BOFH: Nice air conditioning system. Would be a shame if anything happened to it BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns The Boss is worried. The past few years have brought new challenges for IT as our clients have realized that some of the functionality we provide may not be all that necessary. In a post-work-from-home world – where people could order a new keyboard online without talking to us – there's …
That'll be £1,- for the "Welcome" word (per day) and £750,- for using "new age" (per week). The reference to "IT" is cheap these days because everybody depends on it. You'll have it for a mere £4979,- per month, excluding {in,e}gress service fees (aka walking in and out of the office).
We do have to ask a lump sum for the use of double exclamation marks!! It doesn't come cheap to alert IT for no good reason. However, our going rate is reduced because it is the new part of the "new age" and we'll give it away for a mere £19999,- one-time charge.
My wife and I looked at buying a house a couple of years ago - it wasn't built yet, so it'd be brand new, and one of the things they touted as a huge benefit was an "app-controlled smart meter to keep track of and control your heating spend" which was marked as "(Free)*" in the prospect. Turns out, that little asterisk meant "for 12 months, thereafter the equivalent of EUR 25 per month; mandatory". One of the many reasons we didn't buy a property there.
Don't forget the initial outlay on A4 paper, to list the 5,000 snagging faults with the new property and your yearly subscription to your local solicitor who will need at least five years to get any of the faults repaired.
Oh, and don't forget the cost of having the mineshaft your house is sitting on capped properly, and the Victorian cemetery deconsecrated, the bodies relocated to a neighbour's skip, and the cost of the priest to get rid of the ghosts and ghouls that will otherwise haunt your new build forever.
When anyone says "New" to me, I read it as "can be fixed if you have the time, money and energy"
The NHS trust I'm at is currently leasing some "panic button" software that is so mind bogglingly simple it could be written by us in a day or two. Not only is it not a one off , each Dr practice forks out individually and regularly. Nice work if you can get it , but its basically stealing taxpayer money , or to look at it from the other side , NHS management pissing away money to a level I would call "negligence"
The software is called wigglyamps believe it or not . I think they've just changed it to something less taking-the-piss and corporate sounding.
True, but no justification for a subscription service. After all the device itself is not cheap.
They could offer it over wi-fi to an email account of your choice to generate an alert for free, or perhaps as an extra-cost option if you really wanted SMS by someone else, but fsck-them with a rusty pole for a mandatory service charge to make the bloody thing work.
In my friend's case, the RCBO feeding her freezer in unused room tripped but other stuff was on, so it would not be obvious until too late that something was wrong.
These day's if WiFi is down due to sharing a circuit with stuff like a freezer folks know there is a problem damn soon and can deal with it.
Regulations now are all sockets of 32A or below need 30mA RCD "additional" protection if used by normal folks (i.e. not electrically skilled or electrically instructed). That also applies to any cables hidden less then 50mm from wall surfaces that are not fitted with suitable mechanical protection like heavy metal plate, or have earthed armour/sheath that would disconnect by over-current MCB trip if penetrated by a screw/nail/etc.
So unless you have both a very particular cable route and have the fridge hard-wired to a FCU or similar (i.e. not a 13A plug/socket) it is no longer acceptable.
>"These day's if WiFi is down due to sharing a circuit with stuff like a freezer folks know there is a problem damn soon and can deal with it."
Heh, I put my Starlink power supply on the same duplex outlet as my freezer, just because that was a convenient place to plug in and I was too lazy to move it. I feel smarter about it now!
Been there, done it, on my 3rd (or is it 4th) UPS now - each time increasing the capacity slightly to run/protect ever more things (and to protect the kit so I didn't need the extorionately priced 'extra year's warranty' for the nice PC I have that would have cost an additional 50% of the original purchase price[not to mention about 50% more than the resale value now], just hoping they don't decide to start uploading dodgy drivers to it now it's out of warranty.)
The device is not just the BOM. You have to account for R&D, employees, any logistics and other running costs. If device is connecting to a server, that server cost is recurring so if the device was one off payment, that at some point that one off payment would be less than just the cost of running the server alone. It's just not sustainable.
If you think it should be cheaper, then go ahead and create a cheaper version, make bags of money and retire into the sunset.
You're looking at it from only one angle. It has to be worth paying for from the potential customers' PoV. If it isn't then the whole thing will sink. Personally if I was the potential customer you'd need to convince me about how it's going to keep running when you pull a Google, shut down the servers and walk away because you can't be arsed running it/it's going to cost too much for the server farm refresh/you're moving on to something else. However convincing you sounded I'd still walk away.
If device is connecting to a server, that server cost is recurring
That is fine if it is something I elect to use but here they don't give you any option to use your own choice of server, or WiFi, or your own SIM, etc.
Basically it is more IoT shit (but maybe better made) where you depend on them deciding to keep the service running, and any company who takes them over.
In 1938, you could get an automated power failure detection device without any need for a subscription (except the one for your electricity provider, of course).
It was a lightbulb that would go dark when there was no juice, then light up brightly when the juice was back on (thanks Pierre Dac).
> In 1938, you could get an automated power failure detection device without any need for a subscription ....It was a lightbulb
We got that here! Tonight when a tree falls on the power line (winds predicted faster than a speeding BMW), I'll put the house on generator but not the garage, and turn-on the garage light switch. When we see that "light up brightly" we know the juice is back on.
all good stuff. Except when the the tutor tried to convince us not to pre-judge other drivers, and that those driving german cars were not disproportionately the head-bangers. Credibility shot. I tested it on the way home - one nutter in an Alfa Romeo, all the rest beamers and mercs.
《It was a lightbulb that would go dark when there was no juice, then light up brightly when the juice was back on (thanks Pierre Dac).》
And even invert the signal with a LDR/photodiode phototransister, battery and piezo alarm.
Detecting mains (and loss of) with low voltage non contact tech isn't rocket surgery.
Shortest distance between two points is an engineer. :) Not some IT megatech marketing droid.
Their FAQs basically say that using your own SIM created too many support issues, which I can believe.
However, considering the mobile coverage is variable in my house I do wonder how confident they are that connectivity is guaranteed.
The cheapest I've seen for 4G backup so far is 1pmobile, at 30 something pounds a year PAYG, which is not unadjacent to 3 quid a month
If you really don't want to use their solution the alternative is a UPS, a dongle with SIM, and some custom software. That will cost you more than the 160 quid (plus subscription) here.
I'm no fan of subscription services, but really, it looks like they have some decent solutions here.
something that supports a push alert?
pi zero to do the push every minute, power goes off, push not sent, alert goes off.
So long as you only want to be notified for outages longer than a couple of minutes, statuscake's free plan and ~£15 for the pi?
It might achieve roughly what you want, but this is not comparing like with like and 'no ping' does not necessarily equate to 'no power'.
Additionally you're relying on a free plan carrying on. Statuscake's lowest non free plan (which includes SMS alerts) appears to be 12.49 a month.
Like I said, I'm mostly not a fan of subscription services, but that plug has an ongoing cost and it has to be paid somehow.
On a completely unrelated matter I was recently pointed at online services that enable you to track your media collections, including barcode scanning, auto categorisation etc. It's a subscription service - at around 25 quid a year. That's not really that bad if I consider the time to set up a server, software, online hosting if I don't want to stick it locally etc. Your time and effort has a cost, and paying someone else may be a good idea.
Except they're greedy. 25 quid to track your games. Fair enough. Books? another 25 quid. By the time it reaches over 100 quid for games, books, music, and comics per year it's time to give up and use your own database or just enter lines in a spreadsheet.
Our site has nothing but water available for free (and I think they only do that because it's a legal requirement), although they will heat it for you, and provide a (shared) fridge for the milk. They don't even supply paper cups any more because of "concern over the environment" ( or maybe they don't want to employ cleaners to empty the bins). I'm just waiting for the first food poisoning incident, looking at the state of some of the cups on people's desks.
But I think the BOFH has missed a trick. They ought to whitelist just the models of keyboard and mice that they supply in the USB driver tables, quoting the 'special functionality' (i.e. that they work) for the ones supplied through IT at whatever price they want to charge. That way they can't be bypassed. May have to find obscure keyboards and mice with unusual IDs, but it should be possible,
My secure laptop has something like this already. It doesn't allow PS/2->USB keyboard adapters, so I can't annoy my colleagues with my 1990 built IBM Model M!
Say that to Simon and you'll be doored, all right. That door will be the 6th floor elevator door, and the elevator will be on the 7th floor when he pushes you through, quickly followed by an elevator in freefall that somehow manages to fall twice as fast as gravity would allow.
I metered power for hardware next: start with the drivers of electric vehicles who've already got the necessary cards and accounts. And, why don't we go back to metered network use?
I'm sure some companies are already looking at moving from work from home to full company store mentality where everything has to be paid for in BOFHCoins.
I'm guessing you have enough knowledge to put something in the line to replace the IDs of your adapter with the ID of a keyboard it already likes. Just plug in some USB keyboards you have in your house or office until you find one it accepts, then use the same IDs as that one.
First they started charging for refreshments. Then, 'economies' were made with tea and coffee, so we swapped the contents between the 'management' and 'other' supplies, even though they were in different locations.
Management got all shirty regarding provision for visitors which they expected to derive from our self-funded supplies. Eventually, realising that we were using our customers to make a point, they had a Damascus moment and declared an armistice on tea and coffee. The guerrillas (us) made peace only by accepting gifts of comestibles in perpetuity.
When confronted with this situation at a previous company, I polled my cow-orkers and we passed the hat around to purchase a drip coffee maker and some coffee.
Corporate security said it was a fire hazard, but we put it on a timer and had taken the precaution of including our bosses in the enterprise, so that objection was quickly dealt with and we enjoyed non-crap coffee.
I had a filter coffee machine for yonks. Usually on the corner of the desk. Simple rules - I don't care who drinks it as long as when I want some there's some left. If you empty it, fill it up again. Coffee is in the drawer; training provided if needed.
Good arabica coffee is quite cheap. I varied it - sometimes Guatemalan, sometimes Kenyan, sometimes Columbian...
When I changed sites, it took less than a fortnight to get our office converted. Quality coffee meant visits from staff who would tell us all the important gossip.
Then we had a visit from the MD of our outsourcing company, having a meeting with the client.
"I notice that you have decent coffee" she commented. "Is this because I was coming?"
"No, we always try to be civilised."
"How do you organise it?"
"If it's running low, one of us will go and buy some."
"In future, you put it on expenses. At the big office, they the machine on free vend. You should benefit too."
Our arabica probably cost the same per cup as the horrible machine concoction. And it became part of our Ts & Cs!
My colleagues had a Jura Machine in the office. Paid for by the company. My colleagues filled it with the cheapest, nastiest, Aldi Coffee they could buy. I could never understand it. Eventually they ditrched the Jura because it was apparently too much effort to clean. They now have a crappy filter machine, and still fill it with the crappiest, cheapest coffee they can buy.
Some people just have no sense of taste...
I buy my coffee from a nice coffeeshop just down from the office, in a travel mug and drink that throughout the day...(and if needed go back for refills during my breaks)..
The Boss probably never uses the lift (just in case it "accidentally" gets stuck between floors at the start of a long weekend) and wears a safety harness whenever using the stairs. You cannot be too careful when the BOFH or PFY is around (and doubly so when they are not around).
Don't forget the several stories of basement before you get to the one with the robot. Even if you want to reduce the potential vertical movement you're not going to have your office on that floor. What's more there'll be the sewer vent to worry about. Nowhere's safe.
True, but you never go down or up. If you enter on the ground floor, you must stay there. You probably can't enter on the other floors, so those are out. If you need to use the stairs or the lifts to exit the building, then there's a guaranteed path for an injury. The BOFH will still get to you on the ground floor, but he'll have to use something other than the old standbys and that would at least make it entertaining for us to watch.
Quote
And who can forget those times when people'd get to work on a freezing morning only to find their AC locked in cooling mode?" the PFY says.
"When was that?" the Boss asks.
"Every morning next week," I reply"
And thus died another keyboard .... and nearly the letter the PFY left me too (its her day off)
Dont worry , I got someone to open it for me just in case it had any number of nasty surprises in it.
Turns out its just a wedding invitation. for her and 'lunk' (my name for her soon to be husband)
Which means I get to meet our ex-production engineer (her uncle) again, I think I'll renew our friendship with a garlic and chilli sauce sandwich during the reception......
This struck a chord with me.
For the past two weeks I have been trying to create a docker proof-of-concept container image that resembles what our app will look like when upgraded.
We use a third-party component which provides about 80% of the functionality in our app.
Problems found so far:
1) Their documentation is spread all over the internets. They have their own site where I suspect there are at least two competing documentation teams. There is also a github repository where their template projects live (reading one of the issues there helped me get past at least one obstacle) and finally their forum.
2) They never (5 years) upgrade package dependencies. Upon opening the sample project (based on one of their template) Visual Studio showed me there were four dependencies with vulnerabilities. I asked the vendor to upgrade, and their reply was "do you know how much time and money it costs to pay a developer to do such tasks?!?". Of course their packages have listed a maximum version constraint so after fixing their folly by upgrading the transitive packages I'm left with compiler warnings telling me that I've gone too far.
3) At one point I noticed that a simple end-user operation would result in an exception being logged. Although the end-user would not notice, having "friendly" exceptions in our logs will make it more difficult to spot real problems. The support person was aware and told me he had logged an internal bug report a while back, but... Developers are expensive I suppose. See #2.
4) Oh... They have blob storage plugins. Their blob provider base interface does not offer any asynchronous IO support... Why would I want to write my own blob storage provider? Because their Azure one does not support TokenCredential, so I'll either have to do this properly myself or mess about with shared keys. Incidentally there is an open source competitor and their azure blob storage provider looks like a clean and nice implementation done by sane people.
The amount of money we're paying these bastards... I think I would prefer paying BOFH and PFY for some AI mumbo jumbo instead.
BOFH used to be a light hearted look at IT.
This edition, dealing with the subscription model, is true to life and there are no cattle prods.
I will now have to resort to threatening to cancel my subscriptions to things I don't actually subscribe to and signing missives off as: "angry of Andover" (I lived there three times, for around four years in total, coz Army)
Can we please go back to the good old days of punch card related joviality - "huur, two hundred card pick up" and other topical subjects.
I concluded a while ago that the BOFH was (figuratively) christened 'Simon' although the upside down cross and slaughtered goat suggests it wasn't C. of E. (Episcopalian.) I imagine Aleister Crowley was a god parent. ;)
It would appear from today's text* the PFY's given name is 'Stephen' hopefully not destined to 'Slouch[es] towards Jerusalem.'
*[Boss] "Which parts of the Company?"
[BOFH] "You mean apart from Stephen and me?"
An idea for an sequel to ITV's recent effort.
Travaglia doesn't have to dream up any of this dystopian nonsense he just has to chronicle managements' current world best practice.
Subscriptions aren't new - tithes were a sort of "get you into heaven subscription" if you think about it. I don't think anyone minds paying a recurrent fee for some service that they want and can use. Its paying for something they don't want and couldn't use even if they did.
I would like to see something like the (intent of) "right to repair" legislation that mandates that any product that comes with a recurrent cost must be made available for outright purchase in the maximal functional form (no artificial restrictions or disablement) that can rationally used without requiring a subscription and at the same or lower purchase price.
eg You could purchase outright a HP printer (heaven forbid) with the certainty that refilled or third party toner/ink cartridges will work if technically at all possible. I'll put a pair of ice skates in the coffin for that day.
"eg You could purchase outright a HP printer (heaven forbid) with the certainty that refilled or third party toner/ink cartridges will work if technically at all possible. "
Simple solution - don't Buy an HP Printer, I can get replacement chips for my Ricoh cartridges that work for about 50p each (so I can use the full capacity of them and not leave 30% of the toner in there to be discarded - at that price it's cheaper than buying cheap toner and refilling).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
