Seriously? A.k.a. "My adventures with "ePolicy Orchestrator"

From the why-oh-why-do-you-hate-me department:

Seriously? We have to break the official IT computer naming policy because you product refuses to be installed on a system that has a (perfectly legit) underscore in it's name?

I usually don't get frustrated with a product until after I install it.

It only after I change the computer name, that I get this error on my Windows 7 professional installation:

Of course, that document is not part of the installation, only the "product guide" is. 

Update 1:
I now have a super duper "Windows Server 2008 R2 - 64 bit" installation.   Guess what I get when the installation starts?  A new error!

"8.3 naming convention"?  Wait...  Didn't you just force me to upgrade to "Windows super duper"? And then you complain that you don't have the features from DOS in 1981?  And no, the "installation guide" doesn't mention anything about this.


Update 2:
After some Googleing, a registry change, installing MS SQL, configuring port, choosing various passwords (whose complexity requirement are kept a secret), the installer finally got running.

And I was awarded with....

At this point, only 1 comment makes sense:

Update 3:

Wondering if I was running the latest version, I found out

• McAfee's beta portal is seriously broken
• it refuses my (stored) password 
• it doesn't really execute password resets (although it says it does)
• That doesn't really matter, since there is a an open FTP server from which one can download any beta software they ever released.
• That also doesn't really matter, since I was already testing with the latest version, EPO 4.6 RC3.
• The beta seems to expire really quickly, in this case: May 31, 2011 (it was released mid march)

So, saying in the spirit, I used an ancient "hack" technique from the 80s.  It's called "setting the clock back".
Result:

30 minutes of installation dialogs later:

Allow me to say:

Physchic computer support

Can you help me with my computer?

Is it no longer working? 

Eh... yeah.. weirdest thing...

Did you let your kids use it?

Yeah, little Billies computer was acting up...

And you let him use your login, instead of a "Guest" account?

Yeah, it was just for little while...

And that was a full-privilege administrator account?

Yeah, that's how the computer came...

And you left him alone like that?

Yeah, well, I had to go to work.

So the first thing he did was install "Limewire"?

Yes, how do you know?

So he thought he scored some free music, but nobody told him music files don't end in .mp3.exe ?

Eh... what's an EXE?

So he installed whatever the trojan of the week is, and now your computer won't connect to anything any more?

Yeah, exactly!  How do you know? 

OMG! We are are all gone DIE!

Let's take a breather from the "swine flu" craziness, and think things through for a minute.
First off:

Yes, you are going to die.

Life has a 100% mortality rate. This has been proven billions of time before you were born. Anybody who believes they are immortal needs serious counseling.

Now that we got that unpleasantness out of the way, let me give you some basics of "threat level analysis" : In a nutshell, you figure out out what is most likely to hurt you based on a self-assessment and what has happened to others in the past, which gives you a list of what exactly you should be worried about, and how much.

Let's look at the facts that we have available:

This particular "swine flu" "epidemic" has killed less than a dozen people total. Source: CDC

Other mortality stats of other causes (Source: NSC):

Type of Accident or Manner of Injury				Deaths	One Year Odds	Lifetime Odds

	Assault, X85-Y09, Y87.1, *U01			18,124	16,360	210
		Assault by firearm, X93-X95		12,352	24,005	309
		Assault by sharp object, X99		2,097	141,396	1,817
		Other and unspecified means and sequelae, X85-X92, X96-X98, Y00-Y09, Y87.1,*U01

	Event of undetermined intent, Y10-Y34, Y87.2, Y89.9			4,742	62,528	804
		Poisoning, Y10-Y19		3,240	91,515	1,176
		Hanging, strangulation, and suffocation, Y20		139	2,133,144	27,418
		Drowning and submersion, Y21		242	1,225,236	15,749
		Firearm discharge, Y22-Y24		221	1,341,661	17,245
		Exposure to smoke, fire, and flames, Y26		120	2,470,892	31,760
		Falling, jumping, or pushed from a high place, Y30		69	4,297,204	55,234
		Other and unspecified means and sequelae, Y25, Y27-Y29, Y31-Y34,Y87.2, Y89.9		711	417,028	5,360

			Ignition or melting of nightwear, X05	6	49,417,844	635,191
			Ignition or melting of other clothing and apparel, X06	97	3,056,774	39,290

There you have it.

You are more likely to killed by your own pajamas or an asteroid than by this flu.

You don't need a mask, you need fireproof pajamas and a safety helmet.

P.S.:Get one for the kids as well

You are all special! That's why you ride the short bus to school!

Don't you just love these little notifications from twitter when you have a "new follower"?
Doesn't it make you feel all fuzzy and warm inside?

That's cool.

Are you starting to asses your self-worth by the number of followers you have?

Do you "follow" people just so they might follow you?

Do you "follow" people just because they follow you?

That's retarded.

And if you have a script in place that does the automatic "follow who follows me" for you...
that makes you the retard that pees in the public pool.

Here's why:

The number of followers is not a score. It's a statistic. Like "minutes used on your phone plan" or "number of claimed dependents". Changing that number doesn't make you more or less cool. Changing your behavior just to change the number is stupid.

The entire "Reason D’être" is to post status messages. So that people who think you are interesting can see what you are doing or thinking. So they "follow" you. But: there is a limited amount of information that a human can possibly read and comprehend, at any given 24h period.

Ergo: With every additional person you "follow" the average "attention value per followed person" decreases.

In other words:
If you follow more than a few dozen people at the same time, you are a fraud.

What else would you call promising people to give attention, and then ignoring them ?

Of course, the auto-follow is evil squared.

This is telling people "You are so special to me, I will subscribe to everything you say. But I can't be bothered to read it. Or even click a button to send this message. Also, here's my affiliate link to herbal viagra."

Yes, this is my new pet peeve, because it destroys the emerging ecosystem. I have seen spam bots with dozens to thousands of followers, and interesting people with only a handful of followers. Do you see what going on here?

I do find some enjoyment in the fact that the people who are complaining most about receiving twitter spam are those who are at the root cause of it. Karma can be a bitch.

"Why so serious?" ? Because I am one of those old geeks who remembers the days that you could actually post an email address online without it being spammed to death in hours. These days, spam traffic is the bulk of all email. Can we learn from mistakes, please?

On the security of credit card signature verification

I just rediscover this very entertaining post about a man's quest to have his signature verified when making a purchase.

So when does anybody look at the signature on the back of your card.
The short answer: Almost never.

Automated systems don't read it.
Humans never look at the paper receipt.
Most waiters only pick up the signed statement after you left the building.

And don't get me started on these "electronic signature" pads at grocery stores:



At first, I (quite naively) expected them to do a fancy AI signature comparison on the fly. That would be logical, since most of the time, the cashier does not even see what you wrote on her own screen.

After a lot of experimentation, I have reverse engineered the complex algorithms in these machines that decide on whether a signature is accepted or not.

It goes something like this:

10 DRAW(Blank_Rectangle, Buttons)
20 WAITFOR(Ok_Button_Pressed)
30 IF (NumPixelOnScreen < 20) THEN
BEEP
GOTO 10
40 ELSE
50 ACCEPT SIGNATURE
60 PROCESS(Transaction)

That's it. So a blank screen or a single dot wont be accepted. A straight line or any drawing that you can come up will.

Again, that's regardless of what is on the back of your card. Even if it says "SEE ID".

Side note: The whole idea behind "SEE ID" is that is would somehow be harder to fake a driver's license than a signature. If that is true, how come all those teenagers are using fake licenses to get alcohol?


So should you or should you not sign your real signature?


Let's run the scenarios:

When you sign your real signature:
- The shop has proof you made the purchase, can hold you liable.


When you don't sign your real signature:
- You gain time, since a quick swipe of the pen to draw a line goes a lot faster.
- The shop can never prove you made the purchase. If the purchase ever gets contested, their "image proof" will be laughed out of court.

I'll let you decide on this one...

American warning labels

Saw the label when packing stuff up:

What do mean I can't pack up my toddlers in these? I want to keep them organized and quiet!

More mile-high fun!

On a Virgin flight NY-SFO, I was trying out the various "Games" in the in-flight entertainment system. (I have a weird connection with those, more on that later).

One of the options was sort of "wheel of fortune" setup, where given a string of 7 random letters, and you scored points depending which words you could create out of it.

I was bummed to receive zero points for my 7 letter word, which not only should be in the dictionary, its also a great concept that I plan to license to Apple.

Spot the terrorist!

The updated numbers are in! Currently there are over 755 thousand people on the terror watch list. All these people are deemed by our benevolent leaders too godless communist liberal dangerous to fly (but not enough to be arrested).

Other number: The current population of the US of A is 301,139,947.

A little math tell us that this translates to roughly 0.25% (1 in 400) being a "bad guy".

Personally, on any given week, I see hundreds of people. Dozens in the office, dozens in at the grocery store, hundreds just walking by. So... mathematically, I must have missed pointing out terrorist right next to me on several occasions!

This blatant personal carelessness about national security is shaming.

Henceforth, I hope you will join me in making our streets safer by publicly wrestling down and reporting to the police anybody who looks "suspicious", "dangerous", "different"!

I leave it to your personal threat assessment to choose what particular appearance attribute to discriminate guard against: Mustaches, skin/hair color,..

All is fair in love and war!

Only with your help can we make things safe and clean again! Do it or the terrorists win! Think about the children! God is with us!