Posts by Robert Carnegie

Re: getting into trouble with cron

You could script the "sleep" command to delay work by x seconds. Though of course cron will have to launch shells on the minute.

Re: Military IT Moves

Military service does rely quite a lot on obeying orders and not stopping to question them. Unless they're war crimes. For that matter, your commander may have a grudge against computers, so it's deliberate. But, yes, terrible things happen to innocent computing equipment. But it's probably for launching bombs or something unpleasant like that, and so the world may be a better place if that doesn't happen.

Re: Hospital story

I was going to suggest old blankets vs. newer duvets, but you used the latter word as implicitly in the dust era or just after it. I think "bedding in a sack" was introduced to me as a "continental quilt" reaching Britain in the 1970s maybe. I miss blankets... I think.

So does "hotbox" mean that you don't put the vape into your mouth, instead you turn the room into a sort of vape sauna?

Do you have any idea how many people are found dead from going that? Including other family members, and pets? I don't know if it happens at all, but it sounds likely. So I'm curious. And I expect that word goes round.

Re: Customers are the security liability

What I'm thinking is that as the white-hat sender of fake phishing spam, I would be requiring users to recognise and report it, not just to block it. Especially if my spam was the only phishing that they managed to block.

The enterprise should block phishing spam as far as it's practical to do that. But with that in place, white-hat phishing spam is needed so that users do expect to see messages that are timewasting or worse, and to treat them appropriately. Otherwise, any real phishing which does get through is more likely to catch victims.

Re: If you want phishing taken seriously

"Star Trekkin" by The Firm, first chorus for the first offence, then an increasing scale.

Make the full track available to play without misbehaviour, to avoid encouraging that.

Many of us have videophone earpiece headsets, though. But accessing the loudspeakers should be possible by pwning the machine. Or without that.

I think that's the one that my boss thought might be a virus, so instead of opening it, he forwarded it to me to ask what I thought. Fortunately I'd already heard of it, probably from The Register. I do keep old e-mails, so maybe I still have it?

Re: "Forced" password change in a few month

Good heavens. Just find out his password, change it, and use his e-mail to send slightly unprofessional e-mails to several female colleagues. Or board members. Joke about the word "member" (for males). Also in the e-mail, tell everyone the old password is. Then, deny everything.

A happy memory is of my sister explaining how she used her work computer, "I type commnet commnet ...oops". Her password was also "commnet" and she'd just told me. I expect she has changed it since then. In case she has not, it wasn't actually "commnet".

Re: Unannounced security tests

This implies that the best way to do phishing is by posing as a phishing test service.

If you have a phishing report function, then report it. If you work with idiots, then announce it... that there is a sneaky evil e-mail, not the other thing.

Create a new separate e-mail, subject line "Suspicious E Mail - Free beer for who has the best password", as a warning that the free beer offer that you received may be not sincere. Do it quickly.

If anyone sends their password to you and demands the free beer... do whatever you dare to.

Re: Christmas party

I wonder how many of the laptops actually came back. If I was a bar worker, this sounds like an opportunity. It's not an opportunity that I'd take, although I am thinking about a new laptop.

Re: A Bit Puzzled?

A CEO probably authorises anything that they like. The question I'd ask is whether anything on the network was compromised besides the CEO's own PC, if they used that for the penetration, or the outsider device plugged into the network. Arguably an outsider device should simply be not allowed to communicate, but apparently, this network wasn't that secure. If it was, you probably also need 3 months to set up a network port for a new member of staff.

Regardless, I like to imagine the internal IT staff smashing the CEO's computer with sledgehammers as instructed by our hero, in front of the CEO, keyboard and all, and THEN asking the questions. They probably didn't do that, but I like to imagine it.

Re: Keepass

You could use an encrypted zip file at least. However, plain zip encryption is broken, insecure because defeated. Still, it discourages no -technical snoopers. Also, to deflect suspicion, be sure to disguise the file as pornography.

Fetish pornography. No one wants to see anyone else's. Bonus if your spouse resembles a hobbit anyway. Remember they are pipe smokers, including women presumably.

As others have commented, you probably meant password "copy and paste" unless you remind yourself to change a password after, say, 60 days by pasting 60 copies of it in the file to start with.

Remember to print your file of passwords in a font that lets you tell letters and numbers apart, tricky ones like l I | 8 B 5 S.

Re: Shameful confession time:

I like passwords that can be typed, but not that one.

For instance, if use of a punctuation mark is enforced, then: mxyz comma ptlk

Although of course the password censor doesn't have a sense of humour. So that one won't pass.

Otherwise, I recommend not being imaginative with your password punctuation mark. Be imaginative, or ideally random, with the letters. A punctuation character that is even slightly exotic - that either is unfamiliar in the United States, or is in a different place on the U.S. keyboard and on yours - is liable to be misread or lost when you input it. A symbol that has a special meaning in a data file or an internet protocol, such as $ and #, also may be swallowed. Even ' risks calling up the spirit of Bobby Tables. Use this junk only if you are mandated to use the corporate password generator, and may /ˈbjɑːrnə ˈstrɒvstrʊp/; have mercy on you.

I myself use $CHAR1 whenever a password demands a punctuation mark, except for a few systems which apparently regard $CHAR1 as not a punctuation mark, and in those cases I use $CHAR2. And a box of dice which I have altered to produce numbers 0/1/2, 0/3/6, and 0/9/18, when a new password is required. (Away from home, I use a "fidget spinner" with equivalent modification. This means that setting the password is s potentially relaxing break of dome minutes from screen work, but a time of mental arithmetic instead. I suppose I could use spreadsheet software for the arithmetic.

Re: Customers are the security liability

I'm not sure if you want to make board members nonfunctional - which seems to save money if you don't need to have a board, but it leaves you with your CEO or president without controls on their behaviour - or if you just want to airgap the board from anything technological. Then you have a manageable expense of each board person having a PA employed to print their e-mails and type their replies. But that raises again the question of whether the board members themselves are required.

Re: Customers are the security liability

I don't know that I agree with what you've done, It is an important staff training process.

If I was running this, I'd consider validating that the fake spam reaches you and you recognise it as suspicious using your eyeballs. And I want to know if not, why not.

I also will use the same domain to organise Secret Santa.

Re: "supposed expert who turned out to be anything but"

Don't consider that a challenge, unless it is, then "challenge accepted".

Re: "supposed expert who turned out to be anything but"

" two admin staff had to have a A4 print out of the alphabet stuck to the shelves with patient records on"

I expect it saves time and asking a colleague. Did it have the big and little letters? ;-)

I think I only confuse my screenshot for the actual software about 10 percent of the time.

Once again, I form an incorrect mental picture, in which you pause before sending your e-mail and you say aloud "Thank you" to your computer screen first. It's something else to try!

Although my first thought was that your unfortunate colleague actually had addressed all of his requests to helldesk@repository.elsewhe.re . Spot my deliberate mistake!

I'm imagining a clever if unnecessary pulley to turn the Apple apple 180 degrees, but perhaps you're thinking of something with a little motor. Or well placed weights. Or magnets!

I'm looking at the back of a Dell LCD monitor now and I notice that the E is positioned squint. Apparently that is on purpose.

Read for comprehension. The executive director's PA is a nice person, and is not necessarily over-rewarded. The executive director may be a waste of space and money; we do not know that. It is the way to bet.

(Robert tries out the sideways method)

It sort-of works - if you hold the mouse somewhere away to your right (if right handed) and not in front of you. But it may not catch on. And the main button is operated by the thumb, which feels very wrong. Of course, you can swap the button actions; tell the computer that you are left handed. (Not all left handed people choose to do this.)

On a modern system, you also can connect more then one pointing device. You can use one mouse to move, and use the buttons on another one, to click.

Don't.

It's morally equivalent to owning a sentient ape-slave from the "Planet of the Apes" sequel / prequels - if I got the originals straight, chimpanzee refugees from the Planet come to Earth and become the new Untouchable caste. In the remake, intelligent apes are created on Earth scientifically. Both times, it's judged that these beings have human feelings - more or less so, because they aren't human - but they don't get any kind of human rights.

I gather that starting in the original French novel in 1963, the "Planet of the Apes" gives gorillas, chimpanzees, and orang-utans specific roles in society, which is troublingly racial. It may or may not also be their class system. Wild humans survive; this planet's humans had made the apes intelligent and put them to work, which made it either practically or biologically unnecessary for humans to be intelligent as well. The apes rebelled and expelled the unintelligent humans from cities. Humans are not considered to be useful workers, although an ape experiment in space flight uses humans in a space capsule for a safety trial launch.

I'm uncomfortable with dominant-submissive relationships between humans, but if it's what people want to do, I may not have a right to criticise. But to create a creature designed only to be dominated is a step further. Of course, our existing relationships with animals can be troubling to look at; as our "companions", and as what Peter Davison was in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

Re: I'm curious...

Isn't the laser table thing from "Goldfinger"?

Re: I worked at a hospital group

Phase the new system in gradually, so that while the phase three people are using the Lenovo stylus tablets that they demanded, the phase two-ers have been given the Surface instead, after the phase one group handed those back and accepted laptops?

Re: Only 2.5 years in the NHS ....

I think I may be about to remember what a virement is. I'll let you know the outcome.

Re: ctrl-alt-arrow and ... cats

This raises the issue of how to lock your beer when unattended, I mean your coffee.

The (once?) famous "Evil Overlord List" has advice applicable to the situation, but expensive - on the lines of, if you have to leave the table which you are sharing with an enemy, then don't try to work out when you come back which of the drinks is now the poisoned one, just order another round.

A "virtual laptop" is a new thing to me, is it something that you get in the Metaverse? So you wear the monitor goggles and you type on a keyboard which isn't actually there or something like that...

Re: A 1980s minicomputer at the bottom of a mine ?

I've read the book. God does the animal collecting, not some 150-year-old men.

Re: Ah, the 80's...

I'm not sure how you were older in '79 than in '82? ;-)

In the '82-'83 paragraph, I thought you joined the Army. They're clever that way...

I put lots of white labels to write on next to the keyboard on most of the laptops I've owned, to show which port is where around the sides. But there is a bit of a problem of perspective. The label is vertically above the port, but you probably aren't looking at it from directly above it.

Re: Not a screen saver, but...

That sounds like the fictional "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in which an article about the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation "describes their marketing division as a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes, with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent" - I'm not sure exactly what happened in the Guide office after the first half of that quote, but it's probably a legendary quitting or a legendary firing.