Posts by JasonLaw

The BA safety briefing says the same thing.

Re: Stand up Jack, let John sit down!

Changi airport by any chance?

"Funnel down"

It was so well planned, it's still down 4 days later... (checked 12:30pm on 7-Jan)

Economics, mate.

The experience so far is that legally produced drugs have a much lower cost, making illegal trafficking unprofitable.

+1 for the DCB

I hope you're all saying it right....

Bob Moog (the music Moog) rhymes his surname with Vogue.

Re: Meanwhile, out in the countryside...

As one who also lives in the country : bollocks.

https://www.gov.uk/check-vehicle-tax

Re: "no idea of UK callcentres"

I fly 40 times a year, on average, mostly long-haul. I've been BA Gold for 4 of the last 6 years and silver for the other two. It probably costs £15k a year to maintain Gold.

* The Gold reward flights are far, FAR more available than Silver. As long as there are available fare-paying seats left and you have 1-month notice, they will make a seat available for Avios (for double points).

* I probably score an upgrade twice a year. It used to be more frequent. When I first started going to Australia, it was probably one in four. They now only upgrade if the cabin is oversold. If there are empty seats, you ain't getting one.

* The LHR T5 First lounge is pretty good, especially since April when you have direct access from the check-in. I normally rip the pants out of the Johnny Walker Blue Label (£160/bottle), which greatly exceeds the cost of the £35 reward flight. I agree the food isn't all that.

* In the last approx. 250 flights, I have had maybe 3 short delays, no cancellations and zero lost luggage. I flew the otherwise fantastic Singapore Airways last month and they misplaced my luggage for 36 hours - sometimes shit happens.

* The cabin crew can be a bit hit and miss. I've had two flights (out of 20) this year where they were surly and unhelpful. I've also had amazing service. Even their best now looks like a drunken fumble compared to Singapore, Emirates and Qatar who are in a different league - and frequently cheaper than BA.

* Their modern fleet like the A380 and B767 are great, but I flew a diesel B744 clunker back from ORD in April that was frankly an embarrassment. Shite IFE, shite seat but great crew. Go figure. They ripped the old club Europe A320 2+2 seats out a couple of years ago and replaced them with standard 3+3 economy ones with the middle seat blocked out. Why anybody would pay for this is a mystery.

* The Gold call centre has very short/nil hold times. The staff have been universally great, friendly, and sounded local. I hope this doesn't change, but I'm sure Crapita will fuck it up.

* The new 'pay for food & drink' policy on European flights is a travesty. If I fly internal on AA or QF, who both charge for drinks, then pulling the Gold card gets free booze. Not so on BA. As somebody else said, if it's a race to the bottom, Ryanair already won.

Re: Drink the f up.

"hard cider" - found the American. AICMFP.

Re: Being Rational

Same here. My copy is in the bookcase, still in the cellophane it came delivered in. I'll always have one more Pratchett novel to read.

Re: Done

Likewise

Re: Song title

Not many Whale fans on here. +1 for effort.

Re: Last Chance To See

The A380 is definitely the best of the best in terms of cabin experience. I've flown three different carriers and all four classes on the A380 and it's never been less than superb. I flew in a 4-week old B787 a few months back and it was in the same class as the 380, but not quite as good, IMHO.

The 747's are showing their age in comparison. When I first started doing long-haul, I was super excited to be on a jumbo jet. But now, my heart sinks a little when I see it on the gate. Noisy, cold and frequently a little tired around the edges.

WHERE THE FUCK IS LEWIS PAGE!?

something, something, Lewis Page.

well said

.(the post is required, and must contain letters)

Re: Jet engines...

Pretty stoked that I flew on this exact plane just a couple of weeks ago on the LHR->EWR route.

The dimming windows are pretty cool and it's whisper quiet in flight.

But .... still second best to the A380. Still the number 1 in my book.

Re: XP

I was at an industrial trade show in Chicago last week and about half of the laptops I saw were running XP.

I used one XP laptop for a demonstration and it was 14 years old. The owner worked for a not-for-profit and couldn't justify upgrading a working machine. The main software they used was all browser-based and to be fair, a 14yo XP lappy worked just as well as my 18 month old state-of-the-art machine.

Re: lies, damned lies and then statistics (and then PR campaigns by telecom companies)

^ very much this ^

I drove through some amazingly poor parts of Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Moldova and Ukraine last year and had 4-5 bars, 3G service everywhere. I landed back at Gatwick airport and couldn't phone the missus to tell her I was safe, because there was NO signal of any sort. I never got a signal during the 60 mile drive home and pretty much only did when I was in range of my own SureSignal as I walked up to the front door. I live in Hamsphire - the 5th most populated county in England....

I'll take that bet

The difference between 'designed for disk' tables and 'designed for RAM' tables is pretty significant. The only reason for having an index is to reduce the impact of having to read the spinny rusty stuff, which ain't a problem with RAM.

Column store indexes (indices, if you prefer) have already made a remarkable difference to summarising very large datasets. In-Memory just take that to another level.

Re: MS needs to drastically slash prices

At TechEd Australia last week, they announced to the gathered 4000+ developers a one-time, Surface special offer price of "only" $300. Our guys said two things happened; (1) A very embarrassed silence from the crowd, followed by (2) A mass twitter-storm as 4000 people posted "what the/why the fuck!?".

Re: World+Dog gasps at the innovation

Yes, SQL Server has pretty much always cached tables and you used to be able to 'PIN' them (not recommended).

The problem with having tables cached like that is that they were still fundamentally designed and optimised for disk storage. There is a big difference between "designed to operate from memory" versus "designed for disk but can operate from memory".

How big is that difference? Well, according to the article, about x8 quicker.