Optus Rewards Website Sexist Much?

I got a whiff of a really bad piece of work from Optus on Twitter this morning, in regards to the registration page for their Optus Rewards website (click image for larger view):

Really?

“Please select a title and the title should match with the gender.”

So a woman can’t be a doctor, according to Optus? Try and register on it for yourself and see.

Seriously, that’s worse than bad. That’s a dreadful look Optus.

Fail.

(UPDATE – 12:53pm): Optus have advised that they are looking into the problem, and have raised the issue with support:

“Thanks to everyone who let us know about the fault with our Optus Rewards form – we’ve logged this with Support & will keep you posted!”

Well and good.

However, I am still concerned that a form such as this was released into production in this condition. What happened to their User Acceptance Testing (UAT)? Why does ANYONE think you need to check the title against gender to go to the bother of programming such a check into the code?

Yes, fix it Optus – but improve your internal quality processes too.

(UPDATE – 8:15pm): Apparently it is fixed now.

While this is mostly likely a coding problem, rather than intentional or even unintentional sexism, as a programmer from way back, it seems strange to me that:

  • Someone would consider it particularly necessary to have a gender vs title check in the code;
  • That this was missed during acceptance testing of the code before it was released into production – or more likely – wasn’t thoroughly tested at all.

I’m quite sure it wasn’t intentional, but it just worries me – particularly with all the privacy leaks from telcos of late – that these organisations don’t have proper software engineering and testing practices in place.

Makes you wonder where the privacy leaks initiate.

Hacks, lazy programmers, or poor testing?

Either way, we deserve better.

Yes, The Solar Panels Work

We’ve just received our first power bill since the installation of our solar panels.

I think they are working.

It’s better than half of the same quarter last year, and not covering a full quarterly period.

Looking forward to the next power bill!

2011: Posts Of The Year

I certainly hope my readers have had a safe and happy holiday period. Today, I have decided to take a quick look at back at my popular posts from 2011, with the most read articles for each month, and a little discussion of each.

If 2012 throws up some similar results, it will be another good year! Enjoy!

  • January: Single Point of Failure

    V/Line commuters on the Geelong line, and Metro Trains commuters on the Werribee and Williamstown lines have endured another year of extensive “track equipment faults” at Newport station – and nothing ever seems to be done about it.

    “Now, I’m the first to accept that unexpected things happen all the time, and that running an integrated public transport network is undoubtedly difficult, but the regularity of problems at Newport are becoming monotonous.”

  • February: NBN: End User Services Taking Shape

    The rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) gathered pace in 2011, and at their February industry forum, the shape of end user services began appearing before our eyes.

    “For the market, this means that the providers who innovate and deliver the best products over the network will emerge on top. The competition will be furious.”

  • March: Online Piracy Not The Problem

    Copyright holders want us to believe that we are killing their business models through online piracy, but is it us or them who are to blame?

    “The sooner they adopt digital, storage-format-agnostic distribution of their content, the sooner people will stop downloading material in those formats.”

  • April: NBN: Hands On The Hardware

    This article was actually paired with the top February article, but reared its head with a lot of page impressions in April.

    “I managed to get a few moments with the hardware that end users will receive when their premises are connected to the network progressively over the next nine years.”

  • May: Alan Jones And The NBN Fail!

    In the midst of another of his on-air anti-government rants, Alan Jones demonstrated for the masses how little knowledge – (or willingness to research) – he has when it comes to the NBN, and this page generated a lot of views thanks to re-tweets from the ABC’s Mark Colvin and Latika Bourke.

    “If you are going to jump up and down, Alan Jones, make sure you do a bit of research first, instead of instantaneously jumping at an opportunity to forward your political agenda. Your idiocy will remain on the interwebz forever, Mr Jones.”

  • June: New Timetable Improves Little

    Back to V/Line and another attempt to “improve services” which appears to have delivered little to long suffering commuters.

    “We were promised by V/Line that “these changes follow several months of work with Metro and feedback from our customers“. Oh really? Customers asked for slower trains?”

  • July: The Australian FUDs It Again

    Rupert Murdoch’s various media interests – (and particularly in Britain) – have taken a hammering this year. In Australia, they’ve fought a long campaign against the government, criticising it in news reporting and editorial position at almost every turn – trying to be the news, rather than report it.

    “Stop trying to make news, and actually report the news. Ironic that you are called “News Limited” – since your ability to report “news” seems rather “limited” at times.”

  • August: HP Shipping Fail – You Just Have to See This!

    This was not the most highly read article on my site for the year, but it was certainly the fastest moving article – at its peak managing several hundred views an hour. Four months later, this one still stuns me!

    “If your goal is to be “exemplary global citizens”, I’m sorry HP – you fail.”

  • September: A Simple NBN Maths Lesson

    The financial critics of the NBN project generally scream blue-murder about where the money to pay for it will come from. Some fairly simple second-grade mathematics is all it really takes – demonstrating some quite astonishing revenues for even a relatively weak uptake of network services.

    “That’s where the money is coming from folks! And it will come a lot quicker than many would have you believe.”

  • October: Waltrip: Bathurst A “Geological Oddity”

    October saw three-time NASCAR champion Darrell Waltrip visit Mount Panorama, for the first live broadcast of our Bathurst 1000 into the United States. Interested in what it is like inside the cars on our famous circuit, Jason Bright made sure DW will never forget his first visit!

    “It was television gold, and DW seemed genuinely stunned by the experience.”

  • November: Opposition “NBN” Plan To Cost More?

    Opposition communications spokesperson, Malcolm Turnbull has been spouting for months about the “reckless” cost of the NBN – where it is starting to come to the fore that his alternative plan, though cheaper in the short term, will be far more expensive over time – a few shared by many, including the ACCC.

    “Over time, the opposition plan will cost more than the current intention of building a full FTTH (better) network, before we even consider the lost benefits to the economy.”

  • December: Screw You, Greedy Music Industry

    Copyright protection is a hot topic at the moment, but information that emerged in December showed that the music industry is not suffering as much as they would have us believe – if at all.

    “It isn’t downloads that are killing your industry – it is your own overpricing greed and lack of vision that’s doing it.”

Facebook Ads: Does Anyone Check Them?

Like most people, I’ve always felt that many of the adverts alongside profiles in Facebook are undoubtedly dodgy.

Take these couple of “iPhone” ads I’ve noticed this week:

The first one boldly proclaims an “iPhone 4S” for only $8.45? Even if the price was correct – (lets be honest, it sounds like crap to me) – that’s clearly not an iPhone 4S. It looks suspiciously like a first generation iPhone. Misleading ad number one.

The second ad is also touting an iPhone 4S – (this time for $51.12) – but it is clearly an iPhone 3G or 3GS displayed.

And it’s red!

Red iPhones? Misleading ad number two.

Facebook should be taking responsibility for the advertising that is shown as part of their site experience – (they’ve had enough bad publicity for various privacy screw ups throughout its existence) – so someone should be checking them out before they go live.

Seriously, these ads just seem too dodgy to me.

Browser Update 2011

With just a few days left in 2011, I’ve taken a moment to have a look at the web statistics for this site, with a view to having a look at how the ongoing browser wars are travelling.

In March, I had a look at how things had been over the previous six months, and found that Google Chrome was emerging as the big winner over that period.

I was, however, curious to have a look at a bigger picture over the last four years for which I have detailed statistics – and while it has slipped a lot, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer isn’t quite dead yet.

The following table shows the annual percentage of hits on this site since 2008, that have originated from browsers identifying themselves as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Apple Safari – the four main browsers in the marketplace these days:

  2008 2009 2010 2011
 
IE 46.1% 65.2% 48.8% 27.9%
Chrome - 3.2% 9.9% 20.1%
Firefox 21.2% 20.0% 22.4% 25.8%
Safari 3.7% 3.8% 6.9% 9.0%

The most obvious thing to note from these numbers, is that while Internet Explorer’s market share has taken a hammering over the last couple of years – (dropping from 65.2% in 2009 to 27.9% in 2011) – it still leads the field.

On a monthly basis however, Chrome often beats IE into first place.

I feel that tends to be because of the subject matter I post month to month – in months that I post a lot of “techy” or “nerdy” stuff, Chrome tends to win – suggesting that Chrome has gotten, or is getting, a foothold amongst the geeks. I don’t think this is a surprise.

In months where I post predominantly other kinds of material, Internet Explorer does well.

Interestingly, the share of the market held by Firefox – the previous geek favourite – has remained relatively stable across the four years, and actually recorded its best year on this site in 2011. Go figure.

Perennially fourth placed Safari is still on the rise – but I suspect this is largely due to the proliferation of the Safari-equipped Apple iPad and iPhone in the community. For this reason, Safari’s share will be interesting to watch over time.

While Internet Explorer remains on top – (at least with visitors to my site) – it is clear that the massive share of the market it previously enjoyed is on the wain.

It seems the majority of people who have jumped the IE ship have landed on Chrome, but even Firefox – (which by anecdotal evidence seemed to be on the slide) – appears to have picked up some of the IE refugees, with a healthy gain in 2011.

Internet Explorer still rules – but the challengers have their foot on its throat.

Experimental Aircraft at Tullamarine?

Either Malaysia Airlines have introduced a new experimental wingless passenger aircraft, or Nearmap have one of those really humourous photo stitching hiccups going on at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport.

Torpedo Airlines anyone?

Why Legislated Internet Filtering is Utterly Pointless

The powers that be, in their infinite wisdom, believe that the way to stop people from viewing and distributing the so-called “worst of the worst” or copyright protected material online is to legislate various forms of filtering mechanisms.

In Australia, we have Stephen Conroy’s mandatory internet filtering scheme. In the US, there is the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) to supposedly protect copyright holders from piracy.

We are told it is the only way, that it will be completely successful, and that we must accept it for our own betterment.

Really?

Firefox Add-on Circumvents SOPA Blocking

That didn’t take long, did it?

The problem is, these filtering schemes cost money. Lots of money.

Spending that is clearly pointless, because the “filtering” it is funding is trivially circumvented.

Funds that could and should be used to hunt down the dirtbags producing the child pornography they are trying in vain to block, and save the children they are abusing.

Protecting copyright holders is even easier.

Infuriating.

Screw You, Greedy Music Industry

We’ve heard a lot lately about how piracy and music downloads are supposedly killing the music industry.

How all those nasty people downloading music for free are “taking the caviar off the 50-foot marble dining tables” of the recording artists, and leaving them to cope with “only 17 bathrooms in their palatial mansions”.

Poor snookums.

Is it true though?

Download Stream Turns Into a Flood

“AUSTRALIANS are crazy about music. By year end, we’ll have bought 50 million singles and 37 million albums.”

“That’s 50 per cent more music than we consumed in 2005 and it doesn’t even include the millions of songs we stole via the internet.”

So, what they are saying is that the music industry is doing 50% better than it was six years ago – (irrespective of illegal downloads) – and they still say that it is all slowly killing the industry?

Huh?

Here’s a better idea – drop your prices to reasonable levels, and people won’t even steal your content. As soon as the price of legally purchasing your content is effectively less than what it costs people to download it – (for free or otherwise) – people won’t want to download it for free.

Because it will be cheaper for them, and you’ll sell a lot more units.

It isn’t downloads that are killing your industry – it is your own overpricing greed and lack of vision that’s doing it.

Not the people…but you!

Screw you music industry!