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Count to ten when a plane goes down

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Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#41

Post by patio11 »

jpatokal wrote: post #15
endtime wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In what world Japan, I guess? I've never been there but the story was consistent with my impression of their work culture.

This was the American Embassy, which follows American work culture. Also, in Japanese companies, it's basically impossible to fire people. They can, however, be assigned to a desk in a windowless room and be given nothing to do for several years, until they take the hint and "voluntarily" quit.

c.f. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/business/global/layoffs-il...

Suffice it to say that I am aware of situations created by a societal expectation of lifetime employment which make the above article look positively sane. (And I recently learned that, in some cases, what I had assumed was just an ironclad social contract actually is legally enforceable, which blows my mind.)

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#42

Post by Karellen »

sitinaud wrote: post #31
ryanobjc wrote: post #3

I disagree that it was appropriate that you were fired, but interesting story all about.

That fact that he wasn't too concerned about having accidentally reset all the computers in the building suggests that he may not have had an appropriate temperament/attitude for a sysadmin managing critical systems.

Or, you know, he had a perfectly good reason to think that accidentally resetting all the computers in the building at that time would not be a problem:

"Not long after I arrived in my office, I received a call from a secretary in the Agriculture Department who liked to play a computer game before her workday started. Her favorite game had a bug that regularly froze her workstation. [...] I realized that I had mistakenly hit F7 and reset all the workstations in the embassy. This realization didn’t bother me much, because no one except the Agriculture section secretary was usually on the computer system this early in the morning."

I'm sure I'd have thought something like: "Phew! Glad I made that mistake now, rather than at 11am when everyone was half-way through their morning's work. Likely no harm done at all, and I'm going to be really careful with that command in the future. Yup, definitely dodged a bullet there..."

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#43

Post by marbletiles »

canjobear wrote: post #32
marbletiles wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world where you know you that a) you have an incredibly powerful key with no safeguards at your fingertips and b) you might be in a breaking news situation and nonetheless you go for the key right next to the dangerous one carelessly enough that you miss? Think about it: Unix is equally as "insane". If you're the guy on the console who meant to clean out some crap dir and accidentally typoed "rm -rf /" and then c…

Are you trying to say it's OK because Unix behaves analogously? It is definitely a problem with Unix also.

It is. Which is why everyone in Unix who types "rm -rf " then types their next character _very carefully_ and reads the line before committing.

I'm trying to say that when you've got something dangerous without safeguards, you take care around it. Not taking care of known-dangerous things and causing severe damages as a result is an arguably good case for dismissal.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#44

Post by michaelneale »

feld wrote: post #2

Reset all computers in the embassy with F7? No warning prompt? Fire the idiot who wrote that function.

That was one my my reactions too (yeah it was a different age). My other reaction was about the total loss due to a restart - in what could have easily happened by faults in many other systems - presumably there was no way to save data as work went no, no journaling or anything. Indeed this was a different age.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#45

Post by vacri »

marbletiles wrote: post #29
nmjohn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except he didn't know there was a breaking news situation. He said pushing the wrong button wouldn't normally be a big deal.

He said he came in to find the system running, and the only time that happened was when Washington was waiting for info. And even if you don't buy that, if pushing the button's not a big deal it doesn't need all the safeguards everyone's yelling for. (Had such safeguards been in place he might equally well have seen them, thought "oh, nobody's in, this will do what I want anyway" and approved it).

That button needs a safeguard even if it's not an international incident. Even if only one person would lose a few hours' work from an all-nighter, work for something that's not so important, it's still someone's work.

And given that it's right next to a 'single terminal reset' key, it should be immediately obvious to anyone who's ever used a keyboard - mistakes can and do happen, even when you're fluent.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#46

Post by graylights »

baddox wrote: post #36
marbletiles wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world where you know you that a) you have an incredibly powerful key with no safeguards at your fingertips and b) you might be in a breaking news situation and nonetheless you go for the key right next to the dangerous one carelessly enough that you miss? Think about it: Unix is equally as "insane". If you're the guy on the console who meant to clean out some crap dir and accidentally typoed "rm -rf /" and then c…

But typing "rm -rf /" is significantly harder to do accidentally than typing F7 instead of F6.

Not really, a lot of novice unix users are of the habit of removing files with -rf switch. I cringe everytime I see it.

The command "rm -rf ~/blue/" is just a single space key from being equivalent to "rm -rf /" with "rm -rf ~/blue /"

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#47

Post by austinz »

smacktoward wrote: post #37
feld wrote: post #2

Reset all computers in the embassy with F7? No warning prompt? Fire the idiot who wrote that function.

In fairness, it was a different world back then. There were so few people administering computer networks that you could generally assume someone who was doing so had been thoroughly trained; and the thing about highly trained people is that they tend to view things like failsafes and safeties as pointless time-wasters. "I know what I'm doing when I hit F7, but the damn system makes me sit there for 30 seconds before…

This is very true, which begs the question - why was a 23-year-old summer intern placed in charge of the embassy computer system, or even given access to its central console? He may have have self-taught facility with computers, but I find it hard to believe he'd have much experience at that age with the sort of large, mission-critical institutional computer system described in the article.

I wonder if he had a supervisor sysadmin that he was working under, but given how he described his boss, that seems unlikely as well.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#49

Post by sitinaud »

Karellen wrote: post #42
sitinaud wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That fact that he wasn't too concerned about having accidentally reset all the computers in the building suggests that he may not have had an appropriate temperament/attitude for a sysadmin managing critical systems.

Or, you know, he had a perfectly good reason to think that accidentally resetting all the computers in the building at that time would not be a problem: "Not long after I arrived in my office, I received a call from a secretary in the Agriculture Department who liked to play a computer game before her workday started. Her favorite game had a bug that regularly froze her workstation. [...] I realized that I had mistak…

Yes, he had a pretty good reason to think that probably no major damage was done, and this was sufficient to comfort him. This kind of carelessness about the possibility of causing harm or having caused harm suggests to me that he wasn't taking his responsibility as seriously as he should.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#50

Post by graylights »

marbletiles wrote: post #43
canjobear wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to say it's OK because Unix behaves analogously? It is definitely a problem with Unix also.

It is. Which is why everyone in Unix who types "rm -rf " then types their next character _very carefully_ and reads the line before committing. I'm trying to say that when you've got something dangerous without safeguards, you take care around it. Not taking care of known-dangerous things and causing severe damages as a result is an arguably good case for dismissal.

The proper answer is to type "rm -rf" otherwise you're risking a stray strike on enter.
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