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It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license, about which you’ll find more at the end of this file.  \nThis story and the other stories in the volume are available at:  \n[http://craphound.com/overclocked](http://craphound.com/overclocked)  \nYou can buy Overclocked at finer bookstores everywhere, including Amazon:  \n[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156025981](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156025981)[ ](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156025981)[7/downandoutint-20](7/downandoutint-20)  \nIn the words ofWoody Guthrie:  \n“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright \\#154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give adern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”  \nOverclocked is dedicated to Pat York, who made my stories better.  \n—  \nIntroduction to When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth  \nI’ve changed careers every two or three years ever since I dropping out of university in 1990, and one of the best gigs I ever had was working as a freelance systems administrator, working in the steam tunnels ofthe information age, pulling cables, configuring machines, keeping the backups running, kicking the network in its soft and vulnerable places. Sysadmins are the unsung heroes of the century, and if they’re not busting you for sending racy IMs, or engaging in unprofessional email conduct it’s purely out of their own goodwill.  \nThere’s a pernicious myth that the Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear war; while that Strangelove wet-dream was undoubtedly present in the hindbrains ofthe generals who greenlighted the network’s R&D at companies like Rand and BBN, it wasn’t really a big piece of the actual engineering and design.  \nNevertheless, it does make for a compelling scenario, this vision of the sysadmins in their cages around the world, watching with held breath as the generator failed and the servers went dark, waiting out the long hours until the power and the air run out.  \nThis story originally appeared in Baen’s Universe Magazine, an admirable, high-quality online magazine edited by Eric Flint, himself a talented writer and a passionate advocate for open and free culture.  \nListeners to my podcast heard this story as it was written, read aloud in serial chinks after each composing session. The pressure of listeners writing in, demanding to know what happened next, kept me honest and writing.  \n—  \nWhen Sysadmins Ruled the Earth  \n(Originally published inBaen s’ Universe, 2006)  \nWhen Felix’s special phone rang at two in the morning, Kelly rolled over and punched him in the shoulder and hissed,“Why didn’t you turn that fucking thing off before bed?”  \n“Because I’m on call,” he said.  \n“You’re not a fucking doctor,” she said, kicking him ashe sat on the bed’s edge, pulling on the pants he’d left on the floor before turning in.“You’re a goddamned systems administrator.”  \n“It’s my job,” he said.  \n“They work you like a government mule,” she said.“You know I’m right. For Christ’s sake, you’re a father now, you can’t go running offin the middle of the night every time someone’s porn supply goes down. Don’t answer that phone.”  \nHe knew she was right. He answered the phone.  \n“Main routers not responding. BGP not responding.”The mechanical voice of the systems monitor didn’t care if he cursed at it, so he did, and it made him feel a little better.  \n“Maybe I can fix it from here,” he said. He could loginto the UPS for the cage and reboot the routers. The UPS was in a different netblock, with its own independent routers on their own uninterruptible power-supplies.  \nKelly was sitting up in bed now, a","cbCainka9l7uIeQd","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCainka9l7uIeQd","pdf",208488,"English","# Forematter\n## Introduction to When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth\n# When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth\n## Opening scene and system alerts","[{\"question\":\"What is the premise introduced in the forematter and introduction?\",\"answer\":\"The story presents a scenario of sysadmins facing failures in critical network infrastructure, framed against myths about the Internet’s ability to withstand major disasters.\"},{\"question\":\"What happens at the start of the main story?\",\"answer\":\"Felix receives a special phone call at 2:00 a.m., involving unresponsive main routers and BGP, prompting him to handle the crisis despite arguments with Kelly.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the introduction describe sysadmins’ role?\",\"answer\":\"Sysadmins are portrayed as unsung heroes who keep networks running, often dealing with interruptions that can disrupt personal life, including difficult on-call demands.\"}]","When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - Introduction - When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth | PDF",1791312928,31]