There are two hard problems in computing

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Just saw this, tweeted by @liamosaur: Staying calm enough to not throw the f####ng thing out of the window, and I’m so angry I forget what the other o
[See the full post at: There are two hard problems in computing]

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SueW, Mele20, JohnW, Karlston, Demeter, Bill C., Microfix, satrow, Elly, Ascaris, geekdom

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On the other hand, this give us the perverse and childish pleasure to ride roughshod over security alerts, and say : yes, yes, I want to do this incredibly reckless and stupid thing ! while being sure it’s absolutely safe… Maybe you should leave it like that.

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HiFlyer, woody, BobbyB, Cybertooth, Microfix, Elly

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BRAVO!!! to that quote. Made my day.

But to be honest, in my case, it was not the hardware’s fault, nor even probably the software’s fault. I have learned to never try to fix something while frustrated AND/or until you are reasonably sure you are fixing the actual problem.

Probably not necessary for AskWoody readers, but here goes.

So remember this tip that I have pasted onto my CPU tower (and on the inside of the case door) – just in case I ignore the former.

or “Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair”

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Steve, Karlston, Microfix, lurks about, BobbyB, elreaver, Elly

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Woody, I don’t remember seeing a post for the upgrade [downgrade?] to MS-DEFCON 1.  I remember when you set it at 2 though.

Fortran, C++, R, Python, Java, Matlab, HTML, CSS, etc.... coding is fun!
A weatherman that can code

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columbia2011

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I just take my meds and everything is fine.

Cheers!!
Willie McClure
“We are trying to build a gentler, kinder society, and if we all pitch in just a little bit, we are going to get there.” Alex Trebek

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Were there ever stories of folks throwing out mainframe terminals due to frustration?

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SueW, BobbyB

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Wise words. Let’s get back to serious, heavy computing. Those miniaturised devices are ridiculous. There was something refreshingly intimidating with a mainframe. You would not want to mess with it.

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SueW, Karlston, BobbyB

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I have a mainframe story. One time, in my very early days of computers, I was taking a programming class at the university. I spent much of a Friday night in one of the terminal rooms, getting more tired and frustrated by the minute. I finally decided that I’d had enough, so I wanted to log off and go home. But I couldn’t figure out how to log off! At one point I got to a password screen, but I knew that something wasn’t right, because I could see the password I was typing. I finally just turned off the screen and went home. I have no idea whether anyone came behind me and used my login for themselves!

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Occasionally Laptops come in from the Field with the odd white fuzzy dot in the middle of the screen of varying degrees of severity to mildly irritating, not enough to take out of service or retire, but they always go back to the same employees, sort of an anger management aversion therapy lol. Eventually, over time, after staring at their “handy work” the instances of rough treatment seems to strangely evaporate 😉
One of my big concerns with Cortana is, and I have been guilty on the rare occasion, as we know she “Snoops” is the sheer Volume of expletives directed in her direction casting doubts on the parentage of the board Board of M$, or suggesting various “physically intimate solitary impossibilities” that would make the average user of Reddit blush. I wonder if they ever do listen to the voice data at Redmond from Cortana? Obviously not as she’s still around or they have a certain thickness of skin. 😉

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Bill C., Microfix, Karlston, Cybertooth

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For a second..
Thought you may have been put on somebody’s name list…
Be safe boss

For now I’ll just pretend its still Friday 13th July
Last day when askwoody still show up…

back to fishing for better dreams

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ALTERNATIVELY:

‘There are two hard problems in computing.
Staying calm enough to not throw f####ng windows out the thing, and I’m so angry I forget what the other one is right now’ 😉

If debian is good enough for NASA...

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BobbyB

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It’s a shame that expression won’t (easily) fit on a coffee/tea mug.

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

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OscarCP, BobbyB

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How about:
Microsoft and Windows

XD

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Keep trying, Woody. This post from the land ‘Down Under’ and thanks for the email. Firefox will show your site without a problem as long as I accept the terms and set you as temporary and remember to clear cache.

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Hey 0745 in Bangkok and askwoody is back to normal and secure.  Why did it take so long?

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Good question. The site was set up in a way that still has me scratching my head. We pushed and pulled, and couldn’t get the site’s SSL cert to work, and couldn’t get the host’s cert to work.

I finally got through to the folks who originally set up the site. They got it working in no time — and set the cert up to renew automatically.

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SueW, Elly

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Wow! I just got in for the first time since Saturday night. Now life can go on as normal. No tricks necessary, just Opera on Ubuntu and for kicks IE 11 on Win 7.

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WhooWeee!  Back to normal!…well not completely..the new cert expires in THREE MONTHS?  Why is that?

The cert is NOT HSTS according to Qualys

ever a problem again.  (But then I don’t think the expired cert was HSTS as it was not in my SiteSecurityServiceState.tx file in my Fx profile).

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That ninety-day limit is a requirement of using the Let’s Encrypt service, from their blog post it is to help avoid key compromise.

https://letsencrypt.org/2015/11/09/why-90-days.html

 

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columbia2011, Mele20, Kirsty, Elly, woody

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Look down in the list for cert #2 Seems to be for 2 years or so

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That’s the one I couldn’t get to work.

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Mele20 wrote:

WhooWeee! Back to normal!…well not completely..the new cert expires in THREE MONTHS? Why is that? The cert is NOT HSTS according to Qualys ever a problem again. (But then I don’t think the expired cert was HSTS as it was not in my SiteSecurityServiceState.tx file in my Fx profile).

HTBridge’s ssl checker repors a weak Diffie-Hellman parameter:

https://www.htbridge.com/ssl/?id=ZQ6FWeVA

 

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You want frustration? Enroll at the school I used to work at, and use your iPhone or Android phone to access your campus email. To add to your frustration, get on the campus wifi in order not to have to use your own data.

Here’s the frustration: Every 35 days your password would expire if you didn’t change it before then. So far, so good. But the problem was, your email and wifi profiles on your phone wouldn’t update their passwords when you changed your password on the network. Consequently, when you changed your password on the network, you had just a few minutes to change it in your phone’s email profile (depends on how often it checked your mail – three checks with the wrong password would lock your account). As for your phone’s wifi profile, it was constantly polling the network; so unless you deleted the wifi profile before changing your password, your account would lock as soon as you set foot on campus!

This was very frustrating to the users, because they couldn’t figure out how to keep their accounts from locking; and it was very frustrating to us, because we spent about half our time walking people through this process.

We had a Blackberry Enterprise Server; so if you were one of the lucky ones who got issued a Blackberry, you NEVER had a password issue; in fact, you never had to enter your password, once you got everything set up on your phone.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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philrandal wrote:

Mele20 wrote:

WhooWeee! Back to normal!…well not completely..the new cert expires in THREE MONTHS? Why is that? The cert is NOT HSTS according to Qualys ever a problem again. (But then I don’t think the expired cert was HSTS as it was not in my SiteSecurityServiceState.tx file in my Fx profile).

HTBridge’s ssl checker repors a weak Diffie-Hellman parameter: https://www.htbridge.com/ssl/?id=ZQ6FWeVA

Yep. That’s correct. I was not familiar with htbridge.com’s analysis of sites ssl certs.  Thanks for the information.

Woody’s should have a grade of A for its cert.  B’s good (and A- at the site you link to) but for a site devoted to Windows and security, etc. the cert should be impeccable and serve as an example of what other sites should strive for.  The third and fourth cipher suites used are weak and still accepting TLS 1.0?!  That’s embarrassing.

 

 

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I known the feeling.

But I’ll never get so angry as to feel like throwing my expensive and much needed PC against the wall or out of the window.

Instead, when seriously provoked, I do swear at it repeatedly and with a considerable repertoire of epithets: I can do it with equal fluency in two languages, which I find both satisfying and, when done with gusto, loudly and for long enough, also quite calming. But, preferably, when all alone in the house at the time.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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“Staying calm enough to not throw the f####ng thing out of the window, and I’m so angry I forget what the other one is right now”

Er…remembering to make sure that you perform a backup before installing any Windows Updates? That would be my guess as to the other one.

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