BOFH: The Boss meets the unbearable weight of innovation BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "We need more AI," the Boss blurts abruptly, in the middle of an office meeting. A few heads look up in interest, but the rest of the room can smell the ominous and rank odor of a dumb idea. A dumb idea that will have to be quietly pushed into a cupboard in a couple of weeks and never …
I was thinking the same. They don't necessarily have to do anything BOFHish to do well out of this if they just charge the normal vending machine profit margin and get the snacks wholesale, especially when they have a plausible reason to charge the boss whenever he's present.
That the camera would work so well it would dispense crisps every time the boss walked by, and as a result he would gain weight and be forced onto a diet where snacks were forbidden. But it would keep dispensing crisps (now on a slight time delay to allow him time to pass) and then report to the BOFH and PFY that crisps were dispensed so they could have a free snack paid for by the boss.
And then since the crisps made the BOFH and PFY thirsty, they'd go across the street for a pint, which due to an interface between the vending machines and the pub's POS system (thanks to them "just happening" to be in the right place to help one time when the POS was "mysteriously" acting up and could benefit from their "free" tech support) would also be dispensed on the boss's credit card!
"we have smart clients – we should be smart."
Someone has confused their modus tollens with their ponens, or is just wishful thinking.
If Simon's firm has a smart client then that client has retained his firm's services purely for its obvious lack "smartness" (presumably the useful idiot principle.)
Should the firm actually become "smart" then the smart clients will source their plausible deniability elsewhere and the dumb clients will feel uncomfortable dealing with a firm outside their league and seek an offering from a firm offering a comparable level of incompetence to their own.
If I were Simon I would hire a tea lady (using the "correct" phrasing for time and location of reader) telling the appointee that she has the exclusive rights in the building on the sale of crisps and other comestibles† (from her tea trolley) dispensing with the vending machines entirely; in return she just has to pretend to the boss she is an android with the latest AI (and I daresay a real people personality™ ;)
The tea lady's renumeration could be concealed as "model training" expenses which we all know are exorbitant.
† with the extortionate markups typical of an exclusive franchise understood. ™ Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
Had a former boss who swooshed into the IT Dept. one fine day, with a visiting dignitary, only to start proclaiming we were doing everything in Java - this was circa 1998. We were an AS/400 shop! Java? No, but we can show you some nice RPG
Had a former boss who swooshed into the IT Dept. one fine day, with a visiting dignitary, only to start proclaiming we were doing everything in Java - this was circa 1998. We were an AS/400 shop! Java? No, but we can show you some nice RPG
By that time the AS/400 could do JAVA (and the RPG-JAVA interface is fascinating interesting).
And there we have it. The company needs to get smarter because the Boss can't get the crisps he wants out of a vending machine. This is my job. This is where years of IT delivery has got me.
In my opinion, the most lager-worthy line of the article (icon; and I'm surprised no one else highlighted it before me). Glad the PFY saved the BOFH from the indignity of actually having to do it.
Of course, an experienced reader might suggest that the resident Bastard has not actually delivered the IT he claims to have done so for "years", instead "delivering" years' worth of potently painful, and potentially deadly, punishment. However, someone making that suggestion might indeed be inviting the BOFH and/or PFY to pay a nasty visit making just such a "delivery". But not me, no -- I'd never make such a suggestion, nope. They deliver (entertainment) just fine, thanks.
That feeling is well known to most it people especially when some manager comes up with a new idea.
Fortunately my managers are mostly sensible (in case they are reading the register).
Mind you the latest idea is a partner landing zone to handle big file transfers which keep hiring the limit in the firewall for vpn throughput. So that was a useful meeting apart from the fact I know have more work to do to ratify the design and then work out how to implement it… probably needed a month ago as well..
There was the Xmodem, then Ymodem and then the Zmodem file transfer protocol.
But, there was an unheard-of protocol, called the BOFH protocol.
It is easy to incorporate into any CPE (clustomer premises equipment) no matter who the vendor may be, and can target specific users, data streams, sites or everything all at once.
It will work over any transfer medium (dial-up, adsl, fiber, copper, starlink, barbed wire, you name it, it'll work). The main feature of it is if it feels good (which are not most of the time) your transfers will zip through.
However, when it feels bastardly, speeds will start up great, then goes slower and slower over time, so that the last few bytes of the transfer will trickle through at a measly 4kb/s.
If it will feel extra pissy, it'll induce CRC errors, peering errors, or just random errors and will terminate the transfer, alternatively it will corrupt the transfer randomly.
Yesterday I was on a call with a software architect who said "We are being told to get AI in everything' - and what they are proposing is the lamest thing I can imagine. But that, of course, ticks that check mark of 'AI' because someone defined an interface with a chat bot meets the definition of AI and its really easy.
If all the marketing hype money went into actual planning and development of a working AI system for inventory and sales, well we might get something useful instead of abandoned projects and lost consultants fees when people figure out how much something productive will actually cost.
It has not been that long ago that blockchain was going to save the world, rewrite the way business runs, and all the other hype.
I always know it's going to be a lovely Friday when a new BOFH is presented.
This one had me reminiscing about the Internet Connected Coke machine
I once attended a summer workshop at CMU in the CS department, some 20 or so years ago. They of course had a tour of campus. On a pleasant sunny summer day, there were any number of students out walking their robots. "That one over there will be going to Mars in a few months" the guide told us (or maybe he said the Moon, my memory fails me).
The tour began with the group taking an elevator down to the 3rd floor to visit the ICM.
Here in the US, the machine's "AI" anti-theft system would not only tip it over on you, it would also automatically dial 9-1-1 to report the accident, ensuring you an expensive ambulance ride to an even more expensive ER for your troubles.
Admittedly, it's weird for bankruptcy to be employed as a theft deterrent. Kind of feels like someone's lost the plot.
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