Default Passwords!



  • I stayed at a popular hotel in Cairns, Australia recently and while i was waiting to checkout of my room i glanced at the computer the receptionist works at. I couldn't see the screen as it was recessed under the desktop that i was leaning on, but clearly visible stickytapped on the top of the keyboard was a single strip of paper. On this paper were the helpful words...


    "Username: receptionist Password: password"

     



  • Are you sure there wasn't another note saying "remember to turn caps lock off"?



  • @Eternal Density said:

    Are you sure there wasn't another note saying "remember to turn caps lock off"?

     Nah they probably just set it to lower for them...



  • Maybe they just removed all the caps lock keys. Because, face it, who uses them anyway?

    (Apart from *fish trying to put in their password.) 



  • Strangely enough, that's our receptionists password too!

     
    Although ours took it a step further and renamed the desktop shortcut for their telephone software to "PASSWORD" to remind them of what the password is, although I hate to think of how often they get confused as the password has to be entered in lowercase...

    I gave up with receptionists a long time ago. 



  • @Control_Alt_Kaboom said:

    Maybe they just removed all the caps lock keys. Because, face it, who uses them anyway?

    (Apart from *fish trying to put in their password.) 

    aRTHUR jAMES cAPPINGTON USES IT.  hE RESENTS THE CHARGE THAT CAPS' LOCK IS INEFFECTUAL OR UNNEEDED.
     



  • @Control_Alt_Kaboom said:

    Maybe they just removed all the caps lock keys. Because, face it, who uses them anyway?

             Option          "XkbOptions"    "compose:caps"

    Caps lock is evil, but it can be repurposed to fight on the side of good.



  • @asuffield said:

    @Control_Alt_Kaboom said:

    Maybe they just removed all the caps lock keys. Because, face it, who uses them anyway?

             Option          "XkbOptions"    "compose:caps"

    Caps lock is evil, but it can be repurposed to fight on the side of good.

    Caps Lock isn't evil. Just on the wrong side of the keyboard.

    Logitech wisely changed the shape of the Caps key on this slick black keyboard of mine: it's smaller and lower.

    Cooler would be if it sat next to the Outcast Three (PrtScr-SysRq / Scroll Lock / Pause Break), if the TAB key were put in its place, if the backslash/pipe key would be on the Tab's old place, and if the Enter key returned to its classic two-row size.



  • @dhromed said:

    @asuffield said:
    @Control_Alt_Kaboom said:

    Maybe they just removed all the caps lock keys. Because, face it, who uses them anyway?

             Option          "XkbOptions"    "compose:caps"

    Caps lock is evil, but it can be repurposed to fight on the side of good.

    Caps Lock isn't evil. Just on the wrong side of the keyboard.

    Logitech wisely changed the shape of the Caps key on this slick black keyboard of mine: it's smaller and lower.

    Cooler would be if it sat next to the Outcast Three (PrtScr-SysRq / Scroll Lock / Pause Break), if the TAB key were put in its place, if the backslash/pipe key would be on the Tab's old place, and if the Enter key returned to its classic two-row size.


    That's interesting... I use an AutoHotkey script to swap my capslock and backspace keys over. I find it's less annoying to accidentally hit backspace when I'm going for A than it is to hit capslock and accidentally type most of a line in uppercase. it also means i don't accidentally hit enter when i'm going for backspace, which can be very irritating IMO.



  • @dhromed said:

    Caps Lock isn't evil. Just on the wrong side of the keyboard.

    Logitech wisely changed the shape of the Caps key on this slick black keyboard of mine: it's smaller and lower.

    Cooler would be if it sat next to the Outcast Three (PrtScr-SysRq / Scroll Lock / Pause Break), if the TAB key were put in its place, if the backslash/pipe key would be on the Tab's old place, and if the Enter key returned to its classic two-row size.

     So what should happen to the layout of keybords other then the one you have, I have a two row enter button, and that is pretty standard for Danish keyboards, should we then have a three row enter key.. ?

     Always remember, that there are many different keyboards out there, and if you lack a feature, it is often an matter of looking at different keyboard products.



  • Keyboard redesign is weird. As I recall, during an HCI class at university we were shown a few arrow key layouts and asked if we could identify them. The BBC Micro has the oddest arrow keys I've ever seen, and so retarded that no games ever used them (despite it being a home computer that made room for dedicated arrow keys). Apple put them all in a horizontal line on the Macintosh, which was even more worthless than Acorn's layout. Also, the BBC Micro had ctrl and shift reversed compared to a PC, and it's confusing going back to that now :P (Plus it had a shift lock key (in addition to caps lock), the purpose of which has eluded me for over ten years. You thought caps lock was stupid enough?)

    I have an American friend who gets miffed by what the British did to the PC keyboard. Or maybe the Americans did it on our behalf as a practical joke? Left shift is inexplicably 1/3 width, although unlike the US, return/enter is on two lines. (I think this is actually normal for any European layout.) Personally, though, I have no issues with a tiny left shift.

    My laptop has a really stupid keyboard layout, something that looks like a blender job. The enter key is on one line, and left shift is full size, but " and @ are in the British PC layouts (Apple use the fractional left shift and two-row return in Britain but leave @ and " in the US positions. But then, Apple also give you a §/± key which is completely useless.) I realise I have to live with a shitty fn key where ctrl should be -- all laptops have this utter abomination (and I keep wondering why ctrl isn't working, or why I got ctrl instead of Windows). But our fractional shift puts \ between shift and Z, but the laptop's full-size left shift has displaced \: every time I want \, nothing happens.

    My old Mac keyboard had the ` key -- located where my PC has \ -- marked '\'. I'm used to that key being \ in Windows, the key is marked \ and I get ` instead. Eventually I got a knife and just carved a hole in the key to remove half of the offending symbol to make it look like `. And yes, the keyboard did have two keys labelled '\', one right, one wrong. Quality control FTW.

    The keyboard is a device of fundamental importance to any computer user, yet so many of them are useless. One design puts three power keys below delete/end/pg dn so I'd always hit something like sleep instead of pg dn. Thankfully, Windows 2000 didn't know what the keys were and it blithely ignored them. Another hopelessly retarded design split backspace in two, and made the left side be #. Any time I tried to erase something, I'd hit # instead. Then I'd decide I'd typoed and go to erase the #, getting another #. After a row of hashes my conscious mind would kick in and I'd stop and curse the keyboard.

    Apple recently decided to add an extra function key, so F13 is where F12 would normally be and all the spacing gaps were removed to make room. Why, why?

    I am going to keep AutoHotKey in mind, thanks. I might find a use for that. In the past, when my brain had spasmic malfunctions that made me keep pressing keys I didn't want to, I'd have to physically remove the rubber cup inside to deactivate the key. My new keyboard has these enclosed and non-removable so I'd have to remove the whole key cap. I've mostly cured myself of pressing ins and right-Win all the time, but now I can simply deactivate the key.

    The idea of swapping caps lock and backspace though, was insane but awesome. If I could do that to every system I run *and* knew that it would not mentally scar me for life, it would be fun to try that.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    The BBC Micro has the oddest arrow keys I've ever seen, and so retarded that no games ever used them (despite it being a home computer that made room for dedicated arrow keys). Apple put them all in a horizontal line on the Macintosh, which was even more worthless than Acorn's layout. Also, the BBC Micro had ctrl and shift reversed compared to a PC, and it's confusing going back to that now :P (Plus it had a shift lock key (in addition to caps lock), the purpose of which has eluded me for over ten years. You thought caps lock was stupid enough?)

    Caps lock folds all letters to upper case regardless of shift state. Shift lock acts as if the shift key were held down all the time, so you get the upper punctuation symbols as well as upper case letters. The BBC also had an undocumented mode commonly known as "shift caps", activated by holding shift and pressing caps lock, in which letters would be lower case when shift was pressed and upper case when it wasn't pressed (which was very useful for entering BBC BASIC programs, which required all keywords to be upper case).

    The PC keyboard is actually the one with the oddly placed control key - most older keyboards put it in the same place as the BBC, where caps lock is normally placed on PC layouts.

    I have an American friend who gets miffed by what the British did to the PC keyboard. Or maybe the Americans did it on our behalf as a practical joke? Left shift is inexplicably 1/3 width, although unlike the US, return/enter is on two lines. (I think this is actually normal for any European layout.) Personally, though, I have no issues with a tiny left shift.

    Americans rarely realise that they have a 101 key keyboard, while most of the world has a 102 key keyboard. The US keyboard has a larger shift key instead.


    The idea of swapping caps lock and backspace though, was insane but awesome. If I could do that to every system I run *and* knew that it would not mentally scar me for life, it would be fun to try that.

    I still say that it's far more useful to repurpose the caps lock key as compose (or one of the other keys missing from the PC layout that normally requires chording to obtain). 



  • @asuffield said:

    Caps lock folds all letters to upper case regardless of shift state. Shift lock acts as if the shift key were held down all the time, so you get the upper punctuation symbols as well as upper case letters. The BBC also had an undocumented mode commonly known as "shift caps", activated by holding shift and pressing caps lock, in which letters would be lower case when shift was pressed and upper case when it wasn't pressed (which was very useful for entering BBC BASIC programs, which required all keywords to be upper case).

    Well, at least I have a reasonable indication that you're British. Shift-caps was, as I recall, a documented feature of the Master that could be set in the CMOS. I think I configured at least one Master that way since I did lots of coding on a Master. It's also how PCs behave, but Mac OS does not allow this reversal. I know what shift-lock does, but I still consider it useless. All it gave you was a bonus LED that would help indicate when the OS was sat waiting (often, fatally ;) on a full buffer. Sound, fine. Printer not switched on? I hope you saved your work before asking to print ...

    @asuffield said:

    I still say that it's far more useful to repurpose the caps lock key as compose (or one of the other keys missing from the PC layout that normally requires chording to obtain).

    That depends on your OS. I don't have compose functionality in Windows, just Microsoft's "International" keyboard layout atrocity. For some reason, the "International" layout is just the US (!) layout with a variety of useless ways to not enter what you expected. So here in Britain, it means that @ and " are reversed for a start, before it starts stealing all my other symbol keys. I am not sure what part of "international" the US chooses to believe in, but it seems to lead them to conlude that either a) only people in the US need to enter accented characters [1] or b) the whole world uses the US keyboard layout.

    [1] I would qualify that with "outside of their own locale" but even US English needs accents for words like "résumé", but the US keyboard layout does not support this. In Britain, at least I have alt-gr e for é :-) But after that, it's back to win+R, charmap, enter ... Even Character Map is stupid, and only shows you Unicode characters defined in the current font. If you don't know which font it ended up in, you're hosed. (Well, you can search the Web for a page that has the character on ...) The Mac OS X Character Palette is far better, if instead extra unwieldy ...



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    [1] I would qualify that with "outside of their own locale" but even US English needs accents for words like "résumé", but the US keyboard layout does not support this. In Britain, at least I have alt-gr e for é :-) But after that, it's back to win+R, charmap, enter ... Even Character Map is stupid, and only shows you Unicode characters defined in the current font. If you don't know which font it ended up in, you're hosed. (Well, you can search the Web for a page that has the character on ...) The Mac OS X Character Palette is far better, if instead extra unwieldy ...

    I have a little tool for this, so I can tap Ctrl, and then e", and ë appears. £ æ ƒ

     



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    My laptop has a really stupid keyboard layout, something that looks like a blender job. The enter key is on one line, and left shift is full size, but " and @ are in the British PC layouts (Apple use the fractional left shift and two-row return in Britain but leave @ and " in the US positions.
    Don't get me started on laptop keyboards - I've got an Acer, which has mostly sane keyboard layout, except for one thing - some bright mind decided to move the <> key (I guess this is the the | key on British keyboard) from it's place next to the left shift to the other side of the keyboard, next to the right shift. Now every time I want to use shift, I end up with <<<<< instead, and when I want to use < or > nothing happens...
    Or the Thinkpad keyboards, which still don't know about the Windows and Menu keys, or the HP laptop keyboards with their single-line Enter...



  • @Spikeles said:

    I stayed at a popular hotel in Cairns, Australia recently and while i was waiting to checkout of my room i glanced at the computer the receptionist works at. I couldn't see the screen as it was recessed under the desktop that i was leaning on, but clearly visible stickytapped on the top of the keyboard was a single strip of paper. On this paper were the helpful words...


    "Username: receptionist Password: password"

     

    And still, I have yet to see a "computer movie" where the "genius hacker" didn't do something weird and in direct violation of the laws of mathematics rather than check the sticky notes on or under the keyboard.
     



  • Did you hear that? Sounded like a million IT workers sighing.



  • I actually knew one person who used the caps lock key properly. I was working in a government job with a guy who was in IT before I was born. Yet somehow, he never learned to type with more than two fingers. Whenever he needed capital letters (at the start of a sentence, in a password, etc.) he'd hit caps lock, the letter, then caps lock again. He was really fast at it, too, it was pretty cool to watch.



  • @Irrelevant said:

    That's interesting... I use an AutoHotkey script to swap my capslock and backspace keys over. I find it's less annoying to accidentally hit backspace when I'm going for A than it is to hit capslock and accidentally type most of a line in uppercase. it also means i don't accidentally hit enter when i'm going for backspace, which can be very irritating IMO.

    I use a similar on my PC to disable the insert key, it used to drive me mad when I accidentally pressed it instead of delete while I was typing.



  • What I really hate about laptop keyboards is that on larger laptops (starting at 17") they still use the same layout as for small laptops. You end up with a bunch of empty space on either side that could be used to allow a more sensible layout.



  • @kettch said:

    What I really hate about laptop keyboards is that on larger laptops (starting at 17") they still use the same layout as for small laptops. You end up with a bunch of empty space on either side that could be used to allow a more sensible layout.

    I don't know. Apple have the same problem starting at 15". My own 14" notebook has the speakers at the back and the keyboard further forward, so the keyboard is the full width. Apple have the speakers at the side and keep the keyboard narrow. The only keyboard I can forgive for having a cramped, messed-up layout is the one on my Psion Revo, because it's so small. No-one else has any excuses :-P



  • 15,4" widescreen laptops have this problem, but all 17" models I've seen had a full-featured keyboard with separate numeric keypad...



  • @dhromed said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    [1] I would qualify that with "outside of their own locale" but even US English needs accents for words like "résumé", but the US keyboard layout does not support this. In Britain, at least I have alt-gr e for é :-) But after that, it's back to win+R, charmap, enter ... Even Character Map is stupid, and only shows you Unicode characters defined in the current font. If you don't know which font it ended up in, you're hosed. (Well, you can search the Web for a page that has the character on ...) The Mac OS X Character Palette is far better, if instead extra unwieldy ...

    I have a little tool for this, so I can tap Ctrl, and then e", and ë appears. £ æ ƒ

    You have a tool that turns ctrl into the compose key. 



  • Apparently so.
     



  • @Eternal Density said:

    Are you sure there wasn't another note saying "remember to turn caps lock off"?

     

    No, that one was on the monitor in the cupboard, next to the one saying "Place pie here".


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