IP: Humor -- Probably not as far from the truth as we'd like.

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Stuart Staniford [mailto:stuart@silicondefense.com]
>Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 7:24 PM
>To: cpc@schafercorp-ballston.com
>Subject: Humor
>
>
>Probably not as far from the truth as we'd like...
>
>  -------- Original Message --------
>Subject: [itcfun] Darth Vader took two giant strides
>Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 01:29:36 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Shamim Mohamed <shamim@languid.org>
>Reply-To: itcfun@yahoogroups.com
>To: itcfun@yahoogroups.com
>
>     Darth Vader took two giant strides toward the immense visiscreen that
>occupied the forward wall of the bridge of his flagship Imperial star
>destroyer.  "We've got them now," he rumbled.  Whirling on the
>technicians cowering at their consoles, Vader snapped, "Tractor beam!"
>      "Yes, Lord Vader," replied one, bending attentively to his task.  Then
>he looked up hesitantly.
>      Vader gestured dramatically at the screen, indicating the fleeing
>spacecraft.  "I want a tractor beam on that ship," he declared. "Now!"
>The technician busied himself with switches and dials.
>      "Where's that tractor beam?" roared Vader, his voice dark with menace.
>The other technicians turned frightened eyes on their peer.  They knew what
>happened when Darth Vader's instructions weren't executed instantly.
>      "The tractor beam seems to be down, sir," quavered the technician.
>      "What do you mean down?" Vader inquired with a disturbing silkiness to
>his voice.
>      "It's not accepting commands, sir," the technician explained.  Another
>technician leaned over and examined the console.  "That's odd. The beam
>itself is showing green," he pointed out.
>      "Yes, I know," agreed the first.
>      "But I'm not getting any acknowledgment to my 'Engage' command." He
>pressed a button several times to demonstrate.
>      "Maybe the network's down again," suggested a third technician.
>      "Oh, that could be," admitted the first technician.  "The network
>might be down, Lord Vader," he informed the large black figure trembling
>with
>rage.
>      "What network?" Vader asked ominously.
>      The second technician jumped in.  "Since we've moved to a distributed
>architecture on the Imperial star destroyers, everything is on a network.
>It was felt that the direct connections were too unreliable."
>      The third technician added. "The tractor beam is on one of the
>peripherals sub networks, with the printers and the scanners. It's not on
>the main weapons network."
>      "Why isn't the tractor beam on the weapons network?" asked Vader, now
>more puzzled than angry.
>      The technicians exchanged sheepish looks. It was embarrassing to have
>to point out something so obvious to a superior. The second technician
>cleared his throat. "Well, sir, the weapons network is a higher priority.
>It makes more sense to put the less commonly used systems on a separate
>sub network that has lower QOS."
>      "QOS?" Vader queried.
>      "Hang on a second," said the first technician. "If the network is down,
>how come we're getting a green light for the tractor beam?"
>      The third technician brightened. "Ah! Maybe the console is retrieving
>old MIB data and displaying that."
>      "MIB?" rumbled Vader.
>      The first technician answered "We use SNMP to monitor the network
>elements. When the server queries the element, it stores its current status.
>If the network goes down, it can't query the element anymore, and all
>you have is the latest status in the MIB." He turned to the other
>technicians,
>musing.
>"We really should have an indicator of when the last successful query was,
>instead of just a green or red light."
>      "Good idea," said the third technician. "I'll call tech support."
>      "Say," said the second technician. "How about if we ping the tractor
>beam?
>Let me bring up a telnet window."
>      "Telnet?" asked Vader, now obviously confused. "Ping?"
>      The first technician glanced briefly at Vader, a little annoyed at the
>interruptions. Why couldn't this guy keep up with the service bulletins?
>"The system runs Unix, but the consoles run NT 5000," he replied with
>exaggerated patience. "You need a telnet window to ping the element."
>He turned his attention back to the screen. "That's strange. It comes back
>'active'. Listen, when you get tech support tell them we can't engage
>the tractor but we can ping it."
>      "Right," said the third technician. "I'm still on hold."
>      "Here's a thought," said the second technician. "What if we just call
>the guys down at tractor control and have them engage the beam manually?"
>Vader seemed to brighten up at this, and swiveled his head from one to
>another.
>     "Good idea," said the first technician. He lifted his communicator and
>tapped the switch several times.  "Nothing," he said.
>      The second technician shook his head. "Didn't we tell them we couldn't
>do voice and data with that little bandwidth?"
>      Suddenly Vader noticed the visiscreen and let out a bellow of anger.
>"They're gone!" he boomed.
>      The third technician looked up smiling. "Hey, I got tech support!"
>
>
>
>
>
>--
>Stuart Staniford     ---     President     ---     Silicon Defense
>          ** Silicon Defense: Technical Support for Snort **
>mailto:stuart@silicondefense.com  http://www.silicondefense.com/
>(707) 445-4355 x 16                           (707) 445-4222 (FAX)
>



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/