[Sheflug] Bad Hardware ( was Re: RH6.2 /etc/inetd.conf file. )

[Richard <nospam [at] sheflug.co.uk>]

Dear All

Craig Andrews wrote:
 
> It seems that dodgy RAM is more of a problem that people let on. Also,
> despite my best efforts, we are still using the same supplier. Oh
> well... (sighs and throws RAM in bin)

There have been several British Government investigations of this with
the co-operation of the security services in Taiwan, China, Japan and
other places.  The newspapers over here reported that the raids on
hardware thieves and pirates had been successful.  

However, from what I've seen of the stuff that comes to the UK after
one of those well organised raids is that it takes them about two
months or less to re-organise and then we are back to the usual state
of affairs once again.

It seems to be the case that no matter how much we co-operate with
each other then the hardware pirates still persist and we can only
stay with the way things are and hope it doesn't get worse.

I remember reading one story in the Daily Mail a few years ago which
explained that the thieves would wait until some hardware had been
thrown way in a skip and then they would remove it and sell it on. 
When they started to use sealed skips then the thieves took to
removing it from the production line before it was even tested for
quality.

Quite what you do with this kind of thing I don't know ?

Just to set this in perspective so we don't wholly blame south-east
Asia for everything I should explain the following.

When I worked at the Computacenter at St Albans in 1998 I was building
IBM desktop PCs.  I found that to get into or out of the building I
had to go through a metal detector both which was exactly the same as
the ones that are used in all airports.  They also run the "magic
wands" all over you on arrival and when leaving.  This has two
purposes.  Number one is that the Computacenter has such a bad
reputation that we know of several people who would like to go down
there and shoot at least some of the "managers".  It is also claimed
that it stops people from removing hardware from the premises.  This
is partially wrong headed because we know that the "managers" have a
deal going with the European Mafia for sex and drugs.  This is general
knowledge and not rumour.  Every week or every month we find that
several PCs or something else go somewhere.  While I was there they
had just "lost" an S/390 server or at least something similar.  You
don't just "lose" something of that sort ?

Anyway, the whole thing is kind of interesting as long as you are not
involved in it :)

Thanks
      
-- 
Richard
Sheffield UK


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