I think I'm just going to use this for the rest of the day.

Ooooh.... I should use it for internal email correspondence at work!  


I can see it now....

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 9:08 AM
To: Demosthenes
Subject: FW: error

 

Demosthenes –

 

Can you follow-up on this inventory error issue for <client xyz>?  I've attached
a screenshot of it.

Thanks for your help.

Steve

To which, my reply would be:

STEVE

NO TEH1!11!111 OMG EROR LOKS 2 B TEH RASULT OF TEH CLEINTS INV3N2RY TABL3S MISNG DA TRANSACTION DAET VALUES FOR THOSE IETMS1!1111 Weird Tingly Feeling LOL THIS WAS PROBABLY DUE 2 AN INTERUPTION DURNG TEH SHIPNG OR RACEIVNG PROCES

IVA11!1 OMG Weird Tingly Feeling MANUALY CORECT3D TEH DATA WHICH SHUD CLEAR UP TEH ISUE

-11!!!111 OMG D3MOSTHENES

I haven't gotten one of these in a while.  

Anybody want to mess with this guy?

FROM DESK OF.USMAN ADAMU.
AJAOKKUTA STEEL COMPANY LTD.
PLOT 456 VICTORIA ISLAND IKOYI
LAGOS-NIGERIA.
EMAIL,[usmanadamu1999@katamail.com]
PHONE-234-80236-80490



My name is Mr USMAN ADAMU an Accountant with the Ajaokuta
Steel CompanyLtd(ASCL).My duty includes awards of
contracts, vetting and making payments on behalf of my
Ministry (ASCL).

SUBJECT:After due consideration, I have fully agreed to
privatelyinvestextensively in your line of
products/services. I am intending to retire from government
services to private business; I decided to contact you for
an urgent business proposal. I have decided to deal with a
neutral person like
you because of the nature of the transaction as I
willequally be happy to arrange with you on terms of trade
and possible transfer of the funds needed for the
investment into your company?s account or personal account.
These funds were incurred as a kick back lifting of oil by
the last top military government.

Note that the former President of Nigeria late Gen. Sani
Abacha and his Cabinetallowed the nations refineries to
collapse. This was a ground plot by the late head of state
and his cabinets to enable them lift the Nations oil
through the back door to their foreig counterpart in other
to enrich their individual foreign bank account. This money
(US$30.5M) is now floating in the Federal Ministry of
Finance as a redundant fund waiting to be claimed. Because
of our new Federal Government Decree on Civil Servants, we
are officially not allowed to own a company or operate a
foreign bank account. Hence my soliciting for your
assistance to enable me receives this fund into your
company?s account or personalaccount pending when I come
over for the sharing. To enable me startthe process and
remittance of the fund into your bank account successfully
within 7 banking days, I need the followinginformation from
you by fax or e-mail:


* Beneficiary?s name, address, private telephone /
faxnumber.
* Your bank particulars including your bank name,
address and your account number.


Note that as soon as I receive this information it will be
forwarded to the appropriate quarters for final processing
and approvals. With the modalities I have worked out it
makes it possible for you to act as a contractor who
worked under my ministry and now waiting to receive his
payment and when satisfied by the agencies your bank
account will be credited within 48 banking hours  his
transfer is 100% risk freehaving done all the underground
works locally for the smooth transfer of the fund into your
bank account within the shortest period. I advised that you
should keep this transaction a top secret and rest
allcorrespondence to e-mail now because I am occupying a
sensitive position in the government circle and also this
is once in a life time opportunity.  Finally I want you to
assure me that you will work on my
instruction and my own share of the money will be safe. You
will be rewarded with 20% of the total sum for your honest
assistance and co-operation 10% for all type ofexpense that
we both parties might incur during the course of this
transaction and the balance of 60% remain for me. Contact
me on my private e-mail: for any
question and further discussion.

Awaiting your urgent response to
,[usmanadamu1999@katamail.com]

Best regards,

USMAN ADAMU.
AJAOKKUTA STEEL COMPANY LTD.
PLOT 456 VICTORIA ISLAND IKOYI
LAGOS-NIGERIA.
EMAIL,[usmanadamu1999@katamail.com]

Okay, this is sort of a rant, but it's one I want more feedback from in the form of a poll, so I figured I'd post it in here instead of the main page.

In my job, I support the vast majority of our clients remotely.  The vast majority of those I can reach by any number of relatively secure means... those that have Citrix servers are the easiest, since I can just connect to them via the ICA client... many have pcAnywhere, and Windows Terminal Services works too.  Heck, I even have a couple of clients to whom I connect via VNC.

These are all secure, or, at least as secure as you make them.  All of them support some form of encryption if you want to use it, and all of them can be tweaked to go through different ports if you're paranoid about having certain ports open.

These clients I can get to in an instant from my main desktop workstation at work.  Client X calls with a data problem, I look in their log, see that they use Citrix, I start up my Citrix Program Neighborhood and fire up their connection I already had set up for them, and as easily as that, I'm there.  Client Y needs a patch installed, I check their log, see that they use pcAnywhere, I start up pcAnywhere and fire up their connection I already had set up for them.

However, we have a handful of clients, most of them new, that insist on a VPN for us to connect to their live systems remotely.

This wouldn't be a problem if it were just one or two.  But it's more like nine or ten.

There isn't really a standard out there for VPN protocols, so these companies all use different VPN clients, none of which are compatible with each other.  In fact, we discovered that it hosed Windows up pretty badly if we had two different versions of SonicWall running on the same machine.

Add to that the Cisco VPN client and a few others, and you have a really snarled mess.

I can't install all these different VPN clients on my desktop workstation without them fighting with each other and wrecking things.

That means that we need to use a dedicated machine that's outside of our own firewall here that is used for nothing but connecting to clients who insist on using VPNs.  And for each one of those, we have a separate Windows installation set up for them and only them.

BUT.... the stupidity doesn't end there.  Because this is the only machine from which anybody here can remotely access this handful of clients now, if someone needs to use that same machine to access a client, and somebody is alreay on that machine accessing a DIFFERENT client, we're S.O.L.

So the solution to that was to have TWO dedicated VPN machines, each one set up with a separate Windows installation for each client.

That means that any time one of these new smartass clients comes on board and says "oh, we won't open up our firewall for Citrix, or pcAnywhere, or Terminal Services, or VNC, you'll have to use VPN", that means that I need to do two full Windows installations and two full setups to get that client's project manager off my back.

Each one of those takes around two hours to set up.  So before we even get in the door, I'm doing four hours' worth of sitting around waiting for Windows to finish installing and updating.

What a pain in the ass.

What gets me is the fact that most of these clients always piss and moan about all the extra time it takes us to get into their systems to handle things... when if they'd just open up a few ports and spend the $180 on a copy of pcAnywhere we could get inside in less than a minute in most cases.

And is it really any more secure?  I don't rightly know... but I DO know that these clients who are so fricken concerned about security will send me the secure protocol file to import (that the VPN client uses to authorize access) via email, with the user name and password in the text of the message right there out in the open.  

And usually the passwords are stupid, so it doesn't matter a whole lot anyway.  Half the time, it's the client's company name, ferfucksake.

Not to mention... since the vast majority of our clients that we access remotely use more conventional, non-VPN options and have been for years, and have never been hax0red or fallen victim to worms or viruses that take advantage of these other means of remote access, one has to argue... is the extra layer of security provided by the VPN really necessary if you've never had any real problems to begin with?

Anyway, I wanted to get some input from some of the other techie types here.  Is insisting on a VPN connection really any more secure than just using Citrix or pcAnywhere with 128-bit or 256-bit encryption?

Linkage

I think we've done this one, but it's kinda fun and I think it's been a while, so I'm posting it again.

The Intelligence question is BS, since it's totally based on education level (not actual mental ability).

I've personally known people with nothing more than a High School Diploma that are worlds smarter than some people I've known with Masters Degrees, so that one can be a bit off, if you ask me.

Anyway, here's what I ended up with:

STR: 7
INT: 15
WIS: 15
DEX: 16
CON: 10
CHR: 17


I adjusted my INT score up a point, because I happen to know that in AD&D it's based roughly on IQ divided by 10 (and I know my own IQ score), but I don't have a Masters Degree in anything.

Though I think some of those other ones may be a bit skewed as well.  I don't think my Wisdom score should be above 13, and I seriously doubt my Charisma should be any higher than 14 or 15, tops.

I think my Strength and Constitution scores are probably about right though, and I'm pretty dextrous, so those are right on.

But based on the scores I got, I'd make a pretty decent Magic User, or a Cleric, and probably a good Thief.

Oooh!  I think I qualify for Bard!  

I keep running across these this week.





My caption:

"Bush can be seen here, leaning too far to the right, as per the norm."

Microsoft to demonstrate technology that nobody with a brain in their head would willingly use

Microsoft is set to offer for download on Wednesday a "public preview" beta release of its Windows Media Player (WMP) 10 technology. The biggest enhancement will be the new digital-rights-management (DRM) technology, code-named "Janus," that will be embedded inside.

...

Janus is the successor to the existing Windows Media Digital Rights Management technology. Unlike the current Windows Media DRM, Janus is designed to work across devices — as well as on the next-gen Windows Media Center systems due out later this year — and is custom-designed to support subscription music services (though it also supports other kinds of streaming audio/video content, as well). Janus includes a "secure clock" that is designed to time-out subscription content for which a customer's license has expired.

Ugh.

More incentives for people to switch to open source, anybody?

It's almost as if Microsoft is WANTING people to move away from restrictive, proprietary platforms.

I don't get why anyone would actually choose to use the Windows Media Player anyway... heck, the current version of it is such a resource hog, so crappy, so full of security holes that there are literally dozens of exploits for, so counter-intuitive that when you compare it to free alternatives out there, it doesn't even come close to stacking up... not even when the things you're comparing it to suck too (like RealOne Player, for example).

As usual, I'm sure they're just relying on the fact that 80% of the average users out there are too dumb to realize that there are other options, so of course that means that most people just blindly use WMP anyway since that's the default player in Windows.

Which is why most people still use IE, in spite of its major flaws and total lack of user controls for things like ads, popups, et cetera.

This DRM crap is going to be so infused into the next version of Windows that it'll basically make personal computers running it useless, in my opinion.  

Want to listen to a CD?  Better get permission first!  

Want to rip some MP3s for your portable MP3 player?  Sorry, you're not allowed to do that.  Here, rip the tracks into this proprietary MS format.  What?  Your MP3 player doesn't play things in that format?  Too bad.  Oh, by the way, we're keeping track.  You can rip tracks from this particular CD one more time before it will automatically be deactivated unless you pay another license fee for it.

Want to watch a DVD?  Too bad, you already watched it twice, you'll have to pay in order to watch it again on this computer.  Oh, you want to watch it on a different computer?  Too bad... you were only licensed to watch it on one machine.  

Want to install a piece of software?  Please wait while Windows sends all of your info to Microsoft to see if you're allowed to install a third party application.  Now please wait while Windows contacts that third party software vendor to make sure you have a legitimate license for it.  Sorry, there was a problem with this process and your operating system will now be deactivated until it can be sorted out.  Please call Microsoft to obtain a new activation code.

Microsoft Word has detected that you just attempted to paste copyrighted material into a Word document from another source.  Please enter the 32 digit activation code you obtained from the copyright holder to proceed.

Here's this week's stupid client story.  

We provide support to this particular client for the accounting software that they purchased from us about 8 years ago (and is about that far out of date, but we still technically support them, barely).  We also host their website.


This guy called on Friday and I had this conversation with him.


Client:  Hi, I was wondering if you could help me with our website.

Me:  Well, you'd probably have to talk to <our web guy>, but since he's not in the office at the moment, I can give it a shot.  What's the problem?

Client:  Well, it's down.

Me:  Your site?

Client:  Yes.  We haven't been able to get to it all morning.

Me:  (opens up browser, types in URL)  Seems to be working okay.  Let me try something from outside our firewall.  (Connects via Citrix to another client's server and tries website from there)  Still works.  Uh, sir, it looks like it's working just fine.

Client:  Well, we can't get to it at ALL.

Me:  You're going to <url>, right?

Client:  Yes.  Exactly.  And it just hangs and then goes to a "cannot connect to remote server" page.

Me:  Can you get to any other sites?

Client:  Huh?

Me:  Other web sites.  Can you get to any other sites on the web?

Client:  We only have the one.

Me:  No, I mean like Google, or Microsoft.com, or Yahoo or anything else?
 
Client:  Oh.  I don't know.  Let me try.... w-w-w-dot-g-o-o-g-l-e-dot-c-o-m.....

Client:

Client:  Nope.  Same thing.  So when will you guys have this fixed for us?  This is really a major inconvenience!  We depend on people being able to get to our site!

Me:  Uh... this isn't something that we could help you with.  It sounds to me like you need to call your ISP and let them know you've got no internet connection.

Client:  "ISP"?  Excuse me?

Me:  ISP.  Internet Service Provider.  The company that you pay for internet access.

Client: Oooohhhhh... you mean <well-known communications company>?

Me: Probably them.  Are they the ones you go through for your internet access?

Client:  I think so.

Me:  You should probably give them a call then.

Client:  Okay.  Thanks for your help!!!






Okay, so cut to this morning.  I get a call from the same guy from the same company.


Client: You're the person I spoke to on Friday, right?

Me: (checks notes) Oh yes.  Yup.  That was me.  No internet connection, right?

Client: Right.

Me: Was there something I could help you with this morning?

Client:  Well, we haven't had internet access since around 8:30 Friday morning.

Me: Uh huh.

Client:  I called <well-known communications company> after I spoke to you, and they said we didn't have internet access because of a 'line problem' that was affecting everyone's service in my area.  Anyway, I called them again today, because it was still out this morning, and they said they were working on it, but they weren't sure when it'd be working again.  

Me: Okay.

Client:  We process all of our web orders via email though... I was hoping you could help us with that.

Me:  With what now?

Client:  Well, whenever someone places an order, an email gets sent to us.  But we haven't been able to get our email since Friday morning!

Me: You'd have to talk to your ISP about that.

Client:  Yes, but I already did!  They don't know when it'll be working again!

Me: Uh... what, specifically, are you asking for help with?

Client:  Getting my emails!  

Me:  Getting your emails.  From your <well-known communications company> email accounts?

Client: Right!  Then you could forward them to me!

Me:  You'd need internet access for that to work.

Client:

Client:

Client:

Client:

Client:

Client:  But I don't have any internet right now!  They don't know when it'll be fixed!  Isn't there some other way you could get my emails from <well-known communications company> and forward them to me?

Me:  Well, you could always just switch to a different ISP or something...

Client:  Is that complicated?  Does it take long?

Me: Uh... no, not really.  It kind of depends---

Client:  Great!  I'm gonna call a different one and see if we can't get something set up this afternoon!  I'll call you back!  Thanks!

Me: Wait... uh...

*CLICK*





If there were some way I could prevent this guy from calling me back, I'd do it.

Maybe I could arrange for myself to be tied up in a bunch of meetings all afternoon or something.  There's bound to be one or two here that would let me in....

Thought you guys might like this.

I have all kinds of things I'm thinking about submitting to them.  

http://www.thisisbroken.com

Okay, keeping track of individual poll thread discussions will be confusing, so move the discussion (if any) to this thread, if you would, please.

I tried to make the questions and the options as simple as possible, and as unbiased as possible, though that's pretty hard to do for anyone, much less someone as opinionated as I am.  

And like I said in the first poll thread, I already had an idea of which way most of the regulars here leaned on the subject, but sometimes it's nice to see it put into simple numbers.

If a mod could sticky this thread, that'd be greaaaaaaaat.

Round six.

Fight!

Round four.

Fight!

Okay, here's round two.

Fight!

Linkage

Johnson stands firm, conciliatory

Bwahahahahahahahahaha!!!