Posts by Evil Auditor

PC printer problems and enraged execs: When the answer to 'Hand over that floppy disk' is 'No'

Re: Ah IT 'managers'

IT manager? I thought those people end up in the audit department.

From unmovable boot screens to dead certs, neither are what you want to see in a hospital

I'd definitely go for the SATAn device.

'One rule for me, another for them' is all well and good until it sinks the entire company's ability to receive emails

I see! That's how it's done today. 'bout 15 years ago, some "boomers" attended an MS Excel training. They did get home work and exchanged it between students: printed the spreadsheet on paper and then faxed it each other.

Re: Good riddance

Know the skills of your staff and put them to good use. If someone is "useless" they probably are in the wrong position.

And there I was, a couple of days ago: running into an 19yo who did not have any clue what to do with a word (.docx) file she received via e-mail. Apparently, with today's youth it's all "cloud documents".

Microsoft's own operating system should finally start working on its own hardware ... 'in the coming weeks'

Re: Sums up Microsoft's quality control

Simple: market power. And, I have to admit, some of their products are not that bad, especially considering alternatives. But nowadays I can merely comment as a desktop user for my times as developer or sys admin are long gone.

Re: Sums up Microsoft's quality control

Really? Assuming that people buy their crap anyway, they don't need to hire anyone, being it tester, developer, analyst, engineer etc. That would only botch their bottom line.

Ooo, a mystery bit of script! Seems legit. Let's see what happens when we run it

Re: Last time my car stalled...

Should I plug the drive into my personal computer or a company server?

What a question?! Obviously, you plug it into the personal computer of that colleague of yours.

If Daddy doesn't want me to touch the buttons, why did they make them so colourful?

Re: But I didn't touch nuthin!

Usually I do not condone violence. But would happily make an exception there.

Re: But I didn't touch nuthin!

Should give an additional thumb up for [0]!

At least, one of my (internal) clients back then would happily confess that he did something and usually was able to point roughly in the right direction. This didn't help much to fix the issue since I would also thoroughly check if he borked something else as well which he wasn't aware of but it went a long way for having a very pleasant relationship with him.

Worse then kids: the type of client (PHB?) who believes they know lots in IT but in fact are clueless monsters of destruction. They will not leave with a "simple" disk crash but can inflict truly great system borkage. They happily make use of direct database access and cleverly manipulate some field deep down without any idea of its implication or consideration for consistency.

But what do I know - I left that life many moons ago and it _must_ have change for much better since.

Hey Mister Prime Minister ... Scott! Can you get off my lawn please, mate?

Same here: in a tram or train you might just as well bump into the countries president as into any other person. Then again, there is, afaik no history of assassinations and certainly far less exposure.

To your question, my best guess is because the people should be frightened of them? Considering what POTUS have been doing, rightly so (in differing degrees depending on who or where you are).

...US prez Donald Trump might well receive a flaming trash can...

Nope. For the landowner and anyone nearby would have been kicked off long before the Trump arrived.

Trump issues toothless exec order to show donors, fans he's doing something about those Twitter twerps

Re: So how long before ...

It is quite amazing: whenever you think it can't get worse, time and again the Tremendously Stable Genius proves that it can do "worster".

Now I start to wonder, when will the time be that the gun toting libertarians draw the conclusion: this is why we have the 2nd amendment, this is the tyranny our founding fathers feared. Well, it's not going to happen for the true tyranny is state-imposed health insurance etc. _/sarcasm

Boeing brings back the 737 Max but also lays off thousands

Our industry will come back, but it will take some years to return to what it was just two months ago.

For Boeing I hope they will not return to what they were two months ago. Then they would rather pull the plug right now. And from what I've learnt from a far distance, they should not only enhance product quality but also and especially production quality including their corporate culture.

Made-up murder claims, threats to kill Twitter, rants about NSA spying – anything but mention 100,000 US virus deaths, right, Mr President?

trump verb

1 Emit wind from the anus.

2 (trump around or about) Waste time on silly or trivial things.

You E-diot! Formula E driver booted off Audi team after getting video game ace to take his place in online race

Re: Integrity?

Like with like

The Car Of Choice For Cheaters

Record-breaking Aussie boffins send 44.2 terabits a second screaming down 75km of fiber from single chip

Re: Correction

You're young, aren't you?

Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes

Re: Funny that

That pretty much was one of the SOPs for unlocked and unattended computers. Others were rotating the screen or sending out invitations for after-work drinks or even the odd date. Thinking of it, I'll have to re-implement some in our office...

Easyjet hacked: 9 million people's data accessed plus 2,200 folks' credit card details grabbed

Re: Highly sophisticated

Erm, yes.

Thumb up for the xkcd reference. Or, maybe it wasn't: in one of my former lives our password policy explained how a "good" password should be constructed and also gave an example. As part of an access security audit we checked passwords. Young and naive I was rather surprised when finding how many users used that exact example as their password.

Re: Highly sophisticated

"That's funny: when you type your password in this comments section, it is transformed to ******** after submitting. Try yourself!"

scnr

Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?

Re: problems getting started

Shall I tell you how often I place a laptop the wrong way round on a table? I doesn't happen with the wedge-shaped ones. But with the bricks it happens nearly more often than not, exactly because of the logo.

_{anon because of shamewhatever, no one knows me here}

The Rise of The (Coffee) Machines: I need assistance. I think I'm running Windows. Send help

Re: we obviously also cannot trust what it might spit out when asked for "tea."

If you think France is bad - and I agree, it is - don't try e.g. Italy or even worse: Brazil. They might have tea on their menu. When you order it, the waiters' answers vary between "we ran out of tea" and a puzzled look like your an extraterrestrial.

also cannot trust what it might spit out when asked for "tea."

I have yet to come across such a vending machine that spits out anything resembling tea at all.

Incredible how you can steal data via Thunderbolt once you've taken the PC apart, attached a flash programmer, rewritten the firmware...

Re: more of a neat trick than infosec Armageddon

....stolen, yet encrypted, laptop?

Shutting down the laptop would effectively prevent this attack.

'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up

While reading I suspected something differently, but that must be me being biased with prior experience of less well managed environments: a newfangled machine starting its life in development or test and then miraculously being repurposed to production - obviously without ever being re-staged/moved/re-labelled as such.

_{Yes, I fscked this up myself on a small scale, not worthy of such a column. And saw it from save distance on a larger scale, too.}

Looking for a new IT gig? Here are vacancies around the world for developers, cloud engineers, infosec analysts, Jira admin, and more

Re: The "icon"applies to the article, and not to this comment.

I believe you should get some fresh air and sun.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

Re: Calling Isaac Newton...

I fully agree on Malta, and any other country. If they handed control of such a laser array over to me, I wouldn't see any issue though. I think I just solved one of their problems.

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

Re: sleepwalking?

Good I work from home! Otherwise colleagues might have wondered why I had this hysteric fit of laughter.

_{Pity I can't up-vote you more than once}

India makes contact-tracing app compulsory in viral hot zones despite most local phones not being smart

Re: so what *is* the solution?

Thank you for pointing out its historic context. This does, however, not invalidate nowadays usual meaning. Which in my understanding is not even its opposite if you consider the quote in regard to a "ruling party", whether it's the Penns or the state.

Re: Fool proof!

Foolproof: proof to be a fool.

Watch now the three UFO videos uncovered by Blink-182 star – and today officially released by the Pentagon

Well, I have an actual background of quite an impressive cityscape. That doesn't make me an architect nor an urban planner though.

And this is the moment when I realise that the comments by amanfromMars are, in fact, rather meaningful and sensible.

Microsoft decrees that all high-school IT teachers were wrong: Double spaces now flagged as typos in Word

Re: Not enough

Exactly. And once every day you shall step outside your front door and applaud the spell checker.

SAP decides one head is better than two in a crisis, parts ways with co-CEO Jennifer Morgan

Re: It is simpler than that

That was my first thought as well. ...requires companies to take swift, determined action which is best supported by a male CEO. Here, fixed that for you, SAP.

As much as I disagree with this, time and again I encounter this exact same bias against women/for men.

Facebook sort-of blocks anti-quarantine events – how many folks are actually behind these 'massive' protests online?

Re: Big rant, lots of capital letters...

I'd say: let them have their freedom and liberty!

Don't get me wrong, I think the limitations of some of our fundamental rights is not something to be taken lightly and should indeed be critically questioned. After all, there has to be some balancing of conflicting goals and e.g., a total shutdown with the whole population forcefully quarantined without exception isn't, in my opinion, an acceptable answer either (i.e. under current circumstances).

Coming back to our "libertarians". Let them rant, let them demonstrate, let them meet! Not online, but rather in real life, in person. Let them spread viruses amongst themselves. And let evolution do the rest.

I do have some doubts that this actually works, but one can at least hope... Or as an American friend of mine recently said: then there will be less Trump-voters.

Lockdown endgame? There won't be one until the West figures out its approach to contact-tracing apps

Re auto-correct, lucky you! Mine is trimmed to change "a" into "ae" for the platform ending with ...book.

@KCIN

Would you mind to provide reliable sources for your statement?

Looking for a tech job? Have a browse – there are plenty of roles in our biggest listing yet

Kudos to El Reg for providing the job listing. And for illustrating the listing with female people - it may not be representative but I know that I'm not the only one struggling to create a more diverse team with a great lack of applications from women for tech-related jobs.

This hurts a ton-80: British darts champ knocked out of home tourney by lousy internet connection

Re: here's something to do :

That may or may not be the case. But if so, Gordon the Gopher will never be cold because the broom cupboard surely is the place where the servers live. (And if it gets too hot in there the Dyson is used to suck the hot air out.)

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

Re: Proper lash up

Still better to name something "new" which at least is relative. When I joined the company in 2007 we had an ongoing (far from finished and later to be aborted) project for the replacement of the core system called Sys2005 for its intended go-live date in that year.

Antarctic science put on ice by coronavirus – next summer's expeditions restricted to essentials and robots

Re: TP

It's a trap. Don't fall for it. It's the antipodean and modern version of naming Greenland.

Re: Antarctic stations have “tonnes” of toilet paper

There were the great prophets imagining that our post-apocalyptic struggle will be about fuel, medication or food. Little did they know that it will enter the electronic* history books as the Bog Roll War.

_{*obviously electronic since all paper will be traded as bottom wipes.}

From Amanda Holden to petrol-filled water guns: It has been a weird week for 5G

Re: conspiracy

All these conspiracy posts are part of a government plot to track down and identify idiots.

What an encouraging thought! But do you seriously trust the government to draft and execute such an elaborate plot?

Boeing 787s must be turned off and on every 51 days to prevent 'misleading data' being shown to pilots

Re: Millisecond roll-over?

"...we don't really understand binary and stuff. So, at 49.7 days it may or may not be, but at 51 days it surely is fscked and needs a reboot."

How many days of carefree wiping do you have left before life starts to look genuinely apocalyptic? Let's find out

Covidiots: they may lose their jobs in the current crisis. But surely they lay ground for opening a toilet paper dealership.

I keep my reserves as low as ever. Some years ago I had a discussion with a mild form of prepper. He truly couldn't understand why I didn't have a stockpile of tinned food and other essential supplies. Getting bored of the discussion I simply replied: I don't need to. I know where you live.

Marriott Hotels hacked AGAIN: Two compromised employee logins abused to siphon off 5.2m guests' personal info

Re: Scratch Marriott off the list

there are some chains I want to avoid

Yes, all of them. That is, at least the large, international chains. I did a lot of travelling in the past, both for business and leisure, and have had much better experiences staying off those chains. Of course, there are the odd ones like one which is marketing itself as business hotel and you won't even find a table to work on in any room.