The Comms Room

:D

11:30 AM

The worst thing about winter in the UK is having relatives in Queensland posting photos of their trips to the Gold Coast on facebook all the time :(

heh

mind you its winter there during our summer isn't it?

mind you their winter is probably still nicer than our summer ;-)

indeed

@RobMoir I think they get 6 weeks when it's 'cold'

but they probably feel it more then because they're not used to it...

I love Christmas, but I'd love a BBQ on the beach even more

@RobMoir Keep telling yourself that, Rob. I bet they curse every day they're not in our climate...

in the same way I curse every day I'm not being forced to support OS/2

11:34 AM

@Iain Don't worry the gold coast is tacky and gross

You're not missing much

@RobMoir Exactly that :D

@MarkHenderson I live in Wolverhampton - I'm missing everything

@MarkHenderson You've never seen the North Wirral beaches (even in summer) have you

@Dan You make it sound like liking christmas and liking a BBQ is an XOR operation

@Iain I have been to a beach in Wales in winter. It was grey, the beach was pebble (not sand) and my nipples froze off

And I couldn't understand a word anyone said, although they were allegedly speaking english and not welsh

@MarkHenderson Sorry - lazy typing. I meant I like Christmas as in the snow, and open fires and our Christmas dinner etc etc. But I'd still rather spend that day on the beach :D

@MarkHenderson Don't feel bad. I'm only an hour from the border, and I can't understand anything either

@MarkHenderson where was that ? At least we have sand on our beaches but not much

11:37 AM

@Dan Ive never had a cold christmas, although this year it might only get to 25 (as opposed the usual 35 or so)

@MarkHenderson Pop over to mine if you like.

lifes a beach !

@Iain Dont remember, it was about 6-7 years ago now

If you do come to Australia and visit the whitsundays, don't be fooled by a town called Airlie Beach. There is no beach at Airlie Beach. Imagine how annoyed my wife and I were when we rocked up there for our honeymoon and discovered there was no beach.

i remember going to one of those new year breaks at a butlins with the family and it snowed big time. There were massive snowdrifts on the beach

@Iain Depends on how you classify "cold" and where you are in the country

11:40 AM

that was fun

(sorry for back-tracking a bit)

for me, cold = below 10oC outside

Southern Australia (Melbourne, western Victoria) is cold almost all year, but by cold I mean between 10 and 20 degrees, but northern Australia (cairns, darwin, alice springs) it never really gets below 20, ever, and during the summer hits 40 most days, some days 45

(they close the schools at 42 I think)

ouch

that's too darn hot

@MarkHenderson I was in Oz 2 years ago - I liked Cottesole and Manley beaches Port Douglas beach was OK but the croc warning signs put you off a bit

11:41 AM

Days below 10, there would be very very few, and it would only be in the mornings

or it would be for a whinging pommy like me anyhoo

hey @Jacob

@Iain Port Douglas is nice. Manly is over rated if you ask me, theres so many nicer beaches in Sydney but Manly and Bondi are the most famous

Jacob

@RobMoir Hi.

@MarkHenderson Our relies are in Toowoomba they get a few cold days

But yes, we do have a lot of shit in our water that can kill you, or at least make you hurt

I've been stung by jellyfish more times than I care to remember

@Iain Hey Toowoomba, I used to live about 300km west of there

Yeah it can get cold in Toowoomba, but they also just had massive devastating floods this year

About every 20 years they get wiped out by a huge flood

11:43 AM

I like the cracked website's take on australia: Beautiful place but full of the most weird, deadly and painful ways to die possible

@MarkHenderson next time we're over we'll be going to the whitsundays

@RobMoir If you're sensible and obey the signs, you'll be OK

@Iain Whitsundays is the fucking bomb. Make a note to visit Whitehaven Beach

cracked.com/funny-163-australia

@MarkHenderson our relies missed the floods one moved her cart about 10 mins before the street it was parked on became a torrent

That's whitehaven and it is every bit as awesome as it looks

11:45 AM

I want to ask a question about "Is there a method to convert demos to full version", anyone knows which SE site is the appropriate place to ask that? Hello, BTW.

3. Its primary spoken language is screaming. - very funny ;)

@Gigili What demos? Demos of what?

:-D

And generally, the only way to do that is to purchase it, or get a keygen

Neither of which you will get any help for on the stack exchange network

@MarkHenderson Of a software. you mean, the name of it?

►

11:46 AM

Because we don't support piracy, and we don't do shopping recommendations

2

Haha scared weird little guys ar efunny

user

Or you just change the hostname of a server if you are talking demo to production deployment :P

Did you try Vegemite when you were here?

No

Have you heard of it?

Yep, it's sposes to be like Marmite isn't it

11:49 AM

Well thats the closest comparison

But it's not really

Most people who didnt grow up on it find it hideous

But we go through a lot of it in our household

I'll try it if I remembered - the most disappointing thing about our whole trip was the entirely crap cold fizzy piss you call beer

hahaha

THere's one fruit that really pisses me off though. Honeydew. It has such a nice, beautiful, inviting name that makes you think of sweet, succulent fresh honey and the soft dew on the morning grass. But then you eat it and its fucking gross.

it can't be worse than american "beer" can it?

@Iain Whoah whoah whoah

Just because we serve it cold

Do you remember which beer in particular it was?

11:51 AM

too many to list

VB is shit

Crown Lager is shit

XXXX is shit

Coopers is great

Little Creature in bottles was the best we found as you could let it warm up

actually I've got some decent enough american beer in at the moment - samuel adams

@Iain You sick sick freak. Warm it up? No. Our beer is to be served at or below 2 degrees thanks

nothing wrong with a cold lager on a hot day

I suspect Iain leans towards the "real ale" end of things.

11:52 AM

I don't care if its a hot day or a cold day, if my beer isn't straight from the bottom of the fridge it's going straight back in there

or a cold larger on a cold day.

nice properly laid up bitter is also nice.

bitter shouldn't be chilled and lager shouldn't be warm

or I should say, bitter shouldn't be cold

All beer should be cold. End of story

Anyway I can hear my son wailing from his room

I better go check on him

@MarkHenderson we'd buy 2 schooners each persevere with the 1st while the second warmed up and then things improved

Night all

11:54 AM

cya mark

laters

cold bitter. That's just perverse

yep

What about this @MarkHenderson?

@RobMoir I started drinking iced coffee for preference in the end

11:56 AM

@Gigili I'd look at the comments tbh...I'd say that's utter crapware.

@Gigili - what part of "we don't do piracy here" were you struggling with? Besides that software looks like a rip off. No honour among thieves I guess.

There may be some programmes (FRAPS comes to mind) that lets you enter a serial key once you've bought it to fully unlock it, but in most cases you have to download the full legit version. tl;dr: stuff like that are crap.

I love ale

damn - wasnt scrolled at the bottom

that's still a good comment well made, sir!

Just for @BartSilvestrim tomoconnor.eu/blogish/…

12:04 PM

that's pretty cool @TomOConnor - some parts of apple's enterprise wifi handling is enough to make baby jesus cry

@RobMoir Yarr.

@RobMoir Being thief is much better than accusing people of what they've not done yet.

@tombull89 Very true, painfully true.

And I haven't accused anyone here of anything, @gigli.

@RobMoir What's all this?

@TomOConnor someone wanted help finding warez cracks and apparently found a high horse to climb onto instead when they got called on it, if you see what I mean

scroll back to 11.45 if you care ;-)

anyone want to guess how long crashplan will take to back up my media centre? About 950Gb

Q: How do I tell a user that they are out of their depth?

12:21 PM

May be interesting to see the answers on this one:

1

I came across this question today, in which the asker was clearly out of their depth. What bothers me more than anything is that they said "I have to give a presentation to client that wants such a system", despite clearly not knowing enough about software development to perform such a task. It's...

@RobMoir crashplan is online?

yeah

actually looking at this login speed to the website it might not be online right now... sighs

Rob, do you use SIMS?

crashplan is great. I'd totally reccomend it for home use or for small businesses that have all their infrastructure - mail and so-on i mean - online and just have data locally

@dan no. We use something from a company called Corero

I had to restore ~940GB over the weekend...to a USB drive...that took a while.

@Dan We do, problems with Winter/Spring upgrade?

I bet that did!

12:25 PM

@RobMoir Yep, know them too!

i bet it did @tombull89

@tombull89 Nah - random question. Can SIMS do anything to map printers or anything of that ilk?

@Dan nah, SIMS is just record keeping and behaviour management. We use GPO for printers (and something called Kix to poke them into line.)

Thanks! You mean Kickscripts?

What dose KiX do?

12:27 PM

kixtart.org

Ill take a look

KiXtart 2010 4.62 - yeah, I only knew it as Kix.

I see it around now and again - haven't dabbled myself

Ham hock and pea pie. <3

I try and avoid scripts altogether, but I'll always edge towards VBS when needed

12:30 PM

Crashplan say:

Backup running - 9.3 months remaining.
Remaining 102,125 files (863.4 Gb)
Completed 985 files (440.3 MB @ 299.8Kbps

I have all my documts/music/films/video on a 1TB usb hard disk that gets backed up to a server in the attic. 1TB was full, so got a 3TB of the same model, Seagate Desktop for £150, and was copying all the stuff back to the 3TB.

They really need to offer their hard disk sync service in the uk

@RobMoir Ouch. I was working out on an upload of 512kbps.

@RobMoir 9.3 Months?!

yeah that is lower than what it should be

yeah @TomOConnor this is my home media centre on my home connection

12:32 PM

What's the phrase about never underestimating the bandwidth of a truck full of drives?

@RobMoir Ohh. I thought it was something workrelated. :P

if only I could take it into work and let it run on our 1Gb synchronous connection...

@Dan Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. —Tanenbaum, Andrew S.

@RobMoir There is some pretty nice American beer. You'll just not find it over your way.

@RobMoir Why can't you?

12:33 PM

Isn't there a service in the UK where they will actually let you post your media to them and then they upload it for you?

@tombull89 Amazon will. To s3

@TomOConnor That's it.

aws.amazon.com/importexport

@tombull89 I did my music (160gb) a while ago. I think backing up stuff like this online is a good idea to be honest, because you can spend thousands and thousands of pounds on media and have nothing to show for it if things go wrong locally

don't get me wrong, I have a home NAS box in my "server cupboard" that its all backed up to as well

@TomOConnor that's a good point. Perhaps I should take it in during a quiet period

@RobMoir Presumably it's not a 4U server.. but technically, there's nothing stopping you :P

12:36 PM

@TomOConnor my media server is a mac mini. They're lovely for the job

haha, yeah. All my "stuff" is on at least three different systems/removeable storage. One flaw in the plan is that it's all in my house, so over christmas I want to get a 500GB mini HDD and put the stuff on, keep it in the fireproof safe at work.

@RobMoir Ah, pocketsize.

I don't backup fuck all at home, and I really really should start

@tombull89 If it can wait till Q2 2012, it might be cheaper for HDDs

Mind you, I'm upgrading to 50Mb broadband next month, so I think Virgin give you a lot of free space

12:37 PM

Oh, and good news.. In 2012, i get a junior!

@dan you should if you have a lot of purchased media you care about, or irreplaceable docs...

that is good news tom

@TomOConnor I got the 3TB Seagate External, from Maplins of all places, for £150. And that was cheaper than all my normal online shops.

neato!

@RobMoir I know, I just don't! Though I store a lot of stuff on Dropbox and my webhosting, too. I just dread having to sort through my crap

still not sure if we can hire a replacement for the guy who retired this month yet

that's not so bad then dan, if its on dropbox

12:39 PM

@TomOConnor Giggity

This one. On promotion till saturday (when it probably goes back up to sillyprices.com)

@RobMoir I'm promising I'll sort it when I get my 50Mb

I used to nag my brother about backing up - totally non technical so he is - and of course he never bothered and lost quite a lot of stuff he and his kids had purchased off itunes.

I did a quick totting up of how much I spent on downloaded media from itunes or amazon or whatever, which is when i decided that it was worth paying for crashplan myself.

Which reminds me, I need to book the afternoon off

the 50mb connection is nice though the router they want you to use is made of pure fail

12:41 PM

It can't be any worse than the one I've got for 20Mb

@RobMoir I just threw an extra drive in my machine at work to use Crashplan. Considering I'm backing up things like home videos, it really helped the cost side of things.

Bag of shite it is. I miss the Motorola Surf - that was ace

@Dan I'll star that so you can remember what you said

yeah the thing is @dan if you said that to virgin, they'd pretty much just say "Challenge Accepted". You know that, right?

@RobMoir I know. The worst part is that I avoid calling them about it because it's just such a ballache

12:43 PM

Parents have begun to realise that our 10-year love/hate relationship with AOL UK/TalkTalk is nearing it's end - thank god. 2MB theoretical max, most I've seen on it is 1.3MB/s.

@ScottPack true enough, thats another approach

@dan good choice. Never call virgin support if you value your sanity.

having said that the tivo setup went like a breeze

I couldn't justify TiVo - she tried to sell it me as only £3 a month or whatever, but it changes my internet upgrade from a fiver to nearly a tenner a month extra. Not good to pass the girlfriend test. I pay them enough anyway with V+ HD

I'm so tight that I turn off all my kit when we're done at night, anyway so it's only on for ~4 hours a day so it wouldn't even have chance to find any cool stuff for me

I nearly went with Virgin 50Mbit for R&D purposes at home. I wanted to get a Cisco 2901 and a DOCSIS 3.0 HWIC and figure out if you can use that instead of their Failbox.

I'd like Virgin broadband, but we don't really use the TV enough and don't need the hassle of changing phone provider. I'm pushing for BT Infintiy, my brother wants 02 Broadband.

@tombull89 My parents moved away from PiPeX and onto BT Infinity. Cheeky.

12:46 PM

@TomOConnor I don't think you can even swap between homes. I'm not overly familiar with cable tech, though.

@Dan But you can tell the HWIC to impersonate a different device id, I think.

@tombull89 we're with 02 it works well for us

not sure how I did it but I ended up paying less for 50mb + Large tv + tivo than I was for 20Mb (back when that was the maximum) + Medium TV and no fancy box. I am usually crap at haggling so I can only assume I was channelling the spirit of swmbo, who has been known to make car salesmen cry in her time.

@TomOConnor Potentially, but you'd stand a good chance of being banned. I don't know if they've changed it, but the speed limit was partially imposed by the modem in the past. There was a spate of people hacking them and getting kicked

@Dan Fucking insanity.

I'm with Be* at the moment, and just changed over from the BeBox to a cisco router.. and it's a lot more stable.

12:49 PM

@Iain My brother is with 02 for his phone contract so he says he'd get it cheaper than normal. Thing is, we're not exactly low-demand, we've got two laptops, a desktop, two smartphones, and a Xbox 360. Sometimes two extra laptops and an extra 360 as well.

@TomOConnor Yes and no - it's easy enough for them to see how much people have downloaded. Bit different now they've combined it, but as far as I was concerned the Motorola was the demarcation point. That was there kit and people shouldn't mess with it

@tombull89 you get £5 off for being an existing o2 customer. We get 7Meg download which is 2 more than BT rates our line capable of

@Dan My house, my rules.

@TomOConnor I actually disagree

@Iain Well, that's still better than the 1.3 we get at the moment, haha.

12:52 PM

@Dan on what grounds? Are they paying me rent for the space of having their kit in my building? Are they buggery.

@TomOConnor No - you're paying them to provide you a service. That service comes out of the back of the modem

I think it's a combination of the crappy connection plus we're almost killing our basic Belkin jobby with what we're trying to put through it.

@TomOConnor Although I guess you're just talking about ADSL, which isn't quite the same I suppose

(I'm not saying I WOULDN'T do it, just that I don't have a RIGHT to)

this should be on so serverfault.com/questions/342709/… but does it fail the here code debug test ?

Guys, just to put my oar in. At home i get 100mbps. :)

Got the new Virgin service.

12:55 PM

Go away

Thats what you get for liveing near GCHQ.

I was talking about Cable Broadband, actually.

not ADSL.

@TomOConnor In which case, I stand by my opinion

@Iain - yes. yes it does. vote to close, I think, rather than migrate

I want to terminate DOCSIS on my own device. When they're paying ME for hosting their router, which is, basically what they're doing. then it's a different story.

12:57 PM

@RobMoir I dropped an OT on it

it stupid. At home I can get 100mbps but at work I can only get a 2meg service

and its only just 2.... :@

me too. May leave a comment explaining why too

@TomOConnor But it's not about what you want - it's about your contract between them and you. The modem is a clear demarcation point - no different to most business services. It's not for you to decide how that line is configured

@RobMoir it's gone @sysadmin1138 must have gotten his hammer out

@Dan you have a very valid point. you would start playing with a BT NTE...

12:58 PM

@Dan Then put the modem outside my house.

I don't want their shitty hardware in my house. If it caused a fire, then who'd be responsible for the cost?

@TomOConnor I'll be honest, Tom, I just don't 'get' your opinion.#

@TomOConnor They would if you could prove negligence :)

shame. "don't migrate crap" goes both ways.

@RobMoir shame, I just flagged as OT, not OT belongs on SO.

me too

Another way of thinking about it, Tom, is from an SLA point of view. If your modem is plugged in and they can't talk to it then you can say categorically it's down to them

1:00 PM

@TomOConnor they would be. Its there kit. As long as the T+C's say its there kit.

@RobMoir indeed

@Dan there is only 1 opinion

I flagged it on our site to say it shouldn't have been migrated

@TomOConnor its in there T+C's about the hardware being theres and there resolpinbilty if it goes tits up

@RobMoir ha - so did I

None of Virgin Media Ltd, Virgin Media Entertainment and Virgin Media Payments will be liable to you for:
a. any indirect loss or any loss which is not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of Virgin Media Ltd's, Virgin Media Entertainment's or Virgin Media Payments' negligence

1:07 PM

My point remains. I don't want them hosting their kit in my house, without paying me for it. Anything in my house should be under my control.

But life doesn't work like that

You just assume that their device isn't upto no good. Doesn't mean it isn't.

Get a differnt service then?

@t1nt1n As I said before, I'm with Be* who don't care what I connect to the line.

You can't mess with a Sky Box, either. Or your electricity meter, or gas meter or water meter?

1:08 PM

@Dan You can change the HDD on a Sky+ Box.

@Dan And, yes you can. They say you shouldn't, but you can.

@TomOConnor Yeah, but you can't do "what you like" to it

@TomOConnor You can what? Fiddling with a meter could be a criminal offence

@Dan Which is a better incentive not to. Connecting a DOCSIS modem to a VM line.. They're not going to lock you up.

@TomOConnor No, but they can just kick you off and ban you

That might be inconsequential, or a pain in the arse

I'm not saying it's illegal, or even immoral, just that it's clearly against the contract you agree to (And, IMHO, for good reason). And due to that, you can't kick off if they opt to disconnect you

so if Be dont care why are we haveing the converstation that they do?

@t1nt1n We're talking about VM

1:16 PM

Thought so.

@Iain: Didn't you read the subsequent lines of text?

TylerShads

G'day peoples

@kylebrandt doesn't have a hat? tsktsktsk

Kyle Brandt

You guys draw them or is there a service somwhere?

TylerShads

paint/paint.net/gimp is your friend

Kyle Brandt

Sooo muuch work

1:24 PM

I thought the agreement was no talking to someone who didn't have the hat?

>> serverfault.com/questions/342714/… to SU

Is there a nice explanation of Flag Weight somewhere. I'm sure I've read it before but I can't find it

Found it: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/80170/what-is-flag-weight

TylerShads

@BartSilverstrim you're allowed to warn them/flag them then inform them of the flagging

1:26 PM

@KyleBrandt

Interesting.

@BartSilverstrim no, I read from a prior notification to your's

Man, it's gonna take forever go to from 573 to 749 isn't it :(

@Dan yes

@Dan just thinking the same im only on 240.

1:29 PM

Aw, those make him look so Christmassy.

How have you been @Iain? Seems like it's been awhile.

@Iain I thought i was doing so well

@Dan 511 flags to go for 749 and 521 for 750

@BartSilverstrim I'm good and you ?

someone look at this please. serverfault.com/questions/342716/how-to-know-control-panel

ouch

@Iain: hanging on...I've been worse :-)

1:31 PM

@Dan I have 10 left to go to get back to 750 - my last decline was very painful ~80 flags worth

@Iain Why the decline?

Ooh, you mean someone declined a flag?

Ah right, so a decline isn't just losing one flag! Nasty

@Dan difference of opinion

@Dan flag progression is non linear after 500 but every decline is -10 FW so I went from 750 to 740

which takes 92 flags to fix

FW calculator jsfiddle.net/DHDuH/6

Nice bit of script.

ooh, fun

For the fourth time we got a request to install Print Shop Deluxe 7 on Windows 7.

sigh

1:36 PM

@BartSilverstrim Luverly

They're on version 23.

@BartSilverstrim can't you tell them it just won't work any more?

@BartSilverstrim Did you see tomoconnor.eu/blogish/… seeing as you asked so nicely :D

@tombull89 repeatedly.

Thanks @TomOConnor Sounded like you had fun doing it :-)

@TomOConnor I don't do Macs but I'm favouriting the hell out of that

1:39 PM

@Tom Wibblesplat?

HALP! I need to make a simple web form that would let our library generate temporary user accounts for off-campus patrons to use the computer. I can do it in PowerShell no problem but I have no idea how to 1) Make this into a web form 2) do it in asp.net

If anyone happens to have a bookmark handy of examples of this or something similar, I would love you long time.

@ScottPack Placeholder.

@mdmarra Just service up a different rile in your IdM and use your existing guest account workflow

►

That's funny - SFW

@ScottPack Guest accounts are handled manually. Real account generation is handled with heavy banner integration so we won't be modifying that.

I guess this is the beginning of me creating a guest account workflow haha

1:42 PM

Setting up a Direct Debit to my domain host was the worst decision ever.

Wibblesplat.com is now my wibblesplat.com

Are they creating them with banner, or do you have a seperate tool that just integrates?

@TomOConnor £8 well spent?

I found chlis.net earlier. It's a friends nickname.

@ScottPack New users are entered into banner and there are scheduled jobs each morning that pull that data and create users in out Luminus LDAP and Active Directory.

There isn't a single tool, but one for AD and one for Luminus

@tombull89 4 quid.

It'd feel terrible if i were generating certificates for a site i didn't own.

@mdmarra That smells ugly.

1:44 PM

@TomOConnor pardon £4/yr

@ScottPack Not my design decision :)

This clusterfuck was clusterfucked long before my time

I sit on a few domains that I like.

Domains are like Pokemon. Gotta catch em all.

Chopper did that...he knew that the Wii was going to be called the Wii a few days before official annoucement so he bought up a load of wiisomething domains and then sold them a few days after when their value had increased massively.

It's how he can afford his butler now.

@mdmarra I don't have a lot of room to talk. We're still rolling out and integrating our IdM. At least our old system was outside of Informs

Not that it bothers me, but is there something inherently wrong with my answer here to warrant a downvote:

http://serverfault.com/questions/342715/google-has-cached-query-string-based-dynamic-page-but-how-why/342719#342719

1:47 PM

@Dan Maybe the question mark is there?

It seems like more of a comment asking if that was possible

Make it sound more authoritative

That was my thought too.

Something like "It's possible that someone posted a link with those values, which would explain what you are seeing."

@tombull89 He's got a butler?

@MDMarra Thanks, subtly reworded

@Dan Upvoted.

1:49 PM

Hehe

@tomoconnor: Those ICBM's don't polish themselves in the lair.

@BartSilverstrim They can, but that's a licensed feature.

Ugh. PBS is killing me. Cracking Super Why.

@Dan Generally speaking, anything with a question mark in it, I put in a comment since it seems to be asking for more interaction from the OP

It wasn't about the votes - it's just I consider downs as "wrong / not possible / etc" and ups as "Correct / possible / etc". Maybe I'm wrong

1:49 PM

@TomOConnor Well, not quite, he's got more like a housekeeper, someone that does chores and stuff, but I have a habit of making things a bit bigger than they are.

@tombull89 No wonder you're a hit with the ladies.

@MDMarra That's a good point

@TomOConnor If it were so easy...

@tombull Giggity

@Dan I downvote things that don't answer the question regardless of if they're technically correct or not.

I'm not the one that downvotedd you, but I have on similar questions in the past if I thought it was a comment