Occasional browsing is one thing, but when half of one's work day is related to doing nothing, then it becomes a problem.
I was responsible for a tri-branch office managing the network for about 800 desktops, 50 servers, and 300 employees on the clock around the clock. Nobody wanted to do what I did, so I had to do it by myself. Management wanted bandwidth reports. I gave it to them. Wanted email stats. Gave that to them. Over half the email was FW: FW: FW: FW: garbage, which I was instructed to/dev/null. Done. Such sites like youporn.com were in the top site lists. They wanted it blocked. It was blocked.
Needless to say, people would do nothing but talk crap about me because I'm "the web nazi" or "internet nazi" and other such crap.
And having worked at such a company for over a decade, one day, out of the blue, the same management that told me what to block was the same management that said after XX years, if I didn't take a 75% paycut, that I could take a hike.
I believe in working. If you're not working, you do not deserve to be paid.
And to this day, I still get daily status reports of all of the servers I once ran, nearly 3 years after the fact - because the guy they hired to change my passwords did only that, without checking on anything else.
I've never worked in IT since. There is no reward.
Yeah, I don't know where I first saw that, but here's the original, author unknown:
f a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, then the socket packet pocket has an error to report. If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash, then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash! If the label on the cable on the table at your house, says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol, that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, and you screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse, then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang! When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk, and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk, then you have to flash your memory, and you'll want to RAM your ROM. Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom.
That's almost exactly what I always do. I never sign the back of the card. I take a Sharpie and write SEE PHOTO ID on the back.
I'd say only about 1 in 10 cashiers actually ask for my photo ID. About 3 in 10 turn the card over while waiting for the receipt to print, see something that's obviously not a signature, and hand back the card without looking at my signature or ID. The other 7 just don't care, because we all know that checking my ID will take up 5 seconds of their precious time.
It pisses me off to no end when they don't bother doing their jobs. Is it easier to go through the hoops of fraudulent purchases rather than check the signature and/or ID?
People at my company still play solitaire and freecell. They have been since Windows was put on the desktop. None of them have figured out alt-tab or escape, so they openly just play games. Worst offenders?
First shift supervisor. From 6am-7am (before assistant supervisor comes in) she plays freecell. That is one hour of zero productivity. Times 5 (days) times 50 (weeks) and that's 250 hours. Or you can think of it as 10 days. That's one paycheck that was "earned" by playing freecell. How is this good for business?
Receptionist. Hates her job. Knows she's not going to get fired for whatever reason. Plays freecell. Doesn't try to hide it. Customers pass through all day and she is still playing freecell. Sometimes she's so into the game that she blows _customers_ off. How is this good for business?
Now the biggest offender. Our Netware admin. Does maybe two media conversions a week. At 25 bucks a pop. Huge billing. Aside from that, he doesn't do anything except updating his personal website and play, you guessed it, freecell. Back when I Back Orificed his machine to figure out what the hell he was doing all day (porn, homework, freecell), I noticed a trend in his freecell playing. Started at game #1, then #2, then #3 in an attempt to beat them all. This was 4 years ago, but at the time he was at game #~17,000. 17,000 consecutive games. (just checked this morning and he's at 26,477.) He also won't get fired because he's VP's son. But that jackass makes more than me and I actually work. How is this good for business?
Yes, people will always find ways to not do their jobs. When I'm told to try to control slack such as content filtering, I'm looked at as a complete dickwad and a control freak. Yet these idiots don't realize their added loss of productivity cuts into the bottom line. Come year end, there is NEVER any money for bonuses.
Work is not supposed to be fun. It's called work for a reason. You're at work to WORK, not play games. You want to blow off some steam? Go outside and take a walk. You want to play games? Do it at home.
Sorry to disappoint you, but Ticketmaster does not deal with the Super Bowl. There's a lottery that the NFL sets up every year as a means to distribute the tickets. And whatever tickets you get are first come, first serve - nobody gets more than 4 tickets and usually the first X amount of rows are reserved anyway.
Granted, you were probably being hypothetical about the Super Bowl reference, but with your "i know what i'm talking about" I had to clarify that you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to Super Bowl tickets.
Thanks for reading my post before labeling me a troll. I am far from trolling.
Whoever modded me down either mods based on the subject of the post instead of reading the post, or doesn't know squat about IT and the security involved with it.
Thanks!
People like that should be shot
on
Given Up to Spyware?
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· Score: 1, Insightful
I can't believe there are so many idiots out there that don't care about spyware. Even the author of that pitiful article has in the headline, "So What?" If it's your home machine, hey, fine, do what you like because it will never affect me. But if you're doing it on your company, school's or *MY* network, you'd better believe you will have every reason to care.
It's like those whiny bitches in the AOL and Netzero commercials. "I don't want to take responsibility for my actions, I don't want to enable a firewall, I don't want to run a spam filter, I just want it to work, so because I'm a lazy asshat, can you just go ahead and do that for me m'kay?"
I still get CodeRed and Nimda attempts. How old is that garbage? People are uneducated. That's why they still try to hit me. Because they don't know. Or care. Or both.
Now working in IT Security, from my perspective these people are even worse. Paraphrasing the asshat student who had spyware but didn't care, "This sucks. I can't even browse the web. The IT people are more annoying than this spyware ever was." Until you work in IT, ASSHOLE, you have to understand and abide by the rules and realize why spyware/adware/viruses/etc are so god damn terrible. They are NOT good things. And it's people like you that keep garbage like that perpetually circulating on the Internet.
And to the lady who doesn't have a virus scanner because her subscription ran out, screw you too. There are free alternatives out there.
Yeah, I've installed kazaa, grokster and other p2p crap that installs spyware. First thing I do is S&D or AdAware them off my system because the programs work just fine without the spyware. Most people don't know that and most people don't care.
I have a strict policy on my network. If you are found to have any nasties on your system, access to the Internet from your machine is taken away. There's only so much you can do before people piss you off enough to take such measures. And then people call you network nazi because you're doing your job. IT (and IT Security more specifically) is a very underappreciated field.
Why doesn't the government just arrest the spammers? Most of them reside in the U.S. anyway. As anyone that reads NANAE or NANAS, we already know the home addresses of most spammers. If we know, the government _certainly_ knows.
Alan Ralsky, Ronnie Scelson and other scum spammers all boast HUGE houses and fast cars and their addresses are widely known. They made their fortunes by spamming. So the government wants taxpayer funded bounties despite that the spammers have more than enough money to cover any such civil penalty? What?
ROKSO is your friend. Use it some time. But the government _already knows_ who these people are and where they live. Yet the FTC doesn't give a rat's ass. I've forwarded hundreds of thousands of pieces of spam to the FTC's spam collection addresses. Still from the same old spammers. The spammers are just living it up because they know damn well that the government does not care about prosecuting such illegal activity.
I first heard of Barracuda a few weeks ago when I clicked on a banner ad from (IIRC) theregister.com. I signed up for a demo. The unit came about a week later.
Plugged it in and set it up. My users actually asked me why the spam has stopped, since they don't understand the concept of filtering messages out tagged with *****SPAM***** in their email client. I must say I was really impressed. Until I had to send it back.
While the airports may now require ID, it's primarily for show. In the 6 round trip flights and ID checked 12 times, not once did my ID match my flight information and not once did anyone even question anything.
I generally leave it up to friends to book my flights because I don't care what airline/airport I fly into and out of but they do. So for a wedding in North Carolina in 1999, the friend put down "Crackpipe Johnny" as my name while booking. I chuckled until we actually got to the airport because I didn't know how they'd react. Instead of showing my ID, I showed my Zippo which had Crackpipe Johnny emblazoned on it. "Ok sir, go right through."
Since then it's been a running joke and even post-9/11 Crackpipe Johnny has had no problem booking a flight or boarding a plane.
I wouldn't recommend trying this, but until someone tells me to stop doing so, I will continue to do so. Just because someone says something is so (in this case mandatory ID carrying) isn't reason to freak out.
Most people expect computers to just work without understanding anything about them. Last week at work someone asked me if I could virus scan her machine because she's never done a scan before, yet all the tools are available network wide and are well documented so people don't have to bother me.
There's two types of people I work with: The ones who are afraid to ask and take hours or days to try to figure something out (and ultimately mess something up) and the people who do ask the most idiotic mundane questions (after ultimately messing something up).
Then there's the people whose machines I service on the side. A friend asked me why her computer was so goldarn slow. How am I to know? So I took 2 hours out of my busy schedule to find out. She went out and bought WinXP and installed it on her p3-800 w/ 128MB RAM. I told her it's slow because her machine is not adequate for XP.
So-called technical coworkers don't understand the difference between a physical drive and a partition. Or why their password doesn't work when they have their Caps Lock on. Or when I tell them to send me FULL EMAIL HEADERS they cut and paste the false Outlook To/From lines. Or why they think external devices (modems, etc) are better than the same thing on an ISA/PCI card.
They don't get it. They assume everything will just magically work, and refuse to follow simple instructions I write up for them that a freakin' monkey could comprehend.
Most people don't understand simple things which makes my job very frustrating. It's gotten to the point that when I leave this company, I will never do IT again.
This crap will be around forever, and the main problem is user education. I tell all 150 of my users twice a month to make sure their systems are up to date, and nearly 300 times a month I get the proverbial "yeah, yeah." It is not my job to do patch their systems. That's another guy's job, who doesn't do his job. I put out reminders because of this.
So when we got hit by Nachi, I tracked down the weak link. It was our Netware admin, who deliberately went around my firewall so he could peruse porn, logged into his dialup ISP, checked his personal POP mail at said dialup ISP, and within minutes, bam. Nachi in the house. Of course, this wouldn't have been a problem if he (and the 2 dozen other users that got hit because of him) had kept their systems up to date.
I was found to be the blame of this, despite the fact that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, since he bypassed my security. After a week of TRYING to explain to management why it happened, that nobody should bypass security and so on, I took a long hard look at the incident.
While Nachi was good in concept, it had fatal programming errors in it that caused it to be more harmful than Blaster. We all know this. I chalk it up to a learning experience - whoever wrote Nachi definitely learned from this. Too bad there weren't any real variants of Nachi. Yes, I'm serious. However, people actually learned from Nachi. Three weeks after Nachi infections slammed into my firewall, it stopped. Nachi just went away.
Yet I still get pounded by Codered and Nimda YEARS after information, patches, and global press about it were made highly available and easily accessible.
Everybody bitches about spam and viruses and worms and popups, yet so few people actually do anything about it. Don't complain to me about pop-ups. Use a different browser. Refuse to "learn" a new browser, fine. Get Google toolbar. Don't know how check for viruses? Get AVG. Sick of spam? Fine, I'll adjust your SpamAssassin threshold.
But people don't want to do these things. In their minds, everything should just work, and work the way they want it to work. Everybody at my company knows that we have AVG, AdAware, Spybot S&D and so on. When new software is made available, I pass it on to my users. A user came up to me last week and asked why AdAware never has any updates anymore, for like the last year. Because she disregarded my notice about the new AdAware and kept using the old.
I have strict rules about email, and my SpamAssassin 50_scores.cf file is very, very harsh. My users have been told that some of their email contacts may be tagged as spam, and if that happens, let me know and I'll whitelist them. Not one person has asked me to whitelist anyone, yet everyone bitches behind my back that I'm a lousy admin because *I* somehow personally tagged their email as spam. Even the president asked me to remove all graphic/audio/video attachments, so I complied. Yet he complains that he can no longer get pictures and other non-work-related material through email.
It's an endless cycle. No appreciation for jobs well done. This is why I actually welcome such attempts to clean up the filth on the 'net. I originally despised Nachi. I now praise it.
As long as the end user refuses to heed educational advice about how dangerous the Internet is, the Internet needs vigilanteism.
For years I've been looking the album Terminator X and the Valley of the Jeep Beets. Quite popular in the early 1990's.
All the local Best Buys and the like don't have it. Used CD stores never have it. I'm not paying 30 bucks (or whatever it is this week) for it on ebay.
P2P networks don't even have it.
So I installed the new Napster in the hopes of finally being able to buy it. They didn't have it. So I installed itunes as a last resort. They didn't have it either.
Nobody has it. Until itunes gets it, I won't be using their service.
On a side note, if anybody knows where to get it, please let me know.
[spoiler] Ken wins until July 23rd, the last episode of this season. When the next season airs, he wins the first 10 shows, amassing somewhere in the tune of $1.5 million.
This season stopped taping in February and he can't legally comment on anything related to the show until his reign is over. [/spoiler]
That said, I don't think this guy is all that special. Who knows how many prior 5 day champs could have done what Ken has.
And don't ask me how I know. Let's just say a little birdie told me.
I've been using Dotster for 3 years now without a single problem. It's cheap ($15/yr or $130/10 yr). Transfers, DNS changes, etc. - not a problem at all.
We still use them at our company on an almost daily basis. Not because _WE_ need to, but because other companies still have tons of data on 9 track tapes that need to be transferred to other medium, primarily CDs these days. Most of these companies didn't realize that when they got rid of their drives that the tapes would be useless to them. That's where we come in. But while magnetic media is prone to failure (just like floppies and cassettes), if tape drives are cleaned regularly and good care is kept with the tapes, they can last a LONG time. Just because production is going to stop, doesn't really mean anything. 9 track tapes are pretty much a dime a dozen these days - probably cheaper. If you need them, doesn't matter if they're used... As long as the casing isn't cracked, chances are you won't have a problem if you still have "older technology."
Is it really that difficult to read a couple very short articles? It wasn't the fact that he just had 2.5 million DMV records. He also had copies of drivers licenses and plates from all 50 states. Having 85 CDs chock full of identities and other information is one thing - whether or not THAT is illegal will be up to the courts. What IS illegal, however, is lying to the police about it, stating that these 85 CDs were blank CDs used to record music. Obstruction of justice at its finest. And when it turned out these CDs were not in fact blank, well, his ass is in even more trouble now. Having all of Oregon's DMV records stored, in addition to drivers license and plate data for all 50 states? If you ask me, it wasn't exactly for "information purposes only" - let the idiot fry. I can guarantee you it wasn't for lawful purposes. Thank goodness I don't live in Oregon.
It's bad enough that I have to put up with these [people] on a daily basis, the last thing I want to do is hang out with them outside of work. I can't stand the backstabbing, nepotism, and people playing freecell all day while I'm busting my hump to get [stuff] done. The LAST thing I want to do is hang out with them on a day off. This is why I don't do picnics or even christmas parties or even management meetings anymore. Granted, I have valid and legitimate excuses why I can never go to such functions, but I don't want to hang out with them either. I really can't stand them.
Hasn't Netscape always reported the browser type as Mozilla rather than Netscape? On a server, this is what Netscape shot back as user agent: Mozilla/4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2-2 i686)... And it clearly shows Linux in the string, and no mention of Netscape (aside from Mozilla), and msn.com let me in without a hitch.
It irritates me to no end to have Microsoft use their company name and "philanthropy" in the same sentence. Going after an anonymous tip (can we say disgruntled employee?) the BSA and MS are all over a school district that is running $200 million in the hole. So MICROSOFT, being the PHILANTHROPISTS they are, have donated $20,000 to help Philly become compliant. Ok, here's $20,000 so we don't sue you for $1.5-$3 million? Not only are they running $200 million over budget, Philly School District might _not be able to pay_ its 27,000 workforce? If free software isn't implemented soon, or Apple (or SOMEONE) doesn't step up to the plate, Philly is just plain doomed. While copying copyrighted software is admittedly wrong and illegal, it is perfectly clear that Microsoft and philanthropy do NOT belong together. This is nothing new. There are plenty of bigger fish in the sea, but to further cripple a SCHOOL DISTRICT is down right despicable. -mj
The last time I played a version of Castle Wolfenstein was the terribly bad sequel, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. I still have it on 5.25" for the Apple//. When I think of CW, I don't think of some sweet 3D shoot-em-up - I think of a subpar game that had 19 or 20 controls (qwe/asd/zxc to aim, and similar combinations on the right side of the keyboard to move) and horribly digitized sound effects and godawful graphics. Yeah, I did see CW nearly a decade ago for the PC and it was deemed best as 'kinda cool', but it just seems as if they're beating a dead horse on ever-continuing sequels.
Slashdot Mirror
Occasional browsing is one thing, but when half of one's work day is related to doing nothing, then it becomes a problem.
I was responsible for a tri-branch office managing the network for about 800 desktops, 50 servers, and 300 employees on the clock around the clock. Nobody wanted to do what I did, so I had to do it by myself. Management wanted bandwidth reports. I gave it to them. Wanted email stats. Gave that to them. Over half the email was FW: FW: FW: FW: garbage, which I was instructed to /dev/null. Done. Such sites like youporn.com were in the top site lists. They wanted it blocked. It was blocked.
Needless to say, people would do nothing but talk crap about me because I'm "the web nazi" or "internet nazi" and other such crap.
And having worked at such a company for over a decade, one day, out of the blue, the same management that told me what to block was the same management that said after XX years, if I didn't take a 75% paycut, that I could take a hike.
I believe in working. If you're not working, you do not deserve to be paid.
And to this day, I still get daily status reports of all of the servers I once ran, nearly 3 years after the fact - because the guy they hired to change my passwords did only that, without checking on anything else.
I've never worked in IT since. There is no reward.
Yeah, I don't know where I first saw that, but here's the original, author unknown:
f a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.
If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!
If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and you screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!
When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you have to flash your memory, and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom.
That's almost exactly what I always do. I never sign the back of the card. I take a Sharpie and write SEE PHOTO ID on the back.
I'd say only about 1 in 10 cashiers actually ask for my photo ID. About 3 in 10 turn the card over while waiting for the receipt to print, see something that's obviously not a signature, and hand back the card without looking at my signature or ID. The other 7 just don't care, because we all know that checking my ID will take up 5 seconds of their precious time.
It pisses me off to no end when they don't bother doing their jobs. Is it easier to go through the hoops of fraudulent purchases rather than check the signature and/or ID?
People at my company still play solitaire and freecell. They have been since Windows was put on the desktop. None of them have figured out alt-tab or escape, so they openly just play games. Worst offenders?
First shift supervisor. From 6am-7am (before assistant supervisor comes in) she plays freecell. That is one hour of zero productivity. Times 5 (days) times 50 (weeks) and that's 250 hours. Or you can think of it as 10 days. That's one paycheck that was "earned" by playing freecell. How is this good for business?
Receptionist. Hates her job. Knows she's not going to get fired for whatever reason. Plays freecell. Doesn't try to hide it. Customers pass through all day and she is still playing freecell. Sometimes she's so into the game that she blows _customers_ off. How is this good for business?
Now the biggest offender. Our Netware admin. Does maybe two media conversions a week. At 25 bucks a pop. Huge billing. Aside from that, he doesn't do anything except updating his personal website and play, you guessed it, freecell. Back when I Back Orificed his machine to figure out what the hell he was doing all day (porn, homework, freecell), I noticed a trend in his freecell playing. Started at game #1, then #2, then #3 in an attempt to beat them all. This was 4 years ago, but at the time he was at game #~17,000. 17,000 consecutive games. (just checked this morning and he's at 26,477.) He also won't get fired because he's VP's son. But that jackass makes more than me and I actually work. How is this good for business?
Yes, people will always find ways to not do their jobs. When I'm told to try to control slack such as content filtering, I'm looked at as a complete dickwad and a control freak. Yet these idiots don't realize their added loss of productivity cuts into the bottom line. Come year end, there is NEVER any money for bonuses.
Work is not supposed to be fun. It's called work for a reason. You're at work to WORK, not play games. You want to blow off some steam? Go outside and take a walk. You want to play games? Do it at home.
Sorry to disappoint you, but Ticketmaster does not deal with the Super Bowl. There's a lottery that the NFL sets up every year as a means to distribute the tickets. And whatever tickets you get are first come, first serve - nobody gets more than 4 tickets and usually the first X amount of rows are reserved anyway.
Granted, you were probably being hypothetical about the Super Bowl reference, but with your "i know what i'm talking about" I had to clarify that you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to Super Bowl tickets.
Not trying to be a dick... Just sayin'...
msn search: "bill gates sucks" - 608 matches
google: "bill gates sucks" - 2,460 matches
Not really shocking, I guess.
Thanks for reading my post before labeling me a troll. I am far from trolling.
Whoever modded me down either mods based on the subject of the post instead of reading the post, or doesn't know squat about IT and the security involved with it.
Thanks!
I can't believe there are so many idiots out there that don't care about spyware. Even the author of that pitiful article has in the headline, "So What?" If it's your home machine, hey, fine, do what you like because it will never affect me. But if you're doing it on your company, school's or *MY* network, you'd better believe you will have every reason to care.
It's like those whiny bitches in the AOL and Netzero commercials. "I don't want to take responsibility for my actions, I don't want to enable a firewall, I don't want to run a spam filter, I just want it to work, so because I'm a lazy asshat, can you just go ahead and do that for me m'kay?"
I still get CodeRed and Nimda attempts. How old is that garbage? People are uneducated. That's why they still try to hit me. Because they don't know. Or care. Or both.
Now working in IT Security, from my perspective these people are even worse. Paraphrasing the asshat student who had spyware but didn't care, "This sucks. I can't even browse the web. The IT people are more annoying than this spyware ever was." Until you work in IT, ASSHOLE, you have to understand and abide by the rules and realize why spyware/adware/viruses/etc are so god damn terrible. They are NOT good things. And it's people like you that keep garbage like that perpetually circulating on the Internet.
And to the lady who doesn't have a virus scanner because her subscription ran out, screw you too. There are free alternatives out there.
Yeah, I've installed kazaa, grokster and other p2p crap that installs spyware. First thing I do is S&D or AdAware them off my system because the programs work just fine without the spyware. Most people don't know that and most people don't care.
I have a strict policy on my network. If you are found to have any nasties on your system, access to the Internet from your machine is taken away. There's only so much you can do before people piss you off enough to take such measures. And then people call you network nazi because you're doing your job. IT (and IT Security more specifically) is a very underappreciated field.
Why doesn't the government just arrest the spammers? Most of them reside in the U.S. anyway. As anyone that reads NANAE or NANAS, we already know the home addresses of most spammers. If we know, the government _certainly_ knows.
Alan Ralsky, Ronnie Scelson and other scum spammers all boast HUGE houses and fast cars and their addresses are widely known. They made their fortunes by spamming. So the government wants taxpayer funded bounties despite that the spammers have more than enough money to cover any such civil penalty? What?
ROKSO is your friend. Use it some time. But the government _already knows_ who these people are and where they live. Yet the FTC doesn't give a rat's ass. I've forwarded hundreds of thousands of pieces of spam to the FTC's spam collection addresses. Still from the same old spammers. The spammers are just living it up because they know damn well that the government does not care about prosecuting such illegal activity.
I first heard of Barracuda a few weeks ago when I clicked on a banner ad from (IIRC) theregister.com. I signed up for a demo. The unit came about a week later.
Plugged it in and set it up. My users actually asked me why the spam has stopped, since they don't understand the concept of filtering messages out tagged with *****SPAM***** in their email client. I must say I was really impressed. Until I had to send it back.
While the airports may now require ID, it's primarily for show. In the 6 round trip flights and ID checked 12 times, not once did my ID match my flight information and not once did anyone even question anything.
I generally leave it up to friends to book my flights because I don't care what airline/airport I fly into and out of but they do. So for a wedding in North Carolina in 1999, the friend put down "Crackpipe Johnny" as my name while booking. I chuckled until we actually got to the airport because I didn't know how they'd react. Instead of showing my ID, I showed my Zippo which had Crackpipe Johnny emblazoned on it. "Ok sir, go right through."
Since then it's been a running joke and even post-9/11 Crackpipe Johnny has had no problem booking a flight or boarding a plane.
I wouldn't recommend trying this, but until someone tells me to stop doing so, I will continue to do so. Just because someone says something is so (in this case mandatory ID carrying) isn't reason to freak out.
Most people expect computers to just work without understanding anything about them. Last week at work someone asked me if I could virus scan her machine because she's never done a scan before, yet all the tools are available network wide and are well documented so people don't have to bother me.
There's two types of people I work with: The ones who are afraid to ask and take hours or days to try to figure something out (and ultimately mess something up) and the people who do ask the most idiotic mundane questions (after ultimately messing something up).
Then there's the people whose machines I service on the side. A friend asked me why her computer was so goldarn slow. How am I to know? So I took 2 hours out of my busy schedule to find out. She went out and bought WinXP and installed it on her p3-800 w/ 128MB RAM. I told her it's slow because her machine is not adequate for XP.
So-called technical coworkers don't understand the difference between a physical drive and a partition. Or why their password doesn't work when they have their Caps Lock on. Or when I tell them to send me FULL EMAIL HEADERS they cut and paste the false Outlook To/From lines. Or why they think external devices (modems, etc) are better than the same thing on an ISA/PCI card.
They don't get it. They assume everything will just magically work, and refuse to follow simple instructions I write up for them that a freakin' monkey could comprehend.
Most people don't understand simple things which makes my job very frustrating. It's gotten to the point that when I leave this company, I will never do IT again.
This crap will be around forever, and the main problem is user education. I tell all 150 of my users twice a month to make sure their systems are up to date, and nearly 300 times a month I get the proverbial "yeah, yeah." It is not my job to do patch their systems. That's another guy's job, who doesn't do his job. I put out reminders because of this.
So when we got hit by Nachi, I tracked down the weak link. It was our Netware admin, who deliberately went around my firewall so he could peruse porn, logged into his dialup ISP, checked his personal POP mail at said dialup ISP, and within minutes, bam. Nachi in the house. Of course, this wouldn't have been a problem if he (and the 2 dozen other users that got hit because of him) had kept their systems up to date.
I was found to be the blame of this, despite the fact that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, since he bypassed my security. After a week of TRYING to explain to management why it happened, that nobody should bypass security and so on, I took a long hard look at the incident.
While Nachi was good in concept, it had fatal programming errors in it that caused it to be more harmful than Blaster. We all know this. I chalk it up to a learning experience - whoever wrote Nachi definitely learned from this. Too bad there weren't any real variants of Nachi. Yes, I'm serious. However, people actually learned from Nachi. Three weeks after Nachi infections slammed into my firewall, it stopped. Nachi just went away.
Yet I still get pounded by Codered and Nimda YEARS after information, patches, and global press about it were made highly available and easily accessible.
Everybody bitches about spam and viruses and worms and popups, yet so few people actually do anything about it. Don't complain to me about pop-ups. Use a different browser. Refuse to "learn" a new browser, fine. Get Google toolbar. Don't know how check for viruses? Get AVG. Sick of spam? Fine, I'll adjust your SpamAssassin threshold.
But people don't want to do these things. In their minds, everything should just work, and work the way they want it to work. Everybody at my company knows that we have AVG, AdAware, Spybot S&D and so on. When new software is made available, I pass it on to my users. A user came up to me last week and asked why AdAware never has any updates anymore, for like the last year. Because she disregarded my notice about the new AdAware and kept using the old.
I have strict rules about email, and my SpamAssassin 50_scores.cf file is very, very harsh. My users have been told that some of their email contacts may be tagged as spam, and if that happens, let me know and I'll whitelist them. Not one person has asked me to whitelist anyone, yet everyone bitches behind my back that I'm a lousy admin because *I* somehow personally tagged their email as spam. Even the president asked me to remove all graphic/audio/video attachments, so I complied. Yet he complains that he can no longer get pictures and other non-work-related material through email.
It's an endless cycle. No appreciation for jobs well done. This is why I actually welcome such attempts to clean up the filth on the 'net. I originally despised Nachi. I now praise it.
As long as the end user refuses to heed educational advice about how dangerous the Internet is, the Internet needs vigilanteism.
Bring it on.
Is a coupon for a half a cent really worth it?
Sightly offtopic, but people that can't grasp currency notation irritate me.
Re: your sig
Yes I do, and in fact, I got mine before you got yours.
For years I've been looking the album Terminator X and the Valley of the Jeep Beets. Quite popular in the early 1990's.
All the local Best Buys and the like don't have it. Used CD stores never have it. I'm not paying 30 bucks (or whatever it is this week) for it on ebay.
P2P networks don't even have it.
So I installed the new Napster in the hopes of finally being able to buy it. They didn't have it. So I installed itunes as a last resort. They didn't have it either.
Nobody has it. Until itunes gets it, I won't be using their service.
On a side note, if anybody knows where to get it, please let me know.
[spoiler]
Ken wins until July 23rd, the last episode of this season. When the next season airs, he wins the first 10 shows, amassing somewhere in the tune of $1.5 million.
This season stopped taping in February and he can't legally comment on anything related to the show until his reign is over.
[/spoiler]
That said, I don't think this guy is all that special. Who knows how many prior 5 day champs could have done what Ken has.
And don't ask me how I know. Let's just say a little birdie told me.
I've been using Dotster for 3 years now without a single problem. It's cheap ($15/yr or $130/10 yr). Transfers, DNS changes, etc. - not a problem at all.
http://www.dotster.com
Stupid sexy Flanders.
We still use them at our company on an almost daily basis. Not because _WE_ need to, but because other companies still have tons of data on 9 track tapes that need to be transferred to other medium, primarily CDs these days. Most of these companies didn't realize that when they got rid of their drives that the tapes would be useless to them. That's where we come in. But while magnetic media is prone to failure (just like floppies and cassettes), if tape drives are cleaned regularly and good care is kept with the tapes, they can last a LONG time. Just because production is going to stop, doesn't really mean anything. 9 track tapes are pretty much a dime a dozen these days - probably cheaper. If you need them, doesn't matter if they're used... As long as the casing isn't cracked, chances are you won't have a problem if you still have "older technology."
Is it really that difficult to read a couple very short articles? It wasn't the fact that he just had 2.5 million DMV records. He also had copies of drivers licenses and plates from all 50 states. Having 85 CDs chock full of identities and other information is one thing - whether or not THAT is illegal will be up to the courts. What IS illegal, however, is lying to the police about it, stating that these 85 CDs were blank CDs used to record music. Obstruction of justice at its finest. And when it turned out these CDs were not in fact blank, well, his ass is in even more trouble now.
Having all of Oregon's DMV records stored, in addition to drivers license and plate data for all 50 states? If you ask me, it wasn't exactly for "information purposes only" - let the idiot fry. I can guarantee you it wasn't for lawful purposes. Thank goodness I don't live in Oregon.
It's bad enough that I have to put up with these [people] on a daily basis, the last thing I want to do is hang out with them outside of work. I can't stand the backstabbing, nepotism, and people playing freecell all day while I'm busting my hump to get [stuff] done. The LAST thing I want to do is hang out with them on a day off. This is why I don't do picnics or even christmas parties or even management meetings anymore. Granted, I have valid and legitimate excuses why I can never go to such functions, but I don't want to hang out with them either. I really can't stand them.
Hasn't Netscape always reported the browser type as Mozilla rather than Netscape? On a server, this is what Netscape shot back as user agent: Mozilla/4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.2-2 i686)... And it clearly shows Linux in the string, and no mention of Netscape (aside from Mozilla), and msn.com let me in without a hitch.
It irritates me to no end to have Microsoft use their company name and "philanthropy" in the same sentence. Going after an anonymous tip (can we say disgruntled employee?) the BSA and MS are all over a school district that is running $200 million in the hole. So MICROSOFT, being the PHILANTHROPISTS they are, have donated $20,000 to help Philly become compliant. Ok, here's $20,000 so we don't sue you for $1.5-$3 million? Not only are they running $200 million over budget, Philly School District might _not be able to pay_ its 27,000 workforce? If free software isn't implemented soon, or Apple (or SOMEONE) doesn't step up to the plate, Philly is just plain doomed. While copying copyrighted software is admittedly wrong and illegal, it is perfectly clear that Microsoft and philanthropy do NOT belong together. This is nothing new. There are plenty of bigger fish in the sea, but to further cripple a SCHOOL DISTRICT is down right despicable. -mj
The last time I played a version of Castle Wolfenstein was the terribly bad sequel, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. I still have it on 5.25" for the Apple//. When I think of CW, I don't think of some sweet 3D shoot-em-up - I think of a subpar game that had 19 or 20 controls (qwe/asd/zxc to aim, and similar combinations on the right side of the keyboard to move) and horribly digitized sound effects and godawful graphics. Yeah, I did see CW nearly a decade ago for the PC and it was deemed best as 'kinda cool', but it just seems as if they're beating a dead horse on ever-continuing sequels.