I don't hate my users

I also don't expect more out of them than they're willing to give. Trust me -- I can harp on improved security, et cetera, all day, and if it's too much of a pain in the ass for people to enter their passwords every morning, so that I have to unlock and reset ten or twelve accounts every single day, then improved security et cetera doesn't sway them one damned bit.

"How," I hear you asking, "do you know this?" I've tried! Hell, I used to be an XKCD fan myself -- it was trying to implement that particular suggestion, and seeing the utterly disastrous results it produced in terms of user satisfaction and user relationships, that put me off the damned comic in the first place.

I mean, honestly! Graham the mirror-shouter excepted, how did you people imagine I came around to the attitude I have on this subject, anyway? Just woke up one morning with a hair up my ass?

Re: If that's so, then why

Well, OK, fair enough, you just deniably implied it --

"There is no difference between the strings abababab and nGl04$sh when you are brute-forcing"

No, I don't think I know everything, though given your apparent propensity to get your knickers in a wad, I can see how it'd come across that way. It's just that I don't privilege your bald-faced assertions of how much more you know than I do, over what I've learned through the experience of doing my job -- speaking of which, said job being one you've already admitted you weren't up to, why should I be entertaining your best-practices advice in any case?

Re: If that's so, then why

...you mean you guys actually let random people on the Internet sit there and beat on your login prompts with brute-force attempts? Good God.

Oh, yeah, Graham! After that, I'm unshakably convinced that you left the IT business because you just so couldn't stand to deal with loathsome assholes like me, and not because, say, you lacked the basic competence to keep every asshole in the world from trying your doorknob as often as he likes. That's a much smaller hole than a few Post-It notes in an office that gets locked up every night. Sure.

If that's so, then why

did you present Munroe's opus as though it were all that needed saying? I believe the exact phrase you used was 'That is all' -- which, as swiftly became obvious, it wasn't.

Can't speak for why anyone else got cross about it, but for my own sake, I am sick and tired of XKCD fans because they largely behave as though pointing at their favorite "look how smart I am!" cartoon can stand in place of putting some actual thought into anything. Even when Munroe's got the right end of things, which happens less often than his partisans care to admit, he's not God or Donald Knuth. In a case like this one, where there's arguments to be made on either side -- no, I don't agree with the arguments in favor of the "correct horse battery staple" style password, because I've seen them fall flat on their face in the real world, but at least I acknowledge that they exist -- waving your favorite 'toon, in place of showing some evidence of original thought, just makes you look like a fool.

"[H]ow do they enter their strong password[...]"

Carefully, that's how, because they can't parse it as anything except individual characters -- which is by design; I'd rather they take thirty seconds to enter their password, and get it right on the first try, than enter it incorrectly a half-dozen times, lock themselves out, and call me up to complain. (They'll complain either way, of course, but the way I do it, they complain less -- which is also by design. Believe it or not, some experience and thought has gone into this!)

"Active Directory as it comes out of the box"

There's your problem right there --

Fuck me, eh? Class!

There's that leveller charm! Bitter helpdesk lifer, eh?

I don't know where you're getting your users, but maybe once you've spent some time supporting, among others, several offices full of blue-haired old ladies who loathe computers with a blinding passion yet must use them nonetheless, you cancome back and talk to me some more. 'Til then, you'd do better to remember Wittgenstein's admonishment and keep your ignorant gob shut.

Re: In fact it is not

'Passw0rd!', eh? Bless.

Re: In fact it is not

...you can't even spell my name right, and you're going to tell me about strong passwords? Thank God you're here!

The point, for those thickos who've missed it (which is all of you so far!), is not that I don't know how to type accurately without being able to see what I'm doing -- I'm a sysadmin, of course I can do that. Users mostly can't. Since they're going to fuck up no matter what I give them, increasing the length of the password just makes it that much less likely they'll ever be able to get it right -- whereas, contrariwise, giving them an eight- or twelve-character password that doesn't even begin to look legible will slow them down enough so that they'll have a decent chance of typing it in properly in only four or five tries. ("What if," I hear you asking, "they write it down and put it under their keyboard or in their wallet, then?" -- if they do, so what? Offices have doors that lock, and the odds of someone getting mugged by a technical professional who knows what to do with a pocketed password really aren't all that high -- and a Post-It can't be cracked. Get with the times, kids.)

None of this ought to surprise anyone who has any experience of dealing with users at all, of course, but then this is the Reg comments; if I didn't want to deal with gratuitous harassment from ignorant dribblers, what would I be doing here in the first place?

Re: wtf is a "gash keyboard"?

Thanks -- apparently that one hasn't made it across the pond. (And probably won't, considering this is a country where we say "bunny" and "tidbit" because the original forms, look them up, might be a little bit too tittillating...)

Re: 102 RPis?

Fair enough, but wtf is a "gash keyboard"?

A good start

Now just configure it to block everything else from Facebook, and you'll really be cooking with fire.

Sovereignty

is what you can enforce.

How dare you

insist upon reality.

@SB

Can't you damned levellers be satisfied with having won?

Obviously not

One would expect, after all, that a linguist be able correctly to punctuate his clauses.

Not fucking her any more doesn't count?

Sounds responsible enough to me --

Of course

they have no money also, and cannot afford to hire those who know more than they do.

Sounds like Doc Smith to me

Dropping planets from space at high speed? Klono's horns! -- who else would it be?

Thanks for the link

That's one for the morning paper.

Re: Can we please...

The Reg has ads? When did that happen?

Nothing attracts downvotes

like whining about downvotes.

Re: What about insertion force?

Big handle on the back makes me think it takes a pretty good shove. (Fnar, fnar.)

I'm more wondering why the socket's the side with the conductors exposed. Seems a bit risky to me.

Re: Wil who?

Good on him for not ending up another Gary Coleman, tho.

The point of Pinterest is to make money for the people who built it.

It's web scale.

Re: Client for win7

What, the unnecessary SMB weirdness isn't enough for you? You want to support another, even flakier, fileshare protocol too?

I think you've come in the wrong door, fellow -- the masochists' club is just around the corner. You'll know it when you see it, it's the one with broken glass set into the doorhandle.

Probably not many

The question is, how many are trying to hire an IT professional and either a) see 'hacker' and think 'what an idiot, this guy admits to committing crimes, next!', or b) see 'hacker' and think 'what a hairy-assed weirdo, this guy will be impossible to manage, next!'

"Nothing new" indeed

Bet you've never offered to let one of 'em keep it...

"This won't stand up in court."

Summary judgment for the defendant, plaintiff to pay court costs.

Re: Long-known

...which gives one to wonder about the negligence or lack thereof of the rider, who presumably as a "lifestyle cyclist" should know better than to ride on a seat that's going to wreck his wedding tackle, and who certainly has a more compelling interest in the care and maintenance of said tackle than the seat manufacturer would.

Re: Hacker

...you mean like, say, probably most people on LinkedIn don't?