back to article I'll see your data loss and raise you a security policy violation

With the weekend looming, The Register once again brings you an instalment of On Call, the weekly column in which sysadmins share stories of their eventual success. This week meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Huon"* who told us of the time he worked as site engineer for a company so enormous he dare not even hint at its name or …

  1. joewilliamsebs
    Stop

    Outlook...

    Client had SBS2k3 server which, as they always did, was butting up against the Exchange storage limit.

    A quick review revealed, as they always did, that high-use users had massive Deleted Items folders.

    Set a quick group policy to 'empty deleted items on exit' and pat self on back for a job well done.

    Nope.

    Several of them had worked out that hitting 'delete' was quicker than dragging a completed email to a different folder or flagging it as complete, so that was their workflow for archiving messages. It was absolutely essential, of course, that they were able to retain them.

    1. SVD_NL Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Outlook...

      It's always baffling that no matter how much we try to use familiar concepts and real-world analogies when designing applications, some users just completely miss it.

      Imagine someone putting important paperwork in the recycling bin, and complaining when they find out cleaning staff threw it out overnight.

      1. Robin

        Re: Outlook...

        Or having a massive pile of photos, random bits of paper and possibly even DVDs on the surface of their desk, and complaining they can't find anything, while the desk drawers are completely empty. Oh and I suppose in this metaphor the recycling bin would actually be on the top of the desk too.

        1. SVD_NL Silver badge

          Re: Outlook...

          My working theory is that some users haven't developed object permanence yet.

          Storing things out of sight just makes it disappear for them.

          Can be quite problematic when combined with sticky notes.

          1. Bebu
            Windows

            Re: Outlook...

            《My working theory is that some users haven't developed object permanence yet.》

            So no chance of " formal operations" then?

            Had a dog that was smarter.

            I can see diskless Windows boxes (iSCSI with block level snapshots) might be attractive but probably cheaper to employ smarter monkeys.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Outlook...

            Or they might have ADHD and have stuff visible in order to find things. Or it's a chronological sort. Or something else that has nothing to do with object permanence.

        2. Filippo Silver badge

          Re: Outlook...

          In at least a few cases, I've seen the recycling bin ending up inside one of the DVDs on the surface of the desk, in apparent violation of all laws of both physics and common sense.

          1. SVD_NL Silver badge
            Unhappy

            Re: Outlook...

            Don't you hate it when you're casually dragging your recycling bin across your desk, it slips out of your hand, and just disappears into a different object?

        3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Outlook...

          "a massive pile of photos, random bits of paper and possibly even DVDs on the surface of their desk, and complaining they can't find anything"

          This is the One Pile filing system. It's advantage is that you always know where something is. It's in that pile.

          Not being able to find something happens when it gets tidied into drawers. Anyone who uses that system can tell you that. Those empty drawers are a dangerous temptation.

          1. Little Mouse

            Re: Outlook...

            Another advantage of the One Pile system is that it is self-sorting. The "important", recent, stuff can be found near the top, whilst the "it can wait another week" stuff magically works it's way lower down.

            1. eldel

              Re: Outlook...

              Indeed. I call it the geologic filing system. Every 6 months you just lift off the top inch and throw everything below it away. With a reasonable amount of care it actually works.

              1. J. Cook Silver badge

                Re: Outlook...

                "Strata" and "Syncline" are not terms normally found in filing systems. :D :D :D

                I've given up on my crusade to get people to Not Use Outlook As A File System, by dumping all the mailboxes over to Exchange Online. Let someone else deal with the disk usage...

                1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

                  Re: Outlook...

                  "Strata" and "Syncline" are not terms normally found in filing systems

                  But the old stuff can get quietly subducted into the bin.

                2. Trygve Henriksen

                  Re: Outlook...

                  Ah, may you also be a connoiseur of Alaskan comics?

                  https://www.the-whiteboard.com/autowb301.html

            2. swm

              Re: Outlook...

              This was my strategy for paper documents. I would have several piles of papers, notes etc. in my office. I could remember which pile a document lived and using the principle of 1 inch per month allowed me to retrieve documents quickly.

              The clean desk policy idiots didn't like this but, since they couldn't find anything in my office, I got a conditional pass.

            3. Ken Shabby Bronze badge
              Facepalm

              Re: Outlook...

              Many a micomangler has told me to sort my desk. I told them it is sorted, a heap sort.

          2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Outlook...

            Oh dear. Superfluous apostrophe.

          3. Tim Kemp

            Re: Outlook...

            You mean Reverse Chronological Desktop Heap Sorting?

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Outlook...

          My boss came over to my extremely messy looking desk and started asking me for random things one morning. Slightly baffled I produced each of the requested documents and items easily and then asked why he wanted them. He said he was trying to shame me into tidying my desk up because I wouldn’t be able to find anything. However as I’d been able to find everything so that hadn’t worked but would I please have a go at reducing the mess despite knowing where everything was.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            desk shaming

            Ha! You can't say you've got a messy desk until you're told the safety officer has declared it a fire hazard....

            (Would have used the icon, but AC until I've stuffed a few more paper bins.)

            1. adam 40

              Re: desk shaming

              I think our safety officer is somewhere under the pile on my desk.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Outlook...

            At my first place of work (back in the 1970's, before we had desktop computers and when everyone in an office shared a single phone) our department operated a strict clean-desk policy. Nothing could be left on desks overnight, nor dumped into desk drawers - everything had to go into securely locked cabinets (whose keys were held by security). Anything not secured away would be taken away by security staff during their rounds and you'd have to explain why it wasn't secure if you wanted it back. It made a lot of sense having a disciplined approach to filing, a habit that stayed with me for my career.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Outlook...

              I would be tempted to bring in stuff I wanted disposing and leave it on the desk!

              Now some one else's problem

          3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Outlook...

            You should have reminded him that an empty desk is a sign of an empty head.

          4. Ken Hagan Gold badge

            Re: Outlook...

            If you can see any part of your desk then you aren't using its surface efficiently. Perhaps you need a smaller desk.

          5. Bebu
            Windows

            Re: Outlook...

            《asking me for random things one morning. Slightly baffled I produced each of the requested documents and items easily》

            Random was his mistake. ;) He should have asked for sequential documents....

            It is a curious that storing items over a desk with the least recently used or most irrelevant at the bottom of the pile seems to mirror how the human memory works. I suspect evolution selected the ability to retain "what" with "where" and "when."

            In the early 90s I worked with a chap whose desk hadn't been cleared since he started (+20 years.) When I ask a question while he was telling me (then a PFY) about an old abandoned project to implement an enterprise wide DEC "virtual ethernet" he fished from near the bedrock of his desk top's stratigraphy the particular document answering my query. Shoulders of giants. ;) Unfortunately a single storey building so little opportunity to have been effectively instructed in the art of defenestration.

            1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

              Re: I worked with a chap whose desk hadn't been cleared since he started

              Have we met?

              about an old abandoned project to implement blah...

              ah, clearly not.

              Yes I can confirm the stratified storage system often works better than a conventional system.

              I used to work in an office where there was a Vital Chart* (consulted and filled in three times a day) on the wall next to my desk. One day my boss laid down the law and told me to tidy up my desk. The number of pens I found was quite amazing: typically someone would fill out the chart, put the pen down on my desk and return to their desk. (We had a well-stocked stationery cupboard).

              *Actually a Tea Chart. Someone had devised a democratic method of working out whose turn it was to make the tea, even though there were people out on site, in meetings etc.

          6. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
            Pint

            Re: Outlook...

            In my early days, our Supervisor was in charge of Goods Inward and used chronological filing. Everything was placed in a pile on his desk; nothing was passed on, like Delivery Notes, Invoices, messages.... He was forever on the phone promising "I'll see to it."

            We were forbidden to touch anything. Until he went on holiday, whereupon our suppliers would telephone me or visit saying "Please can we have our invoices paid?" Me and my colleague would then unpack his desk-top and over the next few days, sort and distribute the paperwork accordingly. There would be a sudden hit to the finance department but as they had gone several weeks or months without paying any supplier in the blissful state of 'not receiving the paperwork' and things were offered without tea-stains, spilt food, grease, dead spiders etc. they were grateful.

            When the supervisor returned, to a clean desk, he pretended he had sorted everything before he went away. Eventually, I became his boss and took all paperwork away from him. We diverted his (desk) phone so he could not receive calls. He was good at his practical job so worth retaining, but I welcomed the end of the working week ---->

          7. scott2718282828

            Re: Outlook...

            I had a neat-freak manager once. Couldn't have a single scrap of paper out on the desk at the end of the day. But then he couldn't find anything that he had randomly filed, and had to rely on me to find a copy.

        5. Mark 85

          Re: Outlook...

          Or having a massive pile of photos, random bits of paper and possibly even DVDs on the surface of their desk, and complaining they can't find anything, while the desk drawers are completely empty.

          In some areas this also known as the "look busy kit, MK1". "Just look at that pile of work and you'll see I'm overworked and need a raise."

      2. GlenP Silver badge

        Re: Outlook...

        Way back when I was a civil servant any papers you threw out had to be torn through before binning otherwise you'd find them back on your desk the next day. Apparently it was a measure to stop claims of, "It must have been thrown away accidentally!"

        Out of habit I still do this.

        1. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

          Re: Outlook...

          OTH one must be more through when 'i'd better not find this now, it's better if we don't after all this fuss' happens ;-)

        2. Ian Johnston Silver badge

          Re: Outlook...

          In other news, the civil service apparently employs people to look at every single sheet of paper thrown away.

      3. Excused Boots Silver badge

        Re: Outlook...

        I have literally done this to a particularly annoying client. New corporate policy as dictated from on high was to ‘save email space and enforce via group policy to clear the deleted files folder on exit’, but there was a proviso that it would out up a dialogue box first explaining what would happen. And this is OK Yes/No’

        Well you can all imagine what happened about a week later when we get a ticket from a particularly annoying self-important non-entity demanding that his email is restored or else dire retribution would be handed out to the IT team, and the usual ‘don’t you know who I am…..’

        Now at the time, the IT team were ‘my team’, so I’m not having that and went to see the person myself. Sat and listened to the usual diatribe about how incompetent the IT staff are and this has cost the company X amount of money.

        Eventually I picked up a folder from his desk, asked if this was important, apparently it was, and dropped it into the bin next to his desk. When he remonstrated, I pointed out the similarities but he wasn’t having it.

        At that point, I lent over and whispered quietly to him, ‘you are demanding an exception from company policy, because you think you are too important for it to apply to you, guess again! Now the email is all gone, it’s not coming back, tough deal with it, but if you want to pursue this, then fair enough, but I absolutely will kick it all upstairs and have your fucking job - is that clear!’

        And then smiled and walked away.

        Oddly enough never heard anything more about it. OK slight advantage, I happened to know that said person wasn’t particularly liked but the IT Director understood what we did, how it all just worked from his perspective, no complaints and the importance of keeping it just so!

        As an aside, I think this might be a quite rare situation, it was a large architectural firm in London which outsourced their IT support, and they over spec’ed the support on the grounds that they can’t afford downtime so better that than under speccing and hoping. The IT director actually liked the idea of us not apparently being seen to do anything on the grounds that if you don’t see the IT people, then it indicates that all is well and working, but if you do see them rushing around then shit has fit the fan, but they are all working on it, so leave them alone! He saw it a bit like an insurance policy, you pay for it, but hope that you never need to use it.

        Simpler times……

      4. xyz123 Silver badge

        Re: Outlook...

        I worked for a large corporation required by law to keep physical paperwork of certain transactions.

        Which one manager kept "safely" in the "secure disposal" boxes. i.e. those big wheelie bins that are emptied and the contents shredded/burned once a week.

        We needed a document for a court case, and he wonderd why for the past 12months all his documents were gone......

      5. mattaw2001

        Re: Outlook...

        Professor left an expensive data capture card in it's brown box on his recycling bin and was furious when it was tossed.

        For a week we're had to empty our own trash thanks to the cleaners, not unreasonably, refusing after they got shouted at.

        Allegedly peer pressure forced the least genuine apology ever uttered and a new policy added that if you leave anything on a bin it's your fault - state the bleeding obvious!

      6. Scott 26

        Re: Outlook...

        > Imagine someone putting important paperwork in the recycling bin, and complaining when they find out cleaning staff threw it out overnight.

        Happened IRL to my wife's company - she used to be an office manager for a cleaning company. One day they take an irate call from a client - his $300 running shoes were gone!!! Where did he last see them? Balanced on the top of the rubbish bin under his desk.....

        ffs..... what were the cleaners supposed to think?

    2. GlenP Silver badge

      Re: Outlook...

      I'd be surprised if anyone who administered SVS2K3 hasn't encountered exactly this problem!

      1. usbac

        Re: Outlook...

        Yeah, same here. I had a boss (VP of IT) that filed all of his important emails in the delete items folder. That is until I enabled to policy to empty it every night!

        The guy was a total dufus (English degree, no IT knowledge or skills). Hi qualification for the job was going to collage with the CEO.

        1. Derezed

          Re: Outlook...

          I wish I’d been to collage to study English.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: Outlook...

            Most them aren't grate courses. It's all a bit patchwork-y

            1. The commentard formerly known as Mister_C Silver badge
              Facepalm

              Re: Outlook...

              I didn't go to collage, so I never got to study appliqued physics

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Outlook...

      Predictable that this would be the first comment. It's a consequence of (a) email clients not being designed with reasonable use cases in mind and (b) admins not keeping up with growing storage requirements which is also part of Huon's users' problem.

      1. tyrfing

        Re: Outlook...

        Local storage was not allowed - company policy.

        This meant that *adequate* hard drive space consists of your installed programs, plus (a bit of) temporary space, used by programs, not user files.

        If they were really serious about that policy, re-imaging every night could have been on the table. I suspect someone considered it and thought that re-customizing every morning (there's always customization) would take too much time.

        1. JimboSmith

          Re: Outlook...

          Yeah I worked somewhere where the policy was changed during my tenure there. No longer would local storage be allowed, everything had to be stored on the server. Also since the dawn of time you were never allowed to store anything personal on the servers. Some people dumped a lot of stuff onto CDRoms before this policy came into force. The plan was to restrict user access to the local storage and make it The IT director had the idea that we could then have hot-desking as you’d be able to log in anywhere and access your files and each computer would have the same software loaded. However one program that a few of us throughout the business used required local storage. It wouldn’t work without it and stored user specific data locally. So those of us that used it still had totally free access to the local hard drives. It also kyboshed the hot-desking idea which for a few people was a great relief.

          1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

            Local Storage Required?

            How about something ~like~:

            NET USE Z: \\COMPANYWIDESHARE\%DEPT%\FAKELOCALSTORAGE\APPNAME\%USER%

            invoke-app-here

            NET USE Z: /DELETE

            ... in the application startup batch file? (Test for null values of %DEPT% and %USER% before trying to use them.)

        2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Outlook...

          "Local storage was not allowed - company policy."

          Then there's no point in having a PC. A thin client would have been much better.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Outlook...

            Thin clients are fine if all you want to do is word processing and email. Kind of the equivalent to a Chromebook these days.

            If you want to run teams properly, or anything bigger than a single sheet Excel file though, forget it. They were a superb technology back in the day when properly implemented, but unfortunately just do not have the memory anymore for everyday use.

            I once had someone ask if they could have autocad on the VDI. They got laughed out of the office!

            1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

              Re: Outlook...

              > I once had someone ask if they could have autocad on the VDI. They got laughed out of the office!

              Technically possible! He gets his own 1 HE or 2 HE machine in the server room which he accesses from his thin client, even from home. Even multi monitor support is no problem, though Windows 7 required the "ultimate" version for that. Just make a cost estimate, and then he will be either laughed out of the office or you got a nice project to implement. Don't try server-OS versions, a lot of software has no support when installed on a server, or if costs even more money. But a Windows-server-OS has one advantage: RDP disconnection does not pause your running tasks.

            2. Adrian 4

              Re: Outlook...

              Isn't a web browser a thin client by a different name ?

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Outlook...

                "Isn't a web browser a thin client by a different name ?"

                It was, more or less. Now a browser takes more cpu power and memory than OS it runs on and therefore is, not only fat client, but bloated client.

        3. J.G.Harston Silver badge

          Re: Outlook...

          I once set up an office system like that - on startup the PCs would rebuild the user profiles with a tidy desktop and start menu, and defined links to applications and data areas.

          A few weeks later I visted the site and found that somebody had complained that their mess kept vanishing and they'd dug into the settings and disabled it. Attempting to use any of the PCs was a horror of scattered random garbage.

      2. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: Outlook...

        I mostly agree with you if we're only talking about email servers. While storing stuff in deleted isn't a good idea, if someone has three gigabytes of mail they want to archive in a different folder, we have servers which have plenty of storage to hold that. Admins that continue having tiny quotas do not help unless there is a real space problem, and if there is, it's more likely to be solved by buying bigger disks or focusing on users that really use a lot more than everyone else.

        However, storage quantity was really not Huon's users' problem, even though that was the initial symptom. Their problem could have been whatever reason they had for saying that the servers were unreliable, which could have been a very serious problem. It could, however, be a completely invalid assumption made by someone who has no clue what they're talking about, and this seems more likely to me given that the person who said it didn't understand what C:\temp is for. You don't need a large disk if users are supposed to put all their data on a different disk. It should have had enough space for the temporary data that it would need to store and for system growth, but not necessarily for all the work the team did, since that was supposed to be stored elsewhere and that system could have as much storage provisioned as needed.

    4. Tommy G1

      Re: Outlook...

      "Client had SBS2k3 server..."

      How about a trigger warning PLEASE!

      You've just undone years of counselling :-(

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Outlook...

        Isn't a serial terminal the thinnest of thin clients? (Well, yes, a serial terminal is physically big, but in terms of internal computing power it is not.)

        1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

          Re: Outlook...

          Today it actually would be. The serial connector would be the part making it "not-thin" by todays standards. Take a "thin client" of today and build it with the parts that were available when those "big serial terminals" were the norm, and you end up with something taking up more than AN/FSQ-7 despite using integrated circuits instead of tubes. More detailed here...

    5. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Re: Outlook...

      For my SBS2000 / SBS2003 (R2) Clients I had to do following after a few years:

      Use the Outlook manual Archiving to move all mails "2005 and older" to the "2005 and older.pst". After that all "2006" to the "2006.pst" and so on. It keeps the folder structure intact, an important detail. The PSTs were kept locally for quick access to outlook AND on the file server to be avail when the PC died.

      A solution still usable today with latest OhNo365....

      1. GlenP Silver badge

        Re: Outlook...

        You just had to be careful that the local folder the active PST files were in wasn't being replicated to the server - that could really cause a network slow-down.

        I still do this today with 365 though.

        1. J. Cook Silver badge

          Re: Outlook...

          Indeed: Technically, Microsoft does not support using PST files residing on a mapped drive or network share; However... it does mostly work.

          1. Trixr

            Re: Outlook...

            ...Until your file server runs out of work queues and silently grinds to a halt. It might be fine if you are in a relatively small org where it's just a few dozen employees that have PST files permanently open for write. Not great if you have 1000s accessing the same storage volumes.

            Also, the way those things get corrupted if you just look at them sideways. No thanks.

      2. AVR Bronze badge

        Re: Outlook...

        Not really true now but that sort of thing used to cause awful disk space problems back in the day. I remember trying to explain to someone that keeping lots of multi-gig .pst files on the server was in fact a problem.

      3. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Outlook...

        Trouble was Outlook needed write access to those archived .pst’s and on opening update the archive’s modified date…

    6. IceC0ld

      Re: Outlook...

      SAME

      user had issues loading Outlook when at home and connected to office remotely ..............

      got user to bring asset to office, and remoted in, Outlook WOULD open, but took forever to fire up, 'quick' search, discovered user had a HUGE 2 GB - this WAS 2003, so Office 2003 / XP etc - DELETED ITEMS folder not just over sized, but meticulously set out for the Co, folders for each section, in there sub folders for each manager, and downwards ............

      had to call their manager to explain the issue, took a while to get it through to them :o(

      eventually arranged to have all folders / Emails reset back into Outlook, and archived those older than a year - I am not going to go into just how long this took, I was in Manchester area, user in Glasgow, the line between us was most certainly NOT fibre :o) but suffice to say it did complete

      Outlook never actually sprinted into action, but at least it could now limp to the opening ceremony when user was remote

    7. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: Outlook...

      Ah the NHS user this reminds me of. Way back in 2007 I visited one NHS user at our old site and discovered folders inside the deleted folder "Yeah its where I archive everything". It was at least a user I could rib "Its called deleted for a reason. Why are you archiving stuff in the deleted folder! That's madness". No idea if they changed their ways.

      Another "exec" who was difficult but the more I did work for her, the more I got used to her ways and could talk to her a bit more relaxed than others. She had ALL her icons and files on her desktop, told her its not a backup solution. If the laptop fails you loose all your work. I created a shortcut to the network drive and told her drag these files into that folder and then you'll be covered as they'll be backed up each night. "Yes I'll do that, thanks". I went to another site for a few weeks, popped back for a day and it was all kicking off. She'd lost a document and everyone was scrabbling to restore it because of how difficult she could be but couldn't as she'd left it on the desktop. She saw me in the kitchen and said "Yes I know" at which point I said "I did warn you this would happen".

  2. Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward Silver badge
    Pint

    Another punnery well done.

    I'm on my way for celebrating it with that --->

    Others may groan at the punnery. Let us have our punning funnery.

  3. SVD_NL Silver badge
    Stop

    To be fair...

    ...you should really take a look at the folder you're going to purge before pushing a script like that.

    Even a quick glance at the folder structure would've revealed that the users didn't quite understand the definition of "temporary".

    Don't get me wrong, it's definitely the bean counters' fault, but it could've been prevented.

    Wouldn't be the first time important files or mails end up in a temp folder or the recycling bin.

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: To be fair...

      ...the users didn't quite understand the definition of "temporary".

      In IT there is nothing more permanent than temporary.

      1. blackcat Silver badge

        Re: To be fair...

        Not just IT! There is nothing more permanent than a temporary fix that works.

        1. zapgadget

          Re: To be fair...

          Tell me about it. When I moved to France and discovered that unfurnished meant no kitchen units either, I built a temporary kitchen from the moving boxes and duct tape. Lasted two years.

      2. SVD_NL Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: To be fair...

        Ha! I guess we are all guilty of that one.

        Have one of these--->

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: To be fair...

        This also applies to staff.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: To be fair...

      "you should really take a look at the folder you're going to purge"

      Security might have prevented that. OTOH an enquiry wouldn't have been out of place.

      1. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: To be fair...

        Seems unlikely anyone outside of the DoD or equivalent would have a security policy that banned listing the names of files and last modified date in the Temp directory.

        1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
          Pint

          Re: To be fair...

          User storing his Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Access files in proper folders for each type.

          A shame they were in something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\Excel (Word, Powerpoint, Access etc).

          Come migration & natually his data wasnt present, one his storage location was established...........

          Well where else am I going to store them?

          How about in My Documents or better still on the server....

          1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge
            Flame

            Re: To be fair...

            Seriously: A normal user having write access in "C:\Program Files (x86)" ??!?!?!!!1!?!?!oneeleven!!!11!?

            Since Vista even a local Admin account (not BUILTIN\Administrator aka SID S-1-5-21-*-500) does not have write access without UAC prompts, let alone let Excel store its files there since session-isolation prevents that Excel session storing anything where admin-access is needed. WTH kind of sloppy IT makes it possible in fist place? I hope you were not IT there, else you'd deserve to be (see icon)...

            1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

              It's the default (!)

              For a lot of software installations, "C:\Program Files (x86)\Name of Program", or something like that, is the default file save location.

              Sometimes the developer makes the foolish assumption that the software will be used by an adult.

              And if a developer sets "My Documents" as the default, what happens when Microsoft renames that? As they have. You used to get "My Music", "My Pictures", "My Videos" (from memory). Currently-ish ( Windows 10 I think) these are renamed to remove an implication that any of this media is owned by you.

              1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

                Re: It's the default (!)

                > For a lot of software installations, "C:\Program Files (x86)\Name of Program", or something like that, is the default file save location.

                This is why Microsoft added an file virtualization layer in Windows Vista. Any program that tries to write to c:\windows or c:\Program Files or c:\ProgramData and does not behave gets silently redirected to "%LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore", aka "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore". Vista took so much blame, but quite a few things were done right.

                > And if a developer sets "My Documents" as the default

                To educate you further: Since Windows Vista (maybe XP too?) the folder is "Documents", and what you see as "my documents", or what I see as "Dokumente" in my German Windows 11, simply the friendly name according to your localization. Open cmd.exe, enter "dir /a" and you will see the actual folder names.

        2. Marty McFly Silver badge
          Stop

          Re: To be fair...

          Poking around the file system...of the finance department computers....of a large mega corp. Yeah, that is a huge no-no without permission & an escort.

          Just touching a workstation which potentially contains undisclosed financial information triggers all sorts of insider trading laws.

    3. Tim 11

      Re: To be fair...

      I was once (in the mid-90's) called upon to investigate why our app had stopped working on one of the sales demo PCs. After a short troubleshooting session it was clear there was no database driver installed (informix if you're interested). But the app had been working a few days before. It transpired that the person who originally installed the app decided that the appropriate place to install the database driver was c:\temp which had then subsequently been deleted by someone else in order to free up disk space

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BTDT

    Doing clear out/tidy up of /var/tmp on a Solaris server and deleted a file - which apparently was vital to the operation of the application. At least the app team lead acknowledged it shouldn't have been there and was able to recreate it.

    Then I did it again about a year later... oops!

    The saving grace for me was that app was pernickety as hell and prone to falling over at the best of times.

    Posting anonymously because, well....

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: BTDT

      > Posting anonymously because, well....

      Because you were using Solaris?

    2. Roger Kynaston
      Pint

      Re: BTDT

      My Solaris experience was with a local government system which stored (by design) a load of files in /tmp. I rebooted the server and a load of important files were lost. The blowback was surprisingly muted.

      Icon because Friday and I am on leave in ten minutes time.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: BTDT

        An application that keeps WIP files in /tmp - which is what /tmp is for - should remove them on normal closure. If you close down the server peremptorily and don't let the applications close normally you should expect the stuff in /tmp to be important; the application developer might have anticipated the possibility of this happening and been able to use them for recovery. The only files that could be safely deleted are those that haven't been touched for a long time.

        The basic rule is if you don't know it's safe to delete a file don't delete it.

        1. DS999 Silver badge

          Re: BTDT

          On Solaris /tmp is not and has never been a real filesystem, so the contents of /tmp will no longer exist after a reboot. Applications would have to be written to survive an unexpected shutdown without an expectation any files in /tmp would remain.

          If they wanted the files to remain after a reboot they could put them in /var/tmp, which is a real filesystem, but it would be far far better to have the install script for the application create a special directory under /var for that purpose (as some do) so that any startup scripts that did housekeeping such as clearing the contents of /var/tmp would not cause these valuable WIP files to be lost.

        2. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: BTDT

          /tmp, on many systems, is not on a disk and is not maintained through reboots. There are lots of other places that are on filesystems that persist. A program can keep some temporary data, in fact it makes a lot of sense, but if you deliberately put your data where it will be lost in a certain case, then you should be able to recover from that situation somehow. In addition, unless the server was forcefully powered down, any properly written software would have had the standard shutdown notifications, whether that is the service system stopping them with the scripts they wrote for that purpose or monitoring for shutdown notifications. Software that expects that the server will never be rebooted is not adequate.

          Another basic rule is if you need a file to still be there no matter what happens to the computer, putting it on a ramdisk is stupid. If you put it on a ramdisk, have a plan for what you'll do if that disk ceases to exist. Depending on what the program does and how large it is, that can be anything from "no problem, they just run it again from the start and if that causes a delay, that's on them" to "store completed stages and information to resume in a different program-specific temp directory and only keep the current stage's work in /tmp".

  5. WhoAmI?

    Sounds familiar

    I worked for an insurance company (long since gone) and we were moving from Windows 3.11 to Windows NT 4.0. We weren't a rich company so we were upgrading the OS using the `ghost` application, one machine at a time (two if we had two floppy disks and a spare source hard drive)

    Before each upgrade we visited or emailed the users and told them that they would lose everything that was not in the "C:\DATA" folder (which we had created for them when we built the machine in the first place). We stressed this several times as that was the only folder we were going to back up to the Netware 3.1.1 server (see the kinda era we're talking about here?) so if they wanted to keep it, the data needed to be in that folder and nowhere else. Everyone understood. We repeated it. They understood even more.

    We spent weeks doing the upgrades one department at a time. We had smaller offices around the country (Glasgow to Bristol) so we'd visit for a day, do the deed, and then either head home or onto the next closest office (Newcastle and Glasgow were usually done in one trip over a couple of days. Where else was I going to get a proper Scotch Pie from?).

    The only problem we had was at Head Office in the Finance Department. We did HO machines over night (mainly to minimise disruption, but also for the overtime). We'd spoken to the sub-head bean counter and he was ready. We backed up his DATA folder, ghosted the machine, then copied his documents folder back again. Job done. Beer deserved.

    The next morning we got a phone call from sub-head bean counter asking where his data was. We told him that it was in his DATA folder. He replied:

    SHBC: But I have data in other folders. I need that back too

    IT: It's gone

    SHBC: I need that data back. It's important

    IT: We told you that we'd only back up the C:\DATA folder

    SHBC: I thought you meant all my DATA folders, not just that one

    IT: It's not happening. We didn't know about those other folders, and we don't have time to search hard drives for data

    SHBC: But it's important company critical data

    IT: Oops.

    We had a good boss. Ken was big. Ken was scary. Ken was the one who decided what was allowed on his network. No one messed with Ken and, if he knew you didn't do anything wrong or had been proven guilty of something, he'd defend you to the end. He went and had "a chat" with said bean counter. Nothing was ever heard about it again. EVERYONE got their documents into the right folder after that

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sounds familiar

      Similar story I probably wrote here a couple of times.

      I was sending global emails every month to all users of the factory instructing them to put all documents in the Z: network drive cos it was the only one properly backed up on the server. And nothing in My Document which was local disk only (win 95).

      One end of the day, a Paula phoned the Hell Desk for an issue. Hard drive fubared. Tech. replaced it, re-imaged the desktop over the evening et voilà.

      Next morning, I was the first in the IT offices, and this one Paula phoned, saying "Where are my files ?".

      Went there and indeed, as one would expect, due to the replaced local drive, My documents was empty. I reminded her of all the emails I'd send but she seemed of the opinion all IT emails were hot garbage, as her Z: drive was also completely empty. She never bothered to put anything there ...

      At one point, the not so clever Paula asked "So, all my documents are gone ?". Me: "Exactly" and I turned back, leaving a pretty pale Paula behind me ...

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: Sounds familiar

        How hard would it have been to check that users were using the space provided for them on the server?

        (Proving that they weren't using local storage is, admittedly, harder, though not by much. You might have to get off your arse and run a script on the machine in question.)

        1. doublelayer Silver badge

          Re: Sounds familiar

          It is not IT's responsibility to audit everyone's files. Different users will have different requirements. For example, I keep some stuff on my work machine's local drive. It is there because I can run things faster locally if it doesn't have to be pulled down, but anything important also exists on some other system such that I can lose the disk without losing important data. A script that checks whether there are files on my disk will say that there are, but it won't indicate a problem. If you were strict about that, then any program which creates files in the documents folder (I've known several) would set it off. If you check what people are using on the server, a user who has exactly zero files might be suspicious, but there could be some jobs that don't require storing files there. If they mostly work in email, either having a job that's entirely communications or a job that's not done on the computer, then maybe they really don't have files. If they put one file there once and never used it again, the script will indicate that their folder isn't empty even though it contains nothing of use, so you'd need a much more complicated script to look for changing files or a certain expected quantity of stored data with both false positive and negative possibilities.

          With this level of complexity, it really isn't as simple as you make it sound. It's also not what IT is there to do. They create the policies and make things work. They're not supposed to police everything a user does with a computer. When other policies exist, they usually don't come with a requirement for an automatic system to notice every violation. For example, if there is a room where you may not bring liquids because there is sensitive hardware there, then the general steps will be to put a sign on the door and to make it clear that this is important, not to build a water scanner and install it so you can't enter without passing. I'm generally supportive of having the computers check for risks and warn about them, but that doesn't mean that every possible problem needs to have a detection script. If employees don't bother to follow the policies that have been set up for a reason, bad things might happen.

          1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

            Re: Sounds familiar

            I would put it under "Checking that the backup has worked". If you are not backing up a user's files, then those files are at risk. And the files are work which belongs to the company, not to the user.

            Now, how to check, and what to do about it, I'm not sure. Perhaps if a user's files on the server are not changing, and the user is currently showing up to to work, then send them an e-mail after a month, to remind them that only the files on the server are backed up. Maybe send their boss an e-mail about it more frequently.

        2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Sounds familiar

          "How hard would it have been to check that users were using the space provided for them on the server?"

          It's not IT's job to make sure that professional, paid, employees are doing their jobs properly as per company policy.

          1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

            Re: Sounds familiar

            Essentially you've asked: How hard would it be to ensure car manufacturers stop people driving the wrong way down a road?

            1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

              Re: Sounds familiar

              Large magnets under the pavement should work. Any car facing the wrong way is turned 180 degrees. Or is flipped sideways into its own side of the road, but sometimes that's inconvenient for other drivers.

              Marking a line down the middle of a road to separate traffic going opposite directions is described by Wikipedia as an idea of "ancient civilizations" which didn't quickly catch on in so-called modern times. Some municipalities still think they're for sissies.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Sounds familiar

          "How hard would it have been to check that users were using the space provided for them on the server?"

          As hard as it would be to verify they've wiped their arse, each bloody time.

          It is just a matter of effort and time spent on people that don't give a damn ...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sounds familiar

        Has anyone else been called to a site with no backups, the public store disk on it's last legs with the company storing everything in the public store folder? Exchange 5.5 no service packs and a wobbly NT4.0 server.

        Glad it's not just me

  6. Robin

    When?

    At the time Windows often lived in a mess of its own making

    Doesn't help narrow it down, really.

  7. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Windows

    No local storage allowed ?

    You're using Windows and you do not allow local storage ?

    You clearly don't know Windows users.

    1. Mark #255

      Re: No local storage allowed ?

      I recall my university had rooms of PCs (this would be '95 or '96) which had no local hard drive, everything was done over the network.

      Given that we were stringing our own PCs together via ribbon cable between parallel ports for Duke Nukem, this was serious voodoo.

      1. SVD_NL Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: No local storage allowed ?

        Lovely solution for situations like that, especially considering the cost of storage at the time.

        PXE made this a lot easier, but i believe that wasn't released until '98 or '99.

        Also, not sure if the Voodoo pun was intended, but have one of these either way --->

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: No local storage allowed ?

      "You clearly don't know Windows users."

      And forgot what the P in PC stands for.

      1. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: No local storage allowed ?

        PC nowadays is most likely "Probably Crap"...

        1. J. Cook Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: No local storage allowed ?

          "Profusely Corded" (back when USB had just been introduced, so PCs still had PS/2 / AT ports for keyboard/mouse, at least two serial ports (usualy 9 pin, but 25 wasn't unheard of) a parallel port, ethernet (Thinnet OR cat 3/5 or both) a model port, a SCSI port, and bog only knows what else.)

          "Patently Complicated"

      2. tyrfing

        Re: No local storage allowed ?

        This is an attitude I don't understand, though I have encountered it occasionally over the decades.

        The machine in front of you is supplied by the company, paid for by them. All the programs on it are also paid for by the company.

        When you were hired, you signed a contract that anything produced on company time and with company resources (like that machine) is the company's property.

        Yet, you think of it as "your" machine.

        Do you take your desk and chair home with you? Why is the machine different?

        1. 42656e4d203239 Silver badge

          Re: No local storage allowed ?

          >>The machine in front of you is supplied by the company, paid for by them. All the programs on it are also paid for by the company.

          likewise the "I want to connect my <device> to your WifI" or "I want to plug my random USB stick into your machine" attitude from random users.

          Last time I heard the latter was from a member of the local constabulary. I asked him if I could plug my random (Kali as it happens) USB stick into his laptop (which, sadly I couldn't connect to the corporate WiFi); to give the officer credit he thought about it for a moment or three and said "good answer". The problem has not occurred on subsequent visits.

          1. Martin an gof Silver badge

            Re: No local storage allowed ?

            A problem does arise though when IT doesn't consider how users need to use their machines. Blocking USB ports, for example, is all very well, but if I need to transfer data in and out of my machine to third parties? Oh, you've blocked me from using WeTransfer (etc.) as well, and Sharepoint only allows users with local logins. How do you suggest I get this (very important, needed for a meeting in 30 minutes) file from this external contractor onto our network, eh?

            Just one example - there are plenty of other scenarios with similar outcomes. Company-wide removal of deskphones and installation of softphones? My computer has no speakers, no camera, no microphone... how's that gonna work? There are many occasions where the "one size fits all" computer really doesn't; the joy lies in finding an IT department which recognises that :-)

            M.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: No local storage allowed ?

              I'm in automation. Sometimes we have to transfer files to a non-networked device, and a thumbdrive is really the only option. And an encrypted thumbdrive won't work, as the device can't handle it. Corporate wants to block unencrypted thumbdrives? Only if they'll take over supporting the production hardware...

            2. Tim99 Silver badge

              Re: No local storage allowed ?

              Email?

              1. Martin an gof Silver badge

                Re: No local storage allowed ?

                Attachment size limits...

                M.

            3. J.G.Harston Silver badge

              Re: No local storage allowed ?

              On one project I was on we descended on Vehicle Testing and upgraded all the PCs, with a new organisation-wide policy of disabled USB ports. Naturally, we killed the business stone dead as none of the vehicle testing equipment that plugged into the USB ports was usable.

              1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

                Re: No local storage allowed ?

                Classical failure of a bad Project Manager not assessing whether the no-USB policy needs exceptions. Double fail if it was known that any testing equipment was needed since these tend to be special. Did he/she ignore that even though you mentioned it? Couldn't have lasted long anyway when the first PCs without PS/2 ports popped up.

        2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: No local storage allowed ?

          "Do you take your desk and chair home with you? Why is the machine different?"

          Do you see a possessive pronoun you wrote in what I quoted? Why is the machine different?

          1. DS999 Silver badge

            Re: No local storage allowed ?

            Do you really have to be told that you can only do things with a PC that the company's policies permit, regardless of what you think the "P" stands for?

            I guess you do, because you are still questioning this. You are exactly the kind of person that necessitates IT writing a security policy that explicitly bans storing any company data on local storage of PCs, as well as explicitly banning the storage of "personal" data on any company property whether PCs or network shares, and banning the use of any personal devices such as USB sticks to connect to any company property.

            1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

              Re: No local storage allowed ?

              OP wrote "your desk and chair" and omitted to describe the machine similarly, i.e. "your machine".

              I assume that when you go into the office your personally sit on your chair at your desk at to do work for the company. And likewise you personally use your computer to do that work for the company. The computer is no more the user's to take home but it is one being personally used by the employee. Perhaps you're too young to remember when using a computer meant accessing a shared computer with a dumb terminal and that the separate computer on the employee's desk was called a Personal Computer - I don't think I know what the P stands for, I remember it..

            2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

              Re: No local storage allowed ?

              If there is a conflict between getting my job done and adhering strictly to IT policies, then yes, I do need to be told that the job is less important. (See elsewhere in this forum for examples.) Furthermore, if IT want to get snarky and take it up with manglement then that's fine with me because I know who is going to win that one.

              Fortunately, where I work, it is possible to have a reasonable discussion with IT about the actual requirements that motivated any given policy and come up with a solution that meets everybody's needs. Not everyone is so lucky.

    3. imanidiot Silver badge

      Re: No local storage allowed ?

      It's not that I WANT to use local storage, but I have to use a few programs that for some reason refuse to work as expected when running from a network drive (or become infuriatingly slow) so I HAVE to put stuff local. (Of course I DO make regular backups to both my network drives and the companies offsite servers, and I know exactly where all the local data is stored so I could ask for it to be transferred in case it ever came up.)

      1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

        Re: No local storage allowed ?

        Buuuut: Those programs are known by the IT, and then IT implements a workaround for such misbehaving programs which cannot store their DATA somewhere else. A logon/logoff script which copies the data away, for example. As for "running from the network drive": Blocked by company policy to run .exe .com .etcetera from network unless the IT allows you, i.e. whitelisted by name and hash. How old are the programs you talk about anyway? Haven't seen such bad "program and data must be on C:", at least for actually useful programs, for more than a decade.

        1. imanidiot Silver badge

          Re: No local storage allowed ?

          IT would know about them if they bothered having a process that allowed me to get those programs approved and installed through IT (Yes, IT is outsourced). Instead I get my work done. Running programs from the network drives isn't blocked, it just doesn't work for some reason. It should, but sometimes it doesn't, other times it's just REALLY slow. It's not an old program either, just very engineering specific.

          1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

            Re: No local storage allowed ?

            So you need an IT support which actually has interest in doing their job! I work in IT, I know exactly what you mean. I have to deal with that type often enough to understand how valuable my current employer is.

  8. KarMann Silver badge
    WTF?

    What's in a name?

    I'm not sure whether The Reg doesn't mention Huon, brother of Hurin, of Tolkien's Silmarillion fame, because it does know us so well, and doesn't need to point that out to us, or because it doesn't, and overlooked that aspect of it.

    ETA: I'm an idiot. Of course, that's Huor, not Huon. Stoopid brain association.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What's in a name?

      <nelson_muntz>Huor Huor</nelson_muntz>

    2. thosrtanner

      Re: What's in a name?

      Well, I was thinking the submitter was a dark ent, to be honest

    3. Roger Kynaston

      Re: What's in a name?

      Then there are the huorns (those almost ent trees) in LOTR.

    4. collinsl Silver badge

      Re: What's in a name?

      I kept thinking of the Huron, a Native American tribe. AKA the Wyandot people

    5. Tim99 Silver badge

      Re: What's in a name?

      I own several items made (under licensing by a friend) of Tasmanian Huon pine (Wikipedia). The area it comes from is named after Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec, a C18th French Naval Officer.

    6. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: What's in a name?

      I, for one, have not read what I think is Andre Norton's first published novel, "Huon of the Horn" (1951), but it sounds pretty wild and in need of fact checking.

      "As Huon, the young Duke of Bordeaux, traveled with his brother to the court of Charlemagne, they were attacked by Amaury and another knight, whom they didn't know. The armed knight wounded Huon's unarmed brother; in anger, Huon killed the knight, not knowing it was Charlot, son of the Emperor Charlemagne. For this deed he was sentenced to die, but the sentence stayed on condition that Huon perform an impossible quest in the city of Babylon--the very stronghold of the Saracens. Aided by Oberon, king of the fairies, Huon accomplishes his quest and returns to defend his dukedom."

      "Charlot" seems to be Charles the Younger, to whom either this did not happen or he was magically brought back to life in the story. Either we are supposed to know who Amaury is, which I don't, or else he or conceivably she is explained in the book. Babylon probably wasn't especially or at all "the very stronghold of the Saracens" at that time, and perhaps the book reveals that in due course.

      1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        Re: What's in a name?

        Aha, I read down the comment here, and we are informed by "tweell" that "Huon of Bordeaux is the title of a thirteenth century French epic poem." It turns out that the weirdness in the synopsis of Andre Norton's novel is mostly copied from the epic poem. Even the participation of Oberon the king of fairies in the mission to Babylon. Which I want to be Baghdad, but for this particular time, maybe that's wrong, too.

        I mean, I don't know that Babylon is wrong, but the last time that I heard much about it was the Book of Revelation. And it's a certain community's slang for police, but that's probably not relevant.

  9. Steve Button Silver badge

    Hunter?

    "We considered "Hunter" but decided against it lest it fuel certain conspiracy theories"

    I suspect that little comment won't age very well. A bit like someone in the New York Times during 1973 saying "What's all this fuss in the Washington Post about Watergate, it's just a conspiracy theory".

    Let's wait and see.

    1. Mog_X

      Re: Hunter?

      I saw that and initially thought of 'hunter2' https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hunter2

    2. Hubert Cumberdale Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Hunter?

      The fun thing is that most actual conspiracies are carried out so ineptly (e.g. Trump's failed coup attempt) that they don't have time to develop into "theories". Watergate didn't need a conspiracy theory: it was just a plain and stupid conspiracy.

      To say "let's wait and see" is a great example of the self-perceived superiority of the theorist and the idea that they somehow have a better understanding of the world than others/some kind of special knowlege because they "do their own 'research'". It's also convenient that if nothing in particular comes out regarding the theory a while after they've said this, they can continue to say the same; conversely, if a person is exonerated/a theory is fundamentally debunked by copious evidence (see: flat earth, moon landings, 9/11, birds aren't real), they can also claim that the conspiracy just got even deeper and we need to be ever more careful!!!11!1one. (What happened to the tinfoil hat icon?)

      1. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: Hunter?

        For all the incompetence and dementia that the right wing likes to ascribe to Biden, they simultaneously ascribe to him a multi state election stealing conspiracy that ranged from local election workers "swapping USB sticks like they were vials of cocaine and heroin", other countries like Italy helping out with their defense satellites zapping election machines from orbit, and China importing a bunch of fake ballots filled out for Biden that weren't detected despite them being made with "bamboo fibers" unlike genuine US made ballot paper. That massive conspiracy went undetected by election officials in all states, and the only ones who know the full story like Rudy Guliani have been keeping quiet about the proof for years. Waiting until they are indicted so they drop a bombshell in court during their defense, or at least that's what Rudy claims.

        Simultaneously Biden also been operating a bribery ring taking bribes from well I'm not sure who he is supposed to be taking bribes from, but presumably it is a lot of money to be worth it and somehow this money has escaped detection in that he didn't make any huge real estate or yacht purchases or even install gold toilets at his Delaware residence. Or maybe he did but his plumber is part of the conspiracy and kept quiet.

        Pretty amazing how someone as incompetent and dementia ridden as Tucker Carlson and his ilk claim him to be has held together the largest conspiracy the world has ever known, and not one of them has gone to the authorities or to the press and said "I would like to confess and offer irrefutable proof of my part in stealing the election from Trump". By contrast Trump's people are flipping right and left even in closely held conspiracies involving a lot fewer people such as his obstruction of justice in the documents case. Guess Biden must not be so incompetent after all, operating a conspiracy of thousands and not one person has squealed. The mob must be jealous! Plus he's able to keep all that bribery money hidden, the mob would feel they could learn a lot from him there too. Maybe he's faking the dementia symptoms the right claims to see, like that mob boss did back in the day? Dark Brandon strikes again!

        If he was really able to do all that you'd think the right wing would want to vote for Biden. After all someone able to manage such a massive conspiracy would have to make a way better president than one whose every conspiracy falls apart due to the sheer incompetence of those he surrounds himself with, combined with an inability to avoid confessing to his crimes in public ("I could have done it, it was my right to do it!")

        1. Steve Button Silver badge

          Re: Hunter?

          It's possible that when all this stuff was going on back in 2016 and before he had most of his marbles, but since then he's lost most of them. He doesn't seem exactly with it a lot of the time. Perhaps it's the stress.

          This has really got nothing to do with stealing elections. It's just about what the hell Hunter was doing taking millions from Burisma? Oh, and why did the FBI want to desperately cover it up. Aren't they supposed to be non-partisan?

          You seem to have taken every "conspiracy theory" you've ever heard relating to the Bidens and lumped them all together into one huge rant.

          1. DS999 Silver badge

            Re: Hunter?

            It's just about what the hell Hunter was doing taking millions from Burisma?

            Same thing Jared was doing accepting $2 billion to manage (at $50 million per year plus 25% of the profit) from the Saudis immediately after leaving the White House, despite zero experience managing hedge funds, and Ivanka was doing getting dozens of languishing trademarks approved by China not long after Trump took office. Cashing in.

            1. Steve Button Silver badge

              Re: Hunter?

              Yes, totally agree. I'm no fan of the Trumps either. Seems like everyone is at it. However, the article referred to Hunter and conspiracy theories and was nothing to do with Trump, so a little off topic. Even more off topic than my observation.

      2. Steve Button Silver badge

        Re: Hunter?

        "Watergate didn't need a conspiracy theory: it was just a plain and stupid conspiracy."

        Actually that's just not true. Watergate was reported by the Washington Post for months and months, and most people just ignored it or thought it was what some would nowadays call a "nothingburger". Perhaps in hindsight we now realise it was a plain and stupid conspiracy, but that was very much not the case in the times leading up to it. At least that's what I've read, as I was a toddler at the time so I don't remember it.

        The whole "Let's wait and see" thing is not superiority. If I believe some of the credible things I read on Substack blogs, it seems pretty clear that Biden will be impeached in the next year. Although looking at mainstream media they pretty much all seem to be studiously ignoring the whole thing. Apart from, unfortunately the Daily Mail. Sometimes they are not afraid to go places where other papers won't touch. A lot of the time they are full of shit. How to tell? Wait and see.

        My biggest question would be what exactly was Hunter getting paid for by a Ukrainian oil company? Seems like a hellova lot of money to spend on someone, with no oil expertise? Can anyone explain that? And presumably we'd never know about any of this if he hadn't stupidly taken that laptop to a repair shop, whilst presumably... how can I say this... not thinking straight.

        Lumping together politicians lying and taking bribes with conspiracy theories like flat earth, moon landing and 9/11 is just a ridiculous argument. We've seen lots of examples of politician being caught lying. You do know birds aren't actually real though? They are just flying reptiles, right?

        Of course I could be completely wrong. I've got no skin in this game, I don't live in that country. It just smells really really fishy to me, and it has done ever since the FBI told social media companies to hide the story in the New York Post, because it's "Russian misinformation". If it smells like a conspiracy, looks like a conspiracy and quacks like a conspiracy...

        1. Dave314159ggggdffsdds Silver badge

          Re: Hunter?

          I'd debunk your Trump-fanboy nuttiness, but it'd be like shooting fash in a barrel...

          1. Steve Button Silver badge

            Re: Hunter?

            This has nothing to do with Trump. And I'm very much not a fan.

        2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Hunter?

      We considered "Hunter" but decided against it lest we find ourselves in a Red File.

      Oooh Meeester Callan.

    4. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: Hunter?

      You've been waiting an awfully long time now. And if they executed Hunter Biden for his crimes and displayed his head on a tall pointy stick as a warning to others, President Joe Biden still would be President. And still would look like winning in 2024.

  10. trindflo Silver badge

    Bad storage joke

    On a clear drive you can seek forever

    1. Ken Shabby Bronze badge
      Coat

      Re: Bad storage joke

      Did you hear about the infinite storage hard drive?

      No, probably because they're still formatting it.

  11. MichaelGordon

    I know someone who keeps documents in GMail drafts. Occasionally they send one of the documents to someone, then copy it from Sent back into Drafts. I sometimes provide some unofficial IT support for them, but after having tried to explain why this is such a dreadful idea and suggesting several more reasonable ways of doing things to no avail I've simply had to refuse to provide any support for such a fundamentally misguided setup.

    1. jmch Silver badge

      "...keeps documents in GMail drafts"

      I'm not sure of the exact source, but IIRC there was some story involving corrupt politicians and/or whoever was bribing them sharing a gmail account and communicating by editing the same message in the drafts folder over and over. No mail ever left gmail, so nothing to intercept.

      1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge

        Normally reported as criminals doing that to communicate with each other.

        Criminals <> Politicians. Tomato, tomato.

        (Yes, I deliberately missed the redundant 'corrupt' before 'politicians')

      2. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

        Re: ...keeps documents in GMail drafts

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12/heres-the-e-mail-trick-petraeus-and-broadwell-used-to-communicate/

        This was the one I remember.

      3. John R. Macdonald

        Some extremists used the same method to communicate with each other because they were aware of the Echelon program.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I routinely use Gmail's Drafts folder as a notepad, accessible on any device. I have dozens of draft "emails" there. Haven't lost a single bit of data doing that, ever. Storing files there is certainly unusual, and better solutions exist, but what makes it "fundamentally misguided"?

      1. F. Frederick Skitty Silver badge

        Sounds a bit daft when that same Google account you use to access GMail also provides a notes app.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          ssshh, don't tell anybody, but I find it more reliable than one note, it syncs properly!

  12. Camilla Smythe

    Ah yes .tmp files

    I ended up on the help desk of somewhere. I regular help call was "I just lost the document I was editing. HELP!" This was mostly a result of 3.1 deciding to burp and the user not saving regularly. Rather than chat about it on the phone I would ask where they were and tell them to stick their hand up when I entered their office. Almost without fail the 'lost document' would be the last, most recently dated, one in their .tmp folder under a mangled name. Presto, work recovered. But. but. but what about the other 2,000 plus ones!? Also with similarly meaningless names. "Would you like to go through them all or delete them?" Sometimes they tried but mostly del *.* was the preferred option.

  13. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Linux

    None of my machines have a recycle bin

    I know that if I delete something then it's gone - teaches you the 'measure twice, cut once'.

    1. Steve Button Silver badge
      Flame

      Re: None of my machines have a recycle bin

      I don't have a fire extinguisher or smoke alarms in my house.

      Teaches you to be careful with fire.

      1. KittenHuffer Silver badge

        Re: None of my machines have a recycle bin

        I don't have a roof on my house!

        Teaches you to be very careful with electrics, and not to blaspheme while holding a brolly!

    2. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Re: None of my machines have a recycle bin

      That is fine for the things YOU delete. But trust me: I love snapshots/shadowcopy. Catches misbehaving programs as well, not just users.

  14. Howard Sway Silver badge

    Do you know any storage jokes?

    Q: What should you use to temporarily store your files if you want them to be irrecoverable in 3 months time?

    A: c:\gate

    (needs to be said out loud)

    My boss emailed me requesting a new hard drive and I replied "A57 Snake Pass, Manchester to Sheffield".

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

      Seagate Barracuda - they were a bit fishy...

    2. Korev Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

      That joke was a bit SCSI

    3. Hubert Cumberdale Silver badge

      Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

      Personally, I don't know why people seem to think the Snake Pass is anything other than a nice road with pleasant scenery (notwithstanding recent subsidence problems). Ever driven the Hardknott pass? It makes the A57 look like the M1.

      1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

        Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

        I've done Hardknott (and Wryenose) once in each direction. It's a combination of challenge and beauty. I found my little automatic made it easier to traverse as I could go into twin-pedal mode without running out of feet. One day I'll have to try in a manual car.

        1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

          Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

          > One day I'll have to try in a manual car.

          Then you will learn that handbrake is your "third foot". And learn how bad the automatic logic was when choosing the right gear, especially since automatics cannot look a few seconds ahead.

          But if your car is reliable you may not need to. By the time it breaks electrics might be the standard. They are, usually, without clutch.

      2. BartyFartsLast Silver badge

        Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

        Did somewhere in Snowdonia yesterday, took a wrong turn near Beddgelert and the sat nav recommended a road that had one of those nifty little "ignore your sat nav" signs for trucks.

        Fantastic drive, lovely scenery, just about met the definition of road being only, at most, 50% grass.

    4. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

      Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

      German version: Sie-geht oder Sie-geht-net. Spoken like "Seagate oder Seagate-net". Translates to "It-works or It-works-not". Quite a few series were the latter, with only one difference: Many HDD makers died after one "-not" series. Seagate is still there. Same for the rest of still living HDD makers.

    5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

      ""A57 Snake Pass, Manchester to Sheffield""

      Langsett to Ladybower with dodgy brakes.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: Do you know any storage jokes?

        Kyiv to Sevastopol.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Customer rang me up complaining that software I supported wasn't working.

    After a bit of a discussion, I find out that the back-end database isn't working. I ask them to start it, and it fails. Can't find the database files. So I ask them to go look in the database directory, only to find it's empty. Then the person on the phone says "Oh, we were running out of space, and I cleared out some large files".

    The database was gone.

    So I say "Well, I hope you got a good backup last night, because your only option is a restore".

    Apparently the backups had been failing for the past couple of weeks and they hadn't got around to fixing it. Last backup was about 2 or 3 weeks old (monthly full backup was OK, all their incremental had failed).

    Sorry as I felt, there wasn't a lot I could do to help.

    1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: Sorry as I felt, there wasn't a lot I could do to help.

      Sometimes I was a hero for getting data back from a Netware volume by piecing together files using the recover deleted files option in Filer, depending how your application works, sometimes several versions could be found. Only works if the appropriate recovery option is configured in Netware. I used to use this in preference to recovering from a backup, simply because the file would be bang up to date, as at the point of deletion, rather than when the last backup was taken.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wrong base?

    Q: Why was the rock band called 1023 megabytes? A: Because it couldn't get a gig.

    Erm, shouldn't the question be "Why was the rock band called 999 megabytes?", as using mebibytes would kinda break the joke?

    </shameless pendant>

    1. druck Silver badge

      Re: Wrong base?

      No, for me all disk sizes are measured in powers of 2. It's the thieving disk manufacturers that decided to round down to powers of 10.

      1. Norman Nescio

        Re: Wrong base?

        No, for me all disk sizes are measured in powers of 2. It's the thieving disk manufacturers that decided to round down to powers of 10.

        The last disk I used that was measured in an integer power of 2 was the 8" floppy on an RML380Z.

      2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        Re: Wrong base?

        Yes and no. It's computer users, including programmers, who casually treated 1024 bytes as "one kilobyte" (KB) and likewise for MB, GB, and TB, when those came along. I still do. But it never was a real standard, and storage sizes counted by 1000 and 1000000 bytes were not actually wrong... technically. So now, 1024 bytes is one kibibyte (KiB) and so on.

  17. Frank Bitterlich
    WTF?

    It can get worse...

    "There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution"...

    User have been known to use even worse places to store documents. I once got yelled at because in the course of regular maintenance, I've been emptying the trash can ("recycle bin" for Windows users) on a Mac. The lady using that desktop had actually put documents there that she wantetd to sort out later. Well, tough luck...

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: It can get worse...

      Skeuomorphism is all very well but it will only get you so far.

    2. gnasher729 Silver badge

      Re: It can get worse...

      What about a request to the OS makers: Just besides the “Trash” icon, put another icon “Later”. Just as unremovable. So stuff that people want to do later goes in the “later” folder and not the “Trash” folder.

      Even better: Add a “Sooner” and a “Later” icon for everything you need to do sooner or later.

      1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

        Re: It can get worse...

        There's a cartoon page for people like you. But my main point would be "Don't put the "Sooner and Later bins NEXT TO the Shredder". Well away, please.

        Make it a Shredder icon to destroy documents. But after you put documents in, you have to press the "Shred" button on it to start the shredder. Or you open it, and you can shred files individually. You do you, you know? And it animates and it makes a noise. But you ALSO make the Shredder icon pop up at random when it has stuff in it, and it animates and it makes the noise. It doesn't actually destroy the files then, but it frightens the user. In a good way.

        Some of this, we do already get.

  18. Rikki Tikki
    Facepalm

    A while ago, during my pre-retirement gig, a user approached me after the IT department had performed a weekend 100+ PC replacement:

    "I left a very important DVD in my computer on Friday, and now it's gone. Can you get it back for me?"

    She wasn't happy with my reply that (1) it wasn't my job, (2) did she read the email that the PCs would be replaced, (3) no-was going to spend time searching the warehouse for "her" computer, and of course (4) did she abide by policies for securing data.

    I can sort of understand why users sometimes don't understand that the C: drive is that 2cm thick box inside their PC, because they only see it in a list of drives that all look pretty much alike, and they've never actually seen the innards of the machine.

    But a DVD? Seriously, you don't know that you have to physically put that in the "cup holder" and take it out when you're finished?

    Personal comeback from this, though, zero (see point 1, I was no longer working in the IT department).

    1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
      Pint

      I'd have taken her down to the warehouse given her PPE (The sloppy, floppy, steel toecapped overshoes of shame), hard hat, safety glasses & a paperclip, point her at the pallets of PC's (Extra points if they are boxed) shown her how to eject a drive & said..... There you go.

    2. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

      Re: Storage media stuck

      (1) I think it was an Iomega optical drive with a letterbox slot I had trouble with. Wouldn't eject. Brand new drive. Had to get them to ship the media back to me from The Netherlands once they'd opened it.

      (2) I used to have a customer that was in the news for all the wrong reasons. Doing a tape backup on their premises one day, the tape got stuck. Engineer attended and tried in vain to insist that the unit had to go back to Dell's premises to extract it. I had a bit of an argument with Dell about that, particularly as they couldn't guarantee even which country the unit would be shipped to before it was looked at (this was before GDPR).

  19. A____B

    Regomiser

    I was expecting an explanation of Huon to be "Who On earth....."

    1. short a sandwich

      Re: Regomiser

      Wasn't Hu on first according to the Marx Brothers?

      1. Sherrie Ludwig
        Headmaster

        Re: Regomiser

        Wasn't Hu on first according to the Marx Brothers?

        No, it was Abbott and Costello. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ5vspsNS1g Still hilarious.

  20. chivo243 Silver badge
    Windows

    My Documents redirected

    Long ago when only desktops roamed the earth, I worked at a place where My Documents was redirected to be the p:\ on the server.... No one was supposed to save anything locally, it was NOT backed up! Our thinking was: we're not backing up 300 desktops, when we can back up a couple of servers. Any issues on the desktop was a nuke a pave, pull your profile down from the server and move on. We had one new employee, stored all his work in a folder on his desktop. We saw this and pointed out our set up, and told him any local data was not backed up, and we're not responsible for it... You guessed it boys and girls, his pc needed a nuke and pave, and all his work was on that desktop... I was in a meeting about his disaster, long enough to confirm that I had done my part telling him NOT to save locally. I was excused and never heard another peep about it.

    1. J. Cook Silver badge

      Re: My Documents redirected

      Yup; We stress this as well. Store your stuff on your home drive, departmental stuff in an appropriate folder on the department share, and temporary stuff or stuff that you don't care if it disappears on the desktop.

      We don't use Roaming Profiles, because Roaming profiles are THE DEVIL. (and we have people who will fill the local hard drive up with crap on their desktop, and then whine at us when it all goes poof if we have to nuke the local user profile...)

      It was hilarious when it happened to one of the supervisors in the IT department, though...

      1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

        Re: My Documents redirected

        Agree, user profiles should ****ing well stay on the server, that's the entire point of having servers.

        The *users* should roam, not their data.

  21. heyrick Silver badge
    Happy

    included the letters "Hu" in sequence

    How could I not mention Yuve Yuve Yu?

  22. Real Ale is Best

    Doug.

    Well, he didn't get in trouble, but Doug's dead.

    1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
      Pint

      Re: Doug.

      Dougs dead Dave, everybodies dead Dave.

      Norman Lovett is a really nice chap.

  23. aerogems Silver badge
    FAIL

    Back in my uni years...

    I was a part-time support person for one of the smaller departments on campus. The way the admin for the department had things set up, new computers would be partitioned so there was like 10GB (this was in the 2000-XP days) for the OS and apps, and then everything else was for document storage and whatnot. Then there would be a backup program pointed at the document partition and was set to back everything up overnight to be stored on a massive array on an XServe server -- the admin was a big Apple fan.

    Anyway, one day it transpired that one of the grad students, who was I think less than a year away from graduating, had a HDD fail on his computer. Turns out, whoever set it up (before my tenure) forgot to point the backup program at the correct partition and the department wouldn't spring for data recovery services, or maybe for some reason it silently failed. The details are lost to the mists of time, but not really important. So, the poor sod had to start all over on his thesis. All they got out of it was bumped way up in the queue for getting a new computer. Usually the new systems would go to the paid uni staff, then their old systems would be cleaned up and given to the grad students, but this grad student got a shiny new computer (think it was a Dell Optiplex 280) and I was given very clear instructions to make sure the backup program was pointed to the right partition this time when I was configuring it for deployment. I'm sure the admin made sure to manually check the backups the next day to make sure it was working. Pretty sure everyone else in the department inundated the admin with requests to make sure their data was being backed up after word got around.

    1. J.G.Harston Silver badge

      Re: Back in my uni years...

      Wot, had he never printed it out at any time?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Back in my uni years...

        We once had a Piglen tech turn up and update the firmware on a drive that was showing errors. On hearing this, I asked if I could make a copy first. He uttered the immortal line, "Don't be stupid, it won't touch the data."

        It was sent to Pogon data recovery at Piglen's cost after the head of school contacted Piglen. I miss his ability to rant without swearing for hours on end.

      2. aerogems Silver badge

        Re: Back in my uni years...

        No clue. Just going off of snippets I heard here and there from a time longer ago than I care to remember. I do remember the grad student taking it reasonably well considering. Or at least he didn't take it out on me. Maybe he still hadn't quite gotten over the shock of what had happened by the time I installed the new computer.

  24. tweell
    Headmaster

    Huon a knight of IT?

    Huon of Bordeaux is the title of a thirteenth century French epic poem. IIRC, Huon accidentally kills a prince and has to perform epic deeds to keep from being executed.

    The modern Huon has it much easier.

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: Huon a knight of IT?

      Oh, so Andre Norton didn't make it all up in "Huon of the Horn" (1951) which I described in a comment above. Although that implies that somebody else did.

      Wikipedia: "The poem tells of Huon, a knight who unwittingly kills Charlot, the son of Emperor Charlemagne. He is given a reprieve from death on condition that he fulfil a number of seemingly impossible tasks: he must travel to the court of the Emir of Babylon and return with a handful of the Emir's hair and teeth, slay the Emir's mightiest knight, and three times kiss the Emir's daughter, Esclarmonde. Huon eventually accomplishes all these feats with the assistance of the fairy king Oberon." Sorry, what?

      Andre Norton's version is, according to what I take as the book cover, just like that. Norton's Huon kills Charlot who attacked Huon and his brother apparently without provocation. Charlot had it coming, but Charlot was maybe king and his father was Emperor, so there were consequences.

      In real life, or in Wikipedia, Charlemagne divided his empire among his sons, his son Charles, or "Charles the Younger", or "Charlot" in that sort of thing, was designated King of the Franks. Charles the Younger died of a stroke aged 39, which is bad luck and/or the consequence of a surfeit or something.

  25. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    Big corporates...

    I sometimes used to sell bespoke software into big corporates. Always this was for a small subset of the business, yet important for the overall bottom line. Trouble was, though our bespoke software could be written to not use the registry, or anything on the local drive, there would be reasons why it needed to be there, not on a remote drive. Two scenarios were likely: (1) the pc hardware would fail and would be replaced in its entirety, whereupon I would get a call "where's our program gone?" (2) IT would do an audit and complain about a non-compliant piece of software on "their"* kit. I'd then have to go through the hoops of explaining what it was for and why it was necessary (basically, there was no off the shelf equivalent).

    *Actually kit that I'd supplied which couldn't easily be integrated into corporate culture (see (1)). Presumably they knew by doing a MAC address survey. One company had their own bespoke mains plugs/sockets. It was impossible to bring in a piece of kit from home and plug it in, luckily pc's have universal IEC sockets.

  26. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    After a chap who worked for me left...

    I thought one day, let me tidy up the hard drive of the pc he was using.

    Yes, before we go any further,I will admit that he did sometimes tell me he was running short of space on it.

    So, I started with one of the applications he'd been writing. Found some zipped files. Inside the zipped files were more zipped files... inside those were more... aaaaargh.

    1. trindflo Silver badge

      Re: After a chap who worked for me left...

      Incremental **ck up

    2. The Dogs Meevonks Silver badge

      Re: After a chap who worked for me left...

      I once had a user with a problem every few months, running low on disk space on their C: drive... this was back in the 2000's and I admit I was still picking up a lot of knowledge.

      As nearly everything was stored on the server and there was seemingly very little in the way of software or personal data that could cause this... They'd go through a basic disk cleanup and free up GB's of space and be done with it.

      Except the problem came back... and each time they did a clear out, the space was still dwindling. on a small HDD that space was getting smaller...

      The problem had been ongoing on and off for over 12 months by the time it fell to me... and I noticed that it was a recurring issue and no one had bothered to look into it further.

      So I actually bothered to look at the data being cleaned and compare it to the folders themselves.

      What I found was thousands of zip files in the temp folder that were not being deleted.

      CAB files.

      As you know, windows creates temp zip files for logs before moving them into the logs folder.

      It appeared one of these had got corrupted and never completed... and so never got deleted... and because it couldn't complete the process... it never completed every subsequent one either... and not a single one would then get deleted

      This had probably been going on for a few years.

      As these logs were unlikely to ever be needed, I manually deleted them all... I freed up some 70GB of space. User never had an issue again... I wrote up a report/guide for the support DB adding to the things to check for... But no one ever had the same issue again...

      In some 25yrs of support, I've had that issue happen once, and 90% of the people I've ever spoken with had never heard of it... I've googled the issue and struggled to find the solution that I did... in fact if you do find the issue... It's highly likely my discussion of it around the net will pop up.

      1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: After a chap who worked for me left...

        I have encountered that issue multiple times. I added the requisite scripting to my "tidy up" script.

        Most of the problematic logs were from windows update, so I would stop that service before deleting files and then re-start it; hence the script.

  27. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    I shall just mention my encounter with a system set up with TEMP=C:\DOS.

  28. The Dogs Meevonks Silver badge

    Roll Out Project

    About 14yrs ago, I did a roll out project at a large company that dealt with cars from almost every manufacturer. They came in from the ports, were inspected and any minor fixes done (surprised at how many needed paint fixes) before being sent on to the dealers.

    Huge site, 90% car park. Upgrading every single machine.

    Every user had a timetable for when their system was being replaced. Everyone had step by step instructions on moving any and all data into their user folders... and explicit warnings that failure to do so would result in lost data.

    How many people out of a couple of hundred, do you think bothered to follow said instructions... surprisingly, about 98% of the grunts and office wonks.... the management tier on the other hand... about 2%... and those were the ones that complained the most.

    The head of their IT was quite ruthless, pointing out that 6 emails had gone out over the previous weeks. Including one the day before their scheduled upgrade. On top of that, every computer/laptop desk had a large A4 printout of said instructions, taped to their keyboard the morning of their upgrade.

    Despite about a dozen complaints about lost data, my team was in the clear each time... because I made sure that every member of my team, double checked with each user before unplugging their system that ALL data they needed/wanted was moved to their 'my documents' folder.

    Guess which users lied about doing that.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Roll Out Project

      Interesting isn't it. It's always Management or Finance!

      I'll add one more to that list though, marketing.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Happens more often than you think...

    Despite many many warnings not to do it, there coes a time where you feel the urge to issue a mass cleanup of TEMP.

    They never do it again.

    Yes, it's a big stick but C root never seems to help.

    1. gnasher729 Silver badge

      Re: Happens more often than you think...

      Just saying: On MacOS X if I remember correctly the “temp” folder is excluded from time machine backups, and files inside can be deleted by the os if storage is needed. On the other hand, it’s a bit hard to access by the average user.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not quite the same thing...

    ...but an accidental deletion nonetheless...

    ...I've had many calls from people over the years accidentally deleting EC2 instances because they thought the "terminate" button was there to perform a non-graceful shutdown. That button really is dangerous, and it's in a very dangerous location as well.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is there something about finance departments...

    I worked for a Global financial organisation. The finance dept had their own separate IT team "to prevent sensitive financial information falling into the wrong hands". I was tasked with integrating the work and their network (not the team) into corporate IT. They fought like hell, it took me weeks to get the information I needed. That included documentation of their current network and estimates of changed needs for the upcoming year. The documentation was virtually the proverbial "back of a fag packet", a hand drawn "network plan", nothing else, not even any backup arrangements. Their increased capacity estimates for the next year amounted to a ten-fold increase with no written or verbal explanation or business case (ever tried getting something past a Finance Dept without a business case?). They told me their senior management would back assurance that it was justified. My report was accepted at board level, their team was "redeployed" and their kit successfully integrated, the modest budget I'd proposed for future needs proved more than adequate.

  32. Richard Pennington 1

    Heap-sorted desk

    I'm retired now, but at one of my previous employments the boss operated his desk by the "deep litter" principle. The assorted paperwork on his desk gave a sort of "crown green" effect, with the paper depth approaching 50cm in the centre of the desk surface, and tapering off towards the edges.

    The boss had been a chef in an earlier incarnation, and he had invited the team over to his house for a meal / celebration, and had left the office to make preparations. I habitually worked late, and thus I was the only staff member in the office when the phone call came in. It was the boss, asking me to go into his office and see if his wallet was there. The best I could manage in short time was to say "not obviously".

    It turned out that when the boss went home to do the meal preparations, he discovered an intruder inside the house, and his wallet was missing. The intruder escaped. A couple of weeks later, the intruder was caught ... he had used the boss's credit card at a Chinese restaurant, and when he went back to another similar establishment, they called the police and caught him red-handed. Surprise! - the Chinese restaurant community talk to each other.

  33. vectorspace

    Long ago when I was in first line IT support the company used lotus email. Mailbox storage was 25MB for regular users, and 50 for managers, no exceptions. I remember having a "discussion" with one low level team supervisor who claimed to require unlimited storage because they used their email account to archive performance documents for their team, and refused to consider one of the many network drives. I don't know how that was resolved because I had to pass it to my manager, but I assume they never got their unlimited storage.

  34. Sequin

    I worked on a system for the Police in the UK many years ago - the data wasw held on our mainframe in Liverpool, and the users in London had terminal access. The head of the end users' department was horrified to hear that the "highly sensitive" data was held in Liverpool - apparently a hotbed of IRA sympathisers - heck - I even had an Irish surname myself! After seething for a while I assured he that we were all security cleared to at least the same level as him, so If he wanted to make further allegations let him try!

    I went down to London to visit the users a couple of weeks later to find out that they had somehow learned how to program the function keys on the terminals and had hardcoded their logins into a macro and assigned it to one of the keys, then put a sticker saying "LOGIN" on the key! So much for security (and these users were serving police officers)!

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