Yeah, but that's just US contractors being all Anglo-Saxon about rules, codes and standards. Over in this hemisphere, they don't give a flip. (Hi)
Err.....not quite. That's the government being all Anglo-Saxon about rules, codes, and standards. Were it up to the contractors, they'd do the bare minimum to get the bid.
Good point, well made! I guess it's a question of whether the variation order for delays caused by the site not being ready is more profitable than sending the minions up to work among the live wires.
Only climate change through denial and greed from those Anglo-Saxons? Much more evil is on their record as well. However, it's a big world and there's plenty of shame and blame to go around!
Hey Chris, on another note, I've been removing a lot of new users the past couple of weeks, all clearly spam emails and junk email addresses, etc. Sometimes I'm removing as many as 40 or 50 a day. Today we've got 184, and there is no way I can see to remove them 'en masse' in the admin interface without clicking on the correct radio buttons over and over. It's really time-consuming. Do you know a faster way to do this? I'm also trying to ban the IPs as well, a lot of the time all the new users in one day originate from the same IP. However, banning the IP doesn't remove the user. I wish there were a way to do this faster, I'm spending a lot of time on it. On the new user page of the interface, the default is to take no action on the new users. Ideally, this should be set to 'reject'; then I can reject all of them with one click, after accepting any that appear to be real. Is there a way to change those defaults on the new user page to 'reject', and remove the email notification as well [untick that box]?
Great! now I don't have to tell TR I don't know where it is, except now I do. Hey TR it's over here!! By the way that happens to be my favorite piece of modern architecture!
If Chris can't help you out, maybe I could help share the burden. spoiler alert! You would have to teach me stuff and you know what that's like! ":O)
Well, I got it done yesterday, the number had worked its way up to 238 new users, so I didn't want to wait anymore...the situation would just get worse. It took a while, but it's OK now. I banned 2 IP groups that seem to be the main offenders, so perhaps that'll help now.
You might look at the options under 'Batch Update Users'. I don't know if there is something there that would make life easier or not. I'm half-tempted to just start banning Chinese IPs at the firewall, since that seems to be where a lot of this cruft is originating. I'm hesitant to do that, since I don't know how many legitimate Chinese users we have, and I don't want to punish the innocent. Also, since ISPs recycle IP addresses between users, banning a specific IP address isn't a good solution either, as again it results in 'friendly fire'.
Well, yesterday I banned 46.161.11.* and 195.154.254.* which both appear to be Russian. Of the 238 new user applications there were only 3 that did not originate from one of those two IP groups, so I doubt if we will lose many good users, if any. TBH, good applicants, using clearly real email addresses are few and far between. Most of the new user applications are just spam addresses. I'll take a look at the 'batch update' thingy and see if there's anything helpful there. Usually it's no real problem, but the past couple of days have been a bear to keep up with.
AFAIK, the Russian government pays hackers to "stir up trouble" in the West. Why we are worth their time is a mystery. However, refer to the preceding sentence.
