Is there a way of telling if there have been power cuts in the night or while out?

[SteveW]

I don't remember many due to faults ;)

SteveW

[Tim Streater]

In re the NHS, it's an odd sort of "starvation" that saw above-inflation increases for the NHS every year she was in power.

[MM]

Well, computers are only as clever as the people who type in the inputs, which isn't very clever. As long as there's a barcode to scan, that's safer. Personally, I'd sack anyone who entered the wrong value more than three times. Why should we, the bill payers, have to suffer for other people's incompetence? We're often put to great inconvenience to sort the problem out (because, of course, the companies *never* discover problems by themselves), while the call centre and IT centre staff carry on in their own sweet way making our lives a misery -- and then having the gall to tell us that WE are in the wrong!

Like today, for instance. SSE have increased my DD payment from £43 to £53 a month from January, as after yesterday's bill I still owe them £16. But nary a word about whether I'd instead prefer to pay the £16 and keep the monthly payment the same, oh no! They just whack another tenner a month on, which will likely mean that I will mostly have a credit with them as the weather gets warmer from March.

Given the current abysmal rate of interest payable by banks and building societies, I'm not going to bother this time to complain, because whether the tenner sits in their account or mine, the amount of interest I lose is fractions of a penny anyway. But "old school" customer service would, in my opinion, have ~suggested~ an increase first, and provided alternative options.

Anyway, hopefully the power companies will soon all have their balls squeezed if Cameron's promise to come down hard on the tariff structure actually materialises. I can't wait to hear the screams of pain! It's gonna be good!

MM

[MM]

Of COURSE we ruddy will! I expect she'll get a state funera, like Churchill if the Tories are in power at the time. The BBC will spend millions, as will the police controlling the massive crowds of rubber neckers and foreign camera crews. It'll be another "Kate's baby" event, with Australians ringing up pretending to be Denis.

MM

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 14:37:53 on Thu, 6 Dec 2012, MM remarked:

But he's already dead, which is a bit of a giveaway.

[Mark]

The voice wasn't even convincing.

As far as Mrs T is concerned. She is a champion of the private sector so they should sell shares to raise money for her funeral ;-)

[polygonum]

What's that "Kate's baby" reference?

:-)

[Dave Liquorice]

Bah, the *only* time we've ever had a meter misread is when they used the fancy scanner device... That device didn't last long I think I only saw it twice. Technology now is a Psion Organiser type device that tells the reader the address and meter number to read, he then looks at the numbers and presses the buttons.

And the computer is *never* wrong...

Agreed but I suspect that for a great many people being given such a choice is much too difficult. They don't want to bothered having to firstly think, make a decision, respond to the choice and possibly make a seperate payment.

Ha! You think the squeals of pain are going to come from the power companies? They won't they will come from those that have sought out and switched to the cheapest tariffs. The standard and silly expensive ones will come down, thus meeting Cameroons edict, but the cheap deals will either disappear or go up. Nothing will be allowed to affect the profits and shareholder dividends.

[Clive George]

The cheapest tariffs were loss-leaders weren't they? So while all the above is true, I won't have a great deal of sympathy.

[Mark]

A lot of cheap tariffs run for a year. That seems a bit long to be a loss-leader.

[MM]

Yes, but when you consider how many barcodes are scanned EVERY HOUR in the UK in shops, warehouses, factories etc, you're talking millions, probably, a year. Your one off failure was likely in the early days of scanning technology, or the scanner was a cheapo device, or the scanning recognition software was rubbish. Believe me, I spent AGES getting scanners to work efficiently and reliably at one company I worked for to track work flow. And think how many DHL-style deliveries are made to households nowadays. There are hundreds of white vans beetling around the countryside every day and each one can have up to a 100 deliveries on it.

Nowadays, with correctly *designed*, written and *tested* software, it is more infallible than humans by far. Computer "errors" are far more likely to occur because of human cockup and too much self-assuredness. Of all the bank/ATM failures in recent months, as far as I can tell, they ALWAYS happened after some human had "updated" the software!

Okay, a simple Yes/No question up front would accommodate this, e.g. "Are you happy for us to make this change, Y/N?" Surely that is no bother for anyone?

I can but dream! After last night's Question Time, any statutory underpinning looks as likely as the moon found to contain green cheese. Can't understand by Leveson hasn't popped up again to complain, after all the effort he and his team put in.

Of course, the real reason why Cameron will fight tooth and nail against legislation is because he's fearful of how the tabloids will portray him in the run-up to the next election.

MM

[MM]

Huh, do you think that minor detail will stop the Australians?

MM

[MM]

Hasn't anyone suggested cryogenics yet? If so, let me be the first! A bit like a supercooled Lenin.

MM

[MM]

Duchess of Cambridge! Do keep up!

MM

[polygonum]

Is that a potato dish? Instead of being nicely piped into raised bits, it is spread as flat as possible?

[Andy Dingley]

My crappy "Internet radio". Give it a momentary power cut and it comes on in the middle of the night.

[Mark]

How many software systems are correctly designed & tested? Very few, if any, commercial systems I expect.

One of the common mistakes made in designing software is to assume that it is infallible. A lot provide no way of correcting errors in the underlying databases.

[dennis]

They all allow access to the base databases at some level, they shouldn't let normal staff interfere or they *will* bugger it up.

[MM]

Oh, this is just so much nonsense! You are succumbing to the typical Daily Mail shock, horror headlines! How would ~any~ major organisation function today but for computers? You really, truly believe that "very few, if any" commercial systems have been correctly designed and tested? That is a very ignorant position to assume, believe me.

I repeat, complete ignorance of the true position is what you are promulgating there!

MM

[MM]

Exactlly! Dennis,you have restored my faith in the general common sense of people.

MM