Pop goes the diesel
Positively the last, last word on the narrow trains on the Hastings line, courtesy of Dave Kitchenham, at Reuters. He sends us the link to www.hastingsdiesels.co.uk, which is one of those sites that the internet was created for.
Handy for the vice squad
Sometimes we carry stories that you send us and wonder how on earth you decided to do the research.
‘The new Local Google service (local.google.co.uk) works a treat,’ says Tony Carter, from Servomex. ‘Type in ‘brothels’ and ‘Maidstone’, and you get just one hit – Kent County Constabulary. Complete with map and everything.’
Tony: don’t use that map
Mad dogs and Englishmen
You’ve sent us more usernames. Dave Joynson, at Areva, tells us that in a former job he had a colleague called Geoff Maddock, and a login naming scheme that used the first five letters of the second name plus your initial.
Meanwhile Rhys Williams, at National Britannia Group, where they use initial plus surname for the login, works with Teresa Rout. Are you making these up?
Tony Shortland’s daughter goes to a school where the login is the first four letters of the second name, plus two of the first, which isn’t much fun for Edward Farthing. ‘Children can be sooo cruel,’ he says.
But our favourite this week comes from John Duncan, with yet another IBM username story. ‘The scheme was the first five letters of your surname, then your two initials. We had a very pleasant young lady join us at Cosham, named Tracey Susan Alltimes, whose ID was changed almost immediately’.
If Tracey is reading this, please email us. We want to know what life is like with a dodgy username.
A man of letters
It’s becoming apparent that for every reader who is tortured by his company’s computer users, there’s one of you who’s doing the torturing – such as Andy Mears, at Schenck UK.
‘When work was slack, I used to get one of our engineers to clean keyboards. He would remove all the keys, clean them individually and replace them, but always ensured he had at least one keyboard as a guide for key replacement.’ You can see what’s coming.
‘One day, a senior manager said that every time he typed ‘Q’ on the keyboard a ‘W’ would appear, and vice-versa. His secretary and I looked at the keyboard and nearly fell over laughing. We assured him the keyboard had been upgraded to the new ergonomic WQERTY type and managed to keep the joke going for more than a week.’
The poor manager was reduced to using Tippex on the keys, with the correct letters written on top.
A week is a long time in IT support
In the run-up to the General Election, it’s apt that we bring a political flavour to Backbytes.
‘We’ve recently undertaken the task of e-enabling our elected members, as have many local authorities,’ says a correspondent, who prefers anonymity. ‘We experienced the expected volume of support calls, but weren’t able to anticipate the sheer lack of intelligence. We were approached by one member wanting to know if “councillor laptops were down” because he was unable to get any response from his when pressing the power button. I explained it was most likely a problem with his machine and that he should bring it in.’
The laptop in question was a week old, but its fault wasn’t hard to discover. ‘We drew lots to see who would tell the councillor that it needed to be plugged in from time to time.’
Who says the brightest minds don’t go into politics these days?
Temperature control
Our story about the fake voice-activated monitor last week reminded Andrew Jones, at Alquist Consulting, of a previous job.
‘Your story reminded me of an energy management system we installed for the AA in Basingstoke many years ago,’ he says. ‘We removed the old thermostats and replaced them with high-tech sensors. We explained that the new sensors were actually microphones.’
So anyone who didn’t like the temperature would approach the microphone, state their name, departmental cost code and then explain the problem, believing an engineer in the plant room would listen and adjust the temperature accordingly.
‘There was even a lady in the canteen who used the new system to explain what was on the menu each day,’ says Andrew. ‘Our engineer had to pretend he heard the choices for months.’
One-way ticket
How many pointless signs are there in the UK?
At Suffolk Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, Bret Mineart finds a sign on the toilet door. ‘This toilet is for Staff, Patients, and Visitors ONLY!’ it says.
‘If you don’t work there, and you’re not a patient, and you’re not visiting the place, who could you be?’ he asks.
Dave May points out that those change converter machines say ‘convert your change to cash’, which isn’t so much redundant as just wrong.
Finally, our favourite for this week comes from Bruce Parker, at AIM Legal.
‘We have a sign at the entrance to our local cemetery in Hessle, East Yorkshire which reads “One-Way”.
Open wider: this won’t hurt a bit
We are delighted to hear this week of the robot application to relax us all: a robotic dentist to drill your teeth.
New Scientist reports on the robot dentist, developed by Tactile Technologies in Israel, which will be used to fit dental implants.
It has just been approved to be tested on humans, none of whom has made any complaints afterwards. The absence of complaints from people who have had a robot drilling in their heads is either a very good sign, or a very bad one.
I talk to the screens
Last week Mick Rutherford told us how he advised users who wanted to know how to right-click on a touch screen to use their right hands. This week: the German voice-activated monitor joke.
‘We were supplying 21-inch monitors to a German client, which came with a remote control to adjust the tilt and direction,’ says Guy Mason, at Central Dynamics. ‘We demonstrated this to the chap in the office, who thought it was great.
‘At this point his superior came in; he stood just behind his superior, with the remote control hidden in his hand, and told him it was voice-activated, which he demonstrated by shouting “Monitor up”, and pressing the appropriate button on the remote control.’
He gave his boss a go, too, pressing the right button each time.
Guy hasn’t had the call to say the voice activation feature is broken, but it can only be a matter of time.
Log on as a less stupid user
‘Steve and Mike’, at the Muir Group, are the source of this week’s user story. Stupid user or unclear advice? You make the call.
‘Today we had to install an additional printer on a machine. We needed to log on with administrative privileges, so my colleague sent the user an email telling her to click on ‘Start’, ‘Shut down’, ‘Close all programs’ and then ‘Log on as a different user’, thinking that she would log off.’
Taking the instructions literally, she asked the user on the next desk to log on to her machine.
Too much train knowledge is a dangerous thing
Mark Drukker, who admits quitting Mensa in the 1970s when he went to a social event to find it populated entirely by single men looking for a Mensan girlfriend, can add to our already excessive knowledge of the trains on the Hastings line.
‘There have been examples all over the UK of lines that could only take smaller trains,’ he says. ‘Another was Hampstead Heath tunnel. Until it was enlarged a few years ago, freight trains could only pass through if no train was going through it in the other direction.
‘Railways are similar to computers concerning compatibility. Lines were built to different gauges, tunnel sizes and electrification systems, and stock built with different couplings between carriages. Even now, the privatised railway companies buy their own trains that can’t run until platforms are rebuilt and track layout changed.’
Good information Mark, but a note to randy young male Mensans: if a woman ever does actually turn up to one of your social events, don’t try this conversation with her.
Good clean fun for microwave abusers
Stuart Madagan, at Mothercare, writes with a good plan for microwave abuse: ‘Two bars of normal soap cooked at full power provides an entertaining way to fill the entire microwave compartment. As an extra bonus, your microwave will be cleaned too,’ he says, adding ominously: ‘after a fashion’.
The price of progress
We couldn’t be happier to read your letters about how progress in IT has failed to deliver.
’When I started working with computers in 1964, our weekly update run for 120,000 customer accounts took about four hours, with the payments being read from punched cards,’ says Alex Black.
‘The ICT 1300 we used cost £75,000, and had less power and memory than a £400 BBC Micro in the 1980s. By the 1990s, using an ICL Series 39 costing more than £500,000, updating 36,000 council tax records each week took eight hours.
‘The only progress noticeable was the ability of software developers to soak up any extra power, and the ability of manufacturers to persuade customers that newer was better.’
Pain in the username
More on dodgy usernames.
‘A while ago we had a user called Pete Iles,’ says someone who signs himself ‘Tino’, at Acordis Services. Sadly for Pete, they used the first initial of the first name, followed by the surname.
We’d love to hear more, but remember, we are a family newspaper.
Look at Leo
Backbytes’ investigative journalism instincts were once again aroused by Google‘s home page last week.
Friday was Da Vinci Day – with the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile beaming out from one of the Os, and various plans for hovercrafts and flying machines encircling the Google logo. Turns out it was celebrating Leonardo’s birthday.
Naturally we researched this historical fact by Googling Leonardo Da Vinci.The first page was not full of references to Dan Brown, thankfully, but pointed us to www.mos.org/leonardo/index.html
Just move your cursor around the page, and delight to the Terry Gilliam-esque animation. It will keep you amused for hours... well, perhaps seconds.
Sign language
From your emails it seems there are many pointless signs in the country, and we’d like to hear about all of them.
‘The most pointless sign I ever encountered was in an open area of grassland, and it read: “Do not throw stones at this sign”,’ says Peter Lord, to kick us off.
John Stenhouse, at Ninewells Hospital, regularly sees sees a sign that tells him: ‘WARNING: Hot water is very hot.’
Ashley Crompton, at the DVLA, spotted a sign taped to a fire extinguisher at work. ‘It said: “This is not a door stop”,’ he tells us. ‘I was tempted to pin a sign to my phone saying: “This is not a kettle”, but quickly realised I’d be starting a trend that would be impossible to stop.’
Nevertheless, a colleague has taken up the baton by putting up a serious sign saying: ‘End of office, proceed no further.’ Which is certainly good advice if you want to avoid walking into walls.
Our final pointless sign this week: ‘We have one saying “helpdesk”,’ says an anonymous cynic at the Borough Council of Kings Lynn & West Norfolk. More please.
Irritation on demand
Backbytes loved the story about internet users being annoyed as ever with spam, but learning to live with it. A poll of US internet users found that 52 per cent complained about junk mail being a big problem, and that 28 per cent were getting more spam than they were a year ago.
But, just like traffic congestion and rubbish TV on Sunday evenings, people are accepting that spam is just something they have to put up with.
You can get the full report emailed to you…
Full of signs yet signifying nothing
A letter reaches us from someone signing himself only as Mark. ‘I work for one of the new 3G companies. There are warning signs placed near the microwave ovens in our coffee break areas saying “Please do not damage or remove the wave guide filter inside this microwave”,’ he says.
As he points out, it raises many questions: what can you do with a removed filter, and why does it need a notice? The suspicion that Mark’s employees are slightly anal retentive is confirmed by the sign on the water filter, also in his office, which reads: ‘Please do not let water overflow into the drip tray.’
Why not? That’s what it’s for. Does anyone else have an office of unexplained or pointless signs?
It’s just too close to call
Our stories on things to do with a microwave raise some interesting questions. Not many of you wonder about the state of mind of a man who would write to us about the fun to be had watching live spiders cook, but the story of calling a mobile phone while it is being microwaved set Gerry Cutler thinking.
‘There are two ways to look at this’, he says. ‘Either the shielding on a microwave is so poor that a mobile phone signal can get through; in which case, don’t get too close when you’re heating your TV dinner. Or the signal from a phone is strong enough to get through the microwave’s shielding, so it’s not a good idea to hold it an inch from your brain.’
Alastair Dudley provides us with a link to the scientific literature on microwave fun. Well, it looks a bit like scientific literature. Work with us on this one: http://amasci.com/weird/microexp.html.
Nearly touching rock bottom
We have metaphorically touched bottom with our suggestions for the music for the Japanese singing toilet. Well, we will have in a minute. An email from (and we’re not making this up) The Romney Marsh Potato Company Ltd suggests a 1983 hit by Robert Plant (we’ll let you find it out for yourselves).
‘How about the 1980s disco hit by Leon Hayward, Don’t push, don’t force it (let it happen naturally)?’ asks Peter Stapleton, at EDS. That’s enough innuendo: we have to stop this torrent of filth.
There’s a right and a wrong way to do things
‘Oh, how the pain and guilt still consume me,’ says Mick Rutherford, at Dragnet Software. If only more of you were as sensitive as Mick, you wouldn’t write to us laughing at old ladies who lift their mice to try to get the cursor to go up.
Hang on, what’s in the rest of Mick’s email? ‘One of our customers spent a fortune on some nice shiny new PCs with touch-sensitive screens,’ he recalls. ‘Training and implementation went really well until a smart-alec divisional manager asked me about right-clicking in the interface. I replied that as the monitors were really smart, you only needed to use a finger on your right hand and the computer would recognise the difference.’
And for this, the project was commended for delivering ‘smart kit’. One or two of you are feeling a little embarrassed now, aren’t you? Go on, try using the other hand.
Must try harder
The latest in our occasional ‘only in America‘ series: At the University of Missouri, a software system developed by students is being used to mark other students’ essays.
Can a computer ask you to ‘see me’?
Username and shame
On to your usernames, many of which we sadly couldn’t possibly print in a family newspaper. Lisa Dormon, at IBM, remembers: ‘The policy was six characters from the surname and then one or two from the first name for uniqueness.
‘David Campbell (campbed) asked for a revised name.’
More please.
Guerilla tactics
Martin Lawrence has been receiving marketing messages from Anne Marie Bush, at SPSS, offering a ‘Free Fraud Briefing’: ‘If you are interested in the above but are unable to attend, please contact me and we will arrange for our business manager to call you’.
If anyone wants to know what sort of marketing this is, you might take a hint from Anne Marie’s return address: ambush@spss.com.
It’s all downhill for upgrades
We asked for upgraded systems that turn out to be worse than they were before. And the early signs are that there are quite a few you’d like to complain about.
‘I’d nominate the “new” online banking from the Halifax, which replaced the old Bank of Scotland one,’ says Alasdair Downes, at the University of Strathclyde.
‘The most unbelievable thing is that every 410 transactions, your online account is marked “Account Renewed”, and all your transactions disappear. At this point they post a paper statement to you which can take up to 10 days, during which time you have no access, other than by phone banking, to the transactions which occurred since your last paper statement.’
‘Surely the perfect example of each improvement being slower is booting up a computer,’ says Martin Williams, at Powys County Council.
‘The good old BBC Micro, which launched school computing in Britain, took two seconds to boot. It’s been downhill ever since.’
What’s in a username?
Remember the days when our user names weren’t firstname-underscore-lastname? Maybe we should return to them in today’s security climate so that intruders find them harder to guess.
‘My first holiday job from university was at the Admiralty Research Establishment in Fife,’ says David Rigg, at BAE Systems.
‘On the first day, the IT manager asked what I wanted my username to be. “I dunno,” I replied, and thus it was for the whole summer.’
It’s a valuable tip for all of you who are just about to receive your holiday student intake. So is anyone else living with a similarly mangled username?
New and unimproved
There’s more to the story of the Hastings line and its skinny trains, don’t you just know it.
‘As a daily user of the train service from Hastings, I can clarify the narrow trains story,’ says Ray Norton, at Sopra Group. ‘When the narrow trains were finally phased out, British Rail decided that rather than do the job properly and rebuild the tunnels, it would make each tunnel a single line with points either side, introducing a service from Hastings that takes longer now than it did in the 1950s diesel era.
‘I’m wondering if readers can suggest IT-related examples where the improved replacement is slower and more prone to failure than its predecessor,’ he adds.
As if that would ever happen. Well, can you?
Looking on the sub-optimistic side
John Staniforth has found an excellent way to avoid exam failure – or rather, he reports that training company Pearson Vue has made the breakthrough.
‘Microsoft and Pearson Vue are giving you the opportunity to take a “Second Shot” at a Microsoft Learning IT Pro or Developer exam – FREE!’ says the web page at www.pearsonvue.com/ms/2ndshot/.
‘Simply take the exam at any Pearson Vue Authorized Center between February 28, 2005 and May 31, 2005, and if you “sub-optimize” it for any reason, take it again for free by June 30, 2005.’
If only we’d had such a concept available when we were being sub-optimal at school. Definitely a new paradigm.
Microwave, maximum damage
Straightaway we give you this week’s microwave challenge. Provided that anyone still has a functioning microwave after the past few weeks, we’d like to warn you that the ideas are getting odder.
Of course, we don’t recommend you do any of this, especially Christopher Boxall’s suggestion that you use spiders (‘Experiment with various power and time settings. View antics through microwave oven’s door. You may need a stock of spiders’). We have alerted the appropriate authorities.
Nick Zea proposes microwaving the ex’s CD collection.
‘Switch on for five minutes and watch those mothers fry. Put back in boxes and randomly replace on shelf, then leave the house forever. New microwave from Curry’s and death to Shania Twain,’ he says. Although Nick’s ex might wonder what you are doing using her microwave if you try it.
More sensibly – as if ‘less sensibly’ was possible – Jason Massey, at MCR Systems, and his team have been experimenting with the office microwave.
‘The broken-up contents of two boxes of Rexel No. 16 staples were quite impressive, as was the chain of 12 paperclips, suspended between two upturned plastic cups and secured with Blu-Tak,’ he reports. He didn’t break the oven until they tried some AOL CDs, so finally a game we can all play. More next week.
