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Prosecutors in Seattle filed charges this week against a software engineer who is accused of a theft scheme that swiped approximately $300,000 from his employer. This is what happens when you ask them to come in on Saturday
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Employee productivity in the work-from-home age faces growing pains as workers deal with unresponsive applications and unresponsive IT help desks. I would have posted this sooner, but my network connection was down
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As a CIO I can tell you the support my department provides is outstanding - and it shows on the annual reviews of everyone who works for me. What drives me nuts are the local ISPs that can't seem to figure out how to provide consistent service.
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obermd wrote: As a CIO I can tell you the support my department provides is outstanding
Then you are one of the exceptions that confirm the rule... I have yet to find one IT department as yours 
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
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Our new hires keep saying the same thing when they realize that we're actually responsive to their needs and attempt to help them do their jobs better.
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That's actually how it should, but in the most places are either morons technically inepts or burocrats without real professionality.
I had a problem once, it escalated up to hotline level 4 (the supposed Guru) and the answer I got from them was still totally bullshit and barely related to my issue.
Another time I had to work with some from IT, when planing the project, 80% of their contributions were "this can't be done like that", and when asked "Ok, if not like this, how?" they answered "I don't know, but not like that"
Small exceptions when you get a decent worker in the hotline, but those are really due to the person itself, not to the policy and definitivelly not often.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
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real life sometimes is even better.
We had a similar policy, with several annoying requests and 6 weeks validity. I wrote an E-mail to the big IT-Boss giving him a polite feedback about the "wtf are you thinking" policy they implemented because we were a company of industry programmers and we were mostly on the way.
Some weeks later...
A co-worker I trained had programmed a maschine that was shipped to the USA, got two weeks holidays, was ill for a week and then worked only a day doing burocracy things needed for the trip because the machine was about to arrive destination, so the laptop remained switched off. He next day went to the airport, switched the laptop on, connected to the VPN and checked emails and so on. Boarding, arriving, checking in the hotel, have a shower... try to continue writing emails. He can't log in. Big "???" in his face. Try everything he can... nothing.
He called me (and woke me up) to explain me the problem, I tried to manage the issue from the company next morning. I was pretty sure where the problem was, when he checked the emails at the airport through VPN the server had set the flag of "password expired", but being out of company net, the prompt communicating it didn't come. Having notifying nothing, windows didn't care and blocked itself on its own due to domain policy.
Speaking with the IT people...
- IT: He should get a prompt to reset the password when booting up.
- Me: He doesn't, he is not in company network
...
- IT: I have unblocked the user, he should be able to log in again.
- Me: No, he won't, because the windows is already locked and the laptop can't speak to the server without VPN to re-enable him.
...
- IT: He could create a temporary local user
- Me: No, he can't. You have revoked our local admin privileges and he can't log into windows, because the OS is blocked as previously said (several times...)
...
- IT: He could come by and we could unblock it with our super-admin user
- Me: He sits in an hotel in the US... a bit difficult. Would you share the password with us?
- IT: No way
End solution: Prepare another laptop and send it per post. (Over a week delay).
Collateral damage: The guy had to travel out of the country and in again because he had not enough time to do his job and would have had visa problems.
Some weeks later...
- Pissed off customer had complained about the delayments and wouldn't pay the extra days because the programmer was not even at the facility
- Project leader pissed off because of customer complainings
- Project controlling pissed off because of the extra costs and unpaid bills (bills that IMHO should not even exist, but that's another topic)
- Technical boss pissed off, because finance complaining about the fiasco
...
When they started to ask us for questions... I gave them my complain to the CIO and his answer, a protocol of the conversation with the hotline and even a couple answers related that they didn't ask for (and I had to bite my tongue to avoid a "See? I told you" to a couple of people).
The only ones who weren't so much pissed off were the guy in the US because he got a week paid holiday without having to use days of his account and me. I just bought some popcorn and enjoyed the couple of weeks as much as I could.
Some weeks later. Password expiration changed to 6 months instead of 6 weeks and when a password expired, you would not be able to access / use company common resources and / or internet but at least you would still be able to use the laptop offline.
Local admin rights were re-stablished a couple of months later due to another situation in the same lines...
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 3-Jan-23 5:23am.
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I'm hoping that CIO was fired for thinking IT security trumps all other considerations. It doesn't. It does need to be worked into the system but in such a way that it doesn't interfere with normal operations.
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He didn't. wasn't. He eventually left time before I went.
I visited the company last year, 6 years after I left... what a pity. Only 3 people still there from my time, there were no laughs at all (we were laughing A LOT), people looked between sad and mad...
And when one of the ones I still knew (lucky event since that was his last day) explained what had happened in the meantime... Oh man, am I happy that I left when I did.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 3-Jan-23 16:46pm.
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This is a perfect explanation of "how technology _really_ works!"
Fantastic story. Thanks for sharing.
Love the parts where IT is like, "he can just..." over and over.
They never get to a place where they understand unintended consequences. Blithely they roll on.
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Just restart the pc all fixed
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
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The constant distraction of social media could be preventing our minds from settling into a deeper, more complete feeling of boredom, according to a new study. Something to read if you're not bored
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TL;DR I got bored reading the article. 
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And... it is good or it is bad?
In my case is not exactly social media (or at least not in the usual scope, I almost only visit CP) but I do like online games, films...
And something pretty prehistoric... I do read books too, to avoid boredom.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Some periods of having nothing to do lead to introspection, which has been shown to increase mindfulness, reduce stress, and have other beneficial mental effects. Boredom is probably the worst way of phrasing this. A walk through a forest without anything to do except walk would be way better. Meditation (active or passive) does the same thing. Active meditation involves doing a mindless job repetitively, so your mind wanders.
Bond
Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere
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Matt Bond wrote: Some periods of having nothing to do lead to introspection, which has been shown to increase mindfulness, reduce stress, and have other beneficial mental effects.
I know, and I practice it too.
A bit of music in the background, sit comfortable and search for holes in the air...
or go to a more or less quiet place, just stand looking to the sun (with closed eyes) and hearing the birds or other sounds around me
Meditation is something I have tried a couple of times, sadly without success, because I haven't found the proper way yet. The standard methods (thinking on a white wall, your personal place and so on) don't work with me. Still searching though
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Ironically, I generally was never bored before technology took over my life, because I was reading. Still largely true even with technology available.
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Or do you still have one collecting dust since the last time someone said something like this?
"
Programming will be obsolete. I believe the conventional idea of "writing a program" is headed for extinction, and indeed, for all but very specialized applications, most software, as we know it, will be replaced by AI systems that are trained rather than programmed.
" -- The End of Programming | January 2023 | Communications of the ACM[^]
As for me, I'm about to embark on a program to analyze record count variances for a dataset over the past six years. Maybe by the time I finish I might have most of the information which would be required to train a non-existent AI to do it for me?
I write code; it's what I do. ™
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: I believe the conventional idea of "writing a program" is headed for extinction, and indeed, for all but very specialized applications, most software, as we know it, will be replaced by AI systems that are trained rather than programmed.
-- The End of Programming | January 2023 | Communications of the ACM[^]
This might be the foolishness of age, but I don't believe current AI/ML techniques are anywhere close to approximating the ability of even typical programmers, much less domain-expert engineers. AI/ML is limited by the data used to train the model. It can derive problem solutions based upon that model data, but can not synthesize new solutions in the same manner as a human being. For some problem domains this limitation might be acceptable. As a general rule, it is not.
Software Zen: delete this;
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: most software, as we know it, will be replaced by AI systems that are trained rather than programmed.
Because, as we all know, AI systems grow on trees!
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Malware operators have been increasingly abusing the Google Ads platform to spread malware to unsuspecting users searching for popular software products. I guess I should stop clicking on every advertisement I see
I've worn out three mice this week.
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Kent Sharkey wrote: I guess I should stop clicking on every advertisement I see
if the click was always needed...
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Pony is an open-source, object-oriented, actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language. Everyone's getting a Pony!
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