Welcome to 2011

Problem: Cisco's ASA-Launcher for a brand-new, just-breaking-the-seal-today, ASA-5510, doesn't work*. The asa-launcher just goes off into space; running it from the management web page results in a web page that pops up, tells you "don't close this web page", and does nothing else.

Solution, according to Cisco: a whole lot of random fiddling with sho ver and other commands, all of which accomplish precisely zero.

Solution, according to random web forums on the internet: downgrade the version of Java running on your management computer to 5.0 update 22.

That's crazy, what does Sun Oracle have to say about that?

We highly recommend users remove all older versions of Java from your system. Keeping old and unsupported versions of Java on your system presents a serious security risk.

(Not to mention all the other more modern crap that will get broken with a downgrade.)

Remember when Java was going to mean Write-Once, Run-Anywhere? Yeah, me neither. Java's never been like that. It's more of a Write-Once, Fuck-Around-With-It-For-Ever-Then-Get-Pissed-And-Give-Up, Run-Nowhere kind of pain.

Dear Cisco, it's 2011 for fuck's sake. It is far past time to be brewing something a little newer than this. And shipping a brand-new box with ancient firmware in it that basically can't be managed by a modern workstation? Amateur hour stuff. Why the hell do you think people pay you a ridiculous amount of money? Because they don't like money? I've wasted basically two hours on this crap. Which is probably nice if you are a cisco professional services engineer, but I'm not. My customers expect results.

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*= ignoring the fact that the beautifully printed quick-start guide is incredibly wrong. When it says:

If you have an ASA 5510, connect the inside Ethernet 1 interface to a switch {...}

...you are supposed to understand that it means the management interface instead.