Posts by Pascal Monett

I quietly disagree

"You just do not get the same level of job satisfaction or client adulation when supporting clients remotely, do you? "

I feel fine working from my home office. I have a new customer that wants me on site now, and the highway and parking experience are every bit as horrible as I remember FBC (From Before COVID). Thankfully, that customer only signed for 3 days a week, and it would appear that, some days, I might be able to work remotely again.

I must have been a cave troll in a previous life.

So it "stifles innovation"

I understand two things in this plan :

1) there is finally a chance that I no longer have to store 50 different chargers "just in case"

2) Apple is no longer to make a mint by purposefully designing chargers that are just slightly different for every one of its models so that it can extract a maximum of additional moolah from the idiots that buy from it

I think I would be quite happy with point #1 if I bought Apple gear, and I am very, very happy with with point #2 in any case.

Stop the waste. Be more customer-friendly.

Besides, your phones hardly differ from one year to the next. Stop churning out clones every 12 months.

Ah, the wonders of self-assessment

"26 per cent of surveyed technology workers consider themselves 'elite performers' "

I am not an "elite" performer, I am a friggin' god of performance. If my salary was based on my personal assessment of my performance, I'd be paid €60,000 per month.

Unfortunately, I'm not really the one determining my salary, my clients are. So, as long as they keep calling me (and paying me), I am still the god of performance.

FamousSparrow

A bit much like Red Sparrow. Frankly, those Russkies should extend their lexicon a bit.

"The kill-switch is intended to be used by the operators only "

I think there is a very good kill switch available : the 9mm Parabellum.

You only need to know where to apply it.

That video is edifying

"The ability to master complexity is not the ability to extract simplicity "

Honestly, every single Microsoft employee manager should watch this video, for educational purposes.

"Last year, remote-control drones were used"

And how did that go ?

Were there any problems ?

Inquiring minds and all that.

"individuals and services organisations that claim expertise in a product or technology"

Are people who go to client site to do their jobs.

If they're not good enough, their claim is in the gutter and they won't be hired again.

A certification is not going to help, and I have known certified people who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.

I'm sorry, where's the difference ?

You spend an entire paragraph on 5G saying that it is all about processing close to the user.

Then you try to contradict that by saying that airplanes need to use local processing.

Well, that's about as close to the user as you can get.

I don't see the difference : in both cases, data is not being processed centrally.

One is not a contradiction to the other.

"We once played for two hours to decide who'd wash three plates,"

I'm glad the Royal Navy is able to spend that much time determining with precision who is to do what.

I do hope they do not use that system when it comes to targeting and weapon firing in combat, though.

What really worries me is the "we no longer have the skills to operate a paper chart " part. That clearly means that, in case the computers go down, the Royal Navy (and probably every other navy in the world) is dead in the water.

That part doesn't sound too good.

"we don’t shy away from scrutiny and criticism"

No, indeed you do not.

You just brush it off and ignore it, continuing business as usual.

It's Russia, what do you expect ?

A KGB officer at the helm, jackboots in the streets ensuring order and thugs in the shadows silencing opposition.

It sounds a lot like what Solzhenitsyn wrote in the The Gulag Archipelago. Stalin is dead, but his legacy lives on.

It's going to take a long time for Russia to get out of that hell.

"It's the unpredictability of the costs"

And how is it that the beancounters aren't up in arms about this ?

Beancounters love it when the spreadsheet shows profits rolling in and costs tightly contained.

Come to think of it, I don't much mind that myself.

Anyway, bills are never fun, but unpredictable ones can really stick in your throat. And the bigger you are, the worse they can get.

In-house. Yes, it's a hassle, but if you do it right, you have all the experience at your fingertips when things go wrong.

And things always go wrong, in the cloud or not.

"our platforms will be designed as uncrewed"

I'd really like to see a warship without a crew.

What happens if there's a problem with the engine ? Does the vessel make a call to the helpdesk and some team needs to be shipped out to evaluate and make repairs ?

Today's fighting vessels are complicated beasts. Navigating is not an easy task, even with GPS. The vessel will need to be able to avoid storms, other ships, and plot a course to its destination that will optimize transit time while avoiding all dangers.

That is why all ships, merchant or military, have people in the bridge and the engine room, places where decisions need to be made and, occasionally, things can break. An uncrewed platform is going to be a long time coming, with or without "AI".

"a multitude of fresh qualifications counted for naught"

Not entirely true. They count on the paper the HR drone looks at.

Someone with a decade or more experience in the field will always know the incidental things that no university course can possibly teach (since the teachers do not go on client site), and will therefor be able to evaluate the total environment of the problem to find the real solution.

"trained observers may be wise to your caper and stop you"

In the supermarket ?

Under what authority ?

You can still wear any garment you wish in civilized countries, can't you ?

"the High Court ruled in the firm's favour by default"

I'm sure the Russian hackers are quaking in their boots.

I am eagerly looking forward to an article in this style concerning Sharepoint.

But I'm not holding my breath.

The Southern hemisphere is gearing up

They have the population, COVID gave them the motivation, now they are starting to realize their potential.

The future of economic influence zones is going to be interesting. Australia is weaving accords with its nearest neighbors, now India and Singapore, China is desperately trying to find exchange deals with anyone willing to work for a dictatorship, I seem to remember reading about Brazil as well, things are moving forward.

And that means that the economical influence of the USA and Europe is waning.

Interesting times ahead.