Posts by GlenP 1093 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Apr 2012
We've had plenty of those, down to one that had actually registered a very similar domain name. I'm fairly certain the data is being scraped from LinkedIn for at least some of them, if you can find "MD of XYZ Ltd." and "Accountant at XYZ Ltd." it's not that difficult to craft a suitable message.
We have taken internal security steps however.
Big red kill button, box of paper on floor, operator bends down* to pick up paper and nuts kill switch.
*If he'd had manual handling training of course this wouldn't have happened!
I have also had a Unix server where the power button and CD Drive eject were very close together, that one got a card flap over the power button.
...about the first one.
I can recall dismantling a keyboard and scrubbing, literally, the PCB under the tap after a user spilt a sticky orange drink (probably Fanta) on it. Given that a decent keyboard could be over £100 in those days it was worth doing.
The keyboard did recover and continue working, and it probably avoided an embarrassing conversation for the user with his boss.
Sadly the users today are no better, I've had to write off a laptop recently due to Coke (the Cola variety) damage,
Working with both Apricot (remember them?) and IBM compatibles was confusing as the former didn't reserve A: and B: as FD drives, so typically the main HD was A:.
I shall admit to occasionally starting to format the HD on customer's machines! Fortunately I'd always notice quite quickly and kept a copy of Norton DiskDoctor handy for Undelete.
With one system we stopped using Y to continue as the users would never actually read the messages, sometimes resulting in data loss.
We started using a random character generator instead, with second character confirmations for more "dangerous" tasks, so, for example:
"Do you wish to erase all data? Press L to continue"
"Do you really wish to erase all data? Press T to confirm"
It worked.
Glen
As with many above they were also my first ISP proper, having previously been on Prestel*. As I was living at Parents' at the time I did most of my browsing late at night to avoid tying up the phone line (and hoped the "ding" from the phone when connecting or disconnecting would go unnoticed).
I moved over to Zetnet for a while as they were cheaper then Freeserve came out and made more financial sense for the relatively limited use as I wasn't at home very often.
*To email a friend in the pre-Internet days I would dial in to work, initiate a PSS connection to JANET (Joint Academic Network) then onto the Northumbrian Universities network to access a MicroVAX in their department. Login to that and send an email!
Forget professors and lecturers - if you get on the good side of secretaries, security, storesmen and technicians (including syshacks) you can get absolutely anything done and in an amazingly short time.
Being on the right side of a technician obtained us the superuser account for a Unix box to which (for no apparent reason) we only had access during limited hours. The box was standalone in a small lab and only we were using it so it was incredibly frustrating to be kicked out of our opsys project* work for a few hours in the middle of the day. From superuser a quick su would get us into our group accounts and we could carry on working.
*I wonder how many undergrads these days are expected to write a multi-tasking operating system?
Unless the pricing comes in significantly cheaper than I would pay for a decent beer in bottles I really can't see the point.
I have made my own beer (results variable) and cider* (from both concentrate and apples), it's time consuming and really not worth it most of the time.
*One cider brew wasn't so much uncontrolled strength as close to a controlled explosion! 8.5% alcohol and so dry you had to have another pint to cure the dry mouth, well that was my excuse.
I acquired a decent laptop in a similar way. The user had managed to load it with so much malware he just gave up and bought a new one.
Admittedly it wasn't the easiest wipe and reinstall I've ever done (it took a while to get the thing to boot of CD) but a free £1,000+ worth of laptop and extras for a few hours work seemed a reasonable return.
Paper documentation is good, and I often still prefer it. But Dec used to take it just a tad too far in my opinion.
In my first job one of my responsibilities was to update the DEC manuals every month*. One bookcase of VAX (which were referred to occasionally) and another with PDP manuals for a system that was never turned on.
*They were ring binders and packs of updates were sent out. I quickly developed the technique of always tearing the old versions out so they couldn't get mixed up with the revised ones. I then had to tear every one of the old ones through before I could bin it as otherwise the cleaners would return it to the desk (Civil Service rules).
he found he could silently slip in and out unnoticed by pushing his unsophisticated old ID card through a gap between the Yale lock and the door frame
I worked in an office where it was generally quicker to open the front door with a credit card rather than the key. The Yale lock was only used at lunchtimes when the front office wasn't always manned (overnight there was a deadbolt) but still not very secure.
I remember 10Base2, including making up the cables (wonder if I've still got the crimp tool anywhere?)
One of my employers had installed, at great cost, 10Base2 networking using make-before-break plug in cables, so in theory you could connect and disconnect individual machines without killing the whole network segment. The cables alone were eye-wateringly expensive, even more so in one of the buildings where they'd gone for the shielded version due to "noise" from the workshop. The downside was that it was very difficult to keep track of total cable length so I ended up buying a full blown network tester, wish I'd managed to retain it.
Just about as I was leaving they recabled everything with 10BaseT instead, probably at further vast expense.
Exactly my opinion having been there (and you can leave out the asterisks, I got as far as Oh F <crash>).
The reality, I believe, is that in most cases either there is insufficient time to make a decision that will materially affect the outcome or the vehicle will be out of control anyway.
My first thought was why not donate the chair to someone who needs it, but...
It is an old model, highly customised to the owner and probably, after several years use, knackered (to use a technical term!) From family experience wheelchairs do not last indefinitely.
Better to sell it as a curiosity and use the money raised.
If I decide the increased cost and risk* is worthwhile. GigaClear have just been digging up the street to install the FTTP cabling, funded mainly by you and me (via Westminster and Europe).
I am in a rural area (fields immediately behind the house, etc.) but we already have FTTC which, being reasonably close to the box, runs at around 78 Meg (if I plug the fast laptop directly into the router). Is it worth another £15 a month (by the time I've subscribed to a VOIP provider as well, c**p mobile coverage) to up that to 300?
*By risk I mean that with only the one provider if they fail, which has happened, I'll be left with either hoping someone else takes over the infrastructure or reverting to the FTTC connection which will take time.
It turned out that the builders had different plot numbers to the actual house numbers (WTF?),
Not all that unusual. Where I live they extended an existing road and added a new cul-de-sac as well.
Plot 1 became 23 xxxxx Road, Plot 3 became 1 yyyyy Close. There was certainly potential for confusion as initially the post code databases only new the plot numbers.
If we move away from graphics the first "game" I can remember playing was the "guess the animal"* one that seemed to be a mainstay of demonstrations at the time. First played it on a primary school visit to the local college, so around 1974/75, from a terminal with an acoustic coupled modem (not sure where the mainframe was situated). The Science Museum had the same "game" running on a terminal well into the early 80s.
Glen
*For anyone too young to remember the computer would ask you to think of an animal and then ask a series of questions to guess the answer. If it guessed wrongly it would ask you for an additional question to distinguish it's guess from your answer, early machine learning?
One site even accepted 5th Nov 1605 as my DOB....
A friend had persistent problems with contacting TalkTalk, he hadn't joined them voluntarily, they'd taken over another provider and his details had been transferred. He always had to remember that the answer to the birthdate question was 01/01/1900 as the previous company hadn't recorded DoB.
The only contaminants I can recall are the usual beverages (Coke, Tango, coffee, etc.) and stationery.
Sugary drinks were always the worst, in the days when keyboards cost a lot (£100+ sometimes) we'd end up dismantling them and scrubbing the boards under the tap. They usually survived to work again.
Many years ago when the first plain paper fax machines came out we had an FD who insisted we reused paper in it to save money. Which was all very well until someone put a piece of paper with still wet Typex on the top of the stack the "wrong" way up. The £100 or so for a new toner/drum kit after I'd tried every trick in the book to revive the damaged one would have bought a lot of paper. Reusing label sheets could have a similar effect when a label peeled of onto the drum but 1,1,1 Trich would usually get things clean again.
The current employers had bought two very expensive sheet feed HP scanners. One of these wasn't feeding properly which may have had something to do with the paper clips and staples that had been ground through the mechanism. It didn't survive the experience!
I seem to recall the clock speed on the Commodore PET could be increased by the simple use of a POKE command to a register. This was only safe for certain CPUs though, if you had the "wrong" one the chip would fry itself.
Biggest con I reckon with PCs was the so called "turbo" button which was nothing of the sort. It was actually a slow-down button for app compatibility.
Walking round Newcastle, not having lived there for over 30 years, I resorted to TomTom to find somewhere. It reckoned it was 2 1/2 miles away, when in fact it was about 300 yards on foot. I gave up and went back to my ageing memory to find a couple of pubs. One was still there but the other closed down a few years ago,
Delved into the world of app payments and tickets recently in Wales when I used the Trainline app for tickets from an unmanned (and no ticket machine) station. It worked fine, and I was vindicated as the conductor on the train was unable to take card payments, his machine only worked when it had a 4G signal (I did say I was in Wales!)
It was noticeable though that when I went to scan the barcode on the screen at the ticket barrier the "customer services" person seemed a bit surprised that it actually worked!
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