“IT Manager” Blames OS Vendor for 3rd Party Error
Posted on March 27, 2006
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 57 views |
Panic and hysteria in the America heartland. Tornado? No. Hurricane? No. Flooding? No. Terrorist attack? Getting closer….
In Tuttle, Oklahoma the town’s City Manager, Jerry Taylor, threatened to call the FBI on free operating system vendor CentOS because the town’s website displayed the default web page Apache contains on the CentOS install.
Evidently the town’s web host re-configred their servers and made a mistake, somehow omitting the web sites. These servers just happen to run CentOS, which did the correct thing: in light of no web content to display it displayed the default.
It was enough for Taylor to go ballistic:
Who gave you permission to invade my website and block me and anyone else from accessing it???
…
Get this web site off my home page!!!!! It is blocking access to my website!!!!
…
I am computer literate! I have 22 years in computer systems engineering and operation. Now, can you tell me how to remove ‘your software’ that you acknowledge you provided free of charge? I consider this ‘hacking.’
Short story quick: the CentOS guys, under no obligation but out of the goodness of their hearts, got in contact with the town’s 3rd-party web host, tracked down the problem for Taylor, got it fixed for him, and then were kind enough to explain to explain to him what had happened.
Taylor’s response:
I am sorry that we had to go through the process and accusations to get the problem resolved. It could have been resolved a lot quicker if the initial correspondence with you provided the helpful information that was transmitted in the last messages. My initial contact with VIDIA disallowed any knowledge of creating the problem.
In other words: he still blames CentOS for the issue. No good deed goes unpunished.
(The whole sordid tale can be read email-for-email here.)
Update: This comment from Slashdot made me laugh:
That’s nothing. Over the years I’ve been the victim of some ruthless Native American terrorist organization that always seems to hack my webpage within minutes of installing the server.
Comments
Leave a Reply