Comet

On Tue, 6 Nov 2012 09:16:15 -0000, "Geoff Pearson"
wrote:


"Martin" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 5 Nov 2012 22:51:23 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

Didn't bother to look in Comet or Curry's as I knew what sort of clap
trap I was going the get there anyway!...


If you'd looked at, Currys, you might have realised there's no
apostrophe.

Mea maxima culpa;!(...

Started off as Curry and then became Curry and Sons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cu...gate_1903.jpeg
--

Martin


Therefore it should have an apostrophe, short for Curry's shop. If it had
been Currys - an unlikely name - then it would be Currys' to avoid the
discomfort of Currys's. Marks and Spencer is the name on that shop front -
but Marks and Spencer's is fine, following the same rules.

Or Currys' shop assuming the sons had the same surname as their
father.

"Martin" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 06 Nov 2012 18:33:36 +0000 (GMT), charles
wrote:

In article ,
Martin wrote:
On Tue, 06 Nov 2012 10:49:46 +0000 (GMT), charles
wrote:

In article ,
Mark wrote:
On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 06:35:47 -0000, Roderick Stewart
wrote:

--snip--

Another aspect of this is that economy of scale and the increased
reliability of mass produced electronics

I don't think mass produced electronics has improved in reliability.
Quite the opposite actually. I've got electronics from the 1970s and
80s nearly all still working yet most modern devices fail after a
couple of years.

we must blame the EU and lead free solder for this.

Only if you have pre-lead free solder brain damage.

If lead-free solder is reliable, why are items for medical & military
purposes (ie things that matter) exempt from the requirement?

Lead fumes permanently damage your brain.


I don't think hardly a day went by in the course of 50 years that I didn't
inhale some soldier fumes, just think if lead solder had been made illegal
when I was young, I might have been a veritable Einstein by now :-)

In article , Mark wrote:
As well as customers, manufacturers of (good) products have an
interest in letting you see before you buy, so perhaps there will be a
trend towards manufacturer-owned shops where you can examine the
physical objects. The manufacturer will benefit even if you buy
online.

This was an idea I was discussing yesterday with some of my colleages.
It might happen but I doubt manufacturers would see the advantages.

Isn't this what Apple do? It can evidently work, but you first have to
manufacture what effectively works like a religion, wherein your
followers are prepared to queue up at 7am (I have seen this with my own
eyes) outside a shop that sells computers costing 3 times as much as
anybody else's, believing that those computers never break down or fail
to connect to internet routers. They also have to believe despite the
evidence that making the aerial of a mobile phone part of the external
metal trim on the lower half of the phone where you hold the thing,
thereby impairing the coverage, doesn't matter, any more than it matters
that you can't change the battery. They also have to believe that your
wibbly wobbly Salvador Dali style map system complete with randomizing
feature is superior to Google Earth which has been going for some time
and generally puts cities in the right places. If you can pull off the
psychological stunt of selling your products at a high enough price to
cover the cost of your retail shrines while keeping the faithful blind to
any faults they may have, then you could be on to a winner, but I'm not
sure how to advise you in engineering terms how to do this.

Rod.
--

In article , Mark wrote:
I could see no moral problem
with a surcharge for a delivery specified but not met, but normally it
would save everybody time and money and give them happier customers.

As long as they pay us compensation if they fail to meet their own
delivery times.

Nobody can either meet or fail to meet a delivery time if it isn't specified.

Rod.
--

In article , Mark wrote:
I'm having difficulty thinking of anything that could be considered
advantageous these days in buying something from a shop, and thereby helping
to keep it in existence, as opposed to buying it elsewhere at a lower price.
Once upon a time the shops would be able to provide advice and assistance
with specialist products, which it could be argued had a value, but those
days are well gone. Now umpteen online vendors compete against each other on
price, delivery and range of products, and the shops aren't even bothering
to compete with them.

I can see several advantages in using a physical store. It gives us a
chance to view the product when buying, we can often take the product
away straight away (rather than having to wait in all day for a
delivery), and there are still specialist places that give good advice
and service. Also it is easier to take a faulty product back to a
shop than to test out the awful call centre or badly designed web site
to get a RMA number.

Ever tried to buy a mobile phone from an actual physical shop recently? They're
hand-held devices so part of your assessment should be the ergonomics of them -
how they feel in the hand, the appearance of the display and the response of the
controls, but most of the phone shops near me only have dead ones nailed to a
display stand like a Victorian butterfly collection. One of them did have a
working smartphone of a type that interested me, but it was enclosed in a
perspex frame fixed to the display stand by a bit of chain about a foot long. I
appreciate that security must be a problem, but this is such a waste of time
that if I have to buy without trying anyway, I might as well go online and get a
better price, which for the last three phones is what I've done.

The list of items which can be properly assessed in a shop, or for which the
shop assistants can provide any useful information, or which are actually in
stock should you decide you want one, is steadily dwindling, to the extent that
even if there is a possibility of finding the item I want in a shop I usually
consider it not worth the time or the petrol to go and look. Books, CDs and DVDs
are the most dramatic example; I used to love spending hours trudging round
bookshops and record shops, but now they don't offer anything I can't find in a
few minutes online, and usually a lot cheaper despite postage costs. This
particular tide is never going to turn.

I use both physical stores and online retailers as appropriate. There
are many products I just can't get locally.

Same here. I do still buy some things in shops, but the list is becoming shorter
day by day. Call it progress or the relentless march of history depending on
your point of view, but it isn't going to stop.

Rod.
--

In article , Martin
wrote:
On Tue, 06 Nov 2012 18:33:36 +0000 (GMT), charles
wrote:

In article , Martin
wrote:
On Tue, 06 Nov 2012 10:49:46 +0000 (GMT), charles
wrote:

In article , Mark
wrote:
On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 06:35:47 -0000, Roderick Stewart
wrote:

--snip--

Another aspect of this is that economy of scale and the increased
reliability of mass produced electronics

I don't think mass produced electronics has improved in
reliability. Quite the opposite actually. I've got electronics
from the 1970s and 80s nearly all still working yet most modern
devices fail after a couple of years.

we must blame the EU and lead free solder for this.

Only if you have pre-lead free solder brain damage.

If lead-free solder is reliable, why are items for medical & military
purposes (ie things that matter) exempt from the requirement?

Lead fumes permanently damage your brain.

and?

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.18

Richard Tobin wrote:
In article ,
Martin wrote:

Currys seems to be a reasonable name for a shop owned by more than one
Curry.

According to the normal rule for English plurals, that would be
"Curries".

That 'rule' is never applied to proper nouns.

Bill

Rick wrote:

I don't think hardly a day went by in the course of 50 years that I
didn't inhale some soldier fumes,
Were the military men in your area great farters?

Bill

In article , Martin
writes
On Tue, 06 Nov 2012 18:33:36 +0000 (GMT), charles
wrote:

If lead-free solder is reliable, why are items for medical & military
purposes (ie things that matter) exempt from the requirement?

Lead fumes permanently damage your brain.

When does the lead in solid solder fume?

Perhaps during circuit card manufacture, but proper containment and
ventilation can sort that out.

Perhaps during post disposal corrosion, but proper disposal can sort
that out too.

If you have evidence of lead solder producing fumes of lead vapour in
normal use, I'd love to see it. It is the fact that lead solder is
stable in normal use that makes it reliable in the first place.
--
Kennedy

On Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:38:28 +0100, Martin wrote:

On Tue, 06 Nov 2012 18:33:36 +0000 (GMT), charles
wrote:

If lead-free solder is reliable, why are items for medical & military
purposes (ie things that matter) exempt from the requirement?

Lead fumes permanently damage your brain.

There isn't much lead in the fumes from solder, it's the flux that's
the problem. The lead only really becomes a problem at disposal of the
device.