Slashdot Mirror
University of Twente NOC Fire Arson
Lars writes "A 26-year old man from Hengelo has admitted to deliberately setting fire to the Network Operations Centre of University of Twente, last Wednesday. The fire gutted two wings of the building and devastated one of the fastest networks in Europe.
The arsonist is an employee of the University, which must come as quite a shock to those involved.
The University released a short statement to the press.
It mentions that the total damage caused is roughly 40-50 million euros (about the same in dollars) and that the guy was caught last Friday, when he tried to set fire to one of the faculty buildings."
The arsonist is an employee of the University, which must come as quite a shock to those involved. The University released a short statement to the press
English text here.
The article basically says: he dun-it and he's an employee. What it doesn't say is why he dun-it, though.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Press release Twente Police 25 November 2002
Confession concerning fire UT
The 26-year-old man from Hengelo detained on Friday afternoon has confessed that he also started a fire on the grounds of the University of Twente on Wednesday morning 20 November 2002. In this fire two wings of one of the buildings on the grounds were completely destroyed and damages caused of between 40 and 50 million euro.
The 26-year old was detained Friday afternoon after witnesses had observed the start of a small fire in another building. On the directions of these witnesses the 26-year old could then be detained.
On the how and why of the arson on the 20th no further announcements can be made at this moment. The suspect will be undergo further questioning on this.
We can announce that the 26-year old is an employee of the University of Twente. The University staff has been informed of his confession by now.
He will be brought before the magistrate in Almelo today.
I believe that a lot of imporant free software sites were hosted by this university. Hence, its relevance here.
Stupid idiots.... the whole infrastructure was burnt down, and we're trying to rebuild it as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, www.utwente.nl is used as a central point of information towards students and employees. Which n00b put the link on slashdot, _AGAIN_? Thanks for ruining our just revived webserver, thanks for nothing!
Here's a summary of the statement in English (from Dutch):
--
A 26-year old man from Hengelo admitted sunday evening that he started a fire on wednesday 20th of November that incinerated 2 wings of the University of Twente building.
He was arrested after witnesses saw him at another small fire on campus.
Police can make no statements about why and how he did it. However the police confirms that he works at the University.
--
"Son, in a sporting event, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get" - Homer J. Simpson
Looks like the Scotty/Tkinetd pages are still up - I guess that they are hosted in another building, thank goodness.
Why put your servers in a building that burns that well?
They were already planning a new NOC, which should have become operational in a couple of months.
You guy's are really considerate: fire destroys network, they do all their best to get it somewhat back to work and then you slashdot it back into oblivion.
/. effect that nearby....)
:(
Don't worry about that. The temporary www.utwente.nl website is hosted at a temporary site just across the street (but it sits at the same subnet as some of our own servers, never had a
Though the arsonist takes a huge part of the blame, i think the university also made some faults. Why put your servers in a building that burns that well? If you have so much expensive equipment, you should consider everything, including arson! A few days ago they were happy that no asbestos was released because it was removed shortly ago. But isn't asbestos a fire retarder??
I think it's partly because of historical reasons. The building was built in 1974 and even back then it was already called the TW/RC building because it came with a computer room.
I believe the University is assured against fire, but I'm afraid that these researchers who lost years of their research in the flames have no other option that to do it all again
Somethign tells me this guy who burnt the place down, will not go to the tropics to meet woman. Instead he is going to prison and meet Bubba; the A$$ Plow.
Please keep your barbaric notions of prison to yourself. Prisons in Netherlands constrain the punishment to the one given by the judge, and do not employ cruelty like the American prisons, which do so in order to bring prosperity to the commercialized federal prison system
Their 'campus'webserver (http://www.snt.utwente.nl/) has some information on their network.
They installed a 55Mb uplink to a company nearby the night after the fire, but this was through a masquerading server. Thursday night they have started connecting all buildings to SURFnet (so they would have official IP-addresses and stuff), still through the 55Mb link. The campus was last on Friday. They are repeatingly asking the students not to download large files.
They expect to get a full 1Gb uplink tomorrow afternoon.
I don't know what they did with the Debian servers, though.
I wanted to point out that more complex trials are handled by three judges instead of one (I'm not sure about the exact rules on that matter). The punishment will probably depend a lot on his past criminal record, motivation & current regret/willingness to be treated. In the best case it might be low (community service). It has been proven that (more) jail-time will increase the chance of someone becoming a repeat offender, so we try to reduce jail-time in favor of more educational approaches (and reduce the load on our jails + save money).
I also want to point out that judges aren't elected, so they aren't forced to punish harder to appease the people* that believe the "Crime is increasing"-mantra that the media like to perpetrate (and have for hundreds of years. They complained about it during roman times and ever since.).
*True democracy is the average man deciding who is smart enough to govern them. It's not the average man making decisions on complex matters which they cannot (be expected to) understand in detail. The people should choose the goals and judge the elected men and women on the results they achieve. Politicians should be allowed to try and achieve these goals with a coherent set of decisions. That's why I don't like these micro-management elections or referenda for that matter. </rant> Sorry, had to get that off my chest.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi