Terry's Cost Cutting Maneuver of the Week

Terry is on the rampage to save money these days. Rather than cutting costs by reducing the number of Terries around the shop -- which would definitely help things on a number of dimensions -- he again prefers to nickle and dime us to savings Nirvana.

One example is the other day when I went out to a local take-away place to get some sushi for lunch and forgot to bring cutlery back with my food. So I went up to the canteen and asked the friendly, helpful girl on the till, "do you have any plastic cutlery?" She replied, "What do you want it for?". Amazed that she could think I wanted it for any other purpose, I said, "to eat something" . To which she replied, "You'll have to pay for it", she said, "it's 10p".

You can't make this stuff up.

Anyone With Intelligence Need Not Apply for A Job at a Telco

Last week a dude in my group -- lets call him George -- had been having a really, really bad day due to the airline loosing his luggage and just being general shits about locating them. At one point he was about to put his fist through his monitor after talking with them when they suggested that next time his bags might not disappear if he travel with less expensive ones.

So to calm things down, another guy lets call him Jim, says, "hey man lets go upstairs to the canteen and I'll buy you a tea." So they go up to the canteen. George who does not like to use Styrofoam because he is concerned about its over-use, decides to grab a paper cup instead. gets a tea and goes in line. The woman at the register rings him up and says, "that will be 65 cents please." George says, "but I've got a tea in there, and that is 40cents, right?" She says, "Oh dear Sir, Telco Regulations require that I charge based on the container and since you've got a paper cup its 65 cents." Luckily Jim was there to stop George from jumping over the counter and strangling this poor ninny.

This is a good analogy for why deep packet inspection might be necessary. Charging simply based on the container isn't always the way to best maximize or economize the charge for network traffic.