Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

Register readers know the secret of tech support is that it's often made harder than necessary by the very customers who require it. Which is why each Friday we offer a fresh episode of On Call, our reader-contributed tales of icky incidents and hidden horrors that we hope create a chance to share misery in company. This week …

[Kevin Johnston]

1 in a million scenario

With suitable bows to Sir Pterry, being asked to solve a problem with no data or diagnostics options should be a 1:1,000,000 incident but almost everyone reading El Reg will have a story of when they hit this brick wall...hell, it even happened in those dim and distant days of the Pharoahs when people had to interpret forgotten dreams. Come to think of it, that reminds me of all too many managers I have worked for

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Solving a problem without data, diagnostic options or even full access to the device is a bit akin to having to steer a black spaceship where all the controls are labelled in black letters on a black background, and whenever you push one a little black lamp lights up black to show that you have done it.

Doffs hat to the late, great Douglas Adams

[KittenHuffer]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Imagining that is making me feel sick. But then you could do with a bit of colour round the place!

[A.P. Veening]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

But then you could do with a bit of colour round the place!

Any color, as long as it is black (Henry Ford).

[mirachu]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

That's a myth.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

And you are missing the point, for which it is completely irrelevant whether it is a myth or not.

[jake]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

It's not exactly a myth, nor apocryphal.

The phrase wasn't invented at the right time to sell the car (the timelines don't add up), however it may very well have been Ford himself who came up with it. It first appeared in “My Life and Work”, his co-written autobiography, which came out in 1922. He was describing a meeting in 1909 where he told his sales staff what the color options were. Unfortunately for history, those cars would actually be painted in various colors from the factory (red, green and black, if I remember correctly). It wasn't until 1914 when Ford fired up his new-fangled production line that the black-only policy came online. The primary reason for it was because the time it took to clean up and switch colors slowed things down and cost money.

[Alan Brown]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Actually it's not.

The T started out in multiple colours (brights: gray, green, blue, and red, with optional black highlights) but as production speed ramped up these were whittled down to black because it was the only CHEAP pigment compatible with paints that would dry fast enough to keep up with the production line (1914-25) despite the paint formulations constantly changing (different colours could have been used in sections, but nobody wants a piebald car)

As soon as alternative paint-compatible pigments became cheap enough to offer, they were offered (dark shades of red, blue, green, brown and gray. Black was discontinued)

[TimMaher]

Re:”whenever you push one”

A sign lights up saying “Do not push that button again”

[Mark 85]

Re: whenever you push one”

A sign lights up saying “Do not push that button again”.

Since the sign is black with black letters and on a black wall would anyone see it? Might be easier to ponder Schrödinger's cat.

[CorwinX]

Re: whenever you push one”

If a tree calls in the forest with no-one to hear does it make a sound?

[J.G.Harston]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

.... is like making love to a beautiful woman.

[spacecadet66]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Yup, sounds like about the right odds.

[Acme Tech Support]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Reminds me of a PC I built recently. The last time I had built one was a Pentium 2, nice brown coloured main board, white case, different coloured cables for reset and power connections

The new one, black case, black cables, black main board, black heatsink on the memory. It did have a perspex panel on the side - tinted black, so couldn't see inside it!

[CorwinX]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Very like one I built back in the day.

Tower case with a cutout on the side I crafted myself with a perspex window.

UV lighting inside so it basically glowed blue on black.

[Mark #255]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

The last PC I built (Ryzen 5500, so quite recent) really surprised me when I did the first power-up (case open, obviously) and was rewarded with a cycling RGB LED lightshow from the motherboard! I'd overlooked that line of the spec sheet. Since it was going into a windowless case, I looked for the off setting in the BIOS.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

I must have been old from a very young age! I've never seen the point in flashy LEDs on computers other than as specific indicators such as power on, cassette in record or playback mode, later floppy drive read indicators and eventually hard disk read indicators :-) Modern PCs are to be stuck under a desk or otherwise out of site, which negates the need for light shows.

[CorwinX]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

But the blinkenlights are pretty ;-)

[BobTheIntern]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

ACHTUNG! ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENSPEEPERS...

[katrinab]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Back in my day, they used to put their blinkenlights on the under side of cars. I guess putting them on computers is relatively harmless in comparison.

[IanRS]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Just got back from the EMF festival (emfcamp.org). Blinkenlights are compulsory, on everything. Except the very good pizzas.

[David Hicklin]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

> blinkenlights on the under side of cars

where I grew up I remember seeing a car that had a clear dome on the rear axle differential that was lit up at night so you could see all the gears working....

[jake]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

"clear dome on the rear axle differential"

Summit Racing used to sell those. They were made out of polycarbonate. Was a fad that lasted a couple years among the "lifted trucks that never see dirt" posers. They only really showed the gears when the vehicle was at a standstill; if it was moving the ring gear kicked oil all over the inside.

[Handlebars]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

There's a market of people who want everything with lights and the case is displayed prominently.

[jake]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

"There's a market of people who want everything with lights and the case is displayed prominently."

I know of at least three high-end research facilities that have a "control room" that is nothing more than a mock-up, with blinkinlights, knobs, switches, displays, the odd sonalert, a couple different sizes of printer chugging out tractor-feed at random, etc., all behind a glass wall along a corridor. The entire room does nothing but impress management, moneybags, and VIP visitors (and sometimes the Press). The actual guts of the things are really messy (but logical) breadboard rigs. Remember, they are research facilities ... the controls can change near daily, so there is no time or money for "pretty".

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Remember the Pentium fdiv bug? It was very, very rare, until you were doing 3-rendering, when the errors made vertices leap about all over the place as you rotated the model.

[stiine]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

you might be interested in a talk about playing Doom using non-euclidean geometry:

2022 - Non-Euclidean Doom: what happens to a game when pi is not 3.14159…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZSFRWJCUY4

[G.Y.]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Nebuchadrezzar, not Pharaoh; see Daniel 2:4-5

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Indeed. And the dream hadn't been forgotten - the proof that the interpretation would be correct is if the interpreter could say what the dream was!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

That could have been "forgotten but I'm sure I'll remember it if somebody reminds me what it was", but yes it helps with the proof too

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

I read an interview with someone (probably on this very website) who was responsible for wrangling very large data sets. On the topic of handling unexpected occurances, he remarked that due to the volume of data they handled, "million to one" events would happen multiple times per night.

[MatthewSt]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

With 8.1 billion people in the world if someone says you're one in a million then there's 8100 others out there just like you

[stiine]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

Yep, and your fifth child will be Chinese.... yay statistics...

[Bilby]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

As The Whitlams noted:

Some say love comes only once in a lifetime,

But once was enough for me,

She was one in a million,

So there's five more just in New South Wales...

[Free treacle]

Re: 1 in a million scenario

I heard million to one changes crop up nine times out of ten.

[wolfetone]

"The software won't care about a Russian sub in downtown Dallas."

"How did you know?"

Not that I've been to Dallas, but I'm fairly sure you wouldn't need the software to notice something like a Submarine trundling down the high street there.

[Korev]

> you wouldn't need the software to notice something like a Submarine trundling down the high street there.

It's not something you sea every day...

[David 132]

OTOH a yellow one in Liverpool wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

[Anonymous Coward]

or it would be: how did they manage to find enough people to man it in the British Navy?

[J.G.Harston]

Or The Crimson Permanent Assurance setting off to do battle with the Very Big Corporation of America.

[Alan Brown]

The Blue Meanies would ensure nobody saw anything

[FirstTangoInParis]

> Not that I've been to Dallas, but I'm fairly sure you wouldn't need the software to notice something like a Submarine trundling down the high street there.

Downtown Dallas has restaurants with polite notices asking customers not to bring concealed carry weapons on to the premises. On that basis one could park a sub laden with weapons outside and it would not look at all out of place. In fact some nice chap would valet park it for the captain!

[mirachu]

The sub is obviously SEP. Nobody would pay attention to it.

[Munchausen's proxy]

> Not that I've been to Dallas, but I'm fairly sure you wouldn't need the software to notice something like a Submarine trundling down the high street there.

Texas drivers would never notice it.

[spacecadet66]

If it drew attention for any reason, it'd be for being an unusually small and modest vehicle by Texas standards.

[Someone Else]

Not that I've been to Dallas, but I'm fairly sure you wouldn't need the software to notice something like a Submarine trundling down the high street there.

It's Tejas we're talking about here, folks, where a large portion of the populace wouldn't recognize a submarine anyway, and where ostentatious excess is lauded.

_{Hey! That 'ere low-rider looks an awful lot like a submarine, don't it?}

[mcswell]

USS Dallas

But the Dallas *was* a submarine. Commissioned in 1981 (and decommissioned in 2018), so I suppose it's *possible* the Dallas the spook was talking about was the US submarine, not the Texas city. Although 1981 seems a bit late for the Navy to be playing with pocket calculators.

[Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch]

Re: USS Dallas

According to Tom Clancy, it had a run in with a certain ballistic missile sub Красный Октябрь, but according to repeated statements from both governments, none of it ever happened.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: USS Dallas

This is the US navy we're talking about. I'd be shocked if they weren't still playing with pocket calculators.

(Dunno if it's HP or TI, but TI still makes calculators, and HP calculators in the US are now made by Royal Typewriter. Somebody's buying them, and I'm betting it's not just students.)

[Clarecats]

Re: USS Dallas

I can't say for the US situation, but colleges buy calculators to provide to students during exams. Smartwatches etc. are banned and the student's calculator might have content stored in memory.

[jake]

Re: USS Dallas

Many, many moons ago, when the Internet had less than 100 nodes, I was sitting an Applied Maths exam. The examiners removed all four of the calculators (in all their LED wonderful redness) from the four of us who had built them from an HP kit. Not one of the examiners even noticed the Sun Workstation on my hip. No, not that Sun, this Sun:

http://sliderulemuseum.com/Hemmi/S071_Hemmi_255.jpg

I did not use it ... I didn't even realize I was wearing it until after I got home.

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend once called in "probable submarine" in semi-central Stockholm. It was the Swedish navy rescue submarine being road-transported in the middle of the night...

<

This was less than a decade after the U 137 incident, and the Swedish navy was hunting Soviet subs on an annual basis.

[Xalran]

Karlskrona archipelago ( and waters with a distinct lack of depth ) at that time was a major nuisance for Soviet Subs... Because it was in the way to the Karlsrkona Shipbuilding and Naval Base.

Been there just after the end of the Soviets and as a Foreigner, I couldn't leave the city proper ( except by the main road ) to visit the archipelago without a pass from the local police ( that could take up to two weeks to get ).

The Shipbuilding and Naval base is still there, but last time I went there you were free to roam in the archipelago.... Despite the fact that they still hunt Russian subs on a regular basis in the area. ( the Russian learned from the U 137 Incident, they don't try to get in anymore, they just stay outside )

[Korev]

> To illustrate his point, he joked: "The software won't care about a Russian sub in downtown Dallas."

Shame it wasn't in the UK or there could have been an excellent dad joke about Wakefield...

[David 132]

That’s very Astute of you…

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Here, have a Whiskey on the Hotel, If you fancy a round of Golf later just ask for the pro Victor...

[Korev]

These jokes are HMS Tireless...

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Calm down dear, you sound Truculent...

[Korev]

There needs to be a Swiftsure Resolution to all these puns

[Korev]

We need to Upholder some standards...

[El blissett]

No use trying to stop posting puns, someone always brings them back with a Vengeance...

[MatthewSt]

If at first you don't succeed, Trident try again

[John Brown (no body)]

That was Nauti. Less funny, just Nauti.

[Terje]

Be careful though after the Foxtrot and Tango exhibit during the Typoon with Romeo and Juliett you can still hear the Echo of that Yankee Charlie twisting his ankle tripping on that twenty Kilo portable cooler, so Papa and Oscar have to take Mike to Lima for his flight with Delta home to Quebec.

[UCAP]

Here, have a Whiskey on the Hotel

I like mine on the rocks.

[KittenHuffer]

I normally have my Whiskey while dancing .... normally the Tango or the Foxtrot!

[parlei]

Whiskey on the rocks, Soviet style

[Xalran]

They were a bit too Téméraire with a U 137 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_submarine_Le_T%C3%A9m%C3%A9raire_(S617))

[John Brown (no body)]

"I like mine on the rocks."

Superb!

[Evil Scot]

I bet the Uniforms felt like a right bunch of Charlies as he was Foxtrotted off site. It didn't happen in November did it?

My apologies if I did not understand the language. Was not taught Latin.

Mine is the Argyle jacket. Because strictly I need the space.

[ShortLegs]

!

"Here, have a Whiskey on the Hotel, If you fancy a round of Golf later just ask for the pro Victor..."

Foxtrot Oscar, that was naff

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

Time and materials.

The dream of any supplier, and the nightmare of any diligent worker or customer.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

or taxpayer

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

My employer had contracted a shiny new building to go up. We were close to "first fix" and discovered an error in some of the cabling specs. We pointed it out and said it the material costs were the same and the installation labour would be the same too, so could they just use the correct cable?

"No. It'll cost too much in lawyers time to get the contract amended for such a small amount. You'll have to replace the cables once the building is handed over."

We had a quiet word with the sub-sub-sub-contractors: We'll sign off the cable installation if they installed nothing. This alone would save us time & money in pulling out the wrong cables (or any potential damage to other things). With it being a new building the runs weren't too bad so the installation of the correct cable was fairly easy. What contractor doesn't mind being paid to do nothing?

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

We'll sign off the cable installation if they installed nothing

nice work if you can get it !

[KittenHuffer]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

I'd have given the cable that you really wanted, and said you'd sign off if they installed that instead.

They get to save on having to buy the wrong cable, and you save on ripping and replacing.

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

You don't have that agreement in writing though - and you're literally asking the contractor to do something that they weren't told to, and that they could be punished for. Never mind that it's what is needed. Whereas, not doing something that they were told to, that may be what they planned to do anyway.

Someone may have mentioned the nearly-working-now new Scottish ferries. I think one of the problems reported was that lots of wiring was installed with exactly the specified lengths of wires - which unfortunately meant that wires were just a little bit too short for actually connecting the wires to the things that are supposed to have wires. And I think that all that wiring had to be done over again. Or so we were told.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

And, of course, the Boeing Starliner capsule with the wrong (flammable!) insulated cables installed in very difficult to reach places.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

Not just big defence clients. We had a complaint from a very large US telco that our X.25 software kept disconnecting when they established a PAD (terminal) connection. After investigation we found that their PAD was sending a parameter value that was illegal according to the coloured book standards, and we were rightly rejecting it. When we pointed this out their response was along the lines of "hmm, yes, you're right, but we have thousands of these systems deployed. Can you change your software to allow for this?". We refused, pointing out that such a change would break our standards compliance certification, and lose us all our government clients. They went quiet.

A few weeks later we got a sharp message from our CEO, who had been golfing with the telco CEO, asking why we were unable to fix our software. Clearly the telco staff had not admitted to their CEO that they were at fault. We replied to our boss with the email chain & support info, and never heard any more about it (our CEO could be very blunt when required).

[Yes Me]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

a) Serves them right for using X.25.

b) I hope you mean the yellow CCITT X.25 book (an actual standard), not the JANET Green Book (Triple-X PAD) spec, which wasn't even a British standard, let alone a CCITT Recommendation. The Triple-X PAD ended up at the CCITT too, but X.3, X.28 and X.29 would all have been yellow too.

c) Serves them right for using X.25.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

What's wrong with X.25? Still a widely used protocol, and its basic principles form the foundations of today's packet-based networks, including the internet. It's a secure and reliable networking protocol, with many features that later protocols lack. If you've taken money out of an ATM over the past 30 years, you've probably used an X.25 fast-select call.

And yes, I mean the CCITT/ITU-T books, although mainly the Red & Blue (1980s) and White (1993) ones, rather than the older Orange and Yellow from the 1970s. I had well-thumbed copies on my desk, and got to know them all rather well, as we had to meet GOSIP compliance standards. We rarely had much dealings with JANET, which had mostly changed to IP by then, our customers were big industrial and commercial businesses. A very, very, profitable business for many years.

[mike.dee]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

I've head a story abut Italian trains. Normal Italian trains are running with a 3000V DC supply. French trains are running with a 1500 V DC supply, and Italy and France share a border, so on two train lines there are a change between 3000 and 1500 V. Old Italian locomotives could run on 1500 V at basically half speed, so it wasn't a big deal on a border station to mix Italian and French passenger trains.

Italian railways bough new trains that use a lot of power electronics and forgot to ask the dual voltage option.

The trains could be modified with a relatively small aftermarket extra circuit that makes the computers controlling the engine happy. But instead Italian railways decided to change part of the stations to run with 3000 V power, and maintain in services the older trains and use diesel railcars in the meantime.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

I thought you were going to say that someone ran a French 1500v train onto the Italian 3kv rail. I suppose that would have been more of a Who Me story...

Then again I know of at least one French mainline station where they had to take an angle grinder to the concrete platform edge, after discovering that the new (German ?) trains theyd bought required a few cm larger loading gauge than the older ones...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

"I thought you were going to say that someone ran a French 1500v train onto the Italian 3kv rail."

You're not the only one. How disappointing.

[Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

Indeed - that story seemed to have so much potential

[Korev]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

I'm shocked he didn't finish it...

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

.........Can we have a current update

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

I see Watt you're doing.

[gotes]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

I'm trying to resist the urge to continue with the electrical puns. There's so much potential!

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

"I'm trying to resist the urge to continue with the electrical puns."

I bet that Hertz.

(Ok, ok, this started with a DC reference, but all the best ones have been taken)

[Wanting more]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

Ohm my that was a good one. Hope you're not going to charge for that.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

1500 to 3000? rrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRR YAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

"Mind the Gap", indeed!

[Xalran]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

There's only two locations where there's a mix between Italian and French voltage for trains :

- Modane and Vintimille.

Since the Code d'Azur line is a standard 25KvAC line, it's not there.

Now Modane has the 1500VDC... and IIRC the way the station is built locomotives from one country can't go on the other country side.

As for grinding concrete platforms... It's a classic. ( it's being done on the RER B ( Paris suburban express train ) right now for the new trains that will come soon... and it's been done in many places all over France [ it created a small scandal at that time ] more than a decade ago when some new TER model built by Alsthom came ).

[I could be a dog really]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

I thought you were going to say that someone ran a French 1500v train onto the Italian 3kv rail. I suppose that would have been more of a Who Me story...

I vaguely recall something my lather father told me. In parts of the Uk rail system they used different voltages (AC) on the overhead, and someone had to switch the transformer when passing between different systems. I can't remember any of the details, but recall thinking the voltages were different enough in scale to ... at least make a bang with some fuses.

Hmm, according to Railway electrification in Great Britain, 1500V DC was used for overhead. So I guess if you have a network with mixed 1500v DC and 25kV AC then things could be ... interesting.

[Xalran]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

There's gaps where the overhead line is not under any voltage when you have a change... and the train drivers are trained for it.

Basically they lower the /pantographe/ for the voltage they were using at the sign telling such area starts and raise the one for the new voltage at the sign ttelling them that the area ends.

( now in modern equipment it's the same /pantographe/ for both voltage but they still need to lower it, activate the voltage change and raise it back. )

It's also something done between 25Kv and 25Kv LGV when entering or leaving high speed tracks ( though obviously they use the same /pantographe/ ).

The only location left in France where the electricity comes from a third rail are : subways, and narrow gauge trains (metric) like the Train Jaune and the Saint Gervais-Chatellard/Martigny line.

At one point the Eurostars where equipped for a third rail, that was before HS1 was built and they had to use British Rail network once out of the Chunnel.

[Dave559]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

Regarding problems with different UK overhead line electrification systems, it could be the mixed 6.25 kV / 25 kV system (both AC) initially used on the first electric routes of the Glasgow suburban network (nowadays all 25 kV) that you are thinking of, where there were some initial fairly serious incidents with the transformers on the new Class 303 trains. (Look for the parts about 6.25 kV in the "Description" section of the article, and to the footnote linking to the Ministry of Transport report - if you want a very thorough amount of detail(!))

(Routes using non-25kV overhead line systems were generally stand-alone routes, with no connection to 25 kV routes (Britain being generally rather slow to get started with main line electrification, these just didn't exist in those areas then), and were usually either converted (or had been de-electrified or switched to LRT operation) by the time that 25 kV routes actually reached them.)

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

Private Eye magazine should hear of this (the Prince of Wales thing), if they haven't yet. They've been worried about this sort of thing in most issues that I've read, or it feels like that.

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

And now I don't remember what the Prince of Wales thing was, but it appears to be censored! I'll have to renew my subscription, then. :-)

[Dai Corner]

Re: "Or struggled to serve a classified client?"

You want to change the contract? That'll be an extra £xM . Let us know when.you've got it signed off.

[SVD_NL]

Not a tech job but...

I worked as a food delivery driver for a couple of years while i was in university, and one of our repeat customers worked late shifts at the Royal Dutch Mint. I've never seen a bag of chips be so thoroughly checked and cleared through security. (A prison i also regularly delivered had significantly less security in place).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not a tech job but...

Reminds me of the story of the guy who biked across the border every day. One border guard was intensely suspicious of the guy, so every day he had the bicyclist turn out his pockets, answer a ton of questions, etc. This went on for many years until eventually the border guard retired.

The other guards held a retirement party at a local pub. After a few rounds, the now retired guard noticed that the bicyclist was sitting alone at a small table in the corner. The guard walked up to him and said: "look, I know you've been smuggling contraband all these years, and it's been driving me nuts. I'm no longer responsible for the border, just tell me, what was it? Drugs? Counterfeit bills? What?"

"Bicycles" replied the cyclist.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not a tech job but...

I knew someone who used to smuggle gold across the Irish border (this would have been 50s/60s). On all his many caravan holidays, no-one ever noticed that in one direction the caravan curtain rings were brass, but in the other direction some of them were gold wedding rings.

[lglethal]

Re: Not a tech job but...

If you'd said you were delivering to Cell Block B, then I guarantee the security would have been tighter! But since you were delivering for the Guards, they can afford to be a bit more relaxed...

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Not a tech job but...

(A prison i also regularly delivered had significantly less security in place).

Depends on the prison. A class D, pretty much anyone can walk in with pretty much no security. A class A is a whole other world of hurt to get, even with the background checks/security clearances and pre-booked appointment.

[Bebu]

"he joked"

Fatal* mistake. These types have absolutely zero sense of humour. Dealing with them a) avoid, b) run away, c) three wise monkey^¤ time.

Given this must have been ca 1965-70 I suspect the state of art of civilian (satellite) infrared imaging was no where near the capability of detecting the small temperature differential from the heat from a Soviet^☆ nuclear submarine up to 30 feet (~9m) below the surface that Tristran surmised was the case. Probably highly classified.

Another thing about these nutjobs is that they are incapable understanding how a reasonably intelligent, rational human being could take the evidence of their eyes, apply a little logic and smidgen of imagination and arrive at largely the correct conclusion.

So long ago I suspect that the usual hardware guy's ploy of shifting responsibility to the (client's) software developer wasn't routine.

The "Cone of Silence" and 86's shoe phone are fond memories from Get Smart (99 was cute too. ;)

* _{potentially literally} ¤ _{graphic's chosen for the 4th monkey} ☆ _{AFAIK never actually enemies of the US}

[Evil Auditor]

Re: "he joked"

These types have absolutely zero sense of humour.

Even though that doesn't exactly reflect my experience. Then again, I also discovered sparks of humour in US immigration officers.

[lglethal]

Re: "he joked"

"I also discovered sparks of humour in US immigration officers."

Do you mean they were laughing as they applied the cattle prod?

[doublelayer]

Re: "he joked"

That's true. A lot of these people have senses of humor but have somehow developed the ability to turn them completely off. This leaves two large classes of people. One looks like two completely different people whether they're working or not. If they're at home, they look like normal people. If they're at work, they look like those old science fiction shows where the robot has killed the person and worn their skin as a disguise. The other is a bit scarier: they look like normal people with senses of humor, even at work. Then you say something and they instantly switch to robot mode and don't come out.

[Claptrap314]

Re: "he joked"

I had a friend who worked for DHL. He had a somewhat colorful past, which I think the G-men recognized one day when he was making a delivery. Two of them got on an elevator he was on, went to opposite (back corners), looked at each other, nodded slightly, and put on their sunglasses simultaneously. Freaked him out. Then he started laughing. One of them cracked a smile. "We do have a sense of humor."

[Spazturtle]

Re: "he joked"

It probably would have been Green-Red-NIR film (compared to normal film which is Blue-Green-Red).

With this type of film once developed green shows up as blue, red shows up as green and infrared shows up as red. This was a popular type of film for military surveillance since foliage reflects IR nearly completely but most manmade objects absorb it. Kodak Aerochrome is an example of this type of film if you want examples of what it looks like.

Maybe submarines operating near the surface were churning up algae and that is what they were detection?

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: submarines operating near the surface were churning up algae...

Oh dear, we will now have to keel you...

[KittenHuffer]

Re: submarines operating near the surface were churning up algae...

Did you mean keel? Or keelhaul?

[Claptrap314]

Re: submarines operating near the surface were churning up algae...

Yes.

[The commentard formerly known as Mister_C]

Re: submarines operating near the surface were churning up algae...

You are Doug Marcaida off of Forged in Fire and I claim my five pounds

[Anonymous Coward]

I know of one very small piece of gernment was instructed by spooks to have a forensic security assessment carried on on one innocuous application as it may have been attacked.

How was it attacked? Can't tell you

Who attacked us? Not telling

What did they do? Not saying

Who is paying for this? You are.

So they forked out 30k for a forensic analysis and I don't think the spooks ever shared the results.

[Evil Auditor]

Seriously, you leave us here without naming the calculator model in question?!

[David Harper 1]

They were probably Highly Prized

And Horrendously Priced. Also Hugely Practical, mainly because they used Reverse Polish Notation, which deterred mere mortals from stealing them.

[KittenHuffer]

Re: They were probably Highly Prized

Priced Horrendously and. Hugely Practical also, because Reverse Polish Notation they used, stealing by mere mortals deterred it did!

FTFY!

[frabbledeklatter]

Wang 700. I'm the perp in this one. Story got a bit garbled. The client was using the Wang Super Surveyor package, a really nice land survey program for property lines, but applying it to ocean-size areas. The calculator's firmware could not handle sines and cosines of very small angles, such as those used in lens grinding. Take a very small angle error and extend the line a thousand miles, and you're really, really off at the other end. One of the things Super Surveyor could do was translate coordinates, so it would not have been a problem to relocate the Earth's poles and meridians to obscure the problematic data while retaining the problem.

At another place down the road, nobody checked my cases of tools and spare parts on the way in. Everything got checked thoroughly on the way out. I suppose that meant I would have to have left any explosive devices with the client.

[Robert Carnegie]

I like the idea of removing the problematic data but leaving the problem in place, so that you may get called in again for it and you have job security. But it may be not ethical.

[Anonymous Coward]

Going in and out of those places...

I had occasion to visit, and I generally referred to them as "roach motels" things go in, but not come out. I have been told that this applies to such things as disk drives, cell phones and smart watches. On exit they are confiscated and "rendered".

Anon for obvious reasons.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Going in and out of those places...

Yeah, anything with "storage capabilities", and with everything having EEPROMS and/or other non-volatile storage, even DIMMS, then yes, nothing that could have some surreptitiously acquired credentials etc leaves site, which means pretty much anything electronic these days. Another reason why military kit costs so more than identical civilian devices. All warranty repairs involve them retaining the faulty parts so they can't be taken away to be repaired.

[Evil Auditor]

Thank you for the revelation!

[Anonymous Coward]

(nothing to see here)

Probably an unwise idea to reveal your identity, the men in black will be knocking at your door sometime soon.

And now the other men in black will have to visit all of us with the neuralyzer - and you know how much Agent K hates having to do that amount of overtime...

[Anonymous Coward]

I do know an engineer who was called out to a government office in London to fix a reported hard disk failure. When he arrived he was escorted to a bare basement room containing just the computer, with the offending disk removed "for security"! Not really much he could do, other than arrange for a new HD to be shipped for the department's own team to install and configure.

[UCAP]

Ahh yes, removable hard disks. I did work for a certain UK military agency that had loads of desktop PCs (laptops not allowed) that handled SECRET aand above; they all had removable hard drives that where taken out when not being used and locked up in a safe. The also rand Windows XP (this is only a few years ago). A friend of mine took his hard drive out at the end of the day then realised that the PC had not finished shutting down. Subsequent checks found that a lot of files on the drive had been trashed, and there was no backup (because of the classification of some of the data). If you think security are humourless, wait to you see an IT geek tasked to recover that sort of data SNAFU.

[SVD_NL]

Good lord. Why did they even store those on hard drives? wouldn't those be printed, filed, and the drive wiped? (i have never dealt with sensitive data so i am clueless).

This feels like a data security and integrity nightmare.

[ShortLegs]

Good lord. Why did they even store those on hard drives? wouldn't those be printed, filed, and the drive wiped? (i have never dealt with sensitive data so i am clueless).

No. SECRET disks were pink; pink 3.5" floppy disks, pink 5.25" removeable drive caddies.

I say pink, because thats the closest colour in the spectrum to describe the caddies....

Mhy own tale involved working late on a classified MoD project at Northumberland House ( late 1991 or 1992), as a young JNCO reporting directl to the CRE providing IT support for some project work. One evening the staff all buggered off to celebrate the CoS departure, leaving me in the offioc, forgotten about. With a pile of pink disks. And no idea of the secure location safe nor combination.

This was before the days of mobile phones. I had my boss's number and a couple of the analysts, but that was it. Cue much calling. Eventually a callback that someone will escort me and the disks to MoD Main Building. About 30mins later me and the disks are at reception, when a (quite attractive) young lady arrives. The squaddy gene kicks in, and I confidently state that I ought to carry the disks, being a roufffy tuffy squaddie and all that.

At which point she opens her jacket, revealing a holstered Browning 9mm, which she then loads and makes ready, with the comment "its ok, I've got my mates with me".

[M.V. Lipvig]

Do you have any idea how long it would take to reload the data each day? They save it to the removable hard drive, then just chuck the whole hard drive in a safe each day. Next day, they can put it back in the machine and continue working.

I used to do that stuff, but it was way back in the days of paper messages and no removable hard drives. The disks were those monsters on the VAX 11-785s (?) that the programmers could make fall on its side if they want, and backed up on great big tapes that never left the room, ever, until it was thoroughly degaussed. After degaussing, it was off to the burn barrel.

[doublelayer]

There's a time problem, a data storage problem, and a general security problem with using paper instead of hard drives.

Time: To use paper, budget time for printing every document modified during the day, filing each paper copy, putting the drive in the wiper, wiping it if you're supposed to stay watching it, retrieving the papers from the file, scanning them in, and editing OCR errors, which ideally should be rare because you're scanning a fresh print but they still happen and it's very important that you don't order the 15l part when you need the 151. Compared to removing the drive and locking it up, that's probably at least an hour of extra work, which means a lot less gets done each day.

Data storage: You're doing this so the sensitive data isn't on the drive, and in order to do it, you're putting the same data through many other systems that could theoretically be used to try to access it. Sure, probably nobody is going to break in to try to get copies off the printer's cache, the scanner's cache, or to modify the wiper to read before wiping, but anything is possible. Also, I've assumed that you have a data drive that you're wiping and a system drive that you're not, mostly because if you only had one drive then reimaging a fresh version every morning would extend that time problem to ridiculous levels, but if you do, there's a chance that some parts of the data files will be on the system drive in temp files, so you'd still have a hard drive to secure. More points where the data is stored won't make the process worthwhile.

Security: Locking up a hard drive is no more complicated than locking up papers, and in fact you can use a smaller box to store it with less risk that someone will get it. Among other things, you don't have each day's stack of paper to deal with. It will probably be shredded, but never having been printed makes it even harder to reconstitute. Paper is also easier to steal. If I, your colleague who's also a spy, manage to get into your office while you're in the morning scan process and steal some of your sheets from the already-scanned pile, then you might not notice, allowing me to sneak your documents away, and if they get caught any time after I drop them, you get the blame.

[Ribfeast]

Except every printout, and computer storage media (HDD, DVD etc) must be registered on a classified document register, which are regularly audited, and you should have a clean desk policy...

Working with vendors when you have an air-gapped network and they simply want you to allow them remote control to fix the issue, and you are constantly telling them it's not possible...

[TSM]

20-odd years ago when I worked at a facility that handled materials up to SECRET classification, we did much the same thing. It makes sense if you look at it with the right level of paranoia. Bear in mind that such places strongly discourage making unnecessary physical copies of classified information.

If you were working on unclassified material, you used the unclassified hard drive in your computer and the unclassified network cable. To work on classified material, you shut down, pulled the hard drive caddy out, got the classified caddy from your safe and put that in, swapped to the secure network cable, and started your machine up again. (Details are a bit sketchy after this time, but it wouldn't access the network if you started it up with the wrong network cable in place.) On the secure network you had no external network access, if I recall correctly, and no email access (even internal). You were effectively working on a different computer when you were on the secure network.

The overriding principle was that classified information was never exposed to any system that could exfiltrate data. Floppy disks, by policy, carried the security level of the highest security machine they had ever been placed in - it didn't matter if you had only stored unclassified material, if you put it into a secure computer it was now classified SECRET and couldn't be left out, removed from site, etc. [Because secret material might have made its way on there, either with or without your knowledge. When there's a risk of serious espionage attempts, things like worms that might attempt to store data in unallocated sections of a random employee's disk become part of the threat model.]

If you'd used the same OS disk for secret and unclassified uses, who knows what secret material might be left floating around on it when you were in the more vulnerable unclassified space?

Those of us who had mobile phones (I didn't at the time) had a lot of fun rules to comply with in that regard as well. I don't remember those clearly since I didn't have to, but I remember they were absolutely not allowed in any classified meetings, due to the risk of surreptitious concealed transmitters.

Now to be fair, there was a project planned (maybe even started) to investigate whether the secure and unsecure computing environments could be integrated in a safe manner. I have no idea whether that eventually worked out for them. I hadn't heard about any progress before I left that job, but I wouldn't have expected to unles it was almost complete, since I wasn't in the IT department.

[Doctor Syntax]

"arrange for a new HD to be shipped for the department's own team to install and configure"

Given suitable levels of paranoia would a new disk be trusted enough to be installed or even allowed into the building?

[Chloe Cresswell]

While not classified stuff, client of ours sold a set of xray machines to HMRC to use in airports (when this was spun off into borderforce, the xray machines would change hands too)

We were working on one in birmingham airport, about a week after the jeep hitting glasgow airport incident.

Naturally while we are running the scanner itself, there's big red lights on outside the doors of the room, you know the sort of thing, no entry when red light on, danger XRAYS, etc.

The room in question is in the customs area between departures and arrival corridors.

The red lights are on, the doors aren't locked, but we suddenly see faces at the door on the far side of the room to the console we're controlling the system from.

As soon as the scanner finishes, I hit the "safe" button to turn the lights off, and 3 armed officers pile though the door with MP5s, with a 4th who slowed down a little to say "Thanks!" before dashing out the other door into the departure area.

We never did find out what actually was happening, and just hid in the xray room working for as long as possible!

[Elongated Muskrat]

Free doughnuts in the departure lounge?

[MrBanana]

I took the tech support call from [REDACTED] regarding a program that was core dumping. I asked the usual questions, all of which were replied with with, I'm sorry I can't tell you that over the phone or send anything in email. An onsite visit to [REDACTED] was scheduled. Submit all identity and employment information before travel. Once escorted through the three layers of security I got to sit in front of an isolated, green screen terminal, in a windowless room, connected to a test system. How do I run the program? You can't touch the keyboard. Can you install a debugger? No. Can I see the source code? No. Can I access the database? No. Can I have my laptop back to check on something? No. A few other options were floated, all were "no". The impasse was only solved when a copy of The Official Secrets Act was proffered for to me to sign.

[John Brown (no body)]

"The impasse was only solved when a copy of The Official Secrets Act was proffered for to me to sign."

I'm surprised you got that far without having already signed it. Signing to confirm you've read and understood it[*] is usually part of the clearance process to even being allowed in the building.

*For those who don't know, everyone in the UK is subject to The Official Secrets Act as it's part of the law governing the UK. "Signing" it is not subjecting you to anything new. It's just proof that you read and understood the contents and its ramifications, sometimes with specific references related to the job/location/task at hand.

[Christoph]

One of our people had to visit a certain establishment in Cheltenham. Apparently getting in wasn't too bad but getting out again was dire.

[Boris the Cockroach]

If its anything like the establishments I had to work in, I suspect the MoD plod at the gate were more concerned about wether you'd pilfered something off the site and were doing a runner with it.

Only on days that had alerts running did they care about what you were bringing in... just in case it went boom*

*going boom was our speciality.... hence icon .... and very twitchy MoD plod

[Anonymous Coward]

I once had to visit an iron ore mine to do some support work. Security at the exit gate seemed to have the "verify he's not taking anything out with him" mentality.

I had a good chuckle to myself about stealing product. Iron ore pellets sold for about $50 / ton at the time.

(Granted, they were making sure nobody made off with some of the expensive tools used around the place).

[Strahd Ivarius]

but where is the kaboom?

[Boris the Cockroach]

It went

KABOOM

oggle

goggle

oggle

goggle

gone

[An_Old_Dog]

Kaboom

"Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering kaboom!" -- Marvin the Martian

[Tim99]

I worked at an MoD establishment whose entire purpose was to make things go boom. I believe that you may be correct as to searching for what people might take off the site - As well as going boom it was classified. We too had MoD police, many of whom had large imposing Webley revolvers. A exception to exit searches involved a service engineer on a routine maintenance visit. He turned up on the first day in a large estate car with a lot of kit in the back. Unusually he was pulled over and asked to open the tailgate for inspection and open a number of boxes and cases containing tools, test gear and components etc. I was called whilst this was going on to escort him to the job. It was a large establishment, so it was a 10 minute walk to the gate. When I got there the car was empty and the boxes were all on the tarmac. Another few minutes elapsed while we reloaded the car. The engineer said that he had to open everything. The next day he told me that when he had left, the same person flagged him down. He expected another rigorous search, but it was just to sign the paperwork. When he was asked if that was all, the reply was "That's fine, if there is anything in there we would never find it"...

[Christoph]

Dave Langford used to work at the place that makes Very Loud Bangs. He wrote a very funny novel about the security there. The Leaky Establishment.

[Rol]

Reminds me of attending a festival on the race course near there. I think some of the security from the place we should not mention were moonlighting as security for the festival, as they were stopping people from leaving the stage venue with their drinks.

Of course their remit was to stop people bringing their own drinks into the venue, but clearly the message put into understandable grunt English was "Do not let anyone pass here with alcohol" which lacked any direction and was left to a very broad interpretation.

Fortunately for us they were not armed with anything more dangerous than a very thick skull, so we shuffled by while quietly explaining to them that the venue doesn't give a damn about us taking drinks out, only drinks in. I don't think they took our advice onboard, but in the face of overwhelming numbers, they had no choice but to back down.

[John Brown (no body)]

According to recent reports, the door codes are 1234 :-)

Of course, it being the Daily Express, you have to read right down to the last sentence to find the complete truth of the story. The codes are only for the limited "publicly" accessible areas in case they need to go the bog or something. And quite possibly changed on "secure" days as opposed to press and others being invited in.

[andy the pessimist]

what we're they thinking?

Did they give the error code or message?

With the calculator grammar/flow chart you could sketch the code out.

A duplicate calculator could demonstrate the sort of problem. There operator/programmer may recognise the problem.

If the tone is a collaborative/help me then sure give them all the help you can. If the tone is adversarial then why am I fixing your code?

My gun with the magic bullet is at home.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: what we're they thinking?

"My gun with the magic bullet is at home."

That would get you into more trouble.

[andy the pessimist]

Re: what we're they thinking?

https://www.pulseandcocktails.co.uk/little-magic-bullet-vibrator-10-speeds/

You can have this magic bullet.

The code fixing magic bullet is more expensive.

Hopefully the url survives posting.

[doublelayer]

Re: what we're they thinking?

There wouldn't have been an error code or message from the sound of it. The problem was incorrect results. If they had had someone there who was thinking, that person would have figured out a calculation with random numbers that gave an inaccurate result, and they could just send that. Apparently, that's not what they did.

[steviebuk]

"How did you know?"

I've watched Hunt for Red October.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Could they enemy submarines? That was quite a prospect.

Interesting use of "enemy" as a verb

[Excused Boots]

"Interesting use of "enemy" as a verb”

Is it a regular verb? I enemy, you enemy, he/she enemies......

[Pascal Monett]

You think I'm impressed by your bullshit ?

Can't access actual data, don't have any unclassified test data to test on.

What do want me to do, wave a magic wand ?

Do you know that I don't actually need to see the data to be able to test it ? No ?

Why am I not surprised . . .

[Marty McFly]

Yes / No support calls....

Did that, done that. "We cannot tell you anything, but we can answer your questions with a yes or no." And so it begins...

Is the first octet of the IP address between 1 and 128?

Yes

Is the first octet of the IP address between 1 and 64?

Yes....

Eventually it is uncovered this device has a 10.x.x.x IP address. Now we start over with the second octet.

But hey, no rules were violated and we all got paid to stretch out the support call as long as possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Debug by research and guess

At a previous UK employer I produced a device that is integral to many black/red networks with lots of TLA customer specific ITAR modifications in their builds. (The modifications were never a problem for me to know about and I had strict systems in place to avoid ITAR tainting the main codebase and to keep the customer specific ITAR source files off any unrestricted storage, even while compiling for that customer.) [Things were sensible in those days, unlike the current NSA restrictions my US colleagues are NOT telling me about.]

I used to spend Friday afternoon's trawling the 'specialist press' to find out who had won certain contracts for TLA and other special customers.

Then I used to at least have a clue what a customer might be trying to do when they rang up to ask for help with configuring something or had found a very obscure bug.

The conversation would iterate along the lines of "if I tested [xyz] in a scenario with [abc] and [def] data streams over protocols [ghi] and [jkl] might this show the problem?" until I eventually found a scenario that would illustrate the problem, and would receive a "yes" - the only other answers being "no" or "we can't tell you"!

I think the worst had about 8 variables, but in that particular instance they did take pity on me and say how regularly it happened - once every 3 to 4 weeks!

A little diligent research and an accommodating employer to allow it, goes a long way.

[Daedalus]

Re: Debug by research and guess

At a recent contract, and one might say, a career ending one because I finally retired, many TLA's were being thrown around and black/red was definitely in play. In order to get up to speed with the technobabble going by in meetings, I asked if perhaps there was a glossary being maintained somewhere.

The answer was, appropriately, a TLA. That is to say, TIO - There Isn't One.

[chivo243]

You had me at Cone of Silence

No! Max!

But we digress. Sorry about that, Chief – missed holding the narrative together by that much.

[Daedalus]

A not entirely unrelated example of uber-secrecy

The Polaroid SX-70 instant camera was revolutionary even by the standards of Polaroid. Apart from its much better optics, it boasted the ability to deliver a picture in 10 seconds without the need to peel off and discard icky chemical film.

It came to pass that someone was contracted to produce a certain part for the camera. However, in order to do that the person was given no access to cameras and when the time finally came to do a test installation, they were only allowed to fumble inside a black bag that contained the camera hardware. This came as quite a surprise, but fortunately the part fitted and the contract was fulfilled.

[DS999]

Why wouldn't they have some support people who are cleared?

Having some random support dude show up in a highly classified environment seems like a waste of time. They won't let him see or touch anything, so how could he fix anything?

On one contract I worked there was an EMC support rep that came by a couple times a week to replace drives or whatever after receiving a call from one of the arrays. I was talking to him once and he said he was cleared Top Secret because there was a government client in the area (it was Boston, so I'm sure there had to be something) that had massive amounts of storage and they required clearance to touch the hardware.

The only difference from his normal clients beyond a more extensive process to get on the floor where the arrays were was he couldn't take the bad disks/controllers/etc. with him. It remained and it was disposed of by the client in whatever fashion - probably a shredder. I recall asking if that support was more expensive, and he said he didn't deal with that end but he assumed so.

[doublelayer]

Re: Why wouldn't they have some support people who are cleared?

Probably because they needed an engineer who could fix something, not general support. They might well have had someone who could replace broken parts, but not someone who could fix something that was wrong for all units. Then the problem got reported to someone stupid who brought in someone who could fix the problem but didn't understand that, to fix the problem, they had to know what the problem was.

[DS999]

Re: Why wouldn't they have some support people who are cleared?

When is the last time you saw a service guy who did anything beyond replacing parts? Do you really think they needed a guy who could operate a soldering iron to replace failed caps on a board or rewire a power supply? And even if there was such a unicorn company out there who still did that sort of thing, that they didn't have a guy with those skills who was cleared?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why wouldn't they have some support people who are cleared?

" It remained and it was disposed of by the client in whatever fashion - probably a shredder"

I have been informed (from an ex-EOD officer) that many years ago, a little bloke in a suit, with a briefcase handcuffed to their wrist, appears when they are disposing of that weeks "blinds" / duds.

The EOD pile all the stuff that should have gone bang (but did not) in to a pile.

They prep and fit the stuff that will go bang (C4 / det cord).

THEN.. the EOD have to vacate the area, back to the bunker, while the little aforementioned bloke stacks the "extremely important but broken media" on top of all the stuff that is about to go bang.

They retire to safe distance and BNAG, then the bloke is first back on site to make sure the media no longer exists.

[John Brown (no body)]

I once hadd a callout to a very, very secure site...

<redacted> :-)

Why yes, they really did have black helicopt.....<click>

[Claptrap314]

Word from 1988...

When I was in the USAF, satellite communications, one of my coworkers described an *interesting* semi-regular occurrence. In general, our work required a SECRET clearance, but it was not super-rare for our equipment to be part of a TOP SECRET facility. I'm told that the procedure went something like this. "You see those two red lines coming out from that door?" "Yes". "What is between those two lines is classified SECRET. What is not, is TOP SECRET. You keep your eyes between those lines while we guide you to your equipment. You will place your tools between those lines. You will work on the rack in front of you. You WILL NOT look outside those lines while once you go past this door. You will be accompanied at all times. Am I clear?" "Yes, sir."

[Sampler]

The entry reminds me of back when I used to push buttons on server that weren't responding remotely to infrastructure team an hours drive away.

It was for a fairly large financial institution, the separated building you needed to show credentials to get through the fence between our building and there's, once in to reception you needed c-suite sign-off to get through the full height turnstile (once you've surrendered any mobile or other electronic device on your person).

Once in you're monitored by staff at all times via CCTV, my work order was for Hall B which I naturally assumed would've been the one on the right, sadly not, as I turned right and headed to the door (that would not have opened) I got a bellow over the intercom "Hall B is to the left".

Guess it's reassuring that physical security is fairly high on the bank's priorities.

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Reminds me of the time we got a laptop in for repair.

There was a note taped to the screen saying that under no circustances were we allowed to switch the laptop on.

My manager telephoned the customer to ask how we were supposed to diagnose the problem without booting it up.

The customer was adament, we could not boot up the laptop or access the hard drive, it contained the final draft of her next book and we were not allowed to read it.

The laptop was sent back unrepaired, as there was no way we could repair it under the conditions she'd set.

We never did get another book by that author, so I'm wondering if she ever managed to get the laptop repaired...

[TSM]

Clearly the indicated procedure is to replace the hard drive first, then boot it up to diagnose and fix the problem.

If you're feeling exceptionally generous, you can reinstall the original hard drive once the repairs are complete (if the problem wasn't a failed hard drive).

[Conundrum1885]

Once

Had someone come in to <location> and ask if I had a clearance to be there.

Turns out that they weren't actually supposed to be there either, as they were meant to be in a different building!