@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:

Machete wielding attacker at the Louvre in Paris. No word on casualties yet, guard killed the assailant.

Here's the video footage of the event:
Youtube Video

Sounds like that would take care of both issues.

1. no more clicking
2. no need to mess with the old hard drive (data mysteriously vanished)

I call it a win!

Hello! My name is Art, and I'm here to spread IT knowledge and waste time... and I'm almost out of IT knowledge.

Wait, wouldn't that be very much like @Minion-Queen giving @JaredBusch an award for being the most moderated ML user?

https://www.dropbox.com/help/9227

Just in case any of you out there are still trying to use Dropbox from your XP machine, don't bother. As of yesterday, you are dead to them... but your account remains, with all of your data.

Why on Earth would I post something so irrelevant, you ask? Well, the only reason I know of this little tid-bit is because I just had to deal with a user whose Dropbox worked just fine yesterday. Suddenly, it won't work. I'll give you one guess why that was... No, really, take your time before you answer.

I know that it is tempting to reach out to people that you know or respect in the community, or any community, with your technical questions; however it is important to restrain from doing this whenever possible. Of course, there are times that this needs to be done, such as when you are asking something personal or must divulge personal or private information, or need to hide the discussion from someone (like an employer).

But, in general, all questions should be asked out in public in the forum. The community is, after all, where you are coming to make a connection. The entire point of the community is to provide a public forum where many people can view, discuss, learn from and eventually search for information. It is a collective effort of many people, creating not just value for the original poster, but for future posters as well, and for those that will never post but will find the information when doing research.

When you ask a public question on the forum, you are welcoming input from anyone and everyone who has an interest in responding. People are free to respond when they feel that they have valuable input, or are interested in the exchange, and are free to not respond when they do not feel that they would be adding value or do not find the exchange interesting. It is a purely voluntary effort, which is important, since no one is being compensated monetarily for being involved.

The people who take the time to participate in the forums do so for a variety of reasons such as helping others, gaining recognition, learning through the discussion, pushing themselves to get better or to advance the field. When we attempt to get questions answered unnecessarily through private messages instead of through the public forum we break this process. The person being asked to answer a question loses the purely voluntary status that it is assumed that they will work from and is being asked for a favor rather than for them to volunteer. The discussion is lost and, instead of being part of an ongoing exchange of ideas, they are being asked to act as a dedicated consultant instead. Instead of a public discussion where many people can benefit from the discussion, it is kept private only for the person asking the question. Instead of recognition for their efforts, the person providing the answers looks as if they are not participating at all.

And then there is the community to consider. When we ask private questions we are keeping the community from benefiting, just like how private groups or categories would work where the effort in posting is kept for a small group of people instead of being open to the public and open to search engines. As a community it is very important that we generate context, traffic and activity. This is what makes vendors willing to participate, sponsors willing to pay the bills and the posters willing to take the effort to engage in the discussions. The community exists solely for the interaction that happens on the threads and nothing more. If we try to make those discussions private we are doing nothing that AOL Instant Messenger did not do twenty years ago and no more valuable.

We should all try to keep the discussions, whenever appropriate, as public as possible. It is about helping each other, learning from each other and growing together.

When we keep it all public everyone benefits. The person asking the question benefits by getting the best exposure and as many eyeballs as possible looking at the problem and either participating by posting or possibly just participating to make sure that the question gets an answer and that the answers are reasonable – sometimes people watch in silence as long as things are going well. The original poster also, we assume, gets the fastest response by allowing whoever is available to begin the conversation not just waiting on a single person to have time to respond. And the original poster is not stuck having to guess who is the right expert for the question – something that is far harder than it may at first seem to be.

The person responding gets recognition for their efforts and gets to learn from everyone who gets involved. They build their own knowledge, skills as well as their reputation. In many communities they will get points as well. Sometimes even badges or privileges. This may seem trivial but often this publicly searchable “resume” turns out to be very important for their careers as employers may be using it to find, promote or review candidates.

For the community the public exchange takes the question of one person and turns it into something for everyone. A chance for anyone to learn how to solve or how to approach a problem. Learn what others are facing and tackling. Learn who has the experience that they need. Learn new ideas or products. And in some cases even find the answers to their own problems that they might be having at the same time or even found through searches that let others find answers later.

And finally public posting builds the community. Without public posting none of us get to be here. None of us have a conversation in which to be involved.

@gjacobse said in Hackers Caught on Camera Breaking Into Laptops:

a hairy situation which could turn to be catastrophic....

Currently a catastrophe. If they are caught, it could result in a cat-ass-trophy.

@RojoLoco said:

My boss hates using it

...and there's another plus for going with a trackball! Nobody wants to use your machine. :)

I would call him while sitting in front of Google Earth and have him give directions. As soon as he finishes, tell him what his address is. That should be fun. Then, never actually go there; the dude's a nut-job supreme.

Without being familiar with the model, I would first say that the boards I have used don’t like DHCP and need a static IP as well as having the router IP input into a field. Also, I’ve not seen a mixer with built in wifi, so they always need to be wired to the router or directly connected to a PC for recording/DAW functionality. If none of that applies here, I have to think about a faulty NIC in the sound board.

@RojoLoco said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Spent all morning with a tech trying to recreate our door access system from scratch. The machine that it lived on before had a drive failure, no recoverable data (including all the backups and database, which only lived on that machine). Finally got it all running right, but everyone that walked out of the office had to go to the front door to get in since their access cards didn't work anymore. I'll be firing off a backup of this system later this afternoon so we don't have to go through this again.

Didn't that system give you trouble a while back, too? I seem to recall hearing about it.

@scottalanmiller said in What did you have for lunch or dinner today?:

I had the tabula rasa, it was awesome.

I think I'd get wasted on a steady supply of Tiramisu.

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@dafyre said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@dafyre said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

How do people who run windows desktops not know about downgrade rights?

How do so many people get into IT and not know how to spell corporate... I don't think you have to buy a cooperate Windows 7... you can just torrent that.

Well, that I can excuse as a typo or a non-native English speaker. Spelling is a lot more acceptable than attempting to buy Windows 7 licenses new.

I try to not be a stickler for things like grammatical errors unless it's just a totally screwed up phrase. I know people who can write and speak English as a second langugae far better than some of us native speakers, lol.

Spelling or weird wordings especially, who cares. I'll take someone struggling with English that gets phrases or spelling wrong anyday over a native speaker who tries to bluff by using words like cloud without knowing what they mean.

But cooperate isn't a misspelling of corporate; it's another word. If I was talking about couch computing and meant cloud, you would lose your mind.

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

It's a lot of rain here.

Better dry outside than in!

I think I know what you meant...

@RojoLoco said in Deodorizing a Smelly PC:

@NetworkNerd said in Deodorizing a Smelly PC:

@RojoLoco said in Deodorizing a Smelly PC:

Put it in a big bucket of coffee beans?

For some sad reason, our server room doesn't have any coffee beans. We really missed out on a very useful tool. :)

I'll try the alcohol approach and see how it goes.

You do have stores nearby, right? They sell coffee beans. And buckets.

Right? I'm not sure what made this difficult to process. :P

I know when I did work for Unitrends that any split domain caused real havoc when trying to back up any on-premise Exchange. I can't recall the details, so I'm kind of curious about this, too.

@scottalanmiller said in Cyber Insurance:

@Mike-Davis said in Cyber Insurance:

@scottalanmiller I agree. Looking at it like auto insurance where cars can be replaced for a price and medical bills can be paid just doesn't have parallels in IT.

Not at all. It's kind of like getting insurance against doing business badly.

And, at the end of the day, it's just monetary compensation for lost data, which I doubt can really be accurately assessed. If your data is gone, all the insurance in the world won't bring it back, and its value isn't well-replaced by dollars.

@scottalanmiller said in hide yo kids, hide yo wife - with a VPN:

Encryption on HDMI was a major deal when it released.

We all know you're watching porn. Can't we just accept that and avoid the added complexities?

@DustinB3403 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:

Would you both really want a life time supply of chocolate?

I'd get fed up with it really fast.

Stop talking about chocolate; you're making me hungry.