The Icon Bar: The Playpen: User error: Please replace and try again
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User error: Please replace and try again |
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swirlythingy (01:05 17/11/2009)
Lampi (18:06 17/11/2009)
Loris (18:15 17/11/2009)
filecore (19:18 17/11/2009)
Lampi (19:51 17/11/2009)
swirlythingy (14:27 18/11/2009)
swirlythingy (19:06 17/11/2009)
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Martin Bazley |
Message #112032, posted by swirlythingy at 01:05, 17/11/2009 |
Posts: 460
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I know I mentioned it at tonight's ROUGOL meeting, but I want to commit it to posterity. 
This afternoon (well, yesterday afternoon) I was in a public library for the purpose of using the Windoze PeeCees (a necessary evil in this day and age, sadly).
They have a time limited system (each registered library card holder is allowed one hour per day), so you have to do as much in that hour as you can.
When I had about seven minutes left, and was trying to tie up loose ends, the woman on the computer around the corner suddenly disturbed me. "Excuse me," she said, "I don't suppose you know anything about this email thing?"
"Don't you?" I replied, possibly a little sarcastically.
"No!" she laughed, as if it were enjoyable. "I don't - I'm a novice. I don't suppose you could help me - only Andrew's gone away and I don't know how to do it."
Whoever Andrew was, I was rather busy at that moment in time, and didn't want to get kicked off, so I asked, "Why don't you just ask a member of staff?", indicating the nearest lady at the information desk.
She kept going on about Andrew, but I didn't have time to help her, so eventually she went and got the lady from her desk. Far from it be my habit to eavesdrop, I heard quite a few tell-tale snippets of conversation during my last frantic minutes, including: "It isn't working any more!" (the user), "I do find you remember the sequence after a while - it's just something you get used to. I've been doing it for a while now," (the librarian), "That's my email address... so you type that in there" (the user), "Log off now, I don't want you to lose all your time" (the librarian), and finally the ominous comment from the librarian: "We're going to have to get IT services to look at it." It transpired she was attempting to log into her Hotmail account.
By this time I had logged off, and I felt bound by comradeship not to let the poor IT serviceman get sold down the river on what I strongly suspected was a wild goose chase (to mix and match a few metaphors there). I saw them logging off, and kept an eye on proceedings.
The lady then attempted to log back onto the same computer in the belief that it would fix her problem, but ran into difficulties. She typed one character of her library card number, but then clicked outside of the writable icons (which in the wonderful world of Windows causes them to lose their focus, y'know) and tried to type in the rest. "It isn't coming up," she complained. The librarian pointed out she needed to click in the field first. She double-clicked (naturally) and highlighted the character already typed.
This was all too much for both the user and the librarian. The librarian proclaimed that the lady had better go to the next computer while she switched the offending machine off and then on again (via the time-honoured procedure of holding down the power button for ten seconds afterwards). With one last dark mutter about IT services, the librarian returned to her desk.
I decided I had a duty to take the bullet for the inevitable repair-man, so I stayed by the lady and asked her to show me how she was logging into her Hotmail account. She waited for the desktop to appear, clicked about ten times on the M$IE icon, clicked in the address bar, typed in her email address and hit 'Go'... |
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James Lampard |
Message #112048, posted by Lampi at 18:06, 17/11/2009, in reply to message #112032 |
Posts: 190
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It should be possible to decode the ends of email addresses entered into the url, and then launch the correct webpage. So entering a xxxx@yahoo.co.uk address could launch the yahoo email page. |
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Tony Haines |
Message #112049, posted by Loris at 18:15, 17/11/2009, in reply to message #112048 |
 Ha ha, me mine, mwahahahaha
Posts: 1025
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It does already for the example you give.
Everything before an '@' in a url is generally irrelevant[1], so you get to yahoo.co.uk.
Read this.
[1] Actually it's for authentication, so you may get a warning about potential phishing. I do in firefox. |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #112050, posted by swirlythingy at 19:06, 17/11/2009, in reply to message #112048 |
Posts: 460
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It should be possible to decode the ends of email addresses entered into the url, and then launch the correct webpage. Well, it didn't - she and the librarian had spent some time staring at a search results page. |
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Jason Togneri |
Message #112051, posted by filecore at 19:18, 17/11/2009, in reply to message #112049 |
Posts: 3868
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Everything before an '@' in a url is generally irrelevant[1], so you get to yahoo.co.uk. Unless you hit an FTP link in your browser, in which case it's definitely for authentication and you'll get an incorrect login error. But that's just me getting off topic. |
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James Lampard |
Message #112052, posted by Lampi at 19:51, 17/11/2009, in reply to message #112051 |
Posts: 190
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I see what you mean, I really should try stuff before posting.
I get the following in Firefox:
You are about to log in to the site "yahoo.co.uk" with the user name "james_lampard", but the web site does not require authentication. This may be an attempt to trick you.
Is "yahoo.co.uk" the site you want to visit?
It just produces an error in IE though.
[Edited by Lampi at 19:51, 17/11/2009] |
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Martin Bazley |
Message #112061, posted by swirlythingy at 14:27, 18/11/2009, in reply to message #112052 |
Posts: 460
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It just produces an error in IE though. IE was what she was using (in spite of the Firefox icon pinned neatly next to it - I suppose she probably thought that was a Sonic clone or something). |
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The Icon Bar: The Playpen: User error: Please replace and try again |
