Posts by Dabooka 1231 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007
I appreciate the cynicism but that in itself is part of the problem; for organisational change to occur folk need to speak out.
I have been the investigating officer in several instances and two things I note are prolonged history where quicker intervention would have helped, having a cynical approach stops people coming forward sooner. We take it very seriously and it is not lip service
Now I am way removed from the IT sector, I am definitely at the 'end user' part of the scale (sorry!) but I do recall my former Comp Science lecturer form some 30+ years ago talking about the greatest progress being in creativity at both organisation and individual levels. Again something that isn't recorded in productivity metrics, but look at what rank and file folk are doing now for themselves (me very much included) in relation to data and other essential job roles.
Also my missus in software dev and her experiences of trying to overturn a poorly implemented AI model has been horrendous. Cost a fortune and deadlines missed aplenty
Today on the front page of El Reg, we have this article and another reporting on the Cybersecurity and Resilience Bill and "Now more than ever, the UK needs to build and protect sovereignty over its digital infrastructure, and not leave itself vulnerable to the policies and actions of foreign powers such as the US and China"
And yet we want Starlink of all systems to replace TETRA....
Brown raided surplus form public sector pensions form those 'over performing'; sucked still of course.
Reeves is talking about raiding the tax free obligation to bring it down and keep more in the annuities, or pay a tax on what you decide to take out. Sucks even more but a clever way to force a draw down that probably means tax is liable on the income.
My former employer had a staff survey system developed by a mate of the Dir of HR from their time together in the NHS.
And just as in the story, once logged in to the system you could simply amend the staff id in the address bar to access anyone else's responses and a quick look on something as simple as Outlook Contacts could bring up anyone's staff ID number.
Farcical. And did anything happen to change it? Nope.
The work they did was immeasurable, and the conditions rather grim in certain circumstances too.
Coincidentally I have just finished The Emperor's Codes, a great book for anyone interested. Despite reading plenty in the past about Bletchley, this book still offered significant amount of new information especially about how the US pollical scene was in the run up to them joining. I will admit now much on how the ciphers worked went right above my head!
They do have mini kegs but I personally find them gimmicky and difficult to get a decent pint out of without some being wasted or the latter pints being a bit too flat. Watney Party Sevens were notoriously worse
For cask ales and ciders from the breweries they can be great. I often get them for gatherings at my house when we'll be on an ale and it doesn't matter anywhere near as much
It's about how it is implemented, copy and paste is already covered in the usual plagiarism academic regs of the institution.
We need to be better at how it is implemented and utilised, focus on the research elements it can support but not to rely on output. We've had these discussions before, thirty years ago with the rise of the WWW and even bloody word processing before that,
Our early LAN parties saw token ring cards pilfered and network play in my mum's dining room. The movement required for four players was so great it invariably planned the whole weekend as towers, CRTs, keyboards etc were lugged about and setup, resulting in a whole weekend of varied gameplay.
Doom, Quake, Rise of the Triads, Heretic and even strategies such as C&C, Red Alert all found their way on to our (by know) TCP network. Pizzas and beer also featured
Happy days...
Doing A Levels 1991-93. Apparently TP was used as its structuring was a good basis for the real world apparently.
Knowing what I know now I work in the sector myself, it was probably as much to do with the fact it was cheap! I am pretty sure there were grumblings back then it was already obsolete although I can appreciate why for someone's the first dip into programming how it would have been a reasonable choice back then. Maybe. I don't know, I never took it up in any sense afterwards.
(And for those outside the US, college here in Blighty is post compulsory school, so was then usually attended between 16-18 years of age)
Somewhere they'll be managers in marketing or other departments who called this bullshit out for what it was; they'll have had had their cards marked for being against it and yet now, after being proven correct, they'll remain a pariah. For making the bleeding obvious call all along.
PHBs never go back and promote the guy who correctly went against their idea.
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