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The absolute worst scenario happened

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Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#401

Post by Mauricebranagh »

Nextgrid wrote: post #3

This doesn’t sound that bad. Unless I’m misunderstanding something, the ERP was used as a source of truth for DNS records, and that mechanism broke. There’s no indication of actual data loss so it should still be in the ERP DB, and it’s a matter of reverse-engineering how it was all put together and then extract the data into a zone file (or into a managed DNS service such as Route 53) at least for the core domains w…

I did something similar for a customer of ours who was a major UK cinema chain - they had had a falling out with some small company that had built an online booking system.

Highlights:

1 Bookings where made at individual cinemas

2 The network was a packet radio system that blocked :-) only Transaction could be in flight (Leicester square had two channels)

3 Core of system was Perl running on three windows NT machines which manipulated a shonky screen based system (Pacer Cats)

4 Trying to sell tickets online for Phantom menace system crashed at midnight (when tickets went on sale) we made 1 transaction at 6am

% And no credentials so I had to research how to crack NT - I did consider setting up or fleet of a dozen or so of our suns as a cluster to crack NT, but not sure if the internal security would have liked that (aka secret squirrels and the bit that Bruce Shenier worked for

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#402

Post by reaperducer »

jbroson wrote: post #378
reaperducer wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in america farmers hire illegals to harvest crops, claiming that no american would do the work This is a political talking point that has been repeated so often that people believe it is true. During the recession of 2008, there were stores on local TV news in many places showing unemployed Americans waiting in long lines for the opportunity do do those jobs that the politicians kept saying no American wanted to…

My somewhat educated guess is that these farmers in the PNW don't share the same politics as farmers in the rural south or midwest. That and Republicans have grown way more hostile to immigration since 2010, so it's an interesting anecdote but not sure how well it translates across the US, where polling shows farmers are overwhelmingly Republican who tend also tend to hate immigration legal or not.

My somewhat educated guess is that these farmers in the PNW don't share the same politics as farmers in the rural south or midwest

When you say it's an "educated" guess, educated how? It only seems to reflect the usual bigotry that comes out of the coasts.

polling shows farmers are overwhelmingly Republican who tend also tend to hate immigration legal or not

If you're going to make a statement that sweeping, you really should back it up with credible sources.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#403

Post by CobrastanJorji »

blhack wrote: post #375

It's dark, but I kindof love situations like this (although luckily I haven't had something like this happen to me in digital space since I was a teenager). Some places I would look: 1) Are you SURE that everything is actually gone? Is there a logfile, a billing trail, sent emails trail from your email provider, something like that? If it was me I'd be looking for a secondary system (like alerts, logfiles, billing, e…

I get where you're coming from. It's a little bit like a real world, high stakes escape room.

Come to think of it, this could be a fun online challenge. I picture a series of VM images, each of which describes the design of the system and the terrible thing that has gone wrong, and you are challenged to get it fixed and/or get the data out of it.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#404

Post by notyourday »

4e530344963049 wrote: post #384
notyourday wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A "firefighting" consultancy might be fun, no? It is... interesting. I have been doing this over last 4 years. The biggest problem, as I pointed out before, is the disconnect between what companies claim they would do to fix the problems vs. what they would actually do. So ~90% of selling is repeatedly explaining the same things to different people whose jobs are in the eminent danger of being restructured/depriori…

Do you mind if I email you with some questions? Thank you.

Sure. Email is in the profile.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#405

Post by benlivengood »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #143
amachefe wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to the question is there >We can't access the backups. Even if we could, we noticed two years ago when trying a restore from the backups, that it doesn't work. Booting the restored server leads to a kernel panic we couldn't figure out. Management said we don't have enough money to fix any of this.

> Management said we don't have enough money to fix any of this. It's often even worse. Many years ago I was responsible for backup a DEC Unix system. Asked for funds to conduct a disaster recover exercise to find out if our backups worked and was turned down even before we had tried to work out how much it would cost. I often wonder what proportion of backed up files and systems are actually in a state to be restore…

> I had to inform several users that I could not restore the file that they had only just noticed was missing because it was last seen more than two years ago and presumably disappeared longer ago than our longest backup cycle which was one year of monthly full backups.

If you can afford 12 months of backups then you can almost certainly afford >=12 years of yearly backups by buying a new set of monthly tapes once a year and taking a set out of rotation and into archive.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#406

Post by yowlingcat »

ycombinete wrote: post #322
tofuahdude wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this with all my heart. You did exactly the right thing at every step.

Funnily enough it made me sick to my stomach. I manage a small company and the idea of being extorted in such a blasé and psychopathic fashion terrifies me to even think about.

The idea of /you/ mismanaging your company in such a "blasé and psychopathic fashion" is more what should terrify you. Remember, /you/ manage a small company, not the person you hire. If you end up in such a mismanaged position, the manager who let it get there is you, not the employee.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#407

Post by marktangotango »

ycombinete wrote: post #336
Judgmentality wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Funnily enough it made me sick to my stomach. That an overworked employee who had already left the company would stick up for himself? Or that a company would go to such efforts to try to manipulate a former employee? I realize my tone doesn't hide my feelings, but even if we disagree I'd still be curious to hear more.

My apologies, I edited my comment as you were typing I think. I added some more.

IMO your edit didn't help and you're not getting a lot of sympathy. The point wasn't that the employee is psychopathic as you say, but that management was incompetent by not ensuring a transfer of knowledge and validating before the employee left. You as the buinsess owner should plan for people to not be available and no one person can derail a $10M contract. This is also called the "bus factor".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#408

Post by Aloha »

bityard wrote: post #352
rolobio wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why a check with your lawyers? Why not just deposit into your personal account?

Look up what "escrow" is. When 1/4 million dollars is on the line, you don't take the company's word that they'll pay you afterward, and they don't take your word for it that you'll actually deliver the service.

1/8th of a million.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#409

Post by clipradiowallet »

csomar wrote: post #307
kolbe wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farming is low margin. Farmers don’t get to set the price of their products, and they aren’t handed billions in capital to burn through or 1000x multiples on their profit in the public markets. When most businesses say they can’t hire someone and the reason is because they don’t pay enough, the underlying cause of their low pay is usually because that’s what the company can afford. Sure, farmers could pay $10/hr, but…

> Farmers don’t get to set the price of their products Actually farmers could set any price if they colluded to manipulate the market. People will buy food at any price and everyday .

This is offset by imported food. If 100% of American farmers colluded to fix prices, they'd have their lunch eaten(hah) by food importers. Obviously not everything is importable(eg rice), but there is more to the market than the American farmers.

Re: The absolute worst scenario happened

#410

Post by Bud »

ycombinete wrote: post #322
tofuahdude wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this with all my heart. You did exactly the right thing at every step.

Funnily enough it made me sick to my stomach. I manage a small company and the idea of being extorted in such a blasé and psychopathic fashion terrifies me to even think about.

You seem very confused about what "extortion" means, and also about what "psychopathic" means. So I'd suggest starting there.
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