Whine whine
Feb. 9th, 2005 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zotzSince I've been working here we've had two motorised filter wheels in a box waiting to be fitted to the microscopes. The advantage of these is that they can be driven by a computer, so they make certain sorts of timecourse imaging possible. Last week, after most of a year, the supplier's service bod - from a big reputable company that you'll all have heard of - turned up, finally, to fit them.
One of them was DoA. The other got fitted and worked. For most of a week[1]. It, too, has now died. To be fair, the dud has already been replaced by a fresh one which arrived in the post on Monday, but that's small consolation at the moment.
Why is nobody capable of supplying kit which actually works? I got used to hearing, for years and decades, about how the private sector is wonderfully efficient and can make things happen and is kept lean and competent by competition and constantly armwrestling Adam Smith's invisiblepenihand. Can I please be put in touch with some of that competence now? Constantly dealing with these shitehawks is starting to get to me.
[1] Correction: Almost two weeks. Doesn't time fly? That's certainly good value for a grand's worth of . . . well, a motor, a position sensor, a bearing and some folded metal. I certainly don't feel that the taxpayer is being shortchanged.
One of them was DoA. The other got fitted and worked. For most of a week[1]. It, too, has now died. To be fair, the dud has already been replaced by a fresh one which arrived in the post on Monday, but that's small consolation at the moment.
Why is nobody capable of supplying kit which actually works? I got used to hearing, for years and decades, about how the private sector is wonderfully efficient and can make things happen and is kept lean and competent by competition and constantly armwrestling Adam Smith's invisible
[1] Correction: Almost two weeks. Doesn't time fly? That's certainly good value for a grand's worth of . . . well, a motor, a position sensor, a bearing and some folded metal. I certainly don't feel that the taxpayer is being shortchanged.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 03:33 pm (UTC)I remember when I worked for Network Rail, we purchased a huge 6 Terabyte SAN (basically a large array of hard disks) and before we could use it, an engineer had to upgrade the firmware. Without the upgrade, apparently we could have loaded all our data onto the disks and lost the lot due to a random glitch within a matter of a few days.
And this firmware bug apparently made it all the way through testing and QC. *shakes head*
We then, over the course of the next year, had to bring the system out of service about once a month for more firmware updates.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 03:36 pm (UTC)You'd be amazed at how little there is of this to go wrong, though, and it still does. Two of them, in fact.
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Date: 2005-02-09 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 04:12 pm (UTC)I was going to say , but most GNU/Linux distributions have to release updated RPMs/DEBs/$their_distro's_packages to address bugs and exploits too. I think the difference is in the ease of installing the updates and in the speed at which they appear once a bug is discovered − usually days rather than weeks. Also generally with a Linux-kernel-based OS, the chances of a buggy application taking the entire computer down with it are very slim.
they don't do this at Ford … yet.
That would kill people, and then Ford would get sued, which they don't want.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 04:33 pm (UTC)Bloke eventually turns up, knowing in advance the spec of the machine (which is not exotic). Bloke has no RAM in the van (excuse me?), rearrange. Bloke turns up, replaces RAM, declares machine fixed, leaves. Machine won't even boot. Bloke turns up, replaces motherboard, leaves. Machine boots, yay, but wait, it can't see the DVD drive.
In the end I fixed it myself. I'm still waiting for a replacement LCD unit though - over two months now, because "they have to come specially from Holland".
no subject
Date: 2005-02-09 04:38 pm (UTC)