• Scott (unregistered) in reply to Mel
    Mel:
    Scott:
    You need to watch more mythbusters. Lit cigs won't start a fire. LIGHTING a cig will, but once it's lit, no issue.
    Nope, my house almost burnt down when I was about 9 because of a lit cigarette. Someone had dropped a lit cigarette down a crack in the floor of the porch, and it had smouldered in something flammable for a while (maybe a day or so), until my sister and I noticed smoke billowing out from under the house... kinda scary, but exciting when the fire engines came :)
    Different issue. Gas vapors will not light from a lit cig, it's not hot enough. Depending on the item a cig is laying on, it could light it, it depends on the temperature at which that item combusts. My statement was only about filling up with gas, not a cig in any other scenario. Lit cigarettes start a slew of fires every year and kill a lot of people.

    People need to remember that a lot of rules are for stupid people. They say no smoking because a sign that said 'No lighting of cigarettes please. If it's already lit you are okay.' Peoples' heads would explode trying to read the rule.

  • Andrea (unregistered) in reply to Aaron

    There are signs in my office elevators asking us to not use cell phones because they interfere with the operation of the elevators.

    And yes, I work for state government.

  • BeenThere (unregistered)

    I wonder if G.W. was trying to find WMDs in the database. Last time he looked for those and didn't find any, a lot of people got mad.

  • Josh folder (unregistered)

    LOL, wish I could find a store like that, I'd go in with three phones all transmitting! Funny thing is, theyd never know it cause it doesnt happen! They just dont want peopel yapping on the phones while in line.

    Jiff www.privacy.de.tc

  • Ifni (unregistered) in reply to Josh folder
    Josh folder:
    They just dont want peopel yapping on the phones while in line.

    If that is the case (and I agree that it is), they should simply put up a sign that says "No shoes, no shirt, talking on cell phone, no service" or some such.

    If the customer is at the register and talking on the cell phone, the cashier should move on to the next person in line. If they are already in the middle of a transaction, void it out and move to the next person in line. If there is no next person, stop the transaction and move on to something else until the customer is off the phone. If you are a salesperson and are talking to a customer, and they answer the phone, abruptly walk away. That is essentially what the customer is doing to you by answering the phone.

    If people choose to ignore common courtesy, then they should be afforded none.

  • Herohtar (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    The Nautilus one isn't a WTF. It's just sad. Nerds trying to be funny and stuff.

    No, but the real WTF there is that Michael W. clears his history often enough to see that message multiple times......

  • (cs)

    I haven't seen the phone sign before. I'll have to keep an eye out next time I'm around an Australia Post. Also, as mentioned on the sign, the term to use in this thread is mobile phones, not those foreign cell phones, so please get it right! (sarcasm detector self test complete!)

    for the \newline one, I figure that NR means Not Rated, so that amounts to 'Rated Not Rated'.

    What is perception parsing?

  • GermanGirl (unregistered) in reply to Andy L.
    Andy L.:
    I've always assumed that the warning on airplanes wasn't because they were worried about fully-functional cel-phones and radios, but because they were worried about damaged cel-phones and radios that were transmitting on the wrong frequencies.

    Though I don't imagine that's a big issue now that the large majority of them are digital.

    I agree. I don't think there's any physical reasons why they cannot be used on planes anymore, BUT, the public rails against using them on planes. For example, in the space of two months, I had overheard three different people talking loudly into their phones about theirs or someone else's latest hospital procedures. One was a knee surgery, one an eye repair procedure, and another lengthy one about a large abdominal abcess, in all its spewing detail at the restaurant table next to mine. Forgive me, but if I was stuck in a cramped airplane seat, and someone was blathering on and on about this kind of crap for hours on end, they would definitely need some future surgery. A "foreign body removal" procedure I am quite sure. So, I think the cell phone ban just helps to keep the peace and prevent groups of people from kicking the crap out of some rude obnoxious jackass, and (hopefully) pitching him/her out the door at 20,000 feet.

  • Xythar (unregistered)

    Yeah they've had those notices at post offices here in Australia for ages. Not all of them but I definitely remember seeing a few signs to that effect at the post office in Armadale, Melbourne about a year or two ago. I wonder if this one is anywhere near that?

    The old signs said something like "If the computer freezes up, please step away or switch off your mobile phone". It honestly felt like they'd somehow had this problem in the past but I have no idea how.

  • (cs) in reply to Superdude
    Superdude:
    I was going to reply with something amusing, but my brain's irony detector has blown.

    Then leave it to me to point out the irony that aptent was being sarcastic. Irony is something that happens, not something you do.

  • (cs) in reply to Xythar

    Could well be--the sign on the left (stating the closing date for Labour Day) provides enough information to deduce that it's in Victoria.

  • jim steichen (unregistered) in reply to Eternal Density

    In order for perception parsing to be experienced correctly, you have to imbibe mind-altering (and therefore illegal) substances.

  • (cs)

    Whoa, the "doomed to repeat history" message from Nautilus. I thought that was just a quirk from a beta - I haven't seen that since, uh, some 1.x release. Yep, still seems to exist in recent binaries.

    Then again, I don't use the browser mode and thus have little need to forget histories. =)

  • (cs)

    If frequencies from mobile phones can freeze the computers, that means they didn't pass FCC/IC/whatever approval, as radio waves and things that block them work both ways, accepting and permitting egress...

    If one were a jerk, one could report the office for using unapproved equipment...

  • (cs)

    I asked a professional pilot about the cell phone issue many years ago. He said the ban on cell phones came from several points.

    One, older planes could have problems with radio transmitters. Modern planes (in the last thirty or forty years) don't. The airlines say "no phone on any flight" because if they said "phones OK on this plane, not OK on that plane" all the passengers would say "arrggh, I'm not flying on that plane!".

    Two, the speed of the plane means that the phone is moving from cell to cell extremely rapidly, something that older cell installations don't handle well.

    Three, people talking on phones are sometimes annoying to those around them.

    He said that the airline industry decided twenty years ago that the simplest way to deal with all of these was a blanket ban. No complex rules to explain to induhviduals, just a simple "no radio transmitters."

    B

  • jaybz (unregistered) in reply to GrahamS

    first time poster here. :) anyway...

    GrahamS:
    How exactly are you going to scan a mouse click tracker's logs??

    Even if you had extra hooks into their browser so that you knew exactly when they were visiting the target web page you would still need a screenshot to determine what they were actually clicking on.

    Not impossible, but a hell of a lot harder and requires more hooks which means it is more likely to be detected.

    Actually, it's not a hell of a lot harder to get all the information you need. It's only a hell of a lot harder on them script kiddies who don't know how to code their own "tools". Also it isn't more detectable. You don't need browser hooks to take screen shots. The mouse logger could simply take screen shots each click. Though it might not work with Vista, depending on the trojan's permissions. Also, in most cases, the screenshot will also show enough of the url to figure out where to go. As for knowing WHEN to take the screenshot, it's a matter of finding out which application is in the foreground and when it's a browser, then take a screenshot every click. Taking screen shots and retrieving a list of running processes is considered less invasive than monitoring mouse-clicks and sending data over the network. It will still be the mouse monitoring and network activity that will trigger trojan/virus detection software.

    As for sifting through the information, the attacker most likely have targeted a specific site or set of sites to want to install a mouse logger since most sites use the usual text boxes for convenience. The attacker could simply put in additional code that sends the user's browsing history and correlate the images with the time the user visited the target site. Not that much harder. And not really more detectable either.

    Although it's true that it takes extra effort to specifically target specific sites, but remember, there is someone who actually thinks that it's worth the extra effort.

    Attackers can be very persistent when it comes to sensitive information like credit card details. That said, I still think that using mouse clicks to enter bank information is a very good security measure. Very few trojans actually send mouse-clicks. Though, imnsho, the drop-downs are still a WTF. It's bettter to use cross-browser javascript to create an on-screen number/key pad where you just click on the desired keys when entering sensitive information. For one thing, that method requires half the amount of clicks drop-downs require.

  • jaybz (unregistered) in reply to shepd
    shepd:
    If frequencies from mobile phones can freeze the computers, that means they didn't pass FCC/IC/whatever approval, as radio waves and things that block them work both ways, accepting and permitting egress...

    That would apply only if they used a regular PC operating under normal circumstances or something to that effect. FCC/IC/whatever certifications are only required for manufactured products and I think are required only for products that are sold. The PO could simply have something like say, weighing scales jury-rigged into their computers with weight reading software cannot handle bad data gracefully. None of that requires certification from one of those organizations. The software and jury-rigging would still be WTF material though.

  • jaybz (unregistered) in reply to Andrea
    Andrea:
    There are signs in my office elevators asking us to not use cell phones because they interfere with the operation of the elevators.

    And yes, I work for state government.

    Actually, elevators interfere with the use of cellphones. Now I wonder if they just got that backwards. Or perhaps those elevators pre-date cellphones. If it's the latter, I'd use the stairs. :p

  • (cs) in reply to OMG
    OMG:
    www.verires.com for that terrible credit card form. The whole site is a WTF.

    And no, your credit card number will not be scrambled because there's no SSL on that page. The encryption relies on a technique known as "lying". It will be emailed from the server in broad daylight, written onto Post-It notes at the other end, then left in the bins outside.

    Not too bad. Got a support request a few weeks ago that consisted of some screenshots pasted into a word document. That word document had been printed out, scanned back in, pasted as a picture into an email, that email sent to our liaison in the customer organisation, who'd printed it out, scanned it in, and mailed it to us.

    Someone clearly didn't know about email attachments...

  • Dave (unregistered)

    I'm not going to comment on spelling as many others have done (I have better things to do with my time than read useless posts). With this in mind, apologies if this has already been posted.

    To answer the original question: Yes, that PO does sell mobile phones. The PO in question is an Australia post outlet.

  • Kail (unregistered)

    The biggest WTFs on are some of the people posting comments about how smart they are to not obey a polite request. Of course, they know everything already.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10536660

    " World RSS Email Print ShareThis Qantas probe laptop link after 300 foot plunge 2:45PM Thursday Oct 09, 2008

    Passenger laptop computers are now being investigated as a possible cause of the Qantas mid-air emergency off Western Australia on Tuesday.

    The Airbus A330-300, with 303 passengers and a crew of 10, experienced what the airline described as a "sudden change in altitude" north of its destination on Tuesday.

    The mid-air incident resulted in injuries to 74 people, with 51 of them treated by three hospitals in Perth for fractures, lacerations and suspected spinal injuries when the flight bound from Singapore to Perth had a dramatic drop in altitude that hurled passengers around the cabin.

    In July, a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course, according to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's monthly report"

  • calloatti (unregistered)

    The RWTF on the last one is how they used the letter "O" so the "zero" will be the last option after the "9".

    [image]
  • Jesper (unregistered)

    Mobile phones are freezing computers?

    That would be a good one for The Mythbusters to test.

    MYTH BUSTED! :)

  • (cs)

    Netflix uses Lisp?... well, you learn something new every day.

  • Eros (unregistered)

    Having a credit card number input field in with each digit in drop down menus should help black box testing immensely! I.e. you have a finite amount of possible input!

  • Matthias (unregistered) in reply to TwelveBaud
    I dunno, looks like RTF to me...
    s/R/W/ (Sorry for being Cpt. Obvious) I suppose that printout is what you get when you force long-time TeX users to use some "word processor".
  • George (unregistered) in reply to Xythar

    Hey everyone, totally forgot I even submitted the Post Office snap!

    I thought the picture was rather humorous. At the time I thought what possibly life-threatening or critical application does Australia Post use to warrant the turning off of mobile phones? I can understand a hospital or an airplane, but the local post office was peculiar. It also makes the AP look like they're some antiquated corporation that are still using POS machines (and I don't mean point of sale).

    However, seeing the comments from others, especially those who used to work at Australia Post, makes sense somewhat. If it interferes with their EFTPOS machines, then it's clear that they decided to just place a sign and hope that people would heed their advice, rather than fix their broken systems. I'm not at all surprised, AP have always seemed quite thrifty IMO.

    Xythar:
    Yeah they've had those notices at post offices here in Australia for ages. Not all of them but I definitely remember seeing a few signs to that effect at the post office in Armadale, Melbourne about a year or two ago. I wonder if this one is anywhere near that?

    The picture was taken about a week before Victoria's Labour Day earlier this year, at the Knox City / Wantirna South post office. It's the first time I've ever seen these signs, but then again I don't go to the post office often.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    The Nautilus one isn't a WTF. It's just sad. Nerds trying to be funny and stuff. But I do like the \newline. Looks like LaTeX.

    I laughed so I guess it worked.

  • Kasper (unregistered)

    Speaking of interference from phones...

    On my old monitor the picture on the screen would actually start shaking a few seconds before I received a phone call. Apparently it could interfere with the monitor faster than it could start playing a ring tone.

    And this laptop was actually locked up the other day, but came back to life as soon as I switched off my phone. (Not as surprising as it may seem, as the laptop was hanging trying to make a bluetooth connection to the phone).

  • convicted felon (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    The Nautilus one isn't a WTF. It's just sad. Nerds trying to be funny and stuff. But I do like the \newline. Looks like LaTeX.

    That was my first thought too. I thought it might be a macro to return "New Line Home Cinema" in special formatting. But New Line isn't involved in the production or distribution of that show.

  • convicted felon (unregistered) in reply to WWWWolf
    WWWWolf:
    Then again, I don't use the browser mode and thus have little need to forget histories. =)

    I just got a girl friend. =)

  • Jay (unregistered)

    Hey, I wonder if somebody has used this in a movie or TV show yet: The villain goes to the hospital where his intended victim has just had surgery and is lying on the bed unconscious. He casually walks into the victims room. Then, looking around to make sure no one his watching, he sneaks out his cell phone and turns it on. Immediately, the medical equipment keeping the victim alive fails. The monitors all flat line. The villian turns the cell phone off and casually walks out. As he slips out the front door we see the nurses racing down the hall ...

  • gwafa_darren (unregistered)

    computers.....nice..

  • bitter (unregistered) in reply to GrahamS

    Look for patterns of around 32 clicks, in an alternating pattern where the first click is slightly to the right of the click made two clicks previously, and the second click is roughly below the preceding click, and with the whole sequence occurring within a relatively short period.

    No, it would not as easy as looking for a sequence of digits, but I'm certain it is possible.

  • TekniCal (unregistered) in reply to halcyon1234
    And yet, I still see douchebags walking through a gas station with a lit cigarette.

    The coal of a cigarette isn't hot enough to ignite gasoline. You can even toss a butt into a pool of gas with no ill effect. Just don't spark a lighter or strike a match, and you'll be fine.

  • Phr34ker (unregistered)

    Cellphones near poorly shielded computers is a real problem. For insance, here is a movie of my frend rebooting a Dell at his workplace just by calling his cellphone: http://www.rickardliljeberg.com/media.php?itemID=2015

  • (cs) in reply to Phr34ker

    I worked at a rental car company and our computers were old enough that when customers would stand at the counter and talk on their cell phones the system would go haywire. It would read the cell signal as all sorts of funky input and essentially cause us to have to re-enter the contract from the beginning.

  • ha (unregistered)

    Comments are freezing my brains. Please, do not post.

  • Reggie (unregistered)

    I'm guessing the credit card drop downs are to circumvent keyloggers?

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to ais523
    ais523:
    The Nautilus one looks to me like someone messed with the localisation files. I tried the same thing in Nautilus, and got this rather saner message as the subtitle:

    "If you clear the list of locations, they will be permanently deleted."

    However, it's entirely possible that it's me rather than the OP who has the non-standard message...

    The OP has the nonstandard message (or at least you have the standard one, or there's a virus going around surreptitiously getting rid of this humor and we both have it...but that's impossible, we're running LINUX!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!1!!!one!!!)

  • Ansable (unregistered)

    I've actually had problems with mobile phones and computers. I had this old (circa 2000) dell laptop, and whenever I moved a mobile phone near it -zap- the frame rate was cut in half. I can't blame airlines for not wanting signals not interfering with on board equipment-more the weiring then the actual computers. A post office, on the other hand, can afford computers with nice (normal) metal cases that prevent interference.

  • eeyore (unregistered) in reply to amischiefr

    Google for "Santayana history" to see where the quote comes from.

  • Verires Inc. (unregistered) in reply to OMG

    Verires has been using this method of encoding for 13 years and have not had one complaint or compromised cc number. Our data goes directly to our offices. Their data goes through several networks while being processed, thereby increasing the chances of being compromised. It's one of our competitors complaining.

  • Verires Inc. (unregistered) in reply to paratus

    Verires has been using this method of encoding for 13 years and have not had one complaint or compromised cc number. Our data goes directly to our offices. Their data goes through several networks while being processed, thereby increasing the chances of being compromised. It's one of our competitors complaining.

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