RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 14 hours ago, mcnach said: Cillit Bang - because of the annoying TV guy... Ah, 'Barry Scott ' . Legend . Well I thought so, until I just found out he is Neil Burgess actor . Now disappointed 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prowla Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 I’ve just been cleaning my bath with Cillit Bang; stupid name, but it beats any of the other domestic cleaning products. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chriswareham Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 7 hours ago, prowla said: Hewlett Packard - now there's a company that went from hero to zero. I used to work a lot with their kit and then the Carly Fiorino person took over and things got all wobbly. They then made the mistake of firing one of their execs for expensing a "good time" in Vegas, but unfortunately he was a pal of the Oracle boss man who said Oracle were no longer supporting HP so their customer base disappeared. They acquired one of the consultancy companies and made a stab at it, but I don't think people were buying. What was their offices in Bracknell has now been demolished and I think a warehouse or storage facility has been built in its place. Oracle then went on to buy Sun Microsystems and killed that product, then they restructured their pricing (again) to fleece their customers, so the customers stepped away. I don't know if the Sun brand still exists. Oh, and talking of database companies, Informix was one who got it completely wrong: they had a great product but then decided that they were going to tell all of their customers that they were doing fundamental changes which meant they had to completely re-think their strategy and architecture; well, the customers went elsewhere (ironically to Oracle!). IBM bought Informix at some point, but I think they just let it fade away into oblivion. ICL - I did some work for them, but the place was just full of grey people straightening paperclips. When my contract was approaching the end I said I was going to move on and they said "but we need you to stay"; I pointed out that I had done about 3 days work in the 6 months I had been there, so I didn't think they really did need me. They were later taken over by Fujitsu. And no, I wasn't on the Post Office side of things - I was working on a system pulling call records from telephony networks. HP went to the dogs when they went all in on Intel's attempted replacement for the x86 processor, the Itanium (or Itanic as it became known). I wasn't unhappy with that turn of events, as HP not long before bought Digital Equipment Corporation and killed off so many of their great products such as the Alpha processor. As for Sun Microsystems, the brand no longer exists. Similar bad feelings about Oracle for effectively killing off great products like the Sparc processor and Solaris operating system. I hate Oracle with a passion anyway, as they have horrendous licensing scams, sorry, schemes, and their database is an antiquated nightmare to work with. And ICL... My first full time job was at a company who were in one half of a building with the other half occupied by a division of ICL. After Fujitsu bought them, that office closed down. The dinosaurs they emptied out of that building were interesting (and no, I don't mean the staff), ancient mini-computers that were only kept in case various government departments that relied on them needed spares. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BassTractor Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 1 hour ago, chriswareham said: HP not long before bought Digital Equipment Corporation and killed off so many of their great products Just a slight bit of pedantry: Compaq bought Digital some years prior to HP buying Compaq, the point here being that Compaq had already let Digital stuff bleed to death during these years. I have no idea what HP "contributed", but do know my b-i-l saw things going down the drain quickly after the first takeover, and he fled Compaq as fast as he could: before everybody there would stand in line for new jobs. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prowla Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 I sold an Itanium HP-UX server in Novermber; it had been sitting under my desk for years. I've still got a HP workstation and a Sun 1U server. My first job was writing Fortran on a PDP-11 running RSX-11M. Ah - happy days... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SH73 Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 Three network- what a pile of shite! Never used to get a decent signal. Skype- was atrocious, the calls constantly froze Anything that has tarragon in it, disgusting herb, I'd rather eat a jar of marmite. Old people's clothes, I will never dress that way. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tauzero Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 4 hours ago, chriswareham said: And ICL... My first full time job was at a company who were in one half of a building with the other half occupied by a division of ICL. After Fujitsu bought them, that office closed down. The dinosaurs they emptied out of that building were interesting (and no, I don't mean the staff), ancient mini-computers that were only kept in case various government departments that relied on them needed spares. I once worked for Medical Portfolio Ltd, a subsidiary of ICL based in Tipton. In deference to the ICL system of naming their buildings with the first three letters of the location and a sequence number, we called the building TIP01. Anyhoo, ICL brought us in-house, in one of the Birmingham buildings. After a while, the pathology system that I was the sole support for was quietly dropped from the product line, and I was quietly dropped from the staff. ICL paid a couple of guys at Hallamshire hospital IT department to maintain the system - their programming experience was from writing Spectrum BASIC. The consequences were not good. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/sep/14/martinwainwright https://www.ranker.com/list/actual-y2k-failures/tracey-graham Note: these are ascribed to Y2K errors, which they weren't. The dickheads who did the support didn't use the inbuilt routines to change date to day number and day number to date, but did something stupid instead. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steantval Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 30 minutes ago, SH73 said: Three network- what a pile of shite! Never used to get a decent signal. Skype- was atrocious, the calls constantly froze Anything that has tarragon in it, disgusting herb, I'd rather eat a jar of marmite. Old people's clothes, I will never dress that way. 1 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asingardenof Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 On 23/02/2024 at 08:06, SteveXFR said: I can't stand the whole "we're punk, now buy shares in the company because that's what punks would do" thing. The abysmal treatment of their staff doesn't help either. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asingardenof Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 On 23/02/2024 at 09:34, Newfoundfreedom said: Whetherspoons. Not because they're supposedly full of pond life. I never found that to be the case. I used to work away from home, live in hotels all week, and at one time or another went to pretty much every Whetherspoons in Britain for a cheap and cheerful meal and a pint or two. But since the B word that shall not be mentioned I would never put another penny in Tim Martin's pocket. The man is an absolute bell end. Same. The last time I was in one was not long before the Brexit vote and the place was full of anti-EU propaganda. I've happily never set foot in one since. 5 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asingardenof Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 On 23/02/2024 at 12:48, jezzaboy said: Kwik fit. Around 2005 my wife took our Ford Focus in for its mot. They said to her it needed £600 worth of work as the brake disc, drums on the back, pads and shocks needed changed. Took it to a local garage that was recomended by a friend and it passed its mot easily. And the garage has looked after our cars ever since. The mechanic in my local place said that KF were notorious for trying to rip folk especially women off. Halfords are bastards for this as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyTravis Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 1 minute ago, asingardenof said: Halfords are bastards for this as well. Yeah - I won’t use Halfords for anything. They f*cked up an order for 2 Graco car seats no less than 4 times… Absolute moron soup of a company. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asingardenof Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 On 23/02/2024 at 20:24, nekomatic said: Now we’re getting down to the real crimes against customer service! Dabs.com once had me listening to Bittersweet Symphony on hold for half an hour, which along with another issue I had with them would have been my every for this lousy had they not been subsumed into BT, a richly deserved fate. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asingardenof Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 9 hours ago, Lfalex v1.1 said: Energy Supplier. And they ARE difficult to contact/ deal with. They just don't want to know. Obligatory "I've had nothing but good service from them" counter-post. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricksterphil Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 On 24/02/2024 at 21:52, StingRayBoy42 said: Sounds like you're Dyson with death... Ba dum Tish 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimR Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 On 22/02/2024 at 20:37, Jean-Luc Pickguard said: Surely getting the development team to spend a few hours working on driver updates to ensure support for older products after discontinuation isn't going to cost these companies much, and the goodwill it would generate is worth a lot more to them than having people like me making a consious decision to never buy anything again with their name on. It's not 'a few hours' and if the product is discontinued why would they spend any time supporting it? If an OS update stops something working and it's discontinued you must have had it for a fair few years, time to upgrade to a better, newer interface. This is the same with all computer based electronics. If you're spending a lot of money, buy something that is supported by the latest OS, not just by the OS you're currently running. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Dare Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 The way things are going, we won't have anyone left to buy stuff from... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dad3353 Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 33 minutes ago, TimR said: It's not 'a few hours' and if the product is discontinued why would they spend any time supporting it? If an OS update stops something working and it's discontinued you must have had it for a fair few years, time to upgrade to a better, newer interface. This is the same with all computer based electronics. If you're spending a lot of money, buy something that is supported by the latest OS, not just by the OS you're currently running. This a great 'consumer' policy, buying stuff that will become useless by design, and thus destined for scrap. Buy again, and repeat... Is there no better way..? Is there not an inherent wastage here, with the 'new' stuff offering little in the way of real extra value. Then we wonder why the climate is changing..! First World, eh..? 5 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neepheid Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 Sustainability? I can understand if there are technical reasons why an older device can't be supported, but I call BS on anyone who claims it's not used as a means to coerce customers into buying the latest shiny tech. As long as it's shinier than my tin foil hat, right? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimR Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 I'm pretty sure tech has to be supported for 5 years after it comes off the market. If you look at the MSWindows 8 it was released in 2012, end of life was 2016 and end of mainstream support 2018, end of extended support 2023. Any hardware predating 2012 by would have been supported for up to 20 years. I'd be interested to know how many people are using the same hardware 11 years on,et alone 20 years. If you run a company with many products, you have to make a point where you stop developing products you don't sell anymore. Assuming the old hardware is compatible with the latest computer hardware. My phone is starting to give me issues. Just seen its 3 years old and the OS is end of life. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JazzyJ Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 The saying 'built in obsolescence' comes to mind. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAY AGAINST THE MACHINE Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 Tate and Lyle for changing their logo 🦁 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 That's enough B word, thank you. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chriswareham Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 2 hours ago, TimR said: I'd be interested to know how many people are using the same hardware 11 years on,et alone 20 years. I recently stopped using a Yamaha UX-96 USB MIDI interface, which I bought over twenty years ago and used with my laptop as my other USB MIDI interface is a bit bulky. I only stopped using it as a friend offered to buy it off me since it seems to have some special functionality when used with a specific bit of Yamaha kit he owns. And my laptop? A 2011 vintage MacBook Pro which has run Linux for the last eight or so years since I bought it. My main music composition tool is a Roland W-30 workstation, which is 1989 vintage (although the floppy drive in it has been replaced with an emulator that uses SD cards). When it comes to computer add ons, look for USB "class compliant" devices. There are standards for things like MIDI and audio that mean compliant devices don't need vendor specific drivers, and will use the generic drivers that come with Windows or Apple's operating systems. (Ironically, the UX-96 I mention above wasn't class compliant as I think it predated the USB standard for MIDI, but Linux has a dedicated driver for it). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OliverBlackman Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 Epiphone- I worked really hard on my paper round to raise money for a Thunderbird and it was crap. Never again 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.jpg.7e18f76540598a8efc0e6ca9be453059.jpg)
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.