Posts by Sam Crawley 51 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2009
That is supposedly what is coming down the line in the medium to long term - moving from SaaS and its price gouging to AI-created bespoke software for each individual role - so in theory no more big beast frameworks like SAP. Of course I'm sure the software houses will still find a way to monetise it.
Meeting summaries can be useful, although we're still in a world where people are checking the output - presumably once you rely on it the manual checking goes and we just have to pray the accuracy is better! Although how accurate are people taking minutes and notes anyway?
What is genuinely interesting (and frightening, depending on your perspective!) is that O365 and CoPilot are rolling out capabilities where usage data is being used to produce recommendations where AI could automate roles, aka O365 is going to be telling HR which jobs it thinks it could eliminate! It's going to be a supercharged version of the productivity monitoring of the past, and I'm sure there will be some trip ups along the way. "According to CoPilot you've been doing nothing all day" ... "But I've been slaving away all hours, using this non-Microsoft application!". There will no doubt be some interesting test cases of contract law if or rather when AI accuses you of being a lazy bugger!
I do not understand why these cannot be built on brownfield industrial sites? These are likely to have the road infrastructure for construction traffic, will have decent power sources even if an upgrade may be required, will be suitably distanced from residential areas, need the jobs, and it probably doesn't matter if there is historical ground pollution if a large concrete platform will be stuck on it. Sticking them on actual green land close to London against locals wishes seems short-sighted, unnecessary and greedy - tell me there's not a suitable derelect site in, for example, the Tottenham / Lea Valley corridor that could be repurposed?
There's a good Freakonomics episode on why infrastructure projects always go horribly wrong / over budget. In summary the best guide as to how a project will go is how previous projects went. I wonder how NIE's ECC deployment project went 25 years ago. Anything in TheReg's archives?
It seems to me that the balance of power between SAP and their customers is in the wrong place. SAP kindly agreed to let their customers continue to use their software?! I suppose this is what happens when a market is broken in terms of there not being many enterprise-credible alternatives. There have been several articles on here lately about the "powerful" German SAP user group being upset about the direction in terms of forcing S/4 and cloud, but I haven't seen SAP change direction in the slightest... I guess that recurring cloudy revenue stream is just too compelling?
The issue is not the move from free to chargeable - I think the consensus on the forums was that this had been a good thing for a while but no one was surprised they reneged on their original stated promise (free forever - or rather the price is mining your data...) but the issue was the cost proposed was pretty significant, especially for non-commercial usage. I forget the exact numbers but with a family bigger than 3-4 people involved it was ending up significantly more than a similar O365 package. Also worth noting that I suspect the majority of affected users are really just Gmail users with a vanity domain, they're not taking advantage of whatever wonderful features the wider Workspace suite provides.
That's what bothers me about the pro-office arguments around human social contact and keeping city coffee shops open - being based at home now I'm interacting far more in my local community and using local shops, and in the long run this is bound to lead to a more balanced economy even if at the short term expense of a few sandwich shops in the big cities.
Of course another unintended consequence the beancounters won't have modelled is that this will hit Google Home device investments, although to be honest the Home / Nest integration with GSuite services has always been a bit hit and miss. I was starting to hand out Google Displays to extended family to share photos from Google Photos but I will now look for another way to accomplish that.
I don't think we can stem the tide of "smart" devices but these examples of obsolescence make the case for:
(a) requiring that devices are engineered so the the smart aspects fail 'cleanly' when they lose their central coordination - for example the smart fridge displaying some nice art or being able to switch off the screen completely rather than to have to live with certificate errors or code dumps etc..
(b) requiring that smart devices can be re-pointed to alternative services - perhaps a market will grow for subscription-based central services - after all the reason these things are being wound up after a few years is they cost money and are being offered out free aside from the initial capex, right?
(c) perhaps requiring that devices talk via subscription broker services to make it easier to do (b) - would also probably help with interop where sensible.
If you look carefully at what is said by company spokespeople they will often stand outside the court and say they are "planning to appeal" the unfavourable judgement. I suspect a lot of these cases then never go any further after they consult lawyers. In the UK you can't appeal against a judgement just because you don't like it, you have to show that there was an error in law or some critical new evidence wasn't before the original court. As I'm not a lawyer I don't know how often that happens but suspect it is a small minority of cases. Even then the appeal court will often just push the case back to the same level court to re-hear the case with the new evidence or with the correct law.
So punters can cope with "Fibre" in the name meaning faster broadband even if there's no fibre, but can't cope with "Giga" meaning even faster, even if it's not gigabit?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/15/asa_cityfibre_fibre_broadband_judicial_review/
Doesn't work on corporate tariffs because <this is what we've been told by our account team> Vodagroan haven't worked out how to charge for the service on the corporate billing engine yet. Ignoring the point that you would only be using Wifi calling when their own network is insufficient in the first place.
@TeeCee that is the perfect solution. Honestly I read this review thinking that it's a shame that I just won't even consider what is obviously a nice bit of tin because of the Samsung crapware that gets loaded on (and I can't be doing with the faff of rooting and applying custom roms). I hope someone in Samsung is getting this feedback - "Wake up! You are actually losing customers because of this"!
..on Vodafone? That doesn't sound familiar at all! Maybe it's not the new handset, maybe it's their creaking shoddy network, have they considered this? Don't try to test data on the handset between 4pm and 7pm around King's Cross, you might get connectivity, but there will be ZERO THROUGHPUT!
And lol at all the comments above, why oh why do Vodafone feel the need to frig about with the stock build - anyone who has a modicum of techie in them will just then have to go to the hassle of reverting anyway - who wants to wait a year for each Google update rollup just so Vodafone can "evaluate" it - can they demonstrate one single time ever when this has been beneficial for customers?
Love the scheme, try to use it every day subject to a bike being available at King's Cross at about 08:30 (answer if sunny = no, if rainy or cold = yes), but the implementation has been poor - as just a regular user I have repeatedly suffered ghost journeys, random charges on my accounts, dock consoles always crashing, entire docks malfunctioning repeatedly, and the latest I've noticed is the on-site staff during rush hours are slowly being withdrawn earlier and earlier in the evening leaving full docks, clearly just a cost-cutting measure. As I thought the scheme was modelled on Montreal I would have thought most of this would have been avoided. If this is largely Serco's responsibility then they are right to withhold payments.
Great idea, and this would have been perfect for my Grandfather (RIP) who used to struggle even with a basic Nokia. I remember when my Grandmother had had a mobile for several months, she rang us (on landline) to complain that it didn't seem to work any more. Have you charged it, we asked? What do you mean 'charge"?, she replied! That's low usage for you, eh?!
The patent troll guy (and that's precisely what he is) seems to have trademarked "Android Data" not "Android".. does this mean that any component of trademarks is also restricted? Gillette have "The Best a Man Can Get".. no more using "Best" for any shaving gear anyone else?? Ridiculous...
