BOFH: Don't sell The Boss a firewall. Sell him The Dream BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns "What're you working on?" I ask the PFY, who's been banging away at his keyboard for the past couple of hours. "I'm just writing the business case to replace the firewall," he says. "The Boss wants a business justification." "And you don't want to just buy it under the guise of IT …
And that's why the BOFH is getting all the malware on Christmas day disguised as an e-mail about him getting a company bonus. Ir he fails for it? Revenge is served. If he doesn't then he will still find out he somehow ended paying the younger man Pub tab due to not paying attention to that paying app settings due to getting caught in a prank war.
At the moment and for the vast majority of us, a Firewall is useful and AI is shite.
In time, AI might not be so shite but Firewalls, even in the cloud will remain an essential part of IT kit.
My home router firewall current has almost 30% of IPv4 addresses blocked. If I could get a list of IP addresses assigned to China, Vietnam, Russia and India I'd block them all in a flash.
Thanks, now I have something to do for the spare little AMD box with dual port I have lying around idle :)
I'll leave the WiFi6 I get from my telecom provider 'public', but as I have two little managed switches I can put the filtered output on a VLAN and route it back to ports in the living room where all the fun stuff lives that can use a cable. Or maybe add a VPN option to the box so even the smarter WiFi connected gear can grab a circuit. Or I may upgrade those switched, 2.5Gb units are not that expensive anymore and I've messed around enough with USB-C connected 2.5Gb ports to know that that hauls data around like there's no tomorrow (not that I have that much, but it's just fun to play, sorry; experiment with). That AMD box has one of the two port at that speed which is what got me curious in the first place.
Thank God it's Xmas soon - plenty of spare time to do just that (and it'll be cheaper and more educational than buying an extra WiFi mesh :) ).
Next up: learning about IPv6, but that will definitely be for next year..
The Plan
In the beginning, there was a plan,
And then came the assumptions,
And the assumptions were without form,
And the plan without substance,
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers,
And they spoke among themselves saying,
"It is a crock of shit and it stinks."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said,
"It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying,
"It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong,
Such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors saying,
"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another,
"It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them,
"It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him,
"This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigour
Of the company With very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon the Plan
And saw that it was good,
And the Plan became Policy.
And this, my friend, is how shit happens.
Thank you for the information, but Firefox doesn't like that website:
Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead
Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to www.catb.org. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details.
The "security issue" is a bad certificate.
The site's certificate has been issued to a multitude of other sites but it seems to be valid for those so I went to CATB. It looks fine. No scripts and other nasties hijacked me.
There is a weird issue with spaces being shown as diamonds with ?'s inside them but Firefox can correct this. "Toolbar > View > Repair Text Encoding".
The CATB site itself looks interesting and potentially useful but perhaps saner people than me will want to avoid it.
Merry Christmas and have as wonderful a New Year as possible.
You are roughly right. I first came across "the plan" some time in the 1980s, when I was working as a young research chemist in the (now defunct) ICI. The original "plan" was quite a bit longer and more detailed, and carefully tailored to reflect the well known (to staff) attitudes and proclivities of some of ICI's individual operating divisions. It was wildly popular at the time. Such deep cynicism (AKA insight?), among us merely mortal junior staff, was profoundly unwelcome to senior managers, to the extent that copies had to be hand circulated (Don't use the internal mail!) pretty much as samizdat literature. Photocopiers were relatively rare, with limited access in those days, and digital media had barely been invented. I even saw handwritten copies.
There was a widespread view at the time, no doubt reinforced by the furious management reaction, that "the plan" had originated in one of ICI's heavy chemicals divisions. It may have had some roots earlier in history - who knows - but I am pretty confident that it first appeared in its "fully developed" form, as described above, somewhere within ICI. Although I have been retired for many years, I think I still have a copy in a file somewhere (must get around to weeding all that old stuff--).
If there is any interest, I could possibly post a copy in this forum. Under "anonymous", of course!
This story illustrates the essential difference between the Thames Valley and Silicon Valley. If you can sell The Dream in the Thames Valley you get a new box with flashing lights to put in your hardware cabinet. If you can sell The Dream in Silicon Valley you get $500 million in VC funds to create an AI powered crypto marketplace in the metaverse.
keyboard falls to the BoFH
"You follow that up with a pre-treatment application of organic factual compost " and thus it died.
But today needed cheering up, you see its friday, and lunchtime is taken in the pub, while I take the afternoon to write up some documentation ..(translated : 10 mins writing ..3 hrs snoozing )
However today is different....you see our new production engineer is young and keen and enthusiastic and hes been on the internet looking at engineering vids...... then various websites. and hes got to the stage of trying to convince me to buy into his big idea (its to do with fixtures and setting and programming... we looked into it years ago buts its too expensive for our needs)
So theres me working away with both eyes closed when he bursts into the office with "Boris.. look at this........."
One eye opens while a few neurons flicker into life, resenting their now alert status whereupon a bunch of glossy papers trying to convince me that his idea is worth taking to the boss are shoved under my nose.
The other eye opens now that Mr Brain is fully awake and burning with hatred while Mr production engineer jibbers on like a monkey on a crystal meth over dose.
But its too cold to open a window, but not too cold to ask the PFY to come to the office to order a new carpet as my eyes narrow and my head drops while feeling for the hammer of corrections.
Alas , as the last trickle of hope drains away for our production engineer and I rise from my chair like an enraged balrog(and twice as nasty) his arse is saved by the boss wanting to wish everyone merry christmas as he distibutes this years bonus...
The young whippersnappers here won't have a clue what IZAL is (Sadly)
You have to have tried to wipe your ass with it to know how ineffective it truly is. I can just about remember visiting a nameless Government Installation which had IZAL in the loos. Each sheet was printed with 'Property of HM Government'. you had to see it to believe it.
Careful there, you need to backdate the firewall paperwork yesterday so the bean counters don't get nervous and order the firewall to be removed because you apparently didn't pay for it. Normally they wouldn't care but in case of an audit, possible sell out or merge of the company...
Remember is not doing the job well or bad, is having the paperwork saying you did everything above board and doing it with some easy to fix mistakes. So the company accountant has something to do, doesn't get fired and runs away with most of the company money.
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