Click here to Skip to main content

Welcome to the Lounge

   

For lazing about and discussing anything in a software developer's life that takes your fancy.
The Lounge is rated PG. If you're about to post something you wouldn't want your kid sister to read then don't post it. No flame wars, no abusive conduct and please don't post ads.

Technical discussions are welcome, but if you need specific help please use the programming forums.


 
You must Sign In to use this message board.
Search this forum  
    Spacing  Noise  Layout  Per page  Show 
GeneralRe: Mispronounce Thes...professionalMatthew Faithfull18hrs 51mins ago 
Sure but we wouldn't want to panic the natives. Some of them are armed you know. Smile | :)
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

GeneralRe: Mispronounce Thes...protectorAspDotNetDev18hrs 50mins ago 
Unlike the t-rex. Roll eyes | :rolleyes:

GeneralRe: Mispronounce Thes...professionalSoMad14hrs 54mins ago 
I am sitting here all alone. Not a soul around to hear me. Still, I pass on your challenge. Blush | :O
 
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty

GeneralSorry...memberPHS24119hrs 35mins ago 
Auntie admits[^] it f***ed up.
 
£100m of feepayers money wasted. That's alright then.
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.

GeneralRe: Sorry...memberMaximilien19hrs 17mins ago 
I prefer wasting money on a project and find out it will not work then close it than play blind not close it and keep paying ...
 
pick your fight.
Nihil obstat

GeneralRe: Sorry...memberPHS24117hrs 39mins ago 
FTFAGOC Smile | :)
 

 

 
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.

GeneralRe: Sorry...memberGuyThiebaut16hrs 40mins ago 
How does a project get £100m spent on it and then get shelved?
It just makes the mind boggle, what did the £100m get spent on before they actually realised that it was a failure?
 
There again as I don't pay the license fee, I have been through this all with television licensing around six times and my access to Auntie is entirely legal, so I don't really have anything to hold them to account on...
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

GeneralRe: Sorry...professionalRob Philpott16hrs 8mins ago 
I'm working from memory here so can't be certain this is correct but the NHS managed to spend £12 billion on a centralised system which got canned in the end. Can't remember what it was called.
 
I remember pricing it up in the office with some other techs. We thought we could do it for about £25 million.
Regards,
Rob Philpott.

GeneralRe: Sorry...memberGuyThiebaut15hrs 53mins ago 
Rob Philpott wrote:
I remember pricing it up in the office with some other techs. We thought we could do it for about £25 million.

Exactly - that was what I was thinking about the Beeb fiasco.
If they only left it to the grunts we could get projects going and successful for so much less!
 
(Incidentally I remember reading a story about some US soldiers who ordered a radio controlled car and remote camera system, from their mothers back in the US, to replace a blown up million dollar robot - it cost them in the region of $100 to replace the robot)
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

GeneralRe: Sorry... [modified]professionalMatthew Faithfull15hrs 47mins ago 
My understanding is they blew £6 billion and reckoned it would have taken 12 to complete it given that they had achieved 20% of what was specced WTF | :WTF: .
I had a friend 18 years ago who worked in healthcare IT and also happened to be something of a genius. He had already predicted all this would happen, generated his own spec which was at least as ambitious as theirs and could deliver the whole program by 2005 for £1 billion. He wasn't mucking about either this guy was already selling IT systems into hospitals for tens of thousands of pounds and getting repeat orders so he knew exactly what he was talking about.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)


modified 15 hrs ago.

GeneralRe: Sorry...memberMark H28hrs 8mins ago 
So allowing for 300% contingency you could have cleared 11 billion.
 
The trouble with the dickheads at the top is they simply don't believe that things can be done for far less (and I don't mean cheaply) D'Oh! | :doh:

If your neighbours don't listen to The Ramones, turn it up real loud so they can.
 
“We didn't have a positive song until we wrote 'Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue!'” ― Dee Dee Ramone

"The Democrats want my guns and the Republicans want my porno mags and I ain't giving up either" - Joey Ramone

GeneralRe: Sorry...memberjschell12hrs 11mins ago 
GuyThiebaut wrote:
It just makes the mind boggle, what did the £100m get spent on before they actually realised that it was a failure?

 
Could be complexity. Could be lack of clear direction in terms of process control and/or requirements.
 
BBC has 23,000 employees and presumably a significant number would have been using this with complex work flows involved. Determining what those are can be difficult.
 
Not saying that is what happened just that it could.
GeneralRe: Sorry...protectorMarc Clifton15hrs 14mins ago 
Several comments:
 
Between 2010 and 2012, the project cost the corporation £98.4m.
 
My God. How is that even possible?
 
The contract to deliver the DMI was originally awarded to technology company Siemens in 2008 but was taken over and relaunched by an in-house BBC team in 2010.
 
Well, that partly explains it. The glancing blows I've had with involvement with Siemens is, lots of marketing, eye candy dog & pony shows, and giant money tar pits. But an in-house team spending £98.4m??? I can't even begin to imagine where the money went.
 
The Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was designed as a production tool that would make BBC recordings accessible to staff via a desktop - from the raw footage right through to the final edit.
 
You would think they could have just bought the software that, erm, certain industries use for their, erm, business.
 
"wasted a huge amount of licence fee payers' money".
 
I think this just goes to show that, even amidst a global economic downturn for the last 5 years, there are businesses with money to literally burn. Not just burn, but vaporize. It's incredible.
 
Marc

GeneralRe: Sorry...professionalMatthew Faithfull14hrs 53mins ago 
Although I can't explain it either and I certainly wouldn't try to excuse it I can offer some small insight into BBC inhouse software systems which might be a starting point.
Some years ago my boss at the time was married to a senior BBC executive and I have consequently seen one of their main inhouse systems. I can't tell you what it did being 15 years ago but I can remember its characteristics.
Everything was custom, no OS or library standard look and feel at all.
The UI was tremendously complex for a product of the time and seemed to be mostly black.
The manual was one of, if not the thickest I have ever seen. It made a brick look anorexic and consisted of incredibly detailed step by step instructions with diagrams of how to achieve each possible thing you could do with the software and there were a lot of things.
The things although I cannot remember what they were seemed to have little to do with one another but they were all achieved in almost exactly the same way. By repeatedly pressing the same large green button on the UI over and over again like a gambler playing the slots with the occasional tweak to some white on green on black setting or list somewhere else on the ever shuffling never coherent UI.
My guess and it is only a guess was that a large proportion of the £100,000,000 went on training people to train other people to use something that in the end turned out not to be useful and then on the therapy and compensation for mental distress to all those who had to do the training of the trainers despite none of what they were teaching making any sense to them or anyone else.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

GeneralRe: Sorry...memberPHS24112hrs 59mins ago 
Marc Clifton wrote:
he glancing blows I've had with involvement with Siemens is, lots of marketing

Don't get me started on that useless bunch of a***holes. I had serveral weeks of misery messing around with their access control system hardware and decoding their flawed protocol. The support we got from their office was appalling. We were developing for a client who were unfortunate to have an arse wipe of a consultant recommend their equipment to them. Of course, he, like Siemens did with the BBC, took the money and ran. I'm not suprised the BBC got fleeced and then carried on the good work of throwing good money at badly managed projects.
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.

GeneralRe: Sorry...memberTnTinMn11hrs 50mins ago 
The contract to deliver the DMI was originally awarded to technology company Siemens in 2008 but was taken over and relaunched by an in-house BBC team in 2010.
 
Between 2010 and 2012, the project cost the corporation £98.4m.
 
So how much was wasted on the original contract to Siemens?
GeneralCrossed the Rubicon...membermark merrens19hrs 45mins ago 
Ha! Have now joined the 200k + rep points club. Works out to about 1550 points per month since I joined though I did lurk for a while prior to that.
 
What I want to know is where is all the extra money I should be earning, the fame, the kudos, the MVP awards...
 
Oh, yeah, meaningless.
 
Anyway, thanks CP, been a fun and educational ride: all the kudos goes to the hamsters for keeping this place real. Thumbs Up | :thumbsup:
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection
nils illegitimus carborundum
 
me, me, me
me, in pictures

GeneralRe: Crossed the Rubicon...memberPB 369,78219hrs 43mins ago 
You've changed.
GeneralRe: Crossed the Rubicon...membermark merrens19hrs 42mins ago 
?
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection
nils illegitimus carborundum
 
me, me, me
me, in pictures

GeneralRe: Crossed the Rubicon...protectorOriginalGriff19hrs 38mins ago 
Everything changes when you cross the Rubicon, it is a point of no return.
 
From this point on, your soul belongs to the hamsters! :evil: Laugh | :laugh: :evil:
The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)

GeneralRe: Crossed the Rubicon...membermark merrens19hrs 35mins ago 
My bad: thought he was being literal. Blush | :O
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection
nils illegitimus carborundum
 
me, me, me
me, in pictures

GeneralRe: Crossed the Rubicon...professionalJörgen Andersson17hrs 11mins ago 
Of course you've changed, you used to be The Digital Man and now you're a mere mortal mark.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Abraham Lincoln

GeneralRe: Crossed the Rubicon...memberRage19hrs 35mins ago 
Thumbs Up | :thumbsup:
~RaGE();

I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Do not feed the troll ! - Common proverb


GeneralRe: Crossed the Rubicon...protectorOriginalGriff19hrs 40mins ago 
Congrats! And you have good platinums too - Ten articles is an achievement all on it's own, them buggers is hard work! Beer | [beer]
The universe is composed of electrons, neutrons, protons and......morons. (ThePhantomUpvoter)

GeneralRe: Crossed the Rubicon...membermark merrens19hrs 34mins ago 
Thanks - coming from you that is a great compliment. Thumbs Up | :thumbsup:
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
Those who seek perfection will only find imperfection
nils illegitimus carborundum
 
me, me, me
me, in pictures

General General    News News    Suggestion Suggestion    Question Question    Bug Bug    Answer Answer    Joke Joke    Rant Rant    Admin Admin   


Advertise | Privacy | Mobile
Web04 | 2.6.130523.1 | Last Updated 25 May 2013
Copyright © CodeProject, 1999-2013
All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use
Layout: fixed | fluid