@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Oh and another great one...

3. I am trying to set up a server with 8TB of storage and I want everything on RAID 0....

"I get more space with RAID 0!"

Well, OpenLDAP and Linux you can pretty much run most client networks on it as a regular Windows domain. As far as the machines are concerned, it might as well be a Windows Server machine for the most part.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Of course, more SWisms... Guy with the bad SAN setup... once he learns that he totally misused SAN and has a device that he should not have his setup what does he do? Instead of asking IT pros for advice or hiring a storage expert or taking a class he immediately calls up the vendor that screwed him and asks the sales people what he should.

Seriously, you can't make this crap up.

About 18 months ago I had explained to a client (software only, if we ran his network this wouldn't have happened) that his three VM hosts having a single NAS was a bad idea for all the obvious reasons, such as when the NAS fails, it'll be a bad day. He kept telling me that it makes it really easy to move from host to host if he needs to (AFAIK he never did this) and that, and I quote "a NAS doesn't really fail anyway it's not a big deal, I've never had one fail on me before." Plus he "gets more space with a 20TB NAS than on all the VM hosts," which I think the largest server he had was using something like 120GB, and at any rate the NAS itself was only at about 30% full.

Well, a few weeks ago, it failed, and he asked us for help, because having different VMs across hosts for redundancy for AD and Exchange doesn't mean dick when they all fail at the same time.

Anyway after an expensive ass bill, we did actually manage to recover a lot of his information, and reset things up properly, but he then called me up personally to tell me he was upset we didn't use the new NAS he just paid $2,500 or something for. He wanted me to come personally reset it up, I explained that #1 that's why I have employees and #2 I'm about 12,000km away, but if he wants it set up the old way, he'll still have to pay for it to all be redone, it won't be for free, and he'll have to sign a waiver for when it inevitably fails. We didn't have to do that.

I just don't even get this mindset, as if they believe their hardware is made of diamonds or something and nothing could ever go wrong.

@scottalanmiller said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products:

@thwr said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products:

My major concern about using Microsoft software is not about the quality or the price. It's about managing all the licensing, which really is a PITA and nearly impossible to overcome for just a one or two men show.

I am often amazed to find SMBs unwilling to consider the licensing overhead aspects of software choices. It can represent a massive cost. When people talk about the "hidden" costs of open source, they normally mention things that are equal with closed source, but they universally overlook licensing which is the only unique cost between the two and often one of the largest.

"You git what you pay fer" - Every anti-Open Source salesman. Every once in a while I still hear that from regular IT people who shouldn't be in IT. It used to happen more often, about 15 years ago I used to constantly hear "Linux? You get what you pay for!" and of course quotes from Robert Heinlein novels about neoliberals on the Moon.

@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:

@RojoLoco said in Non-IT News Thread:

@wirestyle22 said in Non-IT News Thread:

@momurda said in Non-IT News Thread:

I lived in Orlando for a few years in my 20s. Nobody ever went swimming in the many lakes and ponds around the city, because 'gators. It is why everybody has swimming pools.

What is worse than losing your child?

Knowing you lost your child due to your own stupidity because you let a 2 year old run loose in central FL.

And these were Americans. Knowing that Florida is dangerous is common knowledge and common sense.

So, you're saying they'll sue.

What's funny about this is it reminds me of that stupid thing from last year '"could our ancestors see blue?" that people kept sharing on Facebook because of that blue/black/white dress thing which made no sense at all. It's claimed that nobody until very recently used the term blue to describe the sky, or ocean, etc.

While it's true that the Greeks didn't really do this, that isn't true for everyone else. Naturally the original scholar who thought up this weird idea about 160 years ago basically thought Greeks were the only source material of any work worth looking at, and since they didn't use colour descriptions as English speakers did, therefore every other language must be the same*.

Anyway, speakers of Germanic languages like the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and so forth did use blue and did describe the sky and ocean as blue, in fact one of the very oldest rune writings in existence describes the "blue horizon", and "blue waves" of the ocean. It even uses "into the blue" "út ínn blá" (I think) in idiomatic phrase. The point is, yes, people used word used the word blue, hence our friend Harald here.

This post isn't really that important, but I figured language dorks might enjoy it and since nobody else was talking I figured I'd bring it up being that it involves language and Old Norse.

*This also reminds me of the popular belief in Turkey that Turkish is the root of all languages.

Source: myself, I am a huge dork and at university I was only one of four people in an Advanced Anglo-Saxon English course. Old Norse and Old English were almost mutually intelligible, so I can read a lot of old texts, or at least get the gist.

And to derail even more:

I am not a native English speaker, but I know it better than most natives do, and even so I'm not the kind to correct people's grammar or call myself a grammar nazi. For me, English's spelling being so broken means that it's all a joke to begin with, so as long as the message gets across clearly, it doesn't matter.

Native English speakers tend to not understand how broken their writing system is and that it's a complete joke to take pride in it. Nobody takes pride in a toilet that takes 400 steps to flush it instead of 1. Hell, many have told me "English is the hardest language to learn," but that's only because of writing, it's actually pretty easy. Then again, I don't expect much from people who often think English comes from Latin and isn't a Germanic language. There aren't really important things to know anyway, except how broken the spelling is, people should know that most children in non-English or French speaking nations learn to read/write nearly every word in the first year or two of school, where as even by grade 8, most English speakers can only read/write 40% of the most common words, and rarely improve into adulthood. Waste of tax money, time, effort, but... whatever.

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@Minion-Queen said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Oh cool you will be at your dads then?

Yeah.

Pfft dads are stupid.

Oh crap, I'm a dad!

@scottalanmiller said in I'm under attack I need help in ssh:

@inroute said in I'm under attack I need help in ssh:

@tiagom GNU/Linux

That's a family but not an OS. OS would be like CentOS, Ubuntu, etc.

GNU/Linux is pig tail riding on behalf of Richard Stallman. If it's GNU/Linux, then this is actually not MangoLassi, but NodeBB/MangoLassi, and WordPress is Zend/WordPress. Funny how nobody else on the entire planet other than Stallman makes a requirement of software using libraries he hasn't contributed to in 30 years.

</my non-contribution to conversation>

@DustinB3403 Watch the first episode, if you've seen as many zombie films as I have, you'll spend a lot of time going "REALLY!? REALLY?! Come on!"

Glad they finally got wildcard. For years every time SSL cert cost came up on slashdot I argued that it was basically a scam and was even more irritated when everyone seemingly at the same time went to require signed certificates. It was like Verisign bribed everyone. LetsEncrypt made life better and I was disappointed they didn't support wildcards for a while but glad to see it finally.

So much for all those counter arguments on slashdot that the cost is for the insurance in case the certificate doesn't properly work or something else unclear, as if any of the potential problems wouldn't also be a problem for the entire Internet infrastructure when it came to security. Really people are just paying thousands of dollars in some cases for 640 bytes, or whatever, to be stored at a server somewhere and some requests for verification from time to time. It's a racket. If you want a CA though still gotta pay through the nose unless you push your CA cert to all the work stations in your business or whatever.

LetsEncrypt is the best thing to happen to the Internet, but especially the web, since IPSec and SSL itself.

@thwr said in Walking Dead Plot Holes - How would IT folk survive:

@tonyshowoff said in Walking Dead Plot Holes - How would IT folk survive:

@thwr said in Walking Dead Plot Holes - How would IT folk survive:

@gjacobse said in Walking Dead Plot Holes - How would IT folk survive:

@thwr said in Walking Dead Plot Holes - How would IT folk survive:

@gjacobse said in Walking Dead Plot Holes - How would IT folk survive:

Stepping back to some fundamental items:

• Generating Power using combustion
  ** Makes noise and would draws attention.
  ** Requires Fuel of some kind. Petrol products 'expire' and are limited in supply.
  ** Requires Fuel storage - which can be a hazard and liability, and difficult to relocate.

• Generating Power using Solar
  ** Requires space for panels.
  ** Has to be 'banked' for poor solar exposure days (clouds, darkness)
  ** Has to be converted to run AC devices

You can generate fuel to run a generator, but it is a process - needs time, resources, and space.

There are other ways of generating electricity, using steam power; either solar based or fuel based - fuel being petrol or biomass... again - needs space and generates some noise.

Keep in mind that solar panels (photovoltaic cells) will degrade over time, same is true for the batteries. They will degrade even faster. While solar panels are OK for like 20 or 30 years, you will need to replace the batteries every 5 to 10 years. Think about your UPS for example. There are technologies that let you store power in a mechanical way, like a flywheel generator, but this may be hard to find.

So something nuclear would be better, IMHO.

Nuclear is better until.... it goes nuclear...

Rather being the dark... They did it in the olden days..

But hey, if things go south you can read in the dark - without any light The nice green glow will be enough.

I went to school for nuclear science, specifically for making nuclear weapons, and I can assure you that you can indeed read by the light of Uranium, if you have enough.

Not for long maybe, but yes, that works.

Well, radiation exposure works differently than commonly believed, in fact if you're conceived and born in a highly radioactive environment, you're actually extremely resistant to it (by that I mean a place radioactive as a result of human activity, not the surface of Mars, for example). It's why claims that Chernobyl would basically be sterile and kill everything for the next quadrillion years turned out to be total nonsense, and in fact people are already moving back there, animals are fine, plants are fine, but yes they do contain more radioactivity.

Radiation also doesn't cause deformity in the same way commonly claimed, it usually just causes sterility (not to say it can't, it certainly can deform). Additionally, the concept of nuclear winter is also unlikely, considering it was made up by Carl Sagan who was a good astronomer, but in every other field was always highly alarmist as well as pretty ignorant. It likely would be a nuclear autumn.

Not to down play this at all, literally billions would die, but long term humanity would absolutely survive, and life would go on.

When it comes to web vs legacy applications, especially with modern JS libraries, webassembly, etc aside from a few niche cases which you have to basically struggle to defend, asking whether or not to start with web or ancient technology is like saying:

"Look, I know that cars are fast and everything, but they have a lot of up keep and there's so much going on with them and they're scary, so wouldn't you say that a horse and buggy are still a viable solution to travel with because I'm confused and/or intimidated by cars."

Or to put it more obvious: "Yes, web is easy to update, easy to secure, easy to keep it from being pirated, but I'd much rather have an application anyone can easily reverse engineer, lock out my updates, have to worry about a billion platforms or one single one where I still have to struggle with antiviruses, permissions, to the point where I act like Eaglesoft and just demand local admin rights for all users no matter what... sounds like web is great but, I heard serious applications are written with mud bricks, whoops, I mean old approaches because I don't know about jQuery and handling multiple browsers sounds impossible!"

Or in the case of the OP: web is about design and old applications are about whatever... let me hip you to something, all good web designers are terrible, terrible programmers. This is why these are typically two jobs. Yes, plenty of them defend how awesome they are at coding, how they care about standards, etc but if they actually let you see their code you'll find that either it's crappy code or a crappy design. That goes for both web and old style applications, it doesn't matter. Straight forward vs pretty.

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@tonyshowoff said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@dafyre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classful_network#Introduction_of_address_classes

Classes? CIDR is the only way to fly... or route I guess.

That's why I posted... CIDR has been the norm for the past few years as far as I can tell... Classes never really mattered anyway... Did they?

Sort of, but most often they were used as a means to explain subnetting rather than being used as a literal standard in their own right.

Yepp. There's a reason that no one uses classes anymore. At least in theory.

Hell even now class usually just refers to large groups of what you'd notate with CIDR anyway. Like "It's a class A" "oh OK so I'll put 0.0.0.0/8". A definitely obsolete thing I hear very rarely is the different bytes being referred to as "octets", even though they're obviously written in decimal or hexidecimal. It just tells me they don't know what the hell octet even means and think it means byte or class or something.

@jaredbusch said in what language used in Mangolassi:

@scottalanmiller said in what language used in Mangolassi:

@it-admin said in what language used in Mangolassi:

@scottalanmiller but PHP still has the lion share in the web market, isn't it??

PHP is making a big come back now. It never went away, but since the PHP 7 series released it has greatly improved in performance and features and is way more viable today than it was at the time of this thread. Its ecosystem has blossomed again and there are more and more powerful frameworks than before.

It is still only one of many great options, but way better than it used to be.

WTF with the necro posting yesterday and today...

This ain't some phpBB forum with vidya games, son, everything is always worth talking about

That is supposed to sort of sound like Hank Hill

@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:

New Zealand takeaway boss ignores armed robber
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-36773835

SIR GET BACK OVER THE LINE AND WAIT YOUR TURN! I WILL CALL YOU OVER WHEN I AM READY!

@Dashrender said in Thicket files in Windows - how are they "linked"?:

I recall seeing this ages ago. It happened when I would save a website onto my computer. I found that the directory had copies of the images (and perhaps other files) that the HTM file referenced.

@Pete-S
Indeed this has been true since at least Windows 98 when IE had the feature (maybe still does) "Read web page offline" and also as a part of the Save... feature, and other browsers copied that same implementation when saving the assets. In the end it doesn't matter where it came from, how it was created, etc nor whether 9x or NT. If there's a .htm(l) file and a directory with _files in the name they are treated as linked in Explorer, but not in CMD (IIRC).

@scottalanmiller said in This was a June 28th-thing...:

@tonyshowoff said in This was a June 28th-thing...:

That's a pretty cool story, I say definitely nurture her technical side. I've noticed that in the west, especially America, there's a subcurrent of almost discouragement for girls to be interested in technology. It's vague, it's subtle, but it's certainly there.

I'd say it is more huge and in your face than vague or subtle. Girls are often outright faced (often from other women more than men) with "that's not a girl's job", or talk that girls won't be good at that kind of thing or, more often, just told that girls don't enjoy that kind of work.

Well I was just trying to be polite for all the Americans here. I've pointed out on Spiceworks many times in those types of threads that if women inherently dislike that kind of thing, why does Russia have more female engineers and doctors than male ones? Most of the programmers I've met here were women as well. It's not completely inverted in every case, but at the bear minimum is at least 50/50 on the low end. So if there's some sort of genetic predisposition to women not like technology, then for some reason Slavs don't seem to carry this. Of course the typical response is either silence or "well you'll never convince me otherwise [because I'm a lonely white guy in America who thinks women shouldn't like technology so I have a huge confirmation bias, my mom isn't a programmer, therefore women don't want to be.]"

Maybe there were like 5 people saying the same thing so people could post nonsense to get points

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

My brain hurts...

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1714892-help-please

Whoa!

Like I said above, IT and software engineering have a lot of knowledge overlap and I think that's why outsiders are confused as SAM talks about. There's a similar issue in web development, confusion with web design. People think because I make web apps that I must be a web designer, can make logos, etc but being a designer almost always implies that you're terrible at programming and visaversa. That contrast isn't true between IT and software engineering in the reverse, there's no significant sample size I've ever noticed where IT and software engineers have totally incompatible skills and knowledge, most IT people I've known just hate programming, they do the scripting they need to do and hate the rest. And the reverse is, programmers who don't understand infrastructure or how businesses benefit from networks other than mantras about client-server architectures are just bad programmers.