* Posts by pstones578

18 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Oct 2011

Bizarre backup taught techie to dumb things down for the boss

pstones578

Had to restore an exchange server to recover an execs deleted

Pretty much same issue described in this story. Exec storing critical in deleted folder. Somehow deleted got deleted and went past soft recovery windows. Exchange server needed restoring to get it back.

Thanks for fixing the computer lab. Now tell us why we shouldn’t expel you?

pstones578

Surprised he wasnt expelled for hacking the places systems. Unfortunately even with a crap password this still comes under computer misuse and hacking type stuff. BUT, I think they landed on the right side of this decision.

Accidentally wiped an app's directory? Hey, just play the 'unscheduled maintenance' card. Now you're a hero

pstones578

Accidentally deleted some VM's once

In my defense, we had been pressured to move a project along even though we did not have enough storage, so we hosted the VM's on local storage on a host. We forgot they were there then one day rebuilt the host as it was playing up and it's quicker to rebuild and join the farm than waste time troubleshooting. It soon came to light the 2 VM's on the local disks have gone off the network.... Fun times!

39 Post Office convictions quashed after Fujitsu evidence about Horizon IT platform called into question

pstones578

"Apparently if you make a transaction, it can appear like the process has finished, but if you press the 'logout' button while this transaction is still processing in the background, when you next login it attempts to duplicate the transaction and records both lines in the finance records.

Ultimately those duplicated lines being the "evidence" in several cases. If management knew about that and still prosecuted......"

Guess they never heard of idempotency when creating the NFR's for the Horizon system.

pstones578

Re: Hope it brings some closure

"I would NEVER let someone be prosecuted if I new it was based on a lie."

I would have tried my best to help and make the right noises but once things go 4 layers up the food chain what can you do? Unless you are in the top 2 or 3 layers of the management structure there is only so much you can really do.

Cats: Not a fan favourite when the critters are draped around an office packed with tech

pstones578

I worked at Pets at Home for 9 years. Lot's of interesting IT issues there related to animals. Chewed cables aplenty springs to mind.

It wasn't just a few credit cards: Entire travel itineraries were stolen by hackers, Easyjet now tells victims

pstones578

I stopped doing this years ago

The challenge is if a bad actor gets in and has the credentials / tokens / keys etc. to access the data then encryption is not enough. There needs to be monitoring in place to detect bad behavior and either automatically shut it down or alert a team that should respond immediately.

Surge in home working highlights Microsoft licensing issue: If you are not on subscription, working remotely is a premium feature

pstones578

Re: The most simple way is not mentioned here?

This will work but it is a clunky solution. In 2020 companies need to be better than this. I was doing this sort of thing over a decade ago.

Beware the Friday afternoon 'Could you just..?' from the muppet who wants to come between you and your beer

pstones578

I stopped doing this years ago

Same story as everyone else so won't bore you but suffice it to say you learn the hard way and move on. 20 years in IT now and the only person who get's free support is the spawn point (mum)

The safest place to save your files is somewhere nobody will ever look

pstones578

Special kind of C level Exec

This story reminds me of a place I used to work that had someone high up who was very "special" and for years saved critical emails in his deleted items in his mailbox. This became new news to me when we implemented a policy to delete items from deleted at a certain retention period threshold. We had to restore the whole exchange DB just to get his emails back. The other bit I will never forget is that absolutely no one had the minerals to have a word with him so we had to work around his interesting way of managing email.

Sysadmin left finger on power button for an hour to avert SAP outage

pstones578

I will give you that one given the timeframe but if this was SAP then I would guess it was not running on Windows. These days servers never come with CD drives anymore

Car trouble: Keyless and lockless is no match for brainless

pstones578

Who wrote this crap?

Unreadable, try writing with a maturity level above a carrot next time.

How an Amazon engineer's slip-up started a 20-hour Netflix cock-up

pstones578

Change Control / Change Freeze

Would it not make sense to have some proper change control and then Amazon could have reviewed their change documentation and hey presto notice a change had happened around the time of the problem. Also while they are at it wouldn't it also be a good idea to have a change freeze around such a critical time of year! Unbelievable

US sues Apple, publishers over ebook pricing strategy

pstones578

It's like they just want everyone to go and download 5000 ebooks off the internet for 'free'

Foxconn staffer lets slip iPhone 5 ship date

pstones578

How's it 5th generation when it's not the 5th one?

IPhone overtakes BlackBerry in the corporate world

pstones578
IT Angle

re the 2 iPhone users, can you not integrate them into your mail system directly? What mail server do you use?

pstones578

Can you not integrate the 2 iPhones into your internal mail solution? What are you using?

Apple gets patent for ‘unlock gesture’

pstones578

This will be their next patent

An interactive means by way of the user manipulating the power state of a device. Apple will refer to this as the iON and iOFF switch. No other device will be able to transition their power state using a switching technology similar to iON and iOFF.