• Zapp Brannigan (unregistered) in reply to SteamBoat
    SteamBoat:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    JL:
    C:
    zebano:
    I can't figure out what purpose gum would serve...
    Auto-stick-to-CD tweezers. ;-)
    Yeah, I guess the gum would stick to the tweezers pretty well. And if the gum doesn't work to get the tweezers out, a little peanut butter should loosen up any residual gum left in the drive.
    Then you put a mouse in there to eat the peanut butter?

    Then you put in a cat to get the mouse.

    I don't know why.

    MArk B.

    I know where this is going, eventually the gorilla dies when winter comes.

  • (cs) in reply to Zapp Brannigan
    Zapp Brannigan:
    SteamBoat:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    JL:
    C:
    zebano:
    I can't figure out what purpose gum would serve...
    Auto-stick-to-CD tweezers. ;-)
    Yeah, I guess the gum would stick to the tweezers pretty well. And if the gum doesn't work to get the tweezers out, a little peanut butter should loosen up any residual gum left in the drive.
    Then you put a mouse in there to eat the peanut butter?

    Then you put in a cat to get the mouse.

    I don't know why.

    MArk B.

    I know where this is going, eventually the gorilla dies when winter comes.

    They probably broke the CD in half to jam it in the drive. Now they use the gum to stick the two halves back together.

  • EngleBart (unregistered) in reply to Seann Alexander
    Seann Alexander:
    I'm guilty of holding my RSA Key upside down. I was curious as to why I never seen hex digits before on the screen, oddly enough at the same time my login wasn't working.
    Me, too. I usually catch it after one or two entries are rejected. It only delays me if it is a number either way, I notice the E and h right away.

    I am just glad that the RSA sticker hasn't fallen off yet!

    On a true, enterprisey system, it would detect the upside down entry and inform you that you need to invert your key. Kind of like most password fields now warn you when you have your caps lock on.

  • (cs) in reply to Kowell
    Kowell:
    Prepare Spaceball 1 for immediate departure!... And change the combination on my luggage!
    Here's to you, Explains The Joke So Everybody Knows He Gets It guy!
  • pong (unregistered) in reply to B B
    B B:
    Process for removing CD from floppy drive:

    Stick gum to string and CD needing to be removed. Tie string to CD tray Write a script to eject the CD tray to yank it out

    You forgot the steps for building a CD drive with a tray.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to EngleBart
    EngleBart:
    On a true, enterprisey system, it would detect the upside down entry and inform you that you need to invert your key. Kind of like most password fields now warn you when you have your caps lock on.

    I'd like to put something like that in the rsa entry fields - if you enter letters in the rsa code field, it tells you to turn the thing over.

  • (cs) in reply to pessimist

    Well, here's an idea: How about the company that makes those tokens and the software that controls them make sure that it only ever displays characters that cannot be mistakenly read upside down?

    It's the same concept that SHOULD be applied to captchas. They should never include characters that can be easily mistaken for other characters, like I and 1 and l, and 0 and O and Q, all characters that can easily be confused for one another, particularly after they've been mangled by the captcha software.

    Oh, yeah, I guess that would be too sensible.

  • Wine Snob (unregistered) in reply to RogerInHawaii
    Well, here's an idea: How about the company that makes those tokens and the software that controls them make sure that it only ever displays characters that cannot be mistakenly read upside down?

    Congrads, you just reduced the one time password scope considerably.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to RogerInHawaii
    RogerInHawaii:
    Well, here's an idea: How about the company that makes those tokens and the software that controls them make sure that it only ever displays characters that cannot be mistakenly read upside down?

    Because when the token is upside down, the character are also in reverse. So, you'd have to make sure that all codes are palindromes. .semordnilap era sedoc lla taht erus ekam ot evah d'uoy ,oS .esrever ni osla era retcarahc eht ,nwod edispu si nekot eht nehw esuaceB

  • Grant (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    Kowell:
    Prepare Spaceball 1 for immediate departure!... And change the combination on my luggage!
    Here's to you, Explains The Joke So Everybody Knows He Gets It guy!
    Er, no, that's the next line in the dialog.
  • Jeremy (unregistered) in reply to bored
    bored:
    TRWTF was that the VP was doing work.

    captcha: Venio (a venetian gang member)

    No no no...you clearly don't understand the chain of management. TRWTF is not that the Board Member was doing work, it is that the board member called in for himself. Really, what normally would happen is that the Board member would contact the CEO, who would then contact the CIO, who would then contact the director, who would then contact the manager, who would then contact the technician responsible for fixing the issue.

    Also, ironically enough, the CAPTCHA I just got was 'ingenium.'

  • Zapp Brannigan (unregistered) in reply to Jeremy
    Jeremy:
    bored:
    TRWTF was that the VP was doing work.

    captcha: Venio (a venetian gang member)

    No no no...you clearly don't understand the chain of management. TRWTF is not that the Board Member was doing work, it is that the board member called in for himself. Really, what normally would happen is that the Board member would contact the CEO, who would then contact the CIO, who would then contact the director, who would then contact the manager, who would then contact the technician responsible for fixing the issue.

    Also, ironically enough, the CAPTCHA I just got was 'ingenium.'

    There is always an executive assistant in the chain of command.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    RogerInHawaii:
    Well, here's an idea: How about the company that makes those tokens and the software that controls them make sure that it only ever displays characters that cannot be mistakenly read upside down?

    Note that the passwords are numeric on a 7-segment LCD. Eliminating the numbers that appear 'similar' upside down gets rid of 1, 2 & 5, 6 & 9, 8, and 0. The remaining passwords can therefore be any desired combination of 3, 4, and 7.

    However, this will still not prevent lusers from misreading 3 as E and 4 as h. If you wish to have a system sufficiently robust to deal with this segment of the population, you should restrict your character space to the digit '7'.

    Have fun.

  • (cs) in reply to North Bus
    North Bus:
    Note that the passwords are numeric on a 7-segment LCD. Eliminating the numbers that appear 'similar' upside down gets rid of 1, 2 & 5, 6 & 9, 8, and 0. The remaining passwords can therefore be any desired combination of 3, 4, and 7.

    However, this will still not prevent lusers from misreading 3 as E and 4 as h. If you wish to have a system sufficiently robust to deal with this segment of the population, you should restrict your character space to the digit '7'.

    Have fun.

    And if anyone comes to you asking where the backwards-J key is on the keyboard, you must smite them repeatedly with a clue stick.

  • (cs) in reply to bryan986
    bryan986:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    SteamBoat:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    JL:
    C:
    zebano:
    I can't figure out what purpose gum would serve...
    Auto-stick-to-CD tweezers. ;-)
    Yeah, I guess the gum would stick to the tweezers pretty well. And if the gum doesn't work to get the tweezers out, a little peanut butter should loosen up any residual gum left in the drive.
    Then you put a mouse in there to eat the peanut butter?

    Then you put in a cat to get the mouse.

    I don't know why.

    MArk B.

    I know where this is going, eventually the gorilla dies when winter comes.

    They probably broke the CD in half to jam it in the drive. Now they use the gum to stick the two halves back together.

    But what of the gorilla? We must save him!

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to North Bus
    North Bus:
    you should restrict your character space to the digit '7'.

    Have fun.

    No, because upside down (and rotated) 7 looks like an L.

  • enim lla enim (unregistered) in reply to Grant
    Grant:
    Zylon:
    Kowell:
    Prepare Spaceball 1 for immediate departure!... And change the combination on my luggage!
    Here's to you, Explains The Joke So Everybody Knows He Gets It guy!
    Er, no, that's the next line in the dialog.
    Even if it wasn't I'd like him more than I like Repeat The Same Joke Because He Is Too Lazy To Read The Previous Comments guy.
  • NutDriverLefty (unregistered) in reply to gravis - ultrasound or analog pro?
    gravis - ultrasound or analog pro?:
    Not so much "highly specialized" technician as simply "special".

    I wonder if he arrived on a short bus.

  • Him over there (unregistered)

    I've had common things like "My laptop won't power up from the mains"

    <flick>

    And "The computer isn't on"

    And of course the electricity is off

    But my own contribution to this field was putting a CD into the drive of a Rack mouted server, getting distracted by someone and inserting the disk between the top of the CD Drive unti and the bottom lip of the bay.

    Had to power down the server and get it out on the rails and opened up.

    D'Oh

    CAPTCHA - appellatio, a Mountain Man sex act

  • Anonymous user (unregistered)

    username: Password and Password **** (user??) ..

    how did the technician swap username for password and password for username when the author specifically said otherwise..??

    I blame the author for this mistake or WTF??

  • Anonymous Asshole (unregistered)

    It's clearly because he's a very "special" technician.

  • Bill G. (unregistered) in reply to FriedDan
    FriedDan:
    Back when I was doing support I had the CD in the floppy drive call. Except the woman I was talking to didn't try to be clever, she just tried to blame it on us... wanted us to pay for getting the CD out of her machine.

    Gotta wonder about people sometimes.

    She's right you know.

    If you initiated installation of Windows XP Personal (aka Windows XP Home) by using the WINNT command in DOS mode, it will eventually tell you to insert your Windows CD into your floppy drive.

    As an OEM maker, you ARE responsible for supporting your customers through that process.

  • (cs)

    "...I occasionally have to help the Highly Specialized Technicians that our equipment vendors send over for maintenance."

    I would really have enjoyed hearing about the maintenance that was done on the technicians.

  • (cs)

    Get ready to run, we've got 25 minutes... 15 minutes ... 05 minutes ... 6h minutes!?

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to Wine Snob
    Wine Snob:
    Well, here's an idea: How about the company that makes those tokens and the software that controls them make sure that it only ever displays characters that cannot be mistakenly read upside down?

    Congrads, you just reduced the one time password scope considerably.

    Actually, it can have a gravity activated sensor to turn the display upside down.

  • Not Bob (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    Wine Snob:
    Well, here's an idea: How about the company that makes those tokens and the software that controls them make sure that it only ever displays characters that cannot be mistakenly read upside down?

    Congrads, you just reduced the one time password scope considerably.

    Actually, it can have a gravity activated sensor to turn the display upside down.

    There's an app for that

    Or at least the RSA folks should make one.

    Personally, I think you should just make tokens that always display 1010101 for the passkey. Works upside down or not, backwards or forward.

    Minor degradation in the security level, but only if hackers find out.

    Captcha: nulla What, like the wafers?

  • (cs) in reply to Andrew

    Why put that in hardware when you can just put it in the RSA field validation? That only cuts the universe in half, which should be fine.

  • Falcon (unregistered) in reply to Zemm
    Zemm:
    Get ready to run, we've got 25 minutes... 15 minutes ... 05 minutes ... 6h minutes!?
    I immediately thought of this! Nice to know I'm not the only one...
  • justsomedude (unregistered) in reply to GrammarNazi
    GrammarNazi:
    trwtf is the VIP using the east st. louis ghetto slang 'her' instead of here.

    FTFY

  • Jelte (unregistered)

    In my early days as a computer programmer (this is 1987) I was working at a company where every programmer had to take 1st line support calls as well. The CD-ROM story reminded me of the following call:

    A user calls up and says she's having trouble installing the software. She said: "It says insert disk #3, but I can't get it in anymore. Disk #2 was already hard enough..."

    After I resolved the problem I went back to my programming desk and changed the installer to say "Remove Disk #1 and insert Disk #2"!

    (This is serious, not a joke!)

  • (cs) in reply to Sir Wilhelm
    Sir Wilhelm:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    JL:
    C:
    zebano:
    I can't figure out what purpose gum would serve...
    Auto-stick-to-CD tweezers. ;-)
    Yeah, I guess the gum would stick to the tweezers pretty well. And if the gum doesn't work to get the tweezers out, a little peanut butter should loosen up any residual gum left in the drive.
    Then you put a mouse in there to eat the peanut butter?

    But my friend, that is the beauty behind the plan. The mouse-in-a-wheel who magically powers each PC will take care of any residual peanut butter while he's taking his tea at 5-o'clock.

    I use those newfangled laser mouses these days

  • Jak (unregistered) in reply to North Bus

    7 is L.

    All numbers must be removed. No user input so no errors. Sounds good.

  • rainer (unregistered) in reply to yeah whateva
    yeah whateva:
    Just this monday (sept 14), I walked in the door to have my boss tell me our highly specialized technician wasted a ton of time over the weekend in a foreign country with an Ethernet communication problem.

    Turns out the jack to jack connection was correct, but he somehow managed to plug the connector in upside-down on one of them. As to how this is possible, I haven't even the courage to duplicate the effort. Seriously, how can you do that??

    One of our users just damaged a DMS-59 to DVI adapter by plugging it in upside down. Turns out that the D-shaped shell is completely useless to prevent this. It's manufactured with sufficient tolerance to go in both ways equally easy. Designed for failure.

  • SR (unregistered) in reply to bd_
    bd_:
    I don't know about the RSA tokens used here, but the ones that Paypal uses have a label that wears off really quickly. After a few months, there are no obvious indications as to their orientation.

    ...until the "E"s and "h"s start to appear

  • Bonce (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    Well, as long as you write the software to accept entries of either "7777777" or "LLLLLLLL" as the same key then there will never be any confusion. No more helpdesk calls; win!

  • N0G (unregistered) in reply to bjolling
    bjolling:
    Sir Wilhelm:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    JL:
    C:
    zebano:
    I can't figure out what purpose gum would serve...
    Auto-stick-to-CD tweezers. ;-)
    Yeah, I guess the gum would stick to the tweezers pretty well. And if the gum doesn't work to get the tweezers out, a little peanut butter should loosen up any residual gum left in the drive.
    Then you put a mouse in there to eat the peanut butter?

    But my friend, that is the beauty behind the plan. The mouse-in-a-wheel who magically powers each PC will take care of any residual peanut butter while he's taking his tea at 5-o'clock.

    I use those newfangled laser mouses these days

    Mice with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads?!

  • Henning Makholm (unregistered) in reply to bryan986
    bryan986:
    They probably broke the CD in half to jam it in the drive.
    Why so? An ordinary CD-ROM is smaller than a 5¼" floppy disk in every dimension -- possibly excluding height, but there were a lot of vertical give in those drives. No need to break anything.
  • IT Girl (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    RogerInHawaii:
    Well, here's an idea: How about the company that makes those tokens and the software that controls them make sure that it only ever displays characters that cannot be mistakenly read upside down?

    Because when the token is upside down, the character are also in reverse. So, you'd have to make sure that all codes are palindromes. .semordnilap era sedoc lla taht erus ekam ot evah d'uoy ,oS .esrever ni osla era retcarahc eht ,nwod edispu si nekot eht nehw esuaceB

    Okay, where are the grammar nazis to point out the missing "s"?

    captcha: damnum, damnum all.

  • IT Girl (unregistered) in reply to Zapp Brannigan
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Jeremy:
    bored:
    TRWTF was that the VP was doing work.

    captcha: Venio (a venetian gang member)

    No no no...you clearly don't understand the chain of management. TRWTF is not that the Board Member was doing work, it is that the board member called in for himself. Really, what normally would happen is that the Board member would contact the CEO, who would then contact the CIO, who would then contact the director, who would then contact the manager, who would then contact the technician responsible for fixing the issue.

    Also, ironically enough, the CAPTCHA I just got was 'ingenium.'

    There is always an executive assistant in the chain of command.

    Who would have caught the VP's stupidity and saved everyone the hassle.

  • Zapp Brannigan (unregistered) in reply to SilentRunner
    SilentRunner:
    "...I occasionally have to help the Highly Specialized Technicians that our equipment vendors send over for maintenance."

    I would really have enjoyed hearing about the maintenance that was done on the technicians.

    Well one time, I had this work order to lay some cable at Megan Fox's house. I was just about to ring the doorbell when Jessica Simpson's convertible pulled into the drive. Her passenger was Jessica Alba and they were wearing satin teddies. Megan had invited them over for a pillow fight. And then...

  • (cs) in reply to North Bus
    North Bus:
    If you wish to have a system sufficiently robust to deal with this segment of the population, you should restrict your character space to the digit '7'.

    Have fun.

    Under those rules: 7 can be read upside down as L, so it's gone, too.

    Digits 1, 2, 5 and 8 read as the same digit upside down or right side up (on 7-segment displays). So if you were to use those, and stick to palindromes...that'd give 64 passwords (for an 8-digit display).

  • MOH (unregistered) in reply to bd_
    bd_:
    I don't know about the RSA tokens used here, but the ones that Paypal uses have a label that wears off really quickly. After a few months, there are no obvious indications as to their orientation.

    Don't ask don't tell ?

  • C (unregistered) in reply to Grant
    Vicky:
    12h851 is not 128451 upside down. It's 158421 upside down.
    i can't believe noone else thumbed this up yet...
    Grant:
    Zylon:
    Kowell:
    Prepare Spaceball 1 for immediate departure!... And change the combination on my luggage!
    Here's to you, Explains The Joke So Everybody Knows He Gets It guy!
    Er, no, that's the next line in the dialog.
    Agreed. Actually, i knew i heard the joke before, but couldn't remember where from. :"> Thanks, Kowell!
  • (cs)

    He only told him to "type user first, THEN password". He didn't say which fields to type them into. As for the "lower-case", it probably arrived as "not upper-case".

    Some people are pretty inventive when it comes to coming up with new ways to be stupid.

    (That goes for the chewing-gum lady too. It's a kind of Idiot McGyver)

  • Vic (unregistered) in reply to Him over there

    Been there, done that!

  • Vic (unregistered) in reply to Vic
    But my own contribution to this field was putting a CD into the drive of a Rack mouted server, getting distracted by someone and inserting the disk between the top of the CD Drive unti and the bottom lip of the bay.

    Had to power down the server and get it out on the rails and opened up.

    Vic:
    Been there, done that!
    Sorry - failed to quote original message.
  • Harrow (unregistered)

    I wrote a filk on "The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly" but there's no way to post it here.

    It starts out "I know a young lady who stuck in a disk...", but when it got to the part about how the tweezer failed to please her, Miss Priscilla Goodbody, the supervising censor over at Akismet, went into cardiac arrest and the post was rejected with prejudice.

    Well it's probably too labored and long anyway.

    -Harrow.

  • Kristoph Minchau (unregistered) in reply to Zapp Brannigan

    Exactly, there are always an executive assistant in the chain of command.

    Coincidentally, the same day, I got another RSA token call with yet another Board of Director.

    He was on vacation in Hawaii trying to remotely log in. I was talking to him guiding him through the process and asked him to enter the code on his token. He said that he didn't have the token, but assured me that he had the code... he had written it down.

    Apparently, he didn't realize that the token number changes, and assumed that the code that was displayed was the same all the time. So, he wrote down the code, left the token, and went on vacation. (Which obviously was the source of his problems).

    We ended up conference calling his secretary where she was able to find the token and read back the -current- numbers, and he was able to log in.

  • someone (unregistered) in reply to North Bus

    7s can be read upside down as Ls

  • Me (unregistered)

    TRWTF with #1 is segmented LCD displays. 1980 called: it wants its technology back.

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