Posts by Pirate Dave

Re: CYGWIN

I remember looking at Microsoft's NFS client several years ago as a way to shuttle files from Windows servers to Linux backup targets. I soon realized I'd rather shoot myself in the nuts than try to get it working. If memory serves, it was heavily reliant on Active Directory, which we didn't have at the time as we were a Novell shop. And I don't recall ever finding a way to get it to use "local" (non-AD) accounts.

Cygwin saved the day for me. I ended up using Rsync to copy the files, and didn't have to worry about mounting or mapping the Linux drives. To this day, that's still how I get the backup files from my Windows boxes to the Linux boxes. It has proven to be very, very robust over the 7 or 8 years I've been using it.

Re: Meh

Agreed. Classic VB made Windows programming bearable, even if us VB guys did have to hang our heads in shame and be cruelly mocked by the Visual C++ guys. At least we were keeping our kids fed. VB.NET was a stretch too far for me, so I've just stuck with VB6. I'm an admin now, not a programmer, so any coding I do is for my own use. And in truth, I don't use VB6 much these days, since I learned Powershell (which is its own form of purgatory, and is in no way a programming language, but is handy for doing admin work on Windows boxen). But every now and then, I have to tweak one of my old VB6 tools, so I fire up the XP VM and have at it.

Re: Make something new

"Or the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant?"

That could be cool, if done properly. Giants, Bloodguard, rock ships, and leprosy, all in the same movie. What's not to like?

Anti-hero stories might be a hard sell to the general public, though. There's nobody to cheer for...

Re: How should the history of computing be recorded? Discuss.

" Historians of AD2100 will realize there is a giant void starting in around 1990 where no historical records survive. "

When they figure out how to read the last extant copy of the Internet Archives (on a stack of DVDs, found in a janitor's closet at the Field Museum in Chicago) , they will quickly understand why no written history was kept. Porn, cats, and the fall of Western civilization, that's all there was.

Re: Why even use hardware firewalls in the first place?

"500Mbit is of course plenty for most internet connections."

Maybe in 2005, but not anymore. Bandwidth is cheap now - a full Gig (over fiber) runs less than $5k/month even way out in the boondocks where I am, and is much, much cheaper in the big cities. So a 500 Mbit firewall won't cut it.

Besides, most of the "hardware" firewalls are just vendor-labelled white-box 1U Intel servers from China anyway. Most that I've seen don't have anything particularly special or esoteric in them as far as hardware (although I think my sonicwall NSA boxes supposedly have MIPS processors in them). Maybe Cisco, Foundry, F5, and the other "big iron" switch and router guys put some special-sauce hardware in their firewalls, but things like Barracudas, Sophos/Astaro, and Sidewinders are all just Intel boxes running somebody's hacked-up Linux or BSD.

Re: The Inevitable

"With systemd taking on a huge and privileged role in the OS, and with it's significant source code volatility, can we honestly say anything positive about the security of Linux/SystemD based OSes at the moment? I'm not sure we can."

Don't paint us all with the same brush - some of us are sticking with sysvinit systems until we either retire, or until certain vendors wearing rouge chapeaus pull their heads out of their asses and send systemd packing. This security issue is not necessarily a "Linux" problem, this is a "systemd" problem, which IS NOT LINUX.

(OTOH - the new acronym for systemd could be STINX - SysTemd Is Not linuX...)

Re: It is not so much the companies as the idiot management.

@ecofeco - sorry I can only give you one upvote. In spirit, you have my entire quota of upvotes for the day.

If you're going to fire the one guy who knows how to use the IT magic wand, then you'd damned sure better have another Wizard with all the passwords waiting in the wings before you call him into your office. Because once you say "You're fired", his only required response after that is "Fuck you!". If you think you can live without his contributions going forward, then you have to live without his contributions going forward. Simples, no?

Re: Other theories are available

Q: Why don't Baptists have sex standing up?

A: They are afraid someone might see them and think they are dancing.

Dancing is the work of the Devil.

Re: There is nothing wrong with kernel 4.4

Damn, you beat me to it. I'm running various CentOS 6.x which are still using the 2.6 series. Still work just fine, as far as I can see. Oh, and no systemd garbage to litter things up...

Re: I ran a payrolll system

Just a guess here - these DVRs are for shops who DON'T have a DVR specialist on staff, so the passwords are for the hired-in CCTV contractors (who, in my experience, generally only have the slightest of ideas about how networks work to start with). So instead of rolling a truck for every call, the CCTV guys can remote-in and check on things or fix/change things in the DVR. Fairy-magic it is.

It's not like Rosie the Florist can figure out how to change the admin password in her DVR every time she needs Joe Bob's Fire Alarm and CCTV Shop to login to her DVR and update the camera names.

But like I said, that's just my guess. I could well be wrong. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that these may be aimed at a lower-tech target audience.

Re: Momentum Transfer!

@Rich 11: Thanks, sunshine, what a heart-warming story. Geez, now I need a beer.

Re: The only plausable explanation...

"But what if those Galactic empire bastards build another... only bigger?"

But,um, we'd need to go into the future so we can see into that part of the past to find out. We need a Compressed Forward Time Travel device, because Standard Forward Time Travel is a real drag.

Re: Pirate Dave Not too fearful

@defiler

yep, same here. I used to theorize that the smallest measurable time division in the Universe was that ultra-brief instant of time between when the BES server went down and when the President darkened my doorway asking when his Blackberry would start getting emails again.

We got a BES because said President was given a BB for Christmas by his wife so they could "keep in touch" while he was at work. And it just so happened that was right after Blackberry and Novell teamed-up to give away 10-user BES licenses for free to Groupwise shops, which we were at the time. So I got to spend a week near lovely Cleveland, OH learning how to install and run BES from an actual BB employee/trainer. A year later, our BES user count was up to 4, most of which were VPs. A year after that (after the iPhone came out), it tumbled down to just one VP. I kept that BES going until 2014 when we migrated from Groupwise to Office365, and told that remaining VP that we could no longer support her BB after that.

It was a fun ride at times. I gotta admit, BES was decently reliable software.

Re: Vaping isn't cool

"Nicotine is a bitch of a drug to kick and is on par with heroin for addiction, don't ever do it in any form."

Amen. I took up dipping snuff (aka "smokeless tobacco") as a teen. "Just a pinch between cheek and gum" is like shooting nicotine straight into your brain. I've quit a few times for a year or two, but always wind up back at the Cancer Altar, cursing myself for my inherent weakness of will, wondering which morning it's going to be that I wake up and find a lump in my neck or jaw. It's all downhill from there.

I was asthmatic into my 20's, so smoking was never really an option for me, and not sure if vaping would be any better. Wife wants me to try it, but, eh, I dunno.

Re: So

I agree, AC, but like Nate posted, the whole chart for Nutanix is there, and every quarter has been a loss for them so far. So I feel kind of funny telling my VP that I want to buy $100k worth of equipment from them. Unless their stuff is like super good, stable as a rock, and can be managed over lunch hour by an intern...

I guess I could roll my own with HP, VMWare and Citrix, but, mmph, that's a lot of work (and reading. Oh, and probably money, too). But at least I'm relatively sure all three will be around in 5 years. I do tend to run things until the bearings wear out around here, so I'm not much for the "here today, gone tomorrow" companies if I can avoid it.

But I do appreciate the input so far.

Re: Microsoft will fix it

"I think you should change it a little to 5050"

I think 5150 would be much more descriptive...

Re: Great news!

I'm glad somebody finally got it...I was beginning to worry that I'd been too subtle.

"I know! I'm still not touching Quantum, Maxtor, IBM or Micropolis hard drives! "

Don't forget PrairieTek - that was the first IDE drive I bought in 1991, and I'll never buy another one. (although to be honest, I still have that drive here in my desk drawer as a memento of the Good Old Days, when plugging in the laptop connector backwards meant a fried drive).

Re: Four Seconds

>It takes longer than 4 seconds for Firefox to do anything

Ah, point taken.

Re: Exhaustion? and yet...

"Try getting a /24 it is pretty painful."

Unless you're a college/university. I got one in 2013 and it was way easier than the tech guru at my ISP had warned me about. ARIN didn't really even ask for justification, they just saw I worked for a university and said "Here you go..". Sometimes it's nice to get an unexpected break...

Re: It will be a shame if the Archer gets charged

"The worst we would see is losing the ability to purchase new assault rifles"

That's something I've been pondering recently - I know Hillary has a boner for banning sales of the AR platform, but considering how "modular" the AR is, what exactly are they planning to ban? Are they only wanting to ban completely assembled rifles, or completely assembled rifles and lowers (the serialized part), or ban complete rifles, lowers, and assembled uppers, or ban everything related to the AR platform? I bought two stripped lowers 2 months ago just so I'd have some outlet if The Worst does come to pass, and I've been stockpiling 30-round mags like they're going out of style.

"A bigger problem for gun owners is sites like Craigslist won't take gun ads making private sales a little more difficult."

With sites like Gunbroker.com, there's not much need to sell guns on Craigslist, eBay, etc. It's all guns, all the time. If the folks at Craigslist don't want to list guns, well, fine, it's their servers, we don't need them.

"heathens who use camel case also like to write sentences as their variable names,"

That's because VB doesn't mind long variable names. ;)

Re: "Topological quantum fluctuations in quantum chromodynamics"

"Um, sorry, for a minute there I thought I was reading an excerpt from a ST:TNG episode."

I kept expecting to read :

and the Librarian replied "Ook! Ook!!"

Re: HP Inc - please don't tell them...

I was thinking they could use it to send you an SMS telling you it's time to bend over and buy a replacement toner cartridge.

or Gentoo? Not that I use it anymore, but that and Slack are the two old kings of DIY Linux. Gentoo was cool, it just took too long to install for my ADHD personality. ;)