[ale] OT: The Website Is Down: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude

[Geoffrey]

My favorite all time support story is about a stapler.

We were supporting a time reporting system and had problems with 
managers leaving their computers logged into the system, a huge security 
issue.  Thus, we had a 'green' C programmer on the team change the code 
to include a time out function.  Basically what they did was sit in a 
loop looking for keyboard input.   If it didn't see any, it would 
terminate the application.  The problem was that there was a bug in the 
code such that it would create a race condition if there was continuous 
keyboard input.  About a week after installing the fix, we starting 
seeing sever system degradation.  Looking at top, we would see a couple 
of users eating up all the cpu.  Mind you, this was on a AT&T 3B5. 
Anyway, I sauntered out to one of the users location to find the 
computer unattended, with a stapler sitting on the spacebar.

Turns out, one of our 'support persons' suggested this as a fix because 
the user was tired of having to re-login after leaving his desk.  Of 
course, this user shared the solution with other users.

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
  - Benjamin Franklin