From: David Pacheco Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Subject: Lartlestar Galactica:1999 Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 10:19:25 -0000 Organization: NO CARRIER NNTP-Posting-Host: modem-77.leopard-shark.dialup.pol.co.uk LART: (L)user Attitude Re-adjustment Tool, a tool commonly used by sysadmins when reconfiguring their users. Usually large, heavy and blunt. <- 0 -> "Sir, the Alliance has destroyed XENIAC-V!" "Give it to me in plain English, Lieutenant." "XENIAC-V, the supercomputer that was controlling all of our battle droids! It's been completely destroyed by a well-placed shot from an Alliance Battleship!" "So... all the battle droids are now non-operational?" "Yes, sir." "So implement the Disaster Recovery plan, immediately! Why are you wasting time?" "Ummm..." "Well, what's the matter with you man?" "We don't have a disaster recovery plan." "What?" "I said, we don't have a disaster recovery plan." "You're kidding me." "No, sir. We put in a budget requisition two years ago for a backup XENIAC-V to be located in an offsite facility, but then the whole budget got cut. That was the first thing to go, sir." "So what kind of resilience was built into XENIAC-V?" "Umm... it had a UPS, sir." "A UPS?" "Yes sir. To protect it from voltage spikes." "YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT WE HAD A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE IN THIS SYSTEM, AND NO ONE DID ANYTHING ABOUT IT?" "We tried, sir, but it was a corporate mandate. We calculated the costs of the offsite XENIAC-V, and compared it to the odds of potential failure, and corporate told us that it was too much money. Here, take a look at the email I got from Lart Maul, our financial..." "NEVER MIND. Oh, for crying out loud, this is EXACTLY what happened the last time." "I know, sir. In all fairness, nobody really knew about the exhaust port being a single point of failure in the last destroyer until the Alliance dropped a bomb down it and the whole ship collapsed." "Well the ALLIANCE seems to have known about it." "I know sir. That was because we had misconfigured our firewall, and they downloaded the plans from one of our systems." "Damn that Alliance! They must have some incredible hackers on their side." "Not necessarily, sir. The system didn't have any passwords on it." "...and why not?" "The senior executives kept forgetting what their passwords were, so they mandated that all passwords would be the same, and would no longer be changed every 45 days as per our Security Tech recommendations. After about a month, the execs realized that they kept forgetting that single password too, so it was changed to blank." "A-HA! Then it's the Security Tech's fault for not making the execs understand the implications of what they were doing!" "It would be hard to blame Lart Jones, sir. He was fired during the last rightsizing, before the senior execs' mandate came out. Security Techs are always the first to go, sir. In fact, he was fired just as he was installing the firewall, but never got to finish. That's why it was riddled with holes, and the Alliance managed to break in." "Damn it. All right, at least we've learned our lesson. Call up Jones and tell him he's re-hired." "Hard to do, sir." "Why?" "Do you know what 'rightsizing' means, sir?" [ Suddenly the ship is rocked by a gigantic explosion. Screams of terror, flames. Alliance ships can be seen through the portholes, blasting away. ] "ENABLE THE FORCE SHIELDS!" "Sorry, sir. No can do." "And why NOT, Lieutenant?" "After the last round of rightsizing, we only had one tech covering the force shields and the XENIAC-V. I'm afraid Lart Mahoney was with the XENIAC-V when it was evaporated. We tried to buy some remote control software for it in last year's budget, so he could perform routine maintenance from this ship, but..." "...it got cut." "Actually no, sir. The funds were reallocated to continue paying for the Empire Project." "The Empire Project?" "Yes, sir. Corporate was looking at widespread cost-cutting measures, so a team of 40 full-time senior execs was put together to see where savings could be achieved." "And what were the results of their investigations, pray?" "We don't know yet, sir. They have only been meeting for 24 months, so their initial findings report aren't due until next fiscal." "So what was Mahoney doing over with the XENIAC-V?" "Rebooting it, sir. It had darkscreened again." "In the middle of a BATTLE? THE BATTLE PROGRAM IS THE MOST MISSION- CRITICAL PROGRAM WE RUN IN THIS COMPANY, LIEUTENANT! WHY THE HELL WAS OUR MOST MISSION-CRITICAL SOFTWARE *DOWN* IN THE MIDDLE OF A *BATTLE*?" "Well, the XENIAC-V darkscreens quite frequently, sir. It's a very unstable OS." "Then why the HELL did we run our Battle Program on it?" "Corporate mandate, sir." "FROM WHOM?" "From... you, sir." "Me?" "Yes sir. You said you liked the interface, and the company was willing to give us the software if they could use our name in their 'Success Stories' advertising campaign." [ EXPLOSIONS. Alliance troops are breaking through the door. ] "AAAAAH! Lieutenant, I order you to protect me from the enemy! It's your duty! They're breaking in!" "Don't know about that, sir." "Excuse me?" "Well, I've been giving it some thought lately, sir, and the Alliance does have an interesting story to tell. I have an idea for a great new business, and they say they can help me launch the company and even help with the IPO if the idea is successful. I asked corporate whether we could implement the idea here within the Empire, but they didn't seem to care because it would involve capital spend, sir." "Well, let's talk about it NOW, Lieutenant! I'm interested, I swear I'm interested! Let's discuss it on our way towards the escape pods, shall we? I'm sure we can work this whole thing out!" "Funny you should mention escape pods, sir..." "...why?!" "My idea was to introduce a more sophisticated escape pod into the destroyers, sir. The ones we have today are essentially just bits of the ship that detach and fall off, with no propulsion system of their own. All they have is a homing beacon designed to transmit an encrypted SOS call so the pod is found and picked up at a later point by Empire recovery units. Unfortunately..." [ EXPLOSION. The door breaks down, Alliance troops storm in, guns ablaze. Empire soldiers try to fire back, but their guns (built by the lowest bidder from the RFP) are getting memory protection errors. A single Gun User Support Tech is running around, trying to fix the problems, but the soldiers only manage to shoot a couple of times before freezing again. ] "Oh, for crying out loud..." "Yes sir, unfortunately, it's relatively weak encryption, and the Alliance would have been able to break it even if they hadn't found the encryption keys on the same system they found the destroyer plans. So now there's a whole Alliance battalion specifically charged with detecting these homing beacons and blasting the pods right out of the sky." "Oh, errr... OK then, let's just walk over here. Can you take a memo? 'TO: ALL LINE MANAGERS. RE: I.S. SPEND. Concerning the future of capital spending for our I.S. infrastructure, we are currently reviewing plans to allow increased expenditure on all security and disaster recovery programs. The results from this review will be available very soon, as soon as the advisory..." "I'm afraid it's too late, sir." "Too late? What do you mean?" [ LIEUTENANT points gun. It's not one of the cheap Empire knockoffs: this is an Alliance weapon, running Allinux. ] "You're under arrest... sir." "How DARE you! Put that gun immediately, Lieutenant! Don't you know who I am?" "Yes, sir. Lart Deisnery, ruler and CEO of the Evil Empire. Now please sir, we don't want any trouble. Please assume the position. You have the right to remain silent. If you choose to waive that right, anything you say may be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to incredibly expensive attorneys who will eventually settle for much more than what the plaintiffs demanded in the first place. You have..." "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" (c)1999 David Pacheco This has been a true story.