Punked in the Data Center: 'What happens if I cut this cable?' | Hacker News Reader

Punked in the Data Center: 'What happens if I cut this cable?'

datacenterknowledge.com

24 points1SockChuck20 comments

That was honestly one of the better ads I've ever seen.

I was going to comment on how clever this is. I thought it was very funny until the end when I had to visit their website for an explanation of the magic trick.

My thoughts: "Marketing stunt. How sad."

But then, I don't generally watch or admire "awesome" ads.

It's also fantastic for inbound links (SEO)

I agree. In fact, I love this type of advertising. It made me laugh, I enjoyed it, and I even shared it with my friends.

It's a win for me and a win for them.

Next time, he's going to pretend to shoot the guy's daughter dead. What fun!

I love the comment at the end. "We have permission to do this, the sales manager...". As if that makes it okay. Someone who has nothing to do with the technical operations says its okay to cut a cable in the data center (magic trick or not).

That would be like setting up a sales call, convincing the sales manager that he is going to close a big deal and then saying something ridiculous that completely ruins any chance of a sale. In that situation wouldn't he be really pissed off?

He didn't actually cut the cable.

It would be like placing a fake sales call from your friend, then "ruining" it. Nothing was ruined - it was a joke.

Your victim may or may not find it funny though.

You'd have to tell him "the director of engineering said it would be ok" of course.

for some reason I didn't find this funny ... it's oddly reminiscent of "Punk'd", where Ashton Kutcher places people in awful situations and then pulls the blanket and laughs at how upset they got.

if they are not prepared to handle a wire failing, i dont want to be using that vendor.

btw, that was the first magic trick i learned as a kid.

What really can happen if someone cuts random wire? I think worker reaction was bit too nervous. If in fact cabling is redundant there should be no problem with cutting just one wire.

Who cares if a guest of yours smashes a wall in your house? You starting to scream hysterically would be a bit of an overreaction. After all your house can (probably) do without.

Replacing a wall would take much more resource than replacing one of thousand cables and you know exactly which one.

“Let me just stand here totally relaxed while someone destroys my property.” :)

Do you curse and swear if someone for fun shreds blank piece of paper that he found in your office?

It's all about value of property, effort to replace it and the disruption to operation. If they have redundancy in cabling all of this would be minor and shouldn't cause such strong reaction.

Does anyone really 100% trust their complicated redundant gear?

And without watching the explanation, I'm pretty sure that is an empty outer insulator. It cuts way too easily with scissors and I don't see the light colored insulators and wire ends in the opening.

No, it's a real Ethernet cable. It's just a cheap one, and may not be Cat-5. (I have some "Cat-3" cables that can only do 100BaseT. Microsoft thoughtfully included one with my XBox, presumably because a real Cat-5 cable wouldn't benefit the XBox in any way, and would cost like 3 cents more.)

It was an illusion. The cable he cut was a short piece of the same color cable he was just holding in his hand, not attached to anything.

If cutting a cable is a huge problem for their datacenter, they aren't going anywhere near my datacenter.

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