A smarter alternative to password recognition could be right in front of us: Unique, invisible, maybe even deadly "Breathe into the tube, sir." Oh yes, dear reader, I am being breathalysed. I comply and watch the pretty LEDs dance back and forth in their traffic-light colours before settling on a crimson red. I win! I win! Actually, I am being économe avec la vérité (as nobody says down here) as it did not quite happen like that. For a …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane
"It was a common misconception that Joseph Pujol passed intestinal gas as part of his stage performance. Rather, Pujol was allegedly able to "inhale" or move air into his rectum and then control the release of that air with his anal sphincter muscles."
Which will presumable include the "pre BF" promotions that are appearing now that the marketing idiots have killed sales in the run up to BF...
And the latest marketing tosh email I received ... "Celebrate Giving Tuesday with PayPal ❤️" Evidence of a B-Ark survivor amongst us.
One particular company I know of kicked off with an "Autumn Sale" at a nominal percentage off. This gave way to the Black Friday sale at a slightly-increased percent off (thus pissing off anyone who fell for the Autumn Sale), then went into Cyber Monday (on the monday), then went into Cyber Monday - Extended for the next two days. Over this period, said company sent out something crazy like 11 emails inside of 5 days. Except that I appear to be in the list twice, so I actually got 22.
Posted anonymously, as the company in question is my employer.
For the last two weeks, my email and SMS accounts have been going nuts. Anyone who I have previously purchased from - some well over a year ago - have been spamming me incessantly.
My latest 'Cyber Monday' email was at 18.21 today (3 December). The first (which ID'd itself as 'Cyber Week') was on 18 November (just checked my trash folder). Hundreds of them.
It's even more annoying that some of the spam comes from companies I have active products (including live subscriptions) with, trying to sell me the product I already own a licence for. And more annoying still is the sudden use of SMS from companies who've never SMS'd me before!
Let's face it. They're all desperate as a result of the pandemic, so you know why they're doing it. But it's enough to put you off - and I don't think they've considered that.
Black Friday is just an American thing that's somehow ended up everywhere else. The Thanksgiving holiday spans two days with the actual holiday being on a Thursday leaving Friday empty. So the obvious thing is to go Christmas shopping. Twenty plus years ago. These days we spend a lot of that Friday trying not to eat leftovers, not fighting for stuff at mall stores that are probably out of stock anyway.
So Black Friday gets exported. My daughter first noticed it was spreading like a stain when it appeared in Romania. In September. Now the curse appears to have spread to the UK (along with tacky malls and all the detritus of retail consumerism that's now a bit passe in the US proper). I suppose we should now get Boxing Day in exchange.
me runs all the way upto new year...
Lets face it , on telly now its nothing but xmas adverts interspersed with "DIY cremation" and "over 50s pay for your DIY cremation" ads
Hint: never watch daytime TV while depressed... especially after that failed breathe test has locked you out of your iShiney gadget(and house... and car)
Anyway.. have a smiley for the music vid
Morning TV on France's major channel (TF1) is flipping telesales. Every bit as bad and hammily presented as QVC was a quarter century ago. I see it on the big TV at work, and I think to myself that no matter what one might think of BBC and/or ITV, it could always be worse.
We had a guy (obviously a guy...) who re-heated his lunch in the microwave. His favourite, and seemingly daily, evening meal was fish curry. His presence was detectable well before meeting him up close, and there was always a scramble to get through the kitchen before him.
I must have worked with a cousin. He liked microwaving tinned smoked mackerel. And then eating it at his desk. One row down from our very-OCD clean-freak manager.
I think that lasted about two weeks before she finally cracked, took him aside and asked him very politely to knock it off.
Was used by the space station/research facility in Alien resurrection (4). and showed how to bypass it also. Obs this is the worst Alien movie but it still looks good as the design was great (apart from the alien baby screwup) . The script however, yeah needed MORE work than the legions who tried to polish that mess.
Oooh, posh.
Just a single sink, overflowing with a vigorously replicating community of fungi way beyond Mr. Pasteur's wildest nightmares, that would probably yield a few plates, pots and pans if someone would be brave enough to dress up in a hazmat suit and attack the pulsating mound with, oh, probably something featuring in "Things I Won't Work With".
I don't recall her Asterix translations having literal explanatory footnotes.
However the versions in Germany were littered with them. Couldn't decide if it was Teutonic lack of humour - or a conscious parody of same. They also stuck to one very plain, single size, balloon typeface - whereas other languages' translators used them imaginatively eg Gothic for Goths.
I did actually buy quite a few things last Black Friday with the intention of going on a hiking trip this year. Between subsequent lockdowns and then injuries I still haven't been though, but of course it means for the last year I've had nothing but recommendations for camping and hiking gear, usually "convenient" ways to relieve yourself off the beaten track. Which now I've written it looks like a euphemism for something else....
Having survived - just - the twenty-seven steps, two passwords, multiple security codes, and a flurry of fingerprint readings on the mandated phone app that allow one the honour of accessing an HSBC France bank account on-line - but not using the bank card in a store - I can see the appeal of Smell-ID.
Honestly, passwords may be fine, but the two, three, and five factor identification schemes are driving me insane.
(Random thought: are military systems in the war theatre protected with equally byzantine and error prone schemes, and is that why we "lost" in Afghanistan?)
We've been living in France for just shy of two months, and every Friday Dabbsey make me feel like yes, I do understand French life, and yes, it is worth being here.
Any chance he can tell me where to find the bottle recycling bin in Montbrun, Charente?
"and yes, it is worth being here"
Very much so. This coming May I'll be celebrating twenty years.
I'm a little further north, in the frozen wasteland of pig farms that calls itself "Brittany"; but only just, so I get to see the sun in the upper Loire valley (the département that's a stone's throw away and has exactly zero connection to the Loire, but got tacked on to the Pays De La Loire because nobody else wanted it) even if the sun isn't over me. Because, you know, Brittany. Sky full o'flippin' dragons or something.
Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries.
I am a little disturbed to see that even after a few hours there are no references to this quote, given the subject matter and M. Dabbs' country of residence - or perhaps I am just getting old.
Pedant Alert!
Two separate quotes:
You don't frighten us, English pig dogs. Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so-called "Arthur King," you and all your silly English K-nig-hts.
And:
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries
I like to listen to that turned up ear-bleeding-internal-organ-shakingly loud - I don't know why, I'm a very boring 55 year old who has only ever been really drunk a few times and never done any drugs and it's not my normal kinda thing.
Now, where is my stars and stripes jumper?
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