in the past.  Had an electrical storm which blew the router.  They came out within 24 hours and sorted it.  Most other things dealt with over the phone.  So they are pretty good at the minor stuff from experience.  Its much better from when it used to be NTL.

But never had any major issues like 5co77ie.

Edited by Barry Fish, 07 February 2012 - 02:08 PM.