Misconfigured Webserver, Threats to Call FBI

the_harlequin writes "The Register is reporting that a city manager threatened to call the FBI over a misconfigured webserver. From the article: "The heartland turned vicious this week when an Oklahoma town threatened to call in the FBI because its web site was hacked by Linux maker CentOS. Problem is CentOS didn't hack Tuttle's web site at all. The city's hosting provider had simply botched a web server." "

Comments

Interesting study on incompetence

[DiveX]

The tendency of the average person to believe he or she is better-than-average is known as the "above-average effect," and it flies in the face of logic... by definition, it is impossible for a majority of people to be above average. The more incompetent someone is in a particular area, the less qualified that person is to assess anyone's skill in that space, including their own. Here is the summary of the study. http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=406

Re:Interesting study on incompetence

[dougmc]

It is perfectly possible for the majority of people to be above the mean [average] or modal [average] but impossible for the majority to be above the median [average].

Average usually refers to mean, as you're probably aware, but you're also right that people tend to be pretty loose with the definition.

In any event, my favorite example for when talking about this sort of thing is this --

Most people have more than the average number of legs.

... and it's not just most, but probably around 98%.

In case an explanation is required (it shouldn't be, but some need one), most people have two legs. A few people have one or zero legs, but nobody that I'm aware of has three legs (we'll leave that joke alone) so the average (mean) number of legs that people have is 1.98 or so, and most people have more legs than that. The median and the mode are both 2, but the average is 1.98 or so.

Ultimately, not everything has a nice Gaussian distribution.

And as for `incompetent, and unaware of it', I'd consider those results to be pretty much common sense, or at least they mirror my experiences. One thing I've learned over the years is that it's not always about what you know -- it's also about what you do when you don't know (know how to look it up!) and most importantly, to know when you don't know. It's true that most of the really smart people I know know lots of things, but they also know what they don't know.

As for Jerry Taylor, I can understand him not understanding the message he found on the web page. Yes, it's there in relatively plain English, but people do make mistakes. But really, if somebody responds to you politely and points out that they're not to blame and that somebody else is, perhaps you should at least consider that they might be telling the truth and check into that before continuing the tirade. And his `apology' (I use the term lightly here) at the end (the site is down, but I read it earlier ... it was `it's unfortunate that it took all these accusations to get to the truth' or something like that) ... if there was ever any doubt before, it tells us a lot about how Jerry responds to people who point out his mistakes. Jerry may have welcomed the publicity then, but I doubt he does now. I wonder if he even has a job anymore.

The PHB in question

[sethadam1]

The PHB in question is the city manager. According to him: "My door is always open and I answer all calls."

So... here's his info: City Manager Jerry A. Taylor, and his email address: citymgr@cityoftuttle.org.

Note that I am not "exposing" anything, all of this info comes directly from the publically available cityoftuttle.org website.

PS. I can't believe we fried centos.org but not cityoftuttle.org.

Re:The PHB in question

[JabberWokky]

Significantly more useful is this fellow's information. Mayor Lonnie Paxton can be reached at mayor@cityoftuttle.org. He may not be aware of how large this ugly little spat has spread and unaware of how inflated and incorrect his manager's knowledge of IT is.

--
Evan

Yelling!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you noticed on his bio at the website - he was a manager for E-Systems. This is the way E-Systems managers manage - the yell about everything - get absolutely nothing done but yelling - but yell they do - until someone comes along and fixes it for them. He is classic E-Systems - everyone in the defense industry know about them - and has had to put up with their management technique. Finally the rest of you can start to deal with them too...

Re:MSCE strikes again

[REBloomfield]

Or even an MCSE. If you're going to knock us, get the term right.

Re:Law Suit!

[James_Duncan8181]

Since CentOS are down, I have mirrored the whole exchage at http://jaduncan.net/centos-vs-city-of-tuttle.