[Gllug] Uh oh, govt attempting to regulate "hacking"

[Ian Northeast]

Tethys wrote:
> Pip writes:
> 
> 
>>>This is why EDS are the preferred bidder for every contract, despite
>>>their glaring ineptitude!
>>
>>I work for EDS. Actually, I'm just about to leave, but that's not the
>>point. Whilst working there, I've been overwhelmed with the depth of
>>knowledge some people have on the technologies they're supporting:
>>these are good people.
> 
> 
> I can only say that that isn't a representative statement of the
> interactions I've had with EDS staff. Those with whom I've had the
> misfortune to encounter have indeed been technologically inept, and
> good for little except paperwork and beaurocracy.

My experience is the same as yours.

Some years ago my company merged with a Dutch company which was 
outsourced to EDS. For some time we maintained the separate systems with 
links between them.

At the start of this "relationship" their "DNS expert" took some time to 
lecture me on why our internal DNS setup, with private TLDs and no 
internal roots, could not work. The fact that it had been working 
successfully for some years did not appear to deter him.

During this transition phase we had two major problems which caused 
great annoyance to our customers and much grief to me and my colleagues 
as managent pressured us to solve them because EDS insisted there was 
"nothing wrong at their end".

One was a failure of their LPD server, which fell over whenever an 
unauthorised client attempted to connect. They had fscked up their DNS 
(same "expert" I expect) making all our clients "unauthorised". Once I 
proved that their server was failing every time we attempted to connect 
to it, they said "yes, our server is falling over but it's your client 
making it do so". Eh?

The other was an NFS failure on their VAX. After they finally worked out 
that it was their problem and fixed it, I asked for a written 
explanation of the problem and why it had taken so long to fix. It 
arrived - in Dutch. All parties concerned conducted all their business 
in English, so I can only assume that it was an attempt to confuse me. 
Why they thought that, working for an Anglo-Dutch multinational, I would 
not have ready access to a translator is entirely beyond me.

Both of these problems went on for over a week.

Regards, Ian

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