This Photo Of The Californian Fires From Reuters Looks Like A Hieronymus Bosch Painting

Aina? Photographer is Max Whittaker it would seem.

One Shot One Kill

Yes that's right, if you make ONE mistake on the online banking login the system locks you out. Uh, well I guess that's a secure system...secure against both legitimate and criminally-intent users. Where else have you encountered a system that does not even give you a second chance!? Even the system we have at work allows you three tries. Is this how the l33t hAx0rz (sic) work? They just try random names and passwords to see if they work?

"Well I found out this guy named Bob Smith has an account here, I'm gonna see if his password is "bs" Nope. How about "bs1" Nope. How about "bobsmith". Nope. Oh, I know Bob is 48 years old, let's try "bobsmith48" Nope. *sigh* Man being a hacker is hard work! This is gonna take me hours, but rest assured I will have Bob's money! Muwhahaha! I tell you, I sure hate freedom! I wish everyone could live in slavery, then we'd have peace. I swear, if I could just get Bob's money to give to Al Queda they'd meet their February budget and be able to wipe out all non-believers with the seal over their hearts and that. I can't wait! I hope my fingers don't cramp up from trying passwords all night!"

Useless Laws In Action

This post is not going to be all that elegant because I'm writing it when I'm MAD. You shouldn't do that, but I'm doing it anyway. I've now been locked out of my online banking accounts at Associated Bank for the fourth time. Why? Because the federal government passed a shitty law about so-called security questions that you have to answer. There's this list of bullshit trivia they quiz you on and you're supposed to fill in an answer for. "What's your favorite candy?" "What's the name of the street you grew up on" and stuff like that. Yeah I get it, stuff only the user would know. Usually I enter just my normal password and get in, but every month or so it seems I enter the password and then the shitty, government-crippled system barfs out "You've been locked out cause your security questions were not answered correctly". Which is a damn lie because they didn't even ASK them. Either the system locks you out instantly or it is programmed to fail on some kind of timed interval. But you cannot call some automated line, a case where automation would be welcomed actually; instead you have to call during daytime hours to speak with a bank person to reset the fucking questions. IT IS THE LAMEST MOST BOGUS SECURITY AND THE BIGGEST PAIN IN THE ASS I HAVE EVER SEEN IN A COMPUTER SYSTEM!!! Fuck the Federal Government and fuck their laws that treat me like a fucking terrorist. I'M NOT SENDING MONEY TO AL QUEDA YOU USELESS BUREAUCRATS, I'M JUST TRYING TO PAY MY FUCKING BILLS!!! This is what you get with laws, good intentions, total failure in action. And what can I do, close my account? I'd LOVE to. I'd LOVE to rip Associated Bank a new asshole for this treatment, but it's not their fault, they're just OBEYING like everybody. I'm sure this pointless hot air piece of legislation makes ALL banks have to fuck up their systems with this silly hoop jumping. Fuck them. If this is security I don't want it. I'll take my chances with just my plain 'ol password, thanks. AND I DON'T WANT TO BE LOCKED OUT BECAUSE OF A FUCKING TYPO!!! I'm HUMAN for fuck's sake, I can't type perfectly every time! Hitting a Y instead of a U doesn't mean I'm a hacker trying to steal money. Forgetting which serial number I've added to the end of my regular password (thanks to the ordinary bullshit practice of expiring passwords) doesn't make me a guy hellbent on funding terrorists!

Invisible Mouse Buttons

I just ran into an interesting PEBCAK problem with a co-worker. (Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard) He is using the Apple Mighty Mouse (at least I think that's what it's called, the white one with the tiny scroll ball) and had occasion to use a contextual menu. That in itself should be somewhat of a red flag, don't people use contextual menus all the time? Hmmm. Anyway, there is a plugin I've installed on all the department machines which copies the path of a file into the clipboard so you can paste it into an e-mail. So if Jim wants to tell Bob to open up the October Sales Projection document he right clicks on the file on the server, chooses this "Copy Path To Clipboard" command and pastes the string into an e-mail. Easy enough, right?

Now here's a criticism of Apple's hardware; they made a three button mouse that looks like a NO button mouse. It doesn't have buttons per se, but it has sensitive areas which function just like buttons. By default the driver is set to make the mouse one button. This is why the co-worker thought he could not right-click on the files. So I showed him how to change the driver preferences to make the right sensitive-invisible-button to be "Secondary Click" and the left side "Primary Click". This seemed to be fine for a few weeks.

Then today he says that he changed the prefs back to both sides being Primary Click because he was getting unwanted contextual menu popups in the Finder. Why? Well it's simple; because he always clicks with his middle finger on the right side of the mouse. Erm, okay... So it had nothing to do with the software or hardware, just that you're clicking the wrong button! Sheesh! So I explained to him the revelation that Control-Click is the same as Secondary Click on the Mac. What about swapping the buttons around? It's like he's left fingered on his right hand or something. Really really strange.

It's Not Even Halloween Yet You Idiots

Could we PLEASE stop rushing holidays further and further ahead of the day they actually happen? It's bad enough to be rushing Christmas in November but now the bastards are pushing it in fucking October! People, a holiday is ONE day. ONE SINGLE DAY, not THREE MONTHS! The next holiday coming up is HALLOWEEN. Got it? HALLOWEEN. Not Thanksgiving, not Christmas, not New Years, just fucking HALLOWEEN. Can we stick to that? Stop skipping ahead!

Since time is apparently malleable to whatever we want how far will this nonsense go? A year ahead of time? On December 26th 2007 the stores will be advertising sales for Christmas of 2008?! Why stop there? Why not five years ahead of time? Hell, let's just make every single day Christmas so we can have non-stop sales and shitty Muzak at all times.