You’ll be a criminal either way
Oct 13, 2008 Bad Business
XKCD.com takes a look at the cons of buying DRM protected music:
A sad state of affairs indeed.
OSCAR: McMaster University’s way of upping the suckage
Oct 3, 2008 Bad Business
McMaster University uses a centralized database for all of its co-op, internship, part-time, full-time, etc. job postings. Companies and individuals from all walks of life post jobs to this job board in hopes of attracting McMaster students to their jobs. The database is used by many departments, including Engineering Co-op and Career Services on which I depend for finding co-op positions for next summer. This post is a tale of the frustration that is OSCAR (Online Student Career and Recruitment, the most lackluster, non-sensical job bank in the world.
Let’s start at the beginning. OSCAR’s URL is https://oscar.mcmaster.ca/mcauth. For most sites, just typing “oscar.mcmaster.ca” would be enough to take me to the right page. Not so for OSCAR:
Ok, maybe the problem is that I did not connect through HTTPS just plain old HTTP. Entering https://oscar.mcmaster.ca helps, somewhat. I now get a 404 page from IIS.
Finally, I type its full address https://oscar.mcmaster.ca/mcauth and SUCCESS! I’m in…
This may be an issue with how the subdomain is set up and not with OSCAR specifically, however it is still an annoyance. I’ve since bookmarked it so I don’t have to go through this experience again.
After logging in (which if you’re using Firefox version < 3.0 can be an adventure) I am ready to search for a co-op or internship position. According to the handbook on using OSCAR I received, I'm supposed to select both the Co-Op category and Internship category:
The search returns a WHOPPING 9 results!
I find it hard to believe that there are only 9 co-op/internship postings for the whole school. The [Change Criteria] link above the results tally allows me to go back and change the search parameters. If I click it, I’m presented with the same page as above and allowed to enter new parameters. I clicked it to double check the search I performed and it was as expected, the Co-op and Internship categories were selected.
Another feature of OSCAR is the ability to save searches for quick reference in the future. A few months ago I did a search for co-ops and internships and I saved it to my saved search list.
Clicking it yields 49 search results.
How is this possible? Different search criteria? Possibly. Let’s click the old [Change Criteria] to see what the parameters are:
Surprise, surprise, THEY ARE THE SAME!!!
How can this happen? How can it be that the SAME search parameters yield two VERY different results? What kind of system is this?
And what about the fact that, and I quote from the “OSCAR Student Guidelines”:
Using keywords will severely and falsely limit the number of jobs you will be able to see.
It’s this kind of thing that makes me wonder about people’s decision making abilities. How could the people in charge of Career Services have picked a system so inefficient and so difficult to use? It boggles the mind.
No iPhone for you
Jul 31, 2008 Bad Business
The Torontoist reports that Rogers is preventing some customers from purchasing an iPhone. After the fiasco about the data plans offered with a new iPhone, you would think that Rogers would have learned its lesson.
Apparently not. According to the Torontoist article:
Due to a breathtakingly boneheaded policy created by the company’s National Planning Department, existing customers currently under a Rogers contract and who have upgraded their handset within the year are prohibited from purchasing an iPhone. At all.
Well, that’s only partly true. They can buy an iPhone if they cancel their current contract, pay the early cancellation penalty fee ($20 per month left on the contract) and handset subsidy, and then sign up to a new contract, which includes an additional $35 activation fee. Customers aren’t even allowed to keep their previous phone number, as number porting is only available when transferring carriers—so, to retain a number with an iPhone, a customer would have to sign up for a brand new account with Rogers subsidiary Fido.
Absolutely ridiculous. I fail to understand why this company is so afraid of having happy customers. It is mind boggling.
