• (cs)

    Stupid "Frist" posts like the ones above get deleted for, well, being stupid.

    OnTopic: Story was kind of lame. We've heard it before, and it wasn't very well written.

  • my name is missing (unregistered)

    Finding stupid companies like this is hardly difficult. Your best bet is a Monty Pythonesque "Run Away! Run Away!".

  • (cs)

    "Andrew isn't at the company anymore; he's now working at a small consulting company where he's much happier."

    ...and makes double his old salary. :P

  • (cs)

    It seems our friend got a real education about our industry at this company. Sometimes, you need to go through Hell to appreciate normality.

  • (cs)

    That story was ok. I am however really interested in what could possibly require your password to be setup that way in order to print.

    Addendum (2007-10-04 14:56): That story was ok. I am however really interested in what could possibly require your password to be setup that way in order to print.

    Edit: Thinking even further, is the printer somehow not connected to active directory, yet requires a login? But somehow the printer driver sends your Active Directory password to it?

    Ok here's my final solution: The IT guy is clueless on how to operate the printer, the pritner can probably be setup to require password authentication. He didn't know how to have it tie into Active Directory, but he was able to find the manual add/edit login credentials admin tool.

    The printer driver, when trying to print, is asked by the printer for a login. The driver first tries the current user's Active Directory login credentials. If that fails, it will probably popup a login window.

    The IT guy probably wanted to originally have a company global login for the printer, but some PHB wanted individual users to use their logins.

    Unable to link the printer to Active Directory, the IT guy decided to create a password method that everyone must adhere to in order to print. No changing of passwords allowed.

    //God I hope I'm wrong

  • kamil (unregistered)

    10 Mbps LAN's really aren't that uncommon. I know for a fact that we had them in college, and like Andrew, I graduated in 2006.

  • KG2V (unregistered)

    Gad, I can remember crap like that - at a BANK (thank god it didn't do financials) - the only way we got source control was when 3 of us (2 consultants and I) got fed up, and went out and BOUGHT some. Bullpen seating, in a room with NO ac, lan cables draped across desks (you had to step over, or crawl under to get to 1/2 the seats). I ran away after 10 weeks. made a few friends that I can still call for help - 13 years later. Having gone through hell together...

  • wait what (unregistered)

    It sounds though like "p2nJFH58^$gyueTR6" would have been a valid password. Starts with p2n, ends with a unique number.

    Anyway, that's pretty bad. Using "onomatopoeia" as a captcha is too. If a robot can read a small word why can't it read a big one?

  • bighusker (unregistered)

    Why does the client even know the details of their bug tracking system? There's no need to discuss internal development processes with outside clients (unless it's a potential security issue like having the repository of source code stored off site).

    Even if they learned about it and had some misguided security concern, just tell the client it's been handled and move on. If they're stupid enough to think e-mail is more secure than commercial bug tracking software running on a local domain, then they're too stupid to know if anything has been changed.

  • bighusker (unregistered) in reply to kamil
    kamil:
    10 Mbps LAN's really aren't that uncommon. I know for a fact that we had them in college, and like Andrew, I graduated in 2006.

    They aren't that uncommon, but I think 10mbps LANs using Category 3 cabling are pretty rare these days. As recently as 2 1/2 years ago, my former company only had a 10mbps LAN on the top floor of the building. However, the bottleneck there was a bunch of old switches. The whole building was wired with Cat5e and is capable of 1Gbps. As of now, they're running 100Mbps Fast Ethernet and 1Gbps to a few nodes.

  • (cs) in reply to JamesKilton

    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

  • GreatPretender (unregistered)

    Man - I've been there. Worked for a hospital once that had no source control, no bug tracking, nothing. I set up source control on my workstation just to get something, and even then all the server guys and network guys eyed it suspiciously.

    My favorite part was when we finally wrote a bug tracking system in-house (we were bored and needed something to do), and then management would freak out every time we showed them reports of the bugs we had.

    "We have bugs in the system!?!?...and people can log in here and see that we do?!?! We don't what anyone to know that we have bugs!"

    And of course, there was the famous question we got from the manager before releases. "It's bug-free, right?" If we dared answer "No...no software is 100% bug free", then the release got pushed out a week until we could make it "bug-free".

    It truly saddens me to think about how much further along humanity could be if we didn't have idiots running engineering shops - and I imagine its no better with civil, chemical, or electrical engineering either.

  • (cs) in reply to Storme
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    I vote for an automated discard of EVERY first post. Run it as a cron job; every hour. <g>

  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    I vote for an automated discard of EVERY first post. Run it as a cron job; every hour. <g>
    How about nightly as in the WTF :)

  • Jess Sightler (unregistered) in reply to bighusker
    There's no need to discuss internal development processes with outside clients (unless it's a potential security issue like having the repository of source code stored off site).

    I wouldn't mock the off-site dev repository too much. Considering how bad the on-site infrastructure was, this might have been the only way for the guy who did it to get reliability.

    captcha: sanitarium -- sounds right

  • James (unregistered)

    The network sounds dangerously similar to the one I found when I started my current job (in 2005): the entire floor shared two coax segments - a dozen or more people on a single run of 10Base2, through half a dozen hubs since it's hard to find 10Base2 NICs. After a few months of this, I got approval to put in a switch - one bit of coax remained (joining my switch to the central building switch), but at least this cut the collisions and wiring problems.

    Mind you, early on we actually benefited from the shared nature: one day the performance really sucked (as in, worse than normal for this mess!) - firing up Ethereal quickly told me the clown next to me was serving up movies to Argentina via half a dozen different P2P apps at once, not to mention a very lonely FTP server (rendered useless by the firewall which prohibited inbound TCP connections)...

    Now, $12m later, we all have switched 100BaseTX ports and Cisco VoIP phones - with the same geriatric servers, though.

  • Steve (unregistered)

    You folks ought to work in a university. Here it's a splendid amalgam of the bleeding edge latest and greatest and stuff that's older than some of the undergraduates (well, almost).

  • Bob Cratchet (unregistered) in reply to GreatPretender
    GreatPretender:
    It truly saddens me to think about how much further along humanity could be if we didn't have idiots running engineering shops - and I imagine its no better with civil, chemical, or electrical engineering either.

    Civil, chemical and electrical engineers have rules that tell them what works and what doesn't - software engineers are still just mucking about in the dark. It's kinda difficult to do much else when our world changes so rapidly, but it's also astounding how little many developers are prepared to put into illuminating their world.

  • llama64 (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    I vote for an automated discard of EVERY first post. Run it as a cron job; every hour. <g>

    I have visions of this script becoming a true WTF in it's own right!

  • (cs) in reply to Storme
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha?

    You're registered. You don't have a captcha, dingbat.

  • Joel (unregistered) in reply to Bob Cratchet

    That's why there are laws governing most engineering fields. Without them, nothing would work and buildings would be falling down.

    It's probably time software standards be made manditory.

  • (cs) in reply to Storme
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    It's easy: you don't put your #$%@ing captcha in your message. It's annoying, and nobody cares what your captcha is. They're completely random, any any relevance to the current story is completely coincidental.

    I think Alex should modify the forums to auto-delete posts in which people indicate what their captcha was. Only then it'd delete this post too, because I quoted somebody who included theirs.

    </rant>
  • (cs) in reply to llama64
    llama64:
    ParkinT:
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    I vote for an automated discard of EVERY first post. Run it as a cron job; every hour. <g>

    I have visions of this script becoming a true WTF in it's own right!

    Oh, oh! Something that'll iterate through every post (150,000 ATM) each night, deleting the first post of every WTF. It'll either take longer and longer as time goes by, or a every article ever will lose a comment each day. Can't wait to see what happens when it runs on an article that has no comments.

  • yetihehe (unregistered) in reply to Quietust
    Quietust:
    It's easy: you don't put your #$%@ing captcha in your message. It's annoying, and nobody cares what your captcha is.
    I care.

    On networks: I'm in campus, where there are about 2k computers on one lan, with B class adresses. Just netbios and other random boradcasts take about 1MB/s. It's good now everyone has cat5e and every building has own fiber to central switch (12 buildings). Overall 100mbit for 2000 students is a little small.

  • Pitabred (unregistered) in reply to Quietust
    Quietust:
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    It's easy: you don't put your #$%@ing captcha in your message. It's annoying, and nobody cares what your captcha is. They're completely random, any any relevance to the current story is completely coincidental.

    I think Alex should modify the forums to auto-delete posts in which people indicate what their captcha was. Only then it'd delete this post too, because I quoted somebody who included theirs.

    </rant>

    And sometimes the captcha is an amusing coincidence, and makes me chuckle when it's shared. I'm far from nobody, so I'd say that refutes your statement about who cares. It doesn't matter that it's completely random, that's part of the attraction of it. Serendipity, if you will. But hey, you had to go and lay a big stinky all over it. Don't you have better things to complain about?

    Back on-topic... I love half-assed implementations. Our old network "admin" (I use that word loosely) here used to have almost everyone's password written down on a sheet of paper at his desk. I'd put him in the same class as the "admins" of this story's network... fortunately, he was let go after not too long.

    captcha: stinky

  • TobiasTheCommie (unregistered) in reply to Quietust
    Quietust:
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    It's easy: you don't put your #$%@ing captcha in your message. It's annoying, and nobody cares what your captcha is. They're completely random, any any relevance to the current story is completely coincidental.

    I think Alex should modify the forums to auto-delete posts in which people indicate what their captcha was. Only then it'd delete this post too, because I quoted somebody who included theirs.

    </rant>

    While it may not be humor at the highest level, it is still, from time to time, vaguely amusing.

    captcha: vern

  • CynicalTyler (unregistered) in reply to Bob Cratchet
    Bob Cratchet:
    Civil, chemical and electrical engineers have rules that tell them what works and what doesn't - software engineers are still just mucking about in the dark. It's kinda difficult to do much else when our world changes so rapidly, but it's also astounding how little many developers are prepared to put into illuminating their world.
    Mucking around in the dark are we?! Gang of Four, to the rescue! Rules and equations are just Patterns that are quicker to write down. Have I just illuminated your world?
    Steve:
    You folks ought to work in a university.
    You folks ought to work in a university hospital. Now that's scary.
  • CAPTCHA (unregistered) in reply to Quietust
    Quietust:
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    It's easy: you don't put your #$%@ing captcha in your message. It's annoying, and nobody cares what your captcha is. They're completely random, any any relevance to the current story is completely coincidental.

    I think Alex should modify the forums to auto-delete posts in which people indicate what their captcha was. Only then it'd delete this post too, because I quoted somebody who included theirs.

    </rant>

    Actually, the CAPTCHAs aren't completely random, they come from a set defined by Alex that contain a high percentage of words that could relate to any given WTF. So the stupid thing would be being amused that a word related to the current WTF came up. And telling everyone your CAPTCHA.

  • (cs) in reply to Joel
    Joel:
    That's why there are laws governing most engineering fields. Without them, nothing would work and buildings would be falling down.
    Or bridges. Or levees.
  • Ron Paul Fan (unregistered)

    Speaking of straws, check out Ron Paul!

    www.youtube.com search for Ron Paul

  • (cs)
    CAPTCHA:
    Actually, the CAPTCHAs aren't completely random, they come from a set defined by Alex that contain a high percentage of words that could relate to any given WTF. So the stupid thing would be being amused that a word related to the current WTF came up. And telling everyone your CAPTCHA.
    Exactly. There's a relatively tiny list of them, and once you've seen them all about a dozen times each, one really doesn't care to see them again.

    Yet we still have the retarded monkeys here posting them again and again as if they're playing Bingo.

  • Flim McBoobie (unregistered) in reply to CAPTCHA
    CAPTCHA:
    Quietust:
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    It's easy: you don't put your #$%@ing captcha in your message. It's annoying, and nobody cares what your captcha is. They're completely random, any any relevance to the current story is completely coincidental.

    I think Alex should modify the forums to auto-delete posts in which people indicate what their captcha was. Only then it'd delete this post too, because I quoted somebody who included theirs.

    </rant>

    Actually, the CAPTCHAs aren't completely random, they come from a set defined by Alex that contain a high percentage of words that could relate to any given WTF. So the stupid thing would be being amused that a word related to the current WTF came up. And telling everyone your CAPTCHA.

    Dude, it's the WAY folks make the connection between a captcha and the story that can be amusing. Observe...

    CAPTCHA = gygax ... oh never mind.

    Now we laugh... HAHAHAHAA! ...or not.

  • Drone (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    CAPTCHA:
    Actually, the CAPTCHAs aren't completely random, they come from a set defined by Alex that contain a high percentage of words that could relate to any given WTF. So the stupid thing would be being amused that a word related to the current WTF came up. And telling everyone your CAPTCHA.
    Exactly. There's a relatively tiny list of them, and once you've seen them all about a dozen times each, one really doesn't care to see them again.

    Yet we still have the retarded monkeys here posting them again and again as if they're playing Bingo.

    Captcha Bingo... that's billant!

  • Dude (unregistered) in reply to Pitabred

    Ok, now what the hell does "captcha" mean??!!!

  • (cs) in reply to Diamonds

    Here's the full explanation to the extent of my knowledge: every employee had their own workstation on which I'm pretty sure we were all administrators. Everyone could have an arbitrary login and password if they so chose. I guess everyone was assigned an employee number or something; this is where it gets fuzzy for me. If we wanted to print, our local passwords had to be the same as our server passwords. So, for example, on my local workstation where I didn't have to log in to any domain, my username was "andrew" and I had an arbitrary password. I couldn't print. If I changed it to "abc72", I could. Every employee's password was formatted as such. Pretty secure, right? I have no idea how this was actually implemented.

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to CynicalTyler
    CynicalTyler:
    Steve:
    You folks ought to work in a university.
    You folks ought to work in a university hospital. Now that's scary.
  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to Steve

    Crap. I didn't intend to do that.

    CynicalTyler:
    You folks ought to work in a university hospital. Now that's scary.
    Believe me, a medical school is scary enough.
  • v.dog (unregistered)
    Then the last character in the password had to be a user-specific number.
    So only ten staff could use the printer, then?
  • Gitsnik (unregistered) in reply to Pitabred
    Pitabred:
    Back on-topic... I love half-assed implementations. Our old network "admin" (I use that word loosely) here used to have almost everyone's password written down on a sheet of paper at his desk. I'd put him in the same class as the "admins" of this story's network... fortunately, he was let go after not too long.

    That's my network right here... thankfully I am slowly moving away from the implementation, but to anyone who breaks into my company, top right hand draw of my managers desk has the sheet you need... including his admin-enabled password... truly, truly scary stuff.

  • Patrick (unregistered) in reply to JamesKilton
    JamesKilton:
    Stupid "Frist" posts like the ones above get deleted for, well, being stupid.

    OnTopic: Story was kind of lame. We've heard it before, and it wasn't very well written.

    I think we've all experienced it before.

  • (cs) in reply to v.dog
    v.dog:
    Then the last character in the password had to be a user-specific number.
    So only ten staff could use the printer, then?
    NINE.
  • (cs)

    This post brought to you by the number H.

  • me (unregistered) in reply to FlorisDenHeijer

    zero is a number

  • FourMajor (unregistered)

    I have never dealt with anything this bad, but I at least know what the feeling is like. For instance, I had to use Lotus Notes. That sucked...

    With my most recent job I made a point of inquiring what my work environment/setup would be like before I accepted.

  • Saemundr (unregistered)

    so is 587555283...

  • Saemundr (unregistered) in reply to Saemundr
    Saemundr:
    so is 587555283...

    ignore me, i can read. honest.

  • Stefan W. (unregistered) in reply to Quietust
    Quietust:
    Storme:
    What IF you make a decent first post, and use "first" as your captcha ?

    captcha: last (for now)

    It's easy: you don't put your #$%@ing captcha in your message. It's annoying, and nobody cares what your captcha is. They're completely random, any any relevance to the current story is completely coincidental.

    I think Alex should modify the forums to auto-delete posts in which people indicate what their captcha was. Only then it'd delete this post too, because I quoted somebody who included theirs.

    </rant>

    Hm. Chaptca: Quietust

  • thePianoMan (unregistered) in reply to felixnine
    felixnine:
    Here's the full explanation to the extent of my knowledge: every employee had their own workstation on which I'm pretty sure we were all administrators. Everyone could have an arbitrary login and password if they so chose. I guess everyone was assigned an employee number or something; this is where it gets fuzzy for me. If we wanted to print, our local passwords had to be the same as our server passwords. So, for example, on my local workstation where I didn't have to log in to any domain, my username was "andrew" and I had an arbitrary password. I couldn't print. If I changed it to "abc72", I could. Every employee's password was formatted as such. Pretty secure, right? I have no idea how this was actually implemented.
    We used to have a similar system to that at my old workplace (a small uni department) before I became the admin. We didn't have a domain of our own because a Windows 2000 domain would apparently have upset the uni's primary domain. Each staff member had a local user account configured on their workstation and another local account configured on each of the servers. Matching usernames and passwords work fine in this case. If anyone wanted to change their password, they had to change it on the servers as well.

    Eventually we just joined the uni's primary domain. Much easier, and the password issues just became Somebody Else's Problem.

  • (cs) in reply to thePianoMan
    thePianoMan:
    felixnine:
    Here's the full explanation to the extent of my knowledge: every employee had their own workstation on which I'm pretty sure we were all administrators. Everyone could have an arbitrary login and password if they so chose. I guess everyone was assigned an employee number or something; this is where it gets fuzzy for me. If we wanted to print, our local passwords had to be the same as our server passwords. So, for example, on my local workstation where I didn't have to log in to any domain, my username was "andrew" and I had an arbitrary password. I couldn't print. If I changed it to "abc72", I could. Every employee's password was formatted as such. Pretty secure, right? I have no idea how this was actually implemented.
    We used to have a similar system to that at my old workplace (a small uni department) before I became the admin. We didn't have a domain of our own because a Windows 2000 domain would apparently have upset the uni's primary domain. Each staff member had a local user account configured on their workstation and another local account configured on each of the servers. Matching usernames and passwords work fine in this case. If anyone wanted to change their password, they had to change it on the servers as well.

    Eventually we just joined the uni's primary domain. Much easier, and the password issues just became Somebody Else's Problem.

    I was at my varsity for six years. We were given a network login/password that gave us access to all the student computing systems. The network was configured to expire the passwords after 90 days. And it remembered every password you have ever used. I appended random chars onto the end of the one, but often forgot it. So, I eventually started going through the days of the week, then months of the year. Talk about security.

  • ... (unregistered)

    Why bother with a password on a local printer in a small company? It's not like the whole world can access it, and I don't think printer access is limited to only a few employees anyway.

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