Slashdot Mirror
The Institute for Backup Trauma
fief writes "John Cleese explains why tape based backup solutions will drive a manager insane in a viral marketing bit for Live Vault. (flash required) Produced by the Captains of Industry. Links provided via AdRants" Barely an ad, mostly just hilarious. Also contains Michael Dorn. Use as directed.
I saw this when it was mentioned on the LangaList a few weeks ago. Very funny, in my opinion, and it's good to see that this company doesn't take itself *too* seriously.
It's probably safe to say I'll remember them, so from a marketing point of view it would be a success.
If only they had hired Ron Jeremy
I mod this video -1 unfunny. Even though it is usually a pleasure to see Cleese, even he can't breath life into this clinker. The only positive thing I can say is that it had nice production values. I want my seven minutes back. That earlier story about electrically-assisted microbial fuel cells that can be used to produce hydrogen from organic material was a knee-slapper by comparison.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
If it's a credible institution, where's the machine that goes 'bing'?
Moderation +4
70% Funny
20% Overrated
10% Slashvertisment
It was moderatly ammusing, I enjoyed the part where their backups failed because the guy who had them drove off of a cliff, we all know that is a problem with a tape backup.
No smoking sigs indoors.
I have an idea for his next sketch, and it involves a smoking server, that features a flash animation, and less than NASA-like bandwidth available to it...
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Y'know, this file is taking forever to load. I only requested the dial-up edition, despite having a T1 line running in here. However, I'm still waiting for it to load about 10 minutes later.
I begin to wonder about the minds that brought us this piece.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Who said Denial of Service attacks are caused by malicious or malfunctioning computers?
/.
just post it on
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
It's gotta involve spam.... spam... spam, spam, spam
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
But it'll never be as good as getting perpendicular
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
John Cleese explains why tape based backup solutions will drive a manager insane
In the next episode, he explains why Slashdotted marketing solutions will drive a network manager to suicide.
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
No joke. His previous company was called Fred and Ted Entertainment, which made similar videos that can be found at http://www.fredandted.com
Their whole skit about "Ambulatory Mortosis" is one of their funniest.
http://www.fredandted.com/Mortosis/index.html
Congrats, Fred. You made Slashdot's front page. Now let's see if your servers can take the slashdotting...
Why's it streaming video *sigh*? I guess it's because of advertising and stuff but streaming video sucks! Can't stream properly when slashdottet, can't email to friends, can't save to harddisk. For all you (other) webmonkeys, here's a word of advice; make a non-streamable version so more people will enjoy this (perhaps) fine video.
Your sincerely
An unsatisfied 4 MB Internet user.
I've been sort of looking for a place to host online backups for some of my home machines. Anyone have recommendations of a cheap place that does this sort of thing? Preferably a place that can handle rsync...
So how many people clicked the third button?
BTW I had no trouble loading it. (Although I just got "loading...loading" when I clicked the 3rd button, is there anything else there?)
Twenties Retirement
Have you had any doubt after noting 'aspx' in that url?
. . . is when I open a website in a new tab, and the site resizes my whole FireFox window.
All for a $@#% Flash site, too.
At least it doesn't use frames, I guess.
A direct link to the movie: http://www.backuptrauma.com/video/FLV/LVCleese_LG. flv
F0 07 C7 C8
What I like about this is its appeal to non-technical staff, especially clueless decisionmakers who feel secure in their data because someone sold them a backup system ("Don't worry, it's fully automatic!")
Yes, the video is an advertizement for a firm selling a product, but who else would be motivated to create something that is both educational and funny enough to let issues be discussed in a non-threatening way?
No-one, especially PHBs, wants to admit that all the money they spent on a backup system can easily be brought to naught, so you have to ease them into the concept. This might help.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
this video is old..
i saw it sometime last year.
funny though.
John Cleese to do this video? I know the answer, money, but this is definitley strange. When was the last time you saw a celebrity like this involved in promoting some obscure IT product?
Because I *am* the kind of person who annoys those around me by shouting out continuity errors in theaters, here's what was in the hidden frame of the Clockwork Orange-like training video:
Congratulations
You have found the hidden frame. If you have time to look for things
like this, you have way too much time on your hands. You are
probably the kind of person who watches movies just to look for
continuity issues, shouting out, "Hey, that guy in the background is
wearing a different pair of cufflinks than he did two seconds ago!"
- as if anyone else cares. You tend to dream up elaborate conspiracy
theories that involve movie stars, politicians, and the logos of certain
brands of cereal. You used to stuff grasshoppers into soda bottles
and bury them in the playground during recess just to see how long
they survived without oxygen. You should definitely seek professional
help of some kind even before you check in to the
Institute for Backup Trauma.
Brandishing Dangerous Logic
I hope they have reliable backups.
Congrats, Fred. You made Slashdot's front page. Now let's see if your servers can take the slashdotting...
The Backup Institute webserver seems to be suffering from ambulatory mortosis.
John Cleese, James Bond's Q, is now perfecting gadgets for backing up servers?
I understand the need for backup, but I think this is going too far ...
As it melts from the /. effect
The earliest you could have seen it is February 2005, because I remember when my uncle finished it.
How could they be going too far? They damn well better have backups now!
Dear PowerMacG4:
I found the informational video on ambulatory mortosis to be quite traumatic as I realized the dramatized symptoms correspond to the symtpoms my wife has been having for last five years.
Of course, I am also relieved as this explains why it has been so difficult to bring her to orgasm. For a while, I was starting to question my manliness. I suppose once Prudential pays my life insurance claim, I'll go to Vegas with my new girlfriend to forget those 5 lost years.
Thanks, PowerMacG4. I owe you.
blog
Combining Kev Vance's comment about a direct link to the movie and nstrom's comment about using the Nyud.net mirror, I give you a high-bandwidth direct link:
L V/LVCleese_LG.flv
http://www.backuptrauma.com.nyud.net:8090/video/F
coding is life
I clicked it first, and since I was on the incomplete mirror, I hadn't heard the setup to the punchline, but Cleese yells at you, and asks why you clicked the "third button" when he'd specificly told you not to. Then he glares, waggles his finger at you, then his head explodes and balloons float out. It was mildly unsatisfying until I saw the balloons.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I remember in the late 70's in England my Father coming back from some training course or other raving about the films they had been shown starring John Cleese, and he was always hyped on the fact that Cleese actually made people learn through laughter. I can't remember specifics but Dad worked for Thorne EMI who were in the Security business.
Thanks for the direct link, Kev. Their server seems to be extremely slow right now, so I'd suggest using the Coral Mirror of the file.
I was told that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume from nine to eleven...
I watched the video and even signed up for the FREE poster they offered, which they NEVER sent me!!!! I wonder if my working for a competitor had something to do with that?
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Our backup runs at 100%... ...It's the restores that are a little spotty.
I'm not responsible for the backup solutions in our shop (we had CA, then Veritas) but really, how hard can it BE to put bits on tape?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Anyone got a torrent up?
I like the idea of online backup. However, this company's website appears to be powered entirely by clip-art models that attempts to lend an air of professionalisim but instead makes them seem like a bunch of assholes who have nothing better to do than watch internet porn, play with pens and read magazines while on the phone. And then they blow at least $3.50 on John Cheese (yes, that was his name before he changed it), marking a new low point in his career.
So - who are this company's competitors (ie: who else provides online backup to corporate and home users) - and who would you recommend?
I just realized that as I'm reading this thread, I'm sitting on two days worth of backup tapes.
*buffering* Where's Real's new technology when you need it?
Therefore, I am entirely disinterested in anything they have to say and have mapped *.backuptrauma.com to 127.0.0.1
Backups are for girls and End (L)users. John Cleese is a blast, though he much better at holding together a flying circus or being a (Lord) Farquad. 'Nuff said
No, sir, that was a series of clips from a much more famous movie. It's mostly famous within film geek circles, though, so I took it as something of an in-joke. You see the famous baby-carriage-falling-down-steps scene spoofed all over, like in The Untouchables and Brazil (directed by fellow Pythoner Terry Gilliam). And there's this one close-up of maggot-infested meat that reminds me of the high-resolution gross-out insets in old Ren & Stimpy cartoons. (There goes the rest of my hyphen allowance.)
BTW, the original was silent, and I don't think Beethoven's 9th was what Eisenstein had in mind!
Hey slashdot editor, small typo on the brief. You typed "Barely an ad" when you really meant to say "Barely Funny".
This should be classified as a jokoid with a heavy does of advertisement browbeating.
I hope Cleese got paid well for the damage done to his reputation.
OK. Who gave the livevault guys a bunch of mod points. Just because I got modded down, doesn't suddenly make the video or website funny.
I mean crap, we've got backup guys dropping like flies, running around literally waving their hands in the air howling like monkeys, laughing like maniacs and this is the best they can come up with?
Very Monty Python, so the choice of actor makes sense. I rank it up there with the BMW film series.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
You ever backed up into someone? It's quite shocking when the impact happens...... BAM!!!!!
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
What is the tonnage price for tin foil?
paintball
I think he has a nice little side business doing this. Our president was a Brit and the company had british roots so it seemed to make sense to hire him when we went through a name change. The way its told is they cooked up the rough script and then had him come up from LA in the afternoon. He rolled in, meet everyone, and then sat down, looked at the script and told them its was (insert fav brit slang here). He asked if he could take it back to the hotel to work on it a bit. He then came back the next day with the new script and they shot it in an afternoon. Word has it he got 50 grand for that. Nice bit of change for the work if you can get it.
trouble is, nowadaze he only does floppies.
On the other hand, tape has NONE of these flaws. Even if your tape drive explodes in a fireball from a lightning strike, the tapes will be fine, and can be read in another drive.
And yet here's a company trying to encourage people to migrate away from tape backups? Yes, they have a good offering -- remote backups. But that can (and should) be done with tape (possibly to disk first, but with a second copy on tape or other offline media).
Sorry to make the only on-topic post in the entire story, but I just couldn't handle the FUD.
One of the scariest moments of my life was formatting my company's 150GB Netware server. It died early one Monday morning: power supply and two disks in the RAID just vaporized. The UPS, mysteriously, was fine. This was a 60-person architecture office; architecture's nearly all electronic these days, so that server *was* the company.
I put in new drives and restored from the previous Friday's tape. One guy had done some work on Saturday, which he lost, but everything else was perfect. Numerous times I've gone back to a tape from months previously (grandfather-father-son scheme) to get one or two files, and I've never had one failure. So personally, I'm a big believer in tapes.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
And then you get a Windows BSOD and, at least for me, my browser crashed. Really.
I thought it was part of the show for a second, until the dialog came up saying Safari had crashed and would I like to submit a bug report.
Interestingly, Iron Mountain has invested in LiveVault according to the LiveVault website.
According to LiveVault's website and some Google research, LiveVault is in no way owned by CA (Computer Associates).
No offense, but where did you get that idea?
Here's a little tip I know.
:)
Now I'm on windows, but I use firefox so we should have a base to work with.
if you go to the address bar and type "about:cache" AFTER you've visted the site with the flash movie, it will show up in your cache index.
I've tried it, and not only did I find the SWF, but firefox also cached the link to the FLV file.
Typing in the FLV or trying to "save as" didn't work initially, so I created a simple html doc with 1 href to the link, and now I'm downloading the 26 meg FLV.
Ah look, it's done. Cheers
TIP: If you see "LVCleese_LG.flv" you're on the right track.
"Only in our American cars, which we know (from Hollywood) have a tendency to blow up without fail in a massive fireball as soon as they leave the road."
Unfortunately, none of them are SUVs.
now we just need an FLV player, or something to extract the mpeg4 from the FLV wrapper.
Redirect the tape device to /dev/null.
;-)
Backups performed in record time!
http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard.html
James
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
industry's first disk-based online data backup and guaranteed recovery solution for small and medium businesses...
One, this seems awfully expensive, and two, we've used Connected which has provided us with a reliable online data backup facility for a couple of years now. (And it's a fraction of the price). What's the difference?
Methinks they should be spending less money on John Cleese, viral marketing and dodgy marketing tactics and a bit more time providing a proper service at a decent price.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
> now we just need an FLV player, or something to extract the mpeg4 from the FLV
> wrapper.
Are there any Firefox extensions that let you save the content from amongst all the Flash and other rubbish?
Cleese is the new Q and all, but those 5 minutes of film don't pay the bills.
Eric is doing broadway shows of Holy Grail, Michael made money on that PBS shit, Gilliam is a director... that leaves Jones, who I guess is the poor one then.
It's a real shame when something so true hits so close to home that it immediately gets modded into oblivion as a troll.
Sad.
That's probably the most insightful post on this thread right now.
No Comment.
I was able to watch the first 1:44 of the clip from the host site, and then it just died. Neither of the caches given above work for me either.
Torrent! Torrent! Torrent!
Also, does anyone know how come mirrordot.org doesn't always mirror the links given in slashdot articles?
VLC plays it.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Are they affiliated with the United Appeal for the Dead?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
FLV Player