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Author Topic:   Humour VIII
jar
Member (Idle past 394 days)
Posts: 34026
From: Texas!!
Joined: 04-20-2004


Message 1381 of 1442 (894337)
05-12-2022 7:43 PM
Reply to: Message 1380 by Percy
05-12-2022 7:25 PM


Re: Sacked!
There's a cat in them, maybe alive...maybe not.

My Website: My Website

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1380 by Percy, posted 05-12-2022 7:25 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 1382 of 1442 (894340)
05-12-2022 10:20 PM
Reply to: Message 1380 by Percy
05-12-2022 7:25 PM


Re: Sacked!
A while back I investigated whether it was possible to open such attachments safely. I no longer remember the details of what I learned, but the short answer is no.
Here's how I would always handle attachments and how it led me to two disturbing discoveries.
Having been a DOS-er for years, I never took to double-clicking a file but rather only application icons on the desktop. Even now in File Explorer I'll do a right-click "Open With ... " on a file rather than double-clicking on it (but then some of the filetype-to-app mapping is a bit wonky so I'd have to do it most of the time anyway).
So when I'd receive an email with an attachment, I would save the attachment to a directory by opening the content menu with a right-click and selecting the save attachment menu item and then open the associated app and open the file within the app. No, I wasn't born paranoid, but rather an attached file was something that I would want to save for future use so saving it was the logical first step.
One day I received an email with an attached Word document file (or Excel -- it's been decades) which seemed pertinent to things that I was involved in at the time (it had something to do with Scouting). So I saved it and opened it in Word, which refused to open it as being an invalid file format. I took a closer look at that file in Windows Explorer and the icon and stated file type didn't match. I went to DOS to look at the file's hex dump and that's when I saw its actual file extension for the first time: it wasn't a .doc file, but rather some kind of executable file.
So the two disturbing things that I learned from that:
  1. I had encountered my first Trojan attachment. The file's name wasn't campgrounds.doc, but rather something like campgrounds.doc.exe, an executable! Double-clicking on it would run it and it would perform its nefarious function. But why didn't my computer warn me by displaying the actual file extension?
  2. That was the second far more disturbing thing that I learned: Windows was set up by default to hide that vital information from us! In Windows Explorer's View there's an option to hide known filetype extensions and it's turned on by default!
    So I turned that stupid thing off! But then after a while (triggered perhaps by a patch) it would be turned back on again, whereupon I would immediately turn it off again. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!, but they have never fixed it! Stupid!
But now my emails no longer offer the choice of right-clicking on an attachment. The only way I can save an attachment is by clicking on it. Which means that I have to have a very good feeling about the authenticity of that email.
Similarly, when I would get a spam email on my phone I used to be able mark it as spam and get rid of it. Now on my new phone the email reader requires me to first open that email before it gives me the option to declare it spam. So I have to go to my computer where I still can declare them to be spam and get rid of them there.
 
Another story about Windows hiding file extensions by default. My Java class was held in an auditorium with the instructor using a school Windows box with a large-screen projection of the monitor. He would create a .java source file and compile it to create a .class file. But the computer wouldn't tell you which was which! Sure, they had slightly different icons, but nobody had any clue what a .java or a .class file icon was supposed to look like. So I would have to raise my hand and walk him through turning off that damned hide file extensions option so we could see the file extensions. Unfortunately, that box being a school computer meant that any setting changes you would make would go away when you logged off. So we had to go through that same evolution every single lecture. What a pain!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1380 by Percy, posted 05-12-2022 7:25 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1384 by Percy, posted 05-14-2022 7:34 AM dwise1 has replied

  
Minnemooseus
Member
Posts: 3941
From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior)
Joined: 11-11-2001
Member Rating: 10.0


(2)
Message 1383 of 1442 (894376)
05-14-2022 6:12 AM


Fun with magnets
Amusement, if not humor.
Moose

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 1384 of 1442 (894378)
05-14-2022 7:34 AM
Reply to: Message 1382 by dwise1
05-12-2022 10:20 PM


Re: Sacked!
dwise1 writes:
But now my emails no longer offer the choice of right-clicking on an attachment. The only way I can save an attachment is by clicking on it. Which means that I have to have a very good feeling about the authenticity of that email.
Have you tried drag/drop?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1382 by dwise1, posted 05-12-2022 10:20 PM dwise1 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1385 by dwise1, posted 05-14-2022 12:46 PM Percy has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1385 of 1442 (894386)
05-14-2022 12:46 PM
Reply to: Message 1384 by Percy
05-14-2022 7:34 AM


Re: Sacked!
Just tried drag-and-drop. HTML doesn't seem to work that way.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1384 by Percy, posted 05-14-2022 7:34 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1386 by Percy, posted 05-14-2022 1:43 PM dwise1 has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 1386 of 1442 (894388)
05-14-2022 1:43 PM
Reply to: Message 1385 by dwise1
05-14-2022 12:46 PM


Re: Sacked!
dwise1 writes:
Just tried drag-and-drop. HTML doesn't seem to work that way.
I use Outlook for email, so I tried forwarding the email with the suspicious attachment to my Google email account so I could drag/drop from an HTML context, but the forward never arrived, so I assumed it was blocked.
So I forwarded an email with an innocent attachment to my Google email account, and that email arrived successfully. Upon opening it I was able to drag/drop the attachment into a folder. This was on my Mac, but I don't see why you shouldn't be able to do this on Windows, too.
I later received a message from Gmail saying that the attempted forwarding of that email with the suspicious attachment had been blocked:
quote
host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[172.253.63.26] said:
552-5.7.0 This message was blocked because its content presents a potential
552-5.7.0 security issue. Please visit 552-5.7.0
File types blocked in Gmail - Gmail Help to review our 552 5.7.0
message content and attachment content guidelines.
On my Mac I was able to drag/drop that suspicious attachment from the Outlook email into a file folder where I was able to open it using Emacs. I'm not familiar with internal file formats, but it included a filename with a .exe extension, so it would make sense if it were actually an executable.
--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.


This message is a reply to:
 Message 1385 by dwise1, posted 05-14-2022 12:46 PM dwise1 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 1387 by dwise1, posted 05-14-2022 3:12 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1387 of 1442 (894390)
05-14-2022 3:12 PM
Reply to: Message 1386 by Percy
05-14-2022 1:43 PM


Re: Sacked!
Giving the attachment a .exe file extension shouldn't mean anything to a Mac, which, as I understand, uses metadata attached to a file to figure out what to do with it when you double-click on it. Windows uses the file extension, which you can associate to whatever application you want to.
It appears to depend on how the HTML was written. I used to be able to right-click on the attachment and save it. Now they've "improved" the page so that I have to click on it; when I try to use the attachment's context menu to "Save As ... " it only allows it to be saved as an HTML file (I suspect that the context file is for the entire page).
Though clicking on the attachment pulls down a menu which shows the progress of downloading the file and then offers options (including opening it). But that still doesn't feel right, kind of like having to provide your SSN for access to services (eg, Medicare before they issued us new numbers). Or being expected to walk around with an RFID credit/ATM card in your pocket.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1386 by Percy, posted 05-14-2022 1:43 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
Minnemooseus
Member
Posts: 3941
From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior)
Joined: 11-11-2001
Member Rating: 10.0


(2)
Message 1388 of 1442 (894465)
05-17-2022 12:30 AM


PDQ Bach - Beethoven Symphony No. 5
Live performance - somewhat different from the also worthy original, below.
Moose

Replies to this message:
 Message 1389 by dwise1, posted 05-18-2022 1:02 AM Minnemooseus has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 1389 of 1442 (894503)
05-18-2022 1:02 AM
Reply to: Message 1388 by Minnemooseus
05-17-2022 12:30 AM


Re: PDQ Bach - Beethoven Symphony No. 5
Peter Schickele would say that he taught musicology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. However, Hoople (pop. 242) is in the north-eastern part of the state, north of Grand Forks.
About 20 years ago Schickele had a radio show on public radio, which I would listen to on San Diego's KPBS late Sunday afternoon once a month on my drive home from reserve duty. One of the things he said was:
quote
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach become musicologists.
The instructor for my music appreciation class in 1972 had attended school with Peter Schickele, as I recall. My first exposure to him was when she played the sports coverage of Beethoven's Fifth for the class.
Most of the jokes are based on musicology lore. For example, Bach's music being rediscovered because a fish monger was using it to wrap fish in became PDQ Bach's music being used as the filter in the coffee pot -- that turned out to be the "Sanka Sonata", a play on Bach's Coffee Cantata, a miniature comic opera which he had written for the grand opening of a friend's coffee shop in c. 1734 and which used caffeine addiction as a plot device ("If I couldn't, three times a day, be allowed to drink my little cup of coffee, in my anguish I will turn into a shriveled-up roast goat.").
And Concerto for Piano versus Orchestra (Schickele 88) is a play on the concerto form in which a solo instrument plays contra an orchestra.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1388 by Minnemooseus, posted 05-17-2022 12:30 AM Minnemooseus has seen this message but not replied

  
Minnemooseus
Member
Posts: 3941
From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior)
Joined: 11-11-2001
Member Rating: 10.0


(2)
Message 1390 of 1442 (895213)
06-14-2022 9:57 PM


10 Levels of Sleight of Hand: Cheating at Poker
Note that it is one continuous take - No edit breaks.
Incredible!
Moose

Professor, geology, Whatsamatta U
Evolution - Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment.

"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." - Bruce Graham

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith

"Yesterday on Fox News, commentator Glenn Beck said that he believes President Obama is a racist. To be fair, every time you watch Glenn Beck, it does get a little easier to hate white people." - Conan O'Brien

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." - John Kenneth Galbraith

It says something about the qualities of our current president that the best argument anyone has made in his defense is that he didn't know what he was talking about. - Paul Krugman (as stolen from Chiroptera's signature)

"My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes" - Ronald Reagan (1984)

"I know a little about a lot of things, and a lot about a few things, but I'm highly ignorant about everything." - Moose


  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


(5)
Message 1391 of 1442 (897512)
09-06-2022 10:08 PM


Belly Laugh
What? You didn't belly laugh?

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 1392 of 1442 (901396)
11-09-2022 1:36 AM


Sure Fire Ticket for 2024
Tshirt circulating on Facebook ATT:
quote:
Ripley/Hicks for 2024
It's the only way to be sure!



  
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 1393 of 1442 (904062)
12-21-2022 8:02 AM


Classic George Carlin
I love this!

  
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 1394 of 1442 (904150)
12-22-2022 12:32 PM


Classic Adam Sandler

  
Phat
Member
Posts: 18262
From: Denver,Colorado USA
Joined: 12-30-2003
Member Rating: 1.1


Message 1395 of 1442 (904258)
12-24-2022 7:22 AM


Comix 2 Ponder
deleted

  
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