Churlish HSBC drops atomic-scale accuracy
International banking monolith HSBC has rather churlishly reprogrammed its magnificent "Find your nearest branch" service so that customers are no longer given the distance to their closest tentacle to within a couple of quarks. Last week, we discovered that Vulture Central and HSBC's Gerrard Street branch were separated by …
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Wednesday 11th January 2012 13:31 GMT Clare (web specialist)
Biased reporting
I for one object to the antagonistic reporting of Microsoft products by 'The Register'. For example the phrase 'a fraught crisis meeting at the highest levels of the company, conducted behind closed doors as panicked execs pondered Powerpoint doomsday presentations', makes it look like the only people who use Powerpoint are idiots.-
Wednesday 11th January 2012 13:47 GMT Mike Smith
No, depressingly realistic reporting
Tsk, tsk. 'Tis well known that if it ain't done with PowerPoint (i.e. verbal communication, simple written English with the syl-abl-es all hy-phen-ated, short slogans backed with a length of rubber hose, etc), execs won't understand it. Comes from the lobotomy they all have to have to get their MBAs. -
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Wednesday 11th January 2012 14:50 GMT Clare (web specialist)
@Ian
Not everybody who uses PowerPoint is a HSBC bank executive. As the only effective way of presenting important project management information it’s use is pretty much unavoidable by some of us. Those of us who pretty much have to use PowerPoint in our daily working lives object to the implication that we are idiots, easily confused and panicked.-
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Wednesday 11th January 2012 19:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Clare
If the feedback from your team is *always* positive, then you can take that as a practical certainty that you really are hell to work for and nobody dares say.
Nobody is perfect, so the only reason a manager can be consistently told they're perfect is if the team is scared to say otherwise.
If it's mostly positive, then that's good.
Incidentally, Powerpoint is only capable of communicating a summary, and it's usually quite bad at that as people don't remember much of the presentation. At best you'll get the summary slide across, at worsat you've lost the audience before you get there.
So the best case is the summary of the summary. Maybe that's how a CEO can authorise a multi-million payout without knowing why?
Anon in case you are my boss.
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Thursday 12th January 2012 07:43 GMT Mike Smith
@AC 19:46
"If the feedback from your team is *always* positive, then you can take that as a practical certainty that you really are hell to work for and nobody dares say."
Damn, you beat me to it.
And @Clare (web specialist), before you start posturing again, take a deep breath and just remember that the Reg readers include a fair number of folks who have forgotten more about a given technology than you (or I) have yet learned. Thinking you know more than everyone else is a classic sign of aggressive weakness.
Rule one of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. Have a pint and chill :-)
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Wednesday 11th January 2012 19:31 GMT Neil Greatorex
"As the only effective way of presenting important project management information"
"only"?
"effective"?
Umm, bet you had ITC lessons at sKool & passed.
I'm over 50, I did A level CS (late 70's) the only times, since then, that I've ever seen Powerpoint used (in anger?) is by clueless sales droids (AKA road twats ^H^H^H^H^H warriors [heh])
My colleague, Alan, who is a "proper" civil engineering Project Manager, you know >£250M projects & multi year time lines, would rather you spit in his ear than use Powerpoint or, FFS, Microsoft Project :-) I s'pose project managing a web page is entirely Powerpoint land...
PS To the "road warrior" last week that said, essentially, that "Because I earn a multiple of your salary I'm better" go shaft yourself you smug, useless, parasitic twat!
OK I'm off, beer o'clock
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Wednesday 11th January 2012 15:19 GMT Daniel 23
Pedant alert
If the true distance is approximately 0.1 miles then 1 mile is not only imprecise it is also inaccurate. A rounded value of 0 miles is much more accurate even though it has the same precision as 1 mile. On the other hand 0.1 miles is both more accurate and more precise than either 0 miles or 1 mile. The precision implies by quoting 0.10956224649966498 miles certainly exceeds the precision of the measuring device used and is therefore inappropriate. However, they may be nothing wrong with the accuracy of that figure. Mine's the anorak with the train timetable, notebook and pen in one pocket and a camera in the other. -
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Thursday 12th January 2012 20:51 GMT Alister
@AC
Length
The standard unit of length shall be the EU standard (Florentine) linguine (unboiled at sea level), defined as 1lg, representing 14cm, 0.02784 perches, 0.462 Japanese shyaku or 0.0007568 Ancient Greek stadium ptolemys
A femtolinguine, is therefore, 1 x 10−15th or or 0.000000000000001 of a linguine, or to put it another way, bloody small!
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