Akula Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 I am sitting at the airport in the Starbucks. This guy, looks like a business man, has a blackberry and the ubiquitous thinkpad. He's on with his tech support trying to connect to the free wifi. Its been 45 minutes. He's now to the point where he is just about to get WZC going. Its a little nutty. I was a Wifi engineer for a couple of years and have seen just about every supplicant on the market and they all have a discovery mode that tells you what ESSIDs are available. At that point you click and join. Its not rocketry, let alone rocket science. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TTQ B4U Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 I'm with you in that I don't get it, but then I also manage a sales team of folks who are less than 50% as savvy as me and I'm not a tech like you. My team struggles with iPads, so go figure. Lots of times it's the people themselves that cause the problem. I've had IT reflash laptop and within one week the reps fuck them up and then complain VPN or something vital isn't working. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rustlestiltskin Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 Intadesting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWW$HEEET Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 ive heard of places "blocking vpn connections". i dont know how that occurs though considering all it does is establish a tunnel, once that is complete, they cant see any of the encrypted traffic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skinner Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 ive heard of places "blocking vpn connections". i dont know how that occurs though considering all it does is establish a tunnel, once that is complete, they cant see any of the encrypted traffic. All they have to do has have the ports blocked that VPN uses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Not Brian Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 There are people who call the help desk when their monitor magically turns off because they accidentally kicked the power cord loose under their desk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWW$HEEET Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 All they have to do has have the ports blocked that VPN uses. How are you gonna disable 443 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Hal Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 How are you gonna disable 443 With magnets. :gabe: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted May 31, 2011 Author Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 ive heard of places "blocking vpn connections". i dont know how that occurs though considering all it does is establish a tunnel, once that is complete, they cant see any of the encrypted traffic. He cant even associate, way before getting vpn up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 you have to imagine how many man hours are wasted on said people, versus the cost of just getting them a 3g/4g usb card so they will shut the hell up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg1647545532 Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 My dad worked for P&G. P&G was a big Novell NetWare client and insisted on using it well past the point where windows was doing everything Novell did natively and better. It made my dad's work laptop a constant pain in the ass. They finally switched to normal AD domains around 2005 or so, but his laptop, up until he retired in 2008, had some Cisco wireless connection manager that overrode the Windows one. If you tried to open the Windows wireless connection manager it just said, "There is another product on this machine used to manage wireless connections" and that was that. The Cisco software wouldn't let you connect to anything that didn't meet a certain security standard, which included my WPA home network. He could connect at work just fine, but I couldn't get that thing to hook up to my home network to save my life, and I even worked as systems admin for a few years. There's no way he could connect to a free wifi hotspot with that thing. Also, for several years the Pentagon was custom ordering laptops without wireless chips. We'd get them with the wifi activity light, and even a physical switch on the laptop to turn on/off the wifi antenna, but there was no wifi chip inside. Confused the snot out of a lot of people who couldn't figure out why their wireless wasn't working. Airport guy may very well have been stupid, but I'm just saying... sometimes companies make it needlessly hard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrhobbz Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 There are people who call the help desk when their monitor magically turns off because they accidentally kicked the power cord loose under their desk These are usually the same people that forget their passwords twice a day, or can't figure out what the colon symbol is or differentiate between forward and backslashes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akula Posted May 31, 2011 Author Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 I work in corporate security now. I know how some companies lock stuff down. I have talked to the security architects for a few companies that are forced to use IE and nothing else. My company locks down the wifi stuff as well, I just go around it. Yes sometimes it is needlessly hard but if you don't know how to do the stuff, you don't need to do the stuff. Don't bother the help-desk guys, they are too busy worried about finding the next Mumbai call-center to find work in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greg1647545532 Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 So the guy shouldn't have been using his work laptop for work? It's one thing for IT guys to vent about dumb users, but it's another thing for corporate policy to be "If our employees can't figure it out, it's not our problem." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffro Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 you have to imagine how many man hours are wasted on said people, versus the cost of just getting them a 3g/4g usb card so they will shut the hell up. dude you dont even know. we have 20 of them with netbooks in our agency. the majority of the users cant even navigate through the sprint connection window if it doesnt connect the first time. and theyre faulty as fuck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mowgli1647545497 Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 Never underestimate the power of IBM laptops to NOT be able to connect to a wifi. Being a corporate pc makes this x10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tractor Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 There are people who call the help desk when their monitor magically turns off because they accidentally kicked the power cord loose under their desk I charge just under $200/hr to fix that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Not Brian Posted May 31, 2011 Report Share Posted May 31, 2011 For the time taken for them to actually call the help desk, get a ticket dispatched, have the ticket assigned me to walk upstairs/other end of the building and get shit straight, it's about that much out of your pocket in tax money.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unfunnyryan Posted June 1, 2011 Report Share Posted June 1, 2011 I charge just under $200/hr to fix that. he said kicked a cord not kicked a cat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Spam Posted June 1, 2011 Report Share Posted June 1, 2011 he said kicked a cord not kicked a cat http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/entries/icons/original/000/004/815/lol-guy.jpg?1294768022 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted June 1, 2011 Report Share Posted June 1, 2011 Is that a right mash or a left mash? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JaSSon Posted June 2, 2011 Report Share Posted June 2, 2011 Dad has a Thinkpad thru work. Through a process of computer upgrades, layoffs, etc the lappy became his personal machine. The pre-installed software overrode Windows and made it a royal BITCH to connect to a network. I went thru it and uninstalled IBM's shitware with extreme prejudice. So your story doesn't suprise me at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wease Posted June 2, 2011 Report Share Posted June 2, 2011 After 15+ years in IT, I've figured out that what I think is simple and comes second nature to me, can confuse the fuck out of a normal person with a 100 IQ. And I weep for those people... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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