• onitake (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    It's worse than that, of course. Not only is Hanzo claiming to *be* a martial art (rather than practicing one), but he's even claiming to be the wrong one. The Book of Five Rings is about being a good *samurai*, and therefore has rather less than nothing to do with being a ninja.
    To add my 5¢: The proper title for Hans should probably be 忍び, i.e. Shinobi; that's what a "Ninja" is called in colloquial Japanese. "Ninja" (忍者) means "concealed person", or more appropriately: "practitioner of ninjutsu", as there's much more to it than just acting in secret.
  • Caruso (unregistered)

    Didn't we see this on CIS Miami?

    "I'll go write up a GUI in Visual Basic to track his IP Address"

  • iWantToKeepAnon (unregistered)

    The RWTF is that IT believes in "hardened by the industry’s best specialists" ... LOL!!

  • Tax slave (unregistered) in reply to Tony
    Tony:
    Sounds very much like [n IT department] that's forgotten it exists to provide services not simply follow 'security procedure'.
    -- Sounds like government
  • neminem (unregistered)

    To be fair, it sounded like the professor didn't really know what he was talking about either... so I say so much that "the professor was right", as that "everyone was equally wrong".

    And yes, I would also love a GM script to allow me to pretend that anything Hans-related just never existed, and they just forgot to post anything. They have been of consistently abysmal quality compared to just about everything else on this site, even the early crap.

    (That or, even better, if they just actually stopped posting them.)

  • (cs) in reply to Yoda
    Yoda:
    This sounds awfully familiar.
    Awfully familiar, this sounds. Errk!

    FTFY (Fixed That For Yoda).

  • Anon (unregistered)

    Really, if "Hanzo" can't explain the problem to a website full of IT professionals, then maybe he's the problem and not the professor.

    But TRWTF is Hanzo supposedly believing this:

    "But we’ve won," Hanzo said. "All he can do now is use ad hominem attacks against the department. Most people who read the editorials are smart enough to tell he’s got no real argument."
  • Calli Arcale (unregistered) in reply to Jo
    Jo:
    - There is no Hesse University in Dresden. I can't find any Hesse University in Germany at all.

    Of course there isn't. It's a fictional construct for the purposes of anonymization. When they want to anonymize a story occurring at a corporation, they usually select "Initrode", a fictional corporation from the movie "Office Space".

  • Calli Arcale (unregistered)

    I really need to add my voice to the chorus of "Hanz is the real WTF". If you need to disable SMTP to resolve a security problem, you are well on your way to making the network so secure that nobody can use it. It's a bit like addressing an oil leak by draining the fuel tank. Yes, it will protect the engine from damage due to inadequate lubrication, but it will also render the car far less useful. Disabling SMTP might be acceptable as an emergency, short-term band-aid to prevent harm while the real fix is made. But that's about it. Getting snarky when users come to you with genuine complaints is a sign that a) you are in the wrong business and b) your employer will probably figure that out fairly soon and rectify the problem.

  • (cs) in reply to Calli Arcale
    Calli Arcale:
    It's a bit like addressing an oil leak by draining the fuel tank.

    I don't think that you're familiar with how cars work.

  • (cs)

    You know what's better than Hanzo stories? SARS.

  • Morbs' Wraith (unregistered)

    Well, the general consensus seems to be that this story and the entire Hanzo series is shit. If this character is real, he comes off as being a little snot suffering from unwarranted self-importance. I wondered if the author was just trolling everyone until he got butthurt and started deleting negative comments.

  • user (unregistered)

    Haven't universities changed from Outlook to OWA (the web interface to Exchange) long ago ?

  • KingBeardo (unregistered) in reply to Andy P
    he's the living embodiment of Sun Tzu
    Miyamoto Musashi wrote the Book of Five Rings (Japanese book about philosophy and single opponent fighting tactics); Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War (Chinese book about philosophy and full-scale war tactics). Many miles and 2000 years of history separate the two. That said, neither had anything to do with ninjutsu. Musashi, a student of Bushido, would likely have condemned it and may have fought actual shinobi at some point.

    More to the point, while the exact nature of the IP mapping issue is unclear here, it is quite clear that IT is TRWTF; as others have pointed out, sweeping a problem under the rug by cutting off key services presumably indefinitely, and then calling the problem 'fixed' is almost management-level incompetence. Conclusion: Hans and Gertrude should be promoted.

    captcha: "valetudo" := a misspelled preprocessor macro that expands to a parametrization of the template class valediction with two std::string values, and the instantiation of the resultant valediction specialization with a standard valediction header and an excuse clause related to the amount of work one has to do.

    Ex. VALETUDO("g2g","supposed to be working");

  • (cs)

    Isn't Shinobi the art of fighting with a sword and a long scarf?

  • Jellineck (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    Calli Arcale:
    It's a bit like addressing an oil leak by draining the fuel tank.

    I don't think that you're familiar with how cars work.

    He is. If you can't start the car, you won't risk damaging the engine by running it without oil.

  • fa2k (unregistered)

    Just to say, I don't think the Hanzo stories are that bad. This one was kind of pointless because the technical problem was very vague, but the others did a fair job of presenting a WTF

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is Hans. (or is it Hanzo?) Look at all these stupid things he's done! It's as if the author of these articles knows only one name. (and given his writing skill, that wouldn't surprise me.)

  • (cs)

    Seems like all these rubbish Hanzo stories are by "Erik Gern". Looks like we just need to ignore anything he submits since chances are it will be this "Hanzo" shit.

    By the way, Book of Five Rings is for SAMURAI, not NINJAS.

  • steelcobra (unregistered) in reply to Millennium

    It could be referring to locking down outbound port 25 to just one IP address, i.e. the server, which is a common practice to prevent malware from using it and getting your domain/public IP blacklisted. Probably. Which means the professor was doing something he shouldn't have. Connecting to exchange from outside the network is generally an RPC over HTTP proxy connection, and all emails still have to transit through the server itself while inbound or outbound.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to iWantToKeepAnon
    iWantToKeepAnon:
    The RWTF is that IT believes in "hardened by the industry’s best specialists" ... LOL!!

    Highly Paid Consultants? "Hey, the servers are unpatched for years and the admin passwords are defaults everywhere!" Yep, the IT departament is TRWTF!

  • (cs) in reply to Jellineck
    Jellineck:
    chubertdev:
    Calli Arcale:
    It's a bit like addressing an oil leak by draining the fuel tank.

    I don't think that you're familiar with how cars work.

    He is. If you can't start the car, you won't risk damaging the engine by running it without oil.

    I just fill the tank back up.

  • Hannes (unregistered) in reply to fa2k
    fa2k:
    Just to say, I don't think the Hanzo stories are that bad.

    Then you are the only one who doesn't think that. It wouldn't surprise me if the author himself thinks they are bad. Because that's what they are.

    Why? Well...

    1. Hanzo and Gertrude are displayed as some kind of "know-it-alls", which clearly they aren't.
    2. The WTFs in the stories are no WTF at all. There are WTFs in the stories, they are just not what the author tries to sell us as a WTF (just see the "radio controlled clocks" stories. Taking a "master clock" to various rooms, so the clocks could sync with it, because the clocks cannot sync with "the master clock" when they are inside a room? WTF?!?!)
    3. The writing is poor.
    4. The characters are lame.
    5. The stories just aren't either funny, nice to read nor can you learn anything from it so you could avoid a possible WTF yourself...

    Or in short: The stories are bad.

  • (cs)

    Sound like typical beaver patterns from infrastructure teams throughout the world.

  • (cs)

    I got it.

    It's like the woman who hangs out with an ugly friend to make herself look better.

    We get these Hanzo stories so the other ones look better by comparison.

  • (cs) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    I got it.

    It's like the woman who hangs out with an ugly friend to make herself look better.

    We get these Hanzo stories so the other ones look better by comparison.

    Well, I suppose you get what you pay for.

  • (cs) in reply to Matt Westwood

    I'm not complaining, I just like to find out the root cause.

  • The Big Picture Thinker (unregistered)
    ...when it was discovered that Microsoft Exchange used the same IP address

    What is that supposed to mean? As if this was a bad thing????

    All servers typically have the "same" (a static/fixed) IP address.

    You couldn't communicate with a server if it's IP wasn't publicly known or if it kept changing.

    This is the entire basis for the Domain Name System (DNS).

  • foo (unregistered)

    Wow, this must be a new record!

    Normally, when we have crap articles and a lot of comments pointing this out, there'll be a bunch of comments defending the author (usually in a row, what a surprise). Not so today. The best we've had is, well maybe, they could be an explanation if you assume what he meant might be like ...

    Erik, if even your fanbois are abandoning you, it's high time to bugger off!

    Of course, if your goal is to make all fellow(?) Germans look like idiots, I'd say Mission Accomplished!

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to foo

    And another thing: If you keep deleting critical comments, such as mine above, and several others as has been pointed out, don't be surprised when people complain about you (who I assume to be idential to Hanzo) in editorials instead of talking with you directly.

    IOW, your actions on this site already are the best justification for the professor's "WTF"!

    So I'm now going to rant about you on /. (no, not really, you're way too unimportant for that).

  • old timer (unregistered) in reply to Raedwald
    Raedwald:
    We have similar nonsense at my workplace, where they refuse to provide an IMAP gateway so incoming e-mails can be read on non Windows computers.

    But linux is Open Source! All you have to do is compile your own exchange client (cf 'Evolution') and it can run on any platform!

  • time keeper (unregistered) in reply to Hannes
    Hannes:
    fa2k:
    Just to say, I don't think the Hanzo stories are that bad.
    1. The WTFs in the stories are no WTF at all. There are WTFs in the stories, they are just not what the author tries to sell us as a WTF (just see the "radio controlled clocks" stories. Taking a "master clock" to various rooms, so the clocks could sync with it, because the clocks cannot sync with "the master clock" when they are inside a room? WTF?!?!)
    I thought WTF? when I read the story today, but I don't make the mistake of assuming that everything I don't understand is wrong.

    I had to study at an institution with a Master Clock system as described in the "radio controlled clocks" story. Just be glad you've never had that experience.

  • np (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    By the way, Book of Five Rings is for SAMURAI, not NINJAS.

    Thank you for catching this as well. Samurai and Ninja have nothing in common besides Japanese roots. It is like saying a Knight and Spy/Assassin are going to follow the same code of conduct. Hah.

  • Mark (unregistered)

    At my university, the IT department decided to block stuff such as student webmail, course resources, and various other administrative interfaces, all of them HTTPS-secured sites that require a login, from the campus WiFi, allegedly for "security reasons". The WTF being that these were all sites accessible from the public internet, and it didn't take long for me to figure out that I could just go from WiFi through a proxy (even one in another country) and back in...

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is Exchange, right?

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to Mark
    Mark:
    At my university, the IT department decided to block stuff such as student webmail, course resources, and various other administrative interfaces, all of them HTTPS-secured sites that require a login, from the campus WiFi, allegedly for "security reasons". The WTF being that these were all sites accessible from the public internet, and it didn't take long for me to figure out that I could just go from WiFi through a proxy (even one in another country) and back in...
    Which university is this, please? So we'll finally know where the fictional Hesse University’s Dresden campus really is.
  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to David T
    David T:
    And what the hell does "Gertrude herself had made the decision to shut down SMTP over wireless when it was discovered that Microsoft Exchange used the same IP address, an uncommon security vulnerability." mean?
    I can actually think of one. Relay restriction setting + some crazy public/private IP routing rules.

    If that's the case, I can't say I have the guts to fix it on an established campus network, when there could be multiple subdomain mail servers maintained by their corresponding department themselves.

  • AN AMAZING CODER (unregistered)

    Guys:

    The "same ip" issue is probably just Exchange server being on the same network as the Wifi, which sits behind the same NAT. The issue being that any host on that network that's sending spam causes the same public IP address as the Exchange server to get blacklisted -- not that internal email is being spoofed.

    TRWTF is being an IT department not being able to figure out how to solve that networking 101 problem, yet dismissing a computer science professor that calls out their incompetence.

  • Hannes (unregistered) in reply to time keeper
    time keeper:
    Hannes:
    fa2k:
    Just to say, I don't think the Hanzo stories are that bad.
    1. The WTFs in the stories are no WTF at all. There are WTFs in the stories, they are just not what the author tries to sell us as a WTF (just see the "radio controlled clocks" stories. Taking a "master clock" to various rooms, so the clocks could sync with it, because the clocks cannot sync with "the master clock" when they are inside a room? WTF?!?!)
    I thought WTF? when I read the story today, but I don't make the mistake of assuming that everything I don't understand is wrong.

    I had to study at an institution with a Master Clock system as described in the "radio controlled clocks" story. Just be glad you've never had that experience.

    Well, then that's a WTF in itself, but not the WTF the author wanted to point out. If the Uni can't even afford good radio controlled clocks (you know, those that work even if they are inside a room ;) ), then it's time to change the Uni.

    Hell, even the Uni Hamburg has radio controlled clocks. That Uni may be a mess in every other aspect (I know that, because I studied there), but at least the clocks show the right time. ;)

  • Fritz, a.k.a. Fritzo (unregistered)

    This is brilliant, just brilliant. An article written by someone who can't write and doesn't undestand the technical side of things!

    Just bring back Mandatory Fun Day already so that us users can create actually funny and/or witty content based on it.

  • Your Name (unregistered) in reply to Jo
    Jo:
    Just enumerating: - Hanz is not a German forename. (They used to be regulated.)
    Not entirely true. Generally speaking, the German law requires that a name identifies the person's gender and it has to be not harmful to the child. So giving your kid 20 names would be frowned upon, or naming your son 'mary' (in fact many men have 'Maria' as a _secondary_ name for religious reasons, which is alright). Apart from that, it's quite free, and special spellings are usually no problem at all. However, I never heard of a real person called 'Hanz'.

    Most other problems of the Hanzo stories have already been mentioned, and I entirely concur: -'Hanz' is a quite unlikely spelling. -'Gertrude' has either had really cruel parents or is approximately 85 years old. -'Ninjutsu' is a form of martial arts, the person practicing it is called a 'ninja'. -The Book of Five Rings deals with questions of strategy and conduct for samurai and thus does not have much to do with ninja tactics. (I.e., kenjutsu != ninjutsu.) -Dresden is in Saxony, which is a different state than Hesse, and (public) universities are state business. Thus a 'Hesse university' with a campus in Dresden is quite unlikely. -A security problem should not depend on the type of network technology used. Having no wireless access at all to email is not acceptable, especially in the age of smartphones and tablets: sorry, but the professor is the customer here, and he is right. -Hanz and Gertrude need to stop whining and just make it work, or they need to be replaced. -Speaking of things in need of replacement: every Hanzo story I had to suffer through reduces the probability of me continuing to visit TDWTF. Please, just stop.

  • Your Name (unregistered) in reply to plaidfluff
    plaidfluff:
    When I was in grad school, I worked for the greater campus IT, which was quite well-run by people who mostly knew what they were doing. However, the CS department had its own IT department (because obviously, CS people would 'know better' than campus-wise IT what's useful for things) and that department was full of the biggest, most arrogant, ego-tripping assholes who had no idea what they were actually doing.
    This sounds so very familiar. Either there is an epidemic going on, or we proably went to the same university. ;)
  • pto (unregistered)

    Are these Hanzo stories some kind of elaborate prank? Like lots of other people, I'm completely with the Professor here. I may not agree with his methods but shutting down one of the most vital IT functionalities rather than fixing it? That IT department is worse than my work one!

  • gnasher729 (unregistered) in reply to Hannes
    Hannes:
    Well, then that's a WTF in itself, but not the WTF the author wanted to point out. If the Uni can't even afford good radio controlled clocks (you know, those that work even if they are inside a room ;) ), then it's time to change the Uni.
    According to Wikipedia: "Thermo compensated quartz movements, even in wrist watches, can be accurate to within ± 5 to ± 25 seconds per year and can be used as marine chronometers to determine longitude by means of celestial navigation."

    Quartz clock + tiny built-in computer that keeps track of how the time was adjusted and then compensates for it in the future, plus temperature measurement to adjust for the change of quartz frequency depending on temperature. (So if you set the clock initially, then set it forward 3 minutes 5 months later, it assumes that it was running a bit slow and increases its speed by 3 minutes over the next five months. A year later you make another, smaller, correction and it takes that into consideration as well. No radio needed).

  • Ivar (unregistered)

    This insistence of trying to vaguely connect what happens in the story to something in The Book of Five Rings is extremely contrived.

    Is the smug-tech-thinking-he-knows-everything-but-failing-to-explain-even-the-basics-and-generally-not-making-much-sense thing on purpose or by accident?

    Captcha: cogo - an equally likely name for the university in question.

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to Fritz, a.k.a. Fritzo
    Fritz:
    This is brilliant, just brilliant. An article written by someone who can't write and doesn't undestand the technical side of things!

    Just bring back Mandatory Fun Day already so that us users can create actually funny and/or witty content based on it.

    Actually, what's to stop us drawing our own Hanzo comics? I'd start right away, but I'm not a graphics person, so I'll just describe the scenery for all of you to draw:

    • Hanzo with slitted eyes and leather trousers(*) (because he can't decide whether he's German or Japanese), wearing a ninja cloak and holding a plastic samurai sword in one hand and the Olympic Almanach (5 rings, get it) in the other.

    (*) Leather trousers are typical for Bavaria, while we have established that this university is in Hesse, er Saxony (Dresden), or North Rhine Westphalia (Düsseldorf), well actually Berlin (central IT), so never mind ...

    • A 120 year old Gertrude, staring through her thick glasses at the 40pt font on her CRT monitor (which reads something like "Insert boot disk and press enter") and mumbling (think of the cat lady from the Simpsons) about same IP addresses, security and msexchange.

    • Opposite of them, a normally looking professor with question marks around his head, saying something like: "Pardon, I must've taken the wrong door."

    For bonus points, hang these on the walls:

    • An ASCII art banner saying "GRAETEST IT EXPERTS ON CAMPUS" with a slogan like "If we can't fix it, the problem does not exist." or something equally arrogant.

    • A collection of newspaper clips, written on top "Us in the Papers!"

    • A certficate saying "Certificated by Industry Best Specialist Corp(TM)" (see 419eater.com for fake certificate ideas)

    • A clock showing an unlikely time (such as 6:10, both AM and PM unlikely for this setting) with a Post-It saying "Must bring master clock"

    • A poster of the guy in Hanzo #1 (it really turns Hanzo on).

    • A geographically incorrect map of Germany.

    • An EBCDIC table, hand-written on it "New, correct one"

    Did I miss anything?

  • JW (unregistered)

    TRWTF is definitely the entire campus being behind a /32. They've got hardware to block SMTP over the wifi network, but not to give Exchange (or... everything else) a different /32?

  • JW (unregistered) in reply to JW
    JW:
    TRWTF is definitely the entire campus being behind a /32. They've got hardware to block SMTP over the wifi network, but not to give Exchange (or... everything else) a different /32?

    Wow, I wrote this almost as well as the article. Sigh.

  • Sir Galahad the Pure (unregistered) in reply to Micky
    Micky:
    TV Tropes:
    So, Hanzo is clearly this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CreatorsPet

    Yup. Remember the comics we had to live with a while back? I don't think any lessons were learned from that debacle.

    Bring back MFD with Hanzo as a main character.

  • (cs) in reply to foo
    foo:
    Did I miss anything?
    Yes. There should be a sign on the door of the IT department that says: "You don't have to be mad to work here, but it surely helps". And Cisco mugs on the table. Perhaps a dog sleeping in a corner, but that's about it.

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