BOFH: How dangerous are your users?

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BOFH Userometer - an online sysadmins resource

Sure, your users may look about as likely to rebel as the pack of mindless sheep that they are - but can they be trusted?

• Are your users reading forbidden literature?
• Are they trying to climb the technical greasy pole behind your back?
• How will you know?
• Can the cattle prod be trusted to solicit the truth?

It's time to put it to the test!

Put yourself in your users' place and answer these simple questions to see if things are going according to plan at YOUR workplace.

1. A MAC Address is:

A. A place you get Quarter Pounders
B. A street address in Scotland
C. Something Technical
D. A Hardware Address in Networking
E. Something technical a system administrator changes to cause the Boss's machine to lose network connection

2. You ring your Systems and Network people because the server has just gone down and you want to know when it will be up again. You expect them to tell you:

A. A number of minutes
B. A number of days
C. To sod off
D. The incriminating evidence they found in your email folder
E. The incriminating evidence they just placed in your email folder

3. The low-power components in your laptop are optimised to run at what voltage?

A. DC
B. AC
C. Whatever the adapter says
D. Just under 3 volts
E. 240 volts AC, and not a volt less!

4. You bring a box of 9 track tapes of your life's work to the operators to read in so that you can download them to your PC. The operator tells you it should be there in an hour. This means:

A. It will be loaded into your home share in an hour
B. It will be loaded into your home share today sometime
C. It will be loaded into your home share this week sometime
D. It will be loaded into your home share when hell freezes over
E. The Operator's bin has recently become full

5. You smell smoke in the building. You know immediately that:

A. You should sound the alarm
B. You should make your way quickly to the exit, notifying staff as you go
C. You should turn your machine off in case the sprinklers activate
D. The System Administrator is interviewing consultants again
E. The operator's bin doesn't need emptying any more

6. The faultiest piece of crap in the building is:

A. Sitting in the bin outside the head of IT's office
B. Sitting on the floor outside the head of IT's office
C. Sitting on the floor inside the head of IT's office
D. Sitting on the desk inside the head of IT's office
E. Sitting on the chair behind the Head of IT's desk, talking on the phone.

7. The best place to backup your files is:

A. To your Home Share, just like the System Admin said
B. To the TEMP directory, just like the System Admin said
C. To ZIP disk
D. (c) to Several Zip disks, and possibly CD-ROM
E. To the Recycle bin, to save the System Admin the trouble

8. The danger of leaving your machine switched on is:

A. It could catch fire
B. It could become a security risk
C. The disk could crash
D. It wastes lots of power
E. The processor might burn the System Administrators hand when he replaces it with a ... faster one ... late at night.

9. The security and integrity of your email is protected by:

A. Your password
B. Company Policy
C. PGP Encryption
D. Microsoft's pursuit of excellence. Waaaaaa ha ha ha!
E. Two pints for the System Administrator every Friday night

10. A System Administrator slaps a piece of paper down in front of you with lots of large technical words on it... which don't mean anything to you. He also indicates a line, with a large X beside it. You:

A. Sign on the line
B. Sign on the line
C. Sign on the line
D. Sign on the line
E. Refuse to sign on the line then check on your life Insurance Payments.