A typical conversation with a Chinese PCB manufacturer - a gerber mystery

I worked for a couple local department store chains as a kid that ran that policy. They're long gone now. The CEOs are doing fine and the stockholders made some money so big deal, they were total amateurs compared to Wal Mart who is much better at it.

Eh, I dunno 'bout China but here in the US IT in big companies live their totally own life. They are constantly trying to somehow justify their existense so they introduce new and new weirdos non-stop up to the point to making entire infrastructure unusable for anybody but office lemmings who only know Windoze with its Office and Excel. Engineering stuff is a minority and it is not them who those higher-ups would listen to so everything is seemingly OK for them.

It doesn't matter that my Altium machine locks its display every 5 minutes so if I stop to think for a while I end up with a locked screen. Thanks to our IT it takes not just entering password but also getting a one-time code in an SMS sent to my phone and entering it into the login screen to unlock. It happens almost every 5 minutes because it is not even my primary machine, it is behind the KVM that is constantly switched to my primary Linux desktop and back...

They don't care and don't listen. Office lemmings don't use anything else except their Windoze PCs and they don't have any problems with the files they use so everything is OK, period.

Son, what you need is a USB mouse jiggler. Sold widely, e.g.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Some companies aren't worth working for.

Ya gotza be pretty lazy to waste $18+tax+shipping fur that doozie...

It is interesting :) Would it mess up with my primary mouse when I'm working on something? Sometimes unintended shift just of 1 pixel may be quite annoying...

Already purchased one, will try it Monday.

BTW, thank for a suggestion -- I couldn't even think such weirdo exists :)

Why so? Seems like a no-brainer to me. Or maybe you didn't read Sergey's post?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Do it in software. There are a bazillion programs that do it. For example, this one's free:

Assuming that your IT droids haven't locked down your computer so hard that you can't install software, which apparently Sergey's have. It's a very common experience for folks who are still in the corporate world.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Which makes it all the more entertaining to imagine all of the interesting things that could be hiding inside the USB mouse jiggler... USB stacks tend to have been tested only with valid responses from the device plugged in, so they often can be made to do funny things when they receive things that the standards didn't tell them to expect.

Some IT departments also disable the USB ports, and put locks on the case. I guess they can still find PS2 keyboards and mice somewhere.

What does it do when you send a zip file that decompresses to a petabyte of zeros?

Some places I worked, the USB ports were not functional. You can transport a lot of information via USB stick in an amazingly small size. No, USB ports were never a friend to corporate security or any other security for that matter.

le, this one's free:

I don't see the problem. He has Altium installed, which is not a typical Wi ndows program. If he cannot get support from management, I'd quit and come back as a subcontractor with a personal copy paid for by management and per mission to use it on other projects. Then he can add other companies to his customer base. Might as well. There is no company employment loyalty these days.

Our security morons will come around and inspect the lock timeout. If it's above 5min, you get major dinged (intentional and flagrant rule violation). To demonstrate just how moronic they are, they announce days ahead of time when they're coming around. For some reason, I'm never in my office at that time.

You can't make up this stuff. I hear Scott Adams actually gets most of his material from fans who write to him.

They disabled USB storage devices but USB ports are not locked. I use IOGEAR

I can't use those devices that fool optical mouse as it is my only mouse/keyboard that I also use for my Linux machine and dev board. My KVM is a smart one that emulates display and mouse/keyboard on all ports so when I switch from Windoze it thinks I'm still there just don't do anything.

That USB Mouse Jiggler seems to be the right thing, I've received it today from Amazon and will test it Monday. It would be a huge annoyance reducer if it worked. Will see it Monday.

As if you can't do it thousand different ways...

It fails. Their "security" software crashes and it fails. Nobody knows why it crashed so they start bothering support droids of the company that sold them that software. Everybody is busy, all 10+ layers of management writing nice reports on their heroic efforts to resolve an issue to each other.

Just had the same issue today. The question was which side do you want the silks screen on? Well it's in the readme file, lol.

Cheers