Posts by Doctor Syntax

Customer service chatbot sector forecast to be worth $7bn this year

Re: Chatbots are pointless

"I bet that the $7bn figure was plucked from the a$$ of some marketing droid with no information to back it up."

Close. It's from Gartner.

Re: Alternate Reality?

More likely the other 2,000 people in the queue before you are there because they have also found the website to be useless for their query. The only people who don't know this are managing customer disservice. They think their website does everything the customer should need. They think the reason the telephone queues are so long is that people don't know about the website. If they actually cared they might analyse the queries coming in through the phone to find out whether they could be answered by the site as it stands, what needs to be done to improve in and how to then staff their phones at a level which doesn't result in them claiming they're dealing with the same unusual level of enquires they've had for the last several years.

Internet backbone Cogent cuts Russia connectivity

Re: unwarranted and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,

The purpose of NATO was to deter war by providing a sufficiently strong defence as to make invading a member counter-productive. Putin has demonstrated very effectively what can happen to a country that does not have that protection. He seems to be prompting Finland to seek it.

Re: Captcha

I was thinking of a Captcha with "Click on the images of Ukrainian apartment blocks shelled by the invading Russian army" or "Click on the images of casualties injured by the invading Russian army" etc.

Re: Captcha

While I'm normally hostile to advertising something along these lines sounds like a good idea. Make it impossible to use web sites outside Russia without encountering regular reports from Ukraine.

IT blamed after HR forgets to install sockets in new office

Re: I want to believe, but...

"It just doesn't seem plausible."

Not all connections are hierarchical. If it had been golf rather than hiking you'd probably have accepted it without a second thought.

Re: Business as usual

"management books I've read all say something similar:"

Very few managers have read them. Reading is such a waste of time....

Re: Watch Your Backs

"recorded it formally as my saying that I didn't believe in managing"

As a micro-manager it probably looked that way to her.

Re: Responsibility

You forget one of the maxims of IT, especially when dealing with HR: the ultimate sanction of IT is to give the user eactly what they asked for or, in this case, didn't.

Re: The first casualty of war is the truth.

"Dictators and HR"

"And" not needed. The one is a subset of the other.

Re: HR or Steve's Boss

HR would be the first to realise the cheapest direction of blame shifting would be onto someone on probation. Steve's manager would simply be bypassed when reporting upwards.

Capgemini wins £30m deal to work on UK customs

One of the most telling aspects of this is that it wasn't designed to be integrated with the rest of the systems from the start.

DBAs massively over-provision Oracle to protect themselves: Microsoft

Re: github?

They own Github so why wouldn't they treat it as their publishing arm? It probably has the effect of drawing its existence to the attention of some managerial types who wouldn't otherwise have heard of it. You can just imagine some CFO telling his IT bods "I've just come across this Github thing. Maybe you should look into it."

Enterprise IT finds itself in a war zone – with no script

"Of these aspects, the lack of leadership is the most pressing. That's not the sector's fault: effective embargoes need coherent and unambiguous governmental and regulatory guidance, neither of which are visible."

Formally that second sentence might be true. In reality, however, the industry could, and arguabley should, be telling the government and regulatory bodies of what's needed. The lack of leadership isn't as implied, all on the governmental side.

Re: The West will have this chance only once...

"5-10 years from now, China will have those keys."

Given that western countries have spent the last few decades steadily pushing their more and more of their supply chains to China, whose fault is that?

Russia acknowledges sanctions could hurt its tech companies

Re: Voodoo economics

Quite. The cost of all the incentives can only be met by printing more roubles and hence adding to inflation. They'll end up seeking economic aid from Venezuela.

PayPal, Visa, Mastercard suspend Russian services

Re: Who is the target?

True up to a point but you would realise it if you tried to make an online purchase from outside the EU. At the moment, however, the average Russian might not be making onlne purchases from outside Russia.

The effect of all these impositions which are being decried on the grounds that they only affect ordinary Russians is to contradict the Russian government's efforts to pretend to its people that nothing out of the way is happening.

Russia’s invasion kicks Senate into cybersecurity law mode

Re: Air gaps don't work

Could you please direct me to the part of the article where air gaps are mentioned. I seem to have missed it somehow.

Proprietary neural tech you had surgically implanted? Parts shortage

Re: "unnecessary computer sounds"

people who think the actual purpose of their car is to provide noise for the mile diameter circle their car is the center of

If I could work out how to switch to it instantly I'd have the climax of The Great Gate of Kiev (orch Ravel) on the car sound system to deal with such occasions.

And to demonstrate that just loud isn't necessarily impressive.

Re: The modern (ha!) wee-wah/whoop-whoop noises aren't so discernible.

It took far too long for what was obvious to become known.

Microsoft says hello again to China, goodbye to Russia

I suppose Russian businesses will just use those centres.

Saving a loved one from a document disaster

Re: Rather computers than cars

Ouch. You just brought back the days when part of my job was to assist she who at that stage had not yet become SWMBO on field work. As it was in winter it involved driving back after dark on the tractor infested and hence mud covered roads of north Antrim in the Botany Dept Mini whose headlights, even when clean, looked as if they were powered by a couple of candles.

Re: Evil Books!

Books will win. I can read books printed a century or two before computers were invented. There are plenty of data files from a decade or two go that can't be read for lack of suitable media drives, software to interpret abandoned proprietary formats an the like.

Surely file n in directory y.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla agree on something: Make web dev lives easier

Re: How about…

"constantly under revision to ensure implementaitons match the spec or, if necessary, the spec matches the implementations."

If the latter is the case why do we increasingly see so many sites which won't work with some browsers?

Re: How about…

Then it's not easy to fix because 'backwards compatibility'

Backwards compatibility is being dealt with by messages saying "Your browser is too old for this site". It isn't necessarily old, it's just one that the designer couldn't be arsed to support because they want to produce the flashiest, least secure thing possible so that means concentrating on just one engine - and quite possibly dropping functionality.

Re: A bit of qualification

if 'best viewed in X" hasn't been the case for years it's only because it's increasingly the case of "only viewable by Y". The whole web design industry is a foetid mess.

Re: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

"designed to show text and hyperlinks"

And to be platform neutral.

Re: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

It's web designers who should be rethought from scratch.

NHS Digital's demise bad for 55 million patients' privacy – ex-chairman

Re: Privacy forever

"And here we all still are, still letting private operators carve off bits that might join some someday metaverse, and still locked up with forever-privacy squeals."

That sounds like cause and effect.

Re: Dead on arrival

Their past efforts lead to a degree of mistrust as to just whether the checks and balances really exist and work. There needs to be a lot of effort to rebuild trust. We need to see that this is really working.

Re: NHS

One wonders what constraints might be imposed by an organisation that appointed Dido Harding as its now thankfully departed chair of improvement [sic].

Deutsche Bank seeks options as sanctions threaten Russian dev unit

Re: Slightly related note

It was cheap. Was. The overall cost has just changed.

Google to wind down pandemic work-from-home

It'll be interesting to see what happens when somebody has a sneezing fit in the office.

ICANN responds to Ukraine demand to delete all Russian domains

The assumption seems to be that connection to the internet is regarded as a right. But rights are really a matter of mutual respect - the old argument of my right to extend my fist stops at the end of your nose. Where is Russia's respect in this?

OneWeb drops launches from Russia's Baikonur spaceport

Re: Hilarious!

"Hindsight is a beautiful thing"

Just as well given that foresight has been out of fashion for several decades.

Snowflake rolls back growth estimates, wipes 30% off value

Is the thaw setting in?

US exempts South Korean smartphones from Russia export bans

"it is therefore entirely conceivable that Russian troops will enjoy uniforms tumbled in LG's new software-defined clothes dryer"

Providing they can still get into them when they come out three sizes smaller.

UK government starts public consultation on telco security

It all depends on what are deemed to be "security critical functions".

The zero-password future can't come soon enough

Re: 2FA problem

"How is it that people that can't see that will be a problem keep getting the job of implementing account security."

It's not their problem so it's invisible to them.

It's an instance of a wider problem with fragile development. The happy path's coded so there's nothing else to do, or at least nothing that can't wait for a few sprints. And a few more...

Re: hitch there is that only covers your browser, and only one browser

"Everything that is currently using a password needs to start supporting some kind of common interface for a password manager."

It's called copy and paste. I have encountered a few instances of web sites that block pasting passwords but they're rare.

Unfortunately if you do want to practice "good password hygiene" it seems that businesses are seeking to make things more difficult. I've just signed up with a different building society which I've wasted half the morning over trying to set up a log-in & now discovered it seems to assume I'll use a mobile app to confirm on-line use. Of all the electronic devices in the house the mobile phone is the one I trust least. For those who don't have their phone surgically attached to their face it's also about the least convenient means to use any service as it's apt to be off/flat/left in the car/somewhere else in the house when it's needed.

I doubt this growing reliance by businesses on assuming their customer have (that cuts out SWMBO anyway) and prefer to use a smartphone is nothing to do with security or customer convenience. It's for their convenience and, I suspect, especially the convenience of their marketing departments.

EU, US close to replacing defunct Privacy Shield II

Re: Don't hold your breath

"Some how I don't think the profits of large corporations as reason is going to be much satisfaction."

When did the profits of large corporations last get pushed aside by popular dissatisfaction in creating US legislation?

"It is hard to see how an agreement alone would survive challenge in the EU, without changes to the USA's laws on surveillance."

And hence we'll be on-track for Schrems III, IV, V etc. because they'll just keep coming up with "new" schemes to kick compliance further down the road.

Google blocks FOSS Android tool – for asking for donations

Re: App Store Pricing

"Actually, the reason I don't pay for apps is because it would mean giving payment details to Google (or Apple). "

Definitely this.

EU cuts off key Russian banks from SWIFT system

Re: "heavy sanctions against Russia's [..] corrupt elite"

"He will, obviously, have warned his ultra-rich friends, and the word will have spread because the rich have ways of finding things out when it comes to money."

If they converted their dsllars, pounds and Euros to roubles they're not going to be happy.

They have non-monetary assets which they will find difficult to shelter. A very effective threat might be to put in motion arrangements to sequester them and use the proceeds for post-conflict reconstruction in the Ukraine. It's surprising how quickly you can find you don't have any friends when the choice between friendship and being ultra-rich.

Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains

"Once you hold the levers of power and can corrupt the election processes then you don't need the consent of the people."

Until it's too late. I remember the images of Ceaușescu and his wife on a balcony, looking panic stricken and trying to pacify the crowd. He was on the end of a rope shortly afterwards.

To say nothing of wondering why they're rising when it's doing nothing but conducting peaceful exercises in Belarus.

I think Russians know when they're being lied to. They can see the newsreaders' lips move.

"Hitler did not invade France, Belgium and the Netherlands until AFTER England and France declared war on Germany"

Given that England and France declared was PDQ after the invasion of Poland he'd have had to invade them almost simultaneously to have done so before.