The Comms Room

sysadmin1138

5:00 PM

ooooOOOOoooo... the FreeRDP project just cracked NLA. sourceforge.net/mailarchive/… Still in devel, but progress!

packs

@sysadmin1138 w00t

sysadmin1138

That would make me Very Happy.

packs

I'm really wanting them to support rdp proxy

pfo

5:17 PM

is there a changelog from what they did to the code since forking off?

Bart Silverstrim

Anyone here have a bias against software if they discover that it's written as, say, VB and Access?

If they spend a lot of money on said software?

Or is that some kind of elitism that's unwarranted?

Sam

From personal experience I dislike stuff written in VB and Access, mainly because I know the hacky ways you have to do some things to get it to work. But I guess in some places it's the best solution to a problem

sysadmin1138

@pfo freerdp.com/component/content/article/1-announcements/…

That's as close as they get.

@BartSilverstrim I've spent enough time in the desktop trenches to dislike Access for anything but single-user purposes.

Bart Silverstrim

To be fair Access was being used for single-user tasks here...

I guess there's something about spending a lot of money on a software package and having it be rather obvious that it was done by gluing VB and Access together that just...instills a sense of foreboding gloom on prospects of quality.

But I'm not a programmer so I don't know how wrong it is to feel that way.

voretaq7

@BartSilverstrim Programmers who see something like that feel dread. Usually mixed with loathing.

Sam

5:31 PM

I get forced to do some programming sometimes, in the past that has been in Access. All your sense of foreboding gloom is valid. VBA and Access apps are hard to support if there is a problem with the code, hard to patch and difficult to customise. If I was spending a lot of money on an app, I would be annoyed if it was in VBA and Access. To me writing apps that way is a way for people who need some functionality, but can't get budget to buy a custom solution go, not professionall software.

Bart Silverstrim

Am I wrong in thinking that VB today isn't really all that bad for making applications? Since the results are based on .NET now? (or am I wrong in that assumption?)

sysadmin1138

I'm sure there are some differences between C# and VB but I couldn't tell you what the significant ones are.

Sam

@bart there are 2 things here, if you have written the code in Access itself usign VBA, then that is effictively VB6 with a few bells on

If they've written some plugins using Office Tools for Visual Studio, that's .net VB with an interface to office, and is much newer and less doom worthy

Bart Silverstrim

So if you're writing some application in VB2010, isn't the resulting app .NET? So the resulting executables should be indistinguishable from a visual studio C# or C++ application, no? Since they're all going to intermediate byte code?

Robert Moir

I've done work in VB. Now the code was probably very bad but that would be down to me, not VB...

voretaq7

5:35 PM

@BartSilverstrim VB gets a bad reputation because so many people write AWFUL code in it (same reason a lot of people who knew PHP back in the 4.x days despise it so much: It's so easy to write bad code that bad programmers flock to the language)

A VB application written by a GOOD programmer can be a great piece of software - well-designed, maintainable, etc.

Sysadmin1138 Expounds

SysAdmin1138 Expounds
RDP from Linux to Windows
SysAdmin1138
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Sysadmin1138/~3/zgQ8_mHs7NU/rdp-from-linux-to-windows.shtml

SmallClanger

@voretaq7: I've written PHP so bad, it borders on art. :)

Zoredache

@voretaq7, PHP also gets a bit of a bad rap because of its 'bazaar' roots. Unlike many other programming language PHP development and growth has seemed very haphazard and unplanned. There is little to no consistence, and most functions just mirror whatever the underlying library used instead of trying to be consistent within the language.

Sam

@bart yes if you write VB code in .net, it all get's compiled into CLR, the intermediate layer, so it is effectively the same You should be able to write the same app in VB or C#

voretaq7

@Zoredache True, but PHP (the core language and PEAR extensions) has become pretty cohesive in the 5.x series

@SmallClanger I've written PHP that calls perl which generates HTML that the PHP then spits back out to the browser (because data file parsing was easier in perl :-x)

Said code is still running in production somewhere too.

Bart Silverstrim

5:47 PM

Silly question...is there a simple way for someone to reverse a .NET program from CLR to another .NET language, so if a teammate wrote something in VB you could edit it in C#? Probably not since references would have to be auto-generated and comments are gone, etc...it would be as messy as any other reverse engineering I suppose.

But the application shouldn't be something where an end tech like me shouldn't see the app and groan, "Oh another <blah> application...

voretaq7

@BartSilverstrim there are CLR decompilers, they work about as well as Java decompilers though (like you said: no comments, crappy variable names, etc.)

program-transformation.org/Transform/DotNetDecompilers has a list of 'em but I haven't tried any

(that site is also cool to browse through if you ever have to reverse-engineer something disgusting :-)

Bart Silverstrim

So the end result now is that VB isn't evil, it's still poor design and implementation by the programmer that makes techs squirm.

Nothing inherently wrong with the language.

Sam

6:07 PM

no, in a lot of peoples view c# is a nicer language to work with, but the end result can be good, or crap, in either language

voretaq7

@BartSilverstrim You can write bad code in any language. Just some make it easier than others :)

WesleyDavid

Sweet! Zimbra 7 is due in a few weeks. Seriously makes me want to ditch Exchange and start a Zimbra hosting service.

Dan

Printer guys, what part of the printer is this:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5686564/2011-01-27_13-06-43_208.jpg

The torn black plastic sheet. the fuser?

packs

transfer belt?

Dan

one of my customers just sent that to me, i had no idea what they were talking about over the phone

voretaq7

6:13 PM

looks like a transfer belt -- can they take a more overview-like picture?

Iain

what model is it ?

voretaq7

(the markings on it seem to say "No touch" but not "Hot!"

Dan

@Iain, stand by..

packs

Judging from the color blue in those clips I'm going to guess xerox

Dan

Its an HP

waiting on the model number

Quick research says they will need an "image transfer kit"

voretaq7

6:15 PM

@Dan if that's the belt (and it probably is) then yup

packs

Curses! HP was my next guess.

Chopper3

If it's HP it's going to be expensive

Microsoft Technet

Today's News
Video: Finding, Testing, and Fixing Applications on Windows 7 with the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.6
Blain Barton, MSFT
http://bit.ly/hdTiLL

Today's News
TechNet Magazine Tip: Use Group Policy to Configure Outlook Junk E-mail Filtering

Outlook 2010 offers a number of options for how you want to handle junk e-mail, letting you further increase security in your environment.
Matt Graven
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg615260.aspx

Dan

CP4525

packs

200-300 I would guess

voretaq7

6:20 PM

@Chopper3 I think Canon is competing with HP for "Most Expensive Parts in a Color Laser Printer" at the Oscars...

packs

Yup, HP sells it direct for $215

Chopper3

which reminds me, I have a HP colour laser printer and went to my local Staples for a new black cartridge - the salesman tried to tell me that you had to install all four cartridges new at once - cheeky sod - when I told him he was talking crap he said "what are you some sort of HP expert?" - I responded with "Well, I just spoke in front of 6,000 at their annual kick off meeting this year, so maybe yeah" :)

Dan

@Chopper3, I think you may have spelled "color" wrong. ;)

Chopper3

@Dan Let me check in my ENGLISH dictionary, that's the language we use right? :)

voretaq7

@Dan "We have to use the British spelling because COL and OR are BASIC keywords" -- roughly paraphrased from a C64 manual

packs

6:24 PM

@Dan Do you remember back when our imperial overlords treated the colonies with the respect they so deserved? Yeah, me neither. Good times.

:)

Chopper3

I'm, rightly, very proud of British English and pronunciation but I absolutely have to admit that 'lieutenant' should start with 'loo' not 'lef' - that's just BS

Chris S

Colour, honour, etc... either spelling is perfectly acceptable around here.

Chopper3

yep, same here

right, I'm off, 'night gents

voretaq7

I don't care how you spell it as long as it's one of the 2 acceptable spellings :P

nite Chopper3

Chris S

Similarly with purple and lavender, unless you're talking to someone under the age of 20, who have never heard of lavender.

pfo

6:31 PM

Hey Chopper - any idea on regarding the capacity things on the netapp?

Dan

Night

Zoredache

Are wegoing to remove @pauska's comment at some point in time. It kinda makes this room a bit more NSFW then it needs to be.

Chris S

@Dan It a transfer belt, usually find them on color lasers. They wear out over time and should be replaced on the same schedule as the fuser. It absolutely can not be touched (the black belt part, the plastic parts are fine to touch) or toner will stick to the fingerprinter and you'll end up with spots on every page. I highly recommend wearing gloves or at least sending someone who really understands how easy they are to destroy by touching them.

voretaq7

@Zoredache can you un-pin, or do we need a mod/SO guy? :)

@ChrisS white cotton gloves are your friend when dealing with laser printer innards

Zypher

unpinned - forgot about it it'll fall off natrually now

Chris S

6:46 PM

@voretaq7 Yeah, I've had a few times where people flip over the toner cartridge, open the little flap, and touch the transfer roller... You can always tell the shape of the finerprint-pages that follow.

@Zypher unless more people keep voting it up! 20 must be a record for SF chat.

Zypher

well THAT i can't control

pfo

@BartSilverstrim - yeah i currently tend to discard stuff that is written in PHP or Perl - i'm not even considering VB and Access.

voretaq7

@ChrisS I'm lucky in that everyone here understands that they need to follow the little picture that says "no touch"

WesleyDavid

I'm bad with that. No touch signs compel me to start finger-poken. "MUST. POKE. CAN'T. RESIST."

Zypher

see i want to pull them apart and see why they say no touch :)

WesleyDavid

6:53 PM

Fortunately in my dealings with large laser printers I stayed away from the toner cartridges... ... ...after destroying a significant amount of clothing with previous exploratory surgeries on them. ;)

voretaq7

@Zypher If you MUST touch the transfer roller remember to smear your fingerprint :-)

WesleyDavid

After a few month-long skin stains and some burns, I learned to respect the laser printers.

Chris S

While I've never touched one myself, I've seen several and know exactly why I shouldn't touch them.. Plus that's my budget, wouldn't want to dump $130+ down the drain because I touched something.

WesleyDavid

Remind me to tell you all about one lady who needed an image of some money for a newsletter she was making, so she scanned dollar bills on a big HP rig.

Fun things happen.

Dan

@ChrisS, thanks.

WesleyDavid

7:01 PM

Turns out counterfeiting is frowned upon in America. "Land of the free" my gluteus maximus!

packs

In my other life, when I was learning to be a theatre electrician, we learned all about the importance of gloves when changing out parts.

Those bulbs will make a helluva bang and send glass everywhere when they heat up.

WesleyDavid

Wow, you did theater work? That's a surprisingly common past life for IT workers in my experience.

Trying to see the correlation.

packs

@WesleyDavid I actually picked my university based on their technical program. You can see how well that turned out.

Dan

One of my old co-workers was in theater lighting as well.

sysadmin1138

I wasn't in lighting, but I was in sound design.

WesleyDavid

7:06 PM

@Dan I'm puzzled. I can't see a direct correlation. @sysadmin1138 My stepfather, a business systems analyst who codes in VB.net, ASP.NET and also does SharePoint development, was a sound engineer for bands and things in the 80s.

I guess it's all engineering at it's core, so attracts the mindset that seems to work well in IT.

packs

@sysadmin1138 After leaving theatre I trickled in that direction with radio broadcasting. That was actually way more interesting.

Chris S

I did theater lighting and sound in high school plays/musicals. Does that count?

packs

@ChrisS Find your own bandwagon, nerd!

voretaq7

I was a bartender :P

WesleyDavid

@voretaq7 What was the drink that you hated making the most?

Chris S

7:08 PM

I even know what DMX512 is. =P

@voretaq7 There's one I'm jealous of.

voretaq7

@WesleyDavid I despise any drink that requires a blender

also drinks that require salt or sugar on the rim annoy me :)

WesleyDavid

@voretaq7 Fair enough about the blender. But the salt and sugar on the rim? Hmmm...

voretaq7

(so I guess Margaritas would be my most reviled drink)

WesleyDavid

So you're more of a whiskey and coke kinda guy? =)

packs

@WesleyDavid Why would you ruin a perfectly good whiskey with coke?

voretaq7

7:10 PM

@WesleyDavid It depends on the bar crowd, but you get whiny bitch who's all "There's not enough salt!" "There's too much salt" "why can't you make my drink right?"

Chris S

@WesleyDavid Tennessee whiskey and Pepsi...

voretaq7

@packs Who said it was GOOD whisky?

@ChrisS I'll see your Pepsi and rase you a Dr. Pepper.

also, bourbon :-)

packs

@voretaq7 True, it could be some JD or something equally vile. Though I don't see the point in drinking bad ones

WesleyDavid

I thought the most hated drink would be the blow job.
Annoying barfly: Can I have a blow job?
Bartender: ಠ_ಠ

Chris S

@voretaq7 with whiskey?? This is madness!

packs

7:11 PM

@voretaq7 Over in security.se chat we had a good long chat about bourbons last week.

I'm all out of Blanton's right now. I need to get some more of that.

voretaq7

@ChrisS One of my hobbies is buying $7 single malts that are just shy of undrinkable and finding stuff to mix them with that makes them taste good

Chris S

@packs Kentucky got it wrong; Tennessee got it right.

packs

@ChrisS You shut your mouth! Sour mash is the devil!

Chris S

@packs it's the burnt white oak barrel. The sour mash helps.

packs

@ChrisS But, on the plus side, you can't call it bourbon if the barrel has been reused. So those things get resold over in Europe and go one to make some epic scotch.

WesleyDavid

7:14 PM

My family usually abhorred alcohol growing up, but my grandfather had a habit of mixing vodka with diet pepsi or just making a screwdriver. To me, vodka and diet Pepsi seems like a sign of the Apocalypse.

Chris S

@packs My favorite brand chips a large number of theirs for use in smoking meats.

packs

One more time :)

voretaq7

the whole "can't reuse the barrel" bit annoys me to no end "-

:-/

packs

Oh, you actually mean chips, as in cut down into chips. Not ships

Chris S

@packs correct, makes them into little chips.

packs

7:16 PM

Is the whiskey flavour strong enough to have a noticeable impact on the meat?

Chris S

@packs Oh yes. Quite noticable. I've smoked a few chickens now, definitely one of my favorite chips, though the oak gives it a very smoky flavor too, which helps. Otherwise apple/hickory is my favorite smoking combination.

packs

Cool, that's good to know. I ended up with an electric smoker last summer, but haven't taken the time to actually do anything with it yet.

Chris S

I've got a propane smoker, the electric ones are really nice for smaller things, especially fish. The propane are better for cornish hen and small chickens (which I prefer).

packs

If I had bought it myself, I would have gone with something more like that. Though it was a gift, so I'm considering it a good trialer.

sysadmin1138

7:32 PM

@packs It was interesting. When I was doing it I ended up having to foley some sound effects, and deal with a reel-to-reel a time or two. Most of the cues were on cassette tape. These days we'd just burn a custom CD, or play .wav/.mp3's straight off of a USB stick.

packs

@sysadmin1138 When I was doing the radio stuff, we were almost exclusively reel-to-reel and DAT. We did have a minidisc system, but rarely used it. In the recording studio we tended towards 8-track 4" reel-to-reel, which was a lot of fun to work with.

sysadmin1138

Yeah, the radio station I poked about in one summer was the only place I've ever seen DAT used for audio.

Heck, my laptop is sophisticated enough I could run whole shows from it now. Ah, the future.

packs

I seem to recall it being heavily used in radio and nowhere else. Just don't pull on the tape. Rethreading is not quite as easy as cassette.

sysadmin1138

Radio and certain enthusiast bootleggers is what I recall.

packs

Wow, that was a long time ago. This afternoon has been a nice trip down memory lane.

Zypher

7:53 PM

any of you guys look at this stuff: coraid.com

sysadmin1138

Can't say as I ever looked at 'em before.

voretaq7

@Zypher looks like iscsi over 10gbit ethernet? I like the sound of it but not familiar with the company

Zypher

not iscsi

they run on L2

call it ATA over Ethernet

interesting concept

voretaq7

very interesting

Zypher

yea ... and uhh the term "how the hell can you sell it for this price" comes up when i look at the quotes they've shown me

like 10x less expensive than traditional sans

just wanted to see if anyone had experience w/ em

trust you guys more than a sales creature :)

sysadmin1138

8:01 PM

The protocol-nerd in me wonders how roboust their network-weirdness handling is.

Zypher

yea .. seems very slick for what it is

although apparently the guy who invented the PIX for cisco started this company ... soo

Zoredache

I have read about coraid before. I have even thought about playing with the Linux implementation of ATA over ethernet.

sysadmin1138

digdigdigdig

voretaq7

I'm wondering how their OS compatibility is - Linux seems solid, there's apparently something for FreeBSD in ports but I'm not sure how well-loved it is...

Zoredache

I didn't think ATA over Ethernet has much, if any, support under Windows, but I haven't read about it in a while.

voretaq7

8:04 PM

@Zoredache my real use for it would be if VMWare supported it - these things are dirt cheap compared to fibre SANs :-)

Zoredache

Does anyone know of a linux tool that will accept a unicode input from a pipe, and give me ANSI output.

sysadmin1138

My WTF-factor is high at this point. Trying to talk my eyebrow out of my hairline.

Zypher

@Zoredache looks like they will sell you HBA's and drivers to make it work

yea

Zoredache

Ah, they have HBAs now, that may work. Last time I read about it, it was all done in software.

Zypher

yea ... i dunno looks like a cool tech ... supposedly you get free multipathing etc because it's layer2 ...

would really like to play with one

sysadmin1138

8:07 PM

"free multipathing" says to me "broadcast based", but I can't tell from here.

Chris S

@Zypher ATAoE isn't novel or popular. FCoE is more robust and better supported by major vendors. iSCSI is more capable and scalable. ATAoE isn't officially supported by many hypervisors either. ATAoE is just like HyperSCSI, a protocol that was an important stepping stone, but little more.

voretaq7

@Zoredache I wonder about those HBAs

sysadmin1138

The fact that the software initiator in linux scheduled to be the replacement in 2.6.38 doesn't support AoE yet suggests its a deep-minority product.

Zypher

@ChrisS yea hypervisors arn't really a concern our production stack doesn't virtualize well

sysadmin1138

Ahah support.coraid.com/documents/AoEr11.txt

Chris S

8:09 PM

@Zypher Good point, wasn't thinking about your particular use case; most SANs these days are for backing hypervisor clusters though.

voretaq7

@sysadmin1138 mmm, tasty datasheet :-)

Zypher

yea ... that's a very back seat thing to us we just use vm for utility stuff like av and monitoring etc

voretaq7

@ChrisS Or playing dumping ground for giant databases :)

Chris S

I know of other ATAoE companies (when my memory feels like working); none of them have been very successful in penetrating the Enterprise market.

Zypher

yea, these guys seem to be doing ok coraid.com/company/customers

fahadsadah

8:10 PM

I'm personally waiting for IPoAC to penetrate the enterprise market at a redundant connectivity solution.

sysadmin1138

@voretaq7 A tasty datasheet with protocol details! Yum.

Chris S

I wonder how many of them bought something for testing or a very minor (perhaps edge case) deployment, but their name is still up there.

When I first learned of ATAoE I thought it would make a great competitor to iSCSI, but the more you think about it, the worse it sounds. I wonder if they grafted something proprietary into their implementation to handle persistent reservations for clustering. The ATA protocol has no concept of shared storage natively.

Zypher

on the sales call I was just on they said USMC bough in for 2PB @ about 1MM

Chris S

Hrm, interesting.. I am curious as to if/how they've solved the shortcomings of ATAoE.

Zypher

dunno - can you enlighten me on the shortcommings .. they of course didn't highlight that stuff :)

sysadmin1138

8:18 PM

MPIO provisions appear to be entirely in the software stack. It does appear to be a unicast/multicast protocol at least.

The lack of VMWare certification makes me suspicious.

voretaq7

@sysadmin1138 I suspect that's related to the lack of clustering/shared storage support

unless they did get around that (didn't see anything to that effect in the spec sheet)

sysadmin1138

Out-of-order arrival is something the storage stack will have to deal with, there is no mechanism in the protocol to handle that the way there is in FC. Also the protocol has no mechanism for flow control that I can tell. Thus, driver maturity will be critical here.

@voretaq7 THey're faking it through 'config strings', a mechanism I haven't been able to conceptualize well enough to evaluate it.

As with iSCSI and FCoE, large MTU support on the ethernet is also critical for performance. Don't want to have the drivers on either side doing more disassemble/reassemble work then they have to.

voretaq7

@sysadmin1138 OK... i think I see, but it doesn't seem anywhere near as mature as what iscsi allows :-/

@sysadmin1138 I assume they'll demand high-end switches like most iscsi vendors do (not much experience with FCoE)

Zoredache

You can play around with it with any equipment, but no using a good switch for production storage would be kinda silly.

sysadmin1138

@voretaq7 FCoE is only just now getting deployments. The biggest pusher of FCoE is (no surprise) Cisco, so that's your price competition right there.

Zoredache

8:32 PM

Of course if you have only one device you need connected a cross-over cable might be all you need.

sysadmin1138

@Zoredache Exactly.

voretaq7

@sysadmin1138 gee paw, why would Cisco want to push [insert technology here]-over-Ethernet? :-)

sysadmin1138

They just want to push Brocade out of business.

voretaq7

@Zoredache true enough - and in my environment when we get the DB up to SAN-scale sizes that's really all I'm going to want...

Zoredache

I vaguely believe I saw an ATA over Ethernet device with a built in switch or 4-6 ports. But I could be miss-remembering.

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