Showing posts with label Common Sense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Common Sense. Show all posts

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Worst Passwords

Here are the worst passwords of 2013.

I should be safe. Mine is:

123456password12345678qwertyabc1231234567891111111234567iloveyouadobe123123123adminletmeinphotoshop1234monkeyshawdowsunshine12345password1princessazertytrustno1000000

Thursday, May 10, 2012

The Math Must Work

Verizon won't waive a $30 fee, so they lose the long term revenue stream worth much more than that. On the face of it, this makes no sense. I can only assume for every person that leaves Verizon there are more than enough people that will just pay the $30 to offset the other lose. It is tough being one of the few that want to fight against silly policies that are not logical, but may make financial sense to Gigantic Corps.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Stupid

I try to avoid doing intentionally stupid things. I fight back when others try to rope me in. Case in point, I asked one of our service providers to send me a copy of their SAS70/SSAE-16 report for my auditors. When the report was ready, they asked me for the shipping address of the CFO of my company. Their auditors, who prepared the report, required that it only be sent to the CFO.

Really? In a completely pathetic attempt to protect their intellectual property, they want to ship the document to someone who a) doesn't even know anything about the service provider and b) will just send it on to me anyway. Reality check, aisle one.

After sending an e-mail to the COO of the service provider, they decided it would be okay to send the report directly to me.

I have several more examples of similar stupid audit rules and requests. I hope others are pushing back. Auditors aren't magical. Heck, their entire industry is built on GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). Generally accepted? That sounds cut and dried to me.

Lets stop being stupid and start being productive.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Saturday, August 6, 2011

From the Everything Has a Cost and Unintended Consequences Files

3D is the next big thing™. I don't actually believe that. For me, it was fun to see the first time at Disney World in some of their shows, but I don't need something to jump out at me every few minutes just because the show is in 3D. I got a lot bigger thrill in going from a 2D to a 3D advanced graphics card (the FPS went through the roof!) when I was playing Quake 2 oh so many years ago. And HD TV has been a great move up.

There are people who are betting a lot of money on 3D in movies and on TV, but here is where it gets fun.

So "the advent of 3D projectors is severely cutting the amount of light that reaches the screen because projectionists are not changing out the 3D lenses for 2D screenings as they should." Using the wrong lenses creates sub-optimal 2D pictures. If you read the article, it goes on to say that they have put so many controls in place that it makes it difficult to make the swap between movies. They are afraid that the bad guys are going to rip them off, so they spend lots of effort to make things difficult - on the evil-doer and the guy who has to support the projector.

The article sums it up this way:
"So in this case, Hollywood's threat model of losing revenues through unauthorized copying and redistribution overpowered its *other* threat model of losing business to home entertainment systems and Blu-Ray. At the projector level, I'd have thought the latter was the worse threat."
I think our default position for so many things in our lives is to make them more secure, but given our inability to evaluate risk, we often create more problems than we solve. I preach it at work and home - keep things simple. Some complexities are required, but others we impose upon ourselves.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Beauty Queen Shoots Intruder

I've seen lots of people linking to the story of a Florida beauty queen who shot an intruder. They mention that she wasn't a very good shot according to her fiancé and that she had a pink gun. I think what should get more attention is what appears to be a lack of common sense:
“We live in a very prominent area and my fiancee wears a $60,000 engagement ring,” he said. “The pizza man knew we had money because sometimes we needed change for a $100 bill when he came to deliver pizza.”
Don't get me wrong, they don't deserved to be robbed or attacked, but who goes around talking about how much a ring costs and pays for deliveries with hundred dollar bills?