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BOFH EXTRAS

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The Revised, King James Prehistory of B.O.F.H Where it came from, How and Why... Here's the revised version in the light of various revelations.

Where it came from: I was an Operator at the University of Waikato, back in the heady days when "Helpdesk" meant nothing, diskquota meant everything, and lives could be bought and sold for a couple of pages of laser printout - And frequently were. We Operators had powers verging on the Technical-SuperHero. On one hand, we had the SYSTEM and root passwords, on the other hand we had the excuse "Really? I didn't know DEL *.*;* would do that - I'm just an operator..". All the power and none of the responsibility. Good Times. You could do ANYTHING to a user and no-one would know. Well, they'd know, but they couldn't prove anything. Still, I was bored, and frequently annoyed. In the late 80s, I even started to get bitter and twisted in the self righteous way that people tend to get when they've got a cushy job. However, I had in my hot little grasp a TRS80 Model 100 with a whopping 23K of memory (and no disk) with an onboard firmware text editor - scored it out of the bin during a building move. BONUS! I started writing articles on it at home and posting them to usenet news from work - the most difficult and important part being remembering to bring the Trash-80 in to do the upload, as it'd only hold about 3 or so articles before the memory ran out. Sigh. So I was writing the Striped Irregular Bucket around 1988-89 or so - it's hard to remember - and I was in much the same situation as the poor operator I was writing about. I was bored shitless. So I chunked out Striped Irregular Bucket, which was far less offensive than some of my previous posts. Somewhere along the line, I mentioned computing and the Bastard Operator from Hell Manual. I think I started getting email from people very shortly after it was published, mentioning they liked the idea of a manual about how to be mean to users. (Remember,

and this point in time Usenet News was really only used by the computer semi-literate and above, and not the cloven-hooved luser types who use it now. So there was a higher percentage of support types to luser types back then, and they liked this sort of thing). Receiving email was unusual enough in itself, but receiving non-local and non-whiney email was almost unheard of. I was surprised. I thought it was just a quick fad, however, and ignored what was blatantly obvious (that people liked it) and went on with other writing, resurrecting BOFH (who was as yet pretty much unnamed) in Striped Irregular Bucket #5. More email came in, and I'm no slow BOFH articles. And still more email off (as I had a tendency to do with to find that people didn't want him of imagination and ideas and let it some years, usually just before, or learner, so I thought I'd bash out a couple of came in. I wrote a bit, and then killed the BOFH characters that were written into a corner) only dead. I resurrected him for a bit, then ran out rest. I'd whack out a quick article for Christmas during, the office party.

I toyed with the Bastard System Manager From Hell for a but, then put that to sleep as well. In late '92 I went to London for a year to seek my fortune and see if the streets were paved with gold. They were not, but it was a good enough time, and I worked for a small Oil Company over there - Enterprise Oil, a nice enough place. I bricked out a couple of articles while I was there and posted them in a huuuugely roundabout manner because the company didn't have an internet connection at the time. Basically, I had to sneak into a basement at the University College London between the last lab time and the building closure time, write the article, send it to a NZ username, then post it to Usenet via a Telnet link to a VMS machine running NEWS. Talk about shocking response time... I still recall the heady delight when the Oil company finally got a dialup link to the real world. Good Times... During that time I'd get maybe one mail message a week from someone who'd just read it for the first time. I still do, strangely enough. Anyway, so I got back home, took up a job as Analyst Programmer, kissed the Computer Room goodbye, and thought that would make a fitting end to the BOFH. That was the plan anyway.

Bastard D.I.Y Excuse Board

Welcome to the BOFH Excuse board - your way into a support standard for the future. Please follow the steps below

Step Zero. Don't send me a scripted version of this. I have one, and one day I'll install it. Meantime, make do.

Step One. Compose the Excuse. Choose one word from the First, Second and Third Columns in the table below, concatenating them to describe the error, situation or problem you're saying has occurred. For particularly unintelligent users, adding the optional fourth parameter may help to clarify that this isn't a situation that should be celebrated... Example: Inherent Software Corruption Dumb Example: Inherent Software Corruption Error

Step Two. Compose a story to backup this Excuse. Remember, the more outrageous the story, the more likely the user is to NOT understand it - and therefore believe it. Unbelievable Explanation (for above excuse) "Well it appears that part of our software is corrupted - possibly because of some hardware error" Believable Explanation: "It seems that the Inherency of the Software is corrupt - not the actual software itself. We're looking at getting some artificial Inherency in to solve the problem..."

Step Three Get the user to become part of the problem. Example "..But the Artificial Inherency costs about 50 bucks a user. If you could just send us the money, we'll get you sorted out" Another Example "..But the Artificial Inherency isn't Right Hand User Compatible - I dunno, it's Welsh or something - so you're going to have to type with your left hand for the next 2 hours.."

First Temporary Intermittant Partial Redundant Total Multiplexed Inherent Duplicated Dual-Homed Synchronous Bidirectional Serial Asynchronous Multiple Replicated Non-Replicated Unregistered Non-Specific Generic Migrated Localised Resignalled Dereferenced Nullified Aborted Serious Minor Major Extraneous Illegal Insufficient Viral Unsupported Outmoded Legacy Permanent Invalid Deprecated Virtual Unreportable Undetermined Undiagnosable Unfiltered Static Dynamic Delayed Immediate Nonfatal Fatal Non-Valid Unvalidated Non-Static Unreplicatable Non-Serious

Second

Third

Optional Fourth Error Problem Warning Signal Flag

Interruption Array Destabilisation Systems Destruction Hardware Desynchronisation Software Failure Firmware Backplane Dereferencing Logic-Subsystem Overflow Integrity Underflow Subsystem NMI Memory Interrupt Comms Corruption Integrity Anomoly Checksum Seizure Protocol Override Parity Reclock Bus Rejection Timing Invalidation Synchronisation Halt Topology Exhaustion Transmission Infection Reception Incompatibility Stack Timeout Framing Expiry Code Unavailability Programming Bug Peripheral Condition Environmental Crash Loading Dump Operation Crashdump Parameter Stackdump Syntax Problem Initialisation Lockout Execution Resource Encryption Decryption File Precondition Authentication Paging Swapfile Service Gateway Request Proxy Media Registry Configuration Metadata Streaming Retrieval Installation Library Handler Figure 1 - Bastard D.I.Y. Excuse Table Copyright 2001, Simon Travaglia

The Bastard Operator from Hell Glossary

Glossary of Terms ADVENTURE MODE - The mode you're in when you have to type repeated, syntax-pedantic commands DUMMY MODE - The mode that users change into when confronted with technical detail which they can't process. DUMMY MODE ON = BRAIN OFF, FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS WITHOUT QUESTION IUF - Incompetant User Failure, the cause of the majority of problems PFY - Pimply Faced Youth. The keen newbie type who often forgets to wash, change his clothes regularly, etc. STACK MODE BRAIN (See Stack Mode Explained for more info) A brain that can only handle a small amount of technical info before redirecting input to /dev/null. Similar to Dummy Mode

STACK MODE BRAINS EXPLAINED

Stack Mode is important. This point cannot be overstressed. Managers live by it, your job is affected by it, and it's a lot more prevalent than people think.

So what is "Stack Mode"? If you've done classical computing, you'll have learnt about Stacks. Or, if you're one of those poor bastard reverse left-handed Polish Rotation-Notation Calculator users, OR you're a postscript programmer, you'll have played with it. The calculator example is the easiest to work with tho. Say you want to add a couple of numbers. Using one of these calculators, you type in the first number, and hit enter. This puts the number on the stack, and is called PUSH-ing in geeky terms. (The opposite of this is POP-ing something off the Stack). So your Stack looks like this: First Number Nothing Nothing Next, you type in the second number, and press enter. Your Stack now looks like this: Second Number First Number Nothing Now you press the ADD key. Your Stack now looks like: TOTAL of First and Second Numbers Nothing Nothing The two dangers of Stacks are Underflow and Overflow. Underflow is like if you were to type in ONE number, then press ADD. ADD the first number to what? There's no other number on the stack. Error! Overflow is the worst. Overflow is when too much data is PUSHed onto the stack. I.e. In the above example, our stack is three items in size. When you try and put a Fourth number into the stack, an Error occurs. Depending on the Stack Implementation, this can be a really bad thing. SOME stacks will remain in place, but POOR IMPLEMENTATIONS lose everything - the stack is obliterated, or filled with garbage.

What's this go to do with Managers? Glad you asked. Managers, like a lot of people, are Stack Brained - only more so. People, when confronted by a term they do not understand in conversation, PUSH the term onto their stack to ask about later. Too many terms and their Stack has a minor error and randomly throws away the new term and/or one or more of the Stack contents. Managers on the other hand have a poor stack implementation and a low number of

items, which means technical conversations usually lose them quite early on. IMPORTANT NOTE: Stack Overflow results in data Corruption E.g: Tecchy: "There seems to be a problem with the handshaking protocol of the modembank" Manager: Uh-huh Manager's Stack: Handshaking Protocol? Nothing Nothing Tecchy: "Meantime we'll also need to look at Distributed Filesystems to provide Locational Obfuscation" Manager: Uh-huh Uh-huh Manager's Stack: Locational Obfuscation? Distributed Filesystem? Handshaking Protocol? Notice: (a) the words "Uh-huh" are used to signal a successful stack operation, and (b) The Manager's stack is now full. We're in the danger zone. All it takes now is one unknown to enter the conversation, and it's all over... Tecchy: "Your wife bears a striking resemblance to a member of the Babboonus Uglius Genus" Manager: Manager's Stack: ***OVERFLOW*** ***OVERFLOW*** ***OVERFLOW***

Notice how the successful stack operation signal was not generated. Notice the Stack Contents. This is a temporary stack, which is replaced almost instantaneously (in Manager Brain time scales - 1 or 2 seconds to you or me) with:

Manager's Stack: Babboon Filesystems Is it lunchtime yet? Locational Handshaking Here concludes the lesson on Stack Based Managers. You now know the risks.

Special Note: Sometimes, in a particularly nasty overflow, the corruption will extend to the Run-Queue and the Manager's Brain will execute the Instruction BTE - that is, Branch To Elsewhere Extra Special Note: There is a known bug in the BTE Instruction in the Manager Chipset, in that it doesn't take an address parameter. Noone knows where it goes, but whereever it is, it stays there. The Manager will most likely have to be rebooted by kicking the "SEAT UP/DOWN" lever of his/her wheely chair. Good Luck.

Welcome to the latest, Smooooth BOFH FAQ as of Y2K1. STOP! LOOK! LISTEN! What can you do for me: Find Maxwell Cooter and buy him a beer. A real beer - A lager, not that sheep's piss in a keg he calls real ale. This is all I ask of you. You owe him, he got me writing bastards after I quit! You could also buy any of the old Network Week Team (before VNU bought them out and shut them down) a beer too, which would be nice as well. And don't buy Jane Oliver any spirits - That's just a mistake. EVeryone knows. Don't let her convince you otherwise. Here's what I've been up to in reverse chrono order, which I usually hate. 18-Oct-2007 Nothing to see here.. 31 Jul 2002 Still Updating, but not much. Heavy demands of work mean that I actually work for a living now, damn it all 19 Apr 2001 Updating. LOOK for some changes in this site. FEEL the difference of the extra content. HEAR the kind words spoken by the readers. SMELL your PC on fire... 14 Mar 2001 Update. Was writing for a place called bugblatter.org for my mate Maxwell, who you should have all bought a beer for by now. That closed down, and so the eight articles I wrote for them (called "Ruthless Tech Professionals") will probably be posted here some day, demand requiring. Plan9.org has just just just released the collected works to the year 2000. See them at www.plan9.org. Still writing for The Register, and was briefly reposted in PCPlus Mag, but that's ended now due to budgetary constraints. No harm, no foul.

The Register Home of BOFH 2000 & 2001 + BOFH Merchandise!

6 Mar 2000 Tee-shirts are available from The Register. 12 Jan 2000 Submitted my first article to the register today. And not a Y2k bug in evidence. Talk about storm in a teacup. JUST as I predicted, there were NO (that's ZERO) problems at my site. Not endkdf k##xff fklf*k! Axxxxxxx`x`f! dxxf``x`` ``xxd' d*vxxfv`' _d_xxf1`. 21 Dec 1999 Look for me writing at www.theregister.co.uk , from Jan2K and for my archives at bofh.ntk.net. Thanks to James Cronin, et al at ntk.net for the hosting offer. Bonza. Righto! So, to recap: look both ways before crossing the street, and remember that Red, Yellow and Blue are often used to denote a PHASE wire. - Simon

Personal Security and the Internet

DON'T PANIC! I'm not here to cause alarm!

This document is, however, meant to give you a couple of pointers to using the net safely. Well, relatively safely, anyway. The most important point is that the Internet is about as safe or dangerous as a city street. (Ok, that sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, but I'll explain...) There are two points to Personal Security - Personal Safety, and Personal Privacy That is, keeping yourself safe and keeping your information safe. The MOST important thing to me is the Personal Safety area, though I will bang on at length about Privacy later on...

Personal Safety

For the sake of this arguement, lets pretend I'm an internet nutcase. (Which, of course, I am - but in this case pretend I'm a potentially dangerous one..) The Internet gives me a couple of advantages:

Anonymity - You don't know who you're talking to. (I'll get to webcams later) I say I'm Helga, 21, from Sweden, and you'd pretty much have to take my word for it. Sure, I might send you a photo, but how hard's it going to be to find a photo of a young blonde woman in front of some ambiguous background? Obscurity - You don't know where I am. Yeah, I tell you I'm from Sweden, and maybe even get someone to send you a postcard from there, but really I could live around the corner. And even if you eventually found out that I actually lived around the corner - you'd still be looking out for that blonde woman in the picture I chopped out of the clothes catalogue... Personality - I can seem to be like anyone In the space of an online conversation, I could pretend to be pretty much any personality I wanted to be - Age, Sex, Nationality, Religion, Personal Feeling - I've got the time to think about and construct the sort of answer I think the person I'm corresponding with expects.

So the person you think I am after hours and hours of chat may not in fact be the person I really am. I'm not saying lock yourself in a room with a baseball bat and 911 on speed dial, but I am saying be careful who you trust, how much you trust them, and how soon you trust them. (If you trust them at all). Because of the anonymity of the Internet, I can create a new personality, email address, etc any time I like, so if you suddenly realise that Helga is a complete nutjob - and might even live around the corner(!), my next personality - Phil, 26, Construction worker from Staten Island, will be the next in line to chat/email away..

Again, I'm not saying avoid the internet. That would be as dumb as saying avoid footpaths because that's where mugging's happen. What I am is control what information you give out, and to whom. There are some pointers tho:

Be cautious about giving out information about yourself - particularly your address and phone number. Be cautious about narrowing down the search area by giving snippets of information - i.e. your Town, Your school, etc Be alert to people who seem to want to know a lot about you. Sure, they may be normal people who are genuinely interested, but they also may be internet dirtbags Be practicle. The internet is a great place to meet people, but it's more difficult to tell what people are like. (Anyone can come across as a nice, caring, witty, charming and funny person on the internet. Hell, if I can pull it off, anyone can) Be cautious of people who're overly friendly or suggestive. Better safe than sorry Again, don't give out your home address. If someone wants to send you something, get them to send it C/- someone else, a parent or friend's workplace, etc If someone's weirding you out, break off conversations with them. Change your email address, chat name, etc, if you need to avoid them. Often internet nutters realise they've gone too far and back off for a while, so again better safe than sorry - pull the ripcord on them. Don't look back! Be hugely cautious about meeting people in person. Especially alone, or in strange places. Be cautious about giving out information about your friends too. Keep their information as private as (or more private than) your own.

WebCams I have only two warnings about webcams from my browsings on the net:

Be careful what they show - I.e. what's in plain view of the camera - the credit card on your desk, your home address, what's out your window, your Elvis outfit, etc Be careful what you show them - I.e. your tits/your dick, etc

I almost wasn't going to put the tits/dick bit it, but I thought, what the hell, that's what I mean to say. If you want to flash someone, BEWARE the pictures could float around on the internet forever.. You may think you're showing only one person, but it may turn out you're actually showing 1/2 the world, or it's being intercepted, and/or it's being captured, which would mean that you can probably expect that more than that one person is going to see it. If it's been captured the two problems are:

They'll be there forever - looooonnnng after you think it wasn't such a good idea... Sooner or later, someone who you really want to hide your flash picture from is going to see it. (Or someone that knows them will). It could be your parents, it could be the new boyfriend/girlfriend in 2 years time who really doesn't like that sort of thing, etc.

So I'm suggesting you act cautiously - And look after your friends too. One phrase I have honestly heard many, MANY times over is: "It seemed like a good idea at the time" Look after yourself

Personal Privacy

Apart from nutters like me, you may also get targetted by:

Spam Mailing (I.e. email advertising) Groups with various Political or Social agendas, who may want to meet you in person to put pressure on you in the old fashioned way Companies wishing to sell you further products People wishing to masquerade as you for some scam (Like me pretending to be Helga so you'll send me money [to move to your beautiful country and be with you])

How's my information gathered? There are stacks of ways I can get information out about you. I could:

Ask you. (Didn't see that one coming did you?) Find it out from your personal web pages Get it from Usenet news or other Message Boards Find it out from "public" records (phone books, class lists, Electoral rolls..) Find it out from some site you've previously supplied information to but which has not taken adequate steps to protect it, OR has shared it willingly Find it out from your insecure web browser. (I.e. somehow direct you to "web page" which grabs values to known cookies and/or environment variables) "Infect" your machine with an application which extracts information about you and posts it to me somehow. Ask you. Yep, I mentioned that Twice. The second one is where you're filling out a form to: Licence some software, apply or register for some service or support, enable some product, fill out an online warranty, BUY something, Be notified of the avalability, enter a competition, get an email account, etc. See it for myself on your web cam. Ask a mutual acquaintance about your info when you're offline. and many, many more

So how should I protect myself and my information?

Don't volunteer it in the first place Don't put your email address on web-pages, Message Board info, etc. If you simply HAVE to have it on a web page, consider making it in the form of an IMAGE that can't be electronically read. (I.e. use a paint program to create a picture of the text of your email address) Only give information to online information requesters where you think it's appropriate. I.e. if you're filling in an online warranty, how much you make a year, your age, sex and occupation are nothing to do with the manufacturer. If you're annoyed, you may want to: o Send email to the site asking why the information is required and if it's legally required to fulfil the terms of the warranty o Require a statement from them stating what they will use your information for and that they won't be passing it on to anyone else.

Require a statement from them outlining the measures they've taken to protect your information. o Refuse to supply the information o For the really keen: Take legal action against them if they refuse to supply the service, etc See Legalities below. Have virus scanning software installed and up to date. Don't use the same passwords between services. I.e. The same password for yahoo as amazon as your chat personality, etc. Turn off unneccessary functionality in your browser. I generally turn off cookies, Java, etc, but you'll find that things like Hotmail don't work properly if this happens. I'm not a big fan of microsoft/hotmail/msn/passport in general as they collect gobs of information on what you do and where you browse. You may want to spread your mail info around a few different freemail sites, like yahoo, rocketmail, etc Provide false information. WHO SAID THAT!?! See Legalities and False Demographics below.. At your own risk... If you have to use a real email address to complete the registration, warranty, etc, consider creating a one-time hotmail/yahoo account, just to get that message, then let it lapse..
o

Marketing and Falsifying your Demographic Info Demographic Information (Your age, location, Occupation, Income, Marital Status, etc) is used in two main ways:

To market something to you. To analyse what you do, to predict the best ways to market something to people like you.

To Explain In the first case (Marketing to you), they may create a mailing or contact list of all the people they have in their database who are Single, Male and between the ages of 18 and 35. Then they contact these blokes and offer them a discount subscription to Hot Nuns in Bondage Monthly. Why? Well, it's a lot cheaper, and less hassle to market to people they think might be interested in Hot Nuns in Bondage than to just email everyone on their database. They also stand less chance of alienating those people on their database who think that Nuns in Bondage is abhorrent, and who might then change their email address, etc. The really interesting part is that the company often pats itself on the back for being so proactive in "selecting" people to junkmail... In the second case (Analysing what you do), Marketing Bods use cookies, scripts, etc, to collect information about you, how you browse, where you browse, etc, and try and spot trends in what you do. As a simple example, if they notice that 93% of the people who say that they're Computing Professionals go to hotnunsinbondage.com, they'll start thinking:

Computing Professionals are generally perves There's an untapped porn segment in the there Interest in Nuns and/or Bondage may be on the rise.

(Of course, they slap all the raw info into a program that does Analysis of Variance stuff, which spits out the above info) None of this helps you if you're one of the 7% of Computing Professionals who's not interested and who suddenly starts getting stacks of invitations to various smut sites...

Faking it, and how to appear uninteresting If you don't want any of the above, you may want to fake information so as to make yourself appear dull, thereby avoiding being in a target demographic. It requires a bit of thought. The first, and most important point is: They're generally after your money. Not all the time, true, but a lot of the time. For this reason:

Make yourself very young or very, very old. >LI>Never fess up to owning your own computer You might want to make your Income figure really low. You probably don't own your own ANYTHING. Maybe you rent, or share accomodation with others. You might even be unemployed, or in prison!. You might live in some out-of-the-way place which is really difficult to get to.. Antartica is fairly unpopular.

There's stacks of other things you may want to choose. However, there's no use complaining that they're sending you junkmail, passing your info around if you don't check/uncheck the boxes which ask you if you want to be contacted about stuff and/or if they can pass your info on to other people "who you may be interested in hearing from..."

Legalities These can be tricky and vary from Country to Country, and even State to State. Worse still, some large companies collect and store information on a machine in a country where the rules on information gathering are most lenient. So, whilst it may be against the law for a company to collect information about you in YOUR Country, it may be perfectly legal in the Country where the Database and website live. Also, when a company actually HAS your information it can be fairly difficult to make them relinquish it. The legalities of whose information it now is become a bit complex here. So, back to basics, the best approach is not to supply the information in the first place. Supplying False information might land you in trouble, can void warranties and registrations, and make you suffer anything else the Company with the dud information may want to do to you to punish you. If you're going to provide false information, you may want to choose what info is false and what is not. You may want to fill out the information in your browser's Identity form so that it supplies this dud info by default. But Remember, you're doing it at your own risk. ALSO REMEMBER: I AM HELGA H HELGASSON FROM STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN. I DRIVE A VERY OLD VOLVO. I AM 71, AND UNEMPLOYED I EARN 3,000 POTATOES A YEAR IN THE PAST YEAR I SPENT $400 ON COMPUTING ACCESSORIES/VIDEOS/DVDS/WHATEVER I DO NOT INTEND TO PURCHASE ANYTHING IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS I HEARD ABOUT YOUR SITE FROM A SEARCH FORM. I WAS SEARCHING FOR "NOSEY COMPANIES" IF that fails, I MAY ALSO BE: BOB B BOBSON, In prison, earn $2,000 a year, don't have a computer. FRED F FREDSON, artist, am on welfare etc...

Final Note I know it sounds like I think the internet's a den of iniquity. It's not, it's a mixed bag of people, some exceptionally neat and some exceptionally nasty. The best approach I can suggest is to just be cautious. It doesn't cost anything to be cautious about who you're dealing with, and it may save you some hassle in the long run. Take Care.