• ray10k (unregistered)

    Awesome story. And at least Derek wasn't a jackass about it.

  • Harris M (unregistered)

    It probably would be better to do it on the second floor, high up and away from cars.

  • Quite (unregistered) in reply to Harris M

    That was my initial reaction. The second floor in Europe is considerably higher than the second floor in the US, so over here that would also be out of reach of tall trucks.

  • (nodebb)

    Fake News - this would have been 10base2 network

  • Peter (unregistered)

    And this is why you don't let stoners run your cables for you.

  • Someone (unregistered)

    Uh, something happened when I clicked "crossover" in "100-ish foot long crossover cable"...

  • zmurphy (unregistered) in reply to Someone

    There are also comments in the page source explaining parts of the story

  • Someone (unregistered) in reply to zmurphy

    Yes, reading them is how I came across that. Unless you think it's normal to methodically click on and/or hover over every single word...?

  • ricecake (unregistered) in reply to Someone

    I have a bookmarklet script that I got from someone else here that automatically highlights the "cornify" word and also displays the HTML comments in the story. Let's see if the formatting doesn't get all messed up:

    javascript:(function(){document.getElementsByClassName("article-body")[0].innerHTML=document.getElementsByClassName("article-body")[0].innerHTML.replace(/<!--/g,'<span%20style="color:blue">%20&lt;!--').replace(/-->/g,'-->%20');document.getElementsByClassName("article-body")[0].innerHTML=document.getElementsByClassName("article-body")[0].innerHTML.replace('<span%20onclick="cornify_add();return%20false;"%20title="click%20me!">',%20'<span%20style="color:magenta"%20onclick="cornify_add();return%20false;"%20title="click%20me!">');}())
  • ricecake (unregistered) in reply to ricecake

    Hmm, seems like it got confused and added some extra stuff.

  • Ross (unregistered) in reply to ricecake

    Why not put it on pastebin, ricecake?

  • Throknor (unregistered) in reply to Ross

    I don't think it had to have a tie down. If it was at a right-angle it would have pulled the case before it was in a straight enough line to pull out. Okay, any non-straight angle but I could see him have it directly next to a window where the window was to the right or left. Given that it was across the street the amount of cable may have been barely enough.

  • Alex (unregistered)

    TRWTF is a PEBKAC with the editor. I'm looking at this HTML comment: "According to the submitter, the computer was pulled out of the window via its network card, which strikes me as implausible. It doesn't take very much force to have the jack release, and anybody who's worked with an ethernet cable knows how easily the locking tab just snaps off."

    Clearly the editor hasn't worked with a 10base2 ethernet cable. A cable with a BNC connector has a built-in metal locking mechanism that is easily strong enough to pull the computer anywhere you want. Even with T-connectors. At that time, you could attach a nice cloud-computing-center dingalong to a newlywed's car, with 10base2 cabling, and have it securely dragged for their entire nerdy honeymoon.

  • MaxArt (unregistered)

    Man. It reminds me when we laid something like 25 meters of RS232 serial cable over the roof of the building to play Duke Nukem 3D and Warcraft together. Good times...

  • Jerepp (unregistered) in reply to Helix

    ... and you wouldn't need zip ties for coax RF or BNC connectors, they would yank the computer out the window all on their own.

  • Appalled (unregistered)

    WTF? My computer keeps shutting down every time I lean back in my chair and stretch my legs.

    Oh silly me. My feet are hitting the Power Strip toggle and shutting it off.

    Hmmm. Probably good enough for a Daily WTF article though, don't you think?

    Can this be tomorrow's edition? Please?

  • (nodebb) in reply to MaxArt

    Way far back in the day(1), I worked on the software team for an ATM switch, and our team had optical fibres strung from the false-ceiling rails using cable ties.

    (1) In a week's time, it will be 22 years to the day since I started that job, and had a crash course in a newfangled thing called Linux, on a 21-inch iiyama CRT monitor that weighed so much it took two people to get it off the floor onto the desk after opening the box.

  • Phuul (unregistered) in reply to Helix

    Why would it be 10base2? We were using 10baseT in the mid to late 90's. I set up a network in my apartment with a roomate. We fished the cable through the air ducts so we could game. Around 98 we got DSL and shared that.

  • Gumpy Gus (unregistered)

    Sounds like a bit of an exaggeration. If it was twisted-pair cable or the RG-58 coax, the connectors are not that firmly secured. Especially the BNC connectors, they are just held on by the coax braid being pushed down with a orange rubber gasket, or just being screwed on over the black rubber with Radio-Shack quick connectors.

    It's also difficult for a wire to get snagged by a passing car.

  • Mistakes in an article about mistakes (unregistered) in reply to Gumpy Gus

    So what have you been smoking?

  • Herr Otto Flick (unregistered) in reply to Alex

    TFA clearly says that the stoner went around accidentally pulling cables out at the LAN party, which is heavily implying that the networking in play is not 10BASE2. You can't accidentally pull out a BNC connector.

  • I dunno LOL ¯\(°_o)/¯ (unregistered) in reply to Someone

    Most of us use a bookmarklet to reformat the page.

    Mine is shorter than ricecake's.

    javascript:(function(){var%20e=document.getElementsByClassName("article-body")[0];e.innerHTML=e.innerHTML.replace(/<!--/g,"<div%20style='background-color:gainsboro;border:solid%201px%20black;padding:4px;color:red;'><span%20style='font-style:italic;'>").replace(/-->/g,"</span></div>").replace(/%20title="click%20me!">/g,"%20title="click%20me!">%F0%9F%90%8E");})();

  • I dunno LOL ¯\(°_o)/¯ (unregistered) in reply to Phuul

    Hey, who back then didn't dream of a LAN connection to a neighbor?

    I'm going to guess that while the LAN party used 10BT, the stoner was using 10B2. I remember that in the late '90s, while you could definitely get 10BT, thinnet was still cheaper, and you could find it used. And a lot of network cards had both connectors. I ran a thinnet for a while around then. But yeah, those BNC connectors could certainly yank your computer out a window.

    That also probably explains how Shawn would have been so happy to give it away, because thinnet is crap that you get rid of as soon as you can afford 10BT. He might even have thrown in the network cards for free, if he had some with coax-only or coax+AUI. Shameful confession: I still have some thinnet wire around, "just in case" I need to hook up some stuff with BNC, even though the impedance will probably be wrong.

  • OlegYch (unregistered)

    Derek reminded me of Derrick from Ideal.

  • Yazeran (unregistered)

    Oh all this talk about LAN's and BNC plugs brings back the memories of Doom2 and the LAN we set up back in 95 or so.

    Cable running out of windows and across roofs or hanging on guard rails between apartments... And of cause, once someone fiddled with the cable, the whole network went down as the terminators had to be in place at all times.

    (not to mention that you got a mild buzz from touching the connectors as the computers in different parts of the network were on separate 220V supplies with inadequate grounding....)

    All in all a fully cowboy job....

    And yes, those BNC plugs could definitely pull the case along....

    Good times though, good times.. :-)

    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

  • WonkoTheSane (unregistered) in reply to Helix

    Naaah Helix, given the date Id guess this would be Coax cable, 500m range, hell even cat 5 would reach over a street (max 100m)

  • WonkoTheSane (unregistered)

    Sorry misread your comment..

    Its been a while since ice seen an article cornified!

  • (nodebb)

    I remember when I first moved out of home in 2002 we wanted to get ADSL. Back then Telstra was notorious for denying ADSL due to stupid reasons like pair gain, distance from exchange, too many bridge taps, etc. So we moved into a house next door to a friend who already had it. It was next door, number 59 and friend was 61, but his was in a student accommodation and its was a free-standing private rental house. Of course Telstra denied our application, so initially there was a house of four uni students sharing 33k dialup. (That Telstra line didn't even support 56k)

    This was also the time of wireless "mesh" networks using 802.11b. We had installed an antenna to connect to another friend on the other side of the valley, which worked well, pulling 500kbytes/sec. But our neighbour friend had troubles working the wireless network card.

    During one trip to town we noticed a box of network cable in a dumpster skip, it still had about 100m of cable left! Thus "unwireless" was born by running the cable up the fence and through a window. There was even enough for a new friend at number 57 to connect too. The poor P100 was in the shed and had three network cards plus the wireless one and did firewalling, routing and file serving and a bunch of other services. We paid for some of the ADSL and all was good.

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    i remember a similar story where they had a wire across the street on the second floor...and a tall truck caught it...

  • Olivier (unregistered)

    We recently had an air conditioning outage in the server room. To try to get the temperature to a more livable level, I installed a fan in front of the open window. And I raised the fan on top of an old PC tower. It was not very stable.

    Next thing I know, I had to collect the fan from the lawn, one floor below, the traction from the fan blade had propelled it through the window.

  • Dude, what? (unregistered)

    I guess Derek should've been higher. I mean put the cable higher.

  • Joe (unregistered)

    apple mag safe was build to stop this.

  • Whitey Dog (unregistered) in reply to Herr Otto Flick

    That is because TFA is half-made-up by some clueless dude.

  • Donald Klopper (google)

    I actually LOLed on this one. I saw the punchline coming, but didn't think it would be a car!

  • Yog-Sothoth (unregistered)

    No mortal ever said "Wait...what?" in the 1990's.

  • PT (unregistered)

    best one in a long time. well written!

  • tooki (unregistered)

    Couldn't have been 10base2, for a simple reason: 10base2 has no concept of crossover cables. That's purely an artifact of the twisted-pair implementation of Ethernet.

  • (nodebb)

    Neighbours had somewhat similar setup, first with 10base2 and then 10baseT, but the wire was 10 m above ground, supported by a steel lanyard, and permanent (and I was connected to them using a home-made optical link).

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