• (cs)

    So TRWTF is that Jim didn't properly authenticate the caller? Maybe there really was a MARYB and she got lucky, but a little more digging would have ratted her out.

    Also, his very FRIST question should have been whether she could get a dial tone.

  • Shutter bug (unregistered) in reply to LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet
    LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet:
    So TRWTF is that Jim didn't properly authenticate the caller? Maybe there really was a MARYB and she got lucky, but a little more digging would have ratted her out.

    I guess Jim wasn't quite as smart as the University President had suggested...

    Captcha: Nobis as in Nobis-ness calling that particular number

    (sorry, I'll just grab my coat!)

  • tkdbb84 (unregistered)

    Sadly I work doing System Administration at a University, I wouldn't have been surprised if this had been an ex-faculty member.

  • (cs)

    How about "Well, that'll be the cause of your problem then. The dial-up needs your phone line to work."

  • peony (unregistered)

    if someone called me on my personal number looking for tech support and the first thing they done was not profusely apologise to me for disturbing my time, i would immediately hang up and add their number to the caller firewall.

  • Nappy (unregistered)

    No idea if there is a law but every once in a while you start finding the problem from the wrong end of the problem

  • Andrew (unregistered)

    Maybe I'm missing something... Did I read this right? Instead of calling AOL, she phoned random numbers at the varsity and lied and get help from their IT instead?

  • Smug Unix User (unregistered)

    Real IT doesn't answer phone calls.

  • letatio (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    Maybe I'm missing something... Did I read this right? Instead of calling AOL, she phoned random numbers at the varsity and lied and get help from their IT instead?

    Should have told her to cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda

  • (cs) in reply to letatio
    letatio:
    Andrew:
    Maybe I'm missing something... Did I read this right? Instead of calling AOL, she phoned random numbers at the varsity and lied and get help from their IT instead?

    Should have told her to cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda

    Better to use /dev/urandom. Zeroes compress too easily.

  • Leo (unregistered) in reply to LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet
    LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet:
    letatio:
    Andrew:
    Maybe I'm missing something... Did I read this right? Instead of calling AOL, she phoned random numbers at the varsity and lied and get help from their IT instead?

    Should have told her to cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda

    Better to use /dev/urandom. Zeroes compress too easily.

    That makes no sense: zeroes are big and round, while ones are skinny. So by using urandom, you're introducing ones, which will compress together much more than big round zeroes.

    Pfft, and the university president said you were smart.

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet
    LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet:
    letatio:
    Andrew:
    Maybe I'm missing something... Did I read this right? Instead of calling AOL, she phoned random numbers at the varsity and lied and get help from their IT instead?

    Should have told her to cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda

    Better to use /dev/urandom. Zeroes compress too easily.
    Then you would get a phone call a few minutes later, complaining that it isn't working. Retards like Mary stay the hell away from the command line, and generally use Windows anyway.

  • King Fax (unregistered)

    Oh I ROFLOL'd. Oh oh oh my, did I ROFLOMAO.

  • (cs)

    Funny story. He should have asked Marty to send a screen shot by email. :-)

  • RakerF1 (unregistered)

    If he was really in IT, he would asked "Did you reboot your computer?"

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd

    Captcha: nibh -- you gotta nibh it in the bud!

  • (cs)

    Until I got to the end I was all ready to say that the Real WTF is having some thinks-he-knows-it-all exec (or academic/government equivalent) tell random people it's okay to bypass the established food chain for support issues.

    Then I got to the end of the story. That's too funny, but now the WTF is a helpdesk guy (corp or otherwise) who doesn't immediately verify the user calling is an actual user of the system.

  • (cs)

    The real WTF if a tech guy being socially engineered by a clueless woman...

  • (cs)

    Obvious prank call is obvious.

  • Paul (unregistered)

    OK, this one had me totally buying in to the retired university story, because that is exactly how university employees act when they want something.

    You see, if you're dumb, you leave school at some point to work in the Real World where your employer can't back your paycheck unless you all get your act together and provide some product or service people want bad enough to pay for it.

    But if you're really smart, the university people well welcome you to the inner circle as one of their own, and you will go straight from Mommy and Daddy paying your tuition to begging the Government for handouts (grants). You never have the experience of being required to produce something of value.

    Therefore your value is not measured by productivity, but by this nebulous thing called clout. You've published papers that are more important than the other guy. You've been there longer. You know the assistant to the janitor of the guy who wipes the Dean's ass. Whatever you can find, you glom onto it and trumpet it about to prove your standing.

    And woe be to the lowly tech support peon who fails to bow in submission to your greatness. Trivia like unplugged power cords are just excuses for your abject craven maliciousness in failing to acknowledge their clout. Therefore you must be yelled at in louder and more dramatic terms until it penetrates your thick skull that they are fucking important dammit so you better fix their shit right now or face their wrath!!!

    Used to happen to me every day.

    If you were clever you could get two of them at your desk at the same time, each trying to outclout the other, and just sit back and watch the sparks fly. Quite entertaining at first, but it gets old. And of course the job didn't pay nearly enough to compensate for that, so I moved on.

    But the opening paragraphs are 100% realistic.

  • John Hensley (unregistered)

    TRWTF is Jim's failure to tell Mary to go to hell before hanging up.

  • (cs)

    This is the kind of story I expect to see on Not Always Right.

  • HeeHaw (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    OK, this one had me totally buying in to the retired university story, because that is exactly how university employees act when they want something.

    You see, if you're dumb, you leave school at some point to work in the Real World where your employer can't back your paycheck unless you all get your act together and provide some product or service people want bad enough to pay for it.

    But if you're really smart, the university people well welcome you to the inner circle as one of their own, and you will go straight from Mommy and Daddy paying your tuition to begging the Government for handouts (grants). You never have the experience of being required to produce something of value.

    Therefore your value is not measured by productivity, but by this nebulous thing called clout. You've published papers that are more important than the other guy. You've been there longer. You know the assistant to the janitor of the guy who wipes the Dean's ass. Whatever you can find, you glom onto it and trumpet it about to prove your standing.

    And woe be to the lowly tech support peon who fails to bow in submission to your greatness. Trivia like unplugged power cords are just excuses for your abject craven maliciousness in failing to acknowledge their clout. Therefore you must be yelled at in louder and more dramatic terms until it penetrates your thick skull that they are fucking important dammit so you better fix their shit right now or face their wrath!!!

    Used to happen to me every day.

    If you were clever you could get two of them at your desk at the same time, each trying to outclout the other, and just sit back and watch the sparks fly. Quite entertaining at first, but it gets old. And of course the job didn't pay nearly enough to compensate for that, so I moved on.

    But the opening paragraphs are 100% realistic.

    You weren't accepted to grad school, i see.

  • (cs) in reply to Leo
    Leo:
    LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet:
    letatio:
    Andrew:
    Maybe I'm missing something... Did I read this right? Instead of calling AOL, she phoned random numbers at the varsity and lied and get help from their IT instead?

    Should have told her to cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda

    Better to use /dev/urandom. Zeroes compress too easily.

    That makes no sense: zeroes are big and round, while ones are skinny. So by using urandom, you're introducing ones, which will compress together much more than big round zeroes.

    Pfft, and the university president said you were smart.

    You're nuts. Ones are made of solid pixels, whereas zeros have that big hole in the middle.

  • NoVOIP (unregistered)

    Oh maaan ... I was sure all along that her husband had cancelled the traditional phone line and went VoIP ...

    Dial Up on a VoIP line would have made a real cool WTF ...

  • gorrillla10101 (unregistered) in reply to @Deprecated
    @Deprecated:
    Leo:
    LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet:
    letatio:
    Andrew:
    Maybe I'm missing something... Did I read this right? Instead of calling AOL, she phoned random numbers at the varsity and lied and get help from their IT instead?

    Should have told her to cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda

    Better to use /dev/urandom. Zeroes compress too easily.

    That makes no sense: zeroes are big and round, while ones are skinny. So by using urandom, you're introducing ones, which will compress together much more than big round zeroes.

    Pfft, and the university president said you were smart.

    You're nuts. Ones are made of solid pixels, whereas zeros have that big hole in the middle.

    Which would technically compress down to about the same size. A deflated 0 is a 1.

  • Not Kevin Mitnick (unregistered)

    So, we have a story today about someone smart enough to social engineer an unnamed university's IT system but too dumb to do anything interesting with the access.

    TRWTF. ^

  • Yogi (unregistered) in reply to gorrillla10101

    Anyone with brains could see that a 0 has twice as many sides as a 1, and therefore would only compress to twice the width.

  • gallier2 (unregistered) in reply to NoVOIP
    NoVOIP:
    Oh maaan ... I was sure all along that her husband had cancelled the traditional phone line and went VoIP ...

    Dial Up on a VoIP line would have made a real cool WTF ...

    But it works, I had to do that to connect a traditional FAX.

  • Joe (unregistered) in reply to @Deprecated
    @Deprecated:
    You're nuts. Ones are made of solid pixels, whereas zeros have that big hole in the middle.

    Which compresses better, a Krispy-Kreme (with a hole in the middle) or a Twinkie (RIP)? Clearly, a university research grant is called for.

    --Joe

  • (cs) in reply to HeeHaw
    HeeHaw:
    Paul:
    OK, this one had me totally buying in to the retired university story, because that is exactly how university employees act when they want something.
    You weren't accepted to grad school, i see.
    I also found it a bit resentful, but it is true that universities have quite a large number of people who've their head stuck up their own arse. Plus, it makes a good story.
  • (cs) in reply to TGV
    TGV:
    HeeHaw:
    Paul:
    OK, this one had me totally buying in to the retired university story, because that is exactly how university employees act when they want something.
    You weren't accepted to grad school, i see.
    I also found it a bit resentful, but it is true that universities have quite a large number of people who've their head stuck up their own arse. Plus, it makes a good story.
    inb4 "those who can, do; those who can't, teach."
  • John Hensley (unregistered) in reply to Yogi
    Yogi:
    Anyone with brains could see that a 0 has twice as many sides as a 1, and therefore would only compress to twice the width.
    FYI these jokes are not very good
  • Tracy (unregistered)

    You've apparently never worked IT with medical doctors as clients. They are convinced that a medical degree is the same as a genius certificate and anyone without it is a moron, and most of their colleagues with them are morons also. They are also in the important business of saving lives so any IT delay is an emergency that could KILL SOMEONE.

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to gorrillla10101
    gorrillla10101:

    Which would technically compress down to about the same size. A deflated 0 is a 1.

    Wrong.

    If you walk line by line, there's two pixels per line for a 0 for every line. Depending on the font, at most half the lines have two pixels for a 1, and on some fonts, none of the lines have two pixels. But for some fonts, that horizontal line at the bottom is really long and makes 5 pixels, so you really have to count carefully and determine by font whether 0 or 1 compresses smaller.

  • Sean (unregistered) in reply to Paul

    Hmm, may be from you we should take away all the stuff that came out of ideas from the people who lack productivity and have only clout. I am sure you would be very productive dragging a hoe or plow in a remote farm. But wait, even those tools or things like irrigation to get water away from rivers were discovered by people who were not productive in your thinking (if ever there was an oxymoron) and thought so that someone like you can live.

    Guess it hurts to be around people who can think when all you are qualified to do is answer the phone and read from a script; if you can find the right one.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    OK, this one had me totally buying in to the retired university story, because that is exactly how university employees act when they want something.

    You see, if you're dumb, you leave school at some point to work in the Real World where your employer can't back your paycheck unless you all get your act together and provide some product or service people want bad enough to pay for it.

    But if you're really smart, the university people well welcome you to the inner circle as one of their own, and you will go straight from Mommy and Daddy paying your tuition to begging the Government for handouts (grants). You never have the experience of being required to produce something of value.

    Therefore your value is not measured by productivity, but by this nebulous thing called clout. You've published papers that are more important than the other guy. You've been there longer. You know the assistant to the janitor of the guy who wipes the Dean's ass. Whatever you can find, you glom onto it and trumpet it about to prove your standing.

    And woe be to the lowly tech support peon who fails to bow in submission to your greatness. Trivia like unplugged power cords are just excuses for your abject craven maliciousness in failing to acknowledge their clout. Therefore you must be yelled at in louder and more dramatic terms until it penetrates your thick skull that they are fucking important dammit so you better fix their shit right now or face their wrath!!!

    Used to happen to me every day.

    If you were clever you could get two of them at your desk at the same time, each trying to outclout the other, and just sit back and watch the sparks fly. Quite entertaining at first, but it gets old. And of course the job didn't pay nearly enough to compensate for that, so I moved on.

    But the opening paragraphs are 100% realistic.

    DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM DAMMIT!!!

  • Cogo the Barbarian (unregistered) in reply to John Hensley
    John Hensley:
    Yogi:
    Anyone with brains could see that a 0 has twice as many sides as a 1, and therefore would only compress to twice the width.
    FYI these jokes are not very good

    But we make it up with volume! (While achieving excellent compression ratios for the conversation.)

  • swschrad (unregistered)

    the real WTF was letting her daughter con her into a cell phone without an RJ-12 jack on the side for the modem.

  • (cs) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    OK, this one had me totally buying in to the retired university story, because that is exactly how university employees act when they want something.

    You see, if you're dumb, you leave school at some point to work in the Real World where your employer can't back your paycheck unless you all get your act together and provide some product or service people want bad enough to pay for it.

    Well, who shat on your donut this morning? You pissed because some Prof. thought he was smarter than you, but you know you're The Smartest Person In The Universe?

    sheesh

  • Spewin Coffee (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    OK, this one had me totally buying in to the retired university story, because that is exactly how university employees act when they want something.

    You see, if you're dumb, you leave school at some point to work in the Real World where your employer can't back your paycheck unless you all get your act together and provide some product or service people want bad enough to pay for it.

    But if you're really smart, the university people well welcome you to the inner circle as one of their own, and you will go straight from Mommy and Daddy paying your tuition to begging the Government for handouts (grants). You never have the experience of being required to produce something of value.

    Therefore your value is not measured by productivity, but by this nebulous thing called clout. You've published papers that are more important than the other guy. You've been there longer. You know the assistant to the janitor of the guy who wipes the Dean's ass. Whatever you can find, you glom onto it and trumpet it about to prove your standing.

    And woe be to the lowly tech support peon who fails to bow in submission to your greatness. Trivia like unplugged power cords are just excuses for your abject craven maliciousness in failing to acknowledge their clout. Therefore you must be yelled at in louder and more dramatic terms until it penetrates your thick skull that they are fucking important dammit so you better fix their shit right now or face their wrath!!!

    Used to happen to me every day.

    If you were clever you could get two of them at your desk at the same time, each trying to outclout the other, and just sit back and watch the sparks fly. Quite entertaining at first, but it gets old. And of course the job didn't pay nearly enough to compensate for that, so I moved on.

    But the opening paragraphs are 100% realistic.

    I'm not surprised. If Scott Adams hasn't done something about university faculty life in Dilbert, he should. This is perfect for that strip.

  • kbiel (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that to this day Jim is still not aware that someone in his department pranked him. I wonder if he also emptied the bit bucket daily and filled out all the ID10T forms.

  • F (unregistered) in reply to letatio
    letatio:
    Andrew:
    Maybe I'm missing something... Did I read this right? Instead of calling AOL, she phoned random numbers at the varsity and lied and get help from their IT instead?

    Should have told her to cat /dev/zero > /dev/hda

    Given how fucking stupid she's just shown herself to be, that would probably result in cruelty to an innocent animal.

  • (cs) in reply to Sean
    Sean:
    Hmm, may be from you we should take away all the stuff that came out of ideas from the people who lack productivity and have only clout. I am sure you would be very productive dragging a hoe or plow in a remote farm. But wait, even those tools or things like irrigation to get water away from rivers were discovered by people who were not productive in your thinking (if ever there was an oxymoron) and thought so that someone like you can live.

    Guess it hurts to be around people who can think when all you are qualified to do is answer the phone and read from a script; if you can find the right one.

    Haven't figured out how to quote someone in your reply? I guess you don't have time with that paper you're writing on fruit fly reproduction in avocados while exposed to Great White's "Once Bitten". Maybe if you get more federal funding, you can hire a few assistants. Make sure you put "drosophila melanogaster" in the application to make it sound really good; that should net a few mil from the taxpayers.

  • (cs) in reply to LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet
    LoremIpsumDolorSitAmet:
    So TRWTF is that Jim didn't properly authenticate the caller? Maybe there really was a MARYB and she got lucky, but a little more digging would have ratted her out.

    Also, his very FRIST question should have been whether she could get a dial tone.

    I guess Jim didn't even try to look up the maryb account to see if it existed? Or did this woman happen to guess both the name of a university worker from 15 years ago AND the format of usernames they used back then?

    Also, Jim doesn't fix her problem at all, and she suddenly bursts out that the uni support is so much better than AOL? So she's just pleased that somebody answered the phone and not bothered in the least that she still can't get online...

    This story sucks.

  • sammybaby (unregistered)

    Actually, as much as I might sympathize with Mary's husband, I think he was actually wrong in this case. An AOL tech would have asked them to check for dial tone within the first minute of the call.

  • (cs)

    My best modem story was a solution that combined old tech with new tech.

    Back in 2004 or so, I was at a retreat and conference center in California that was designed for spiritual solitude and yada-yada-yada. Bottom line, no phone lines in the bedrooms, and obviously no wifi or internet access.

    But I did have a cell phone and laptop, both Bluetooth enabled. (Oh, and cell phones didn't have EDGE or 3G at that time yet. They did have GPRS, which was next to useless.)

    And, back home in Canada, I still had a working dialup ISP account.

    So the solution: pair the cell phone with the laptop as a Bluetooth wireless modem. Call international long-distance to my home ISP and establish a dialup connection over the cell line. I was able to successfully connect at 9600 baud, not really very useful for web browsing but sufficient to check my email every day.

    When I look back at how not-that-long-ago that was, and how much more connected we are today, it blows my mind.

    What blows my mind more: sure, it cost me a couple bucks in long distance roaming fees to make those calls. But to roam on 3G networks internationally today would cost MORE. Yikes!

  • urza9814 (unregistered) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    gorrillla10101:

    Which would technically compress down to about the same size. A deflated 0 is a 1.

    Wrong.

    If you walk line by line, there's two pixels per line for a 0 for every line. Depending on the font, at most half the lines have two pixels for a 1, and on some fonts, none of the lines have two pixels. But for some fonts, that horizontal line at the bottom is really long and makes 5 pixels, so you really have to count carefully and determine by font whether 0 or 1 compresses smaller.

    I believe the original comment was about the compression ratio. Arguing which one is smaller misses the point...a 0 can be squeezed, while a 1 cannot. So even if the 0 is larger in the end result, it would still have a greater compression ratio!

    Unless...maybe if you folded up the foot of the 1 up? Would depend on the font then I suspect. This requires more research!

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to Sean
    Sean:
    Hmm, may be from you we should take away all the stuff that came out of ideas from the people who lack productivity and have only clout. I am sure you would be very productive dragging a hoe or plow in a remote farm. But wait, even those tools or things like irrigation to get water away from rivers were discovered by people who were not productive in your thinking (if ever there was an oxymoron) and thought so that someone like you can live.

    Guess it hurts to be around people who can think when all you are qualified to do is answer the phone and read from a script; if you can find the right one.

    This post is based on the curious assumption that all great thinkers and inventors are university professors, and that all university professors are great thinkers and inventors.

    I don't think anyone knows who invented the hoe, the plow, and irrigation, but I think it's a fair bet that none of them were university professors. It's quite possible that those inventions were made by farmers looking for a way to make their own job easier.

    The original poster didn't make fun of great thinkers. He made fun of university professors who imagine themselves to be great thinkers.

    This post reminds me of all the times I've heard someone say, "How dare you question me! I am a scientist, and scientists have made many great discoveries, from nuclear power to the airplane to vaccines. We scientists have proven ourselves again and again." But of course, the person making these statements is almost never the person who invented nuclear power or discovered DNA or whatever. He just groups himself with these people by calling himself and them by the same name, and then claims credit for all their accomplishments.

  • PRMan (unregistered) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    OK, this one had me totally buying in to the retired university story, because that is exactly how university employees act when they want something.

    You see, if you're dumb, you leave school at some point to work in the Real World where your employer can't back your paycheck unless you all get your act together and provide some product or service people want bad enough to pay for it.

    But if you're really smart, the university people well welcome you to the inner circle as one of their own, and you will go straight from Mommy and Daddy paying your tuition to begging the Government for handouts (grants). You never have the experience of being required to produce something of value.

    Therefore your value is not measured by productivity, but by this nebulous thing called clout. You've published papers that are more important than the other guy. You've been there longer. You know the assistant to the janitor of the guy who wipes the Dean's ass. Whatever you can find, you glom onto it and trumpet it about to prove your standing.

    And woe be to the lowly tech support peon who fails to bow in submission to your greatness. Trivia like unplugged power cords are just excuses for your abject craven maliciousness in failing to acknowledge their clout. Therefore you must be yelled at in louder and more dramatic terms until it penetrates your thick skull that they are fucking important dammit so you better fix their shit right now or face their wrath!!!

    Used to happen to me every day.

    If you were clever you could get two of them at your desk at the same time, each trying to outclout the other, and just sit back and watch the sparks fly. Quite entertaining at first, but it gets old. And of course the job didn't pay nearly enough to compensate for that, so I moved on.

    But the opening paragraphs are 100% realistic.

    I used to work at a University and this was 100% true. The good news, though, is that I had quite a bit of clout myself for a 24-year-old, and got several students' financial aid situations worked out where they were being unfairly denied by talking directly to the President and Vice Presidents.

  • Evan (unregistered) in reply to urza9814
    urza9814:
    Unless...maybe if you folded up the foot of the 1 up? Would depend on the font then I suspect. This requires more research!
    What's the smallest shape of a given area? A circle. So what you need to do is just make as close to a circle from all the pixels in the 0 and 1 as you can.

    You could even then just record the radius of that circle as your compression method!

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