Rogue admin charges cut to size

Terry Childs, the San Francisco administrator accused of locking the city out of its own network, has seen most of the charges against him dropped. A judge ruled last week that Childs would face just one charge, with three hacking charges being dropped. Childs has been banged up since July last year. He remains accused of …

[TeeCee]

What would have happened if the sysadmin had been hit by a pizza truck?

Well, presumably Fate and Serendipity would have high-fived and then gone out for a few beers for a start.

[Bassey]

Big Red Bus

Over here it's generally referred to as the "Big Red Bus" scenario.

[Brian 62]

Bus driver

I wish we would spend more time looking for this bus driver who keeps hitting sysadmins instead of spending tons of money on backup systems and documentation.

[JCL]

oh

I'm not sure why, but I thought this was going to be about bank charges or phone bills. I'd forgotten about this.

Now, where did I put my coat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why SF is different

For those not familiar with my native city, an article in this morning's SF Chronicle may help put the state of City government into perspective.

First off: there are three distinct local goverment entities here in The States, states, counties, and cities. There are some oddities: NYC is a city with multiple counties, SF is BOTH a city and a county. That means the governmental responsibilities of both are contained within the same small 50 square mile, 700K populace entity.

SF government has 55 agencies, 18 elected officials, and 18 mandated commissions, and countless boards and advisory bodies. Also a $6.6 billion budget, but that's another tale.

So for those who wonder why this admin wasn't better supervised, my guess is everybody was too busy attending meetings.

[Anonymous Coward]

What would have happened if the sysadmin had been hit by a pizza truck?

Then they'd have a pavement pizza to deliver as well.

[Tam Lin]

What kit did they have?

Any idiot knows that Cisco, Juniper, &c equipment is designed for pizza truck scenarios (in the US it's bible church buses) - passwords can be reset without harming the configuration. It's just about as difficult as resetting a dead administrator's password on a Windows or Unix server.

[Sly]

@Big Red Bus

Duh! Big Red Truck.

pretty much the same diff... just a different likeness. some large imposing vehicle ends the important one's life before access credentials can be duplicated for emergency measures.

to quote Ghost in the Shell... "Overspecialize and you breed in weakness"

Hence we have the problem with politics. it's all lawyers and no others. way over specialized.

[BristolBachelor]

Keeping the password safe?

So he's being sued because he had a password that would let anyone completely knacker their entire network (even without malicious intent) and he kept it to himself?

Over here, you'd be sacked and sued if you had such a password and allowed it to leak...

Ducks and waits for the flames.

...on second thoughts, if you worked for the government, you'd be OK because they can loose anything and it's no problem.

[Will Godfrey]

His mistake was...

There is only one type of person bureaucracy hates more than someone who can say 'No', and that is someone who has a valid reason to say 'No', especially if they are later proved to be quite right to do so.

[Marco Gnumar]

It's in the contract...

Mine for instance expressly states I am to avoiding being flattened by pizza trucks, getting crashed into the sea by airplanes and getting blown up by the Taleban.

If you initialed that page you are bound by it.

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS IS A TITLE... OK

Ok

So if a client fails to pay me for my work... I cancel the orders I've placed for them

Why did they call the police and have me arrested, they lost nothing, I cancelled the orders I Placed

Why did I get done for it?

They lost nothing

ME!... Arrested, Charged, and Convicted (Computer Misuse blablabla)

[Anonymous Coward]

@Tam

Except when you disable Rommon, use an unknown password and don't write the configs to the startup. In that case, a totally different story...... I'll get my coat.... Anon for obvious reasons.

[Disco-Legend-Zeke]

It's a MACK truck!

Never a peterbilt or a white.

This according to my mom, who used the Mack truck scenario to make me always wear clean underwear. (just in case(

[C-N]

So what's the real story with this guy, anyway?

There's got to be something more to this.

@ Tam: Shhhh! Quiet! That's valuable information! And you're giving away for free! You'll never make a good IT consultant (going on like that).

@Disco-Legend-Zeke: My grandmother said the same thing. Still, I reckon that I'd ruin my pants anyway if I happened to notice the truck/bus/meteorite in time.