Comment On The Killing Job

trtrwtf:

Coyne:

It's like...it's like building Mars-shot navigation around an advanced scientific calculator.

Why not? It worked for the moon shots...

And the Space Shuttle.

Oddball:

Imagine sending an article to a science journal:

"As the following image from the simulation proves:
[simulation written in PostScript that takes 2 years to run]"

That would never pass peer review. Images don't "prove" anything, they only "illustrate" or "demonstrate".

Watson:

geoffrey:

Hell is paved with good intentions.

Translation: good intentions alone aren't worth spit - they need to be backed up with deeds to count for anything.

Not necessarily. Except for the motto having been misquoted - it should be: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions", it is often taken to mean that a lot of really bad stuff is done in good faith. It's often used as a defence against meddling busybody do-gooders who interfere in things a lot and break them.

Although your interpretation works as well.

Ummm... Maybe going off on a tangent here, but where does the sys admin fit into all this? Surely s/he would have final say and the authority to keep all IT resources working and used correctly - and then I'd like to see Mr. "the world revolves around me" say or do anything.

The fact that the sys admin wasn't made aware of the 'fault' was probably the first mistake Bob made!

Sounds far more like he was competing with everyone else for scarce funding and his little print job was just a way of holding up other people's applications causing some to miss the deadline, increasing the likelihood of his project being approved.

I mean honestly, though it may be possible to use Post Script to perform some computation, how are you going to get the result? Print it out then take a photo of each page sitting on a wooden table, submit it to a cloud based OCR service.

Son, we live in a world with print servers, and those print servers need to be guarded by word documents with writing. I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom... We use words like postscript and code; We use these words as the backbone of a life spent number crunching something... I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the very blanket of print services I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you and stopped cancelling my print jobs. Otherwise, I would suggest you setup a print server and buy your own toner cartridges.

geoffrey:

centurijon:

geoffrey:

evilspoons:

geoffrey:

Surely the real problem here is that this guy just figured he could cancel someone's job without bothering to discover the nature of that job or its priority. That's much like someone coming along and disconnecting your terminal while you work. I believe that kind of behaviour should result in you being marched from the building. There is a reason why everyone else was hesitant around the printer - they knew cancelling the job was wrong.

If anyone should be marching down to HR it should be the guy whose job was cancelled without warning. Oh you can add ignoring warning signs to the charges too.

Seriously? The printer isn't FOR running computational jobs, it's for printing. There's a reasonable expectation of availablility for a resource like that. If it's sitting for hours doing nothing, you can safely assume it's broken because no pages are being printed by a device whose sole purpose is to make pages have toner on them.

You are absolutely correct, I agree with you. We have the benefit of understanding the situation however, the guy who just cancelled the job did not.

An unnamed person had submitted a job to the internal reader. You don't just cancel it unless you know it's purpose and it's priority. you just don't. In this case the guy who submitted the job was in the wrong it turns out, but the ends do not justify the means. "Bob" was equally in the wrong here for acting like a maverick and just pulling the switch. In certain situations that might result in disciplinary action. Notice that his co-workers understood this which is why they didn't take any action themselves.

There are times when you need a maverick, or at least someone to take initiative in a poor situation.

Having a line of people waiting for a print queue (like sheep) is completely unacceptable - especially if the non-print job is expected to take two days to run. The article stated that he tried to find the person responsible for the print job and that person was missing. In that situation I would not have even hesitated to cancel the job either.

Sharing is caring, and number crunching on a printer is stupid.

I disagree, it's far better to hold off and wait for management to deal with the situation then cancel a job you know nothing about which could potentially bring down the entire company. Hell is paved with good intentions.

Indeed, and every sane manager would see that clearing up the situation would cost more than two days, and thus everyone should just continue to work unproductively. Solitaire and Minesweeper are installed for a reason.

geoffrey:

Wow you would have thought I was advocating world war 3 by the tone of some of the responses! O.K. lets just all calm down and rewind.

The central issue here is that the *printer* is company property, not Bob's property. The job itself is also technically company property since we can assume the submitter is a company employee. Whether to cancel a piece of work - an act which cannot be undone after the fact - therefore should be a management decision, not "bobs"

So should be the decision to occupy the printer for two days. Or maybe even to print something, since after all, its company property, not the property of the guy who wants to print something...

boog:

geoffrey:

...it's far better to hold off and wait for management to deal with the situation then cancel a job you know nothing about which could potentially bring down the entire company. Hell is paved with good intentions.

Bullshit. Say, let's all stop calling it "a job you know nothing about", shall we?

1) The job was only a few bytes.
2) It had been running for almost an hour.
3) It hadn't started printing yet.
4) It was holding up everyone else.

On any normal print server, this would be an error state. And if cancelling a tiny blocking long-running non-printing print job could potentially bring down the entire company, you've really got bigger issues.

Indeeed. A tiny *PRINT* job won't. When cancelled, it is trivial to resubmit it. No big deal for anyone.

QJo:

The fact that there's a shouty message attached to the terminal might also have something to do with it. From the tone of the behaviour of Bob, I suspect that he may have actually held a position of some seniority in the company, and therefore able to wield considerable responsibility, for example, the knowhow and chutzpah to make executive decisions about whether to kill print jobs that are holding up productivity.

Given the following heated discussion with that guy when bob stormed to his desk, I strongly agree with that one. The other guy was certainly on the same "level" as Bob was, and both were certainly not at the end of the foodchain.

Wasnt much more easy if the programmer just put a broken sign in the printer. Then people will not try to use it and complain.
He is not much smart besides postscript (anyone that can program basic, can program fortran, can program postscrip also, just must be a fool to waste time is this kind of shit), i it was, then he will prevent people from using the printer, perhaps changing network port, and ductaping its inputs and outputs, and puting a sign, now it is broken and cannot be used anymore, then take away kboard and monitor, and put a sign dont touch. Perhaps even taking the printer to his room was the best response first.

ThePants999:

this sentence:

Of all the things the problem that wasn't his was, being not his problem wasn't one of them.

Seriously. FTW. That sentence was the most hillarious part of the whole story.

FTFY

From the sysadmins viewpoint
1. The user was wasting everyone else's time & costing the company money as they waited for their printouts.
2. Company equipment is meant to be used for the purpose for which it is provided - not days-long computations on a PRINTER! Misuse of company property is a matter to be taken up with a manager.
3. Printers usually have slower processors and less RAM than a PC - wtf is a user doing wasting their own time writing a slow postscript program to crunch numbers that could be done more quickly and productively on equipment (a PC for example) that is MEANT for the job.
4. The user needs a lesson in communications and the meaning of the word SHARED in shared resource.
5. The sysadmin says DONT f*ck with the equipment. You don't get to do your own PC programming - if you run programs that aren't approved then out the door you go...

QJo:

Watson:

geoffrey:

Hell is paved with good intentions.

Translation: good intentions alone aren't worth spit - they need to be backed up with deeds to count for anything.

Not necessarily. Except for the motto having been misquoted - it should be: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions", it is often taken to mean that a lot of really bad stuff is done in good faith. It's often used as a defence against meddling busybody do-gooders who interfere in things a lot and break them.

Although your interpretation works as well.

"- it is often taken to mean that a lot of really bad stuff is done in good faith.
- It's often used as a defence against meddling busybody do-gooders who interfere in things a lot and break them."

What difference?

GettinSadda:

dpm:

geoffrey:

There is a reason why everyone else was hesitant around the printer - they knew cancelling the job was wrong.

geoffrey:

Notice that his co-workers understood this which is why they didn't take any action themselves.

You are assuming that. I think it equally, if not more, likely that they hung back because they did not want to get yelled at by a socially-inept bully.

Unfortunately, this story includes two socially-inept bullies

Yeah, the asshole who doesn't know that printers are used for printing and his supervisor.

geoffrey:

Let me throw a curve ball at you. What if the job readout was in error and the job was actually 50 megabytes of important company report - a report which management urgently needs to close the quarter?

Resize images drastically if it takes hours to print the first page.

CoSYG:

QJo:

Watson:

geoffrey:

Hell is paved with good intentions.

Translation: good intentions alone aren't worth spit - they need to be backed up with deeds to count for anything.

Not necessarily. Except for the motto having been misquoted - it should be: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions", it is often taken to mean that a lot of really bad stuff is done in good faith. It's often used as a defence against meddling busybody do-gooders who interfere in things a lot and break them.

Although your interpretation works as well.

"- it is often taken to mean that a lot of really bad stuff is done in good faith.
- It's often used as a defence against meddling busybody do-gooders who interfere in things a lot and break them."

What difference?

I'm sorry, beg your pardon - what's your point?

boog:

Zylon:

C-Octothorpe:

Meh, nothing other than vitriol ever comes from your cake-eater.

And yet, you're a troll-feeding attention-whoring sub-scum who actively contributes to the sheer awfulness of these forums. You could get flattened by a city bus tomorrow, and not only would your absence go unmourned, the universe would be a better place for it.

C-Octomatopoeia may be a troll-feeding attention-whoring sub-scum, but at least he's funny. And I'll take funny over hopeless whining any day.

You are not being part of solution, but part of problem. When is the last time you r posting anything relevent, booger?

Not Frist:

Can't we all just get along? Sniff. Seriously though, what a great WTF. The guy saying that the 'print' job should not have been canceled is clearly a fucking idiot. If that guys wants to respond to me, don't. I don't argue with children. BTW, fuck you idiot. That is all.

The hatred in this thread makes me feel all tingly.

Witness the power of this fully configurable print server!

I can't tell if you're retarded, a troll, or a highly intelligent Wally honing his art of staunchly defending an absurd decision which involves you not working.

"I couldn't do any work boss, the printer was tied up and I was waiting on a management decision to fix it. You didn't want me to not respect management, did you?"

boog:

The Mr. T Experience:

All you nerds are a bunch of jerkoffs, and you deserve every punch you've ever received.

Oh boy! Yet another TDWTF-trollmeme! I can't wait to read this same comment tomorrow!

There you go!

C-Octothorpe:

It's a delicate balance of stupidity and sincerity, really. You can't make it too obvious because fellow posters will see it for what it is and ignore it, and this includes follow-up responses. If it's too stupid or outlandish, he wouldn't get any bites.

Honestly, if you want to piss people off on the internet, it's much easier just to find people with genuinely stupid opinions (and by "find" I mean "throw a rock") and tell how stupid those opinions are. Hell, you don't even have to be rude- the dumber and less informed somebody's opinion is, the more likely they are to react with violent rage to have the logical fallacies in their arguments pointed out to them.

You basically know you've won when it devolves into them saying "I DIDN'T SAY THAT, RAGE RAGE!" and you copy-pasting the earlier post where they said exactly that.

The Mr. T Experience:

Matt Westwood:

The Mr. T Experience:

trtrwtf:

The Mr. T Experience:

All you nerds are a bunch of jerkoffs, and you deserve every punch you've ever received.

Grammatically, that sentence is a disaster. Please try again.

See what I mean? I just can imagine your nerdy expression on your smug nerd face, teetering over your stupid noodle neck.

Who wouldn't punch this?

Come on then fuckface, want to have a go? Think you're hard enough? You silly little wanker, just fuck off.

So some pommie bastid thinks he's tough, does he? Typical. Every Brit is a brawler as long as he's in Britain.

Oy wogbreath, go back to your manara!

Well, it is a problem when the printer freezes, or, in Polish, "drukarka wisi".

Nagesh (copy of a copy):

You are not being part of solution, but part of problem.

Which problem?

Osmood:

From the sysadmins viewpoint
1. The user was wasting everyone else's time & costing the company money as they waited for their printouts.
2. Company equipment is meant to be used for the purpose for which it is provided - not days-long computations on a PRINTER! Misuse of company property is a matter to be taken up with a manager.
3. Printers usually have slower processors and less RAM than a PC - wtf is a user doing wasting their own time writing a slow postscript program to crunch numbers that could be done more quickly and productively on equipment (a PC for example) that is MEANT for the job.
4. The user needs a lesson in communications and the meaning of the word SHARED in shared resource.
5. The sysadmin says DONT f*ck with the equipment. You don't get to do your own PC programming - if you run programs that aren't approved then out the door you go...

You missing two points:
a. That dork might be sysadmin himself
b. His PC processing power might be busy with REALLY important things, like watching video in SVGA quality or running ADOM game

boog:

Nagesh (copy of a copy):

You are not being part of solution, but part of problem.

Which problem?

You exist in this world, that one

Hitman:

boog:

Nagesh (copy of a copy):

You are not being part of solution, but part of problem.

Which problem?

You exist in this world, that one

Well? Which is it, this world or that one?

Make up your mind!

Thanks to a recent "green initiative" we have three printers on our floor, and that's fairly typical in the building.

Each floor has hundreds of people.

And two of the three printers are the Sharp copiers.

boog:

Hitman:

boog:

Nagesh (copy of a copy):

You are not being part of solution, but part of problem.

Which problem?

You exist in this world, that one

Well? Which is it, this world or that one?

Make up your mind!

Jeeze, don't confuse the poor guy. He's having enough trouble writing complete sentences with correct punctuation...

What's next? You're going to ask him to chew his food before swallowing!

QJo:

There are two distinct problems here, butting head-to-head. For one thing, Bob's just a little bit gung-ho, and perhaps should have checked what the job was before deleting it, but second, Mister Galloping Asperger .

wait what ? assburgers ?

QJo:

There are two distinct problems here, butting head-to-head. For one thing, Bob's just a little bit gung-ho, and perhaps should have checked what the job was before deleting it, but second, Mister Galloping Asperger should have taken the time to explain what he was doing in the first place, in order to arrive at the compromise which was the reduced-priority job, rather than just play the "I'm far too important to talk to you" card.

This is not a communication problem, this is a moron problem. If the printer is backed up, you kill the job that's choking it and you move on. If someone keeps sending the job that chokes it, you beat them about the head and shoulders with a tire iron until they stop. Simple.

The Mr. T Experience:

All you nerds are a bunch of jerkoffs, and you deserve every punch you've ever received.

ppfffft. You're hardly scary. I used to fuck guys like you in prison.

The Guy With the "Z":

The Mr. T Experience:

All you nerds are a bunch of jerkoffs, and you deserve every punch you've ever received.

ppfffft. You're hardly scary. I used to fuck guys like you in prison.

Says you.
You ever see the movie "teeth"? I'm like the protagonist, butt in the back.

The Mr. T Experience:

The Guy With the "Z":

The Mr. T Experience:

All you nerds are a bunch of jerkoffs, and you deserve every punch you've ever received.

ppfffft. You're hardly scary. I used to fuck guys like you in prison.

Says you.
You ever see the movie "teeth"? I'm like the protagonist, butt in the back.

What makes you think he meant in the ass?

The Mr. T Experience:

The Guy With the "Z":

The Mr. T Experience:

All you nerds are a bunch of jerkoffs, and you deserve every punch you've ever received.

ppfffft. You're hardly scary. I used to fuck guys like you in prison.

Says you.
You ever see the movie "teeth"? I'm like the protagonist, butt in the back.

Yes I did. And yes, she did have her butt in the back, like most people, and it doesn't surprise me that you do too... what's your point?

The Guy With the "Z":

The Mr. T Experience:

The Guy With the "Z":

The Mr. T Experience:

All you nerds are a bunch of jerkoffs, and you deserve every punch you've ever received.

ppfffft. You're hardly scary. I used to fuck guys like you in prison.

Says you.
You ever see the movie "teeth"? I'm like the protagonist, butt in the back.

Yes I did. And yes, she did have her butt in the back, like most people, and it doesn't surprise me that you do too... what's your point?

That's where me second set of teeth are. Our ewe to aspie two be able too parse text with homophone replacements?

The Mr. T Experience:

The Guy With the "Z":

The Mr. T Experience:

The Guy With the "Z":

The Mr. T Experience:

All you nerds are a bunch of jerkoffs...

I used to fuck guys like you in prison.

You ever see the movie "teeth"? I'm like the protagonist, butt in the back.

...what's your point?

That's where me second set of teeth are.

Based on everything I've read, Zuneberry prefers ears and eye-sockets.

boog:

The Mr. T Experience:

The Guy With the "Z":

The Mr. T Experience:

The Guy With the "Z":

The Mr. T Experience:

All you nerds are a bunch of jerkoffs...

I used to fuck guys like you in prison.

You ever see the movie "teeth"? I'm like the protagonist, butt in the back.

...what's your point?

That's where me second set of teeth are.

Based on everything I've read, Zuneberry prefers ears and eye-sockets.

I've also heard him state on occasion that he likes to create new orifices, too.

geoffrey:

evilspoons:

geoffrey:

Surely the real problem here is that this guy just figured he could cancel someone's job without bothering to discover the nature of that job or its priority. That's much like someone coming along and disconnecting your terminal while you work. I believe that kind of behaviour should result in you being marched from the building. There is a reason why everyone else was hesitant around the printer - they knew cancelling the job was wrong.

If anyone should be marching down to HR it should be the guy whose job was cancelled without warning. Oh you can add ignoring warning signs to the charges too.

Seriously? The printer isn't FOR running computational jobs, it's for printing. There's a reasonable expectation of availablility for a resource like that. If it's sitting for hours doing nothing, you can safely assume it's broken because no pages are being printed by a device whose sole purpose is to make pages have toner on them.

You are absolutely correct, I agree with you. We have the benefit of understanding the situation however, the guy who just cancelled the job did not.

An unnamed person had submitted a job to the internal reader. You don't just cancel it unless you know it's purpose and it's priority. you just don't. In this case the guy who submitted the job was in the wrong it turns out, but the ends do not justify the means. "Bob" was equally in the wrong here for acting like a maverick and just pulling the switch. In certain situations that might result in disciplinary action. Notice that his co-workers understood this which is why they didn't take any action themselves.

No, they just didn't have the balls to go over there and do it themselves. You're creating a strawman argument here. Printer's job: print ink to paper.

If (job.elapsestime > 5 hours) job.kill();

Period. I don't care of Carmak, Gates, Gosling or God himself created the fucking job.

C-Octothorpe:

boog:

Based on everything I've read, Zuneberry prefers ears and eye-sockets.

I've also heard him state on occasion that he likes to create new orifices, too.

Indeed. I have a sinking suspicion he's one of the Woodland Christmas Critters.

geoffrey:

evilspoons:

geoffrey:

Surely the real problem here is that this guy just figured he could cancel someone's job without bothering to discover the nature of that job or its priority. That's much like someone coming along and disconnecting your terminal while you work. I believe that kind of behaviour should result in you being marched from the building. There is a reason why everyone else was hesitant around the printer - they knew cancelling the job was wrong.

If anyone should be marching down to HR it should be the guy whose job was cancelled without warning. Oh you can add ignoring warning signs to the charges too.

Seriously? The printer isn't FOR running computational jobs, it's for printing. There's a reasonable expectation of availablility for a resource like that. If it's sitting for hours doing nothing, you can safely assume it's broken because no pages are being printed by a device whose sole purpose is to make pages have toner on them.

You are absolutely correct, I agree with you. We have the benefit of understanding the situation however, the guy who just cancelled the job did not.

An unnamed person had submitted a job to the internal reader. You don't just cancel it unless you know it's purpose and it's priority. you just don't. In this case the guy who submitted the job was in the wrong it turns out, but the ends do not justify the means. "Bob" was equally in the wrong here for acting like a maverick and just pulling the switch. In certain situations that might result in disciplinary action. Notice that his co-workers understood this which is why they didn't take any action themselves.

I am always RELUCTANT to cancel someone else's job, but I can't agree that "you just don't".

Suppose you saw a truck with no driver accelerating toward the kindergarten playground. Would the responsible thing to do be: (a) Do everything possible to get control of the truck and stop it before children are hurt; or (b) Do nothing, on the assumption that someone must have deliberately set the truck in motion for a good reason and you have no right to interfere?

So okay, in this case no one is going to die if they can't get their printout. But no one is going to die if this mysterious print job doesn't run either. The stakes are lower but the principle is the same. It is bad manners and inefficient business practice to cancel someone else's job because you want the resource now. But it is equally bad manners and inefficient business practice to unreasonably hog a resource that others need.

In real life, when I see a job hogging resources and denying service to others, I try to find the person who initiated the job and find out what they are doing. If I can't find the person, I'll kill the job. 9 times out of 10 they thank me later for fixing the problem that they accidentally created. (If the person insists on hogging a resource and they outrank me I'll talk to a bigger boss about it. Otherwise I'll kill the job.)

The Guy With the "Z":

Fondle memories of childhood.

ZTFY

Oh dear god, what's happening to me?!?!?!

The Guy With the "Z":

boog:

C-Octothorpe:

boog:

Based on everything I've read, Zuneberry prefers ears and eye-sockets.

I've also heard him state on occasion that he likes to create new orifices, too.

Indeed. I have a sinking suspicion he's one of the Woodland Christmas Critters.

I always used to love watching that show with my stepdad on a hot summer night and we'd strip down to our underwear and all sweaty. Fond memories of childhood.

Wow, that's pretty mild compared to what I was suggesting.

In the old days, a PostScript printer processor might be running at 10MHz with the computers at half that speed, so it made some sense to use it as a number cruncher, especially if it was idle a lot.

Just reading up on it -- looks interesting, especially the portability of the language, might play around with it for kicks.

The Apple LaserWriter, when it came out, had the fastest processor of any apple product. It was 50% faster than the Macintosh with four times more RAM. If you're crunching numbers, that's a serious improvement.

Maybe I'm being stupid or missing something obvious, but I have a question about this.

In the end, Bob created a virtual printer for the job. In other words, the job wasn't sent to the actual printer for processing, but instead the processing was handled on the print server itself.

Right?

So did the job ever finish? If so, I assume that the output was to a file on the print server's hard drive instead of to the printer. Or can you have a virtual printer send the output directly to a real printer?

Of course, if a virtual printer on an old machine retasked into a print server could do the job, then that would show that the piece of crap PC wasn't so piece of crap as imagined.

C-Octothorpe:

The Guy With the "Z":

Fondle memories of childhood.

ZTFY

Oh dear god, what's happening to me?!?!?!

Milhouse^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ZTFY is now a meme.

You're actually pretty cool when you're not being a FUCKING ASSHOLE who responds to trolls.

Not that I haven't waged a love affair with assholes.

The Guy With the "Z":

C-Octothorpe:

The Guy With the "Z":

Fondle memories of childhood.

ZTFY

Oh dear god, what's happening to me?!?!?!

Milhouse^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ZTFY is now a meme.

You're actually pretty cool when you're not being a FUCKING ASSHOLE who responds to trolls.

Not that I haven't waged a love affair with assholes.

The days that I'm dancing with the trolls are usually the days I'm in a bad fucking mood and need to have my access to this site blocked.