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UK Ministry of Defense Broken by Spoof Video
An anonymous reader submits "It seems that the Royal Dragoon Guards in Iraq decided to make a spoof of a Tony Christie video, which was recently re-released by Peter Kay for Comic Relief. However, the video file was over 50MB and it took out various e-mail systems, including those at RAF Strike Command. Despite the inadvertant denial of service attack, the MoD said the spoof was 'brilliant.'"
Given the media coverage some poor sysadmin is going to get completely screwed...
So, can anyone provide details of a location we can get the video from?
*thwock!* *groan* *crash* A horrible roar fills the cave, and you realize, with a smile....
It was pretty funny to. Lots of squaddies waving captured Iraqi AK47s in time to Tony Christie is always funny IMHO.
No one fell over though. (joke that americans wont get)
another Roadkill on the Information Superhighway
This story seemed to hit all the major news outlets in the UK. I dont really know why.
I have seen the video a few times as the news stations have been airing it too. Its mildly amusing and probably a more productive endevour for the squadies than shooting people (IMHO).
I do advise agaist searching for the vid though. Its one of those songs that gets trapped in your brain and remains there for the day.
Just reading this story has put it back into my head! Thanks!
"the MoD said the spoof was 'brilliant.'"
Which can not be said about the person who put a 50Mb attachment in his email.
The was a film of Nato soliders spoofing the Beach Boy's song "Kokomo" on big-boys recently and it suddenly disapeared, shame really as it was quite funny.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
they should've used YouSendit d:
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
Why is the thread spammed by nazi proxies?
Well, imagine for a moment that you're an angry male teenager midway through puberty. And imagine that you're too spineless to become a real vandal, or a skate punk or something.
One option that is open to you is to join an IRC channel and prattle on about how 31337 you are and how you will h4x0r t3h w3b.
Unfortunately, you don't have any coding skills. You can, however, download some network scanner with instructions on how to scan for ports that web proxies like squid use. Normally these should be closed to everything but internal networks, but nobody's perfect.
Once you've found one you update your browser settings to use said proxy and post stupid messages on slashdot. Since they're all coming from the ip address of the proxy server, the ip will be banned along with all the people who connect to the web with that proxy server. Then you go back to your IRC channel where you are the toast of the town for the next five minutes.
Sadly, deep down you feel sad and unfufilled and, as the months go by, you realise that you are unlikley to ever have sex in your entire life.
:wq
Brilliant
You had to be there
Let me guess - You're not from the UK, and you've never seen the video that this is a spoof of?
I got this in an e-mail, should clear some things up
1. Start at London Heathrow Airport.
2. Catch flight from London Heathrow to Dallas Fort Worth Airport.
3. Hire car at Dallas Fort Worth Airport.
4. Start going toward the "Airport Exit" on "International Parkway South" - follow for 0.2 miles.
5. Bear left onto the highway toward "Terminal East Parking" - follow for 0.3 miles.
6. Bear left onto "International Parkway North" toward "North Airport Exit" - follow for 2.9 miles.
7. Take the "Highway 114 west" exit toward "Fort Worth" - follow for 29.2 miles
8. Then continue on "US 287 North" - follow for 91.1 miles
9."US 287 North" becomes "Interstate-44 east" - follow for 0.7 miles
10. Take left fork onto "US-287 North" toward "Vernon" - follow for 104.0 miles
11."US 287 north" becomes "Avenue F (US-287)" - follow for 2.8 miles
12. Continue to follow "US 287 North" - follow for 104.9 miles
13. Take left ramp onto "Interstate 40 west" toward "Dumas" - follow for 7.8 miles
14. Take "Exit 70" onto "US 60 east" toward "Dumas" - follow for 0.5 miles
15. Take the "Buchanan Street" exit toward "Dumas/Pampa" - follow for 1.7 miles
16. Turn right onto "Old Route 66 (Interstate 40)" - follow for 0.1 miles
17. Arrive at the centre of "Amarillo, Texas"
That's the f*cking way to Amarillo
SO CAN EVERYONE PLEASE STOP SINGING IT NOW!!!!!!!
It's the "UK Ministry of DefenCe", not "Defense".
To be fair The Ministry of Defence Press Office handled this brilliantly. Any negative comment, or any hint of any negative comment about the troops would not, and could not be made. They could have brushed it under the carpet, but by commenting positively they have reinforced the morale of the soldiers, and further, reinforced their image as an approachable peacekeeping force, something which has been key to their low engagement rates in southern Iraq.
boakes.org
So... what your saying here is that when it happened, the MoD should have said.
"Shit, the mail servers are down. Quickly boys! Pack up and go home, we need the money being spent on our reason to exist to upgrade support equipment."
Slashdotting something before having it posted to Slashdot. Always be a step ahead your enemy!
I like Amarillo, TX. It's a good place to live, but it's not nearly as hick'ish anymore as folks in England want it to be when they get here after winning one of those radio station contests. I mean most duallys don't even have a 5th wheel hitch anymore, the belt buckles have shrunk well below the 8 inch radius, heck we only bury Caddilacs half way now.
At least the Message of the Day wasn't lost!
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
That cane is probably used for carefully probing the ground so he doesn't become a Spread All Over The Landscape soldier. I did notice the ones with cigarettes. Don't they know that's dangerous?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
badgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadger
badgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadger...
mushroommushroom
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/25/
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The mail servers went down for a couple of hours last Friday morning - mail couldn't be sent or received. About an hour into the outage, the sysadmins sent a Windows Messaging service message to all terminals saying that the problem was a 52Mb file called "Amarillo Video" (or something like that) which people were e-mailing internally and please don't do it any more! That was it, essentially - a short-term nuisance, nothing more.
As for why this happened - well, our computer infrastructure is pretty old and cranky. The systems that fell over were mostly head office ones in London - there are literally hundreds of separate corporate networks currently in use, held together by duct tape (or so it sometimes seems), so only a fraction of the MOD was affected in the first place. They're all due to be replaced by a shiny new Defence Information Infrastructure (http://www.mod.uk/dcsa/organisations/dii/) which will be all singing, all dancing, capable of dealing with huge files etc etc etc. (Also all Windows, but you can't have everything.)