And yet, apparently... you might not believe this but...

Mitch Denny, an Australian .Net blogger, suggested this morning that we have a 'mute' button on every window.

I guess it might look a little like this:

Advantages:

I could turn off the volume from Internet Explorer (or some instances of it) and keep volume from Winamp turned on.

I think it's a great idea, cheers Mitch.

(Yeh, i know the image I made is quite crappy, [and has usability problems] but it was just a quick illustration, fuel for thought.

(The topic was partly inspired by josh legard, by the way. cheers Josh)

I have this so-called friend who emails me those quizes that start with 'Send this on to ten of your friends blah fucking blah.'. Here's my take on just such a psychologically revealing quiz.

1. Your family is turned into a rainbow. What colour are you? what colour is your mother?
2. You dream that a dog is biting you. What kind of dog is it?
3. You dream that you are strangling a bird. Why do you do it?
4. Rather lose both hands or both legs?
5. Rather die in a plane crash or a bungee jumping accident?
6. Rather drown or suffocate?
7. Your body is found at the bottom of a ravine. Were you pushed, or did you jump?
8. You discover an assassination plot against George W. Bush. Do you go for a walk or have a sleep?
9. unplanned farts: naughty or funny?
10. You snog a movie star. Why is it Danny Devito?
11. You are put on trial. Guilty?
12. You are a piece of art. Music, sculpture or Painting?
13. The world will end tomorrow. No seriously, the world will end tomorrow. Why are you reading this quiz?
14. You're trapped on a dessert island. What sort of dessert is it?
15. You're trapped on a desert island for twenty years with only one book. When you are rescued how big will the library fine be?
16. The world is ending you can save only one species of animal. What's the point? The food chain is basically screwed.
17. You break a world record. Who's the first person you want to tell?
18. You win a million dollars. Who's the first person you pay to have killed?
19. Someone you consider a friend sends you a stupid email. You tell them they're an idiot, or you use your blog to dillute your anger?
20. Aisle seat or window seat?
21. Tofu or samsonite?
22. Your father is found brutally murdered. Hammer or pickaxe?
23. You dip your toe into a lake. Is it cold or warm?
24. You redesign the company uniform. What colour are the leotards?
25. An apple falls on your head. Do you discover gravity or sue for millions?
26. What's your mother's maiden name?
27. Social security number?
28. Bank account number?

1. I will not begin the design phase until the user requirements have been unanimously agreed upon by all users, and etched onto large stone tablets.
2. I will not begin development until the design is signed off, preferably in blood.
3. Issues that arise during testing will be recorded in the issue management system, and the relevant developer shall be notified, in writing, before he or she is taken out and flogged, not after.
4. Product upgrades will not be released into the production environment until the quality assurance manager has scheduled a time to place his or her head on the correct chopping block, and the axman or axewoman has verified that the ax is indeed sharp.

Feeling very bitter and cynical today.

Does your office have a culture of security?

How many of the following questions can you truthfully answer "Yes" to?

1. I never open an attachment without first verifying the sender and scanning for viruses.
2. I do not use obvious passwords.
3. I do not recycle passwords amongst different systems.
4. I lock my computer before leaving it unattended.
5. If a stranger enters my workplace, I challenge him or her for identification, even if it appears to be a child.
6. I know how to use a handgun.
7. I know how to fake a lie-detector test, and have methodically increased my tolerance to truth serums.
8. I have a diamond cutting laser pistol hidden in my belt buckle.
9. I know how to pick locks and can smash my way out of handcuffs. Pow! Just like that.
10. Even if tortured, I won't reveal company secrets. (Just like Mr Takagi in DieHard).
11. When my anger rises, I am like a tiger, and will search out my enemy and crush him beneath my heel, utterly. (Just like Bruce Willis in Diehard, or Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs)
12. I won't allow a stranger into my house, even if it is a ravishingly beautiful naked woman holding a case of beer.
13. I laugh in the face of Death every chance I get. So much so, in fact, that Death is often embarrassed to see me.

These may all seem obvious, but for a lot of workers security is not a serious topic at all. Test your workers today, and record their marks. For each 'No' answer, beat them savagely with a hammer. In six weeks, test them again and I'll bet they'll pee their pants in fear. That's human nature for you. A cruel heart, a sadistic mind and a weak bladder.

I've said enough for one post. .. comments

The EU has ruled that by bundling a calculator with their popular operating system, Microsoft has clearly engaged in anti-competitive behaviour.

The Association of Independent Manufacturers of Calculator Software has been awarded $600 million to make up for profits they have lost due to Microsoft's evil, vindictive and clearly satanic practice.

In a related case, the McDonalds chain of restaurants has been fined $8 billion for allowing salt satchels to be given away with their meals. The Anti-Competitive-Practices League complained that the 'free' salt satchels made it virtually impossible for small traders to continue to walk from restaurant to restaurant selling their own hand-crafted satchels of salt to customers, resulting in less choice of salt for consumers.

And clothing retailer Target has been fined $57 billion for including buttons on shirts. The EU has ruled that by bundling buttons on shirts, it has become virtually impossible for independent button retailers to entice customers into purchasing buttons crafted by independent conglomerates. Target was further criticised for not including instructions on how to remove buttons from garments.

In a similar case, Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, has been sued because evolution has led people's bodies to come pre-bundled with arms and legs, thus restricting the trade of prosthetic limbs. The American Association Of Plastic Arms and Legs has been awarded over $50 billion for lost profit caused by natural selection's clearly monopolistic behaviour.

Consumers were thrilled with the results as they would now have to pay more for everything and will finally have a full choice of salt.

That's my misinformed rant for the day. All legal actions mentioned in this article are fictional. No lawyers were hurt during the writing of this rant.

There is an email going around with the subject 'What do you mean you've got a splinter?' Think twice before opening it. That's all I'm saying. Don't be a fool. Think twice.

The way people decorate their cubicle says a lot about their personality.

It often gives a meaning they didn't quite intend.

(continues with 4 examples)

The cubicle:

Lots of little plastic animals, fluffy toys and decorative bits of glitter.

The Message they want to give:

I'm fun! Spontaneous! Care-free!

They Message they actually give:

I'm a mentally defective psychopath and oops, I just wet my pants again.

The cubicle:

About fifty photographs of my children

The Message they want to give:

I've got the cutest loveliest family in the world and i just love them so much

They Message they actually give:

My kids fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

The cubicle:

A photo of my yacht.

The Message they want to give:

I am so damn rich and important. TREMBLE BEFORE ME!

They Message they actually give:

How can a handsome guy get landed with such a tiny penis?

The cubicle:

Books, Paper and clutter everywhere.

The Message they want to give:

I'm a genius, so hard at work I never have time to clean this place up!

They Message they actually give:

I'm a filthy idiot who barely scraped through the last round of redundancies. I breed maggots for a hobby.

The cubicle:

About fifty plants, including strange creeping vines and jungle flowers.

The Message they want to give:

I'm a nature lover whose soul has outgrown this cubicle!

They Message they actually give:

Put me on suicide watch, 24/7.

Ever. Just don't do it.

I head to a client's site. In order to connect to their domain I have to let a sysAdmin f*ck with my machine.

Alarm bells go off, but I let the monkey have his banana.

To cut a long story short: it's the next day, many hours of work have been lost. Much frustration has been achieved. And I have a new rule:

It's the thin edge of the wedge. We let sysAdmin's screw with our machines today. What's next? Database administrators messing with our databases?

I'm due to head out to another client in a few minutes... this time, things will be different...

My office, like a lot of offices, has always suffered from a toilet-related problem.

You walk all the way to the toilets, only to find that the toilets are already busy.

You then waste time walking back to your cubicle, where more uncomfortable minutes pass, during which you are barely productive. Finally, you return to the toilets, only to find that they are still busy!

This 'bog-polling' can continue for half a day, putting you behind on your schedules and impacting your bowel.

All this has come to an end now that we have finally turned on Version 2.0 of the intranet-Based Toilet Reservation System (TRS).

The process is as simple as it is brilliant.

1. You check on the intranet if a toilet is currently available.
2. If it is, you reserve it.
3. The door to your reserved toilet then locks, and the "reserved" sign lights up. The door will not unlock for anyone but *you* and your electronic security tag.
4. If no toilet is available, then you can inform the TRS to email you, SMS you, or page you, when one does become available. (Paging doesn't yet work -- but should be online in a day or two!)
5. If any toilet is reserved but not in use for more than one hour, then you are asked to go online and confirm that you still intend to keep the booking, otherwise it is released.
6. You can now book ahead by up to six months and can even set a recurring booking for the same time each day.
7. Before you start worrying: User identity is fully protected -- you can't see who is hogging a cubicle, or who has blocked off a period of time.

Of course, user-identities are still recorded in the back-end system (pun intended...), as they are used for management reports on user productivity. (Personally, I think the data could also be used for assessing mental fitness and for identifying health patterns in the work force. But that level of abstraction is still philosophical at this stage.)

We developed all of this just for our own department's purposes. (We're a government department -- in case you couldn't guess already ;-) ) But I'm wondering if other offices will want us to install a TRS for their benefit too. The equipment involved is little more than a few lights, some electronic locks and an ASP.net intranet application. Potentially it could be opened up to the internet, of course, so you could book while en-route to the office.

In case you're wondering, version 1 of the TRS is system is still in place. It consists of little more than a blurry webcam above the urinals. It gives a fair indication of traffic levels while maintaining anonymity.

Well - i'm off to "download an attachment into the porcelain internet", if you catch my drift.

cheers