Jobs that don't need to exist

[Dale The Ram]

9 hours ago, jono said:

Daily Mail ... Roughly speaking .. Every other Wednesday .... aspirin and red wine will extend your life and every other Friday they will kill you or ruin your sex life. The same applies to statins, beer, and jogging

Exactly, to think someone actually gets paid to make these things up really makes you think where you went wrong

[Phoenix]

Regional weather forecasters. A couple of years ago I wrote to a 'respectable' daily newspaper questioning why we need two weather forecasts, one immediately following the other.

It never got published, but I have just discovered that round about that time, strangely, its sister paper came up with an article about the same subject, mainly on the aspect of wasted public money.

Okay, it's the Daily Mail, but it is worth a read. Too long to copy, and many images (to stress the point), so here's the link.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2699451/Why-does-BBC-waste-money-weather-forecasters-One-forecast-week-dozen-different-faces-country.html

[SKRam]

Are you officially No. 1 poster Boycie? Not seen another 43k + or anything close? I've started checking these things as its post season 

[GboroRam]

On 23/05/2016 at 23:45, Red_Dawn said:

EU Commissioners

MEPs

#VoteLeave

 

Not like our MPs eh? Doing sterling work. 

[Boycie]

6 hours ago, SKRam said:

Are you officially No. 1 poster Boycie? Not seen another 43k + or anything close? I've started checking these things as its post season 

Was told to fill content when the forum first started way back in the day.  Most of the posts are from way back, but I confess, there's a lot of bs in there.?

[Red_Dawn]

1 hour ago, GboroRam said:

Not like our MPs eh? Doing sterling work. 

Them too.

[Mafiabob]

The Royal Family. If that is a job

[SaintRam]

1 hour ago, Mafiabob said:

The Royal Family. If that is a job

It's not. 

[eddie]

Computer specialists who understand legacy mainframe languages (RPG, Assembler, Cobol, Fortran, PL/1 etc) - or at least they should be by now. My current responsibility is interpreting unstructured, undocumented code to tell people what it does, what it was intended to do originally (not always the same thing) and what functionality can 'safely' be ignored while they try to produce replacement code to run on replacement platforms.

Who'd have thought that when the likes of me wrote all that garbage 40 years ago on machines that were less powerful than the processor in your kitchen clock that,

a) It would stand the test of time

and

b) one or two of us old dinosaurs would still be needed now to help people understand it.

[Wolfie]

Anyone employed by a UK company and located in an Indian call centre.

I thought companies had twigged by now that consumers had had enough of incomrehensible & incompetent customer service courtesy of "Mike from Mumbai".

Virgin Media, I'm looking at you.

[LesterRam]

23 hours ago, Wolfie said:

Anyone employed by a UK company and located in an Indian call centre.

I thought companies had twigged by now that consumers had had enough of incomrehensible & incompetent customer service courtesy of "Mike from Mumbai".

Virgin Media, I'm looking at you.

or even worse, anyone employed by a UK company which pays virtually no taxes in a british overseas territory and uses an Indian call centre, so we have no tax paid in the UK, piss poor customer service and the bearded **** can come here 3 months of the year without recourse.

[Gladys' Handbag]

On 27/05/2016 at 10:21, eddie said:

Computer specialists who understand legacy mainframe languages (RPG, Assembler, Cobol, Fortran, PL/1 etc) - or at least they should be by now. My current responsibility is interpreting unstructured, undocumented code to tell people what it does, what it was intended to do originally (not always the same thing) and what functionality can 'safely' be ignored while they try to produce replacement code to run on replacement platforms.

Who'd have thought that when the likes of me wrote all that garbage 40 years ago on machines that were less powerful than the processor in your kitchen clock that,

a) It would stand the test of time

and

b) one or two of us old dinosaurs would still be needed now to help people understand it.

I saw this in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/26/us-nuclear-arsenal-controlled-by-1970s-computers-8in-floppy-disks

"The US military’s nuclear arsenal is controlled by computers built in the 1970s that still use 8in floppy disks.A report into the state of the US government, released by congressional investigators, has revealed that the country is spending around $60bn (£40.8bn) to maintain museum-ready computers, which many do not even know how to operate any more, as their creators retire."

You may be needed to save us from World War 3 (or start it), remember to wear your underpants on the outside.

This was the bit that made me feel old, the author thought it necessary to explain what a floppy disk is(was):

"We’re talking the OG 8in floppy, which was a large floppy square with a magnetic disk inside it. They became commercially available in 1971, but were replaced by the 5¼in floppy in 1976, and by the more familiar hard plastic 3.5in floppy in 1982."

Those were the days, when floppy disks really were floppy.

[Phoenix]

The thing is, floppy discs are neither floppy nor disks. From the outside anyway.

Well, thay's Eddie's next job. Saving the world with old 360's.

[GboroRam]

23 minutes ago, Gladys' Handbag said:

Those were the days, when floppy disks really were floppy.

Wish mine was 8 inches floppy.

[eddie]

22 minutes ago, Gladys' Handbag said:

I saw this in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/26/us-nuclear-arsenal-controlled-by-1970s-computers-8in-floppy-disks

"The US military’s nuclear arsenal is controlled by computers built in the 1970s that still use 8in floppy disks.A report into the state of the US government, released by congressional investigators, has revealed that the country is spending around $60bn (£40.8bn) to maintain museum-ready computers, which many do not even know how to operate any more, as their creators retire."

You may be needed to save us from World War 3 (or start it), remember to wear your underpants on the outside.

This was the bit that made me feel old, the author thought it necessary to explain what a floppy disk is(was):

"We’re talking the OG 8in floppy, which was a large floppy square with a magnetic disk inside it. They became commercially available in 1971, but were replaced by the 5¼in floppy in 1976, and by the more familiar hard plastic 3.5in floppy in 1982."

Those were the days, when floppy disks really were floppy.

I saved you all from disaster on January 1, 2000, and since then I have been waiting in my Trappist monastery, just waiting the call to save mankind again, with only my faithful companion Orval to keep me company.

Just say the magic phrase "Happy hour for Westvleteren" and shine the holy goblet beacon in the sky and I shall return.

[Sith Happens]

3 hours ago, eddie said:

I saved you all from disaster on January 1, 2000, and since then I have been waiting in my Trappist monastery, just waiting the call to save mankind again, with only my faithful companion Orval to keep me company.

Just say the magic phrase "Happy hour for Westvleteren" and shine the holy goblet beacon in the sky and I shall return.

Its amazing how many people thought the whole millenium bug thing was made up, and when we emerged largely unscathed on the other side were quick to say 'well that was a whole load fuss about nothing'.

[eddie]

2 minutes ago, Paul71 said:

Its amazing how many people thought the whole millenium bug thing was made up, and when we emerged largely unscathed on the other side were quick to say 'well that was a whole load fuss about nothing'.

I spent over two years searching through millions of lines of code, sometimes physically looking at one line at a time, producing amendment decks, running test harnesses and the like. It took its toll - for the next 8 months I was unemployed - partly because companies had blown their development budgets on maintenence and partly because I was utterly burned out and just couldn't face looking at another line of code.

[Sith Happens]

5 minutes ago, eddie said:

I spent over two years searching through millions of lines of code, sometimes physically looking at one line at a time, producing amendment decks, running test harnesses and the like. It took its toll - for the next 8 months I was unemployed - partly because companies had blown their development budgets on maintenence and partly because I was utterly burned out and just couldn't face looking at another line of code.

I wont say i went to that extent but i was in charge of the company i worked for Y2K program, which aswell as reviewing software and systems also meant i had to contact all of our providers to ensure they would be Y2K compliant too.

We had to replace all PC's and servers and install an updated version of the system we used to ensure all would work ok, i remember once particular manager who despite me contacting him beforehand to explain why i would be in his office and why i would be installing new equipment did nothing but moan whilst i was there due to the inconvenience (to his time and to his budget) it was causing him  and muttered on more than one occasion 'if its not broken dont fix it'. He also had the nerve to email me after the turn of the year to once again re-iterate that it had been a pointless excercise as everything was working fine and actually demanded that his budget was not hit by the cost of the new equipment as it had clearly been a false alarm, quite how he got to such a senior position is beyond me, i did invite him to have all his old kit re-installed if he wished but never received a response.

It was a bit of a no win situation, if it failed people would moan because it didnt work, but if it worked they could say what was all the fuss about.

 

[davenportram]

14 minutes ago, eddie said:

I spent over two years searching through millions of lines of code, sometimes physically looking at one line at a time, producing amendment decks, running test harnesses and the like. It took its toll - for the next 8 months I was unemployed - partly because companies had blown their development budgets on maintenence and partly because I was utterly burned out and just couldn't face looking at another line of code.

unsung hero.

on a serious point is it the case that a lot of these large systems such as the Nuclear arsenal computers were built on bespoke hardware, with bespoke code that has one purpose, and as that purpose hasn't changed why update it?

 

[Sith Happens]

6 minutes ago, davenportram said:

unsung hero.

on a serious point is it the case that a lot of these large systems such as the Nuclear arsenal computers were built on bespoke hardware, with bespoke code that has one purpose, and as that purpose hasn't changed why update it?

 

I agree with that, i had (and still have) an old commodore amiga that i used to play streetfighter 2 on for hours and hours. If that was the only game i ever wanted to play why bother upgrading to any other piece of kit.

I very much doubt these systems interact too much with others, they are going to be totally isolated.