Cisco shoots itself in foot, APC makes servers kaput

It seems my less-than-reverent salute to the passing of Commander Montgomery Scott (aka James Doohan) hit a nerve. Outraged Trekkies rushed to scold me for my insensitivity. So no more jokes about the kilt-wearing wizard of the warp drive. Readers should also feel free to write snarky columns about me when I am old, enfeebled, and wetting myself -- which, if history is any guide, could be as early as Saturday night.

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Cisco Kid was no friend of mine: Cisco CEO John Chambers might as well be walking around with a sign taped to his back saying "hack me." First, the company's attempt to silence whistle-blower Mike Lynn earned it the distinction of being named the annual hacker's challenge at DefCon 13, where the world's sneakiest geeks vied to duplicate Lynn's feat. Then Cisco's Web site was compromised, forcing the company to reset users' passwords. The company claimed the problem "does not appear to be due to a weakness in Cisco products or technologies." And if you wake up one day and find the Internet has gone dark, that's also not Cisco's fault.

A pair of jokers: Cringester Keith B. says he recently spent an exciting weekend in Omaha playing in a bridge tournament with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. That's not unlike spending your weekend tailing a Brinks truck, hoping the rear doors will pop open.

Just chute me: Still, it's a thrill a minute compared with the long weekend Brian S. spent reviving his companies' moribund Windows 2003 servers. Turns out the APC PowerChute software monitoring the servers' backup power supplies went belly-up after its Java Runtime Environment certificates expired. APC's tagline is "Legendary Reliability." It seems a new legend has just been born.

No comment: Tech news site CNET had the audacity to "Google" Google CEO Eric Schmidt and publish what it found. Now the search giant is refusing to talk to the site's reporters until July 2006. When asked about the ban, Google declined to comment. Apparently they're not talking to me either.

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