Drunken employee pops cap in server An employee of a Salt Lake City mortgage company allegedly got drunk and popped a cap in the firm's $100k server, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. Joshua Lee Campbell, 23, had apparently been enjoying a few liveners with a fellow worker at the Twilight Concert in Pioneer Park, and later nipped back to work to shoot the server …
Although sadly fictional, *Eddie Shoestring* also used an American "weapon of choice", a baseball bat, in his character defining resignation from IT. As I recall this was occasionally shown in a flashback, but there's no evidence on the web.
I should think even a single whack on the casing would not have done much for those late 70s multiplatter disk packs...
If he had even an inkling of the Mastery of BOFH he would never have used a gun.
A true BOFH would have gotten the Patsy^WBoss to use the modified cattle prod and made sure that a CCTV camera was pointing at the server to record the event. This would be after transferring the contents of several company bank accounts to off shore accounts and ensuring that the transactions traced back to the boss's computer.
How he would have convince the Boss to do it is far beyond my ability to even imagine. Such is Simon's Mastery of the art of BOFH.
The BOFH would have claimed to have 'accidentally' sprained his wrist on the latest server upgrade, then asked the boss if he'd be so kind as to slide the server - ever so carefully - back into the rack. "Boss, for 'elf and safety's sake, to ensure you don't get a shock, I'd recommend using this stick"
BZZZZZT! Job (both) done.
Mwahahaha!!!
...from a friend that at the Microsoft campus a few years back. There was a Brit with their group and a lady (typical West Coast liberal-type) start going off about how the US is backwards and "inhumane" vs. the UK and their progressive gun control legislation.
The Brit pipes up and says "Inhumane? You haven't seen inhumane unless you've seen someone get beat to death with a beer bottle".
The point here is that *PEOPLE* kill other people and you don't need a gun to do it. Gun control or lack of guns (after all the most popular weapon in Rwanda was machetes) does not mean people don't get killed.
Anyway, as far as the article goes, yes me too... I think we've all wanted to do this at one time or another.
Bringing it all together: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e5Ky7CXPA
A gun is a tool, simple as that. How many people die every year in the States from accidents with power tools? Are you going to ban all those too? Good luck building anything. I hear about 3500 people in the States drown every year, are you going to ban swimming "for their own good"? Don't let's even look at deaths in car crashes, otherwise you could talk yourself into walking everywhere! Good luck in your ultra-safe life, wrapped in bubblewrap (falls around the home kill people every day), always indoors (lightning strikes to avoid) and eating only with a plastic spoon (no solids, I'm told hundreds of people choke to death on solids every year too). Best if you also disconnect yourself from the Internet, you wouldn't want to risk getting an electric shock.
You completely forgot to mention that it is the areas of the US with the strongest gun control laws that actually have the highest recorded incidences of gun crime. I have visited many US cities and felt a darn sight safer than many in the UK. I was in North Texas a few years back, where every truck seemed to have a gunrack and I'm pretty sure quite a few cars had a pistol in the glovebox, and the locals (people you would probably label as "rednecks that cling to their guns and bibles") were most upset about a shooting that had occured in their county - the first in twelve years!
"areas of the US with the strongest gun control laws that actually have the highest recorded incidences of gun crime."
What came first? Your trying to imply that the gun control caused the higher crime? Gun control laws are a response to high gun crime.
The problem is that if the law is only in one area it's a short drive to get your gun.
In Canada they have strong control on hand guns, and most of the guns used in gun crime come from the US as they only find about 10% at the border.
"......What came first?...." The high levels of gun crime. Then the kneejerk reaction of stiffer gun laws, which had the effect of removing weapons from law-abiding citizens, making them less able to defend themselves. Bad news was that criminals are not law-abiding citizens, they didn't give up their guns, and now had softer targets to prey on. The "what came first" bit ignores that the stiffer gun laws came next, with the illogical view that they would reduce gun crime, but the reality is it actually went up in such places. However, in areas where US citizens were encouraged to own firearms, incidents of gun crime went down as the criminals couldn't gamble on not running into a gun-toting "victim".
"....The problem is that if the law is only in one area it's a short drive to get your gun....." What a fallacy! In the '80s, the most common handgun used in street crime in Chicago and New York was a cheap German revolver that wasn't even legally imported into the States (it was so cheap and nasty it failed Federal safety testing)! Criminals smuggled them in to sell to other criminals. There was no need for criminals to go shopping for guns in other states, they were usually too lazy to, they simply bought cheap guns from the more organised criminals. All that baloney about guns being brought into Liberal states that had tighter gun laws was just more of the same old Liberal moaning that they were never to blame for a problem, it was always the fault of those nasty Republicans in their gun-loving states!
Here's a post that demonstrates one of the fastest ways to lose your civil rights: You fear your neighbors having some right and you are willing to give it up yourself if it means some symbolic gesture--say, a law of questionable efficacy--will calm your fears, justified or not.
(Whole lot of good it did Pat Regan.)
That's just because they don't have gun shops (with a pawn shop on one side and a liquor store on the other) every two blocks in the crappier part of town. Rwandans had to put some effort into their evil deeds while Americans don't even have to get out of their cars.
and who do the criminals steal these guns from? Yes - it's the law abiding citizens who went into a shop and filled out all the paperwork. Criminals may still be able to get hold of guns, but the fewer out there legally, the harder it becomes to obtain them illegally.
Also, all it takes is for one law abiding citizen to have a bad day and they can quite easily "go postal". If they don;t have a gun to hand, they are less likely to go out and find an illegal/stolen/smuggled gun to use, and will vent their anger in a different way
Yes, people still commit crimes, with knives, beer bottles, bike chains, chair legs, etc. But all of these require a bit more effort than standing 50 feet away and shooting someone with a twitch of a finger, and they are easier to stop.
You may also find, that if every man and his dog isn't armed to the teeth, the police/criminals etc don't automatically assume you are carrying a gun and are less likely to shoot you "just in case"
"Gun control = limiting arms of law-abiding citizens."
No, gun control is an attempt to restrict the acquisition of firearms to law-abiding citizens and ideally, to those law-abiding citizens who are mentally competent for such responsibility.
If your argument held water, then firearms fatalities per capita in the USA would be similar to European countries with gun control (because gun control would have no impact on the ability of criminals to acquire firearms). As it is, firearms fatalities statistics in the USA place it alongside the crappiest countries in West Africa. This may be because criminals in the USA can acquire weapons with relative ease from others, who originally purchased them as apparently law-abiding citizens. In countries with gun control, lawful owners of firearms take care not to let their weaponry fall into the hands of criminals because they may be held partially responsible for the crimes that ensue.
Anyway, each to their own. I'm sure the Yanks will continue to enjoy living with the consequences of almost unbridled gun ownership and Europeans will continue to live with the life-impairing bureaucracy involved in gun ownership.
In every major city here in the US if they make it harder to get guns for the average person crime goes up. Why, because criminals know they won't get shot. On the other hand if a city or a state makes it easier to get guns then crime drops in that area. So yes here in the US legally owning a gun makes you less likely to be a victim of a crime.
If the UK is the alternative you have in mind, I wish to point out that murder rates in general were already far lower there than in the US prior to the 1998 handgun ban, and probably still are even with the apparent recent increase in violent crime; for that matter, homicide rates in the US have been leaps and bounds ahead of the UK's even as far back as the first decade of the twentieth century. Y'all just aren't as fond of killing people, I guess.
Brits are always commenting on this site about how Britain is becoming a police state. So, then they come for you what are you going to do?
Fight back? With what? The military and police have all the guns, and the training to use them.
The original purpose of the US Constitution's 2nd Amendment was intended to ensure that the government could not enact unjust laws upon the people or impose a tyranny through the use of force without the people having the ability to oppose them with equal force.
Its been misinterpreted, misrepresented, watered down and misused over the years that most people have forgotten what it was originally for.
I would like to see guns go away, to never need one for anything other than hunting for dinner or protecting myself from a bear while hiking. Until Human nature changes there will be a valid, if also unfortunate, justification to their existence.
And yes, I know this is a Troll, hence the icon.
In the UK we have a thing called Democracy. Thats how we fight back.
See the perfect example is that the previous government started to go all fascist police state on us. We had an election, we voted for the other guys who were not fascist police state people. They got into power, they are now removing the fascist police state stuff implemented by the past government.
No need for guns, no need for the army to get involved. Its an interesting concept, that people can vote for a different type of government i know, but you guys should really give it a go sometime...
in the UK we have a representative democracy. we vote for people to represent us to make decisions for us. hence days of negotiations to get a coalition agreement that no-one really voted for, but that's the way it works.
The poll tax was brought in because no-one was paying the old council rates. no wonder people rioted when they had been happy avoiding tax and suddenly had to pay. Thing is, the poll tax was fairer than the council tax. You didn't see pensioners rioting over the poll tax, but several did protest about the council tax by going to prison rather than pay up. Yeah, that's fair, stick it to the pensioners instead of the working age young men.
Thatcher was not the Messiah, but she doesn't deserve half the vilification she gets.
The only troll that I see is the icon. You speak the truth. I'll never voluntarily give up my firearms. I honestly wish that we didn't need them for anything else than hunting and "plinking" servers that misbehave - unfortunately humans have a very nasty habit of preying upon other humans. It doesn't matter if it's an individual or the "State", I refuse to be just another "victim" of random violence. If it were a perfect world - we would have have nothing more than drinking, sex, & 'nix boxes. Where's the excitement in that? Wait a second........
the reason we have shootings in the us for the most part is because of:
#1 our great society programs that have created environments where black youths can either make $7/hr at a gas station or sell drugs on the street. <- courtesy of the US government.
#2 dangerous mind-altering prescription drugs, the majority of the shootings that we have seen are all directly tied into mind-altering (legal) prescription drugs.
And in this instance, it's a felony to use a firearm while under the influence so since this chap was already breaking the law by utilizing his firearm when intoxicated it would be no different than a street thug with an illegal gun holding up someone.
You guys have it so good over there, please keep your gun laws to yourselves. When someone trys to break into my house they're be met with with my gun and not me yelling help me.
Bullets, schmullets! Any foo-well knows the best way to disable a server is powdered aluminium. A few granules landing in the PCI slots or into the PSU will either kill the server or cause serious issues. If ground small enough, the resulting short will vapourise the granules, removing any trace of the deed. Allegedly, of course. But make sure it's only a pinch of granules, otherwise you risk a flash explosion which will probably not be too healthy!
Hollow-points are designed to work on softer tissue, not metals and plastics. An hollow-point might shatter if it hit a piece of the server's frame or a disk, though that might cut down the chance of a ricochet (make sure you fire from behind something solid enough to cope with a ricochet). I did laugh at a story I heard a while back about a guy that took his old PC out to terminate it in the backyard, and a round ricocheted off a stone and broke his leg. I'm pretty sure it's on Youtube somewhere.
Plain old FMJ would do better than hollow-points, but calibre probably wouldn't make much difference as long as it had good velocity. Just put two in the CPUs and one in the RAM to be sure.
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Can we get the post-mortem? Did he get it in the heart (CPU=pump), brain (memory=mass storage) or the lungs (RAM for lack of anything better)? To continue this tortured analogy the NIC would be like a shot in the foot and the PSU the belly.
Did redundant power supplies and RAID keep the patient alive for hot swap organ donation?
The term ".45" for the round is the shortened version of .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) and I suspect that is where the "automatic" in the article came from. I agree it was more than likely a semi or revolver that actually dispatched the slug into the server, since it's quite tricky to legally own a fully automatic weapon in the US legally, and I think a bit more than a Class B if you're caught even with it in your possession, let alone shooting up some privately owned property. Plus I'm not sure of a full auto that shoots a .45, but I'm sure there's one out there somewhere.
Let me just add my voice to the throng of IT professionals who I am certain are rushing to add their comments expressing our unified disgust at this inappropriate and unprofessional behavior, and completely irresponsible use of a firearm.
Also, may I just add, hell yeah, that machine has had it coming for a long time.
No wonder there are so many shootings in the US. I'd much rather live somewhere with decent gun control so I can get pissed in comparative safety.
Um just a few things. So you mean to tell me that if you had a gun and got pissed you would act the same way ?? More people in the US are killed by drunk drivers then people getting drunk and shooting other people. Oh and must gun violence in the US is done by people who are not allowed to have guns .
They don't let *every* bloody moron own a gun.
There are strict licensing laws that ensure that all gun owners are sane and competent. This ensures that no-one ever:
* flips and takes their guns into the office in order to massacre their co-workers;
* leaves their guns in flimsy cabinet that their kids can break into in order to massacre their classmates;
* shoots their cheating spouse, said spouse's lover and then turns the gun on themself;
* goes out drunk and shoots a server.
Hey, this guy finally found out the true multi-platform implementation of kill -9 -1!
I got reminded of an incident with our campus enrolling system and a load of TIMEOUT messages. It lead us to start quoting Pulp Fiction, and damn, those lines might have even been the actual dialog:
Drunken Master: Where are you from?
Server: [Operation timeout]
DM: Do you speak english in Timeout?
S: [Timeout]
DM: Say TIMEOUT again! I dare you! I double dare you motherf***er! SAY TIMEOUT AGAIN!
S: [Timeout]
>BANG BANG BANG BANG<
And thus, the $100K server dies....
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To truly render a server useless, I'd recommend something in the .308 caliber. .45's are great for scaring people and are reasonably accurate within 15 to 20 m, but nothing has the penetration of a healthy rifle round. For maximum hardware trama, I'd shy away from hollow points and go straight for a FMJ.
However, if you're going for style, you might think about a 12 gage with steel shot. Assuming none of it riccochets back, it should rattle around inside the drive cases while the disks are desintegrating.
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The author must live "in da 'hood". Pitiful use of language aside, how many of us haven't wanted to do this? Of course I wanted to be fully sober and aware to enjoy the well deserved carnage.
And another thing, "calibre" means 1/100 of and inch. Properly, 45 calibre means .45 inch whereas .45 calibre means .0045 inch. a .0045 inch bullet would be, what, a human hair or something of similarly small diameter? Oh hell just call it the 11.43 x 23 and be done with it.
I thought Shoestring used an axe not a baseball bat? Been a long while though and I can't quickly substantiate it.
Anyway, for a 2006 example of putting a bullet through the storage array, and the storage array surviving, try this 3minute video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFyXlb26ihs
This has not been a Matt Bryant production. Have a nice weekend.
There's another hp promo vid where they blow up a whole set of servers (Windows, VMS and hp-ux) to show how they automatically fail-over to another datacenter. The story I heard was they had so many hp employees just dying to blow the fudge out of their servers they had a lottery as to who would be the lucky one to press the trigger. Not sure if the story is true but it did make me smile.
Canada and Switzerland have levels of gun ownership comparable to the US, and murder / violent crime rates that are A LOT lower. The problem in the US is social, there are large social underclasses, deeply embedded grudges and suspicions between classes, races etc, and teh whole thing escalates in a vicious circle. Taking guns off the streets will not work, they would just find some other way to kill each other.
And I'm sure there are plenty of gunless ways to wreak divine retribution on a server.... some of which probably you could do without criminal liability as well
and who do the criminals steal these guns from? Yes - it's the law abiding citizens who went into a shop and filled out all the paperwork.
Nope . Must guns crooks get come from crooked gun dealers or illegal straw purchases. Most AK's on Americanstreets were illegally imported. nice try though.
On the order of a 'cherry bomb' would have done nicely.
This is because even clapping your hands causes a small EMP event.
Of course chopping the server up with a fire axe; feeding to a commode in small pieces; and then flushing said 'cherry bomb' down after it is much more satisfying (at least so I have heard.)
OK, so it's targeted at Netware servers, but you should find a few entertaining ways to shut down or crash pretty much any server to which you have physical access:
http://packetstormsecurity.nl/Netware/penetration/novell-crash.html
Of course, it also helps if you eliminate the tape safe as well. Sure, it'll get you a few extra years staring at a grey wall with bars across the window, but what's the point of killing the server if it can be restored onto another box from tape backups?
Firing weapons in enclosed spaces while intoxicated is dangerous, full-stop. Arguments over gun control/ownership will never end, but if you do own a firearm, responsibility is called for on your part. Trigger locks are a great idea which could be federally mandated Stateside, but are opposed by the NRA, a powerful political lobby. It's a shame because they're inexpensive and would stop some accidental shootings. But if you're not too drunk to find the key, well...
IMO, the original intention of the Second Amendment (which refers to a "well regulated militia") was to allow citizens to keep and bear arms so this militia would be, well...regulated. It's a different landscape now with the likes of Blackwater...er, I mean Xe. I never thought I would see my govt (yes, I'm a USian) hire mercenaries but there you have it.
Some gun facts: the first overseas US military experience was the Spanish American war at the end of the 19th century. the US also declared war on Cuba and the Philippines (having little experience in empire, they figured they would also declare war on Spanish colonies). The plucky Filipinos had Moro warriors armed with machetes who, even after an American soldier (yes, some were sent there) emptied a .38 caliber revolver into them, would still slice up the soldier. Note: calibers are often named after English measurements, so a .38 is 0.38 inches in bullet diameter. Also note that caliber alone does not determine the velocity or kinetic energy of the fired round.
With the ".38 Special" failing in this instance, a .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) round was devised. As the name suggests, this round was designed for a pistol (a handgun which contains a spring-fed clip or magazine, usually in the gun's handle, and fires/recoils-reloads-recocks and can be fired again on the next pull of the trigger). This allows for faster loading than a revolver, in which the rounds are inserted into a cylinder which rotates when the hammer is cocked so the round is in line with hammer and barrel, as a clip is faster to replace. Pistols usually hold more rounds than a revolver as well, so the Colt .45 pistol was well received and became the official sidearm of the US armed forces in 1911, and remained so until the 1990s. The .45 round was admired for its "stopping power" and was adopted for the Thompson submachine gun, which was used by police, criminals, and even soldiers in WW2. Perhaps the best film representation of the Thompson is in Steven Spielberg's 1998 film "Saving Private Ryan": the Captain Miller character played by Tom Hanks carries and uses one throughout the film.
A century after its invention, the .45 ACP round remains popular. That said, it really ought not be fired at servers, and except in dire circumstances, at people.
JtB
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