Private enterprise

No posts for a couple of days because I've lost control of my iDisk. A colleague is working on a project that requires her to send the designer lots of big image files, around 50Mb each. An obvious case for a simple FTP drop-box, read only, from which the designer could suck the files. Indeed, I myself have just finished such a project and my colleagues in five affiliated research centres, who were sending me images, told me where to go, how to log in, and voilà. But not our own dear centre. For almost three years I've been asking for a read only FTP drop box. Apparently it is a security threat. Given that the biggest single source of interruptions to the system is those who administer it, this seems a bit rich.

So, my poor colleague has been using my private iDisk as a mini drop box. She uploads one file. Emails the designer. He downloads it, emails to says he has done so, she deletes that file, uploads the next, and so they go, round and round for the best part of a day. It would have been cheaper to burn a CD and hand-carry it by air, if necessary. Oh no, I forgot. Staff time isn't worth anything, is it? To say nothing of staff annoyance or staff job satisfaction.

And if I weren't the kind of übergeek (!) who has an iDisk …