One of my first jobs was as first, second and third line support at our university. The support group had an ethos of being pro-active and creative - so when I saw a zero-day for local root on Solaris 5.8(?) posted to bugtraq - my first inclination was to a) test it b) test if the sys.admin group was aware/had patched the servers. Since we ran just our own linux boxes, I reached for the first Solaris box on hand, the employee file (and maybe mail?) server. With some 2 (two)-10.000 user accounts. Exploit compiled, ran... and the box crashed.

Thus I learned that exploits can be unreliable - not binary get root or nothing. The phone call down to the sys.admins was a fantastic serving of humblepie. At least they were happy about the heads-up about needing to patch the servers...

I know also know not to run random code from the Internet (even if I had at least read through it) - and that some people kiddie-proof their public zero-days in order to save busy sys.admins some time putting out fires lit by naive support staff and users...