Posts by chartupdate 7 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2015
I used to work in the Baby Shard which has identical software installed in its lifts. Late one evening on the top floor the control panels in the lobby all decided they no longer had network access and went offline, befuddling the single security guard on duty to answer the helpline phone. Myself and several colleagues literally had to use the service stairs to go down to the next public level in order to summon a lift to the ground.
This snafu is oddly reminiscent of the under-reported incident a couple of years ago when Google emitted a Chromecast update which rendered them unable to connect to networks powered by TP-Link branded routers (it really was that specific). After a few weeks they issued a patched version of the firmware but that still meant those with stranded devices having to jump through hoops to connect them to an entirely different network briefly to receive the OTA fix.
Some years ago I worked in support for a company which sold digital services to the radio industry. We had a product that allowed radio stations to manage their DLS text, the scrolling updates that appear on digital radios. To avoid abuse, given it allowed the presenters to put up their own messages, it had a profanity filter, the configuration of which had to be tweaked when the system mysteriously declined to acknowledge the playing of Saltwater by Chicane.
About 15 years ago I was shown around the server room of a well known independent media organisation.
They had settled on a naming convention for machines for ease of identification, each one denoting what type of platform it was, the core function it performed and the OS platform it was running. This did unfortunately mean that the (S)erver running (EXC)hange on Windows (NT) was branded SEXCNT01. Although its Disaster Recovery twin was DR-SEXCNT
I think the level of confusion exhibited by several commentators here only service to illustrate the complete Horlicks Microsoft has made of its product branding given that "Office 365" is an umbrella term for a series of different and often overlapping products aimed at both consumer and enterprise markets and which provide the end user with differing functionality depending on the package they have purchased. To whit:
Office 365 is the name of the cheap as chips cloud-based productivity suite of Word Processing, Spreadsheet and Presentation apps running in a browser and which share a user interface and most functionality with the legacy desktop Microsoft Office product.
Office 365 is also the name of the subscription service which allows the home user to install desktop apps on up to five devices, These apps are fundamentally Microsoft Office but benefit from a regular stream of feature enhancements and updates not immediately available to purchasers of the offline retail version. Purchase ALSO entitles the user to access the cloud based versions of the apps, and if we've been good users and configured our desktops to save to OneDrive then files can be accessed via the cloud on any device. Unless your desktop sync has glitched with an unhelpful error message.
Office 365 is also the name of the suite of enterprise cloud services which, depending on purchased tier, allow businesses to run filestore, mail and even AD systems in the cloud without recourse to any on-premises hardware. Billed on a per-seat basis it also allows use of the cloud Office apps and installation of desktop apps, unless you are on the cheapest tier in which case you are cloud only and it is no install for you bad customer.
Clear as mud isn't it? Don't get me started on Skype for Business which is the offering previously (or in certain backwaters of the admin console still is) known as Lync and an entirely different service to the product also called Skype as marketed to the consumer space. Or the fact that higher tier Office 365 (enterprise) customers get to use Sharepoint services for enterprise cloud storage, despite also having access to the enterprise-grade tier of OneDrive which performs largely the same functions on a basic level, just not in a granular Sharepoint-y way.
All of the above may be wrong as they may have changed stuff since last week.
There are passenger display screens at Waterloo which keep falling over with BSOD errors (a brief diagnosis of which suggests the boxes they are running on, screwed to the wall inside plastic cases, keep overheating.
Yet there's one, tucked away in a corner by a ticket machine which has been crashed for nearly two months now. I'm convinced they've forgotten it is there, or that nobody has decided it is their job to report it.
https://twitter.com/ChartUpdate/status/1050066728032583681
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