The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2010-09-01 Reply Admin

Ben:
I imagine that from McAfee's point of view, anything that is constantly reported as a virus may as well be a virus.

I think McAfee classifies it as a "joke program". i.e. one which isn't exactly malicious but in a corporate environment may lead to user confusion and wasted IT time investigating non-issues. Given the stories in this thread, they do kind of have a point.

mott555 · 2010-09-01 Reply Admin

Bad combination:

Having a work PC in a visible location in the office where people constantly walk by.
Installing this screensaver.
Using a RAMDisk to hold source code working copies (to improve compile times).
Not checking in your source before leaving to lunch.

Add those up and you lose everything you worked on that morning.

2010-09-01 Reply Admin

mott555:
Bad combination:

Having a work PC in a visible location in the office where people constantly walk by.

Installing this screensaver.

Using a RAMDisk to hold source code working copies (to improve compile times).

Not checking in your source before leaving to lunch.

Add those up and you lose everything you worked on that morning.

Wait... you guys actually do work BEFORE lunch? You should really try out consulting...

havokk · 2010-09-01 Reply Admin

mott555:
4) Not checking in your source before leaving to lunch.

True. Saving is like voting - you should do it early and often.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

FuBar:
Anon:
It's only cheaper if you ignore the lost of the users data. Unless you're backing everything up every hour.
Why in the world would there be data on the local hard drive instead of on the network where you probably have at least RAID 5 storage if not a SAN? If the local hard drive crashes, your data is just as lost. Motto to live by: "Anything that is stored in only one place may not be there the next time you look for it." Don't let your users store stuff on their local drives (unless you have a backup strategy for those drives that meets the requirements of your documented RPO)

You do both becuase despite whatever policy is in place the users put their mp3 files and baby photos on the mirrored, backed up and copied offsite network drives but keep the important stuff on their local drives (or more annoyingly USB sticks).

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

Satanicpuppy:
Linux has a really nice BSOD screen saver, as you'd expect. It's in the zillion-screensaver rotation.
Once I was involved in a project to deploy linux terminal services to ~200 machines. Thin client, netbooted, pretty snazzy. Ran off of a couple of big honking blade servers. Still, to save cycles, we set it so that it'd only render one screensaver, and share it out to every terminal.

You see where this is going.

Yes. You decided to let this stupid screensaver run on machines that are being used by people who aren't experts and thus wouldn't get the 'joke'.

Sure enough, every machine is blue screened. Every linux machine is blue screened. Sigh. I walk up to the nearest desktop, slap the mouse, and the logon screen pops right up.
200 people, and not one of them had touched their mouse or anything.

Why the hell would they? As far as they knew, their computers had crashed! Why would moving the mouse make any difference? Especially as a BSOD has NO MOUSE CURSOR!

Normal people don't look at an obviously buggered PC and instantly decide to try and fix it—something they know damned well is someone else's job. They'll just start chatting to each other about football or general gossip.

FYI: It's called "socialising". A concept you might not be familiar with, given your apparently sincere belief that everyone capable of independent thought should know that Linux's own core dumps don't look like their Windows counterparts.

Perhaps you should look up the word "service" in a dictionary sometime. It is, after all, what you're supposed to be providing.

2010-09-02 Reply Admin

With respect to S. T. Baggaley's venomous rant above, it is directed at entirely the wrong person. The BSOD screensaver was one of a few dozen screensavers that would be randomly cycled through by xscreensaver on the default list. It's a combination of poor default settings, bad timing, and sending the same image to many machines that produced the above mixup. At other times it would have been a bouncing cow or flying toasters on all screens.

The default was of course changed long ago to avoid confusing people like this.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

S. T. Baggaley:
Satanicpuppy:
Linux has a really nice BSOD screen saver, as you'd expect. It's in the zillion-screensaver rotation.
Once I was involved in a project to deploy linux terminal services to ~200 machines. Thin client, netbooted, pretty snazzy. Ran off of a couple of big honking blade servers. Still, to save cycles, we set it so that it'd only render one screensaver, and share it out to every terminal.

You see where this is going.

Yes. You decided to let this stupid screensaver run on machines that are being used by people who aren't experts and thus wouldn't get the 'joke'.

Sure enough, every machine is blue screened. Every linux machine is blue screened. Sigh. I walk up to the nearest desktop, slap the mouse, and the logon screen pops right up.
200 people, and not one of them had touched their mouse or anything.

Why the hell would they? As far as they knew, their computers had crashed! Why would moving the mouse make any difference? Especially as a BSOD has NO MOUSE CURSOR!

Normal people don't look at an obviously buggered PC and instantly decide to try and fix it—something they know damned well is someone else's job. They'll just start chatting to each other about football or general gossip.

FYI: It's called "socialising". A concept you might not be familiar with, given your apparently sincere belief that everyone capable of independent thought should know that Linux's own core dumps don't look like their Windows counterparts.

Perhaps you should look up the word "service" in a dictionary sometime. It is, after all, what you're supposed to be providing.

Obvious troll is obvious.

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

Herby:
This reaffirms the saying: For sufficiently advanced technology, the difference between Magic and technology is difficult to discern.
For some people BSOD's are sufficiently advanced technology! Go figure!

If you are going to quote Arthur C. Clark, at least get the quote right.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

2010-09-03 Reply Admin

hahaha... the pains of dumb users. I have the same screen saver... I love it.

2010-09-04 Reply Admin

I ran this at work after reading this article; when I cam back from a cigarette break someone had hard rebooted for me, too. Thats what I love about working in a noc, everyone is so helpful.

2010-09-04 Reply Admin

Troy:
Herby:
This reaffirms the saying: For sufficiently advanced technology, the difference between Magic and technology is difficult to discern.
For some people BSOD's are sufficiently advanced technology! Go figure!

If you are going to quote Arthur C. Clark, at least get the quote right.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

If you are going to quote Arthur C. Clarke, at least get his name right.

2010-09-05 Reply Admin

Mostly Evil Frank:
Same thing happened to me with the BSOD screen saver running on X-Windows on my Linux workstation in the era of Windows NT/2000. I didn't work in IT at the time but in a tech support group supporting large and very expensive manufacturing equipment. Mordac was at my desk talking to me about a problem with the network when the BSOD screen saver kicked in. He spent the next 10 minutes arguing with me that they were going to take my PC to get fixed with me saying not on his life was he ever going to touch my PC. He then started in on my boss about me overstepping bounds, that IT was responsible for all things technology, that my PC was company property and it would be wiped and Windows restored so it worked properly. My boss who was listening in on the whole exchange and knew exactly what I was up to laughed a bit and and said, "why don't you move the mouse?". The look on Mordac's face was priceless when the desktop returned and he knew instantly why my nickname was "Mostly Evil Frank". Of course the network problem never did get fixed and I had to develop a work around, but that is a story for another time.
Chris:
Yep, a coworker ran this screen-saver. One of the "IT Guys" was walking through the office one night, saw the screen saver, thought it was an issue, and yanked the plug on the machine. To make matters worse, the machine didn't come back up. Ever.

Top-posters should be hanged and quartered.

2010-09-06 Reply Admin

Anon:
Nick:
David Davidson:
Typical lab tech solution... Lift off and nuke the site from orbit.
Typically, if the SOE is set up correctly it is a lot faster and easier from a cost/benefit perspective to re-image rather than spend an hour troubleshooting. That's not to say there there shouldn't be a minimum level of troubleshooting done, which would have solved this "problem".
Also, does no-one lock their computers when they are AFK?
It's only cheaper if you ignore the lost of the users data. Unless you're backing everything up every hour.

In a properly set up IT infrastructure the user should have no data on their machine that is not already on the server, they should also have no personal data on a work machine. Users should be told that their computers are not backed up and they should expect to lose any information they have on them at any time.

2010-09-06 Reply Admin

db:
FuBar:
Anon:
It's only cheaper if you ignore the lost of the users data. Unless you're backing everything up every hour.
Why in the world would there be data on the local hard drive instead of on the network where you probably have at least RAID 5 storage if not a SAN? If the local hard drive crashes, your data is just as lost. Motto to live by: "Anything that is stored in only one place may not be there the next time you look for it." Don't let your users store stuff on their local drives (unless you have a backup strategy for those drives that meets the requirements of your documented RPO)
You do both becuase despite whatever policy is in place the users put their mp3 files and baby photos on the mirrored, backed up and copied offsite network drives but keep the important stuff on their local drives (or more annoyingly USB sticks).

That's why you have a scheduled job to remove non-business files from the server every night. In a workplace, if data is only on a local drive, then it is not important.

2010-09-08 Reply Admin

In the article find (ctrl+f) "BSOD", then double click it. Shit bricks. Hi to reddit.

2010-09-08 Reply Admin

UNICORNS O_O

2010-09-15 Reply Admin

I get a virus warning, when I unzip the file ...

2012-03-06 Reply Admin

A guy at Fujitsu used to run that as his screen saver. He never learned his lesson - every new person to the office powered off his computer the first time they saw it.

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