Re: Speech Distortion
You're making a common error here: you're assuming PR messages are intended to have meaning. They're no. They're just intended to be issued.
38312 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
It took a long time to figure out the problem with Northern Powergrid's ACD front end. My house name, when spoke, sounds to have a number in it so it tried and failed to find it as a street number and name. It would inform me that it wasn't an address in their region. At least it would drop me into a queue for a real person to answer.
"Oh, and never answer any questions in the affirmative until you are generally sure that the caller is who they purport to be."
Ask them to prove who they are.
It never failed to catch out HSBC's marketing department making spam calls. They asked me to prove who I was by asking for details of a recent transaction. They couldn't understand why I wouldn't just answer. I then told them they couldn't possibly be my bank because I'd made it clear to my bank that I'd need them to be able to identify themselves properly and I wouldn't even tell them whether or not they'd guessed right. It was always followed up by a peevish letter a few days later saying that they hadn't been able to contact me - the in order to try to flog me some service I didn't need was omitted. This was repeated about once a quarter. They never learned. It's worrying that their expectations were justified that just about everyone else would give details of financial transactions a random caller who introduced themselves as their bank without proving it.
"the crook's ASR system attempts to convert their vocal response to text, so the back-end model can decipher what was said, devise a response"
I want one of those for when we finally lose POTS in favour of VOIP. As a compensation for the loss of resilience against local power failure it would be great to dump unwanted calls - especially about smart meters - into an automated maze of twisty little passages.
"My own, possibly unkind, response is to ask whether there was enough consideration of the brain capacity (aka intelligence) of those who choose to use AI, cf those who are choose to work without."
Assuming this was a properly conducted experiment they wouldn't have chosen, they'd have been chosen, at random, by the investigators.
And yet we have the situation where employers want to shove employees out of the door at 50 to make room for younger talent.
Managing long careers will demand reconsideration. Personally I left one career in my early 40s having had quite enough and having developed IT skills as a sideline that could then become my next career. I finally quit about 20 years later having had enough of idiot managers - or at least one idiot manager. I suppose I might have gone back after a short break but I'd been freelance for a decade and navigated IR35 successfully at that time but the thought of going back into that particular fray would have put me off.
Perhaps there could be scope to solve two problems and once - recruit teachers from the older age group. That would mean that teachers would come into the profession with industrial experience to share. To make it feasible it would probably need the previous employment's pension to be paid a half rate as teaching salaries would never match industrial rates and would reduce the strain on the pension fund.
"Was the world worse off when only 6% of people went to uni?"
My immediate reaction to that when it was first proposed was to wonder whether there would be enough jobs requiring a degree to justify that. I haven't seen reason to change my mind. There are undoubtedly more jobs requiring a degree but that's just requirement inflation and has been accompanied by a loss of jobs for which the training would have been an apprenticeship. Perhaps it's the loss of those and the industries they formed which is one of the reasons we don't manufacture stuff.
Interestingly I ran it today in whay you might term granny mode and it didn't ask that. I rather thing you must have entered something that told it you knew more about Linux.
Either that or they've taken it out. I did give feedback saying that when I clicked on ni systemd on a more advanced search it would list it put Devuan at the top but then listed a whole lot more some of which it said it couldn't recommend because they had systemd. If that's what's happened they've solved the wrong problem because with other criteria it will list still list options and eliminate them on the basis of being, for instance, 64 bit only.
"In the Linux world, the app stack and OS are separately governed (and probably never talk)."
Opening Synaptic, the application I use to install programs and anything else on Devuan, the status bar tells me that there are 656546 packages available. Now that's not all applications because it includes libraries - e.g. the QGiS application brings in a whole load of its own libraries and even more if you install its map server. But the point is that this is a curated collection of applications put together to work together by the distro. I'm not sure that Windows has that level of integration.
For something not from the distro there are other solutions for combining the executable together with whatever underpinnings it needs, much as happens in the Windows world.
The timing in relation to the Danish announcement will be more a reflection of this being very much a concern in Europe at present as people are finally realising that being dependent on the whim of the USG is not a secure IT policy, even if it has taken a particularly whimsical POTUS to make them realise this. Denmark is, of course, more at risk from his whims than most although less so than the International Criminal Court.
"They need to PICK ONE and recommend that one distro, whichever their Linux guys believe would be the easiest to install for someone with zero Linux knowledge."
If you work through it you will see that it caters for various levels of knowledge. Some options will lead to producing Zorin or Mint as top choices others to Devuan. In that respect it sort of works. It does need to weed out its habit of offering distros and then telling you it wouldn't recommend them and then, yes, prune it to the top three or so.
Why not a single choice? Well, the user might then go to find somebody to help and say it recommended Zorin and find the expert says they usually suggest Mint. If it's offered Mint as well that's fine, there's no conflict between chooser and expert, otherwise it makes confusion worse.
"My biggest bugbear - and a systemic failure of a businesses I have ever worked in over 35 years - is the inability to record non-decisions.
Now that sounds a little weird. but if it does, then maybe you aren't cut out for grown up management."
I think it describes a lot of managers.
"I agree that the final presentation of results is a little overwhelming"
Or underwhelming!
I got it to list several distros that it then couldn't recommend due to various criteria in my answers. If they couldn't be recommended, exclude them from the list. Then prune the answers to the top 3 or so.
"Your MDs, FDs, CEOs COOs all of whom will go "What on earth is this shite ?" if you try to pull the same stunt with them"
Those in the EU who are paying attention - like, for instance the Danish government - will be starting to ask their IT departments what happens if Trump decides to tell Microsoft to pull the plug on the likes of Exchange. Are you lot going to have an answer?
Even if manglement doesn't ask you, do you have a plan B? No? What are you doing to earn your salaries?
Couldn't happen? It did when Trump decided he could and would sanction the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.
For me the Seamonkey mail client window is email, contacts and calendar.* If I weren't running them combined with a browser it would be Thunderbird - more or less the same codebase. Obviously any email client is going to be combined with contacts. Calendar has been an add-on for yonks. Now it's rolled into a tabbed interface rather than being a separate window. If the pig's head is removed from Microsoft's arse where it's obviously stuffed, you'd notice people have been promoting this, especially in Thunderbird form, for ever.
Unlike Outlook they can exchange data with a server by open standard protocols - no proprietary crap. In that way I have calendar sync either way with my mobile phone.
And for avoidance of doubt, it's not just about me: you can even use either on your Windows - no need for whatever app Microsoft provide for mail this month.
* It's also an RSS reader and usenet client. It can also be an IRC client but not addons for more recent chat protocols
"Suddenly an individual server would be DDoS which killed the server, for the bot to return as the server recovered and so on for the best part of a day"
If the site owning the bot could be identified would it not be possible to sue for damages. Sue under whatever small claims procedure is available. Although that means large sums can't be claimed it negates the advantage of size on their part. If all the sites they're traversing started to do that the trawlers would get bogged down in suits. Once they overlook a judgement send the bailiffs in to sequester a server.
In auch situations ceoemail.com is your friend. The CEO won't see your complaint directly but I suspect CEOs are building support teams in direct proportion to the shittiness of their alleged customer service.
At some point, I suppose the CEO complaints team will have its own website. That will then become AI-powered and we'll start complaining to the CEO again.
EU isolationist mindset?
It's the US isolationist mindset that has them worried. I suspect it's not data leakage and GDPR that are the first consideration either. Trump - just like that - sanctioned the ICC so Microsoft pulled their email service. EU businesses and governments will be worried about the same thing happening to them if they use Microsoft 365. The effects of it going from 365 to 0 would be immediate, the effects of a data grab would be more delayed and probably less visible.
" they need email, chat, fileshare to just work"
Exactly. And I suppose Microsoft are hoping they don't notice the email bit because even if they have Azure/365 on prem, if they depend on Microsoft for email that would still be exposed.
Obviously Denmark are most concerned. Trump's bandwidth for foreign affairs (the political kind) is probably exceeded at present. He may well decide to take a swipe at somebody he perceives as weaker like any frustrated bully.