Posts by Robert Carnegie

Security boss thought MFA would be too much security

Re: CYA

Some phone apps may prevent the phone from locking - I use an iPhone grocery shopping list called "Out of Milk" - but you probably can't just install whatever on your work phone?

Apprentice developer defied orders – then got a job supporting her weird code

Re: Have you left behind a mess you ended up having to clean up yourself?

That's where you put program code to fix a problem that you think it's impossible to have...

Like finding an even prime number, or a year longer than 365 days...

(These aren't actual examples. I'm not going to reveal the actual examples.)

Sysadmin broke hardware worth more than he made in a month – and lied his way out of the mess

This could be the wrong solution but you might want only to have one of those expensive devices being carried in your car at one time. Like members of the Government or the Royal Family, if not for exactly the same reasons.

And they still have to make the journey, and all to the same place - and with you driving. And if something happens to the car - you'll be worried about yourself first, and the expensive electronic passenger or passengers, as a second thought.

I suppose that one driver and four footwells adds up to three reasonably safe places to put your passengers...

Re: Stiction [was Sticky Bits]

Hmm, it depends how long you kept using... CP/M? I have a rough sense that auto-parking hard disks appeared later than the 1980s, for consumer or office electronics anyway?

Or you were lucky - if any data was erased or disk damaged, it was somewhere that you didn't notice it?

Re: The hard drive hammers and soda

This didn't change your colleague's mind about the open case thing??

At least you had backup tapes......?

This is your BIOS speaking. Please fix me. Your PC is broken

One of us is confused. Of course, a green light doesn't mean that it is safe to drive ahead or to turn - that depends on actual vehicles. A red or amber light means that driving through, even if safe, is illegal.

I'm confident that most crossroads where, say, northbound traffic is stopped, while southbound traffic may proceed, have a green right-turn filter arrow (as we drive on the left) for southbound traffic, when that turn direction exists. This includes both junctions where north and south traffic simply take turns, and also when there's two-way traffic at first with no filter arrow lit, then the north traffic is stopped and the south traffic gets a right-turn filter. And when there are two lanes southbound, then a right-turn lane may have a red light while northbound traffic is allowed, or alternatively you can just take your chance.

The online Highway Code and, I suspect, online copies of legislation seem to be not exhaustive in showing all the variations of signs and signals that you may see, but any left out probably are considered to have only one reasonable interpretation, at least if you can read English (or Welsh or Gaelic). I also don't see when a red light and a green right arrow are going to appear unless for a reason other than necessity - such as deliberately limiting traffic - but that's how the Code has decided to show a filter arrow example under "Light signals controlling traffic".

its description says - "A GREEN ARROW may be provided in addition to the full green signal if movement in a certain direction is allowed before or after the full green phase. If the way is clear you may go but only in the direction shown by the arrow. You may do this whatever other lights may be showing. White light signals may be provided for trams." I assume that only tram drivers need to know about those. The instruction for Welsh drivers probably is, "I am out of the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated." :-) iykyk

Chinese e-tailer claimed 14-inch box stretched the size of a 9-inch tablet

My Surface Tablet charger broke, basically as described - the wires broke at the plug. I therefore continued to use it with a USB-C charger in its USB port. It's academic now, as it also wouldn't take Windows 11, so it's out of support - oh, and the screen is cracked. I think I saw on Amazon a third-party accessory which is the Surface magnetic charger connector to fit on the end of a USB-C cord. That does have the benefit of letting you use the USB port for peripherals.

Consultant mistakenly deleted a ton of data – but reported it as a bug

Re: Scripts that remove files...

Like for instance, rm / tmp

(Don't!)

Russian oligarch's financial network crashed thanks to a crank and a cleaner

Re: Being Pedantic

Just so I've got this straight, are we one floor up from the foyer? So that the chandelier dropping gear-work is built into the floor - the computer network cables also are in under-floor space - and the gears, or the winding handle, ate up the cables? Thank you.

On-call techie decided job was done and hit the bottle – just before his pager went off

Re: Crash of a different sort

Does anyone make a printer to military standard that fights back?

Re: Words that strike terror in the heart of anyone oncall

(PPOE = Previous place of employment?)

Backup script ingested an accidental asterisk and deleted everything

It's at the top of each news page now. (But not this one.)

Datacenter - Security - Microsoft - AWS - Developer - Open Source - IT Careers - Columnists - Who, Me? - On Call

Custom PC worked in the lab, failed on site – and so did the angry client

As we recently discussed, [e-mail] and [e-mail] are treated as the same identity by Google, for instance, but they may not be at The Register.

Hope your holiday was horrid: You botched the last thing you did before leaving

Re: name? DHCP? I can go lower than that

A reference to the British television comedy "Only Fools and Horses" ( - Work), in which Derek Trotter and his brother Rodney are usually involved in trying to make money by buying and then selling various products with profound design or implementation flaws.

Lab worker built a fake PC to nuke his lunch

Re: What am I missing?

I think the microwave oven was posing as a CRT display, or possibly an LCD and a system unit, but it depended on not being looked at closely. The manager would go, "That over there is a computer screen, it is one of my headcount doing their work, or not doing it since no one is there, but it's nothing to do with me right now. I'll just keep Managing By Walking Around."

Tech support chap's boss got him out of jail so he could finish a job

Re: I need a work permit for a weekend visit?

...I think I wrote that badly. These are "services" where you don't need the service - where you can apply for your visa or refund or whatever, by yourself, quite easily. Or the "entrepreneur" will do it on your behalf, but will charge you for their "service". This was just on "Moneybox" yet again.

Re: I need a work permit for a weekend visit?

There's a regular shady business of companies that make their money by "helping" you to apply for official documents, for refunds of illegal financial fees, etc. that you don't need. Since they do do what they promise, their charge often is "legal" - although you didn't need them at all, you could just use Google. Though a catch is, those companies also tend to show up in advertisements at the top of Google. Or they used to, anyway.

And not actually using the service that you clicked on may not excuse you from paying. It's a contract.

This is on BBC Radio's "Moneybox" personal finance news magazine show, very often.

Not pointing fingers or making specific accusation, but I just typed (car finance refund) into Google - it's a thing in Britain just now - and I got "Sponsored results" from four companies, one of which has one of those little menus, "Check your legibility", "Now to Blame", "Slick and Greasy Legality Check".

Don't quote me, but I think you can expect to do this by yourself and free, too.

Martin Lewis may help you, but make very sure that it's the right Martin Lewis. He has been getting very angry about a legion of fake Martin Lewises out there, who are up to no good.

Support tech caught by 'Technician Aura': the bug that only hides when you're watching

Re: Airplane mode

Oh yes, that works! ...Is it supposed to? ;-)

Re: Sometimes a little human engineering is the key

Oh, that old trick ("The Odyssey" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outis )

I don't know if you can disable or divert incoming calls on the phone.

Wanting to use Bluetooth is a complication, but you could still use some kind of "Faraday cage" arrangement. When I needed a phone case for a 2G candy bar, I tried using a metal spectacles case. I didn't get any calls, and my battery ran down, so I think the case was blocking radio signals, and my phone and the network were going crazy trying to talk to each other.

Perhaps you could lay the Bluetooth phone either inside or under a metal biscuit tin or cooking pan - in such a way that the phone can't "see" the outside world of phone signals, but it can "see" the Bluetooth soundbar, either directly above it, or directly below.

User found the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave

Re: Explains how he managed to bankrupt six casinos over an 18-year period? Nope.

Is that from Ian Fleming's "The Importance of Being Earnest"?

But no, it's in Fleming's "Goldfinger", spoken by Auric Goldfinger.

'Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." '

That old phone in the kitchen drawer could save an industry

Re: Market for devices past firmware EOL date?

In the past, I've seen out-of-support Apple phones and tablets on scale in CEX shops, very very cheap.

I would not try to use them "safely", as some hacks have been as basic as sending a malformed text message to a phone. But I think that that particular mean trick has been blocked on phone networks. Or you could keep the device offline for most of the time, and just occasionally go onto wi-fi and download apps - until support for that was removed as well.

Firefox maker torches Google for building Prompt API into browser

Re: What could possibly …

I think I saw an advert, and I think it was for Google Android phones, where one of your friends texts you to ask where/when your restaurant booking is tonight, and the phone texts back that information without intervention by you - because the phone knows. This seemed to me like something that you don't want a phone to do on its own.

Decades-old Linux UI bug fixed by dev younger than the window manager

Re: But don't rush to call it finished just to say so

I think there have been a few artists like that. Leonardo da Vinci had a lot of unfinished projects, but I don't know if he gave them to patrons anyway and then came back to do a bit more on them.

Microsoft opens door to the past by releasing 86-DOS and PC-DOS 1.00

You forgot Chromebooks, but maybe that's not what you had in mind anyway. Something in between consumer Linux, or a browser with a keyboard and mouse plugged in. I don't know them well. And there's Android tablets... I think? Or you can get something like a Raspberry Pi, with a reasonable chance to plug into a modern TV as a monitor, just like the old days. Though a modern TV has its own complicated if not compliant OS, as well.

PowerPoint punishment sent users into an infinite loop after lunch

I don't see the connection, but if you're proposing to send your logs or other data files to a public web site... maybe don't do that.

I have used a "hexadecimal and text file conversion" web site - very carefully - which apparently stored my file and identified it by something like a CRC signature or a simple byte checksum. Probably the latter - I think if I sent it a second file with the same checksum as the first file, I was shown the hexadecimal data of the first file, instead. And I assume it would show my data to you, as well. Perhaps it still will.

Re: BSOD of joy

That is just sabotaging co-workers and sabotaging the company... assuming that the process you're sabotaging is the victim's work and not something else they're doing. You are what you're being paid to prevent.

To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane

If the kit is NOT supported and up to date on patches etc., then announcing that here may be best to avoid.

'Invisible mouse' made a mess of PC rebuild

I'm having trouble following the story... let's see if I've got it: the new mouse is on the desk, but isn't working; the old mouse lead is being plugged and unplugged uselessly; the plug for the new mouse is what is hidden under the PC's casing - or under the separated lid of the case?

IT manager approved downtime over lunch, but made a meal of it

RAID mirroring does mean that the next time a disk drive pops like a lightbulb, the server keeps running. That's better than being back up and running tomorrow. Of course, you do have to act promptly when you're running on one drive, because of the failure, instead of two. Or else, pop, you're down to none.

Researchers didn’t want to glamorize cybercrims. So they roasted them

is it bad that I wasn't aware that deontology is a word? As a gloss, it refers to a Kantian determination of right and wrong behaviour where judgement doesn't only depend on consequences.

A recently repeated episode of Alfie Moore's radio show of "It's a Fair Cop", about police officers' daily cases, considered a teenager arrested a short distance from what evidently was the locked bicycle that he had tried to steal, although he had not succeeded in stealing it. Several audience members, but I don't know what proportion, gave a view that since he'd failed to commit a crime, he had done no wrong. To jump to the end of the story, the police and the court did not agree.

Re: Hollywood was long glamorized them

I think you may be mistaken about movie audience members identifying with the criminal hacker who does not "get the hot girls". I think the general population thinks that the hot girls are making the correct decision.

And it's irrelevant anyway, because the hot women available to criminals are liable to be bought and paid for. Or perhaps I should say, rented and paid for. It's a significant difference, but either way, the criminal hacker that we're presuming to be male would either buy female company, or their criminal employer would arrange it. For comic relief, the hacker might be shown as unaware that it's a business arrangement.

The developer who came in from the cold and melted a mainframe

Re: HVAC settings

Do penguins like snow, though? You never seem them flying in it. :-)

Re: Always rather it too cold than too hot

Tricky to investigate, but your clean room new hires (if not in the storeroom instead) may have misunderstood what clothes can and can't be worn inside the clean room worker suit.

There's a slightly tall tale of a traditionally minded Church of England priest, "High Church" with full church robing, who invited a much more liberal pastor to co-host a church service. Then the host asked his guest about the experience, and was told that the guest appreciated being able to put his trousers back on afterwards... which, in fact, he wasn't really meant to take off.

Re: Always rather it too cold than too hot

It's probably hormones, which have a complex relationship to gender and sex these days.

I could ask someone who may know more, but I'm inclined not to.

But it's commonplace that menopause makes your personal thermostat misbehave - then again, I think I remember a Victoria Wood character played by Julie Walters who found that her dog had somehow changed the HVAC setting, it wasn't hormones at all.

Security contractor blew the whistle on support crew's viral indifference

Re: Lazy by design.

Perhaps if one rule was set aside for a high workload, then the other was meant to be still applied. Unless it was set aside as well.

Junior disobeyed orders and tried untested feature during a live robot demo

Re: The junior kept his job.

Lydia had just finished speaking when this happened. That isn't "later".

Re: Bah!

A large robot "Powerless And Fell Over" is probably noisy.

Re: Junior was more than lucky to survive.

Tell the ED-209 robot that the employee is fired. IYKYK

Re: Makes sense

You're really not helping.

Re: the one thing it isn't

If you want what to did to be a warning to others, instead of keeping him employed it's cheaper to get a photograph of him and lose the employee.

With creative presentation you can make it look like he died.

Re: Short cuts make long delays, but at least nothing shorted out

Maybe junior has a good trade union. And now also a broom. Still employed, still paid, not going to TOUCH the important stuff any more.

Gmail celebrates 22 years by finally letting users change their addresses

Re: gmail names not unique

I thought that at one time, it was that dottable.name and dottablename were two accounts, they were separate, but if only dottable.name exists then it receives dottablename's e-mail.

But it's described as you say at https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en-GB

(applying to gmail.com domain only - dots are meaningful if you're using GMail at name-of-school.edu for instance.)

And probably was risky if it ever was done the way that I thought.

Brilliant backups that kept data alive for ages landed web developer in big trouble

It says DNS, but it could be the in-office "hosts" file. A minimal office configuration would not have an internal DNS. And I think that all "hosts" have to be hard-coded?

I also suspect that the web site is on an external hosting service. The old and new sites perhaps are on different hosting services. That could make it difficult to "suspend" the old site. And you might want to have it online either quickly or continually anyway, as reference or as backup - at least after a migration to a new site, you may want to be able to drop back to the old one in a hurry.

Or the web server could be owned by Neil or by Gerald, but in either of those cases, I'd expect the new server for Gerald's web site to be given the IP address of the old server, with the actual old server moved to a different address. And in that case, using the old IP address would get you to the new server.

While you're here, could you go out of your way to do an impossible job?

Re: "Security" bags

A limited set of people do photography from space, though.

Blustering Blackbeard's PC was all at sea, sysadmin got him shipshape in seconds

The inventor of the blue LED has a lot to answer for. :-)

Yes, it's clever and it's useful. Yes, low-wattage lighting would look weird without it. But nevertheless...

Work experience kids messed with manager's PC to send him to Ctrl-Alt-Del hell

Re: cabbages

Their joke. And a bit of a challenge for Paul Merton, team captain of a team of two, the actual tub of lard being the other team member.

In Windows you probably can hold down Alt and type 62 on the number pad - the "ANSI" (code page 1252?) code of symbol >. Or, get a new keyboard. Or maybe pull out a key that you don't use - I'm beginning to doubt the story is strictly true.

US state laws push age checks into the operating system

Re: Stay Chill?

I don't know about fridges, but a television capable of "general" computing - I'd say basically if it has a web browser then anything can be run in the browser - they'd make every TV run in "parental control" mode until you input a PIN.

Parental controls already exist anyway, and I can see parents approving that a TV can't be used at all without an authorised login, either for the parent or for a child. I expect you can limit TV time in hours and minutes, as well. Actually, we have that at work.