Journal Entries
War Policy
Posted Mar 18, 2003
*sigh*
Well, I've known this was coming, and I've told anyone who'll listen that it's a stupid, cowardly decision.
The idea that 'It's One BBC, so just go here, where you've never been, to discuss the war' is typical of BBC editorial policy. They have consistently failed to understand how online communities work. It's as if you were told that you can't talk to your friends about the war in your local pub - you have to schlep across town to Speakers' Corner to talk to a bunch of complete strangers. And it's closed at night.
We know what the policy is - why can't we just keep those guidelines in mind while talking here?
Still, what do I know, eh? I only wrote the code.
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Latest reply: Mar 18, 2003
Pentagon 'threatens to bomb war correspondents'
Posted Mar 16, 2003
http://www.GuluFuture.com/news/kate_adie030310.htm
"The Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq, according to veteran BBC war correspondent, Kate Adie."
So, not content with controlling their own reporters and access to their own information, they are, it seems, perfectly willing to kill anyone who is reporting stuff they don't like.
Day by day, this 'war' lurches onward and upward into bizarro world. If people weren't going to die as a result, I'd say it was funny.
Discuss this Journal entry [6]
Latest reply: Mar 16, 2003
Amazon Webservices
Posted Mar 15, 2003
I took a look at Amazon's webservices the other day, and really liked it.
http://www.amazon.com/webservices
All it is is Amazon exposing their facilities as XML, so you can write code to put the results of amazon searches and other features on your own website.
The really nice thing about it is that it works in *exactly* the same way as DNA. They fetch data from their database, turn it into XML, then pass that through an XSLT transformer to present to the user. With the webservices, though, you can get the raw XML directly or tell it to use your own stylesheet. All things which the DNA engine can do. I was almost going to try using a slightly modified h2g2 stylesheet with Amazon's service, but then I noticed they put a 20K limit on the size of the stylesheet they allow - sensible because they are caching these on their own servers, and they don't want to hold huge files (the base DNA stylesheet is almost 1M in size).
Now, I realise that this is really the only way to do this kind of stuff, but I do feel a certain amount of pride that a large (and smart) company like Amazon has arrived at the same point (albeit two years later).
If I thought we had a snowball's chance in hell of getting it past editorial policy, it would be great to have an tag which could be expanded into a listing of the book's details. That would be great for 'What book are you reading' wouldn't it?
Discuss this Journal entry [54]
Latest reply: Mar 15, 2003
Some news
Posted Mar 4, 2003
Bernadette has posted some news to her journal...
F552?thread=253970
Discuss this Journal entry [12]
Latest reply: Mar 4, 2003
Banks
Posted Feb 28, 2003
I had to re-register with NatWest's phone banking system yesterday. I've used it since they launched it, so long ago that they sent out one of those 'acoustic tone dialler' gadgets when I registered, in case my phone couldn't tone dial, but sometime last year, they did something which I still can't quite believe.
I had also registered and used their internet banking system, but not for a long time, and I had lost the registration number they sent me, so I didn't bother using it, and stuck to the phone banking system, since all I really used it for was to pay off my credit card bills.
So I was a little surprised when, sometime last year, I stopped being able to get in to the system with my normal PIN number. I got through to their customer service, and they tried to reset things, but they asked for a password, which I hadn't ever had to set before, and without that, I couldn't reset my PIN. They said they'd send out a card which I would need to return to get things sorted out. No card ever arrived.
This process was repeated every couple of months, and they always failed to send out the card. During one call, I discovered why my PIN number no longer worked. It was, I was told, because they had integrated their phone banking and internet banking to all use the same PIN, and naturally, they chose the internet one, which I had used once, and never reused.
This cock-up was confounded by the fact that, by the time I discovered what had happened, NatWest had kindly decided that, since I hadn't used the internet site for six months, they should delete my registration. So I couldn't even get my details for that account and get in that way.
Once again, I waited for the card to arrive, once again nothing comes. Then, a week or two ago, I tried again. This time, it turns out that *they've completely removed me from their phone banking system*.
*sigh*
*count to ten*
*get to two and start shouting down the phone*
Sadly, call centres have a primary function, quite distinct from their secondary function of dealing with customer requests. Their primary function is to isolate the caller from anyone who could actually materially affect the current situation. You can ask to see the supervisor, and their supervisor, but all you'll end up with is the person in charge of the call centre, when the person you really want to talk to is the moron who thinks it's acceptable to launch an IT system which lets customers "drop off the system".
I was told that this had happened a lot recently, and they were investigating it, and until they fixed the problem, they couldn't add any new customers to the system, because they would also "drop off the system". I explained that I wasn't a new customer, that I had been using the system since its launch. This didn't hold any water, since obviously, their computers told a different story.
So I asked that they re-enroll me once they sorted out their problem. And the form arrived a few days ago, I returned it, and was rung back, and able to set up my new PIN number. I also asked to be added to the internet banking system and was given a separate number. Strange, since I was told they'd integrated everything. Oh well.
So I phoned the internet banking people, and was told they couldn't add me over the phone, I had to:
* Go to their website
* Find the form for joining internet banking
* print it out
* fill it in
* send it to NatWest
Oh. Good. Grief.
I explained to the nice young man that I had already signed up, but for some reason my account had been removed.
"Yes, I'm afraid that sometimes accounts are lost, accidentally."
"What? You mean you accidentally lose accounts. How can I trust you to look after my money if you might accidentally lose it."
"Well your bank account is handled by a different system, and they have stringent checks"
"Well perhaps you could ask the people who did *that* system to stringently check your internet banking system?"
At that point I almost lost the will to live, and anyway, it's not fair to berate call-centre staff for something out of their control.
Trouble is, it's difficult to find who I *should* be calling. Ideally, it's the person in charge of their IT infrastructure, so they can explain to me why I should continue to bank with an organisation with such a lax regard for the security of customers' details. If I find out more, I shall report back.
Oh well. Perhaps this is God's way of telling me to move my bank account.
Discuss this Journal entry [26]
Latest reply: Feb 28, 2003
Jim Lynn
Researcher U6
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