• (cs) in reply to QJ a.k.a. QJo
    QJ a.k.a. QJo:
    Beta:
    Jim the Tool:
    The real WTF is the lack of security, whereby waving a calendar under a door to trip the motion sensor works. Sounds like some people need firing. 1. Chad needs firing for breaking the rules, not having ID, and being a general smart arse. 2. The security contracters need firing, because their security system is shit. 3. The marine guards need firing, and by that I mean a firing squad, for not shooting Chad. 4. The guard's boss needs firing (and by that I mean being shot...)... 5. Whoever didn't have marine guards on duty needs shooting... 6. And we'll round the list out with the entire brass, and all the politicians.

    This kind of weakness in physical security is quite common. It's remarkably difficult to make a door that is very easy to open from the inside and very hard to open from the outside.

    1. He may have broken a rule (which in some rules-over-brains places could get him in a heap of trouble), but leaving a badge at home ought not to be a firing offense, and if you fire all the smart-arses you'll wind up with an IT department full of nothing but dumb-arses.
    2. This kind of weakness in physical security is quite common. It's remarkably difficult to make a door that is very easy to open from the inside and very hard to open from the outside. How much are you willing to pay, per door?
    3. I very much doubt that there were armed guards on that door.
    4. Ah...
    5. So... You understand about 3? But you think there ought to be armed guards on every door?
    6. Okaaaay...

    2: You might start by making it considerably more difficult than sticking something under the door and waving it around. Like perhaps siting the doors in a groove, or something.

    So now we need to use pocket doors? Because you can't swing a door that sits in a groove.

  • Evan (unregistered) in reply to Matteo
    Matteo:
    Or, you know, get rid of the damn motion sensor and just use a pushbar like is used in every fire exit in the known universe.
    This.
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    He probably got on base because of a sticker on his front windshield. Might not work today, but 20 years ago it could. Or a regular photo ID might have been enough to get on base, but the RFID pass for the door was what he left at home.
    Or that part is invented.
  • Anomaly (unregistered)

    Having lived in Military Housing before, at least with army bases, there are locations that are accessible by civilians (PX, Commissary, business offices, industrial warehouses, etc) That are part of and considered on the Military Base but are not locked down.

    Sliding doors have a slit at the bottom that sits on a track, the door is then pulled all the way to one side exposing the entracne. The door itself is bigger than the entrance. Like using a boulder to close a cave. You roll it out of the way when not needed. The wall would contain a hole for the door to recede into. A button on the inside, a card reader on the outside. Sort of bruteforce (both physical and beating the card reader) not much else can get through.

  • Anomaly (unregistered) in reply to Anomaly
    Anomaly:
    Having lived in Military Housing before, at least with army bases, there are locations that are accessible by civilians (PX, Commissary, business offices, industrial warehouses, etc) That are part of and considered on the Military Base but are not locked down.

    Sliding doors have a slit at the bottom that sits on a track, the door is then pulled all the way to one side exposing the entracne. The door itself is bigger than the entrance. Like using a boulder to close a cave. You roll it out of the way when not needed. The wall would contain a hole for the door to recede into. A button on the inside, a card reader on the outside. Sort of bruteforce (both physical and beating the card reader) not much else can get through.

    And On the inside a mechanical lever that can activate the pulley (via a weight mechanism) can be used incase of power outages or emergencies.

  • jarfil (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    Because you can't swing a door that sits in a groove.
    Yes you can, and no you don't need to.
  • Chad (Not that Chad) (unregistered) in reply to Matteo
    Matteo:
    For a real solution, ala the engineer's gloves, you could have a collapsible threshold mechanism - something like a flap attached to a servo, so that when the door is closed, the flap is vertical, blocking the bottom. A sensor attached to an Arduino would detect when the door was opening and signal the servo to lower the flap so it's flush with the floor. Of course, you'd need some redundancies in case the power went out, so perhaps a hydraulic...

    I love how over-engineered this is...

    A simple lever system would be sufficient. As the door closes, it presses a rod behind the hinges. The rod uses leverage or gears to rotate the flap up from the threshold. No electronics, no hydraulics, only a few pins and gears. Works with the power out.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    anonymous:
    no laughing matter:
    Merle will burn-in the servers in Chads absence. With a MIG-welder!
    This is actually the direction I initially thought this WTF was heading. "Psh! Image and burn-in? How hard can it be to operate a digital camera and douse some equipment in diesel and have a bonfire? In fact, let's not even wait for the prick from IT to get back. More weenies and marshmallows for us."
    QJ a.k.a. QJo:
    You might start by making it considerably more difficult than sticking something under the door and waving it around. Like perhaps siting the doors in a groove, or something.
    Ah... how would you propose opening a door that is set in a groove? Does they lift up to the floor level to be opened, or perhaps retract into the walls with swishing noises?

    Captcha: tation. Anion, cation, tation, station.

    "perhaps retract into the walls with swishing noises?"

    Is the concept of sliding doors a revolutionary concept where you come from? The swishing noise is optional; I presume you gleaned your idea of high technology from some 5-decade-old space soap-opera, but we in Europe have been familiar with sliding doors for considerably longer than that.

    A sliding door has to go somewhere. There isn't always room to put one in.

  • itzac (unregistered)

    A Major General is a type of Major, not a particularly impressive General. As such the plural is Majors General.

    How did no one mention this in 57 comments?

  • Not Hans (unregistered) in reply to itzac
    itzac:
    A Major General is a type of Major, not a particularly impressive General. As such the plural is Majors General.

    How did no one mention this in 57 comments?

    Because a Major General is not a Major?

    US Army officer ranks: 2nd LT, 1st LT, Captain, Major, Lt. Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier General, Major General, Lt. General, General, General of the Army.

    So a Major General is a 2-star General.

  • JAPH (unregistered)

    TRWTF is the guy who didn't get the Flux Capacitor reference? Certainly entertaining, but a WTF?

  • (cs) in reply to JAPH
    JAPH:
    TRWTF is the guy who didn't get the Flux Capacitor reference? Certainly entertaining, but a WTF?
    I would have gone a little more obscure, I think, because everyone's seen BTTF. Something about an oscillation overthruster, or an interociter.

    Re doors that fit into grooves: you really want them on your ass about wheelchair accessibility?

  • Scott (unregistered)

    The bad news is it takes nearly 3 decades and an entire family fortune to make a flux capacitor.

    The good news is it only takes a week of negotiating with Libyans and about an hour to fill a bomb casing with used shoddy pinball machine parts to acquire the power supply.

  • Chad (unregistered) in reply to Fritz, a.k.a. Fritzo
    Fritz:
    Chad, a.k.a. Chado

    Now we only have to wait for the real Chad to chime in to say:

    He didn't say flux capacitors. There were no generals. He didn't go to Cancun. No-one in the office paid any attention to him. etc.

    He didn't say flux capacitors. There were no generals. He didn't go to Cancun. No-one in the office paid any attention to him.

  • Evan (unregistered) in reply to da Doctah
    da Doctah:
    JAPH:
    TRWTF is the guy who didn't get the Flux Capacitor reference? Certainly entertaining, but a WTF?
    I would have gone a little more obscure, I think, because everyone's seen BTTF. Something about an oscillation overthruster, or an interociter.
    A turbo encabulator.

    [Ooo, look at me! I'm an actual human! At least I think I am. Isn't that really the question of existence though? What makes a human... human? Is Data human? Would Akismet consider Data to produce spam? Or maybe spam isn't directly connected to humanness. Humans can produce spam, after all, and Data would be evidence for non-humans producing non-spam. In the end, however we will all just turn to dust. Are you happy now, Akismet? Now that you'll have the last laugh?]

  • (cs)

    My grandfather had one of his employees lose an hour of productivity looking for elbow grease.

  • (cs) in reply to Beta
    Beta:
    But you think there ought to be armed guards on every door?
    Perhaps he wants the opportunity to pay far more taxes so that all those extra armed guards are there for every door. Imagine it, you go to the bathroom and there's an armed guard for every stall…
  • danielpauldavis (unregistered)

    Now imagine Merle as a public school principal.

  • Anomaly (unregistered) in reply to da Doctah
    da Doctah:
    JAPH:
    TRWTF is the guy who didn't get the Flux Capacitor reference? Certainly entertaining, but a WTF?
    I would have gone a little more obscure, I think, because everyone's seen BTTF. Something about an oscillation overthruster, or an interociter.

    Re doors that fit into grooves: you really want them on your ass about wheelchair accessibility?

    Imagine a groove that has a raised middle portion something like |__/_|. And A door bottom that looks like |/^_| (not to scale) The door fits in the grooves, can be pulled either side, or up, Could be designed like an old roll desk, or a garage door if you need to worry about storage for the open door. The gap doesn't need to be any more then an Inch wide. Which with the raised bit the door slides on, could very easily compensate leaving maybe quarter inch spaces where the wheel chair wheels might need more momentum to cross effectively. But otherwise it poses no challenge to cross.

    Hell the grooves could be on the ceiling and a mechanically activated flap that closes when the door recedes into the floor could be used as well.

  • Anomaly (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    Beta:
    But you think there ought to be armed guards on every door?
    Perhaps he wants the opportunity to pay far more taxes so that all those extra armed guards are there for every door. Imagine it, you go to the bathroom and there's an armed guard for every stall…

    Would the intimidation factor help remind people to clean up after themselves? you wouldn't even need one per door. One per bathroom would work just as well.

  • (cs) in reply to Anomaly

    The door has 4 edges, one of which is not interesting to us (because it has 'hinges', or if it's a sliding door, then the edge which actually slides into the wall (might be on the side or on top)).
    Thus, if your plan of attack is to prevent people tripping the motion sensor by putting grooved tracks on the floor, it seems we would need these grooves an ALL THREE interesting edges of the door.

  • Worf (unregistered) in reply to Tom
    Tom:
    This is actually an extremely common problem with keycard-activated doors.

    Safety requirements require that the door open from the inside without the need for a key, and a lot of facilities haven't properly oriented their motion sensors to prevent just this situation.

    FYI, there are actually several ways to make doors open from the inside while securely locking them outside, and places with motion sensors usually only have the motion sensors active during the work day. At night and on weekends, you have to use the keypad/card reader to get out that door.

    Or you go with the electronic latch on the frame and regular latch mechanism on the door.

    Outside you have a keycard reader. When it reads a valid card, it clicks the latch letting you push open the door. the door handle is fixed.

    On the inside, you turn the handle (!!!) and the little door pawl disengages from the latch, like a normal door most people are used to. Outside going in requires the card, inside going out doesn't.

    There's a motion detector by the door, so motion disables the alarm when you're going out (the keycard disables the alarm going in). Wave a calendar under the door just disables the alarm, but fails to unlock the door since it needs a keycard.

    To break it, you will need to somehow stick something under the door to turn the door handle.

    A bit better than waving, and requires more complex manipulation to unlock the door.

  • ronpaii (unregistered) in reply to Matteo

    Did you forget the part where this is a government installation?

  • (cs) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    My grandfather had one of his employees lose an hour of productivity looking for elbow grease.

    When I was in Boy Scouts we would send the newbies off to look for left-handed smoke-shifters on their first campout.

  • (cs) in reply to slavdude
    slavdude:
    chubertdev:
    My grandfather had one of his employees lose an hour of productivity looking for elbow grease.

    When I was in Boy Scouts we would send the newbies off to look for left-handed smoke-shifters on their first campout.

    My baptism of fart was a boring old left-handed screwdriver.

  • (cs) in reply to slavdude
    slavdude:
    chubertdev:
    My grandfather had one of his employees lose an hour of productivity looking for elbow grease.

    When I was in Boy Scouts we would send the newbies off to look for left-handed smoke-shifters on their first campout.

    My stepfather said the Army Air Corps used to send newbies out for a bucket of prop wash or a barrel of prop pitch.

    My biological father was a plumber, and the iconic red herring in that profession was a 14-inch pipe wrench. For some reason pipe wrenches (at least in the 1950s and '60s) came in sizes every two inches except the fourteen.

  • Gunslinger (unregistered) in reply to Tom
    Tom:
    This is actually an extremely common problem with keycard-activated doors.

    Safety requirements require that the door open from the inside without the need for a key, and a lot of facilities haven't properly oriented their motion sensors to prevent just this situation.

    FYI, there are actually several ways to make doors open from the inside while securely locking them outside, and places with motion sensors usually only have the motion sensors active during the work day. At night and on weekends, you have to use the keypad/card reader to get out that door.

    Is there some problem with a push handlebar on the inside that everyone else in the industry is blissfully unaware of?

  • Rnd( (unregistered)

    Umm, here they seem to use some sort of odd mechanical thing called lock. With a plastic case around the part used to operate it. That is for security exits.

    Really, for proper security why don't have same system on both side and have some sort of fail-safe on one side... Must be too sensible solution or something...

  • (cs) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    My baptism of fart was a boring old left-handed screwdriver.

    I like Markov chains, too.

  • Jimmy (unregistered)

    I just realised all the "new" (I know they're not so new anymore) writers are there just to provide Hanzo stories so the less new writers seem more entertaining on the odd occasion one writes.

  • S (unregistered) in reply to Gunslinger
    Gunslinger:
    Is there some problem with a push handlebar on the inside that everyone else in the industry is blissfully unaware of?

    That's been puzzlingly me, too. What's wrong with a perfectly simple manually operated door, instead of installing an automated system with a motion sensor? People who can work a swipe card can probably cope with "push" and "pull"...

  • Zacrath (unregistered)

    This story started suspiciously like Insecurity Doors. Then the story changed to something completely unrelated, i.e. TRWTF.

  • (cs) in reply to Not Hans

    A Major General ranks above Major Major but lower than Major Screwup.

  • (cs) in reply to QJ a.k.a. QJo
    QJ a.k.a. QJo:
    TRWTF is that yes, the flux capacitors were delivered on time, then it turned out he needed a sonic screwdriver to install them with -- and that needed to be ordered from England so that it would arrive yesterday.
    IF you can get a flux capacitor, it shouldn't be a problem to have something delivered before it's been ordered.

    Getting the DeLorean might be more of an issue, though.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to daef

    Yeah, that's pretty fluxed up.

    (Captcha: paratus. Readiness means having a spare Flux capacitor.)

  • (cs) in reply to AndyCanfield
    AndyCanfield:
    A Major General ranks above Major Major but lower than Major Screwup.
    And all of these rank lower than General Failure. He is the only one who can read every disk.
  • Tintin (unregistered)

    Who on earth would use a motion detector to unlock a security door? Not only that, but apparently it's not even a PIR motion detector which needs something with heat, but just opens with any motion at all - and not aimed properly either. So, it'd probably open if an insect flew in front of the sensor.

    Have a push button, or a handle, or at least a properly aimed PIR (if people aren't allowed to touch anything for some reason).

    So, the security part of the WTF is not that someone entered by waving a bit of paper around, but that someone thought that a badly configured motion sensor was 'secure'.

    The handle's the best option, BTW, as it's 'fail safe'. Even if all the power fails and you've been hit by an EM pulse, you can still simply turn the handle and get out.

  • Ike (unregistered)

    Here's the real WTF:

    "This was government contracting, nobody was getting fired. Merle couldn’t fire Chad if he wanted to, and the base officers could do little more than complain to the contracting firm."

    They're confusing government contractors with government employees. Contractors can be fired, and sometimes are if the government is displeased with them. Now government employees, on the other hand...

  • Meower68 (unregistered) in reply to no laughing matter

    Obligatory BOFH tale:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/11/bofh_and_the_vax_cluster/

  • navyspouse (unregistered)

    Asking for a flux capacitor is actually a common snipe hunt prank pulled on newbies in the military, particularly on Naval nuke subs. Even if Merle hadn't seen the movie I'd be surprised if he hadn't heard of the gag from sailor stories , given his location.

  • PhillyMike (unregistered) in reply to Anomaly

    Written by someone who has never spent five minutes in a wheelchair.

  • Jeremy (unregistered)

    I've always had a vastly different understanding of the expression "private proof." Privates tend to be very creative in their ability to make mistakes, exploiting even the smallest of holes in a plan or standard operating procedure. To make something "private proof" is to make a system both simple and unambiguous to minimize inventive screwups.

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