705: Devotion to Duty
| Devotion to Duty |
 Title text: The weird sense of duty really good sysadmins have can border on the sociopathic, but it's nice to know that it stands between the forces of darkness and your cat blog's servers. |
[edit] Explanation
This comic depicts a bearded criminal holding a pistol and talking on the phone, most likely to his boss or paymaster.
We are unsure of his aims (terrorism, robbery, etc.) but he has taken hostages and cut all links to the outside world, in order to control the situation and prevent the police from observing the interior of the building (as popularly depicted in film and television). Initially all appears to be normal (for a hostage situation) to the reader but then the hostage-taker explains on the phone that someone has entered the building, climbed the air vents to bypass their cordon, effortlessly killing other hostage-takers (who are likely hardened killers with weaponry) on his way to the server room and then ignored the hostages, preferring instead to reconnect the servers to the outside world. The hostage-taker is evidently puzzled by this and explains it to the person on the other end of the phone, who immediately recognizes the reason: the man that entered the building is a "sysadmin" and is concerned that his servers are losing "uptime" to the internet. This evidently concerns the man on the phone, who knows that a good sysadmin is an unstoppable force once started!
This comic is a reference to one of two things (or both): the Hollywood depiction of heroes able to perform superhuman feats in tricky situations (for example, John McClane in die hard), or the duty that people impose upon themselves to go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that they carry out their work (in this case a dutiful sysadmin, concerned for those trying to use his server).
[edit] Transcript
- [Bearded criminal is holding a pistol and talking on a mobile phone]
- Criminal: We took the hostages, secured the building and cut the communication lines like you said.
- Phone: Excellent.
- [Still talking on the phone, waving gun around in the air animatedly]
- Criminal: But then this guy climbed up the ventilation ducts and walked across broken glass, killing anyone we sent to stop him.
- Phone: And he rescued the hostages?
- [Criminal looking confused and defeated, shoulders hunched and pistol hanging limply at his side]
- Criminal: No, he ignored them. He just reconnected the cables we cut, muttering something about "uptime".
- Phone: Shit, we're dealing with a sysadmin.
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