Posts by Doctor Syntax 42414 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"Nobody who sat on the Board of Serco Group, or who was part of the Executive Management Team at the time these offences were committed, works for the Group today."
I take it this includes whoever made the decisions. Will any bonuses be clawed back? Or have they moved on to other jobs or their pensions scot-free? Presumably it's just left to the shareholders, who include the pension funds the rest of us look to, to take the hit.
"internationally he seems to be working long games"
Internationally I expect the Chinese to be working the long games. I'm sure they've already decided that they want to be in a position where they can't be vulnerable to export technology bans again. They'll accept the breathing space this has given them but will emerge not only as self-sufficient but also as a more complete competitor to the US.
From my PoV it's about a week too late. Not that it was particularly difficult. I was changing from a PAYG to a low data cap sub and the new provider's rates ran rings round his. He started to explain that they "used somebody else's network". I just pointed out I was in the industry more than 30 years ago so I understood all that; it cut him off sharply - I didn't even need to point out that his own in-house MNVO did exactly the same thing or that even back then I knew the people doing his exact job.
I wonder what the real retention rates are and whether they justify the costs of running that side of the call centre. Perhaps this will actually save the operators money.
"This type of fraud doesn't exist as it would be simple to detect, simple to shut down and simple to send the directors to prison."
You could say the same thing about nuisance callers and yet we see it happening. If there's a line of fraud available someone will think they're good enough to try it. Never underestimate the power of the Dunning Kruger effect.
"deploy only encryption, particular only end-to-end cryptography, that can be cracked by American law enforcement"
This, of course, means they'll need to list encryption that they can break. By implication anything else woud be stuff they can't break. I'm sure a lot of people will be interested in that list.
I wish I could remember exactly how this worked but it was over 40 years ago back in the days of CP/M.
I'd built a microspectrophotometer. The computer consisted of a Z80 in a B I G S-100 box with MicroSoft FORTRAN (in those days MS had camel capitalisation). The printer, IIRC, was some sort of thermal teletype device.
Having acquired a spectrum I wanted to be able to print it whilst getting on with the lengthy task of acquiring the next one. There were a few spare K in high memory above the BIOS which started at 48K. Somewhere the video board had another small slice and either above or between them was some spare memory. AFAICR I shoved the data into this memory but I can't remember whether the code to sling it to the printer was also up there or whether it was part of the main executable. Whatever it was, once the user started the print option the printer would start plotting the spectrum with full stops and the console would be ready for the next command.
MicroSoft FORTRAN for CP/M had some handy borrowings from BASIC, PUT, GET, PEEK and POKE which made interfacing with H/W easy. I could make the spectrometer motor step and read the photomultiplier via the ADC without having to drop down into assembler.
"I suggest you are disgruntled"
Far from it. I did very nicely from that experience. I'd been body-shopped in there but then left, largely to go to another system-integrator with in theory, less of a commute (that was a whole other tale). However by the time the first client had learned the error of there ways I happened to bump into one of their guys in the tube station (so much for having escaped the commute into London) who promptly asked if I'd be interested in coming back as an employee which worked out very well in several respects.
"and have no experience in working in a software engineering business."
One of those irregular verbs:
I am a software engineer, you are a programmer, he/she is a script kiddie.
"Move on and find a better work place."
Indeed. It's called retirement even if the first decade was combined with freelancing.
IFAICR Kylix failed to make it past the days of Linux 2.4 - certainly the version I had wouldn't run on 2.6.
Subsequently there was a free cross-compiler and a commercial one. The free one was limited; I tried it on a library and it complained about syntax errors which was odd because it would compile in Delphi. I can't remember what the commercial one was called but maybe this is it.
There's a lot of snobbery involved in attitudes to Delphi.
My last client had used it a lot. When I left they seemed to be recruiting an ever-growing team rewriting the application for their flagship contract in C++. They eventually lost the contract and no longer exist.
"Have you ever worked in a software business?"
Yes. I find it difficult to recognise your halcyon state of affairs.
I've had the experience of being forced by a dedicated VAX/VMS & mainframe oriented manglement to migrate to a new version of the target RDBMS engine on VMS - none of this strange Unix nonsense, thank you. It didn't go well, corrupting indexes several times a day when it met real life. We ended back on a bigger and better Unix box.
... if a vendor can package and charge license fees for Linux Desktop tooling.
But can they get customers for it?
I suspect the only ones who'll bite are mugginses in manglement who have a long history of overseeing development on Windows and have finally decided that Linux might be mportant but don't actually know anything about it and would never in a month of Sundays think of asking their staff.
"the short-sighted greed of the big media companies still stuck in the past."
Part of the past was the reinvention of physical media. Vinyl replaced shellac. Cassette replaced vinyl to some extent (with the slight problem that you could re-record your own copies of the vinyl). CD replaced vinyl and cassette. Each time they counted on being able to sell you another copy of what you'd already bought. The lack of a new physical distribution medium to replace CD together with the arrival of the means for users to rip the CD and transfer it to whatever digital store they want has hit them badly.
"BTW, Idera/Embacardero, the company actually owner of Delphi/C++ Builder, no longer bumps the installation counters for old versions you actually bought (perpetual licenses), unless you buy one of their very expensive maintenance plans that became compulsory with the recent versions."
Free Pascal & Lazarus. Bye bye Windows, bye by Embacardero
"you can take a single ad and see exactly how many people saw it, how many clicked on it, how many converted through it etc."
Can it also tell you how many were pissed off by seeing that ad yet again? How many were so pissed off they decided there and then that they'd never buy anything more from that advertiser?
Look again at what you wrote. Look carefully. Think about it. The only "data" in what you listed is the data the advertising industry uses to flog advertising services to the clients. What's more they're probably charging the clients to be provided with that "data".
"Then the more senior girls were given Marchants (which could multiply) but had a huge moving register,"
They could also divide which, with the moving register, was even more fun. We used those for statistics when I was a student (yes,it was a long time ago). They shuffled themselves along the bench doing division.
"some designers need serious reeducation."
And have for some time. It was just possible to change a headlight bulb on my '90s Legacy but the clearance between the back of the headlight and the windscreen washer bottle - or was it the coolant bottle? - made it very awkward. Designers of any piece of machinery should be required to do a strip and rebuild of the prototypes of their products.
"Book clubs, music clubs and all manner of mail-order companies were a total nightmare to deal with."
My solution with someone who, despite several "not at this address" returns was to ring them and tell them that my handling charge for future returns would be £10 a time, I would invoice and would go to the small claims court. They stopped.
