
Re: PICNIC > PEBCAK
> my PICNIC brethren need to stop being so fucking stupid first before I become happy
"I'll try being nicer if they'll try being smarter" is my standard response to Manglement.
1161 publicly visible posts • joined 18 May 2007
SAP are ending support, not a licence to use the app or the ancient platform it's based on.
Though it would be dangerous for a hospital to continue to use software without an (extended) support contract. The only question is if the extended support contracts are troubleshooting-only or custom & general release patches.
What happened to the "long tail" theory? It costs virtually nothing to store content and the provider pays royalties to the content owner when movie is streamed by a customer.
I guess each content owner wants their own subscription model, which would be fine if it was a fraction of the price of e.g. Netflix, to reflect their limited content.
In a ridiculous related example, Amazon Prime wanted £2 to stream an episode of Firefly, so I bought the Collectors edition series on DVD for £3, watched them all, then gave the DVD to a friend to screw Amazon over again XD
Computers could certainly enhance a paper file, assuming the contents are filed properly. I would hope that system has a chronological summary of the patient history but also allows
- Searching for any term in the file, e.g. "hip". Easy in a digitized file, not so easy in a paper file..
- Linking an Episode, e.g. a broken hip treated in a hospital plus outpatient physiotherapy sessions plus disability assessment.
- Selecting an item, then paging backwards/forwards through related OR unrelated pages. (e.g. You had a fall, but also have low blood sugar. Hmm, could they be related? The human brain is great at making correlations, computers not so good)
- Side-by-side comparison of two pages, e.g. blood test results, to see what has changed. Maybe even highlight changes or anything out of the norm.
That's just off the top of my head, and with little knowledge of current practices. Hopefully those involved are way ahead of me!
(It occurs to me that any CRM system should have those features, so the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented for each use case)
A good point - The end-users got an application menu rather than a command prompt, so it was someone with root privileges wot dun it.
`ls | grep` is also an unlikely command, but that's what I found when examining "/u/grep"
As an apology, I'll offer one of my own "Who, me?"s [1]: `last | grep reboot` [2]
Except I inexplicably missed typing "grep", and "reboot" doesn't ask whether you really meant it...
[1] I make a new-and-interesting major mistake about once every 7 years. I'm overdue another one..I've warned my boss they really should fire me before that happens!
[2] Other, safer commands are available, e.g. `who -b` or even `last reboot`
How many people does it take to make a logic bomb?
- A systems programmer who puts their utilities in /u and makes /u the first directory in the search path, as some of the utilities have the same name as (and supersede) system utilities.
- A user who typos `ls > grep` in /u, instead of using "|"
No real problem so far. /u/grep isn't executable, so is ignored.
- A systems administrator who decides everything in /u should be executable...
It's surprising how much of a Unix system depends on "grep" and will fail if you break that utility!
Maybe they're DARTS, aimed to deflect Earth from reaching the rich galactic civilization...and spoiling it. Or Teasers, drunk rich alien kids who override the safety systems in their ships so they can buzz humans.
There may be aliens out there, but it seems unlikely they would leave evidence.
Douglas Adams nailed it on a larger scale:
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
My team is spread around the globe. So are our internal users ("customers"). We tend to deal with the "customers" in our own time zone, but in any given week I'm likely to be working with the US, Europe and Asia. My manager is on another continent. Being in the local office 9-5 will not help me "engage" with them, it will make me less flexible in my working hours to meet the business need.
Management in a multinational company needs to understand that, and adapt. Perhaps if IBM RA'd the management dinosaurs then they would see more productivity?
Runcorn New Town was build around a dedicated Busway; where it crossed normal roads the buses got signal priority so didn't even slow down [and regularly hit amber gamblers].
Seems like an ideal setup for even the dumbest autonomous buses
https://busandtrainuser.com/2022/09/17/r-is-for-runcorn/
I've probably told this one before, so I'll keep it short:
One time I was checking a maintenance contract and realised we were being billed for systems that no longer existed to the tune of £500K wasted a year. I informed my manager, our procurement manager and the vendors account manager, but nothing changed over the months.
At a briefing session from a big boss, he mentioned that they were looking to cut costs. I raised my hand and asked if he'd be interested in saving £500K. Which got me a glare from my manager, and definite interest from the big boss. Another manager [Let's call him "Jim", for that was not his name] was given the task of dealing with the contract updates, and Jim co-opted me for the details.
At the end of the year, Jim got employee of the year, the procurement manager had been promoted sideways, and I got a black mark on my file for causing trouble and neglecting my core duties.
It seems that using social media is the only way to contact many companies these days - If you call them out for their shoddy service and lack of contact details publicly, they'll soon be in touch to fix the issue protect their reputation.
Unfortunately you have to descend to their level to do so.
Level the playing field in both teaching/coaching and exam situations by giving them a controlled development & test environment such as a standardised VM to work in?
No direct Internet access or remote copy/paste, and if they type in a complete program from start to finish, they're copying from somewhere.
You could record the sessions to review their technique. Though that would still need a lot of supervision/coaching.
Toyota Pre-Collision System with Pedestrian Detection I have no knowledge of its effectiveness, but it may be comparable.
On the other hand, the Dawn Project test was a little odd and the article didn't describe the Tesla's behaviour very clearly - Driving between a lot of child-sized objects (cones), apparently the Tesla slowed down. When it "saw" an opening, it missed the solid white (stop?) line and (stationary?) mannequin, and speeded up again? Again, I have no knowledge of what Tesla's are "looking" for, but maybe the computer or its sensors were overwhelmed.
It's a bad outcome, but would an adult sized mannequin or dummy car/truck have been detected and avoided? How about if the cones were replaced with parked vehicles or the lane was completely open?
HPE are playing dumb and dangerous here - If they "win" this case, then they have a lot to lose with third-party providers distributing HPE software patches.
- It would be nice if a purchased product came with a "lifetime" warranty against flaws.
- On the other hand, if your business model involves using others work without remunerating them, don't try to claim the moral or legal high ground.
A pox on both their houses.
> Deloitte itself found that its performance management process consumed close to 2 million hours - In 2015, Deloitte had 225,000 employees worldwide.
10 hours a year per employee seems quite reasonable to collect and review evidence to justify promotions and pay rises worth thousands.
I normally don't put much effort in to playing the game myself, as I'm happy at my current level (and it doesn't make much difference anyway).
Another reason would be to avoid having to label them "On" and "Off" in every language in the world. Or at least have different marking for different markets.
I must spend too much time with Lusers - as soon as "O" mode was mentioned, I knew where that was going.
- I get the idea of an AI that can interpret general commands to fit its current situation.
- I get that using COTS products could be a massive cost saving over developing your own AI and comms protocols.
But this is such a massive kludge. Why not, say, send an email and cut out the loudspeaker->microphone diversion? (which wouldn't work in a vacuum anyway)
But let's hope they preserve these classics:
Downvoted not for your factual statement of how it is at your org, but for your org itself.
My anecdotal experience is that even Unix greybeards are capable of using a web or GUI interface, or taking appropriate care when using an unfamiliar editor such as edlin on MS-DOS.