Professional Darwinism: Update to OP on p.74

[M-theory]

Sounds like bad blocking technology.  If a block is in place for a valid reason, the user should be informed.  "Access to this site is not permitted at your current classification.  Please contact X if you have a legitimate requirement to access this site."

Oh, she was informed. Verbally by my SO. After he left, she went right back to trying.

[T'Mar of Vulcan]

If you do use a wipe program, make multiple passes.  Just one pass writing ones/zeros won't do the job completely.

I'm surprised at how many people want to know how to completely erase their hard drives. I'm not ashamed of anything I have on my hard drive - even including the slash stories. I do keep a file with passwords to various sites, but they're all innocuous sites anyway. I don't keep my online banking passwords on, and those are the only "important" ones. So what would I care if someone looked at my hard drive? They shouldn't be nosey in the first place.

Back on-topic, we had a teacher at my school who was completely clueless. He "knew people" in the education department, so he got them to assign him to our school in the middle of the term as a head of department. The principal, naturally, was upset that this was done, so she made life extremely difficult for him (unfair of her, but who has himself assigned to a school as an HOD in the middle of a term?!!).

Anyway, the rest of us felt sorry for him and tried to be supportive - until we found out that he had made up the marks he gave the children. And he didn't even do it properly - he gave bright children very low marks, weak children high marks, etc., which set off the principal's hinky-metre. She then (to make it look fair) instituted a policy of checking everyone's marks against the work in the books. Even those of us who'd been there for decades and who are scrupulously honest.

Principal tried to get rid of him through channels, but because he knew people, nothing happened. So she gave him the minimum work and distributed his classes among teachers who had a clue. Eventually he got the hint and left - to be the vice-principal of another school. Once again, not due to competence, but simply because he knew people. I pity the staff of the school he went to. Imagine having to carry someone who gets paid much more, but does nothing. To this day when the end of term comes and we have to come and explain "where we got our marks from", we curse this guy in our minds (and sometimes out loud to each other).

[Twik]

If you do use a wipe program, make multiple passes.  Just one pass writing ones/zeros won't do the job completely.

I'm surprised at how many people want to know how to completely erase their hard drives. I'm not ashamed of anything I have on my hard drive - even including the slash stories. I do keep a file with passwords to various sites, but they're all innocuous sites anyway. I don't keep my online banking passwords on, and those are the only "important" ones. So what would I care if someone looked at my hard drive? They shouldn't be nosey in the first place.

I'm not ashamed of anything I've written, but I do have financial information on mine. You say you don't keep your online banking passwords, but I bet a clever hacker might be able to pull the information, or the pages themselves, back up. Or at least get a pretty good whack of data that could be used for identity theft.

Saying that "they shouldn't be so nosy" is like saying that "well, I'm not going to take steps to protect myself from burglars, because it would be rude to enter someone's home unannounced".

[QueenfaninCA]

I'm surprised at how many people want to know how to completely erase their hard drives.

Lots of people do their tax return on the computer these days.

[SisJackson]

If you do use a wipe program, make multiple passes.  Just one pass writing ones/zeros won't do the job completely.

I'm surprised at how many people want to know how to completely erase their hard drives. I'm not ashamed of anything I have on my hard drive - even including the slash stories.

It's not about shame, it's about ID theft.  We are completely paperless in our home - we scan every bill, statement and other important document that we get and save it to a server and then either shred the hard docs or store them offsite depending on importance.  It's all in an encrypted file, but we harbor no illusions that it's 100% secure.  Whenever we replace a hard drive, we take the old one to a local electronics reclamation center that will shred it right in front of you.

Some people think that we (well, my DH - all this security is his idea) are overly paranoid but with identity theft on the rise we aren't willing to risk it.

[nutraxfornerves]

I just remembered this one. This is a case of deliberately screwing up so they have to let you go. I'm going to change a few identifying details. This took place in the early 1980s.

The guy who told me this story had been an analyst for Company A that did work for US intelligence agencies. Company A was bought out by Company B which as part of the merger was offering extremely generous terms to people who would take early retirement. Our Hero applied and was rejected on the grounds that his skills were much too valuable to the company, and in fact, that he was basically irreplaceable on the project eh was working on.

So he figured out how to make himself very replaceable. He held a high level security clearance. Without his security clearance he could no do his job. So he applied for vacation time and took a tour of what was then the USSR. Just setting foot in the USSR  immediately voided his security clearance.

Company B, recognizing that it would be a bad idea to just fire a hitherto valuable employee, suddenly discovered that he was indeed eligible for the early retirement program.

[PeterM]

I was just reminded of a story I heard years ago that seems to fit for both participants. A smallish city police force was doing a prostitution sting. Female cop dresses up as a hooker and goes trawling for johns, who are then arrested and fined. Not sure if this was before or after they started publishing the names and photos of johns for that little extra oomph of public humiliation.

The cop had a nice little scam going. She'd do her job most of the time, of course, to avoid suspicion, but every once in awhile she'd tell the john she'd caught red-handed that if he paid her some significant sum that was less than the official fine (call it $100 or so)  he could walk out free and clear, with no pesky solicitation charge on his record. Most men she offered it to jumped at the chance, of course.

Except one guy. A week or so after he got caught and bought his way out, he contacted the police department to make sure that his not-quite-arresting officer had in fact gone through with their illegal deal and made sure his name didn't go into the system. The officer had kept her deal, so he wasn't in the system. He sure was after he called and essentially confessed to bribing an officer, though. The officer didn't come out too well, either, though I forget exactly what happened.

[M-theory]

I was just reminded of a story I heard years ago that seems to fit for both participants. A smallish city police force was doing a prostitution sting. Female cop dresses up as a hooker and goes trawling for johns, who are then arrested and fined. Not sure if this was before or after they started publishing the names and photos of johns for that little extra oomph of public humiliation.

The cop had a nice little scam going. She'd do her job most of the time, of course, to avoid suspicion, but every once in awhile she'd tell the john she'd caught red-handed that if he paid her some significant sum that was less than the official fine (call it $100 or so)  he could walk out free and clear, with no pesky solicitation charge on his record. Most men she offered it to jumped at the chance, of course.

Except one guy. A week or so after he got caught and bought his way out, he contacted the police department to make sure that his not-quite-arresting officer had in fact gone through with their illegal deal and made sure his name didn't go into the system. The officer had kept her deal, so he wasn't in the system. He sure was after he called and essentially confessed to bribing an officer, though. The officer didn't come out too well, either, though I forget exactly what happened.

"Now before I let you bribe me, you'll have to take this IQ test..."

[artk2002]

If you do use a wipe program, make multiple passes.  Just one pass writing ones/zeros won't do the job completely.

I'm surprised at how many people want to know how to completely erase their hard drives. I'm not ashamed of anything I have on my hard drive - even including the slash stories. I do keep a file with passwords to various sites, but they're all innocuous sites anyway. I don't keep my online banking passwords on, and those are the only "important" ones. So what would I care if someone looked at my hard drive? They shouldn't be nosey in the first place.

I'm not ashamed of anything I've written, but I do have financial information on mine. You say you don't keep your online banking passwords, but I bet a clever hacker might be able to pull the information, or the pages themselves, back up. Or at least get a pretty good whack of data that could be used for identity theft.

Saying that "they shouldn't be so nosy" is like saying that "well, I'm not going to take steps to protect myself from burglars, because it would be rude to enter someone's home unannounced".

The thing is, there are lots of easier ways of getting financial information than trying to read a wiped disk.  If someone can get credit card #s by phishing or dumpster diving, they aren't going to spend a lot of effort trying to recover data from a hard drive.  If I'm getting rid of a drive, I'll do a single-pass wipe, or break the circuit board in the drive.

[Twik]

Yes, but you'll do more than simply hit "delete" on your sensitive files. You'll at least do a decent wiping.

[norli]

My favorite is the 20+ year Los Alamos Lab employee that tried to steal a baggie of gold shavings.  He got caught when it set off a radiation detector.

[HonorH]

*One girl was overheard telling a customer "What do you want me to do, hold your hand?".  Keep in mind this is a tech support help line.

Maybe she had one of the customers from Unsupportable:

http://www.customerssuck.com/index.php?categoryid=18
http://www.customerssuck.com/index.php?categoryid=19

My favorite Professional Darwinism story is a cautionary tale told to all ALTs entering Japan.  Japan has very, extremely strict drug laws.  Stuff that will get you a slap on the wrist in America will get you jail time in Japan.  Every ALT from any country who enters Japan is informed of this and told not only to stay away from drugs yourself, but to steer clear of anyone you know is doing drugs, since you can and will be brought in for questioning simply for having in your cell phone the number of someone who got caught with drugs.  You are lectured, you're told being caught with drugs (not even arrested) is grounds for immediate dismissal, you're made to sign a contract, etc.  In other words, there's no shades of gray about it.

Yeah, well, one brilliant ALT decided to grow his own marijuana behind his apartment building.  It got discovered by a little granny doing her gardening.  He was arrested, thrown in jail, fired, and then deported.  Hope the weed was worth it.

[Piratelvr1121]

Here's one, then I'm off to bed for the night.

DH works for a company that installs GPS tracking equipment in company fleet vehicles.  Trucks, vans, whatever.   This allows the management and dispatchers for the company to know where employee is with the company vehicle, as well as the vehicle's speed.   DH is the field engineer for this region, which means he installs and does updates and maintenance to the units on the client's vehicles when needed.   

On more than one occasion, he's had to go out to a location to fix the unit because someone decided they were going to take the company vehicle where they weren't supposed to, and didn't want the company to know.   What they apparently didn't realize is that DH's company gets notification when a unit isn't responding, and what could be the problem.   

He told me one guy took the company van up to visit his girlfriend's house for the weekend, in another state.   He was fired when DH discovered what the problem was, as it's pretty obvious when someone's been tampering with the unit.

[Karmelita]

This is from awhile back...

Long story short, two married coworkers were having an affair and got busted sneaking off to a storage room repeatedly throughout the day because our ID badges are automatically logged whenever we pass into a secure area (and the storage area was one of them).  The worst part of it is that they helped install the system, so they knew it did that...

[the Wyffe]

Yeah, well, one brilliant ALT decided to grow his own marijuana behind his apartment building.  It got discovered by a little granny doing her gardening.  He was arrested, thrown in jail, fired, and then deported.  Hope the weed was worth it.

I've just remembered this!  Last year I was teaching in a high-security prison, and they had sniffer dogs.  Cute, I say to the woman.  She then tells me the last tutor was caught by the sniffer dogs with drugs on her!

Who brings drugs into a high security prison knowing there will be sniffer dogs???

And the woman said, "Oh yes, but you see, she was drunk!"

That tutor got fired.