Hacker News Reader

Comment by rzzzt | Hacker News Reader

I vaguely remember this one. Was it covered in a DailyWTF story as well? I can only find a short blurb on it in The Register:

- https://www.theregister.com/2001/04/12/missing_novell_server...

- https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/32502/did-a-com...

View on HN

A more recent and true (or had a good 'shopped photos):

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/epic-...

And the forum thread as it looked when it was posted, with proofs:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130401030556/http://arstechnic...

It was a fake story afaik.

What I've seen ares workers opening a wall with a hammer in an hospital disregarding the fact there was a small shelf with 19" switches on the other side, that they left hanging by the ethernet cables, without even asking someone to call IT. They went on to take their lunchbreak like nothing happened while computers on that floor were without network.

That's a shame and makes me sad.

I once saw my father furiously smacking the screen of the new laptop I brought him. It had stopped working. I quietly explained that the power light is off and he's not hooked up to the wall... yup, came back on as soon as he plugged into power.

I guess I see a commonality about people who don't know any better..

Wasn't that a Novell NetWare server?

It was reportedly NetWare which was a pretty stable and reliable OS, so I could imagine a server sitting in the corner and being forgotten about just chugging away quite happily for years serving files and print jobs.

But the hardware of that day was maybe not that great, e.g. Compaq or HP servers, so from that standpoint I'd be a bit more sceptical of such a long uptime.

I've heard multiple versions of this story over the past 20 years. When NetWare admins tell it, it's a NetWare server. In Mac fans' version, it's a Mac server. BSD admins recall it being a BSD server. etc., etc...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com