Posts by tezboyes

Newly launched civil service pension portal from Capita is crapita, users report

PS the post code box on their address from doesn't work, so I can't add my chosen beneficiary back in without saying it's a non UK address!

At which point it crashes, losing all details...

It was less shit before, in that whilst it couldn't handle the concept of more than one period of employment, it did at least have previous annual benefit statements and online calculators that worked. Oh yeah and links to scheme guidance that actually, well linked to something other than the top of the webpage.

Oh yeah, and it knew who my beneficiary is.

How many people already in receipt of their pension will even know that their pension provider has forgotten that?

Now it has basically has nothing, ok not quite nothing - it has a crazy concept of how long I've been a civil servant. Plus a number of disconnected Excel spreadsheets that they call calculators. Interestingly one that has a version on was clearly created in 2019.

Not much use without the data to put in them though.

I'm still waiting for answers to a question I put a couple of months ago about how much I'd get - they may or may not want me to go down that route.

I suspect mine will have been lost somewhere in the transition. It will certainly be on the wrong form, as they have none of those to complete for enquiry any more.

Ah you must be a part timer, mine's 31 years and 1216 days. Seriously.

I'd definitely look forward to taking that pension, no need for partial retirement any more.

Sadly that figure wrong in so many ways.

Re: They ask for Feedback

The form has no way of recording extreme dissatisfaction, and pointing out that the issue is a complete failure to login...

I can name a bunch of other consultancies and outsourcing companies who are just as bad.

"on time transition"

It isn't on time if it doesn't work :(

And why oh why oh why, does the computer system used to administer pensions belong to the service provider rather than the service.

Oh yeah, outsourcing.

And as they've lost folks login details, wonder if they've lost the backlog of queries too ?

UK agri dept spent hundreds of millions upgrading to Windows 10 – just in time for end of support

Re: Ha, ha, ha

Yep, I was involved in some of the testing, as an end user. It was at latest 2019 maybe even 2018 when it all started. Project had to identify everything that was being used. Get decisions on what had to be continued. Wrangle testers across all those different areas. Most could be tested on virtual machines, but my team had a special requirement. So I got given a real laptop with the candidate build. That was the start of March 2020.

BOFH: Recover a database from five years ago? It's as easy as flicking a switch

Re: 5 year old database?

dBase had at least one cheaper but practically identical (and ISTR better in some ways) imitator, FoxPro.

Others I can think of, and used, DataEase on IBM PC.

SuperBase on Amiga and IBM.

And the evilness that was Lotus.

Or maybe it's early client/server - Ingres, Informix, Sybase ?

Plus mainframe and mini stuff but I didn't touch any of that.

BOFH: HR discovers the limits of vertical mobility

Re: "There's always next week..." the Boss says, unexpectedly.

Or just standard defenestration?

Re: The last line....

Yeah, I was expecting the vertical limit to be around 20m, with a terminal velocity of around 20m/s.

BOFH: These office thefts really take the biscuit

Re: cookie != biscuit

What some call a muffin is not what others do.

Try an oven bottom muffin, it's more like a small stottie (cake) ...

Microsoft walks us through Copilot Search with a domain it doesn't even own

Re: Al did it

I'm sorry Druck, I'm afraid I can't do that.

Re: Al did it

I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

Re: Al did it

Ah,but how do you know I'm not a chatbot ...

Re: Al did it

So I just had an argument with Copilot!

I tried lying about having bought the domain, but it doubled down on how that can't be true. Even when I asked it to check the website, Copilot told me that m365.com was still delivering Microsoft content via their CDN Akamai!!!

Took me several goes for it to admit it was wrong, not until I quoted ename.com did it finally cop to the fact that it (or Microsoft?) got that wrong.

This is how the world ends ...

https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/8Jhu45kcS2f5b6zAuBBsH

Re: Al did it

Which was going to be my question.

Surely a presentation on how great copilot is should be created by the tool itself. And if it was, then it just shows, that like other office juniors, it still has a lot to learn.

I've recently had to point out to staff the existence of example.com and to please remove dummy.com ....

But then I just asked Copilot who owns m365.com, it's answer is Microsoft!

https://copilot.microsoft.com/shares/iRDDRtK8Z8UGKWLUKRLkd

Interestingly using Chrome to visit the site takes me to the Chinese page with an offer to buy, using Edge takes me to a search results page with the M$ Office page at the top!

BOFH: The auditor is asking too many questions. We have just the laptop for that

Re: Note to self

That's a bit old school!

These days it's all backed up to someone else's computer (The Cloud) and you just need to let an AI loose on it. Even if there isn't anything incriminating already, well a little prompting can fix that..

Law firm 'didn't think' data theft was a breach, says ICO. Now it's nursing a £60K fine

Well and a speedometer...

Microsoft's many Outlooks are confusing users – including its own employees

Re: Security

Yeah but, err, it's Office AI, sorry no I mean M$365 CoPilot Clowned, innit. The bastard offspring from Redmond needs to train itself on your every keystroke, pause, rewrite, then one day, you can just vaguely glance in the direction of your inbox and it'll fire off replies to all the other specIAl agents in use by everyone else, so they can reply to each other in a never ending cycle..

Oops, they did it again: Microsoft breaks Outlook with another dubious update

Re: That _is_ the answer!

Break fix - that /is/ the way.

Accenture: DOGE's federal procurement review is hurting our sales

Re: Ah, Ace Ventura

Funnily enough, some of us have dealt with them under more than one name. TBF they're not worse than the rest, all of whom prey on Gov contracts.

But it doesn't take dog-e to work out that spaffing money to those consultancies is one of the most costly inefficiencies. Just employ staff at a decent wage

Privacy warriors whip out GDPR after ChatGPT wrongly accuses dad of child murder

Re: Hit them hard...

Quite, and if a person (actual or legal entity).made a statement like that then they should expect to be sued for libel.

Re: No care, no responsibility

No testing, just break fixing is the new boss

Combine that with LLM generated code based on, whatever it can find.

Will the last one who can get a voice response please ask it to turn out the lights.

BOFH: HR's AI hiring tool is perfectly unbiased – as long as you're us

For some that would be an improvement!

BOFH: Engage Hollywood Protocol – because nonsense always looks legit

Sorry, but at this point I realised that the BOFH has truly jumped the shark

"trumps just running us down at the road crossing between the pub and the kebab shop any Friday night."

as nothing is better than that.

BOFH: Don't sell The Boss a firewall. Sell him The Dream

The Dream may be the Carrot, but how about the Stick, give them The Nightmare!

BOFH: The devil's in the contract details

Re: The view

It's the shortcut, to the 8th circle of hell.

BOFH: Don't threaten us with a good time – ensure it

Re: Warning...

Paul Simon ?

(You can call me AI)

Re: Lock it up in a box...

When to duck.

When to jump.

When to swivel.

Re: Brilliant

Well it was the 90s, so presumably they were cheap nasty keyboards that couldn't stand up to the amount of pounding a professional typist can get through. Should have got a proper old IBM beast, the kind that you can use as a weapon!

Clearly the Company doesn't have death in service as a benefit for the Boss, otherwise they would have gone into receivership years ago!

BOFH: Boss's quest for AI-generated program ends where it should've begun

Re: you just need to ask AI to sum up the numbers

Yep,sounded like a

give the Boss enough rope

answer.

Re: Oh the sentiment!

There's also the Geordie version YI ;)

Re: Oh the sentiment!

Oh I do, partial retirement is not that far off now - and everyone knows it and my attitude to all this new fangled nonsense...

I do continue to teach the new ones the advantages of actually knowing what you're doing and how things work. That will stand them in good stead whatever the future holds.

BOFH: The true gravity of the Boss and the 3-coffee problem

Re: My body objects to coffee!

Nah, there's definitely a Return on the investment.

Re: Tier 4

A couple more and he hits warp factor 10 ...

BOFH: Well, we did tell you to keep the BitLocker keys safe

There are some great breweries and pubs in Leeds. And of course West Yorkshire is next door to heaven, just East of it ...

BOFH: An 'AI PC' for an Acutely Ignorant user

Am I the only one to notice the irony of BOFH being sponsored by DDN The AI Data Company?

Re: Virtual coloured penclis?

How about a little black light on a black background...

BOFH: Why's the network so slow?

Re: "spanning tree, bayesian binary caching, flapping vlans, combination crypto signing errors"

Has the BOFH bullshit bingo ever been collated?

Re: Classic strategy

Nah, update on a Thursday, so when the complaints come in on the Friday you can spend all weekend rolling everything back - on overtime plus sustenance and residential expenses of course.

Re: Mornington Crescent?

You need to be much further North for a laff ;)

BOFH: The new Boss, Aiman, is suspiciously good – for now

I suspect that the new Boss may start ordering its own hardware upgrades...

BOFH: So you want more boardroom tech that no one knows how to use

Re: I was once rushed to a meeting...

Clearly the kind of set of individuals who inspired the classic service desk shaggy dog story that ends.

And return it to the vendor, telling them that you're just too f'ing stupid ...

Re: Oh yeah !

Please can somebody think of the poor cleaning staff and the mess they'll have to deal with!

If the board are all in the same room there are much tidier ways to deal with them

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

Re: Another one bites the dust

Glass half full

Glass half empty

It's your round.

That's fuzzy logic.

BOFH: Nice air conditioning system. Would be a shame if anything happened to it

Re: Tea and coffee

Ah yes proper kit, the kind that could be used to deal with that an incompetent Boss without breaking the keyboard into little pieces.

Re: Welcome to the new age of IT!!

Welcome to the new BOFH, just like the old ...

BOFH: Just because we've had record revenues doesn't mean you get a Xmas bonus

I do love a good heart warming Christmas Carol, ghost story, kind of a tale :)