I got a chiding lecture like that from some skinny UUG-type security admins, by manually shutting down my HP-UX workstation in a university CS lab. I had reached behind it and flipped the power switch.

I tried to flip it back on just afterward, to resume my business (lol) but found that my login was blocked with a message...come up to security in room 300-something and talk to us to get your account un-suspended.

The issue leading to the frantic shutdown goes as follows:

I had been browsing some of JWZ's online journals in Netscape...the old about:jwz trick.

Within those pages, there's a linked audio clip of the fake *rgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally".

I clicked on the link not realizing what would happen, and of course this passionate audio clip played at more or less full volume to a computer lab full of university students from China.

(They were extremely "I didn't notice that" about the whole thing, but I was beet red and frantically scanning the room for anyone who I could possibly nervously laugh with...)

Back then Netscape didn't show any audio controls that I could find anywhere when clips like that played, which was also a really frustrating part of this. I guess it just handed off the audio to some process which I could have found via `top` if I had the time.

There was also an internal speaker, nothing with a manual volume control. Great!

Anyway, I went upstairs, got my lecture about other people who could have had sessions terminated while working on the same workstation, got the login back, and fortunately none of the Chinese students seemed to have let my er..._BYU_ CS security admins...know about the situation in the lab. lol.

(No longer a practicing Mormon; still think CDE is cool)

Edit: Just for the memories...at the same time, I had a PT job doing university IT support on a Novell network, and we supported, among other places (the MTC, the laundry, Creamery--PHEW those amazing chocolate malt shakes--but not so phew the time the creamery's huge 1K+ gal. milk vats leaked and there was a foot of standing milk in our PCs there, etc.), the married student housing computer labs.

Colloquially labeled by my boss and others as the "rabbit hutches"...

This was still pretty early days for the web, and I remember periodically getting frantic voicemails from newly-married folks.

A common version of the voice message would be something like, "Hi, uh...I was in the married student housing lab...trying to book airline tickets for my husband to fly home and see his mom...anyway (tearful quivering voice starts)...russian porn came up I guess? I mean I am just guessing...uh, so anyway...(crying harder, phew)...the lab assistant gave me your number, and here's my number, if we need to talk about this or anything, call me I guess?"

I can't imagine what those students must have felt when the lab assistant just shrugged their shoulders regarding "what to do about this" and gave them somebody's office number to call. Up the chain with you!

Gestapo-level perceptions would always tend to kick in at that point...and you had to maintain an ecclesiastical endorsement to continue studies there, so this was a pretty big deal. Anything involving porn was always at the potentially-terminate-your-entire-university-experience level.

(Often the calls to those labs were pretty funny though. Like a toddler put a dorito inside of a CD-ROM drive, bring your hemostat, things like that. Afterward we'd get a Jamba Juice, or get a free cafeteria meal from a really nice food-services manager, chat about Everquest, etc.)