Would you like fries with your hard drive?
If you were the manager of a branch of a global fast-food chain,
where would you choose to put the hard drive for your brand-new
digital IP CCTV system?
The available spaces are: (a) the manager’s office, (b) a quiet
corner at the back of the outlet seldom visited by anyone with a
bucket of water or (c) the space between the ceiling tiles and roof
situated directly above the deep-fat fryer?
The supplier’s repair man was astonished to be offered a step
ladder and directed towards the third ceiling tile on the right
when he asked to see the faulty hard drive.The lightly battered
drive has now been bolted to the floor to prevent anyone moving it
again.
Government shares its passion for obscurity
The government’s plans to share systems and data across the
public sector have generated a new level of management
gobbledygook.
Downtime has been wondering for a while what this new-fangled
concept was all about. Always keen to help, the government rounded
up a few civil servants to answer the question “what is a shared
service?”
Apparently, shared services is all about “sharing to be
different”, which Downtime is fairly sure is a contradiction in
terms.
And, on the thorny question of whether public sector bodies will
be made to share systems with each other, the civil servants had
another cryptic response. The government, they said, is neither
making shared services mandatory nor is it making them optional.
Instead, Whitehall is “looking for conformance to a shared agenda
as being common sense”.
So now you know.
Excuse me madam, is that a rabbit in your
pocket?
Speciality shoplifters were hit hard this week by the news that
lingerie and sex toy retailer Ann Summers is beefing up its
in-store security. Rather than employ muscle men, Ann Summers has
turned to IT to deter would-be thieves.
Missing items, which retailers euphemistically refer to as
shrinkage, will be spotted by an application that automatically
reconciles stock with the transactions going through the company’s
point of sale system. Managers will be notified by the system if
the losses at any of its stores are above average.
Downtime enjoyed many a smutty giggle reading the press release
about the new application.
Sorry, your World Cup game has been delayed
Press trips around strange datacentres are one of Downtime’s
occupational hazards. Other than pausing to admire the variations
on air conditioning, there really is very little to set each one
apart.
So an onerous trip to Fifa’s datacentre in Munich a fortnight
ago was made more interesting when Downtime spotted a World Cup
countdown clock. Part of a server rack, the clock was supposed to
be counting down until the start of the opening game.
In an uncharacteristic display of inefficiency, however, the
German techies had set the clock for midnight, more than four hours
after the game had finished.
How exercise iPod may bring you to a
standstill
Wily reader Tom Lawton has spotted the fundamental flaw in a
proposed iPod that changes the tempo of music while people
exercise.
Lawton writes, “I thought the reason for having music when
exercising was to provide a reference against which you can keep
going. If the iPod is going to change the music’s tempo as you
become more tired and start to flag, you will not realise what is
going on until you stop.”
Contribute to Downtime: If you have a funny IT-related
story, we want to hear from you.cwdowntime@rbi.co.uk