Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Stupid. Got a degree, but still stupid.

It is of constant amazement to Mine Host how many people consider themselves to be "worldly-wise" and "broad-minded" whilst actually being as dumb as a box of rocks.

The gurus behind Blogger.com security have just been added to that list.

Doubtless these code writers have a tertiary education, likely a swish degree in something difficult.

Since the date of the previous post, Mine Host has been at a geographic location he's never before been to.  Attempts to log in to blogger are met with:

[Looks like you are attempting to log in from an unusual location]
[Please type in the name of the city where you usually log in]

Fine.  A security measure, in case some russian hacker in vlottastock or somewhere has obtained username & password.

So Mine Host types in the name of the town where he usually logs in.

However the really excellent blogger software stated that Mine Host had entered the wrong town.

Mine Host is many things, but he is aware enough to know which town he is in.  However to satisfy the gods of blogger he enters every town where he has logged in to this blog.

Nothing worked, all were the wrong town.

To cut a long story short, login attempts were refused until just now Mine Host typed in the name of a distant city, the same distance from him as Cairns is from Melbourne.

Bingo!  Blogger recognised it as the usual location.

No it isn't you university educated morons.  It is merely the city where his ISP stores many of their servers.  There is no reason for any person to imagine that this place is being logged as the "city where you usually log in".

To repeat:  These blogger security people not only went to university, they passed their exams!

7 comments:

MickfromVic said...

Well played, Steve.

Two questions:

Did it hurt typing in Melbourne?

And how the hell did you work out that that was the desired response? Trial and error?

Steve at the Pub said...

Hi Michael. No the secret trick answer was not Melbourne.

It took me more than a week of casual attempts before I more or less lucked it onto the correct answer.

This indicates how unlikely the answer actually was.

MickfromVic said...

Gawd. Not Melbourne - doesn't leave much. Singapore? Adelaide?

mojo said...

Think trunk cables, guys. What's up north?

mojo said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondwana-1

Came up in 2008

MickfromVic said...

@mojo Nauru?

mojo said...

Well, yes, but not what I had in mind.

Narrabeen