[HN Gopher] The Bastard Operator from Hell (1999)
___________________________________________________________________
The Bastard Operator from Hell (1999)
Author : newswasboring
Score : 80 points
Date : 2024-09-14 17:46 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bofh.bjash.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bofh.bjash.com)
| newswasboring wrote:
| Was suddenly reminded of this while trying to fix my laptop.
| Thought other people might also enjoy it on lazy Saturday
| afternoon.
| newswasboring wrote:
| I'm on a real nostalgia trip today. Found that bash.org is
| down. But its available on the way back machine[1].
|
| [1]
| http://web.archive.org/web/20161023171257/http://www.bash.or...
| h2odragon wrote:
| To whom it may concern, the TN state "BOFH" license plate should
| be available now. I've had it for 30 years, but i'm not able to
| drive anymore and the truck died, so I didn't renew it last
| month.
| jasoneckert wrote:
| If there is such a thing as passing the BOFH torch, this is it.
| I'm sure someone here will thank you for mentioning this!
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I respectfully disagree.
|
| This torch isn't passed, it's taken. Shortly after some off-
| label use of quicklime.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Have you no swamps nearby? Recycling, and so on.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Have you no swamps nearby? Recycling, and so on.
|
| I smell "carbon offset fees" on the BOHF's invoices. Good
| thinking.
| gerdesj wrote:
| How did I miss your comment? I'd normally claim great
| minds think alike, but mine clearly isn't!
| gerdesj wrote:
| TN: Tennessee. No mention of swamps on its wikipedia
| page. There are three bloody great major rivers mentioned
| and mountains, so I'm thinking hydro powered cattle
| prods, weights and a river.
|
| You should be able to sell a carbon credit or two on that
| basis.
| h2odragon wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reelfoot_Lake
|
| some of west tn is "false karst" highlands; we got ~10ac
| to ~1000ac patches of swamp all over. some of them have
| the fun floaty landscape bits that you can walk on, but
| not drive a tractor over. eats bulldozers with an amusing
| _plonk_ sound.
| esafak wrote:
| Back when computer expertise was hard to come by, so admins could
| lord over users. The Internet has made these people extinct. SNL
| parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25J3u3P-HHg
| h2odragon wrote:
| relatable by all the unseen engineers whose job it is to keep
| the machines running, so that _everybody else_ can do _their_
| jobs.
|
| especially so in the early days of computing, from whence the
| stories come; where "reliability" was a laugh
| fadesibert wrote:
| BOFH is still a periodic fixture on TheRegister:
| https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/
| Canada wrote:
| Classic. Remember, the BOFH is no longer the "operator" of some
| systems at a university. Now he's your ISP, your search engine,
| your social media services, and many other important things you
| rely on.
|
| "Well, the answer is, we do nothing _FOR_ users. We do things
| _TO_ users. It 's a fine distinction, but an important one all
| the same."
|
| https://www.chinet.com/html/bofh/lastbofh.html
| fmeyer wrote:
| BOFH, BileBlog, The Daily WTF;
|
| No wonder we all turned cynical.
| bitwize wrote:
| Artifacts of the toxic "contempt culture" historically endemic
| to hacker culture.
|
| https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture/
| woooooo wrote:
| "Contempt culture" is one way to put it, definitely had some
| toxic elements, but it was also actual hacker culture. The
| nice-ification of tech has come with corporatization and has
| its own downsides.
| maxbond wrote:
| It was a gatekeeping strategy. Opening the gates means
| opening them for the people you like and the people you
| don't. Ultimately, it's the hackerly thing to do. Knowledge
| wants to be free.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Strategy? You think a bunch of people sat down and
| planned a specific set of rules to ensure only the "right
| sort" (cynical bastards), were allowed in the club?
|
| The BOFH "culture" was the IT admin culture (exaggerated
| for comic effect); more cynical than anyone because they
| had to deal with people. It's probably still like this.
| IT (or IS as it seems to have been re-branded), sits as a
| "cost centre", frequently at the end of a long line of
| sewage pipes, coping the blame for any number of other
| peoples mistakes. I suspect the prickly nature is a
| necessary survival trait.
|
| Cultures develop as they develop. There's no conspiracy.
| They also evolve and change, and targeted interventions
| can push them in certain directions. "Hacker Culture" was
| never just one thing, and that's never been more true
| than today. Certain "clubs" might have been more or less
| exclusionary at various times, but the scene as a whole
| has always been a welcoming one.
| spl757 wrote:
| I had BOFH as a vanity plate on my car and I never met one person
| that understood the reference outside of work. Yes I'm old. lol
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| If anyone wants to ROTFL, then this is a good place to start.
|
| I've been following Simon Travaglia since the 1980s.
|
| I don't know if he still has his old site up, but he also had a
| bunch of amusing views on Kiwi culture.
| smileson2 wrote:
| now we call them devops
| gerdesj wrote:
| sysops. devops are prey!
| gerdesj wrote:
| ... sorry, customers.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| But the cloud is just some other BOFH's computer.
| trollied wrote:
| Also, bofhcam https://bofhcam.org
| fuzztester wrote:
| Another funny one is the Twitter account of that guy from
| Kazakhstan. I forget his name.
|
| oh yeah got it.
|
| @DEVOPS_BORAT.
|
| check him out. hilarious.
|
| last i checked, a while ago, he had stopped tweeting, but there
| are many previous tweets of his anyway, which should still be
| accessible.
|
| https://x.com/DEVOPS_BORAT
|
| Edit:
|
| In the context of this current hn thread, this is a gem of a
| tweet from him:
|
| @DEVOPS_BORAT * Mar 30, 2011 Confuse of Dev or Ops? Simple rule:
| if you are praise for Web site success, you are Dev; if you are
| blame when Web site down, you are Ops.
|
| having been on both sides of the fence, I can resonate with that.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-14 23:00 UTC)