Posts by Myvekk

A tip for content filter evaluators: erase the list of sites you tested, don't share them on 100 PCs

Well, personally, when testing a system I've set up for image, I'd test in the user environment, not the admin one, so that I know that what I've set up works in the account it's meant for.

Why do you test user restrictions in the admin account?

Re: A lot of El Reg Readers really are very old

The key point there is that they were P.C. systems. They didn't need much security because they were PERSONAL computers and the user (singular) could be admin because they were the only one using it... right up until they were connected to a network at least. Then the lack of security came back to bite all the IT & network support staff! As airgapped systems they were more or less ok. Once they got online though, they were wide open.

UNIX approached from the other side. It was originally a multi-user system, so security had been designed in from the start.

BOFH: You say goodbye and I say halon

Re: Great murder choice.

I once tried walking into a small room where there had been a rapid burn of petrol vapors. High concentration of CO2. Took one step in & virtually bounced off it as the breathing reflex kicked in with a vengence. Felt like dry heaving, but with my lungs instead of stomach.

By contrast, we had an environmental test chamber at work which was chilled by liquid nitrogen. We had to have oxygen meters installed to trigger an alarm if the O2 partial pressure in the room dropped too far, because of the exact reason you stated.

BOFH: Switch off the building? Great idea, Boss

Re: Parts of it date back to when fire was invented

Similar thing happened to my sister. Although she was smart enough to use only a small amount when lighting the garden waste in the incinerator, AND she ensured the metal can was sealed & well away from the incinerator before going back & lighting it. Safety first!

What she learned though, was what people didn't put enough emphasis on, just how fast petrol evaporates. No major damage, but she looked quite surprised for a while after that, from dim memory.

Re: Messing with oxygen-fluorine compounds

Dioxygen Difluoride, the compound with the onomatopeic name: FOOF

Remember the Dutch kid who stuck his finger in a dam to save the village? Here's the IT equivalent

Re: From Experience (and In Hindsight)...

Shoulders...

When you hit one side with one shoulder, then ricochet off & slam the other one into the other side before, finally, pinballing your way through.

Physicists are rather giddy after creating a rare type of laser using laughing gas

Here you go!

http://kalecoauto.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=8&products_id=21&zenid=B0RU3A5YQRjR--cKu7HVL1

That would be 'bad'.

150 infosec bods now know who they're up against thanks to BT Security cc/bcc snafu

Re: Not at all suprised

Did you do their other clients the courtesy of notifying them that their details were exposed? They might have wanted to change as well... Once they knew.

Re: Reply-all email chains are no laughing matter.

Trollish parents hitting reply all, just to keep the torment going... Or to hammer the administrators mail enough to teach them to Do Not.

Hyphens of mass destruction: When a clumsy finger meant the end for hundreds of jobs

Two wrongs don't make a right, but two Wrights made an aeroplane!

One man's mistake, missing backups and complete reboot: The tale of Europe's Galileo satellites going dark

Re: It's Phil's fault!

Nobody seems to be able to justify the silly thing anyway. Safety, energy conservation, farming considerations...none of them actually hold up under critical scrutiny. Time to dump it.

It did when it was introduced, as it meant that people could do the things they needed to after work without needing artificial lighting, thus lowering the energy grid requirements during the war, (when it was introduced, I believe).

These days, however, you are quite right, and it serves little functional purpose.

Re: Doesn't inspire confidence....

It's that rogue engineer again.

If he was from a former Eastern Bloc country, would that make him a rouge engineer?

Or would that be if he was French, and embarrassed about what he did?

BOFH: We must... have... beer! Only... cure... for... electromagnetic fields

Re: Radiation

He was very resistant to them messing with his desk!

http://i.imgur.com/vyk9AU5.jpg

Imagine if Facebook could read your mind: Er, I have some bad news for you...

Re: Do you have something to tell us?

A Boy Named Sue. - Johnny Cash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOHPuY88Ry4

Re: Do you have something to tell us?

Vincent... Price or Furnier?

I'm just a wind up boy...

Calling all the Visual Basic snitches: Keep quiet about it and so will he...

Re: Sounds Awful

"What is this "must" you speak of? Where does this compulsion come from?"

Oh that's easy! It's in the software requirements, (written by someone who doesn't understand reality...)

Google nuked tech support ads to kill off scammers. OK. It also blew away legit repair shops. Not OK at all

Re: Problems

With the VOIP systems they already have, they can, and do, already do this. Perhaps not with an actual MS number, but with other ones.

It is no more difficult to do, than putting a different email address in the 'Reply To' field when you send an email.

Let's talk about April Fools' Day jokes. Are they ever really harmless?

Re: Error Messages

And yet I still heard that in a voice as if it said, "Count(*) as Muppet"...

Re: Error Messages

You could always have a redirect to the spot in Slice, in the upper Ramtops, "the place where the Sun does not shine."

Open-heart nerdery: Boffins suggest identifying and logging in people using ECGs

Re: The end of biometrics

I'm reminded of accessing the War Room in Monsters vs. Aliens... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7SBVutX6OU

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Re: Good old days

I don't know about the hedgehogs, but apparently* the hamsters are NSFW...

*I've never had the need, nor desire, to go check it myself.

Is that like the chinese character for noisy being 3 copies of the character for woman? Or so I have seen written...

No, she lives in several large hice, often referred to as palaces. Hice is the plural not singular!

Fools! *Wanders off shaking head & muttering*

Re: I prefer TITSUP

Well, technically it should probably be spelled as 'teats', but the pronunciation is the same.

Re: I prefer PEBMAC

Back when I was an avionics tech at a national airline, we had a new system & terminals for ordering, logging work etc. As the new PC was being installed, I saw a sticker on the back & asked, "So, we have seven servers, right?"

To which I received the reply, "Yep!"

The sticker read, "YOUR SERVER IS GRUMPY"

Those darn users don't know what they're doing (not like us, of course)

That one happened to a friend of mine in the late 80's.

User, "I think my monitors on fire."

Friend, "What!?"

User, "There's smoke coming out of it!"

Friend, "Have you turned it off yet?"

User, "Are you crazy!? I'm not going near that thing!"

Cue friend running out of the building, up the street to the other building where the user worked in the pathology lab, & into the lab to disconnect the monitor. Turned out that they has spilled a significant quantity of ethanol into it... (or maybe water, not sure any more.)

Re: Re Car

And in between was the early automatic choke that was operated by the water temp of the engine, the same way the thermostat does for controlling the cooling.

Re: The unfamiliar can always catch people out

So, it's sort of like a Microsoft car? Press Start, to Shut Down?

Re: Probably a Sony

The answers to your questions are, "No", and "Yes"*, respectively.

*But mostly just with your head...

Re: Not laughing with you

"All guests bring pleasure. Some when they arrive, others when they leave." - Old proverb of uncertain provenance.

Could you just pop into the network room and check- hello? The Away Team. They're... gone

Re: BANG!

But! What the!? None of them were members of the Removalists Union! Put all that furniture back, RIGHT BLOODY NOW!

Re: Not an explosion, just my own daftness...

They used to do that to apprentices in the repair center I worked at to teach them not to try & catch things. They also had this nice conductive paint. It was only conductive once it was dry, though...

Cue someone* painting the prongs of a 240VAC plug, replacing it in the GPO & wandering off... Nothing happens at first, but then as it dries, it starts conducting a little via high resistance. I^2*R=>heat. Paint starts drying faster. The faster it dries, the more heat...

I'm told it was about 20 minutes later that the power point exploded.

*I was told about it. It occurred before I started there.

Apple strips clips of WWDC devs booing that $999 monitor stand from the web using copyright claims. Fear not, you can listen again here...

Re: Nothing to see...

That would explain the secret mission of the Terminator!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxiJadct3Wo

Re: Streisand Effect

It's rather like the question I read:

"What if every country has ninjas, but we only know about the Japanese ones, because theirs are crap?"

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

Re: so easy to get in

Well, neither of you tried to leg it, so you passed the first test of "Are they doing something they think they shouldn't be?"

"Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave."

A relevant part of a talk by Deviant Ollam on whether or not you are really red team pentesting: https://youtu.be/mj2iSdBw4-0?t=907

Uncle Sam to blow millions on mind-control weapon tech that can be fitted without surgery

Re: Primarily able-bodied

I remember that episode!

Re: Suppositions

If they weren't brain dead when they started, after dealing with enough members of the 'general public', they will be.

Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?

Maybe in a few places, but it wasn't at all common.

I've never heard the term before now, & was using them when you had to boot from your 5 1/4". But 8" was a little before my time.

Out-of-office email ping-pong fills server after server over festive break

Re: Exchange?

I've just been reading up about the period. I now realise that that saying was propaganda put out by tax collectors. The reality is you never get rid of the geld.

On the contrary, you definitely get rid of the geld! (Geld==gold)

Re: Exchange?

[Exaggerated accent] "Hello, this is Phil from Microsoft Support. Your car is telling us that you need to replace the blinker fluid, and adjust your power band. I can fix this for you for a small fee..." [/Exaggerated accent]

BOFH: Tick tick BOOM. It's B-day! No we're not eating Brussels flouts...

Re: My OCD is firing up

Quietly start replacing the 'motivational' posters with ones from Despair.com.

Maybe this one at first: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/gettoworkdemotivator_grande.jpeg?v=1430422890

I'd put it up there along with "Who is this clown?"

A humiliating insult that implies that, not only is the person you are referring to, a clown, but they are also so useless, that you don't have any idea who they are, or why they are there in the first place.

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

Re: “People who develop a reputation for unearned competence.”

Did someone mention a 'bug bounty'?

Re: headteachers...

@Terry 6

You just need to find the right person to appoint as School Bully! That's half the work, apparently. And don't forget to get a team into the 50 mile Hop...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SurRcPE8Tvk

A once-in-a-lifetime Opportunity: NASA bids emotional farewell to its cocky, hardworking RC science car on Mars

Re: Thanks Opportunity!

I'm not convinced. What if it has just decided it doesn't need to talk to us any more...

https://xkcd.com/1504/

Don't forget to read the mouseover text.

Ever feel like all your prayers go unheard? The Catholic Church has an app for that

Re: @Toni - No point

"Yeh, the old REAL (tm) gods razed cities, flooded worlds and spread pestilence. Modern gods, wimps the lot of them"

The new gods move in different ways, take Media for example. She can arrange all of that if she wants. (Or at least arrange for us to to it to ourselves.)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1898069/mediaviewer/rm813967360?ft0=name&fv0=nm0000096&ft1=image_type&fv1=still_frame

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1898069/

Just updated Windows 7? Can't access network shares? It isn't just you

Because the only account I set up on my HTPC was the one for the install, & I never needed any others.

I tried updating it to Win 10, but the software I like to use on it doesn't work on 10, and none of the alternatives, (Windows or Linux) did what I want as easily and simply, if at all.

Re: It's just criminal...

Not at all. MS has the largest QA Department... in the world. [/Jeremy Clarkson]

It's just that everyone else, (except maybe Apple), would refer to them as "customers".

Re: It's just criminal...

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice, that which is adaquetly explained by stupidity.