Monthly Archives: February 2006

Enormous house valuation leaves owner unimpressed

Even governments have to live within their means. But the nice thing about taxation, where you figure out how much tax (or rates) someone owes you, is that revenues are pretty predicatable. You say it, they owe it. Nice. I wish I had that kind of lock on my ‘customers’.

Unless you stuff up.

If you stuff up, suddenly the USD$8m you were counting on isn’t coming in, and you have to start sacking public servants. Read the link, that’s what this rant is about. I’m not going to recount it at length. Let’s just say there was a single character typo and leave it at that.

The nifty thing about this stuff up is that it was via a records enquiry system, by an external operator, who accidentally activated a retired program that shouldn’t have been able to affect property prices anyway (what with being retired and all). Valuation on the property went from USD$150K to… tray lots: USD$400m. Any reasonable system would have said “wow, that’s a fairly heafty increase in valuation, you’re going to have to enter several ‘no, seriously, I’m not kidding‘ codes before I actually believe you.”

Daniel, where’s our “risks” category?

I put it to you that few system developers would have considered this could ever happen, acidentally or otherwise, and that when offered the opportunity to spec a system like this it’d be rare that anyone would suggest a check like “if the rate of increase was more than twice that of any other property in the system, or the increase more than ten times the value of any other property in the system, get it checked by a human other than the one entering the data”. But there was no checking, and with today’s inconnected computer systems, the new valuation cascaded into other systems. Such as the county’s budgeting system, thus the surprise sackings to lower costs.

Please, someone tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that this failure has got to be a one-off, that I’m a cowboy, and the industry I work for is fine.

A foray into corporate blogging

I’ve convinced the company I work for to start a corporate blog. So far it’s early days, with myself (blogger extraordinaire) being the only one brave enough to post anything (apart from an introductory “this is what we sell” post), but I’m hoping the others will also contribute, as the company markets a mucho good product, and there’s a lot of good knowledge of B2B, XML, and development in general, locked up in the various brains around the place.

eVision — RSS feed

AU analogue TV to continue to 2010

Probably sensing outrage from the populace, most of whom have no wish to either throw out their existing TV, or buy one of those fiddly set-top boxes (which rarely fit on top of the telly anyway), the Australian federal government committee overseeing such things has had a change of heart, and postponed turning off analogue TV until 2010, instead of the previous planned 2008.

Digital transmissions now reach 95% of households, but only 12% use them. To try and encourage people onto digital, they’re looking at letting commercial networks multicast from 2007. That’s what should get the punters enthused, after all, for most people a clear stereo PAL signal is all they want — give them the option of extra channels (more than ABC-2, that is) and they might start to shell out for STBs in bigger numbers.

(It’s not a done deal yet — it’s up to the Communications Minister to actually act on the committee’s recommendations.)

CallerID blocking backfires

Every employment agency I’ve come across uses CallerID blocking on their phones. When they phone, it’s a surprise who they are.

I’m not sure why they do that, perhaps it’s to prevent embarrassment when they’re calling candiates on a landline at work… but I can’t think of anyone who would give their work number in their contact details.

So I got a call from an agency. I went through my normal routine of answering a phone, where I announce my name. The agent asked “Is that John Parris?” to which I responded in the negative. “Oh, right, Josh, sorry” says the agent, obviously having misread my name. And before the caller could identify themselves, the call disconnected, no doubt as a function of it being a mobile telephone call. He never called back (perhaps he thought I hung up intentionally), and I couldn’t call him back because I had no idea who/where he was. Let’s face it, they all look and sound the same, so agencies all blur together anyway. I would have thought they’d want to stand out, or at least leave a number they could call back on.

Can anyone suggest why agencies use CallerID blocking?

iPod Shuffle not recognised

What do you do if the iPod Shuffle that your 8-year-old was given for his birthday doesn’t appear to iTunes, the iPod updater, or Windows?

You roam around the iPod support pages, trying out the suggestions: reset the iPod, reset the computer, download the latest software (almost 47Mb for the iPod updater, and another 35Mb for the iTunes update with the bundled Quicktime that you don’t actually want), try resetting the iPod service, remove the software then repair it again… etc, etc, etc.

Then you notice footnote 5 of the iPod Shuffle specifications, which says: Some computers require either the optional iPod shuffle Dock or a USB cable extender (sold separately).

Sure enough, for me, a USB cable extender did the trick.

You know, including that in the support pages wouldn’t hurt.

On and about Google video

Very funny: Why Macs suck (Warning, occasional coarse language)

Speaking of Google Video, they now let you download Google Video (GVP) files and the Player onto Windows or Mac, Video iPod or Sony Playstation Portable. They’ve also got a thing producing the HTML to show the video on your own web site.

.id.au rush on now

Well, if .id.au domains are free, why not grab yourself a .id.au domain? You can transfer it to another domain seller when the free six months are up. I guess they’re planning on you stumping up the $67.50 for the remaining 18 months when you’ve found it to be indispensable, rather than moving it somewhere else.

Now, how am I going to remember to move mine in five months?

Emergency 000 vs 112

If you’ve ever wondered what the difference between the Australian emergency number 000 and the European standard 112 is, check this Australian Communications Authority document.

In past years 112 had network priority and other advantages that 000 didn’t, including working without a SIM, and when the handset is keypad locked. This is no longer the case, as most handsets and SIMs now sold in Australia have a firmware modification to treat 000 just as well as 112. My own handset, a two-year-old Nokia 6100, will happily accept 112 or 000 even when keylocked. (No, I didn’t press the dial key when trying this.)

The stuff on page 10 reveals just how ignorant of emergency numbers some people are, despite 000 being “it” for decades. Mind you, I’m not sure why they don’t make moves to allow 112 from fixed line phones, for the benefit of overseas visitors.

Oh, there’s also 106 for Telephone Typewriter (TTY) users. So far there’s no SMS-capable emergency number. But it’s notable that an emergency call where the operator can’t hear the caller is diverted to a recorded service allowing the caller to press “55” to indicate an emergency if they can’t talk, allowing the call to be passed back to the operator or police, and CLI to be used to despatch a response. Good thinking, whoever thought that up.