This actually happened to me one day. This user was in marketing (big surprise) and honestly had trouble finding where to plug the power cable into his laptop.
LUser: "Can you please increase the power to my LAN segment?"
Me: "Come again?"
LUser: "Please increase the power to my LAN segment."
Me: (amused enough to wonder what the hell he was on about this time) "Why do you need the power to your 'LAN segment' increased?"
LUser: "I'm printing a document and it comes out very light, lighter than everyone else's. Obviously my LAN segment is weak."
Me: (dude, it ain't your LAN segment that's weak) "Have you been watching 'Star Trek' again?"
LUser: "Beg pardon?"
Me: "Nothing.. let's go have a look. I'll bet your laptop went into a special 'Power-Save' mode that drops the power-output from the NIC."
LUser: "The what?"
Me: "The thing on your laptop that the LAN plugs into."
LUser: "Not the power supply.. that's OK."
Me: (very alarmed now, but not showing it) "No, the little blue cable with the clear plastic end on it."
LUser: "Oh.. ok."
So I walk over to the other side of the building to inspect his machine. After giving it a thorough "going over", I switch his printer setting from "Draft" to "Normal". Then I jiggle the network cable and pronounce the "LAN Segment" at full power...
You know, when I started my career in IT, I was the happy helpful SysAdmin. I would cheerfully respond to request after request because I loved helping my fellow employees have a positive computing experience.
I never understood why people always thought SysAdmins were grumpy and belligerent.
However, now after a decade of thankless shit-catching, I am that grumpy and belligerent SysAdmin who believes that users are a fucking plague of idiots set loose in Biblical proportions upon my otherwise Utopian computer networks.
Comments such as "your message titled 'Virus Warning - Happy New Year' had the word 'Virus' in it, so I deleted it to be safe, but then I opened the next one that had an attachment called 'Happy New Year'. Now my computer doesn't work right..." (honest-to-God true story) have made me tend to side with the machines while watching such movies as "Terminator" and "Matrix", and to create tools named for the Borg which enforce draconian administration of my networks.
Are we anti-social because of the machines, or because people are morons?
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Slashdot fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Slashdot screen for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 line troll from one message thread on the hard drive to another thread. 20 minutes. At home, on my Kur05hin account, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Slashdot, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this troll transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even fuckedcompany.net is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Slashdots, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Slashdot that has run faster than its Kuro5hin counterpart, despite the Slashdot's faster troll architecture. my.yahoo.com with 8 categories of Rueters Top News runs faster than this site at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Slashdot is a superior forum. Slashdot addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Slashdot over other faster, cheaper, more stable forums.
You'd have to have a fairly large spacecraft (read, MUCH larger than anything currently launching except the Shuttle which is largely empty cargo space anyway). The reason for the size is because the trip (even one-way) would take months and you need to keep the human crew fed, warm, and breathing. It would be quite easy based on spacecraft size alone to determine if someone were going for something more than an orbital joyride.
Even an old cloth-covered, tail-dragging, C-150 throttled back to near-stall would have no problem slicing through this little balloon without even noticing. You're in good shape.
Come on over to Santa Cruz, have a beer at Seabright Brewery, and then take a nice trip over to the local CostCo to reprovision and tour the campus that once housed SCO (back when they were just a nice little Win32 UNIX variant).
(sorry, but SOMEONE had to make the ObSCO reference)
I drink beer like I breath air, sit in front of a computer at least 10 hours a day M-F, and eat everything I can get my carpal-tunnel fingers on.
But I surf for hours every weekend (and during the week when I can sneak one in) and I continue to have an Adonnis-like body (or so my wife tells me).
Surfing is nice low-impact high-cardiovascular exercise. If you live in an area with cold water like I do, busting ass in 52-degree liquid for two hours is like humping a stair master in a gym for 5 (and it's a hell of a lot more fun).
There'd been a bunch of stuff going around on FD about it that I was under the impression that the two subjects were related since the effect was largely the same (send specially-crafted packets, port fills up, shuts down, requires reboot of switch).
I still say the release of exploit code is no big deal in this case. As you said, the combos were limited, so anyone with half a clue could figure it out without someone releasing code.
You don't read a lot, do you (or don't read the correct mailing lists)? The notification regarding this exploit went out some time ago. The discoverer worked with Cisco, releasing a notification regarding the exploit and some general information regarding cause and severity.
THEY HELD BACK ON THE EXPLOIT CODE UNTIL CISCO COULD DEVISE A PATCH.
Larger customers (ISPs, etc.) were taken care of in advance of the general public notification. Independent parties were no doubt already working on their own exploit code. It's quite common to release the patch and the exploit code at the same time; in fact, some parties prefer to release 0-Day exploit code... let's just be glad these particular folks didn't.
It seems to me that it's Cisco's way of preventing even worse problems by someone fat-fingering the upgrade themselves. It's a little bit slower, but in the end you're assured that you get exactly what you need for your systems. I find that extremely conscientious of Cisco.
Relax. This news has been going around the various vulnerability mailing lists for over a week now. Slashdot is late to the party (rightfully so).
The discoverer notified Cisco and everyone else, but held back on the exploit code until Cisco had a chance to work on it. Now that the word is out as well as the patch, don't waste time here when you should be patching your CATs (or looking for a new job).
The latest incarnation of the Asimovian TLoR was the positronic brain (another Asimov "invention") which powered Brent Spiner.. er, rather, "Data" in STNG.
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1-800-DEV-NULL
This actually happened to me one day. This user was in marketing (big surprise) and honestly had trouble finding where to plug the power cable into his laptop.
LUser: "Can you please increase the power to my LAN segment?"
Me: "Come again?"
LUser: "Please increase the power to my LAN segment."
Me: (amused enough to wonder what the hell he was on about this time) "Why do you need the power to your 'LAN segment' increased?"
LUser: "I'm printing a document and it comes out very light, lighter than everyone else's. Obviously my LAN segment is weak."
Me: (dude, it ain't your LAN segment that's weak) "Have you been watching 'Star Trek' again?"
LUser: "Beg pardon?"
Me: "Nothing.. let's go have a look. I'll bet your laptop went into a special 'Power-Save' mode that drops the power-output from the NIC."
LUser: "The what?"
Me: "The thing on your laptop that the LAN plugs into."
LUser: "Not the power supply.. that's OK."
Me: (very alarmed now, but not showing it) "No, the little blue cable with the clear plastic end on it."
LUser: "Oh.. ok."
So I walk over to the other side of the building to inspect his machine. After giving it a thorough "going over", I switch his printer setting from "Draft" to "Normal". Then I jiggle the network cable and pronounce the "LAN Segment" at full power...
Another satisfied LUser.
"They are dictated by the world of probablility and there can never be any certainty."
The one certainty is this: The CEO's secretary is going to be the biggest pain in your ass, support-wise.
You know, when I started my career in IT, I was the happy helpful SysAdmin. I would cheerfully respond to request after request because I loved helping my fellow employees have a positive computing experience.
I never understood why people always thought SysAdmins were grumpy and belligerent.
However, now after a decade of thankless shit-catching, I am that grumpy and belligerent SysAdmin who believes that users are a fucking plague of idiots set loose in Biblical proportions upon my otherwise Utopian computer networks.
Comments such as "your message titled 'Virus Warning - Happy New Year' had the word 'Virus' in it, so I deleted it to be safe, but then I opened the next one that had an attachment called 'Happy New Year'. Now my computer doesn't work right..." (honest-to-God true story) have made me tend to side with the machines while watching such movies as "Terminator" and "Matrix", and to create tools named for the Borg which enforce draconian administration of my networks.
Are we anti-social because of the machines, or because people are morons?
...or does this press release just seem like McBride is reduced to stamping his feet and saying "No! YOU'RE a poopy-head!"?
I wonder how he feels about playing Mussolini to Gates' Hitler? (and do I now get the Godwin award for this thread?)
I gotta get back to work on my cluster of Never-Will-Be-Licensed-By-SCO-While-I-Live multi-proc commercial Linux systems running 2.4.20 kernels.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Slashdot fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Slashdot screen for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 line troll from one message thread on the hard drive to another thread. 20 minutes. At home, on my Kur05hin account, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Slashdot, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this troll transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even fuckedcompany.net is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Slashdots, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Slashdot that has run faster than its Kuro5hin
counterpart, despite the Slashdot's faster troll architecture. my.yahoo.com with 8 categories of Rueters Top News runs faster than this site at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Slashdot is a superior forum.
Slashdot addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Slashdot over other faster, cheaper, more stable forums.
You'd have to have a fairly large spacecraft (read, MUCH larger than anything currently launching except the Shuttle which is largely empty cargo space anyway). The reason for the size is because the trip (even one-way) would take months and you need to keep the human crew fed, warm, and breathing. It would be quite easy based on spacecraft size alone to determine if someone were going for something more than an orbital joyride.
Cowbell Neal?
(I can't believe no one has said that yet)
Wow.. I've *actually used* one of those linux systems you mention.
However, now "man bload" returns an error...?
I have the same creepy feeling about a sudden increase of Linux "vulnerabilities" being released into the kiddie-wildz.
I am not a number! I am a free man!
And keep those goddamned giant balloons away from me!
oh.. wait.. wrong Prisoner.
sorry.
Even an old cloth-covered, tail-dragging, C-150 throttled back to near-stall would have no problem slicing through this little balloon without even noticing. You're in good shape.
Think "sigmoidoscopy"...
Come on over to Santa Cruz, have a beer at Seabright Brewery, and then take a nice trip over to the local CostCo to reprovision and tour the campus that once housed SCO (back when they were just a nice little Win32 UNIX variant).
(sorry, but SOMEONE had to make the ObSCO reference)
It's actually up to SCO to put out substantiating evidence. Nothing has come so far except FUD and wild, far-reaching claims.
Go surfing.
And not the web, either.
I drink beer like I breath air, sit in front of a computer at least 10 hours a day M-F, and eat everything I can get my carpal-tunnel fingers on.
But I surf for hours every weekend (and during the week when I can sneak one in) and I continue to have an Adonnis-like body (or so my wife tells me).
Surfing is nice low-impact high-cardiovascular exercise. If you live in an area with cold water like I do, busting ass in 52-degree liquid for two hours is like humping a stair master in a gym for 5 (and it's a hell of a lot more fun).
I can't find the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys on my TV...
Me? I'm bringing a shovel.
(and maybe a couple of wooden stakes)
There'd been a bunch of stuff going around on FD about it that I was under the impression that the two subjects were related since the effect was largely the same (send specially-crafted packets, port fills up, shuts down, requires reboot of switch).
I still say the release of exploit code is no big deal in this case. As you said, the combos were limited, so anyone with half a clue could figure it out without someone releasing code.
You don't read a lot, do you (or don't read the correct mailing lists)? The notification regarding this exploit went out some time ago. The discoverer worked with Cisco, releasing a notification regarding the exploit and some general information regarding cause and severity.
THEY HELD BACK ON THE EXPLOIT CODE UNTIL CISCO COULD DEVISE A PATCH.
Larger customers (ISPs, etc.) were taken care of in advance of the general public notification. Independent parties were no doubt already working on their own exploit code. It's quite common to release the patch and the exploit code at the same time; in fact, some parties prefer to release 0-Day exploit code... let's just be glad these particular folks didn't.
It seems to me that it's Cisco's way of preventing even worse problems by someone fat-fingering the upgrade themselves. It's a little bit slower, but in the end you're assured that you get exactly what you need for your systems. I find that extremely conscientious of Cisco.
Relax. This news has been going around the various vulnerability mailing lists for over a week now. Slashdot is late to the party (rightfully so).
The discoverer notified Cisco and everyone else, but held back on the exploit code until Cisco had a chance to work on it. Now that the word is out as well as the patch, don't waste time here when you should be patching your CATs (or looking for a new job).
sheesh.
if we make this like NASCAR, then all the rockets would only turn left.
You find a woman with a tail, she's probably one of these...
The latest incarnation of the Asimovian TLoR was the positronic brain (another Asimov "invention") which powered Brent Spiner.. er, rather, "Data" in STNG.