After 20+ years in IT, I can tell you that this API excuse stinks to high heaven. Like you, I've got so many whys to ask them. This wasn't sophisticated at all, but it was incompetent as shit. I'm betting anything that the engineers were warning the management about it for years, but "there was no budget". Like it always happens in IT, nothing ever changes without a disaster...
Oct 7, 2022·edited Oct 7, 2022Liked by John Birmingham
I was one of the 40% of Aussies pantsed by this nincompoopery. I have joined both class actions, because fuck them.
I would like to expand on Birmo's point about personal data - why aren't we all banding together and saying enough is enough as far as all this free data we give out? It is not a free public good, nor should it ever be. Every company that harvests your data PROFITS FROM IT, either through their own activities or by on-selling it to companies that take your data from multiple sources and build scarily accurate profiles of your behaviour patterns around everything from what you buy to how you vote. An Australian company called Quantium led the world in this and on-sold it all across the planet.
The data is ours, we own it, if they want it they should have to pay for it, and not through token gestures like the 0.5-1% discounts you get on most "loyalty" cards (which are just data mining schemes, btw). How much is your personal data worth? We should all ask ourselves this question and act accordingly.
I was like "bugger" because you know I'm not with Optus, but after I read this...I used to be! Now I'm using stronger words. On the Karma brightside bus, Optus must be bleeding customers like nobody's business.
Stoked to have not been with Optus since about 2004 when I quickly came to the realisation that they couldn't organise a root in a brewery re. basic customer service let alone much else. Any personal ID data (besides my name and license number) has changed about seven times since then but who the hell knows if that info still existed deep within the Floptarse data bowels.
Telstra probs couldn't get their API working as you had to find someone responsible. Vodaphone dropped out downloading everyone's data. Optus won out this time. Where do you go? Get me a some cans and very long strings, I'll be in my cave.
To use an old phrase that describes the classifieds, in that sad shell of a major masthead, that nowadays describes our details as, The Rivers of Gold.
The present-day perception of our data usage may well be superficial. A few years ago, the sudden appearance of that Orwellian ogre, Cambridge Analytica shows us, the digital chickens who lay the golden eggs, what was occurring within a company that had the power to distort democracy.
That revelation is years old, these days there may well be many more versions of software, think Moore's Law and the now outdated timeline of 18 months, that are doing things with our data, that would keep us up a night.
When I got an email from JB titled "Lazy, stupid and incompetent" I thought that was a bity personal! fortunately I read on. Amazing the previous government's all gung ho about security and saving the nation from cyber terrorists thats why we need these laws, and ALP not wanting to give any wedge, says 'these laws a pretty bad' but we will vote for them....instead of once again drafting legislation against big business doing whatever the frak it wants with our data. I hate that the two most likely choices for our government are a right wing pro-business or a centrist pro-business party.
After 20+ years in IT, I can tell you that this API excuse stinks to high heaven. Like you, I've got so many whys to ask them. This wasn't sophisticated at all, but it was incompetent as shit. I'm betting anything that the engineers were warning the management about it for years, but "there was no budget". Like it always happens in IT, nothing ever changes without a disaster...
I was one of the 40% of Aussies pantsed by this nincompoopery. I have joined both class actions, because fuck them.
I would like to expand on Birmo's point about personal data - why aren't we all banding together and saying enough is enough as far as all this free data we give out? It is not a free public good, nor should it ever be. Every company that harvests your data PROFITS FROM IT, either through their own activities or by on-selling it to companies that take your data from multiple sources and build scarily accurate profiles of your behaviour patterns around everything from what you buy to how you vote. An Australian company called Quantium led the world in this and on-sold it all across the planet.
The data is ours, we own it, if they want it they should have to pay for it, and not through token gestures like the 0.5-1% discounts you get on most "loyalty" cards (which are just data mining schemes, btw). How much is your personal data worth? We should all ask ourselves this question and act accordingly.
"Well, when two computer programs love each other very much…"
Just beautiful, JB!
I was like "bugger" because you know I'm not with Optus, but after I read this...I used to be! Now I'm using stronger words. On the Karma brightside bus, Optus must be bleeding customers like nobody's business.
Stoked to have not been with Optus since about 2004 when I quickly came to the realisation that they couldn't organise a root in a brewery re. basic customer service let alone much else. Any personal ID data (besides my name and license number) has changed about seven times since then but who the hell knows if that info still existed deep within the Floptarse data bowels.
Telstra probs couldn't get their API working as you had to find someone responsible. Vodaphone dropped out downloading everyone's data. Optus won out this time. Where do you go? Get me a some cans and very long strings, I'll be in my cave.
To use an old phrase that describes the classifieds, in that sad shell of a major masthead, that nowadays describes our details as, The Rivers of Gold.
The present-day perception of our data usage may well be superficial. A few years ago, the sudden appearance of that Orwellian ogre, Cambridge Analytica shows us, the digital chickens who lay the golden eggs, what was occurring within a company that had the power to distort democracy.
That revelation is years old, these days there may well be many more versions of software, think Moore's Law and the now outdated timeline of 18 months, that are doing things with our data, that would keep us up a night.
When I got an email from JB titled "Lazy, stupid and incompetent" I thought that was a bity personal! fortunately I read on. Amazing the previous government's all gung ho about security and saving the nation from cyber terrorists thats why we need these laws, and ALP not wanting to give any wedge, says 'these laws a pretty bad' but we will vote for them....instead of once again drafting legislation against big business doing whatever the frak it wants with our data. I hate that the two most likely choices for our government are a right wing pro-business or a centrist pro-business party.
To just tickle an API and have it spray all over your face… You’ve changed the way I write code forever.
They fucking did fucking what?
As well as encryption, who did their (don't giggle) penetration testing? A five year-old with a paddle-pop stick?
I can't understand how Optus could get anything wrong, ever. After all, Gladys, the 'Woman who Saved Australia' works there.
Please. C64 was one of the most secure computers ever. 😉
Nailed it again, thanks for brightening my day once more! 😂
Is it another DAS auto moment.
Serious for the rest of the world, yet in oz nothing to see no rule broken move on.
C'mon noone ever that has the technical skills gets the gig. Go & look at linked in jobs for friends or church members.
Maybe they can blame Glady!
Aah yes.