We had a similar one - the doors to the switch room were slightly pushed into the room, so there was a one-foot return either side. The switch to unlock the doors was on one side, and thus invisible if you walked up to the doors and started looking.

Guess where the emergency power off switch was? If you said 'right beside the door, unlabelled' you win a long weekend rebuilding disks from backups.

After the 2nd time the cleaner plunger herself into darkness, they added a label, molly-guard and moved the button.

I agree - and while it's good that more people know about this so they can protect themselves, it wasn't the case that every black hat knew about this already - there'll be a load of script kiddies giving it a go now, so the chances of getting hacked went up.

That said, the people who had a genuine malicious intent were more than likely doing this behind the scenes, while the 'kiddies' tend to go for vandalism and defacement. I'd rather that if I got hacked, it just said 'ask me about teh spam' on my wall, than it silently installed a data-tracking app or something...

But really, what's the issue here? That someone went to the trouble of scraping every public name and profile off the site, or that it wasn't Google?

Mark

PS Why doesn't Chrome recognise Google as a properly spelled word?

I have a truly remarkable proof of this, but my brain is too small to contain it.

And that every other country in the world agrees....

Had one like this once too - he stayed, said if we needed anything at all (conf call with the developers, food, drinks, a chance to vent frustrations) to come find him in the next room. He was out of sight so we didn't feel he was hovering, he was right there so we knew his personal life was getting as screwed up as ours, and he was able to catch up on emails and paperwork so he was more effective the next day too!

Win-win, yet they seem such a rare breed.

Mark

Don't forget to charge them for the taxi you leave the laptop in, then.

So make it a spiral instead

If the many-worlds theory is true, then there already exist an infinite number of universes where the data is already known to the putative attacker...

So you're damned already. Somewhere.

If I was Bruce Schneier that's what I'd do .... Just doodle a random sequence of digits inside to make you crazy (and make you assume I'm a genius for doing it on the spot).

Either that, or he was trying to solve the morning Sudoku, and used your book as scratch paper...

Mark

It's alright, we killed it.

The site, I mean - not the wacky organism...

http://www.google.com/search?q=red+stapler

You're welcome.

Each VOIP call uses less bandwidth than a voice call, so it's a transition to get people to do this. You still have a monthly contract, so expect the price of that to go up as people use it more...

Perhaps they have a deal with Skype also, so they get a share of outcall and termination revenue, after all it's only Skype to Skype calls that are free, if I call my friends on their 'real' phones I still get charged.

In fact, that's part of their plan - once I start using it, I nag all my friends to get it too, so we can all call for free. No marketing by '3', all the cash-strapped fans of Skype do it for them!

Mark

Nothing, but if you want to use the same mobile number, there's no-one (as far as I'm aware) that allows that.

Ideally someone would come up with a single access number that finds me by the best method - cellphone when I'm out and about, over Skype/VOIP when I'm there, and voicemail when I'm not.

If I switch full time to Skype, I can use it at home, but it's a LOT harder when out and about - as far as I know, only '3' in the UK allow it explicitly on their handsets.

Good call. Talking to people isn't 'politics', unless you're talking about the job. The most effective IT guys I've worked with were the ones who said hello to everyone, came out to the pub with us after work, etc.

Be part of the company, instead of the troll in the basement, and you'll find you start getting respect. If you're the faceless 'no-guy' on the end of the phone (which you never answer) then don't be surprised if people are as mad at you as they are at automated phone menus and off-shore call centres...

Mark

And the iPhone already uses Wi-Fi when available, and 3G (or GPRS if you got an old one) when it's not.

It seamlessly switches, and you never use the telco network when you're at home...

Something tells me any Mac with a 3G card in would do the same.

Mark