petergwilson · Monitoring Specialist · ✭✭✭✭✭

Yes. It is really annoying but what can you do other than try to educate them and then, like you say, CYA. I was adding up how many organisations I have worked at in 30 years of IT (20 years as a contractor) and it came to 20. I think I have had this issue in every single one of them. I've read up on the regulations,…

PEGI alerts about in game purchases. Not going nearly far enough. It really needs a complete block on in game purchases unless prior authorisation has been made by the bill payer. Even then you could add a separate authorisation for each purchase. 

BYOD is a nightmare anywhere. I'm working at a University where 50,000 students and 5,000 staff all have their own devices and want to connect to everything. 

I agree with you. Weak passwords are only weak if the bad actor is allowed to brute force the password. If the accounbt gets locked out after three bad attempts it will take forever to break a 5 character password. The weakest link is users writing down complex passwords because they can't remember them. Having this…

I'm about to leave public sector to go back to private sector because of a lot of this. When I joined here I was promised loads of training. None materialised. I was promised management support when improving systems. If anything the reverse happened. I was pretty much ignored until everything I warned them would happen…

Oh sssso closssse (Nagini). It is the evil snake that sits in the corner sending out alerts at random. 

When have you ever seen a Linux person with social skills. The two are mutually exclusive.

If only there was a cloud based alternative. Oh wait. Solarwinds Backup.

Just had an instance this morning where one of the HR muppets logged a ticket saying the HR database server was down. Using a combination of monitoring and a very small amount of brain power I was able to prove that it wasn't. SAM monitoring showed that it was up as was the database and Appinsight for SQL showed good…

Not really a surprise that the Weather App sold off the location data it gathered. It was only a matter of time until someone realised what the data might be worth.

Having a different typo in every copy of a document is an old CIA trick. It caught an awful lot of people.

Yep, that was my thinking. The legs would just crisp up. Might be a good idea to singe the hair off first too.

We use Solarwinds as a managed service through a 3rd party. As such I don't have a login to the Solarwinds Customer Portal. I have asked the vendor who said no. I have asked Solarwinds who say they are looking into it. Until then I'd love to take advantage of all the free training but am unable to log in. We do take…

SF bans facial recognition systems. It's been around a lot longer than people think. I put one in in the early 90s that monitored live CCTV and tracked known players in Belfast.

Conditional formatting for quite a lot of stuff would be great. Disk space available % would be nice in a report if you could highlight those where something should be done rather than allow some numptie to decide if extra disk space should be added or not. They seem to not understand the trend analysis graphs.

We've just done that too with Microsoft. Funny they recommended the same. Must be a push on to promote WEF. Not played yet. They found enough other issues to keep us busy for a long time.

AT&T. Lets make something up, wrap it in science sounding techno-babble and sell it to the unsuspecting public (allegedly).

GDPR is a right pain in the ***. There are some very serious fines for non compliance and no one here, where I work, seems to care. They have done nothing even though they have had two years to get ready and we have been telling them non stop that something MUST be done. They have just now come to us and asked us what we…

I'm going to try out that tool and advice for detecting hidden cameras. Great find.

Still shown in GBP (£) in the UK though so not that useful when the answers are given in USD ($).

I have nothing in my house that is internet enabled except for the router and that has a very good firewall built in (and fully configured). I don't see the point. The only things I have at home that need to be internet connected are the computers and the TV. All hidden behind the firewall.

240 minutes. I do spend time every day relaxing. Sometimes I'm as relaxed as a newt.

Yep, it did both strike a chord and make me chuckle.

They are gotchas if you consider for the last year questions with one answer have had radio buttons and questions with multiple answers have had check boxes. By having check boxes we have been lulled into thinking there may be more than one answer. The ITIL one was easy for me as I have been working in ITIL environments…

Yes. A good way for the police to compile a DNA database that they don't have to admit to.

I wouldn't mind my own Cylon though. I'd settle for the Number 6 version.

Demon Seed is one of my favourite movies of it's generation. It's a mixture of horror, sci fi and unintentional humour. Definitely worth watching just to see what people then thought of AI. Not much has changed.

I couldn't agree more. You have nailed it. That's what happened to me 20 years ago so I left and went contracting. It was great for about 12 years. People listened (as I was technically the external guy). Then things changed. Management started to become even worse. They were mostly business management people instead of…

Yes, don't annoy your System Administrator. We know how to get even.

Really ? £2,275 converted to USD at the current exchange rate of $1.40 to the pound (£) equates to $3,185. If that's close enough please send me the extra $195 I was more concerned that we, in the UK, could be changed $5,995. It's not unknown.