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Comments on: Telco compares merger to Challenger space shuttle

Oh dear! 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 10:49 GMT

Fail!

That is all.

This may be a good metaphor... 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 10:57 GMT

Coat

..... for current Thus staffers.

Posted anonymously whilst waiting for the judgement to come down from above :(

Mine's the one with the CV in the pocket please.

How apt 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 11:13 GMT

Dead Vulture

As a refugee of Cable and Wireless and Thus I think the choice of shuttle is dead on. Except this time we know the O ring is going to go.

There are IT Managers who weren't even /born/ in 1986 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 11:20 GMT

Alert

One may be managing you now. Just cry quietly to yourself.

Was this really accident... 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 11:36 GMT

...or a graphic artist with a sense of humour?

oh yes.... 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 11:36 GMT

Go

Anyone got the URL for BT's vacancies pages?

Look on the bright side. 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 11:39 GMT

Joke

Their office party should have the most lavish display on Guy Fawkes' night.

OH Snap! 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 11:44 GMT

Coat

they just got burned! To death!

coat? me?!

That is a pretty clanger! 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 11:52 GMT

Thumb Down

Oh and on a side note, I had forgotten about this, anyone got a replacement ISP for my connection with Thus? That has morals and doesn't Phorm preferably.

epic fail 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 12:06 GMT

Pirate

thus are crap, we take the service from them and are rubbish at billing and their adsl fault call centre are pap too. this can only mean more doom and gloom for us SMEs dealing with em

abandon ship me harties yaaarr

See also 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 12:08 GMT

A local cab firm in (presumably) a bid to get to the top of yellow pages, chose the first 'A' word they could think of:

http://graeme.woaf.net/pics/taxicard.jpg

Apollo 1 went about as well as challenger, just slower and more horrifying. Just the image I want when climbing aboard a mini-cab.

Maybe there's further similarity ... 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 13:12 GMT

... between Thus/C&W and Challenger - somewhere, in a darkened office with papers strewn everywhere, is an engineer knew 5 years in advance that the parts don't fit and it's just a matter of time before there's a terrible accident ....

Aside: When I first read the accounts of Challenger and the SRB design, I said "They did what!? They designed a f*cking SRB with multiple f*cking 'click-on' sections sealed with f*cking rubber O-rings!? What the f*ck were they thinking!?" NASA managers, like in some businesses, aren't as smart as we'd like to believe ....

"For the young and the ignorant" 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 13:14 GMT

Coat

Wow, that was 22 years ago... now I really do feel old!

Mines the jumpsuit to the left, thats the one..

My comersiations 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 15:01 GMT

Dead Vulture

My Comersations to all Thus employees, C&W took over the company i worked for oh and how fun that was.

Get use to those posters, they come out with new ones all the time (they spend more on posters they they do fixing leaky toilets)

Dont worry though that JP "what a guy", remember every 10 people he "makes redundant" he gets that much closer to his what must now be a 30Mill + bonus.

Re: That is a pretty clanger! 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 15:02 GMT

"anyone got a replacement ISP for my connection with Thus? That has morals and doesn't Phorm preferably."

I'm currently reserving judgment at the moment, but I've got Zen in my sights for if/when Demon's service tanks.

is it any wonder? 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 15:11 GMT

Thumb Up

that the telecoms industry is in the bin with attitudes like this. negative, negative, negative.

As someone who has been fighting to beat BT and improve telecoms services since 1989, this is a great moment for Telecom.

Change isn't for everybody but opportunity surely is?

Time to jump.. 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 15:25 GMT

Coat

Think it's time for me to jump ship from Thus (Demon) before the "O" ring blows!!

Think SKY might get my business now...(no limits :D)

Mines the one with the bailout parachute on the back...

Bloody admin! 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 16:06 GMT

Thumb Down

Anonymous coward, you're not the only one to thing that bureaucracy gets in the way of "good" designs. In the post-Titanic era, her new sister ship was fitted with huge gantry lifeboat davits that could reach across the deck and get lifeboats from the other side of the ship. That way, if the ship listed to one side, the lifeboats on the other side could be used....

....except that the gantries were placed on either side of the funnels, making them useless for retrieving boats.

@Maybe there's further similarity ... 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 18:42 GMT

Coat

"They did what!? They designed a f*cking SRB with multiple f*cking 'click-on' sections sealed with f*cking rubber O-rings!? What the f*ck were they thinking!?"

Which worked perfectly if you launched in the temperature range they spec'ed.

It's like saying they designed this f*cking server with f*cking parts that fail just because the watermain bust and put our machine room under 6ft of water.

FYI 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 19:19 GMT

Alert

If you have Demon mobile broadband, I personally guarantee that your service will not go tits up... I run the billing for it!!!

Better get your resumes in shape 

Posted Wednesday 1st October 2008 20:02 GMT

Thumb Up

Before C&W's "Titanic" bandwidth sale is announced....

Ya gotta wonder ... 

Posted Thursday 2nd October 2008 00:37 GMT

... if this sort of thing is an editorial comment made by people at the publishing house.

Flawless failure 

Posted Thursday 2nd October 2008 00:57 GMT

Heart

Uh, isn't the Space Shuttle due for retirement?

@@Maybe there's further similarity ... 

Posted Thursday 2nd October 2008 03:38 GMT

Coat

"Which worked perfectly if you launched in the temperature range they spec'ed.

It's like saying they designed this f*cking server with f*cking parts that fail just because the watermain bust and put our machine room under 6ft of water."

But they Chose to launch outside of the temperature range... more like saying the f*cking manager told us to move the machine room to the bottom of a swimming pool.

Mine's the scuba-gear with the cable-tester in the pocket...

This is hardly uncommon 

Posted Thursday 2nd October 2008 09:46 GMT

I've personally sat through a BT all-hands meeting full of space shuttle imagery and its supposedly "dynamic" and "innovative" connotations. When the white-elephant, designed-to-death-by-committee, crash-and-burn etc. in-fucking-bad-taste connotations were pointed out to the country manager responsible he just went "pish tush, don't be such a spoil-sport, you non-team-player". I've heard similar stories from other companies. Frequently such imagery turns out to be unintentionally apt, in hindsight.

@Paul Berry 

Posted Friday 3rd October 2008 15:58 GMT

If you're old enough to make comments like that you should understand that just because someone is old doesn't mean they know cat shit from tootsie-rolls.

meh 

Posted Friday 3rd October 2008 18:32 GMT

thought cable and wireless uk meged with ntl. then became virgin media.

I was at C&W during the first round of mergers 

Posted Sunday 5th October 2008 10:13 GMT

If their performance a good 10..15 years ago was anything to judge this one by you're in for a fun ride. I must say that in the years since I have yet to come across another bunch of middle management morons who are even half as incompetent (well, OK, with the exception of some Blairite apparatchik who have enlightened our lives -and wasted tax money- with gay abandon).

Do you know any other supplier who gets handed a monopoly on government data connections and then milks it so much (and pisses off so many people at high level with their incompetence) they lose the contract and have to buy the company that acquired the new contract to hang on to the (vast) profits?

No? Thought not.

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