UCI Housing Network and Cable TV Issues

The recent hubbub about banning all flags from a small portion of the UCI campus, not surprisingly, brought out all the xenophobic, racist, and ignorant trolls in the country.
These idiots obviously have never attended a university.

And not surprisingly, a state Senator (Janet Nguyen, a Republican, predictably) couldn't resist exploiting this issue for political grandstanding. She said she would sponsor an amendment to the CA Constitution to prevent such banning of the US flag.
As a politician, she really should know that the US Constitution prohibits such an amendment. I am sure she has heard of the 1st. Amendment. If not, she would obviously be unqualified for any public office.
She obviously just hopes that her constituents are sheep who don't know nor care about the US Constitution. In other words, Mrs. Nguyen is anti-American! Shame on her!

The students exercised their Constitutional rights to free speech. They should be applauded, not condemned.
But in Republican-controlled Orange County (where the racist "Minutemen" originated), even the UCI Chancellor caves in to racists and xenophobes. Shame on Chancellor Gillman!
Of course, current UCI Chancellor Gillman isn't the first UCI Chancellor to cave in to the Republican donors of Orange County. Former Chancellor Drake did the same when he rescinded the appointment of the first Dean of the UCI Law School (he reverted course later.) That was the beginning of the end of Chancellor Drake. I hope that the current display of a lack of a spine is the beginning of the end for Chancellor Gillman!
UCI needs a real Chancellor, one who stands up for the students, one who supports the students, not these spineless appointees!

There is a resolution out to support the students. I signed it and I urge everybody to sign it as a voice against racism, xenophobia and bigotry!

I have heard that Cisco's CCA/NAC is soon going to be retired, since the contract expires. Cisco actually has not actively marketed this POS for a long time. They know that it is crap, only the likes of Resnet needed years to come to that conclusion... Slow learners...
If they had listened to us way back when, everybody would have been better off.
But well, better late than never

Anyway, there presumably is something else considered, although it that doesn't seem to be fixed in stone yet.
Housing IT (i.e., Resnet) apparently has been discussing this with AGS, and the resident councils have been alerted so that they also can have input.
So, everybody should contact their respective resident councils (PVRC and VRC) to make their voice heard.

I've got word that UCI ResNet "suffered a major data loss".
This is of course a lot of fresh egg in their faces, given that they always think they are all-knowing, and ignore or brush off people like me who point out the folly of their ways.
Like in their AMA on Reddit a few months back, where they accused me of "having an agenda."
As it turns out, I don't need an agenda.
Every time I check, Resnet demonstrates all by itself that they are completely incompetent.
Here's a free hint: It is called backup. Just do it... And check that the backup actually is valid. All this can be automated with some small scripts. But as Mr. Roberge, then ResNet director, and now UCI Housing's IT director, so infamously said: "we don't do scripts"...

The actual email from Resnet about the data loss is here.

I came to know about an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit that UCI Resnet started.
Apparently, Resnet wanted to keep this low-key.
But then, somebody there asked about my blog, and I saw the blog hits, and went to check it out Obviously, the Resnet people hadn't expected me to show up, so they got rather defensive when I nailed them about their braindead instructions to misconfigure routers.
It seems their definition of "anything" doesn't extend to this stuff...
We'll see if this was just a lame attempt at PR which backfired, or if they are really going to grow up and do proper network administration. I won't hold my breath, but I invite them to surprise me

Update: Now these guys are backpedaling, claiming that they were just some students who work for Resnet. If they didn't have approval from Resnet management to do this AMA, Resnet is managed even worse than I thought. Some undergrads who obviously have no clue about network administration trying to speak for Resnet... How f*ed up must UCI Resnet be that such stuff is even possible???
If these guys really did this without management approval, they should get fired first thing in the morning. If they don't get fired, it is just another data point showing that they lied in the AMA.

It seems that Microsoft has updated their "Security Essentials" tool, and the Cisco Clean Access (nowadays called NAC) POS that Resnet forces on everybody in UCI Housing does not recognize it.
This is of course not a surprise to anybody who knows how CCA/NAC works and who knows what a bunch of crap this stuff is.
Resnet of course makes it worse by telling people to use another Anti-Virus package (bloatware like McAfee) or to revert to the previous version of Security Essentials.
UCI Resnet seems to be so incompetent that they can't even create a custom rule as work-around.
Network administrators at other universities can do that just fine, to keep their students online...

So, to nobody's surprise, UCI Resnet once again seems determined to show their incompetence to everybody.