back to article Personalized pop-up was funny for about a second, until it felt like stalking

Well, gentle reader, we have some bad news: the weekend is over, and another five days of labor have commenced. The good news is Monday means it’s time for a dose of Who, Me? in which Reg readers send in their tales of … let's say … hard-earned experience. We shall Regomize this week's student in the school of life as "Curt." …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Idiot

    Curt should have been shown the door.

    1. KittenHuffer Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Idiot

      Yeah, it was nearly Curt-ains for him!

      1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Idiot

        Ha! That reminded me of a shop that I saw in Orpington (very many) years ago:

        "Kurt Aynes"

        Guess what they sold.

        1. Don Bannister

          Re: Idiot

          Slogan of a window blinds company near me:

          "If it wasn't for us, it would be curtains for everyone" !

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Idiot

            Scaffolding company...

            "Satisfaction With Every Erection"

            (unfortunately from back in the day when no one carried a camera)

            1. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

              Re: Idiot

              There's some scaffolders round our way called "King Scaffolders". I think it's an abbreviation, given the amount of 'king noise scaffolders like to make early in the morning when people who work later hours would otherwise still be sleeping.

              1. werdsmith Silver badge

                Re: Idiot

                Wayne Kerr Electronics originated in London in 1946 and now has offices worldwide. Based in Bognor.

                Who knows if it was deliberate? There's also an Irish Rugby League player of the same name.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Idiot

                  A relative used to work at a local community college. A colleague had a student whose first name was pronounced "shih-THEED". But instead of "theed", it was spelled "thead", and the first syllable didn't have that second H. Apparently somebody hated their kid...

            2. James Wilson

              Re: Idiot

              There used to be a shop near here that sold door furniture. It went by the name of 'knobs and knockers'. Sadly it is no more, I suspect they couldn't go online when the rest of the world did.

      2. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Idiot

        A Curt dismissal was in order?

    2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: Idiot

      Certainly Curt's prank backfired on him and he seems to have learned from his mistake. I'm not sure we have enough information to determine whether he should be fired or not.

    3. Evil Auditor Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Idiot

      Ah, I got it: you've been the secret admirer of Jill, jealous of her connection with Curt...

    4. goblinski

      Re: Idiot

      I'd have to chime in Curt's age in the equation.

      If it started with anything but 1 or 2, door indeed. Otherwise - a stern warning.

      I've done and said things at my first job that I shiver at when I think about them now. And I'm not hypocrite enough to convince myself someone else did them, or that it was ok - even back then.

  2. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    Clearly not in the category "Mostly harmless"

    I would much prefer using messages like:

    “Hi there! This is Eddie, your shipboard computer, and I’m feeling just great! "

    "I know I’m just going to get a bundle of kicks out of any program you care to run through me.”

    In a prank like that.

    Doffs hat to the late, great Douglas Adams

    1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Clearly not in the category "Mostly harmless"

      I used to net send messages to the ladies in the Pharma Quality Department (Yes those that used to try & poison me with confectionary) if they tried ringing me.

      I'm Here but not picking up!

      You haven't logged a ticket yet have you?

      Still not picking up!

      Then when she stopped ringing, I'd ring straight back & say, OK Izzy what's the issue?

  3. 42656e4d203239 Silver badge

    been there....

    Bants between me (sysadmin) and pretty young thing in the office, on a system that, in no cirumstances, must logins be shared....

    We set up a system that sent random perfecly safe for work messages, like fortune(6), to terminals at which she was logged in.

    Imagine my surprise to be on the receiving end of a bollocking when her manager used her login to demonstrate the system to a customer and objected to the staus line changing to messages that, whilst SFW, were, apparently, not SFC.

    Corporate embarrassment trumps national security I guess.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: been there....

      Quick thinking should have characterised it as a security test conducted by you, the sysadmin, so you could have given the manager a bollocking for breaching security regulations.

      1. Jonathan Richards 1 Silver badge

        Re: been there.... but not really there

        If you've ever actually given a manager a bollocking for breaching security regulations, we'd all love to hear about it. I came across plenty of opportunities, but I can judge the pros and cons of that course of action.

        1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

          Re: been there.... but not really there

          Been there, done that, escalated to the next level of management (not beyond that though), survived it. "Surprisingly," resulting in no change at all. That left me with documenting the disorderly behaviour to cover my arse. And starting to look for another employer for I do not want to work in such an environment.

          1. werdsmith Silver badge

            Re: been there.... but not really there

            I know you? Exact description of what happened to my mate Tim.

            1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

              Re: been there.... but not really there

              Rest assured, I'm not Tim (you might still know me though). Mine was at a large, late financial institution. I don't think this is a very unique situation with people who have at least half a scrupulous mind. Try to change but don't escalate to the point of inflicting harm onto yourself - I'm too much of a self-preserving coward to go beyond that point.

  4. Oh Matron!

    Labor? Center?

    <Sad face>

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: Labor? Center?

      YHBT

      HAND

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

        Re: Labor? Center?

        I had to look that up

        and what I thought must be new slang the kiddies are using I found the answer at this site , which is decidedly un-mew.

        http://www.catb.org/esr/

        http://www.catb.org/esr/jargon/html/Y/YHBT.html

        Seems to be some kind of early 90s time capsule "home page" from an early internet adopter.

        wouldnt surprise me if it was someone here.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not mine, but I heard of a prank with an Alexa device. It went thusly:

    Device is in the bedroom

    Also in the bedroom is a bedroom lamp with a smart switch

    Someone usually tells Alexa to shut off the lamp after getting into bed

    All innocuous enough.

    Come up with a phrase to shut off the lamp, just a little different from normal.

    On hearing the custom phrase, Alexa obligingly shuts off the lamp.

    Do this a few times then add the following to the routine:

    Alexa obligingly shuts off the lamp.

    Then waits for five minutes.

    After five minutes, Alexa announces: "I can still see you".

    Apparently the guys missus was freaked out.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      When a mate first got an Alexa, he was proud to show it off, despite working in government IT and supposedly knowing the risks.

      So I walked in one day and said "Hi Alexa, order a 9 inch black ribbed", it came back with "from the same place as last time?"

      He claimed another friend had used the same prompt (while he was out of earshot) and managed to order said item.

      Yes, I did get the idea from here.

      Anon as his colleagues read this site.

      1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1807/

        1. neilg

          XKCD is NOT obligatory, just go away, please.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            You're new here?

            :)

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          I tried to pull a #1807 at a friend's house once. Look on his face was priceless. Alexa didn't respond to me, and he disabled Alexa purchases the next day.

          Reminds me that I need to build an Alexa version of a USB stick of death. SWIMBO received one of the Echo devices as a free gift or door prize or something. She hasn't gotten round to setting it up (or asking me to do so). I don't fancy having one of those on my network or in my house. She wasn't interested enough to buy one, but if she does decide to hook it up my objections will not be welcomed.

          Since it's free (and has been sitting for a bit), if it simply appears to be defective then marital strife will be sidestepped.

    3. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      My 'usual' is to just say "Alexa! Fart!"

      1. Mast1

        OK, perhaps I can now categorise the (minimum) mental age of the OP.

        My 8-year old lad mentioned doing this just last week, at a schoolfriend's house.

        Their 'sophistication' was to get Alexa to also vary the tone- quality of aforesaid item.

        1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

          I grow older ..... but I flat out refuse to grow up!

          1. Mast1

            Judging by the relative count of upvotes between you & me on this topic, I think I have to concede defeat. The average Reg commentard appears to prefer not to grow up.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              I think it's more a determination not to let one's sense of humour age.

              :)

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      ... guys missus was freaked out.

      Serves her right.

      Hope she remained freaked out for a long time.

      Why?

      For her being such an idiot and letting her 'guy' set up one of those absurd artifacts in the house.

      And the 'guy' being such an asshole and setting one up in the bedroom.

      Unbelievably moronic.

      Absolutely nothing about this Alexa crap is inocuous, in any way.

      .

    5. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

      Alexa may not, in reality, still be able to see you, but that internet-connected microphone is still listening and broadcasting everything it hears to servers outside of your house for analysis. That's a hard nope from me. Dressing it up as cutesy and helpful doesn't make it any less of a massive fucking privacy and security hole.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Yup. That's why a certain model of Sonos speakers will also never make it into my house.

        That said, it's not the only company gearing up for some seriously dodgy surveillance. If you ever make the mistake of enabling facial recognition in the Windows "Hello" function, you have just given Microsoft permission to leave the camera on all the time.

        You may want to rethink enabling that..

    6. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      That was well served. To have one of those things in a bedroom deserves a lesson about trusting Amazon...

      I hope she took the baseball bat to teach Alexa the lesson...

      1. jake Silver badge

        "To have one of those things in a bedroom deserves a lesson about trusting Amazon..."

        FTFY

  6. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "that took a lot of courage for Curt to confess"

    Yes, I do believe it did and I think that is a good sign.

    I hope that what he learned from this whole debacle is that you simply do not pick on women thinking it's funny.

    Curt was clearly an asshole. Maybe he grew up a bit after that.

    1. TheBruce

      Re: "that took a lot of courage for Curt to confess"

      My definition of asshole is someone who doesn't learn. Especially those who keep arguing I was only joking.

  7. werdsmith Silver badge

    Net Send

    Remember net send on DOS?

    That went wrong so many times.

    1. Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward Silver badge

      Re: Net Send

      And NET SEND on WinNT...

      In later versions of Windows it got quietly disabled due to spammers abusing it, especially if you connected NT4 to the WWW sans firewall...

    2. chivo243 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: Net Send

      I remember when the young students found NET SEND... and they didn't know the syntax to message only one person!

    3. TangoDelta72
      Thumb Up

      Re: Net Send - Useful sometimes, when not abused

      And yet, there were times when it was quite useful when not exploited for devious, um, exploits.

      Back in the mid 90s before a lot of [now] obvious security holes were plugged, I was working at a government facility supporting hundreds of international sites. Those sites were initially set up by our HQ team and remotely managed, but left the locals to perform basic IT operations and updates that had to be done on site (travel budget was good, but not THAT good). During one update instance, a particular site could not complete some thing or other, so they called for help. This was before VoIP and we had a robust VPN and everyone was on a 10-net, so calls could happen and we could still see what was online (or not).

      Being an international setup, sometimes things got lost in translation so despite an hour or so of talking and taking the non-IT locals through the motions, we still couldn't get a config file to set correctly. We had something like 211 out of 212 sites successfully updated, but this one was giving us a hard time. The host server's OS was up but the service in question was not and we could only get so far. The last part of this update was a pathname that had to be manually keyed in. I could hear what they were telling me on the phone: "this letter, this symbol, this number, etc...", and it sounded correct, but the problem persisted.

      This being the age when Win95 and NT4 still reigned supreme, I had the bright spark to send them *exactly* what should be keyed in. Mind you, we would have sent them an email, but the service in question which was down was in fact their email server. NET SEND to the rescue! I don't remember what it was, but something like a 1 to an I (capital i) or l (lowercase ell), or an O (capital o) to a 0 (zero) that was transposed. Remember: Win95 and NT4 chose its fonts poorly.

      When the NET SEND 10.0.212.2 "CAN YOU SEE THIS ON YOUR SERVER SCREEN? HELLO FROM HQ!" hit their server's screen, there was an almighty "Whoop!" heard over my phone. NET SEND's display uses a font that was UNICODE (or something along those lines. Ugly but completely obvious as to what ASCII char was displayed). So we commenced with the correct string that had been muffled from the beginning. Yay!

      This was one of the things I stumbled on just before this trouble call came in:

      Old school security from Gibson Research Corporation (anyone remember the proto-security site?): Shoot the Messenger

  8. PCScreenOnly

    Dave

    Back in the days of NetWare 3.11, I was in a computer room watching the screens and saw that the NetWare server started running a few commands, I also knew the only person who ran those types of commands was out resident programmer "Dave"

    Could not resist the " I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I cannot do that"

    Freaked him out as he didn't know I was in there

    Good simple laugh

  9. MiguelC Silver badge
    1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

      Re: Assumptions

      I love that .

      The perfect toon to show these asshats that on hearing the word "assumed" will immediately pipe up and jump in , regardless of the context of the assuming with this "Oh, Oh , well you know what assumption is the mother of ..."

      or the alt "when you assume you make an ass.. blah blah "

      1. Elongated Muskrat Silver badge

        Re: Assumptions

        "When you assume, you make an ass of you..."

        and then wait for them to reply with "...and me," to confirm what you already knew about people who use that phrase.

  10. Sir Sham Cad

    "Curt" The Regomiser strikes again!

    Top tip: "Is it Banter?" -> Is your colleague in tears (Y/N)? -> If Y, are they tears of laughter (Y/N) -> If N then you are an utter Curt and should probably have a word with HR.

    1. Yes Me Silver badge

      No banter please, we're British

      I cringe at the word "banter". The dictionary says "to speak to or address in a witty and teasing manner" but it's usually much darker than that when used in a phrase like "It was only harmless banter."

      1. Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch Silver badge

        Re: No banter please, we're British

        Er, I'm afraid I don't quite follow you, Squadron Leader.

      2. JulieM Silver badge

        Re: No banter please, we're British

        i am not sure I have ever heard the word "banter" in any context except attempted post-hoc justification for insensitive remarks that went too far.

        1. Terry 6 Silver badge

          Re: No banter please, we're British

          Precisely. "Banter" is normally preceded by "just". And as a defence. "It was..........."

          And is little more than victim blaming.

          Implicit with it is that the person who was insulted, hurt or threatened is just unable to take a joke. It's really just an excuse for racism and bullying.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: No banter please, we're British

            @Terry 6

            Dear God! You've somehow managed to extrapolate a whole lot from the usage of the word banter, haven't you.

            I didn't down vote you, but please don't jump to conclusions, possibly based on your own prejudices.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Net send...

    Many years ago, I remember being sat in the office when a pop up appeared on my PC with the message 'help'. Looking round the office, I saw lots of other confused faces looking around apart from one colleague with his head in his hands. Within seconds other colleagues from further away were rushing to our section to check up on the colleague. They had worked out where it had come from as the phone book included assigned PC names.

    It turned out he wanted to know how to use net send, so had entered the command 'net send help' which alas taught him a very different lesson.

    1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      Re: Net send...

      It's not often someone manages to extract an LOL from me. Well done Mr AC!

    2. imanidiot Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Net send...

      He learned real quick how to use net send. Or perhaps more explicitly how not to use it as the case may be.

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: Net send...

        permutations of help requests.

        man net send

  12. goodjudge

    Customised pop-ups

    My very first IT job ('97-8) was working with another person (Hi LN, if you're reading) to develop an Access database to capture staff overtime. We were young, dumb and sometimes bored, we thought it would be fun to have an intro screen that randomly said things like "I used to be a toaster", "what's 93.31242130 x 12329.22790 - there, how do you like it?" and an 'amusing' comment about the senior manager who was nominally in charge of the project - originally "[NAME] is fat" (which he was) but before the first public demo it became "... is fab".

    I cringe now at the fact we then demo'd this to management, then rolled it out, with these greetings still intact, and that we were even allowed to do so.

  13. GenericLeftieWhackjob

    Not a fan of Curt's behavior but he seems good enough to admit he went too far. "Go forth and sin no more."

    1. Jedit Silver badge
      Facepalm

      "Go forth and sin no more."

      I know that if I tried that at work HR would shortly be telling me to go forth, although what I did after that would no longer be their concern. I'm presuming that there was a great deal of grovelling done and Curt and Jill were friends with a good working relationship, or I expect he would have been doing likewise.

  14. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

    but ... how ?

    he would send messages through the Task Manager

    Whatnow? how would that work exactly ?

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: but ... how ?

      It depends on the operating system in question, but you could open the task manager, select a new process, and invoke something that will open a box on the screen with your message in it. I would suggest msg, which can send a message box to another logged in user, but that would say who it came from so it doesn't sound like what was used here.

  15. disgruntled yank Silver badge

    Oof

    Long ago on a government contract, I was experimenting with a command I remember as "send", to send a message to one, or, all terminal sessions. Somehow I got the PID mixed up, and sent the message "ES&D" not to a terminal under my control but to that of a government employee. The good news is that he was also a young man, and accepted my apology without making a fuss. (I was experimenting because the government-side management wished to send out an announcement urging the readers to report waste, fraud, and abuse. This message did not include the string "ES&D". And I suppose that after that I adopted "Hello, World" as my go-to test string.

    1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

      Re: Oof

      I did something related in the mid-80s. I was developing a message sending program, and for initial testing the command line parsing was just thrown together a fixed-length hex parser. Not even real hex, (line[n]-48)*16+line[n+1]-48

      So, there I was sending test messages to station 10.... when somebody at station 16 piped up "there's something wrong with my computer"... Ooops!

    2. Yes Me Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Oof

      Nothing wrong with Electricity Supply & Demand (ES&D), according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

  16. Marty McFly Silver badge
    Pint

    PCAnywhere

    Way back in the Windows 9x days I shared an office with the resident curmudgeon. A genuine two-finger typist on a good day. I took great fun adding the occasional character to his painfully entered sentences. Then when he went to correct the typos, the mouse cursor would jump one character over before the two fingers engaged.

    Hilarity!

    Yes, he was a good friend. And we got a good laugh out of it.

  17. MickeyLane

    Amateures

    Before Windows 11, there was Windows NT

    Before Windows NT, there was VMS

    Before VMS, there was RSX11-M

    Dave Cutler's fingerprints are found on all three of these systems. As far as I know, Cutler is still working for Microsoft.

    On RSX, terminal input (keyboard) and text output (console or cmd window) were two separate things.

    There was a utility program (CLI verb) called PIP that allowed one to assign inputs and outputs to user accounts.

    If Curt wanted to be a trouble maker, he could assign Jill's terminal input to, say, Susan and Susan's terminal input to Jill and leave the terminal outputs alone.

    Whatever Jill typed would show up on Susan's screen and execute whatever the command was under Susan's account and whatever Susan typed would go to Jill in a like manner.

  18. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Spelling

    imho there's a letter wrong in that name ( and it's not the C)

  19. sanmigueelbeer

    A senior colleague of mine was troubleshooting something on a core Catalyst 6000 (not a 6500, mind you -- It was that long ago) at a remote site.

    As a newbie, I decided to play a prank and issued a "send log" command with the following lines: This switch is about to crash. Kiss your a$$ good-bye."

    Within two minutes, my desk phone rang and it was my colleague. "Did you send that message?" he asked cheerfully. When I admitted it, there was a muffle (like he put his hand over the mouthpiece) but I could hear him say to someone, "He did."

    Next thing I know, our supervisor was on the phone to me and he started to holler, at the top of his voice & non-stop for the next 10 minutes.

    My supervisor let me sweat it over the weekend. Monday came and he quietly pulled me aside, "Don't you ever do that again. You nearly gave both of us a heart attack." He was, however, impressed because he never knew about this archaic command and we started using it (pre-mobile phone days) as a method to talk to each other when in places where we could not use a phone.

  20. Chairman of the Bored

    Optimize the regomization?

    I think I'd prefer "Richard". The moral of the story would become, "Don't be a dick."

  21. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    Suns had something similar

    But incoming remote messages always showed up on the main workstation login window when the local user was logged in by a physical x-terminal (ask your grandmother)

    So whatever her outgoing missives were sent to a remote boyfriend, his anatomically optimistic responses appeared on my screen

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    yes | wall

    Used to be fun on Linux systems.

  23. Sequin

    Two members of staff, one male and one female, were going away to a training course and the bloke had the job of arranging the travel and accommodation. H said to the lady that he'd book a double room and she said something like "Oh yeah". When they arrived at the hotel she found that he had indeed booked a double room! The excrement hit the air impeller very shortly afterwards and the bloke ended up being suspended and put on a final warning.

  24. JulieM Silver badge

    Credible Threat to Life and Limb

    How the hell did "Curt" not see recognise what he was doing as making a credible threat to life and limb?

    Are men not able to recognise such threats when they are aimed at themselves or something?

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