Posts by JimboSmith

Re: I know why they do it.

the West of Lothian Free Separatists?

The Cornish National Liberation Army?

An electrician I once worked with told me he'd found a perfect mollyguard for the 13Amp sockests he used. It was a hard plastic oblong cap that covered the switch perfectly with semi flexible plastic strips at either end. It was part of the packaging from something else so otherwise just waste. A small amount of sticky backed velcro top & bottom kept them in place. He'd installed a few over the years with little if any problems. Then one day a customer said called him and said they had certain equipment being turned off overnight probably accidentally. They asked if he could fit guards as a result. It was a retrofit but easy enough to do and quite cheap.

Customer less impressed as the guards keep 'falling off' so he paid a visit one morning and the Velcro was still there on both the guide and the guard. He stuck the 'fallen' ones off back on and they're fine which is baffling. Everything's fine when the staff leave at night but not the next morning.

Intrigued he made enquiries and it's only happened on certain nights. Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday nights are the culprits. After sabotage can't be ruled out he installed a camera linked to a long play VCR. As some of you will have already guessed the cleaner came three nights a week. Despite there being clearly labelled 'Cleaning Sockets' the cleaner wasn't using them. So they just used the closest socket pulling off the guard as they did so. The cleaner was a little Italian lady who didn't understand why some idiot had put things over the switches or indeed why you shouldn't unplug something.l

Now LinkedIn prompts you to map out about who reports to whom in your company.

My company has rules about disclosing who reports to who etc. to people outside the business. We have other social engineering rules in place too. I've never used LinkedIn and certainly wouldn't after reading that.

Re: Clickable links

I've had at least one phishing test email sent to my work address. I've probably had more but I ignore anything I think is spam, which is quite often. I've deleted a few legitimate emails and just blamed the spam filter.

The one phishing one I bothered to look at had a link and an attachment. I reported it and told IT support I thought others may have received it too. When their response was glacial that time, I cottoned on to the fact it was a test. As I don't do LinkedIn or use my work email for any social media mails with those as a link won't work for me. I don't do internet banking either so those would be another massive red flag. The address I've given work as my personal email is unique to them. If a test one is sent to that address it'll be obvious.

I worked temporarily at a firm that had smartcard entry system and used the same card for lunch payments. The HR bloke who was doing my hello welcome to the firm told me it meant it was quicker for everyone in the canteen. I was give my freshly printed card and immediately tested it with my phone and discovered twas a Mifare classic. I mentioned this to the HR bloke who listened to my explanation that these had been hacked and cracked. He said they knew but this wasn't a problem for the firm. Adding money onto the card was done by debit card and the cash value stored on a central computer not the card. Therefore they'd dealt with the threat of somebody 'adding' money to the card. Further to that it had been signed off as perfectly safe to use by DORM (the department of risk management).

Re: Kill it now

Have seen it installed in a multi branch retail business where the staff at one branch were wondering what it was for. They were initially curious as it looked like a funky new email system. That is until it was pointed out that you couldn't use it for clients or anyone external for that matter. We've got WhatsApp, Email, Company Mobile, what the feck do we need Teams for?

Very rarely used after the initial week and I think that's the same at most branches.

Some friends of ours rented a cottage a few years ago back when such things were possible. It was for a long weekend in the depths of winter and my mate had picked one with an AGA Cooker for extra warmth. We arrived on the Friday and settled in discovering an unadvertised whirlpool bath in one bathroom as a bonus. After a countryside walk he'd made the four of us a pot of tea and toast. There wasn't a conventional toaster instead they had an AGA toaster which resembles a badly made metal tennis racquet. You stick that on the cooler hotplate and turn it over as required. There was a regular kettle and an AGA one that you put directly on the hotter hotplate. Both of these were in the same cream colour as the cooker. Come the Saturday morning and his wife volunteers to make the tea for them. The way he tells it he was in bed still enjoying the thick warm duvet in a post coital bliss when the smell reached him. He arrived in the kitchen to see the plastic base of the regular kettle happily and rapidly melting onto the hotplate.

It didn't stick too badly to the cooker, and when I got to the kitchen he'd removed it and was scraping off the remaining plastic. She blamed the cottage owner for having both kettles the same colour. Their first activity of the day was a trip to the local town to find a replacement. They subsequently bought an AGA for their house but their electric kettle is kept safely in a cupboard out of the way of temptation.

Re: Been there...

Used one at my local Tesco and ended up with a correctly scanned trolley full of shopping. Got to the self service tills and scanned the finished barcode under the watchful eye of the sales assistant. Shopping failed to load onto the till and I looked at her for help. She took the scanner and tried again but nothing on the till and the scanner says to put it in the stand.

Manager comes over to see what the problem is. There's now a queue forming because people need their age validating for booze they're buying. Manager once appraised of the situation apologises and whisks me off to the nearest non self service till that's unmanned. Opens it and scans all my shopping through very quickly. Then price corrects the last item (a 6 pack of cola) to 1p as a goodwill gesture. I didn't put the booze last on the belt which was obviously a mistake. He said it's a right pain when they go wrong and this incident would be reported and investigated.

When I worked near a Waitrose years ago they had the same system but it never went wrong for me. The only reason for using it there was it allowed you to jump the often long queue for the tills. The tills for hand scanners were exclusive to the scanners. This saved vital minutes in your lunch hour.

Re: Ha

Yeah AT&T deserve this, they're idiots for being so cavalier when the patent holders have so much documentation about the deal and crucially the patents.

Re: Been there, done that.

I know of a former colleague who like many had a company BlackBerry. She announced one day in an email that she was turning it off at 17:45 every weekday and at weekends.

Boss responded by email (reply all) saying if she didn't want to be contactable out of office hours that was fine with him. He also reminding her that she'd only been given the BlackBerry so people could contact her away from the office.

She was part of an "on call team" and paid extra to be so. He'd therefore be reducing her salary and having the BlackBerry back.

She opted to stay available out of hours after realising how much she'd be out of pocket.

Re: @Jimbo Smith The duopoly needs to learn the hard way!

The Judges ruling can be found here:

https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20461466-rothstein_order

I am not a lawyer or anything like but......From my initial reading of the first few pages I came away with the following opinion. Parler alleged that AWS acted in conjunction with Twitter in the decision to remove them. AWS say they don't discuss one customer with another. Parler further alleged that AWS hosts Twitter on their servers and there's nasty content on Twitter. AWS said they signed a deal with Twitter in December last year. However they don't host Twitter Feed and (with no date to do so). So have no means to suspend Twitter Feed

They alleged AWS were in breach of contract by canning their service. To which AWS pointed to multiple violations of their Acceptable Usage Policy and Customer Services Agreement. Indeed there is mention of some 26,000 posts on Parler that were in violation. AWS had apparently contacted Parler over this multiple times. They cited what rules were broken and the sections in the agreements etc. that allowed them to say they won't do anything further with Parler.

I didn't get to the third point Parler made because IANAL and it was making me feel sleepy reading the judgement. Bit like an EULA in that respect. That's my opinion and what I took away from it. A legal expert may have a different reading.

I'm surprised Parler didn't start running it on their own hardware sooner. It's not like they were forced to use AWS.

Re: $5,999

Helluva price for an etch-a-sketch https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-04-03

Scott Adams is a vocal Trump supporter - just saying.

Re: Well, maybe?

"Malleable hardware. Hardens upon impact."

That description made me think of D3O

https://www.d3o.com/discover-d3o/

There's video on the net of somebody with their finger wrapped in D3O and it being hit with a hammer. The finger remains intact.

A friend at a party showed me a website where the whole point of the site was to slag off your or any solicitors. It was a long time ago and I sadly can't remember the site name. She said I could look her up on there and find a review. Somebody who had lost a case against her client had left a very defamatory review of her. She said both the website and the reviewer had left themselves open to being sued. The reviewer had left enough info to positively identify them and the case. The legal/trade body representing solicitors was aware and preparing to take action against the site. I believe the site no longer exists.

And Lady Penelope in the back seat with you?

That goes without saying.

Re: Fluorescents...

Far cheaper and quicker than replacing the carpets would have been to give them a suitable anti-static treatment.

I got the feeling that nobody (apart from possibly the designer) liked those carpets and they weren't sad to see the back of them.

Re: GDPR

But if this is true then it's a spectacular own goal from Facebook, there've screwed up the communication so much there's a stampede of privacy-minded European users leaving for other platforms for no reason at all.

Oh it would be poetic justice if Facebook had holed WhatsApp below the waterline with this. I'm actively trying to persuade family and friends to use Signal not WhatsApp and will shunt WhatsApp onto another phone for work use.

Re: Bullseye...

You may remember that on the day we lost Prof Stephen Hawking we lost Jim Bowen later on that same day. The best tweet I read on that sad day said

A true professional to the end, Jim let the Non Darts Player go first.

Made me laugh out loud.

Re: Actually the founders seem to be nice and despite everything have morals

It was $22bn not $2bn.

Re: Computer says no

Yes as I say he was aware that Workday can support multiple managers. It's his company who haven't implemented that feature in Workday.

Re: You get what you pay for

My aging mum called me a couple of years ago in a right panic. Somebody had cloned her card and was spending her money every month. When I eventually got a word in I asked where these payments were going. She said to Apple and I relaxed a bit knowing what it was.She confirmed it was a small amount and I gave her the explanation. It was the payment for her iCloud storage for her photographs etc. I told her not to cancel the card or that service if she wanted to keep access to all the files.

Then during the first lockdown she complained that there wasn't enough storage on her newish iPhone. It cost the best part of a grand if bought Sim Free. She had to inform her insurers she had one and even then it had some hideous excess before they'd even think about paying out. She'd seen my phone when I'd put in a new SD card and doubled the memory. "Why can't mine do that?"

In one industry I worked in there was a very prestigious awards ceremony. You couldn't "win" the award through advertising with anyone it really was done on the judges decision. One year we were nominated for an award which was nice. I was on the nominated team so went to the top London hotel which was hosting the dinner in their ballroom. The food (for vegetarians) was a meatless kiev that had been cooked to death. My knife didn't work with a sawing action on the breadcrumb encrusted horror. Instead I placed it vertically over the central hump of the thing and then hit it with my fist repeatedly. It took a few attempts but when it did eventually crack my plate was a sea of melted garlic butter. Inedible doesn't do it justice and I just ate the watery veg that were served with the meal. Everyone found it funny, we even emailed the company head of legal to enquire as to my rights in such a situation. Sadly he didn't see it until 9am as he didn't check his BlackBerry.

I had a halloumi burger on the way home I vowed I wouldn't go again because the food was so crap and the ticket so expensive. We didn't win and the next time we were nominated we won but I wasn't there to see it.

Re: Fuck javascript.

The first time I saw an AMP page on my mobile (via Firefox) I looked for an addon to make sure I didn't have to see another one. The Redirect AMP to HTML one from memory works (at least on my phone) by breaking the AMP page. It throws up an error message and I can then adjust the URL to point to the non AMP version.

Re: Inside joke?

I had a fun afternoon once years ago testing out a spam filter. A mate working in another company had sent me an email from his work address about the christening of his offspring. I replied and I received a reply that my email was rejected owing to the "use of language" in it. I called him up and he said he had no idea what was going on. Eventually we narrowed it down to my saying I thought the choice of venue was "bad ass". We tried bad arse which also was rejected, as was arsed, pissed etc. I then spent what remained of that Friday afternoon with him and me sending emails finding out what words triggered their filter. I don't remember if we got round to cum but I doubt it.

Re: Can we compare Tube travel to a ride in a Taxi.

A hire bike is useless if you have bulky luggage. I agree some stations are closer than the Tube map suggests. My main reasons for getting a cab is that I'm late and I'm supporting somone who had no income during lockdown. As I was and am again furloughed and on full pay (company makes up the difference) I feel that's the right thing to do. The same with my cleaner who has really suffered from a drop in income, I've got an annual travel card so TFL aren't doing badly out of me either.

Re: On the bright side

I was called by a Payday Loan company out bof the blue in the middle of one day. It was on my landline which had one day left before BT cut it off. Chap on the other end asked if he could speak to a MR XXXXX about a loan application he was going to be a guarantor for. When I said there wasn't anyone of that name here he became more salesman like. He asked If I needed up to five grand which had an interest rate of 50%. He said I just needed somebody to guarantee the loan.

I said that I'd spotted a flaw in their business model which the chap insisted I hadn't. I said If I needed the loan (which I didn't) it would be sensible to pick somebody with the odd 5k to spare to guarantee it. Therefore that person is on the hook for the 5k and will be coming after me if I don't pay the loan back. There's no upside for the guarantor in this situation it's all risk and no reward. Why wouldn't we just cut out their payday loan company and I borrow the 5k from the guarantor. I pay them 25% (or less) interest and I'm saving myself a fair whack of cash. The guarantor also benefits from some serious upside in the form of this interest I'll be paying them. I said that sounded like a much better solution and cost much less.

Chap on the other end of the phone says that won't work. Then says as I obviously don't need the money 'good day to you sir' or something like that. I think this was a genuine wrong number because I then dialed the two numbers with the last digits either side of mine on the keypad. I did end up speaking to a Mr XXXXX on the second one who was very pleasant and liked my idea.

Re: Too Many Stories!

We've got some users with from memory Dell Optiplex 7470 or 80 all in one pc's.They've got the power button on the lower right hand side, it's not recessed or flush it's sticking out. This is also the side that most users have their desk phone. The number of times people have accidentally knocked that sodding power button when answering the phone is amazing. The cables for the phone and the PC are bundled together. Plus most people like having the phone next to the PC. One person decided to put the phone on the left side of the PC and the mouse mat on the right. They were hitting it more that way than the other layout. a work around is to leave something open on the desktop that halts shutdown without user intervention. Or a small plastic cap that somebody taped over theirs.

Re: Ask any actuary

Years ago I was at a Christmas party where in one group the subject was cars. There were a few brands and sporty models mentioned to general approval. Then one chap said that he had a Subaru Forrester which he said was a 4 wheel drive estate car. He defended this saying it was actually a rocket because it was basically the estate version of the Imprezza. It drank fuel apparently but for an estate car it was surprisingly bloody fast when you put your foot down. Also as a 4WD Estate the insurance was really cheap and his kids were on his policy.

Then a woman who'd said very little until this point suggested he sold the car. She worked for one of the large motor insurers and they had cotttoned on to the performance of the Forrester. She said his insurance would skyrocket at the next renewal and would be far worse if his teenage kids were on it. She said they hadn't changed the insurance group so if he was quick he could sell it listing the current lower group. She then handed out other good bits of advice to reduce premiums to the other car drivers.

Re: Probably because the pigment

And this is where it pays for me to to proof read before posting....

What it should have said was

Therefore the remaining ones are totally flexible, open tickets and cost a lot more as a result.

Re: The Truth?

Oh absolutely it's just that the president doesn't have a button he/or she can press to "Launch the missiles". They do have their Sealed Authenticator System Card (AKA the biscuit etc.) that identifies them to the military so that they don't accept just anyone impersonating the great Orange One. Clinton infamously lost his and Reagan was separated from his when the assasination attempt took place. It was in his wallet which the FBI took along with the clothes he was wearing and possesions as evidence.

If it was a Bolt Out Of the Blue attack AKA a BOOB attack then yes the president may have seconds to authorise a launch. If no launch has been detected and everything is normal then I believe from an interview I heard that the National Command Authority (POTUS and SecDef) have to agree to launch. Thankfully this has never been tested in real life and you'd have a defence secretary with a backbone. Mark Esper was removed after he authorised the no fly zone over the President Elect Biden residence in Delaware. El Presidente was very unhappy about somebody at cabinet level legitimising the new president.

The US submarine commanders recieve part of the safe combination (as the bloomberg article states) as part of the launch orders. In the UK it's much less restricted. If both the captain and the first officer decide to launch they can do so, orders or not*. We do have the best submarine command training course in the world known as the Perisher and other countries send their officers on it because it's that good. I know somebody who completed the Perisher and passed. It has a very high failure rate though and is very hard.

*The crew might try to stop them though.