The Comms Room

5:01 PM

@Iain oh, fun

CVV and everything. Those fuckers...

@mfinni Nice! Next up, I'll earn "Abominable Snowman" hat. This hat is awarded for having something that people claim to have seen but have no solid proof of...a thread on Meta.SO from a non-regular that isn't downvoted.

ewwhite

@ChrisS My produce companies pay!

@Tanner Sorry... I'm sensitive.

TheCleaner

heh...it gave me "chatty chatty" hat @mfinni ...Now it looks like I'm riding a giant cat into battle.

ewwhite

5:17 PM

I need a product recommendation... How do I back up 20 Macintosh laptops?

Basil

@ewwhite I think I remember edit: retrospect being good at it like 7 years ago

ewwhite

@Basil In Restrospect, I don't think that was a good idea...

Basil

haha

ewwhite

terrible product name

Almost as bad as el-el-see, LLC (elelsee.com)

Chopper3

@ewwhite time machine is the easiest - either via a time capsule or much better via a mac running OSX server with a fuckload of disk - btw I just ordered one of those new waste-bin mac pros - won't be here before Feb though :(

ewwhite

5:21 PM

@Chopper3 So you think it can be done for a group of people using one server, right?

Basil

Hey @Chopper3, you use a lot of FC right?

mfinni

@TheCleaner I like to help.

ewwhite

one server presenting AFP to the network, and pointing ALLL the laptops at it?

pauska

@Chopper3 what are you going to use it for?

Chopper3

@ewwhite yeah - the trick is to switch on the first backups on each machine sequentially not in parallel - i.e. let it finish the first backup on one machine before doing another - well maybe not more than 2 at once, after that they can do what they like

@Basil yeah, increasingly FCoE but yeah, lots of FC still

ewwhite

5:23 PM

@Chopper3 what would you recommend for the server setup?

Basil

@Chopper3 Brocade or cisco?

ewwhite

and is encryption an option?

Chopper3

@pauska erm....probably let my daughter use it for FCP

pauska

@ewwhite mac mini with usb hub and lots of usb disks!!

Chopper3

@Basil 100% Cisco, actually forgotten all my Brocade stuff

@ewwhite yes, I think encryption is an option

Basil

5:24 PM

@Chopper3 damn. I'm trying to set up the Brocade mib file in our snmp machine, but it's way more complicated than I expected...

Chopper3

@pauska that's all I have for my backups at home

@Basil I fucking hate snmp, I just pay a dullard to do it all

Basil

@Chopper3 heh, I wish I could do that.

ewwhite

@Chopper3 want to architect it for me?

Chopper3

@Basil what's this to achieve?

RobM

What part of "My 'C-Level Executives' don't care if we host our servers in the cloud, in a server room or on a redundant array of etch-a-sketches as long as it works" do some companies not understand?

Chopper3

5:27 PM

@ewwhite sure, mac-mini and a usb3 4TB disk (two if you want to R1 them) - osx server - that's about it - the issue with them all doing their first backups at the same time is just a network/disk swamp thing - it's SO easy

ewwhite

@Chopper3 I need RAID and probably not USB...

Chopper3

@ewwhite k, two secs

Basil

@Chopper3 Right now, when a power supply in a brocade fails, no messages are issued. We need to fix that.

Problem is, unlike most vendors who have a single MIB with a bunch of crap for management and some simple, generally self-evident traps, Brocade has 10 files with interdependancies that don't appear to be the way they're documented, and traps that probably don't even make sense to whoever wrote them

Chopper3

@ewwhite buy that then upgrade to osx server ($20) - job done

RobM

Nice

ewwhite

5:32 PM

@Chopper3 alrighty... Will try that.

Chopper3

@Basil do they not have some form of management software to watch out for and report that - in the cisco world I'd use DCNM

ewwhite

These people are trying to build a Linux server with Netatalk to provide AFP over the network

freiheit

@Basil I gave up on SNMP traps a long time ago. SNMP polling works pretty nice, though.

Chopper3

@ewwhite that's thunderbolt - so not USB3, though I have to say I like USB3 about as much as thunderbolt for this sort of thing - people don't realise just how different usb3 is from v1/2 - it's scsi again, just like firewire or sas

ewwhite

@Chopper3 but stigma

Chopper3

5:33 PM

@ewwhite I have a two disk netgear thing in the loft that I used to use for time machine backups - it was never as reliable as apple's own stuff

Basil

@Chopper3 maybe, but we use OVO which just needs the mib file with the traps

Chopper3

@ewwhite I know, but it works great

RobM

The next revision of USB3 is apparently going to include support for new plug types that can be plugged in either way up, like Apple's lightning port.

Chopper3

@Basil really not my thang sorry, just love the massive faff and over-complexity of Cisco FC switches - even adding licences is a chore :)

Basil

@Chopper3 No worries, thanks :)

jscott

5:35 PM

@ewwhite I used netatalk for a bit with our home MacBooks. When it work, it worked, when it didn't, I had broken Time Machine and had to perform a new full backup... I'd pony up for the Time Capsule or Mini + OSX Server.

Chopper3

@RobM lightning's fine but some devices don't fit in properly if you use any form of case on your device - which blows

@jscott the time capsules are great but stop at 2TB, so you're probably a bit fucked for 20 users

Basil

@Chopper3 See? This is what I was talking about before. That mouse is not worth even close to that. You can get something that cost 100x as much to manufacture for half the price from razer or logitech. You could probable even find a single button touch-sensitive white mouse for half that price, if there was a market for it. But no, apple charges as much as a decent video card for a mouse. You can get a perfectly functional mouse for 5$.

ewwhite

What happened to proper Mac workstations?

RobM

that's true. Still, I do like the idea of a phone/tablet socket that you can connect in bad light. Useful for the bedside and trying to get satnav going late at night in the car.

Anonymous

@ewwhite they turned into mac pros

Chopper3

5:36 PM

@Basil I have to admit I use MS mice/kb's on my macs

@ewwhite dropped as of today in fact, looking forward to my new waste-bin one though, should fly

Basil

@Chopper3 It's their culture of high margin accessories and service that annoys me the most, I think.

I feel like I'm watching my wife shop for handbags

RobM

Apple seem totally unable to make a decent mouse.

Chopper3

@Basil they can be ignored now though, most of the time anyway

RobM

And they're not that good at keyboards either though the latest ones don't suck too much

Basil

"oh god, that one has a brand on the side and it's leather. I'll bet it's at least 900$"

freiheit

5:38 PM

@Basil That handbag is totally worth $275 more than that other handbag. Just look at the stitching!

jscott

@Chopper3 Indeed. At work we've some Xserves + Xserve RAID as our Time Machine target.

Chopper3

@Basil and I'm a share holder in apple too - so I love seeing people spend their money in the stores :)

ewwhite

How about a Helios external PCIe enclosure connected via thunderbolt... eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/HELIOSTB1

Basil

@Chopper3 You're a brave man ;)

ewwhite

then use proper storage... RAID that shit!

Chopper3

5:38 PM

@Basil my wife likes bags too - only two types - Birkin bags and Kate Spade ones for normal use - crazy isn't it

RobM

heh.. friend's facebook status: "Balls. Delivered neighbours' card to 'David and Stella'. Just realised her name is Jill. Stella is their DOG."

11

Basil

@Chopper3 Even if I had all the money I need (and god knows I don't even come close), I would still put my foot down and fight about designer shit. You're paying for social status, not quality.

In the rare situation where designer is actually as good or better quality than the average commodity, it's going to be 5x the price.

Chopper3

@Basil shrugs - yep :(

Basil

(like mac)

I just bought a coat for working in -50 wind for 180$. I have friends with canada goose jackets that cost 500$ and aren't even as good as this one.

ewwhite

@Chopper3 I have a bunch of Jack Spade bags...

Chopper3

5:43 PM

@Basil do you drive a Hyundia? :)

Basil

@Chopper3 ... yeah...

Chopper3

@ewwhite yeah but you're as Metro as me :)

Basil

so (a), that was weird. (b) why?

Chopper3

@Basil do you? shit, I was kidding

Basil

@Chopper3 I got it on sale :)

ewwhite

5:44 PM

@Basil @Chopper3 and I are Hyphy... or at least we're Fly. So image counts a little bit.

Chopper3

@Basil I guess I just meant you're a 'value-first' kind of guy - and that's fine, some people are wired a different way

Basil

@Chopper3 I am borderline autisticly value-only

I'll actually pay more to avoid having to wear a brand with a visible sign

but I've learned that most people I'll meet don't think this way

Chopper3

@Basil that's good, I'd never knock someone for being value driven, I can be about some things, it makes enormous sense, I wish I was more like that most of the time, but I'm more "oh look - shiny - * hands over wallet *" than that

ewwhite

We like nice things.

Chopper3

@Basil that said I recently swapped a big volvo 4x4 for a golf, partly because of value but also because I don't feel as confident driving something so big these days - it did feel like I was being sensible for once

Basil

5:47 PM

I like nice things too, I guess. But nothing provides me as much satisfaction as something that does exactly what it says on the tin better than something flash :)

ewwhite

I mean, I just bought a $190 iPhone case... made of WOOD - in Hawaii!!

Chopper3

@Basil so I'm guessing you hate the idea of first class flights then?

@ewwhite ohh nice, photos?

ewwhite

Chopper3

@ewwhite nice, whereabout?

Basil

@Chopper3 No, not at all. I'd happily pay for comfort or service. That's the irony- I go nuts when my wife tries to get me to buy calvin klein socks, but will happily upgrade a flight if I'm feeling spendy.

Chopper3

5:49 PM

@ewwhite I love hawaii

ewwhite

@Chopper3 I was in Maui the past week.

Wailea

Chopper3

@Basil oh ok, cool

pauska

I need a new desktop mouse.. the one I have is making weird noises every time I click the left button

ewwhite

pauska

should I just get whatevers popular? Razer Deathadder 2013 is the top of the list here in norway right now... but I think it looks a bit geeky

Chopper3

5:50 PM

@ewwhite nice, only been to Maui once, tend to go to the same place at the north of honolulu

ewwhite

usually first class... but I'm a weirdo about that. I use the plane for networking... Ke$ha, businessmen, etc, etc.

Basil

@ewwhite it's hilarious how we are polar opposites on the personal and professional sides, but while I drive a hyundai at home, you make franken-macgyver-storage at work

ewwhite

@Chopper3 Turtle Bay?

Chopper3

@pauska I always go for MS mice for some reason

@ewwhite yep, love the place

pauska

@Chopper3 I want something a bit more precise and comforting.. gaming etc

Basil

5:51 PM

@pauska I heard you can fix that by soaking it in salt water for a day. Just make sure you let it dry completely before using it again.

Chopper3

@pauska corsair?

ewwhite

@Chopper3 from turtle bay...

@Basil Yeah, but I've been spoiled... I want certain performance without paying the vendor costs.

Chopper3

@ewwhite that's just past the horse stables isn't it?

pauska

@Basil I'll try that once I get a new one - great to have one in backup

ewwhite

@Chopper3 On the golf course.

We went on an off road Segway tour

Basil

5:53 PM

@pauska I'm mostly making that up ;) Although now that I think of it, a regular soap soak followed by a clear-water soak might actually work, unless there's a capacitor in there somewhere

Chopper3

@ewwhite oh ok, only ever eaten at the restaurant on the golf course once, last night we were there in fact, not a golfer so don't end up that end

Basil

@ewwhite sure, that's the same reasoning I use at home. That's why I buy a 25$ indestructo-case for the tablet my kids play with ;)

Chopper3

@ewwhite when we were there last time they were making on of the Pirates films at the time and Johnny Depp and now-ex-wife were one beach hut over, we had two massive security guards next to us so we didn't say more than Hi to them :(

Basil

that said, if I had a little more control over what we buy here, I'd probably land somewhere between where we are and a build-it-yourself solution

ewwhite

@Basil I pay people to build these things for me now.

Basil

5:56 PM

@ewwhite it's more about keeping it running once it's in prod, for me... but I could probably get half way to the price/performance ratio you enjoy simply by splitting FICON off into its own box

right now, when SAP comes to me for 65TB of bulk NAS storage, that's being put into real-estate that has mainframe licensing on it

I could easily use 3TB netapp drives or something and charge them maybe 20% what I charge them now

ewwhite

@Basil So I think it's an issue with education. Each big SAN solution seems to need experts to maintain it. I think I'm the storage equivalent of a DevOp, comparing what I do to what you do. Just like programmers trying to be sysadmins.

pauska

The Logitech G500S looks great really.. not so flashy

Chopper3

@Basil we split ours out now because of cost - 3Par for main FC/FCoE, P6550's for dev/lab work and HP X9730's for all NAS

ewwhite

I'd love to be able to use proper storage everywhere... but my clients have a mental block that prevents them from seeing the value.

E.g. they're willing to take a day or two of downtime a year to save $60k

Basil

@ewwhite I don't know about that, I think you'd do fine if you were given triple the budget for the same requirements and just installed some vendor-storage

pauska

5:58 PM

@Chopper3 Is nearly everything over there sequential?

Basil

@Chopper3 yeah, that was what I was suggesting last refresh.

Chopper3

@pauska I game with a corsair m95, it's quite good but the lower models look better value

ewwhite

@Basil Remember, I had vendor storage at a last job... and we still messed it up

Basil

something like that, at least

ewwhite

EMC VNX, Isilon, NetApp

Basil

6:00 PM

@ewwhite vendor storage isn't a guarantee that nothing will break, but it means that you have a deeply experienced support infrastructure behind you. One that's seen almost every type of problem before

Chopper3

@pauska erm...kind of, certainly we have databases but we tend to 100% memory-map them so disk access isn't what it would be otherwise - the VMs tend to vary wildly but most load is on VM restarts - splunk is our biggest IO but we do special things for that anyway

ewwhite

@Basil but we didn't have good engineers... and we destroyed the gear.

Chopper3

@Basil the X9730's are a steep'ish learning curve but we needed something that could scale out very linearly

Basil

@Chopper3 yeah, I meant the first two :) 3par for open and VSP (or p6000) for mainframe. Right now, we use netapp for NAS, but I'd probably consider looking into HNAS before going anywhere else

also, have you seen the new HUS-VM from HDS? Same firmware as the P6000, but open only and priced to compete with 3par

Chopper3

@Basil P6000 is FC/iSCSI only, if you want FICON you need P9000

Basil

6:02 PM

hmm

I thought the p6000 was the VSP- sounds like it might be the HUS-VM

or maybe a VSP with weird limitations

Chopper3

@Basil the P6000 is the old EVA

Basil

oh, well there we go

ewwhite

All this storage talk makes me want to plug my ears with my fingers and shout obscure Linux commands!!

Chopper3

right gents, food's not going to cook itself is it - have a nice day/evening, only one more day to go!

Basil

cheers :)

Danila Ladner

6:16 PM

Coraid

ewwhite

@DanilaLadner Ha

That's scary stuff

AoE

@DanilaLadner You know Josh Storck, too?

Danila Ladner

yeah, I know Josh pretty well.

ewwhite

He moved back to Chicago... have been trying to meet up with him

We met at a friend's wedding... a Two Sigma guy...

Danila Ladner

Oh i did not know, I thought he was going to his own thing in NYC

ewwhite

A wedding full of quants, financial devs, video game devs, Amazon cloud engineers, etc... and me.

The groom shared his seating arrangement algorithm with the group.

Danila Ladner

6:22 PM

fml

-)))

ewwhite

and what looked like a dependency graph...

Anonymous

lol

Danila Ladner

Josh was cool to work with, did not bother much, smart guy.

Anonymous

@ewwhite i think it's nice

Anonymous

was it nice?

ewwhite

6:23 PM

So Josh and I were sat across from each other due to our upbringing in the same region, interest in cycling and our wives hit it off!

@PatoSáinz it was good

and I was next to some Amazon cloud devs...

Anonymous

I can imagine all the SysOps there, seating in the bar while some hipster skinny devop was trying to dance with the bride and dramatically failing at it

ewwhite

:)

Dennis Kaarsemaker

►

I'm half evil

> visited 333 days, 8 consecutive

Basil

So I went out last night and charged a bunch of -60 degree gear to my company in preparation for being sent to winterpeg next month.

Iain

@Basil what's happening ?

Dennis Kaarsemaker

6:35 PM

@Basil what are you being punished for?

Basil

@Iain I'm on call for shortages- if they need conductors, they'll fly me and 7 other guys from HQ out there

Iain

wow

Basil

@DennisKaarsemaker enthusiasm.

@Iain apparently even though the spare board is full in july, they can't find people to man the trains in january ;)

Iain

ah, interesting

ewwhite

RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis - NOTHING IS SECURE!!!

in some cases, a regular mobile phone is good enough. We have used a mobile phone to acoustically extract keys from a laptop at a distance of 30cm...

The attack can extract full 4096-bit RSA decryption keys from laptop computers (of various models), within an hour, using the sound generated by the computer during the decryption of some chosen ciphertexts.

Anonymous

6:52 PM

oh i read that post, quite impressive

Anonymous

now it's not enough with covering cameras with duct tape

ewwhite

I like the fix they proposed.

Just throw some random delays and noise in....

Anonymous

nothing's random ಥ_ಥ

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@PatoSáinz you haven't seen @ewwhite ride his bicycle yet.

Random walks are nothing compared to that :)

ewwhite

Wut!!

Anonymous

6:55 PM

speaking about bikes

Anonymous

i haven't seen @wesley for a while

Anonymous

maybe he's begging for a bike at some street

ewwhite

he's gettin' that money!

Chris S

@PatoSáinz “We cannot trust” Intel and Via’s chip-based crypto

Anonymous

more RDRand drama?

Anonymous

6:59 PM

via has hardware crypto too?

Anonymous

didn't know that

Chris S

Dec 10 at 20:31, by voretaq7

Anonymous

beancounters

Chris S

ewwhite

I feel like @ScottPack and @MichaelHampton and @voretaq7 should weigh in on this RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis situation... Is my pr0n safe?!?

Anonymous

7:04 PM

no one's safe ;_;

Ry Jones

@ChrisS I'm happy that my beard is turning white

Dennis Kaarsemaker

@ewwhite your pr0n is german. 'Safe' it has never been...

84104

@RyJones Okay Santa.

Ry Jones

@84104 it's more because a grey beard gives you +5 unix skills

freiheit

@RyJones Sadly, I'm pushing 40 and only have a few scattered gray hairs in by big red beard. At this rate it will take me another decade or two to truly master unix.

kce

7:09 PM

So I just looked up some former classmates on LinkedIn. They all work for Google or other great places... I'm beginning to think that I was the dumb one in our CS class.

freiheit

Department potluck starts in an hour... I'm really hoping somebody brought something that ^^^^ that comic describes well. ;)

Basil

In perl, is there a clean simple way using only built-ins that I could compare 00:04:00 to 120:00:00 and see that yes, 4 minutes is less than 120 hours?

I'm parsing netapp replication output, so it'll always be hours:minutes:seconds

The only way I can think of doing it is reading those into variables and comparing them with maths

freiheit

@Basil If you had consistent zero padding you could do a simple string comparison.

Basil

@freiheit no zero padding :)

I could see 15:00:00 and 150:00:00

MikeyB

@ewwhite see last night's convo.

ewwhite

7:15 PM

@MikeyB awww

RobM

Currently watching "The Hunt for Red October". Winner of an academy award in 1991 for best use of "leading actor speaking russian with a broad scottish accent"

Anonymous

@Basil perl :DDDD

MikeyB

@Basil I'd probably re-widthize them to 000:04:00 and 120:00:00 and then do a string comparison (oh, I'm behind)

freiheit

@Basil That makes the math just a tiny bit weird so it's a 10-line instead of 3-line problem. Just use Time::ParseDate (comes with perl)

Anonymous

hmm clean way+built-ins? i'm pretty much not sure... gosh cpan's useful

Basil

7:17 PM

@freiheit I wish :\ I don't have admin rights on any servers

Anonymous

@freiheit oh that's built-in?

Anonymous

then i think @freiheit's answer wins

freiheit

@PatoSáinz What does "built-in" mean to you?

Anonymous

@freiheit "comes with"

Anonymous

perl used to come with CGI.pm for example

Anonymous

7:18 PM

also perl ofc ships with CORE::

freiheit

oh, whoops, no, doesn't come with...

Basil

Can't locate Time/ParseDate.pm in @INC

Anonymous

@freiheit boo :<

Basil

it's fine, we just passed the point where doing it the long way became easier than trying to do it the right way ;)

thanks though :)

Anonymous

@Basil then just use perlbrew

Anonymous

7:19 PM

use perlbrew

Anonymous

you don't need root

Basil

can't do that in this shop- for one thing, I'm using AIX.

freiheit

you can install perl modules into any directory and use lib "somedir";

Chris S

@Basil Split on the ":", convert the resulting array to a seconds integer... I don't think there's a built-in function for that. I'm sure there's something on CPAN though.

Basil

@freiheit does that mean literally installing something, or just putting the data there and referencing it?

@ChrisS yep, that's my intention :)

freiheit

7:21 PM

@Basil What's the difference?

Basil

@freiheit I can't run smitty, but I can can put files into my homedir

Anonymous

@Basil AIX?!?!

Basil

@PatoSáinz like a baws

Anonymous

what an awful infrastructure bro

Basil

you say that, but we have thousands of VMs running way more efficiently than we could do on any other hypervisor

MikeyB

7:22 PM

Can't remember the syntax specifics, but:
$a = "00:04:00"
$b = "120:00:00"
@a = map(split(":", $a), int)
@b = map(split(":", $b), int)
@a<@b

which you could in theory reduce down to:
map(split(":",$a),int) < map(split(":",$b),int)

freiheit

@Basil You can install perl modules in your homedir. You can either use some options when doing the "perl Makefile.PL ; make ; make test ; make install" routine, or actually copy stuff around.

Anonymous

@Basil use lib "somedir"; will make perl search on all the dirs at @INC and that dir

Basil

@MikeyB Oh yeah, that's not too much trouble- in fact, I'm already splitting this out from a line containing the results of a snapmirror status

Anonymous

so you can make it go through /home/basil/etc/lol.pm

Anonymous

@MikeyB throw some evals at it

Anonymous

7:23 PM

make it more horrible

Basil

@freiheit I'll look into that- will those files be needed by other users who run the script? Even if so, it's easier for me to put a file on the drive somewhere they can see it permanently than it is for me to install stuff ;)

Anonymous

@Basil quick question, why haven't you exploited your way to root yet?

Basil

@PatoSáinz big place. The only people who get root are the sysadmins.

I can get them to do all my work for me, it's awesome

RobM

We should all work together to design the sort of infrastructure that is so bad that any normal person would rather be trapped in a lift for 12 hours with stallman and someone who thinks that "doge" meme is the height of comedy genius since the dawn of mankind than deploy it. Then post it as an answer to all those "build an x for me..." questions.

Basil

need something mounted? man mount? Fuck that. Hey Jim, got a sec?

@RobM hey, I liked dogecoin...

RobM

7:26 PM

into the lift with you...

Basil

@RobM Sweet, always wanted to meet Stallman!

freiheit

@MikeyB Do you, perhaps, mean map(int,split(":",$a)) <=> map(int,split(":",$b))?

Anonymous

@Basil exploit your way to root now

Anonymous

make your life better

RobM

don't forget your shotgun

Anonymous

7:27 PM

@freiheit excuse me, are you perl golfing?

freiheit

@PatoSáinz No, he got the order of the arguments in map wrong, and <=> is the right comparison operator. :)

Anonymous

i know

Anonymous

i meant that the syntax you all are using is very succint

Anonymous

i'm more verbose

freiheit

@PatoSáinz (a) I've been doing perl since around 1995 and (b) my actual perl tends to have more whitespace, indentation and comments.

Basil

7:30 PM

@PatoSáinz life inside big shops is a little different... I would be refused if I asked for root, and fired if I got it without asking.

Anonymous

@Basil do you work at target?

Basil

@PatoSáinz hah, they wish

we've never had any data leaks that I know of

ewwhite

@ScottPack I have a question for you...

or anyone who knows more than me :)

Anonymous

@freiheit oh yea i know you have way more experience (hell you coded before i was even born), i was just wondering

ewwhite

Is anyone here familiar with grey-market equipment?

Anonymous

7:31 PM

because i found that piece of code to be sort of unreadable... and that made me sad

Basil

TIL @freiheit was coded ;)

Anonymous

lol

Basil

@ewwhite I had a gig in that area once...

it was maybe 10 years ago

Anonymous

@ewwhite grey-market equipment? by that you mean second hand or chineese bran no one has ever heard about

MikeyB

@freiheit actually I mean: map {int} split(":","00:04:00") < map {int} split(":","120:00:00"). Except you have to write the < operator yourself since you can't actually compare arrays like that like you can in Python

ewwhite

7:33 PM

HP gear

Matt Bear

sup

Basil

@PatoSáinz there's a middle ground... you can get, for example, HP hard drives or memory for 40% what you'd pay that are brand new, in box, straight OEM.

Anonymous

@Basil always

freiheit

@MikeyB There's the new fangled ~~ operator that I have trouble wrapping my brain around

MikeyB

@freiheit I got out of perl ages ago. Happy to be gone.

Anonymous

7:35 PM

@MikeyB :<

MikeyB

@PatoSáinz because sensible scripting languages:

In [7]: map(int,"00:04:00".split(":"))
Out[7]: [0, 4, 0]

In [8]: map(int,"120:00:00".split(":"))
Out[8]: [120, 0, 0]

In [9]: map(int,"00:04:00".split(":")) < map(int,"120:00:00".split(":"))
Out[9]: True

Basil

@ewwhite What did you want to know about the grey market? If I don't know, I might know someone you could ask

Anonymous

TIL @Basil is a drug lord

Basil

heh

ewwhite

so the grey market gear is HP ProLiant stuff... The company importing it has been sued by HP.

Basil

7:36 PM

actually, brb 5 min

sorry

ewwhite

A client is trying to compare that grey-market pricing to MY vendor's pricing

and my vendor is like, "that stuff is technically stolen... you're leaving yourselves open to liability"

freiheit

perl -le 'print "true" if join("",map {sprintf("%06d",$_)} split(":","120:04:00")) > join("",map {sprintf("%06d",$_)} split(":","00:04:00"));'

that totally works right.

Scott Pack

@ewwhite I'm hear for you dearest.

MikeyB

@ewwhite eh, not stolen, out-of-channel.

freiheit

(forget carefully comparing each element of the array... just turn it into big comparable numbers as if it was nicely zero padded and do a simple numeric comparison. %03d would work fine for the example values. In fact, %02d would be fine if only the first number is more than 2 digits)

ewwhite

7:44 PM

@ScottPack Is there any liability or HIPAA/PCI issue with using grey market gear on high profile systems? I'm trying to convince this client NOT to do so. The place they're buying from has been sued by HP

European channel... brought to US.

Joel E Salas

@ewwhite What's grey market about it?

Scott Pack

@ewwhite I'd have to go do a quick review to be sure, but unlikely.

@ewwhite By and large HIPAA is all about having not terrible processes that are documented. PCI-DSS has configuration recommendations.

@ewwhite How firm of an answer do you need?

MikeyB

@freiheit system("python -c 'import sys; sys.exit(int(map(int,sys.argv[1].split(\":\")) < map(int,sys.argv[2].split(\":\"))))")

IS HOW YOU DO IT IN PERL

drops mic

ewwhite

not too firm... but the fact that the counterfeit gear can be confiscated...

Anonymous

@MikeyB i'm gravely offended

freiheit

7:47 PM

Uses giant hook to pull @MikeyB off the stage

4

Scott Pack

Yeah. I would call that being factored into your risk assessment but I can't think of anything in either of those requirements, off hand, that would be cranky about it.

ewwhite

@ScottPack But this is a well-known-website...

Scott Pack

@ewwhite Ok.

ewwhite

that didn't work through much of the fall...

Scott Pack

2 mins ago, by Scott Pack

Yeah. I would call that being factored into your risk assessment but I can't think of anything in either of those requirements, off hand, that would be cranky about it.

ewwhite

7:50 PM

wink-nudge

Scott Pack

:)

ewwhite

Just that it's tacky

because the pricing is already excellent

freiheit

And now it's time for the IT holiday party.

Anonymous

@freiheit i agree

freiheit

cya later. :)

Scott Pack

7:54 PM

That makes me sad. My office holiday party consisted of drinking sodas and eating pizza while some people off to the side played Euchre.

Basil

@ewwhite grey market lawsuits are reserved for people with contracts with HP that they'd breach by using that stuff, I should think. End users might be immune, I know channel partners can get in trouble, but it's generally a revocation of some perk rather than a lawsuit. Often the products are just sourced from someone who has a higher discount

I worked with a client in my last job that has 95% off list from IBM for disks

it was a weird political deal, but it's not unusual to see large companies get certain options at cost if they're making their margin on the services

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