Group Efforts 21

Group Efforts
The Diary of a Workgroup Manager

Episode 68 (2000)

(Part 3 of August 2000's five-night summer special)

Wednesday
Our fate hangs in the balance, as the Board meets this afternoon to decide on the W2K upgrade plan. Andy's offering 3/2 against a Llewellyn win after an early-morning consultation with George Barker, who says that Broadleys are backing away from Microsoft technology under IBM's influence. On the other hand Matt, my man with the finger on Broadleys' pulse, says that Group IT are quite happy to see us act as a Win 2K testbed, leaving us to sort things out if it fails. My source on the Top Floor, however, says that Costello and Chapman are both cautious, especially the latter, who knows how Group IT operates. On that basis, we're in with a good chance.
        In the meantime the All Stars Ethics Panel meets to consider the sorry business of Cathy's treasonable behaviour. We decide to give her a chance to repent and show solidarity, and I'm deputed to conduct negotiations. However when I reach Purchasing I find her deep in conversation with another visitor - Llewellyn. Displaying a total lack of concern, Cathy smiles and asks if there's anything I want. I say no, and return, sadly, to the Canteen. As the day progresses, my distress over Cathy's defection is balanced by positive news about the likely outcome of the Board meeting - apparently Tom Stringer, the Operations Director, was heard referring to 'that smarmy fool's latest crack-brained scheme', while Chapman is reported to have expressed his determination not to become another Brison.
        But just as Andy's lengthened the odds to 2-1, I receive an email message, sent anonymously via HotMail from a CyberCafe. It warns of a 'major stunt' timed to occur just before the Board meets, and although it's signed 'A Friend', I know it's from Deep Upgrade. I convene an All Stars emergency session, but we agree that all we can do is be vigilant and wait. The Board meeting starts at 4 pm; by 3 pm nothing's happened, and the view is that it was either a false alarm or a Llewellyn destabilising tactic. Then, at 3.20, Paula in Purchasing (of all places) suddenly finds the Materials Monitoring system locked solid, with a day's worth of inputs trapped in the batch update file.
        Llewellyn appears from nowhere, and pronounces the cause of the problem to be a rogue network driver which has corrupted the MM app's memory space. He then waits until Costello and Chapman arrive before delivering his next point, that crashes like this don't, of course, happen under Windows 2000, which implements proper hardware memory protection. Smugness exuding from every pore, he then proceeds to give Costello a five-minute primer on Intel memory architecture. Groaning to a man, the All Stars head back to their offices to prepare for what looks like being a heavily-influenced Board decision.

Has Llewellyn cooked the All Stars' goose? Did Cathy prepare the vegetables? Is Windows 2000 really crash-proof, or are there still situations in which kernel-mode code can corrupt the memory space of Ring 3 executables? Find out as our week-long Group Efforts Special continues in Episode 69!