Liked that one a lot! Nice work :)

You've paid for the coffee and you've paid for the cup, but if you want to use one with the other, you're going to need a Coffee Access Licence.

and it's now officially the start of my weekend. Cheers *raises coffee cup not rinsed in porcelain and unapproached by the PFY*

<---- Mines the splashproof one

first BOFH that's made me properly laugh aloud for a loooong time!

Just like the good old days. Nice work, Simon!

Right on! One of the best BOFH episodes I have been reading in recent times...having to manage different applications that all require intermingling licensing schemes (say, flex-servers, dongles, flex-servers+dongles blah) is definitely one of the most time killing, annoying and superfluous parts of the job.

...you choose to use the cup without first using a suitable Anti-Virus.....

Mines the one with the Antibiotics in the pocket....

off to the hydrogen filling station with them

Brought on uncontrollable chuckles. Nice one.

> "You mean you have to wash it?"

> "We prefer to think of it as a total maintenance solution aimed at providing the best possible cup experience for the user."

Excellent, truly excellent.

.. note to self make sure I check the cup before accepting the drink

PMSL, Love it!!! absolute delight to read and an excellent twist of real life. Keeep it up!!

Trust everyone, but make your coffee...

Pure genius

The world would be a better place if ruled by BOFHs.

Avoid the water with the blue (or yellow) tinge!

Great to see Simon's back on song - a chuckle or two to end the week

Hmm...

One of our 'senior support consultants' made me a coffee this morning, for the first time EVER in 13 years.

Methinks I might be about to have a bad weekend.

Genius.

Black Helicopters as I can't don't believe in coincidences.

It wouldn't happen to a nicer guy. Really.

Laughed loudly enough to wake my brother.

RE: "It almost seems that the BOFH just sat back" - The BOFH and the PFY work as a team. They have a real partnership. A partnership of mutual respect and cooperation, working together toward a common goal. They always work WITH each other, never against each other - you'd never find the PFY stealing the money that the BOFH had hidden under the false bottom of the fire extinguisher, and you'd certainly never find the BOFH stuck in a darkened basement with a laptop as his only source of light AND his only hammer. Nor will you ever EVER find them electrocuting each other with cattle prods. Oh no. This is a genuine partnership.

You missed out the option of pouring it into a plastic cup ... and the associated licence transfer fee.

I remember in the late 1980s, if you bought a Sun Workstation you had to buy a SunOS "Right To Use" licence. If you then sold it, the new owner had to buy their own "Right To Use" licence, as yours was non transferable. I didn't know there were software vendors out there who could still make these sorts of shenanigans stick.

"No," #1 responds. "I was just wondering what your manager will think about this extortion?"

"Not a lot I shouldn't think", I respond. "Given that the muffins he had at the beginning of your presentation was made in a certain porcelain mixing bowl."

So when the muffins hit the fan......

I thought the old guy had a healthy sense of self preservation when dealing with the BOFH? At least he will live and learn from the errors in his reasoning.

Thank you simon for another great BOFH article.

I was just going back to the previous works that got me into reading the articles in the first place, and this one definitely rates up there with those.

I wonder .... is the use of a "porcelain device" sufficiently reliable. Just thinking about it creates nausea. But is this enough. Don't you need a Mocha topping from Exlax trigger the right results? Even better - chocolate chip muffins.

It was on the radio earlier this week, a headmaster was discouraged from nicking the chocolate digestive biscuits. Spent the afternoon in a much smaller office.

The term "cup" kept popping breasts images in my head.

Just sayin'...

Oh, hi Paris !

Its a big HI to all of us who have had to deal with Licensing in its various forms of evil incarnate.

oh and @ Rosuav

Dont think they dont get each other from time to time, like stuck in the lift over christmas/new year etc.... check back articles matey :)

I knew there was a reason why we migrated to 100% Open Source four years ago ..... because of bollocks like this.

The expression on the FAST guy's face [we suspect someone tried to get us busted for the reward money] when we told him that we had no measures in place to prevent staff from copying application software from their workstations (because there was no need to ..... everything on there was Open Source and so quite legal to copy), in fact we would encourage it, was absolutely priceless. (Actually we had one partial, implicit measure in place. None of the machines had floppy drives or CD writers; and in those days, root passwords -- not issued to anyone except the IT department -- were required to mount USB devices.)

keep an eye on the PFY. He's getting good - maybe too good

This may seem like nitpicking ...but... The PFY did not in fact supply a cup of coffee ....he supplied a cup of water with some coffee diluted into it ....which I suppose is a breach of contract ....leading to ......[ you fill in the rest ....I have gone too far ]

Paris would have noticed...

He who needs a legend explaining what BOFH means, is clearly not ready the article anyway. So why? Inqueering minds need to know (lame punt, I know. couldn't resist).

who saw "model" and "Platinum" and was hoping...?

Why no. 1 and no. 2, I wonder…

ok, so who here has bought or sold (or considered) cisco kit on ebay? the IOS licenses are not transferrable, so when you sell you should wipe it clean, and buy you should buy your own IOS (which would cost more than the kit)!

if your company is bought or goes bust, any cisco kit is devalued because the licenses cannot be transferred either!

so, in essence, cisco kit second hand is basically a brick.

this also used to be the case with EMC, but you'd have to check that.

alongside most porcelain bowls there is a copy of the license agreement for the use thereof. i wish other licensing agreements were as easy to understand and implement.