Posts by Doctor Syntax 40413 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014
"How so? it makes no difference how a bank interracts with it's customers, the data held will be the same."
You have some problem you need to get sorted out.
Scenario 1. You go into a branch, talk to someone, get it sorted. No data.
Scenario 2. You try to sort it out on line Succeed or fail there's data recorded.
Scenario 3. You ring up, maybe because you didn't succeed on line or you knew better than to try. "All our calls are recorded for training purposes...".
"The thing some companies fail to grasp is that just because they have the data for reason a, doesn't mean they can use it for reason b."
One way would be to have separate databases for a & b. It would avoids that category of error. Unfortunately it introduces a new one, that of keeping one of those databases up to date. The database that's used for trading needs to have its names and addresses up to date, the marketing database may well rot in isolation. However there's an effective solution: throw away the marketing database and add value to the business by stopping pissing off customers with unwanted mailshots and spam.
"A contract may not have spirit, but the people implementing it do.... I've worked with contractors and outsourcers who have been willing to go beyond the letter of the contract"
True. We used to have a saying in the PCG forums that the contract is only for when things go wrong. If it's your own business there's a lot of value in having a happy client. It brings renewals or new clients because of your reputation; most of my contracting career I had pimp-free contracts for this very reason. (The sad thing, of course, is that the IR took advantage of the spirit of such arrangements to characterise contracts as IR35-caught.)
"It's not universal, but in general, in-house IT staff deal with an application as if it's theirs, and treat it as such ... If it goes wrong, they know they'll have to deal with it, and so take a bit more care. if it's not what the business need, they'll question things, as it'll save them rework in the future."
More than that. The in-house staff know that what the system does is what ultimately earns the money that pays them. They have skin in the game that outsourced staff half the world away don't.
"management will always rather listen to what an external cunsultant says than to their own expert staff. Even if it's exactly the same."
That's because it costs them more. Price = value. The consultant can ask the expert and then pass the answer on along with a big bill. It's called adding value.
"No-one minds dying in an accident, just as long as they don't get killed by terrorists.
That's what I'm inferring from what the politicians and media are saying, anyway."
What you should be inferring is that politicians don't mind you dying in an accident just so long as you don't get killed by terrorists because they won't be blamed for that.
"there just aren't as many nutters out there as the security services would like us to think."
And rather more spontaneously combustible batteries than they've taken into account. It's more a matter of weighing up the risks of alternative courses of action than deciding to follow one on what are, in effect, PR grounds.
"This sounds like a way to sidestep any need for the usual processes of enforcement, such as courts."
Not really. Presumably failure to comply would have to go through the courts at which point the criminality could be argued. What it does do is require some nifty decision making as to whether there would be a good case to take to court and some erring on the side of safety. Eventually there'd be sufficient court decisions to make this a more informed process.
"I can't say I'll miss Unity."
Neither will I. It was designed on exactly the same desktop-to-mobile premise as the Windows 8 interface and misguided for the same reason - different use cases need different interfaces.
What I will miss is the effort to get a non-spying OS on a non-overpriced phone. One possible outcome might be that commercial investors restart the Ubuntu phone development going without the overhead of pretending that the same interface can work on a desktop with the downside that they'll insist on cloning the Google/Android business model.
"Linux on the desktop has always been marginal; it's really a server OS that works okay in embedded applications too, which is why Android could use it."
Think this through. Why can what you allege to be "really a server OS" work okay in embedded?
It's because any OS modelled on Unix is a portable and properly layered system. Portable means that any part of it can be compiled for different CPU architectures. Layered means that the kernel can carry a run-time appropriate to the use case: a cut down payload for embedded, a mobile-oriented* payload for Android or a standard set of Unix utilities with or without a choice of graphical interfaces for desktop or server.
No it's not "really a server OS". It's an OS. Just because you struggle with it doesn't mean that our elderly relatives can't manage it when we use it to rejuvenate their old PCs.
*The modular driver system helps here.
"No point fining the CEO or trustees - they are not paid very much (relative to FT350 companies with a similar turnover) and is would only prevent the charities being able to attract good talent."
If the trustees are allowing this sort of behaviour it throws the notion of "good talent" into question.
"But would someone giving to a charity like the fact that for every £1 they give 30% will go to pay (sometimes huge) wages, 20% to administration, 40% to marketing etc and only 5% to helping the cause itself?"
Sometimes this analysis can be misleading. You need to look at what the charity delivers and how.
I remember reading that the Samaritans had problems because of the amount that was spent on offices and phones which counted as administrative expenditure. But, of course, what Samaitans does is seat volunteers in offices at phones.
A charity that provides medical or social care might spend most of its income on wages because paying those professionals to deliver care is what it's about.
At the very least you'd have to separate out management expenditure.
"1) call MS and ask them for the enterprise version. tell them you are a company and need 250 + licences of Windows and Office"
1) Call MS and tell them that you're a large organisation with several thousand Microsoft users who you are about to move over to Linux.
2) Watch a CxO come running with amazing offers.
"You may think that's an odd requirement, but trust me, you don't want to argue the point."
I'll take your word for the last bit. But if I wanted to turn off the heating at some random time, after racking my brains for a while, I think I'd come up with the idea of just pushing the switch.
"But I don't believe the Police are in the habit of lurking outside your house hoping to catch you using a door app on your phone"
Prime example of missing the issue here. The reason the police could trap you is because it's illegal to do so whilst driving. The reason it's illegal is because it's dangerous. This is one instance where "think of the children" is relevant. They might even be the driver's own children.
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