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THIS Stuff is The best series - 3 episodes only -> http://www.thewebsiteisdown.co...

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

Three times?

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

Got to love those sales guys:

http://thewebsiteisdown.com/excel_hell.html

Heck, you can even surf the internet in Power Point. (ep#2)

One user account in one RA was compromised.
The attacker created himself a new userID (with a new username and password) on the compromised user account.

In lay terms, a sales rep login was compromised, and used to issue the certs. And we all know what sales guys are like, don't we. ;-D

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

See Episode 2

One of my favorites is http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/ featuring "The Sales Guy vs. The Web Dude" as web dude tries desperately to get his important work (gaming) done while assaulted on all sides by rampant incompetence. And the email from the boss, "whatever happens, DON'T REBOOT THE SERVER!" (of course that emailed was conveniently "not found").

Here's the orig WWW site. Bonus it appears that they have been busy lately and have 2 more episodes avail.

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

If they use/provide company vehicles, would they test potential employees to see if they know how to change brake pads or replace a timing belt?

Of course not. Drivers are already tested and given a driving license if they are qualified to use the equipment. They wouldn't give out a company car to someone without a driving license. As there is no standardised test for IT competency they make their own.

You have a point that the sysadmins should be preventing most of the problems but if you are hiring someone to use a computer on your system 9-5, mon-fri then you probably want them to know, for instance, the difference between Excel and a spreadsheet pasted into Powerpoint. Also the user is usually the weakest link in the security chain, or at least the hardest to secure. No matter how well you lock a system down, a user will need access to the data which they are working on. And if they have access to that data then they have the ability to fuck it up. If you try to lock the system so that the user can't do ANY damage then you may as well turn it off and get them to work on paper.

When all's said and done it's a balance - the sysadmins needs to stop as many problems as they can - proxies to stop people downloading inappropriate files, email filters, users not running as admin etc - but if the company is hiring people to use their computers all day every day then they should be looking for people with the ability to use them. Or at least identifying the areas where they lack knowledge and teaching them.

(this comment was only supposed to be a line or two...hope I didn't ramble too much!)

For your enjoyment

Oh, and further, The Website Is Down

"I did them both, so you should be good. Later."

Easy: Excel Hell

it took some phone calls to stop the censorship.

Trust me, if it was government censorship you were experiencing, it would take an act of god to stop the censorship. Not a few phone calls from Mr. TheWebSiteIsDown.

do IT employees do anything they aren't supposed to, like playing Halo when they're supposed to be working for instance. Geez, how insulting.

Does ANYBODY ever fairly calculate damages? Sometimes one has to wonder how they calculate these numbers they pull out...

SETI costs will not be as high as the legal burden on the system; sure the FA was missing some of the details but having seen some college IT workers who largely come from the student population and few stick around-- it doesn't surprise me they'd have some issues. Some of the top guys are just the kids who didn't leave.

As far as porn on a staff computer-- don't get me started. I'd say that is quite common; sometimes its not intentional... http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/ strikes true in too many ways (on both sides of the IT/staff.) We have a situation where staff are encouraged to take laptops home, answer personal emails etc-- to blur the line between home and work so they can get unofficial worktime from people without them realizing it. Being on call with a cell phone without pay... etc. This clever movement to sucker employees with these kinds of "benefits" also has the side affect in that they think of the stuff as also being THEIRS-- or loaned; again, business tries to blur professionalism and friendship/family to get the best of both worlds.

I did IT for a bit. I found porn. The MEN who blurred the line the most also had the stuff or more of it and not really hidden either. I also found those with laptops INCREASED this tendency. If its partially THEIRS then they treat it as such. I think it is fair for them to do this simply because I strongly oppose the intentional blurring going on but a contradictory professionalism that comes up when the darker sides surface. Don't want abuse? don't "loan" your "family member" hardware for their personal use.

My IT job was harder because of these modern management methods; people were extremely upset if they couldn't run what they wanted to, have a laptop to take home, surf anywhere (from any location,) etc.

An oldie but a goodie...

The website is down

If you haven't been there, then this is for you! http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

....all I can think is how lame the Sun salesman must have been.

Yeah, Chip sucks at computer. emailed from my Macwheel.

Program Manager: What the hell is happening?! Why is the website down?!
Web Programmer: It's the users, sir, one of them put dashes in their SSN on the form!
Program Manager: I don't have time for this mumbo jumbo geek jargon ... what are you trying to tell me? This is an emergency, accounting said our money is leaving!
Web Programmer: Well, you see the dashes are inside the string.
Program Manager: Inside? How is this possible?
Web Programmer: Well, the user must have paused to push the dash key, sir.
Program Manager: So if the dashes are inside the string, we have to get them out. Is there someone we can pay for this service?
Web Programmer: I'm afraid it's too complicated for that. But maybe if we had it write to a file and one of us kept refreshing a text editor on that file ... we could remove it and then it could read back the file after waiting for a few seconds. We would have to hope that more users don't come while we are performing emergency dash extraction.
Program Manager: Goddamnit! Why didn't testing find this?!
Web Programmer: Well, they did but to fix this bug we just removed the dash keys on their keyboards.
Program Manager: Can we do that to each of the users?
*IBM employee enters with massive box labeled "Enterprise SSN Dash Extractor"*
IBM Sales Rep: Gentlemen, let IBM solve all your SSN problems for a mere $2,000 per site license!

There's no arrange by penis.

-Peter

I bet the website is down http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/ heh heh!

Yes, it's made up, but it's one of the most funny tech support bits ever made! http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

Maybe they should try rebooting their PC three times.

Perhaps the most hilarious thing I ever found on Slashdot.. http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

This might entertain them. http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/

yes, but how many times did they reboot it?

http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/
 
Unfortunately, while funny, this won't improve my karma.

How many times did you reboot? You need to reboot the router three times.

I don't want to hear little pings and murmurs from a PDA next to my bed because some VP couldn't find a file for tomorrow's presentation, or a fscking file server is down and Julie in accounting can't get to it. All that can wait until the morning.

uhm, then just turn off the e-mail alert function. People could still call you if there's an emergency, and if there's an emergency e-mail might be helpful (e.g. you can read the exact error messages that your monitoring SW is sending out rather than having "Chip from Sales" tell you that the website is down: http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com./ If you're out at dinner, or similar, you might appreciate being able to not have to run home to get to a computer just because someone calls you with what they think is an emergency.

You can have my crackberry when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

Good laugh (not related to the story, just the parent post:) http://www.thewebsiteisdown.com/salesguy.html