ongoing adventures with my new institution

[kaberett]

I have registered! This means that, soon, hopefully, I will have journal access again. I believe it also means I am officially a member of aforementioned new institution. As such, I am trying to follow instructions to do... something... relating to an information systems account -- the instructions are really not terribly clear. SO FIRST: upon clicking the link to take you to the new place (which has to be a left click; no opening-in-new-tabs-via-any-other-mouse-buttons permitted around here) you get a pop-up prompt for your log-in details.

And then.

You get.

A second one.

And then the full horror is revealed unto you.

Yes. That is, in fact, a page that reads:

Please make your selection!!!!

[ ] Submit request to update ICIS account
[ ] View Your Active Requests
[Proceed] [Reset]

Submit Request

Please use the ICIS Authorisation Application to update your ICIS account by selecting "Submit request to update ICIS account".

MAC Users

The ICIS Authorisation Application does not work using a MAC, It is also incompatible with Mozilla Firefox browser.

Please use a PC / Internet Explorer to submit request for your ICIS access update.

Note: You can still access ICIS itself with a MAC.

Should you encounter problems using the ICIS Authorisation forms, please report them using the 'Service Desk' link at the top of each page.

IN SUM: dear Imperial, IE stopped having a controlling market share in browsers used on desktop machines in 2010 what are you even doing AND WILL YOU PAY ME CONSULTING RATES TO DO IT BETTER.

Comments

[nanila]

AHAHAHA ICIS AHAHAHAAA *hysterical laughter fades to weeping in corner*

[kaberett]

I have yet to have an interaction with the bureaucracy (i.e. not my department or, bizarrely, I cannot get over how weird this is, the student union) that doesn't make me want to weep in a corner, yes.

(THE DEMOGRAPHIC MONITORING. THEY THINK "DLA" AND "DSA" CAN BE USED INTERCHANGEABLY. THEY THINK "THE GENDER YOU WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED AT BIRTH" IS A GOOD QUESTION TO HAVE. THEY BOAST ABOUT HAVING TAKEN THE FORM OF QUESTION FROM STONEWALL.)

[kaberett]

I am trying really hard not to think about how much of a disaster it's going to be when I request a desktop box with dual-monitor set-up running Debian as my work computer. I suspect it would be easier to just go with whatever awful Windows install they give me and dual-boot the wretched beast myself...

[nanila]

Yes, it will be easier. They can do less damage that way. Seriously, get it off them after allowing them to do as little futzing as possible.

[emperor]

*headdesk*

[kaberett]

.............. THEIR SECURITY CERTIFICATE HAS EXPIRED

FOR THE URL SECUREACCESS.IMPERIAL.AC.UK

[emperor]

I will remember this next time I have an "I suck at my job" day :-)

[kaberett]

YES. DO.

They have fixed it by de-registering the host ...

[bens_dad]

# host secureaccess.imperial.ac.uk
Host secureaccess.imperial.ac.uk not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

They have fixed it by de-registering the host ...

[kaberett]

AND IT WANTS TO INSTALL A .CAB FROM "JUPITER NETWORKS, INC" WITH NO EXPLANATION OF WHAT IT IS OR WHY I SHOULD PERMIT IT.

[catyak]

That is presumably why they don't like Firefox, it'll probably fight them over the .cab file because it's got more sense than IE6.

I assume that spoofing the user agent doesn't work, it'll be trying to use Active-X controls via IE6 no doubt.

D

[vass]

Oh God. D: Who was responsible for THAT farce?

I go to Imperial's website every month or so to donate to the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. They haven't yet tried to prevent me from giving them money because I'm using Firefox and Debian.

Which is not to say that the donation site is free from, uh, interesting development choices. The first field on their form is a drop-down menu asking if you're a UK taxpayer or not. So I choose Not, and this triggers the page to reload, and that triggers every required field I didn't fill out (because I'd only just made the first selection on the form) to be outlined in bright, hostile red, with an error message telling me I tried to submit the form without filling in the required fields.

I wonder if the same parties were responsible.

[kaberett]

Ahahahaha NO, I have worked out what the problem is here, the problem is that you hit "enter" to select the item from the drop-down menu. Probably.

BECAUSE AS IT TURNS OUT THEY DO THIS ON LOG-IN PAGES TOO

YOU HAVE TO PRESS TAB NOT ENTER TO FILL IN AN OPTION FROM A DROP-DOWN

UNLIKE EVERY OTHER WEBSITE IN THE FUCKING UNIVERSE :DDDDDDDDDDD

[vass]

AHAHAHA NOT EVEN THAT LOGICAL.

I don't hit enter, I just make the selection with my mouse and then click somewhere else.

[kaberett]

Hmm, actually sounds plausibly related but I don't care enough about this awful awful IT to diagnose the problem properly unless they sodding pay me. >_>

[(Anonymous)]

On the plus side, when they ask "Do you ever suffer from low blood pressure?" you can respond "NOT ANY MORE !!!11eleventy!!"

-- geekette8

[kaberett]

alas even when I am stressed my blood pressure is at the low end of normal -- this leads to UTTER HILARITY when departments insist I am nil-by-mouth for six hours following relatively little sleep for day procedures any then sedate me and for some reason are surprised when my blood pressure drops down into "physiological shock"...

[killing_rose]

I am dying laughing, as I was just entertaining my household with the farce that is my IT department.

(Our IT manager had, up until last month, successfully gotten every manager in the company to ban us from using Chrome and Firefox. And then they rolled out the software from hell, and it will not work in IE. Which has meant we've all finally switched to decent browsers. This upsets him a lot.)

Perhaps he is spiritual kin to these developers.

[onyxlynx]

Back in '06 when I was signing up with temp agencies, a friend recommended an agency to me. Glowingly. So I go and try to submit an application/résumé. Over and over. I showed up at the appointment and, "Oh, you have to submit that in IE."

Nothing about this on the web page, mind you.

There was an IE version for the Mac, but it's no longer supported and no longer works. (The last time I used IE was when I was taking the HTML course, to check webpage compatibility and appearance.)

[hilarita]

There are a surprising number of universities that have student information systems that are designed only for IE of some description. Cambridge is actually comparatively friendly about this sort of thing.
Also, I wouldn't try filling it in in IE10. I suspect that there may also be undefined behaviour...

[kaberett]

IE8 is all I have ready access to ignoring the Windows 7 install on the netbook that I never boot into. I have e-mailed in a "... are you for fucking serious", only w/ less swearing.

[catyak]

I suspect that there may also be undefined behaviour...

On the part of the browser or the user?

[hilarita]

On the part of the browser. I think I can define some bounds on the behaviour of the user. If I'm anything to go by, it will go something along the lines of: 'It did WHAT?!? What were they *thinking*?!'

[inoru_no_hoshi]

...Oh dear.

Webpages that only work on X browser(s) annoy me, mainly because everyone has their favoured browser, and not everyone is going to have a computer with enough RAM to run Y browser(s).

Plus it's kind of terrible IT. I can understand dropping support for older versions of browsers! I can't really understand not supporting them at all. :/

On an amused note, d'you suppose they think "Please make your selection!!!!" looks more cheerful with four exclamation points? :D

[kaberett]

YES.

[katherine]

I had an interaction with a univervisyt helpdesk a few years back due to the process resetting my account password being: email the helpdesk.

[kaberett]

THIS WAS WHAT MY DEPARTMENT MADE US DO AT THE OLD UNIVERSITY. (Actually, the process was bimbling upstairs, hoping you caught Jun when he was actually in, and requesting that he generate & print out a new password. which irritated the HELL out of me, but when the dept is <200 people, including all four years of undergrads...)

[hairyears]

I tend not to work at companies that do that - insisting on IE - because employing crap developers and imposing crap software on your employees (and woere, your customers) is the sure and certain sign of crap management; and *that* plays out in so many ways, making for a chronically and acutely bad experience.

[kaberett]

I suspect that their heads are going to explode when I request that my work computer be not a Windows-running-laptop but a Debian-running-desktop with dual monitors...

[swaldman]

I preempted that my buying myself a new computer to be my main work PC. At cost to me, yes, but I control it, and IT don't get to meddle.
I suspect that only works because of our quaint mini - campus, though. Otherwise I imagine there would be "if you want to connect it to our network...."

[jamfish]

WOT

(also cue my own recoiling in horror from the McGill IT website which informed me that Macs were technically not supported and I was taking my life and data in my own hands when I bought one AND THE REALISATION THAT ALL COMPUTERS ON CAMPUS USE IE AS WELL)