* Posts by Great Southern Land

51 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Feb 2011

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AI chatbot startup founder, lawyer wife accused of ripping off investors in $60M fraud

Great Southern Land

>Lau earned the obstruction charge by allegedly deleting files related to her work with the San Francisco-based GameOn from her employer's records while a grand jury was investigating the matter.

Why weren't her files copied as part of the investigation, prior to referral to a Grand Jury? The article implies that the files were deleted AFTER the Grand Jury commenced.

While I'm not promoting deliberate deletion of records, this smells of entrapment.

Tech support warrior left cosplay battle and Trekked to the office

Great Southern Land

Re: What's the weirdest outfit you've worn to a tech support job?

>I believe the term used in that situation is "meat crayon".

Or, "Organ Donor"

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

Great Southern Land

Re: This is why ergonomics matters

And that's why boxes should have the barcode printed on all 6 surfaces. That way, no matter which way the box is facing, there will always be a visible barcode.

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

Great Southern Land

Re: Can't recall the mechanism

The Australian Taxation Office used to operate this way as well.

However, after a number of high-profile windups where the employees and small businesses got nothing, the law was changed.

Now, directors of a company can be held personally liable for PAYE, GST and employee Superannuation debts.

Gets the attention of "silent" directors real fast.

Great Southern Land

Re: "making them wait was jeopardizing the very existence of their business"

>It seems that "insufficient funds" bank stamps can be grounds for defamation proceedings if made public)

In Australia at least, the banks marked such cheques as "Refer to Drawer" to avoid such issues.

Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws

Great Southern Land

It's not that simple

Japanese employers who choose to do this might want to take a closer look at their labour laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_dismissal

There is no honor among RAM thieves – but sometimes there is karma

Great Southern Land

Re: RAM raid

This means WAR!

Great Southern Land

Re: Sad they have to do that

Both my parents were High School teachers. It was very common for them to bring work home to mark in the evenings or over the weekends.

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

Great Southern Land

Re: BOFHess?

>>Bastard Operator from Hell-ess?

Surely it would be Bastard Operatrix from Hell?

Great Southern Land

>Not even a full day passed between the call asking if I still had a copy and the lawyers sending me a nasty-gram via FedEx.

If that was me, that would be the end of my cooperation with them. Sending the lawyers in that quickly is bullying behaviour. From that point onwards, they can deal with my lawyers.

Microsoft Research chief scientist has no issue with Windows Recall

Great Southern Land

Re: In other news

Along with every Corporate and Government Internal Investigations Team.

How Apple Wi-Fi Positioning System can be abused to track people around the globe

Great Southern Land

Re: Burner Anyone?

>pretty soon, all that is missing is your inside leg measurement

And they'll get that from matching your credit/debit card to the store records.

Get your staff's consent before you monitor them, tech inquiry warns

Great Southern Land

Re: "and freed them up to focus on more sophisticated tasks beyond the scope of automation"

Why bother with the bottle?

Just plug the catheter into a socket at the desk.

The Matrix is one step closer!

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

Great Southern Land

Re: Likewise ...

And even hospitals have zero-tolerance for abusive behaviour.

Great Southern Land

Re: Working for Untrustworthy Companies

Not to mention stealing from the Government.

In Australia, directors of companies that fail to pay PAYE and Superannuation on time, and fail to do anything about it in a timely manner, can be held personally liable for the unpaid amounts.

A million Australian pubgoers wake up to find personal info listed on leak site

Great Southern Land

Re: They were warned....

.... And thus they've had 13 years to do something about it, and haven't.

Great Southern Land

They were warned....

As shown by this Australian Information Commissioner Privacy Case in 2011....

https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/AICmrCN/2011/2.html?context=1;query=registered%20club;mask_path=au/cases/cth/AICmrCN

The complainant alleged that a registered club interfered with their privacy by scanning their driver licence and, in doing so, recording unnecessary information. The complainant conceded that the club was required to collect their name, address and signature. However, the complainant considered the collection of the other information on the licence, including their date of birth, driver’s licence number, driver’s licence type and photograph to be unnecessary.

The complainant also raised concerns that the registered club ’s notice and security procedures were insufficient.

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

Great Southern Land

Re: "speach"

>Wasps? Meh. Wasps are just angry bees.

With magazine weapons rather than the single shot weapon that bees have.

Telco CEO quits after admitting she needs to carry rivals' SIM cards to stay in touch

Great Southern Land

Re: Gladys Berejiklian

One of the smaller states by Area, one of the largest by Population

How to get a computer get stuck in a lift? Ask an 'illegal engineer'

Great Southern Land

Re: Getting stuck in a lift is no fun

Either that, or they'll just use the Universal Master Key that opens any door..... An Axe (As told to me by a building manager in Newcastle NSW)

Typo watch: 'Millions of emails' for US military sent to .ml addresses in error

Great Southern Land

Another solution....

Another solution would be for the US military to change from .mil addresses to .mil.us

Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget

Great Southern Land

And let's not forget the home-made power boards some of these bands used. Plenty of potential for disaster there.

Pager hack faxed things up properly, again, and again, and again

Great Southern Land

Re: Ahhh Pagers

>>> Ahhh Pagers

>>> Do you still get these in this day and age?

Yes, the NSW State Emergency Services and NSW Rural Fire Service (both volunteer organisations) use them for callouts. They use a separate network to the phones and SMS and hence are seen as being slightly more reliable. We also get the callout messages on SMS.

IT phone home: How to run up a $20K bill in two days and get away with it by blaming Cisco

Great Southern Land

Re: Happened to me

This guy would sympathise.....

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/04/us/twinsburg-55000-mail-post-office-trnd/index.html

Student requested access to research data. And waited. And waited. And then hacked to get root

Great Southern Land

Re: Not caught either...

Or between common sense and paranoia/distrust of staff

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Great Southern Land

Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence

Or Australia.

Microsoft is checking everyone's bags for unsupported Office installs

Great Southern Land

Re: Death to subscriptions

I'd be more inclined to borrow the BOFH's cattle prod......

Brocade wrongly sacked award-winning salesman who depended on company insurance for cancer treatment

Great Southern Land

Re: Intrigued

Sounds like the class system in UK medicine, as described in the Richard Gordon novels, is alive and well.

Great Southern Land

Re: A timely reminder

And at the other end of the spectrum....

I was visiting my father in a Sydney ICU, and developed a screaming headache. The nursing staff simply asked some questions, presumably to ensure nothing serious was going on, and handed over 2 paracetamol tabs and water, no charge.

Anyone want to guess how much of the $54.75 went to the Candystriper (who are untrained volunteers BTW)?

Meet the merry pranksters who keep the workplace interesting, if not productive

Great Southern Land

Re: Going BOFH on a spammer.

I see great things in your future. Join us on the Dark Side.

Great Southern Land

Re: Going BOFH on a spammer.

And In Australia, can also be held personally liable for outstanding tax debts.

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

Great Southern Land

Not unusual in any Civil Service department, and not just in the UK......

Great Southern Land

Re: But I DO want to know!

Hamster Dance in one ear, Crazy Frog in the other...... or would that be a breach of international conventions against torture?

Driver in Uber's self-driving car death goes on trial, says she feels 'betrayed'

Great Southern Land

Re: the crux of it all.

Vigilance controls along the lines of those used in Railway locos would do the job.

This is the military – you can't just delete your history like you're 15

Great Southern Land

No it isn't. It still involves being able to perform both functions and thus there remains the potential for fraud. It is far safer for you the worker and the organisation if you have access to raise credits, or to issue refunds, but not both at the same time.

Great Southern Land

Re: Written reports on pron.

Which is why you don't undertake such investigations without written authority, preferably from the Heads of IT and HR.

Logging and monitoring can be a form of bullying, and make for lousy infosec

Great Southern Land

There's a difference.....

.... Between Monitoring and Surveliiance.

I used to work for a Government Department, where unauthorised access to client records was punishable by dismissal, if you were lucky, and criminal prosecution if you were not. It was well known that the department was logging all access to client records, and this was enough for the majority of the 20,000+ staff to do the right thing. This is MONITORING.

SURVEILLANCE (and potentially BULLYING) is when the system reports how often your computer is idle, how often the screen is locked, how many phone calls you made or answered today, how many forms you processed, etc..... and when the results of the report are used to justify disciplinary action against the worker. The worker usually has no access to the report data, won't necessarily remember a day's work 1-2 weeks ago, and if he/she is called in to the manager's office, the onus is usually on the worker to explain the discrepancies, not the manager/organisation. It cannot be assumed that poor results on their own mean a poor worker, but all too often that's what management assumes.

Your app deleted all my files. And my wallpaper too!

Great Southern Land

Re: Concepts are hard to understand

No, you're not the only one who thinks it's a problem.

My experience with a Government network shows that people save their files to the desktop because that's the default setting and they don't realise it until it's too late. Luckily, the desktop usually pointed to a folder on their network storage, not the C:\ equivalent.

But it's not just the "My......" folders that are crazy. Anyone ever gone looking for something in the AppData folders? Why the hell does Microsoft need multiple levels of folders here?

Another bugbear I have is OneDrive. Windows decided one day that it had the right to move everything in the \Users\XXXXX\My Documents folder from the local hard disk to OneDrive without my knowledge or permission. (Technically illegal under Australian legislation)

My answer was to partition the hard disk and create a separate drive for files. It may be a slight pain always having to select F: drive to get at them, but it's less hassle in the long run.

We know it's hard to get your kicks at work – just do it away from a wall switch powering anything important

Great Southern Land

Re: Why have the switch ?

That'd be worse than the dreaded Lego brick hiding in the carpet for the unwary bare foot......

IBM manager had to make one person redundant from choice of two, still bungled it and got firm done for unfair dismissal

Great Southern Land

Evil Mr Catbert is alive and well!!!

Only 'natural persons' can be recognized as patent inventors, not AI systems, US judge rules

Great Southern Land

Re: The judge is right and Australia is stupid

Keep in mind that Australian Law differs from US law. Judges in one country are NOT bound by decisions made in the other country, although they may be guided in their own decision making by decisions in other countries. Australian law is not enforceable in the US and vice-versa.

Thus a decision made in Australia that conflicts with US law or legal precedent is not necessarily wrong, or "stupid". US law cannot be used to override such a decision.

Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, professor warns

Great Southern Land

Re: So Apple have solved the problem of what to do with that pile of cash?

There is another issue that noone seems to have commented on yet. Who will be paying for the data used to send this info to/from your phone? Guess what..... YOU will be.

Architect of tech contractor tax fraud scheme jailed for at least five years

Great Southern Land

Wrong Tax Man

It's not HRMC copping the flack - it's the Australian equivalent (Australian Taxation Office, or ATO).

Watch out, everyone, here come the Coronavirus Cops, enjoying their little slice of power way too much

Great Southern Land

Go to Jail, Do not Pass Go......

I'm amused at the thought of jailing such people. Have the authorities really considered the consequences. It would only take one infected person in a prison and the virus would go through the prison population like a dose of laxatives, How do you enforce social distancing in a prison?

Hold horror stories: Chief, we've got a f*cking idiot on line 1. Oh, you heard all that

Great Southern Land

Re: Oooops, dropped

The trick is to hang up while YOU are talking, not while the client is talking, assuming of course that you are able to get a word in.

Galaxy Note 7 flameout: 2 in 5 Samsung fans say they'll never buy from the Korean giant again

Great Southern Land

Tip of the Iceberg?

In Australia, we've had problems with Samsung washing machines catching fire as well

How's this for irony? US Navy hit with $600m software piracy claim

Great Southern Land

History repeats itself

They should have done their research before selling software to the US Government. Anyone remember the INSLAW affair? Another example of the US Govt stealing software it liked

NBN Co loses the “Co” for AU$700,000

Great Southern Land

Someone didn't do their research - or else they forgot about another entity that trades as NBN and is well established in the Newcastle area! (NBN Television)

Oz sawbones extract fork from old boy's todger: Gents, start your wincing

Great Southern Land

Re: Nothing like variety!

You're probably thinking of "The Throwback", also by Tom Sharpe. A character in that found himself rolling on a condom that had been greased on the inside with caustic oven cleaner. The police found him using a cheese grater in an attempt to get the swelling to go down.

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