• foo (unregistered) in reply to Curmudgeon
    Curmudgeon:
    To be sure (captcha esse), the real WTF is that he ended up as a new hire, in that room, NEVER HAVING SEEN IT BEFORE.
    Honestly, what's that with those CAPTCHA quotes? It's bad enough when posters try to make witty comments about them, but sometimes, like here, someone just copies them into the text without any relationship to the rest. What's the point?

    I'm not trolling, I'm really wondering. It might have been funny once or twice when everyone didn't know that the CAPTCHAs here are always the same, but now, it's just annoying.

    Now THAT's a WTFWYT (WTF were you thinking).
  • foo (unregistered) in reply to Kef Schecter
    Kef Schecter:
    I'd totally have released the button. Maybe if I were feeling particularly generous, I would at least attempt to tape it down or something. It'd be their own stupidity causing the losses, not mine.
    db2:
    "So what you're saying is that if I release this button, you're out ten million, but if I hold it down all day, you're only out... half a million. Here, I'll fill out my deposit slip for you..."
    Except extortion is a crime.
    Yeah, hands up you criminal!
  • foo (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    Is it just me, or are HTML comments absolutely useless?
    It's only you that's absolutely useless. (SCNR)
  • John Hensley (unregistered) in reply to F
    F:
    Must be one of these damn standards-compliant ones.
    Proving that "standard" and "crap" aren't antonyms.
  • John Hensley (unregistered) in reply to F
    F:
    Must be one of these damn standards-compliant ones.
    Proving that "standard" and "crap" aren't antonyms.
  • John Hensley (unregistered)

    Also proving that the comment editing page needs an interlock on the submit button

  • iminuru (unregistered)

    No Unicorns?

    Captcha: veniam - somewhere in vietnam

  • (cs) in reply to foo
    foo:
    chubertdev:
    Is it just me, or are HTML comments absolutely useless?
    It's only you that's absolutely useless. (SCNR)

    My favorite part of your post is where you provide an example of them being useful, proving that it's not your post that's useless. :P

  • (cs)

    Epilogue: a week later, Manny received a massive bonus for screaming at the moment the button was pressed and not an instant earlier (which would have prevented the 12-hour vigil) or an instant later (in which case the prod server would have already been brought down and he would be the one getting dinged/sued/sanctioned for letting it happen with his wonderfully non-specific "grab a computer").

    And everyone agreed that Sarbanes-Oxley need never know that in a shop with this mission-critical power switch, there was neither a failover nor a recovery plan in place.

  • (cs) in reply to foo
    foo:
    Honestly, what's that with those CAPTCHA quotes? It's bad enough when posters try to make witty comments about them, but sometimes, like here, someone just copies them into the text without any relationship to the rest. What's the point?
    We get a lot of morons here.
  • Shagrat (unregistered)

    This is by far the most WTF thing I have ever read here.

    If I were in that guy's place, I would press the manager hard that it is not just my problem, but also theirs. If I let that button go, those millions lost will be visible to their managers - possibly jeopardizing Manny's post or at least his annual bonuses.

    And their case for damage caused would not be that strong either - how can you prosecute a guy for pressing an innocent button? His actions would hardly qualify as negligence. On the quite opposite: Manny could be later prosecuted for gross negligence. He knew the trade server runs on ancient hardware that can fail at any moment and the server is hardly secured in any way, yet he let it be so.

  • (cs)

    We had this critical server that was new when it went into service, but it had sort of been around a while...like about 8 years. It was basically about a pinch above IBM AT. Worked well, but was full of software that, well, wasn't likely to be replaceable (we had passed Y2K during that 8 year period).

    The power supply failed one night. We paid IBM about $1000 for an exact replacement power supply, delivered on an emergency basis, on Saturday morning. Even at that time, we could have replaced the whole machine for the cost of that power supply...but then there was the software...

    However, unlike the people in the story, we did manage to get the box...and its obsolete software...retired not too long after that.

  • (cs) in reply to F
    F:
    Em-dashes are no problem; it's double hyphens that have syntactic meaning.
    Trivia time: Guess how one types an em-dash. Here's a hint: the answer is "--".
  • grnkjl (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    Trivia time: Guess how one types an em-dash. Here's a hint: the answer is "--".
    And if you have an input method that converts two hyphens into an em-dash, then there's no problem with said em-dash appearing in an HTML comment.
  • (cs) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    I can see it now, one of these people reads TDWTF today, and goes, "What? Holy crap, that guy still believes that was a real production server? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

    Best. Prank. Ever.

    Sadly, it probably wasn't.

    I thought it was a prank, too, until they got him a bucket and decided someone else had to flush the bucket.

  • (cs) in reply to Clickety click
    Clickety click:
    Yeah but all the other WTFs aside, someone had an IBM Model M. So they can't be all bad.

    In my opinion, the Model M is the best keyboard of all time. You can keep your flat, soulless keyboards with a row of hotkeys to open IE or whatever (who honestly uses those?)

    I remember back at the beginning of the noughties, when I was working for a fairly large insurance company, word had come from head office in Paris (France) that all peripherals were to be replaced with the officially sanctioned device from some little computer shop in Round Rock, Texas. Some tosh about compatibility. I tried for as long as possible to circumvent this hardware refresh but they eventually got my anti-social, curly-corded noise-maker and threw it out.

    Sad times.

    Needless to say I quit that day etc etc.

    Who uses those hotkeys? well, I use the pause and volume buttons.

    I'm tempted to buy one of those and assign the extra keys to stuff. http://pckeyboard.com/page/category/PC122

  • (cs)

    Holes in the story:

    1. I seriously doubt single machine by itself was so mission-critical.

    2. The story says that the problem wasn't the machine shutting down. The problem was the machine rebooting, advancing the clock to the next day. So, taking your finger off the button would shut the machine down, but it should be at least less damaging to just leave the machine off. Or power it up off the network and reset the clock before plugging it back into the network.

    3. They didn't assign him a work machine? They pointed to a pile of live, running machines and said "go get one of those"? That part didn't happen. Even if I thought it was a development machine, I would be curious why they want me to use the one that's already plugged in to something.

    4. I would not want to be threatened with a lawsuit pending keeping my finger on a button, but I would at least respond to Manny by saying, "If I'm sued, I will testify that you, the person training me on my first day, told me to use this machine. You will be named in the lawsuit, too. Just try me."

  • Cheong (unregistered)

    If I were him, I'd pull out any power/reset wire connectors from motherboard, so the only way to shutdown the production "server" is to do soft shutdown. (Or pull the power cord in case of emergency.

    For how to startup the machine if it has been shutdown? Man, every average or above competent will be able tell you that with a scerwdriver, shorting the first 2 pins will make it start.

    Note that some motherboard use 1st and 3rd pin, and in that case you'll need a little handcrafted tool that serve as jumper to boot that.

  • foo (unregistered) in reply to jonnyq
    jonnyq:
    Remy Porter:
    I can see it now, one of these people reads TDWTF today, and goes, "What? Holy crap, that guy still believes that was a real production server? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

    Best. Prank. Ever.

    Sadly, it probably wasn't.

    I thought it was a prank, too, until they got him a bucket and decided someone else had to flush the bucket.

    That "someone else" was the only person not in on the prank (or on much of anything else). Two birds with one stone ...

  • Cheong (unregistered) in reply to jonnyq
    1. I seriously doubt single machine by itself was so mission-critical.

    In case of trading machine (I assume that it's stock trading, because if it's other's then it's difficult to fit all the limitation and the "million per day" transaction volume... at the days there's machine without ACPI) it's common. Trading machine owned by the company is not allowed to directly connect to Exchange system. They have to rent a server from Exchange and connect through it (and with old machines that don't have ACPI in this story, I assume it uses COM port and can't handle real multitasking). The monthly rent of these machines are expensive so typical trading firms won't host more than 1 active machine unless if it's really needed.

    1. No. I think "the clock" means the clock of the Exchange, not of local machine.
  • Dirk (unregistered) in reply to Clickety click
    Clickety click:
    with a row of hotkeys to open IE or whatever (who honestly uses those?)
    I use the calculator hotkey ALL THE TIME.
  • (cs) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    Trivia time: Guess how one types an em-dash. Here's a hint: the answer is "--".
    No, that's how you type two hyphens.

    Here's how you type an em dash: —

  • Craig (unregistered)

    I had a semi-similar situation, though not involving millions. I worked in POS support for a restaurant franchise that had about 80 stores in 2 states. The (ancient) hardware was running Linux and SCO UNIX. (Ugh) I remoted in to one of our stores about 150 miles away to do some maintenance on one of the SCO machines. I don't remember the exact situation any more, but basically they hadn't paid their support and the OS license was expired. My remoting in caused the system to realize this. The only thing keeping the system alive was the terminal session that I had with this cruddy system over a lousy modem connection. While they wouldn't have lost millions, they would have had to suffer with doing everything manually at a million-dollar store on a busy Friday until the system could be restored.

    I ran my cell phone battery dead twice (as my home phone was tied up) speaking with people at our software vendor until I finally reached someone that had a clue and could be persuaded (through a combination of begging and vague threats) to give me a license key to use, though they weren't happy about it, as it was one they had bought for their own use. 8 hours later, and amazingly the modem connection still going, I was able to put in a temporary license key, reboot the system, and crack open a much needed beer.

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is that he didn't blackmail the manager present. "Give me $500000 check NOW or I move my finger!!!" I mean anyone sane would have already known that it was not only the first day but also their last. If it's real you don't want to work there and if it's a prank you also don't want to work there.

  • (cs) in reply to Sockatume
    Sockatume:
    MacGuyver would've opened up the machine and hotwired the power switch.
    I was thinking of duct-taping a piece of cork to hold down the switch.
  • (cs) in reply to jonnyq
    jonnyq:
    1. I seriously doubt single machine by itself was so mission-critical.
    You're claiming that people and companies never do such stupid things on a site that is devoted to stories about precisely that?
  • (cs)

    Paul didn't realise the situation he was in properly? Not a very shrewd businessman.

    If you release the button they're set to lose 10 million.

    If they sue you they'll never get anywhere near that amount because you'll just declare yourself bankrupt if they have a case at all which they probably don't because any loss you make whilst operating as an employee you would not normally be liable for, just as you can't claim any profit you make for the company as your own.

    Sod the job. But bargain with them how much they will pay you off to keep holding the button all day. How about 1 million? More than they'll lose if you let go. Half a million - cheap for them. Minimum of 300K: any less than that I'll say leave it.

  • (cs)

    See You Next Tuesday is slang for

    C U

    followed by the initial letters of Next Tuesday.

  • Jimbob Jones (unregistered)

    Sounds similar to a story a co-worked was telling me about. In one of his previous lives he worked at a mail house. One of his team-mates was doing a lucrative print job for a client but for reasons they never worked out the font came out 'wrong', but only on one specific machine. They suspected it may have been some strange quirk caused by the copious amounts of fonts installed on his machine somehow conflicting with each other, but couldn't be 100% sure.

    The client loved the way the job looked with the messed up font and seeing as they weren't able to replicate the issue on any other machines, they had to declare his team-mates machine as untouchable, never to be rebooted, upgraded, patched etc until the clients marketing campaign had finished (think it was a 12month campaign, can't remember the exact details). They were afraid to so much as look at the machine in case it fixed whatever it was that was causing the font to be rendered differently. Good times :)

  • (cs) in reply to Cbuttius
    Cbuttius:
    See You Next Tuesday is slang for

    C U

    followed by the initial letters of Next Tuesday.

    A small economical car from the 1980s?

  • tation (unregistered) in reply to Fing
    Fing:
    John:
    the best thing to do when faced with a keyboard and a blank monitor where you weren't sure if it was in screen saver mode, sleeping or off, was to just press the shift key.
    NO!!! Not shift! Control!! You shift-lovers make me sick, I tell you. How many times do I have to go over this? Ye gods I hate living in such a stupid world. And it never gets better...

    No no NO! You use the caps lock key or scroll lock or the num lock key and check to see if the keyboard lights change.

  • (cs) in reply to Cbuttius
    Cbuttius:
    See You Next Tuesday is slang for

    C U

    followed by the initial letters of Next Tuesday.

    Oh. =( I don't want that in my article. I'll go change the day to Thursday.

  • CA (unregistered)

    People that star in stories on this website quit for much less.

    I would certainly make a fuss if they threatened me that way, but only now that I have worked for around 3-4 years and know more. If this was my first job I would probably shut up and keep the button pressed.

  • Bas (unregistered) in reply to Jan
    Jan:
    realmerlyn:
    Steve The Cynic:
    Somebody should edit the comments in the HTML to not include double-dashes, as that confuses at least some browsers.

    lk: Done. What the heck browser are you using?

    In real browsers, "--" is a toggle between comment and non-comment. So an odd number of them will confuse any standards-compliant browser.

    If you write bad code and it won't compile, is it the compiler's fault? Or yours for not understanding the language syntax, arcane as it may be?

    Anyone who asks "what browser are you using" has demonstrated that they are not yet competent to be writing HTML code. Write to standards. That will work on all compliant browsers. If someone is using a non-compliant browser, that's their problem.

    You don't have much experience with enterprise software development do you?

  • Decius (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    F:
    Em-dashes are no problem; it's double hyphens that have syntactic meaning.
    Trivia time: Guess how one types an em-dash. Here's a hint: the answer is "--".

    Oddly enough, when I type "--" I get two hyphens in quotes. When I want an em-dash I type — or &emdash;.

    Don't get me wrong- I very often use hyphens in informal cases where an em-dash is indicated.

  • Left Blank (unregistered) in reply to dgvid
    dgvid:
    Simon Peyote Joints:
    I'm no expert - wouldn't holding the power button for 5 seconds on most machines trigger a hard shutdown?
    Some time in the mid-1990s a co-worker of mine was doing a multi-disk software install from floppies. This was in the days just before CD-ROM drives became common and installing something like the Visual Studio 2.0 or a TCP/IP stack meant going through a dozen or more 3.5" floppies.

    After the second or third disk he reached out and mistakenly stabbed the power button instead of the eject. He was afraid that rebooting mid-install would corrupt his machine, so he kept the power switch pressed down for the remaining 10 or 15 minutes required to finish the install.

    My copy of Microsoft Office 4.2 - 1994 - 32 Floppies - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc. - Sealed within plasic tear-open bags in groups of 5 disks.

  • (cs) in reply to Coyne
    Coyne:
    We had this critical server that was new when it went into service, but it had sort of been around a while...like about 8 years. It was basically about a pinch above IBM AT. Worked well, but was full of software that, well, wasn't likely to be replaceable (we had passed Y2K during that 8 year period).

    The power supply failed one night. We paid IBM about $1000 for an exact replacement power supply, delivered on an emergency basis, on Saturday morning. Even at that time, we could have replaced the whole machine for the cost of that power supply...but then there was the software...

    I had a similar situation with an irreplaceable IBM server from a previous decade (I wasn't sure which one, really) running a hacked up version of Netware and some proprietary database that nobody was able to replicate. If we had really put some development effort into it I'm sure we could have managed to migrate it to new hardware, but it was always scheduled to retire in just a few weeks so that never happened.

    When it finally failed to reboot after a UPS failure we paid someone on eBay $100 for an exact replacement server and moved the drives over. It was much easier than trying to fix the failed parts.

    The next day at the post-mortem meeting we stressed that we were lucky that that worked and that the whole system was a time bomb that needed to be either retired now or have some serious resources allocated to building a backup server so that we didn't lose our remaining clients who still depended on the poor thing.

    The director nodded sagely and offered a Solomon-like solution to the problem. "Here's what we're going to do. You can take $200 out of my budget and buy two more of those servers. That should keep us going for a while longer."

    A year later the company was absorbed into a nearby megacorp. I wouldn't be surprised if even now they still have a big black box sitting in the corner of their server room bearing a handwritten sign that says "Do Not Power Off -- We Really Mean It".

  • (cs) in reply to Kef Schecter
    Kef Schecter:
    I'd totally have released the button. Maybe if I were feeling particularly generous, I would at least attempt to tape it down or something. It'd be their own stupidity causing the losses, not mine.
    db2:
    "So what you're saying is that if I release this button, you're out ten million, but if I hold it down all day, you're only out... half a million. Here, I'll fill out my deposit slip for you..."
    Except extortion is a crime.

    That would be blackmail, not extortion. Extortion is a demand for money with threat of physical violence (e.g. "Gimme the dough or I break your kneecaps"). Blackmail is a demand for money or you'll do something damaging in a non-violent way to the offender.

    Both should be legal when dealing with stupid people like this company, though.

  • Kidd (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates

    I hope this company fails.

  • (cs)

    And what would happen if power went out? Losing a bazillion dollars, because their “servers” are shit, right?

  • (cs) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    That would be blackmail, not extortion. Extortion is a demand for money with threat of physical violence (e.g. "Gimme the dough or I break your kneecaps"). Blackmail is a demand for money or you'll do something damaging in a non-violent way to the offender.
    Extortion: Give me money or I'll reboot your mission-critical server. Blackmail: Give me money or I'll tell all your clients that your mission-critical server has no backup.
  • bubba (unregistered) in reply to rackandboneman

    Note really. Since the switch is already on both the terminals are hot. So bridging them with a piece of wire would not cause any sparks. If you are sufficiently insulated and ungrounded you can safely work with hot wires.

  • mh (unregistered)

    Hmmm ten million you say? How much of that is mine if I don't let go?

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to Jimbob Jones
    Jimbob Jones:
    One of his team-mates was doing a lucrative print job for a client but for reasons they never worked out the font came out 'wrong', but only on one specific machine. They suspected it may have been some strange quirk caused by the copious amounts of fonts installed on his machine somehow conflicting with each other, but couldn't be 100% sure.
    Windows NT4 SP4 or later with Word 97 or Word 98. Or Windows 2000 with Word 97 or Word 98.

    Windows 2000 US version had the same bug during beta, and Microsoft fixed it in Windows 2000 US version some time between beta and final release, but Microsoft never fixed it in Windows 2000 Japanese version. So Windows 2000 US version displayed Japanese fonts more reliably than Windows 2000 Japanese version did -- including Latin characters that are included in Japanese fonts.

    Windows NT4 SP4 or later could be fixed by copying font files from Windows NT4 SP3 or earlier. Windows 2000 could be fixed by using Word 2000 instead of Word 97 or Word 98, but differences in line breaks caused differences in the number of pages occupied by some documents.

  • Stuart Longland (unregistered) in reply to hobbes

    Because I'll bet the "power button" was a big chunky on/off push-button that switched mains power.

    Pre-ACPI likely implies it was an AT style power supply, so that power button was routed straight to the mains socket at the back.

  • Dave (unregistered)

    Bonkers as it sounds I believe it as I had a similar incident. Day2 at a nameless ISP and it turned out the beige box under my desk next to my desktop was both ns1, ns2, radius and the company website. Fortunately I'd learned that some of the power buttons built into no-name beige boxes would lose contact AFTER the switch would pass the point where the catch could be re-engaged. Basically I performed the quick 'semi-release & stab back down' manouver and the machine stayed live (well till somone lifted a floortile and the dust fried the PSU a couple of months later).

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    That would be blackmail, not extortion. Extortion is a demand for money with threat of physical violence (e.g. "Gimme the dough or I break your kneecaps"). Blackmail is a demand for money or you'll do something damaging in a non-violent way to the offender.
    Extortion: Give me money or I'll reboot your mission-critical server. Blackmail: Give me money or I'll tell all your clients that your mission-critical server has no backup.

    Technically, blackmail is threatening to reveal something illegal about the victim. You can only actually be blackmailed as such if you have broken the law.

    Whether blackmail also technically applies to a victim merely wishes to keep secret something about them that is embarrassing (but technically legal) is an interesting question. I would suggest this is not the case, because in the latter case you have always got recourse to legal means of fighting it without compromising your integrity. The victim of true blackmail has no such recourse, as reporting the act to the authorities will require that you lay yourself open to action by those authorities. Such a dilemma is what the blackmailer exploits.

  • Eric (unregistered) in reply to hobbes

    Because on these old Machines where you could hold down the button forever, but releasing it meant an immediate shutdown, the powerbutton was hardwired as 230/110V straight through the PSU. The input jack on the PSU goes to a cord, over the Power button, and back to the PSU where it gets transformed down into 12/5V.

    Good times!

  • ShatteredArm (unregistered)

    I which market is the trading day at least 12 hours long?

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to ShatteredArm
    ShatteredArm:
    I which market is the trading day at least 12 hours long?
    CME might have been the first.

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