The Comms Room

12:01 AM

@JoelESalas I like drop bars more. More hand positions, better for hunkering down against a headwind, and looks faster. Flat bars are fine, too, though.

But now it's time to visit the beer store and then go home.

Joel E Salas

@freiheit spreadsheet time!

thanks again man

ewwhite

@JoelESalas option #2?

flat-bar road bike... upright position. Internally-geared hub... so shifting is clean. Simple maintenance.

Heck, @WesleyDavid should do the same

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Are you entirely opposed to a used bike?

ewwhite

@JoelESalas In LA, yes.

I'd say the same for NY

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite uh oh, why's that?

ewwhite

12:08 AM

a used bike in this price tier is not a good deal

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite At least I'm not pulling a @WesleyDavid and trying to build my own

ewwhite

I mean, would you want a used Real Doll?

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Why, are you selling?

jscott

That's a horrible mental picture.

Joel E Salas

@WesleyDavid lol'd mightily

Michael Hampton

12:10 AM

@ewwhite Sure, why not?

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite Hey man, I'm on a budget. Sloppy seconds

Michael Hampton

They're all used, after all...

ewwhite

New bike gets you some shop support, a fitting, everything is fresh... no ass-juice, and it will be adjusted well off the floor.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite I'd want to keep this sumbitch for a few years, meaning the majority of the time I will have had it, it will have been a used bike

holy fuck that was lexically complex.

ewwhite

At this price tier, used doesn't offer more value

Joel E Salas

12:13 AM

@ewwhite I bought a bike on Craigslist for 50 bucks once. The motherfucker wobbled me right off the first time I tried to ride it. Thankfully the guy gave me my money back

so it's either $50 for wobbles or $600 for an all-new bike bonanza

ewwhite

basically

Goatmale

no ass juice?

I like my bikes with extra ass juice.

WesleyDavid

@Goatmale Yes, but you're a goat. You'll eat anything.

Goatmale

I want to buy a new bike

I took apart my old one and now I can't put it back together.

Very un-sysadmin like.

WesleyDavid

@Goatmale Gah! Don't say that it's not that simple!!

Joel E Salas

12:23 AM

@Goatmale Throw it away and hide the shame

WesleyDavid

jscott

@WesleyDavid My last bicycle purchase was a total whim. Popped into a LBS on lunch break saw something I wanted to ride on sale, so I bought it.

ewwhite

@Goatmale Easy... what's your budget?

Joel E Salas

Oh boy, 10 character password, no special characters? Thanks Vanguard, I'm only trusting you with my entire retirement fund.

jscott

@JoelESalas You won't be able to remember 10 characters if you're old enough to retire.

Joel E Salas

12:35 AM

Hahahha

Retirement accounts are like playing a city sim or MMO for REAL MONEY

Goatmale

12:46 AM

my budget is as little as possible

Joel E Salas

@Goatmale Wobbly bikes it is

Andrew

anyone know of a text editor app for iPad that's explicitly offline (i.e. no cloud sync)?

or is that Not Allowed in Apple la-la land?

Mark Henderson

@Andrew Uh, notes?

Or you want to actually be able to open external files?

WesleyDavid

1:19 AM

@MarkHenderson lick

Joel E Salas

Does anyone mind looking over my presentation? ;_;

For reference: It's about automation, targeted to 18-24 year old CS and CIS students, assumes no prior knowledge

Evan Anderson

HEY GUYS I HAVE A 6 HOUR OLD BABY DAUGHTER. OK BYE.

33

Joel E Salas

@EvanAnderson Wooooo!

Mark Henderson

@EvanAnderson Congrats. What # is this?

Evan Anderson

Updated my blurb: serverfault.com/users/7200/evan-anderson

1st child.

Mark Henderson

1:25 AM

@EvanAnderson Congrats man

Hope you're used to no sleep

I still get chills every time I hear a newborn cry. It brings back memories of fuzzy, grey periods of sleep deprivation

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson never ever ever doing that

Evan Anderson

I didn't think I was going to, either. It's still very intimidating.

Mark Henderson

@EvanAnderson I'm sure you'll be fine. I was scared too but everything just kinda came naturally

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson Then 9 months later you had a kid

heyoooo

Mark Henderson

@JoelESalas It is the single most satisfying thing I have ever done in my life. It's also the hardest, most annoying and expensive. And totally worth it.

The kid, not the sex. The sex isn't annoying.

Joel E Salas

1:30 AM

@MarkHenderson I doubt I'll manufacture my own. I'd sooner pick up a used one

Mark Henderson

@JoelESalas My sister did that. I think it's kinda like playing from someone elses savegame

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson that is the best analogy I've ever heard

Andrew

@ewwhite: re the vCPUs per physical core stuff, I've heard you shouldn't use more than you have or you won't be able to get a lock on enough cores... or is that out of date / wrong?

Joel E Salas

@Andrew Depends on the application, but if you do overcommit cores there is an overhead involved.

Mark Henderson

@Andrew There's an actually easy to read whitepaper from VMWare on it

vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/…

It explains a lot

Andrew

1:33 AM

@MarkHenderson basically have totally offline note taking, without it syncing back to Apple or whoever (confidential client info etc)

@MarkHenderson mmm, how much has changed from 5.0?

we're not overcommitted yet but are wary of allocating more than 1 core for stuff that doesn't really really need it

Mark Henderson

@Andrew No idea

Andrew

like Windows

Joel E Salas

@Andrew We're way overcommitted on CPU and RAM, no ill effects yet,.

Mark Henderson

@Andrew The majority of our stuff has two vCPUs just in case a single thread gets stuck, the VM is then not totally inaccessible

Andrew

@JoelESalas what's your application profile?

@MarkHenderson excellent plan

Joel E Salas

1:35 AM

@Andrew Tomcat and JBoss

Andrew

we got alarms when we zipped files, because oh noes the CPUs are being used

Joel E Salas

hahahaha

Mark Henderson

@Andrew Haha yeah we had that too

Andrew

sorry, CPU singular

ended up doing a dodgy cpulimit thing

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson do you mind looking over my presentation ;_;

Mark Henderson

1:38 AM

@JoelESalas Yeah sure

I don't know much about automation though

Actually maybe thats a good thing :p

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson Right, I'm assuming no prior knowledge

Mark Henderson

@JoelESalas Got a link? Or need an email?

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson Let me link

jscott

You guys need to pin that EA baby notification above @MDmarra's

Mark Henderson

@jscott Can't, they're ordered by magic

Lots of life changing events going on on that star wall

jscott

1:41 AM

@MarkHenderson Seems you have the magic.

Andrew

I don't even... what happened here???

-9

Q: can a single wire/cable can have multiple ip address?

i am using some private broadband which gives same external ip address to all it's users. we want to use the configuration(internal ip,subnet,default gateway,DNS servers) given by ISP inorder to connect to internet. They give a cable for every user from their routers so , we dont need any router...

networking

Joel E Salas

@Andrew My new favorite question

Andrew

@JoelESalas interface aliases, so yes... but the question is... err.

@JoelESalas as I discovered in serverfault.com/questions/336063/… yes you can have an IP "per port", but... no.

going back to a crazy comment on Slashdot bagging IT departments for not providing enough magic.

"I want this port on the wall to have this IP for whatever device I plug in, kthxbai"

IPs do not work that way without extra special magic (DHCP option 82 etc.)

p.s. can we make "I'm trying X on experimental/not guaranteed to have long-term support version Y" unprofessional and hence off-topic?

0

Q: UBuntu 13.04 Server with a Windows 2008 VM

I have a ubuntu 13.04 server. On it I have a virtual machine (kvm), with Windows 2008 on it. I have configured /etc/network/interfaces to have a bridged connection to the machine, so I am able to access my MS SQL databases on said virtual machine. However, I am still not able to connect to it....

ubuntu windows-server-2008 networking virtualization kvm-virtualization

Joel E Salas

@Andrew It depends dude, sometimes there's a really good business reason to use something experimental

Mark Henderson

ONOES MY 10 YEAR OLD OS THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE ISNT WORKING AS EXPECTED

0

Q: LSASS.Exe using 100% CPU usage on SBS2003

LSASS.exe is using 100% CPU usage on my SBS2003 DC. For the life of me, I can't figure out what's causing it. I've checked the event logs and found a few things. I can't see if any of it is related. Nothing except ActiveSync errors (which started quite some time ago, before this issue has occur...

windows-server-2003 windows-sbs-2003 lsass

Actually it's not a bad question, I just like hating on SBS 2003.

SBS 2008/2011 are also not great, but they don't even come close to the shittiness of SBS 2003

Joel E Salas

1:52 AM

@MarkHenderson docs.google.com/presentation/d/…

Thank you for looking

jscott

@JoelESalas Totes not going Takahashi Method on that prezy, eh? :)

Joel E Salas

@jscott Aw crap now I have to look this up

Yeah I guess I could do that\

I might have to revise a bit

Is it very much a wall of text?

jscott

@JoelESalas For me? Yes. it's a lot of text. That doesn't mean you shouldn't touch on all those bullets during your talk.

Joel E Salas

@jscott I should turn most of that into speaker notes

jscott

Not saying "Takahashi or nothing", do what you're comfortable with

But a single. bold image, or a few choice words "stick" with me better than nested bullets.

I also don't know the intended audience, but the Snoop Lion joke might not fly either. :)

Andrew

2:03 AM

@JoelESalas perhaps, but rolling out a system that's "only" supported for 6-12 months is a bit silly.

If you don't mind upgrading and breaking all the time.

Oh, and it's Ubuntu, so don't trust anything than an LTS, because that's all they ever test.

Michael Hampton

@Andrew Sometimes that's better than the alternative. I have two Fedora (18) boxes in production, for instance. As for Ubuntu, well, I expect breakage there whether it's an "LTS" or not.

Andrew

@JoelESalas err, slide 3???

ewwhite

@Andrew It's out of date.

The VM monitoring landscape has changed considerably...

Andrew

@ewwhite like 5.0 out of date or 4.x out of date?

Joel E Salas

@Andrew Mainly to amuse myself

Andrew

2:06 AM

@JoelESalas also the beard stuff...

Joel E Salas

I know most of the people that will be in that room

ewwhite

@Andrew I'm just saying that the concepts are a little different now.

I see a ton of overconfigured VMs in the field

Andrew

@ewwhite I honestly don't have expertise in this, just going by what our vendor told us

ewwhite

Oh, you asked the question

what type of hardware are you using?

CPUs? RAM?

Storage

and how many VMs do you anticipate?

Andrew

true... more looking at what you wrote on the answer to whatever that question was.

2x HP proliant whatevers (pretty new), 24 cores each, bajillions of RAMs, terabytes of SAN, probably a dozen or so. It's over-engineered by quite a lot, which is nice because it will actually last beyond the 3-4 years that it's scoped for at this point.

ewwhite

2:11 AM

@Andrew Not necessarily.

Mark Henderson

@JoelESalas Sorry man only just looking at this now

ewwhite

Anywho, on modern hardware, you can pretty much configure what you want.

chances are that your VMs will be overconfigured.

Mark Henderson

@JoelESalas - extra bullet point on slide 4

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson Thank you sir

Mark Henderson

@JoelESalas Why the SVN hate?

Looks pretty good to me. Looks like it will be light hearted and relatable

Ward

2:15 AM

Fun to watch the presentation change as I'm reading it...

Andrew

@ewwhite ProLiant DL360p Gen8

ewwhite

@Andrew Right. That's fine. What's your question?

Joel E Salas

@MarkHenderson It's client-server model, branching is discouraged because it's a nightmare, it's slow to sync

Michael Hampton

@JoelESalas And for the love of god don't ever attempt to merge!

Joel E Salas

@MichaelHampton oh jeebus

never tried that with SVN

Mark Henderson

2:19 AM

@JoelESalas I've merged heaps of times with SVN...

Andrew

@ewwhite so they've got 12 physical cores each, 24 threads, how many vCPUs each is bad?

@MarkHenderson SVN uses double the disk space!

ewwhite

@Andrew It doesn't matter.

Andrew

@ewwhite good, we were told "if you have more vCPUs than physical cores your VMs can't get a lock and it slows things down".

lockstepping stuff

ewwhite

@Andrew Nope.. that's wrong.

Andrew

ok, the only reference I could find to it was with fault-tolerance

ewwhite

2:22 AM

@Andrew Think MHz, not cores.

Michael Hampton

So if I have 32 GHz available, I can really give a VM 64 GHz?! I think this is probably not useful.

Andrew

@ewwhite so there's no 1-1 mapping between vCPUs and physical cores, despite what vCenter reports?

ewwhite

@Andrew nope

Andrew

e.g. a VM uses a bunch of CPU and the graph says "hey! Core 17 over here has gone nuts!"

ewwhite

@MichaelHampton Talking about what's really used.

Andrew

2:25 AM

this is on 5.0 btw

ewwhite

not 5.1?

@Andrew Check the document Mark linked earlier.

Let's look at a production environment @Andrew

9 ESXi hosts. 160 virtual machines... 104 physical CPU cores across the cluster.

average virtual machine profile is... 4 vCPU and 8 to 16GB RAM

Andrew

@ewwhite what level is that - DS, cluster, host?

ewwhite

You can oversubscribe CPU within reason. There's no need to go 1:1 vCPUs to physical CPUs.

@Andrew cluster

Andrew

@ewwhite no, not 5.1. we rolled out in October and 5.1 was "too new", and recently "there's no good reason to upgrade yet"

ewwhite

There's a good reason to upgrade... support, performance and features... But I know some organizations move slower.

I'm showing you an example from a massive 4.1 installation

Jacob

2:33 AM

And we made it somehow

Nothing like a 5 hour drive

ewwhite

@Andrew Remember, most VMs aren't sitting there pegging the CPU...

But you can also give priority to specific VMs... as well as limit total resources (in MHz) allocated to a VM...

Mark Henderson

@ewwhite That is one idle cluster

ewwhite

which is why @MichaelHampton I suggested thinking in terms of MHz instead of vCPUs

@MarkHenderson that's a single VM :)

Mark Henderson

@ewwhite Shit it is too

I... I should have known that shameface

ewwhite

The cluster, though...

Still mighty idle

Andrew

2:46 AM

@ewwhite I guess what I really want to know is: how can we either find info on this ourselves, or get training on it (that we can keep up to date) - so we don't need to rely on what our vendor drip-feeds us?

or is it the sort of stuff you only need to know if you're a vendor or have large deployments

ewwhite

VMware training helps. Ask people here. Experiment on your own with small ESXi installations.

Are you guys a Microsoft shop? Linux?

Andrew

Mainly Linux on the servers, MS where it's needed, MS desktops

ewwhite

K. Linux... Can you run more processes than the number of real CPUs on a Linux server?

(yes)

@MarkHenderson Why was this closed?

serverfault.com/questions/504657/…

Oh, owner undeleted.

Michael Hampton

@ewwhite This question was voluntarily removed by its author.

Andrew

@ewwhite "It's for home, none mission-critical "....

ewwhite

2:55 AM

Hate when that happens while I'm writing an answer.

Andrew

but take out the home bit and it's valid

kinda duplicate of this one (which you had a good answer on):

5

Q: SATA drives in HP ProLiant server?

Does anyone know if I can install normal 2.5" SATA drives inside an HP DL360 G5 server? Right now it has 6 72GB SAS drives. I am looking for raw storage for my files SAS performance in not required.

storage hard-drive hp proliant

ewwhite

The answer to the poster's question was no. That chassis doesn't accommodate 3.5" disks... I sold one to @WesleyDavid !!!

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Is nice. I like.

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid The other one here needs a home.

Buy one get one free?

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite I could use it, for sure, but seemed like shipping was a pain. I got no more dealers that owe me a favor. =(

ewwhite

3:04 AM

@WesleyDavid I'll see if I can find a way

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Same model, just slower CPUs, etc?

ewwhite

2.0GHz

WesleyDavid

Good enough - I can always find something to do with it.

Andrew

what's the "this is a canonical answer" header we put on stuff?

23

Q: What are the best linux permissions to use for my website?

I have a Linux web server running Apache2 that hosts several websites. Each website has its own folder in /var/www/. /var/www/contoso.com/ /var/www/contoso.net/ /var/www/fabrikam.com/ The base directory /var/www/ is owned by root:root. Apache is running as www-data:www-data. The Fabrikam websi...

linux apache2 security webserver permissions

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Got any other hardware passing through your hands at the moment?

Michael Hampton

3:10 AM

Did someone say free hardware?

ewwhite

Some 10GbE CX4 gear, a Sun x4540 storage unit full of 48 250GB disks...

Andrew

@ewwhite free overseas shipping?

ewwhite

nope

Mark Henderson

76

Q: What are the canonical answers we've discovered over the years?

We've created, appointed, or otherwise identified certain question/answer pairs that are the canonical answer for certain problems. A list of these problems is given in the accepted answer below. Please: Post an Answer to nominate a question for inclusion. Questions explicitly posted for the ...

discussion faq answering-questions canonical

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite I've wanted a Thumper for a long while - but wow that would be heavy to ship and also, 250GB drives. Hmm... I'd want to swap them. But stilllllll...

ewwhite

3:15 AM

@WesleyDavid Too expensive to power at a colo

WesleyDavid

@ewwhite Yeah, I can imagine. Average hard drive spins at 15 watts, couple CPUs, some RAM, etc. and that thing probably idles at 1000 watts. =(

Andrew

@MarkHenderson it's in that list but doesn't have the "This is a Canonical Question about X" bit... might add it

WesleyDavid

Turn that thing on and it probably pulls 2kw at peak

ewwhite

@WesleyDavid 750W

Andrew

@WesleyDavid blog.makezine.com/2010/02/01/…

WesleyDavid

3:24 AM

@Andrew Spiffy! Let's put it in production. #DevOps #nofilter #younglife

@ewwhite That's intense, but I do need a mass storage node that I'd like to use as a massive rsnapshot server for everything I touch, including space for customers.

I was going to get some cheap-o SuperMicro maybe.

3u, 12 3.5inch disks

Kinda sickly, but... so am I.

Joel E Salas

@WesleyDavid Does glacier work for you?

Kevin Soviero

Is DevStack considered even remotely production quality?

devstack.org

WesleyDavid

@JoelESalas Secret: I've wanted to lock myself in for two weeks or so and bang out some kind of Glacier backed storage service. I think I've been beat to it though. Plus, I'm always locked in anyway and we all know how productive that's been.

With a name like "DevStack" it *has* to be production ready*

*(For extremely liberal interpretations of 'ready.' Your mileage may vary. Consult a physician before rollout. May cause sudden death by Catastrophic Facepalm Syndrome.)

I seriously don't know what DevStack is but I already want to install it and start selling it to people.

@MARKHENDERSON!! BUY THIS SHIT!! NOW!!!

Kevin Soviero

@WesleyDavid I don't want to sell it, I want to set it up and play with it, but also run some of my company's services off it (I can't waste the HW)

WesleyDavid

DevStack as a hosted cloud service

Kevin Soviero

3:32 AM

@WesleyDavid My company's internal services. ;)

Michael Hampton

@KevinSoviero It's not designed to be a production environment. If you want to run OpenStack in production, install OpenStack.

WesleyDavid

You know what - screw rpms and debs, I'm deploying all software through git.

Kevin Soviero

@MichaelHampton Ok :D

Michael Hampton

-1

Q: dotCloud Docker vs traditional VM

I am new to Docker. What are the major differences between Docker and traditional VM? Is Docker stable enough for daily use?

linux virtual-machines containers

Shoot me now.

Kevin Soviero

@MichaelHampton Am I the only one who hasn't even heard of Docker yet?

Andrew

3:37 AM

0

Q: How come identical name and authentication between two windows PCs on same network works?

My Experiment So I set up a simple network with Two computers. Both on the same Work group. I created a LOCAL user 'A' with pasword 'A' in Computer 1. And then I created an identical named LOCAL user 'A' with identical password 'A' on Computer 2. My Observation What I notice is that when ...

networking windows-server-2003 windows-authentication dcom

WesleyDavid

@KevinSoviero Nope, you were the second to last to have not heard of it. I didn't hear about it until I flipped tabs and saw you asking about it.

Michael Hampton

@KevinSoviero I suspect many people here have never heard of it. It's not something we'd generally see, unless we were extremely into DevOps...

WesleyDavid

Who names something Docker? Sounds exceptionally perverse.

Michael Hampton

@WesleyDavid It was the first .io domain name they tried that wasn't taken.

Andrew

@MichaelHampton I think I asked a question about LXC, Xen, KVM, jails once

WesleyDavid

3:38 AM

"We named our DevOps product "Docker" because it does naughty things with tools that weren't designed to be used like that."

Docker -- seriously people. It's either going to make me think of slacks or Brazzers.

"Heterogeneous payloads" Well heck, I'm sold!

yawn well anyway, back to boring css work

Michael Hampton

3:51 AM

# TODO This is absurdly oversimplified and should be completely
# rewritten before anyone else sees it.

Andrew

4:02 AM

zdnet.com/icache-geodes-spectacular-crash-and-burn-7000014801

ah Apple, what a fickle mistress you are

Mark Henderson

0

A: How come identical name and authentication between two windows PCs on same network works?

--- This is a really high level summary over-view, don't expect anything technical here --- Let's get started: What is this sharing of username and password called? "By Design"... or more specifically, "pass-through authentication". How come identical name and authentication bet...

@Andrew New form factors are always a problem for case and accessory designers. They really should have seen that happen

No iPhone case ever fits a new model - only ever revisions within a model

Andrew

@MarkHenderson a good reason to ignore Apple in general, because they produce a "universal, unchanging product" that always changes and isn't allowed to do what people want

Mark Henderson

But seriously, every time you give your money to a kickstarter product, you basically should expect not to get it back, and jus tbe happy if you do get something

You're basically placing a bet on the market

Andrew

very Zen. Fits Steve Jobs perfectly. Wish the iPhone had followed him to the grave.

Mark Henderson

@Andrew Seriously?

I'm no Apple Fanboy, but that's incredibly narrow minded

This is the whole new PC vs Mac thing again, except now it's Google vs Apple

Andrew

4:10 AM

Yes, it was the first widely accepted smartphone. Yes, it's relatively intuitive and easy to use. But the negative impact it has on people's perceptions of what a smartphone is, and what consumer electronics is in general, is quite damaging.

Mark Henderson

Why can't you just all live in peace and harmony

@Andrew Damaging... to who?

Andrew

themselves.

Mark Henderson

Are you personally damaged by others having iPhones?

Andrew

People think they want an iPhone when they really want "a smartphone that does X".

Mark Henderson

Is my son's great-grandmother damaged by having an iPhone? Shit no, she's a great-grandma with a fucking smart phone

And she loves it

There is a market for the iPhone. And it's a big one. And it's filled with dumb hipsters and self-serving rich kids. But it's there.

I have an iPhone. I almost switched to Android 3 years ago but I just couldn't

Andrew

4:12 AM

@MarkHenderson the social cost damages us all.

Mark Henderson

@Andrew What social cost?!

My god people, it's just a fucking phone

We all lived without mobile phones until only very recently

let alone smart phones

Andrew

ever seen Idiocracy? Neither have I, but you can see how the cascade effects us all

Tangible cost coming up:

exclusivity patents that prevent and discourage innovation

Mark Henderson

@Andrew That's a problem with Apple, not the iPhone as a product

Andrew

I can't get features X Y and Z together because they're "owned" by different people.

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson People think they want a Xerox when in reality they just need a copy machine that does X. WHY CAN'T YOU SEE WHAT IT'S DONE TO US MARK?!

Mark Henderson

4:14 AM

@WesleyDavid I have only ever seen a xerox branded machine once and it was doing an incredibly specialised job (printing money)

Andrew

@MarkHenderson the iPhone is an embodiment of Apple's problems.

Mark Henderson

@Andrew Yeah, their 150 billion dollar problem

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson Huh, the museum I worked at was almost purely Xerox except for workhorse HPs that churned out about ten thousand pages a week for innane POs, check printing, etc.

Mark Henderson

I'm not denying that Apple aren't a very nice company. But their products, however simple and locked in and inflexible they may be - the one undeniable truth is that they fucking work

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson (And yes, it did a fine job of printing currency... in theory.)

Andrew

4:16 AM

@MarkHenderson sure, for exactly what they allow to work on them.

Stack Exchange

It ships with a version of Google Now that alerts you when it's too late to leave for your appointments.

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson (Actually, funny story about it not allowing money to be scanned and a scare over a three letter government agency)

Andrew

@WesleyDavid CIA, FBI, NSA, FDA, ATF... Secret Service and Treasury don't have enough letters?

DEA?

@MarkHenderson perhaps "I wish the iPhone didn't exist" is too strong. Maybe something like "I wish Apple's culture had changed to be less... Apple"?

WesleyDavid

@Andrew I think it was the CIA? Not sure who the treasury uses. Nevertheless, apparently modern Xerox machines will notify certain interested parties if currency is scanned on some models.

Mark Henderson

@Andrew fwiw I just want a phone that I can use to make calls, check my email, watch porn and do video calls with my parents (latter two are mutually exclusive). I can do all that, so I'm happy

WesleyDavid

4:20 AM

Someone was doing a newsletter and wanted to have a nice scan of a dollar bill but didn't want to, or have the budget for a simple stock photo. Solution? Scan their own dollar bill!

Andrew

It's like a restaurant that makes excellent lamb masala, but damnit there's no such thing as rice, no other meats than lamb, and no other way than masala, ok?!

WesleyDavid

She kept scanning it over and over because the only thing she'd get was a black rectangle with an X in it

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Thuis xerox printer was literally printing money is what I'm getting at. It was at a place I was doing my work experience and the Xerox was printing stencils for polymer notes and had a special print head that printed invisible encrypted information

Andrew

@WesleyDavid Wikipedia / govt websites have nice "currency sample" images

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Photoshop won't let you open an image that contains those points either

WesleyDavid

4:21 AM

@MarkHenderson Huh, didn't know that.

Andrew

@MarkHenderson cough Gimp

Mark Henderson

@Andrew Oh fuck offfffff

WesleyDavid

@Andrew Yeah, I dunno why she didn't just Google image search.

Andrew

Open Source: used by currency forgers! Yay....

@MarkHenderson oh fine, Paint?

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Because she would end up violating someone elses copyright on their photo of the money

@Andrew Much better ;)

Andrew

4:22 AM

Paint.NET?

WesleyDavid

Andrew

@MarkHenderson US Govt stuff is Public Domain. Always.

Mark Henderson

Actually I don't really like Adobe either, but they again do what I want at the price we want to pay

WesleyDavid

WOOP WOOP WOOP Prepare for cavity search.

Andrew

if you work for the US Govt and do stuff during the course of your work, it's Public Domain. That's how Wikipedia gets most of its cool stuff (esp. Air Force and NASA).

"U.S. federal government works are not eligible for copyright protection (17 USC 105). It is not clear whether this applies world-wide -- see the CENDI Copyright FAQ list, 3.1.7 and a discussion on that at the LibraryLaw Blog. The U.S. government themselves state that they "may assert copyright outside of the United States for U.S. government works."[2]"

@WesleyDavid Wonder if that works in Australia...

Mark Henderson

4:26 AM

For fucks sake! I get an email from a client asking for details I don't have "Sorry, I can't answer that for you, i don't know" I replied. So they went and asked my collegue, who also didn't know and asked me. They then escalated it through their ranks. Their departmental manager calls me. "Sorry, I don't know". They call my boss. My boss checks with me. "I DONT KNOW!!!" Client escalates it further. General manager of a multinational public company calls me directly. "I DONT FUCKING KNOW!"

WesleyDavid

@Andrew One way to find out...

Andrew

Then again, our notes are polymer. Pretty difficult to get the raw substrate to print on regardless of if you could scan it.

And micro-printing.

and watermarks.

and a transparent window.

and embossed ink.

Swiss paper notes had holograms, which is about the only thing our notes don't have.

WesleyDavid

@Andrew Our main Xerox tech for that site was an old war horse and had been with Xerox for I think 20+ years. A few days later he showed up for routine maintenance, unrelated to the scanning incident, and I mentioned it to him. He chuckled and asked if we had been visited. Apparently he had seen some stuff about that.

Andrew

I think our polymer notes still have a thread.

WesleyDavid

I wish the US would change note sizes. Ditch the penny, change note sizes for the blind, make the paper pretty too.

Although, I don't like the idea of people knowing if I have big bills or not simply because of a flash of color.

Andrew

4:29 AM

maybe not.

WesleyDavid

Then again, I rarely use cash.

Mark Henderson

Any of you seen that movie The Tin Soldier? (imdb.com/title/tt0114677)

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson No

Mark Henderson

That movie ruined the word "plastic" for me. The fucking kid keeps saying "Plaz-Tech" and I think of that every time I see our money

Andrew

Banknotes of the Australian dollar

The banknotes of the Australian dollar were first issued on 14 February 1966, when Australia adopted decimal currency. Former series (paper) The $5 note was not issued until 1967. The $1 (10/-), $2 (£1), $10 (£5), and $20 (£10) had exact exchange rates with pounds and were a similar colour to the notes they replaced, but the $5 (£2/10) did not, and so was introduced after the public had become familiar with decimal currency. Notes issued between 1966 and 1973 bore the title "Commonwealth of Australia". Starting from 1974, the title on the new notes only read "Australia" and the legal tend...

@MarkHenderson lol "i think this movie was shot in 3 days, and was made for about eight dollars and fifteen cents. it's loaded with plot holes, anachronisms and 10-14 year old kids delivering cliché, over the top lines that even most adults wouldn't attempt. "

Mark Henderson

4:30 AM

@Andrew Sounds about right

Actually I was wrong; it was The Indian In The Cupboard (1995) (imdb.com/title/tt0113419)

Andrew

@MarkHenderson oh no, I loved those books :(

Mark Henderson

I remember seeing both those movies that year, but the Indian one ruined the word pastic

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson People think they want Plaz-Tech when they really just need a petrochemical polymer that does X! WHY CAN'T YOU SEE WHAT THIS HAS DONE TO US, MARK!!

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid We can't be friends any more

Not if you're going to say PLAZ-TECH

You americans are already bad enough with changing LASER into LAZER. Its a goddamn acronym.

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson schlurp

Andrew

4:44 AM

@WesleyDavid actually that'd be like "you want styrofoam" when you really just want a spongy non-reactive packaging, even better if it's recyclable. Like polythene foam.

I know too much. I have to die now.

Andrew

4:56 AM

@MarkHenderson You're right, it's exactly the Mac vs. PC thing all over again. Once again, Apple and their fanboys do the whole Jedi mindtrick thing and pretend that no possibilities could be comprehended outside of the One True Apple Way.

I'm not a Google fanboy but the approach they take is (mostly) better than Apple's.

Mark Henderson

9

Q: A "simple" 3rd grade problem...or is it?

So this is supposed to be really simple, and it's taken from the following picture: I don't understand what's wrong with this question. I think the teacher's reasoning is perfectly correct, yet my friend insists the student got the question right. I feel like I'm missing something critical h...

recreational-mathematics

^ This question stumped the shit out of me. I felt so dumb after reading the answers.

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