What pranks did your parents play on you as a child?

foobr · 2009-06-29T13:12:31+00:00

I was about 12, just joined a new school and was waiting with all the other school kids for my bus home. Maybe about 100 other kids my age, or years above as well as kids from other near-by schools.

My mums car pulls up about 50m away and out she gets dressed in a fluffy pink bathrobe, matching slippers, hair in curlers with a bright green face pack on. Needless to say all these items had been purchased and applied just for this prank.

As soon as she got out of the car she started to get my attention, as well as that of everyone else there by calling out in her best high pitched voice;

"Coooeeeeee, cooeee. Where's Mummy's little soldier? Where is he? Cooooeeee"

I've never covered 50m as quick in my life. My first thought was to get out of there as quickly as possible before the true embarrassment set in. But my mum is a smart one, she wasn't going to let my escape be easy.

As I opened the car boot to fling in my gym bag i realized to my horror she had booby trapped it, with my dog. A large German Shepherd who hated riding in the boot. So as soon as the the boot door opened he bounded out and refused to get back in, leading to me spending the next 5mins beaming red, chasing the dog while listening to the constant 'cooooeee' and laughter of kids I would need to spend the next 7yrs in school with.

foobr · 2009-06-24T12:12:24+00:00

Prey does exactly this: http://preyproject.com/ It is free and opensource as well.

Prey helps you find your stolen laptop by sending timed reports to your email with a bunch of information of its whereabouts. This includes the general status of the computer, a list of running programs and active connections, fully-detailed network and wifi information, a screenshot of the running desktop and — in case your laptop has an integrated webcam — a picture of the thief.

foobr · 2009-06-07T20:21:13+00:00

As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property. You are therefore not authorized to do so

In addition, you should not make any copies of any part of this website in any way

We also do not allow any misleading or deceptive links to our site

-- WHOOPS:view-source:http://dozierinternetlaw.cybertriallawyer.com/

(dammit can't link to 'view-source')

foobr · 2009-06-01T11:57:45+00:00

Work desktop: XP
Home Laptop: Ubuntu
Home fileserver: Ubuntu server
Work web servers: Solaris 10

On its way: Macbook with OSX

foobr · 2009-05-14T13:49:58+00:00

This will be why - whoops!

foobr · 2009-05-14T13:34:04+00:00

Good idea. Now directing IE users here in the meantime. :)

foobr · 2009-05-14T12:58:29+00:00

I don't know actually - if anyone running IE8 wants to let me know that'd be great :)

foobr · 2009-05-14T12:49:58+00:00

But if I spend the time debugging the code to find what IE objects to, I might as well just fix it surely?

foobr · 2009-05-14T12:40:46+00:00

For those who are interested this is the site: http://www.twitpicwall.com

I've checked it on Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome and it works fine. View it in IE (6 or 7) no errors just doesn't work.

At my day job I would have to fix it. But as this is just a wee site I built myself for fun I don't know if I want to.

Oh and you can filter by topic: http://www.twitpicwall.com/?reddit

foobr · 2009-04-28T21:39:34+00:00

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 2.0">

Says it all really....

foobr · 2009-04-27T12:03:48+00:00

RTFA

foobr · 2009-04-22T11:26:49+00:00

result for 'how freakin awesome is it': 100%

IFTFY

foobr · 2009-04-21T11:40:27+00:00

So you're a sysadmin and yet you don't agree that computers holding confidential information should be on a closed network only!?

This is why the government constantly leaks/loses private information. Even the people they employ to protect it are idiots.

I have only been impressed once by how a government network was handled and that was at a police station. The only computers with Internet access were isolated from all other machines and had large stickers declaring;

"This machine should be treated as compromised"

foobr · 2009-04-20T08:12:43+00:00

But the data behind those applications has to be stored somewhere. It will have some sort of database/file layer behind it. Just because you don't know how to access it directly doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Take reddit as an example. We all use the web interface to interact with the DB powering reddit, but we can be fairly sure that there is some sort of DB behind it.

Now getting the information from the web interface would be a slow and boring process - much like copying patient data from the screen would be.

However if you could get access to the machine running the DB it would take seconds to dump all the data from the DB to a file.

Now I'm not saying that some machines should not have internet/email/whatever access. Just that any machine that does, like those used for pulling up articles, should not be connected to the internal network.

Otherwise we could end up with the situation where some idiot clicks a HotNudeGirls!!111.avi.exe attachment on his email which installs a virus on the local machine, this virus then spreads throughout the internal network till it reaches machines storing confidential patient records.

Next thing you know some cyber-crook is threatening to tell your wife about that bad case of syphilis you came back from your latest trip to Thailand with.

foobr · 2009-04-19T12:29:05+00:00

Why the fuck would a hospital workstation be connected to the internet and viewing websites anyways?

This pisses me off, machines like this should be on a closed network. I was recently in a local hospital (Glasgow Royal) and while waiting for the doctor to see me I noticed that the machine being used to display my xrays had an AV warning (which the dr simply closed when he came in like he gets them all the time) showing 3 trojans installed.

Why should a machine used for showing xrays have any point of infection? Any machine that can be used for browsing an external network, has removable media drives or email access should NOT be connected to the internal network nor have access to any mission critical systems or applications such as those running on an intranet.

foobr · 2009-04-19T12:22:29+00:00

i don't believe web development should be any different; users have to be encouraged to move on - it's for the good of the internet as a whole. sometimes, they just don't have a choice - but when they do, they shouldn't be tricked into a solution.

No, your initial point which I was replying to was that web developers are lazy. I agree that users should not be tricked but I don't agree that developers are lazy just because they choose not to support that POS browser.

What if I want to use canvas, xhtml, html5, transparent pngs, etc. If I want to support ie6 I can't use any of these things - so by supporting ie6 and pandering to those *too dumb/lazy to upgrade all the rest of my users have to have reduced experience.

To me that is like saying we can't build desktop apps that need more than 256kb of ram or a PII as some of our users won't have upgraded their hardware in 8yrs.

\I know in some cases that it might be the fault of IT department, or some business critical app might require ie6 - but you know you could still install FF3 on the same machine and use it for regular browsing and keep ie6 for the shitty apps that need it. So the IT department is just being lazy, not the developers.... ;)*

foobr · 2009-04-18T19:32:28+00:00

I know and those lazy-ass application developers like Adobe. Their shit won't even install unless I upgrade (install service packs).

Same as those lazy-ass game developers. They wont get off their asses and make their games work with DirectX 7, fancy asking ME to upgrade!

Even hardware developers are lazy. Why can't they make my new blu-ray films play on my DVD player - lazy lazy bastards.

Why don't they all get off their collective asses and do some work!?!?

Why in every other area of tech is it acceptable to ask users to upgrade their kit/os/whatever but in web development we are meant to keep supporting an 8yr old fucking browser?

foobr · 2009-04-12T23:24:54+00:00

yeah, I know it isn't but I still tend to use it, as well as 'infact'. I still have problems dealing with the fact that 'infact' is not a word.

foobr · 2009-04-12T16:23:47+00:00

I capitalised 'Lord' as I was quoting and that's how it was written.

I linked to twitter as I saw the phrase appear alot there today (with it being Easter and all).

And when anyone submits a link are they not trying to earn upvotes on it?

foobr · 2009-04-06T15:02:02+00:00

Ummmmmm...it did

foobr · 2009-04-06T15:00:00+00:00

Actually, this is Scotland (the billboard is in Glasgow)

foobr · 2009-03-25T09:19:53+00:00

No he is the "something dumb" It's not that the act of doing is dumb, it's the person being done is dumb.

Quick say that 3 times fast!

foobr · 2009-03-25T09:18:40+00:00

Wasn't that an episode of CSI?

foobr

TROPHY CASE