The Comms Room

Andrew

00:08

1

Q: How to have multiple computers transparently share same IP?

This is a routing question. I want to set up a block of IPs (1.1.1.0/24) in the following configuration: /(eth1)-- (Main (1.1.1.3-1.1.1.253) Router (1.1.1.1) --(eth0)(Load balancer or Router) (1.1.1.2) \(eth2)...

1

Q: Phishing site uses subdomain that I never registered

I recently received the following message from Google Webmaster Tools: Dear site owner or webmaster of http://gotgenes.com/, [...] Below are one or more example URLs on your site which may be part of a phishing attack: http://repair.gotgenes.com/~elmsa/.your-account.php ...

dns phishing

Mark Henderson

00:29

Never. Never. never. never. use afraid.org as your DNS provider

1

Q: Phishing site uses subdomain that I never registered

I recently received the following message from Google Webmaster Tools: Dear site owner or webmaster of http://gotgenes.com/, [...] Below are one or more example URLs on your site which may be part of a phishing attack: http://repair.gotgenes.com/~elmsa/.your-account.php ...

dns phishing

Seriously, how do people not know this?

We had a client who was using afraid.org as their DNS and they had the same thing happen. They had hundreds of phishing and spam domains coming off their company domain and they had no idea until I saw one by accident one day and told them about it

Andrew

In their feature set - "Let your friends point theirname.yourdomain.com to their own connection", like that's a good idea

Mark Henderson

@Andrew It's like handing assholes a free ride, on a plate

Journeyman Geek

lol

or just use your registar as your DNS... tho I've had good experiences with zonedit

Mark Henderson

@JourneymanGeek We use dnsmadeeasy.com - best decision I ever made

Journeyman Geek

@MarkHenderson: I have a legacy .co.cc subdomain that I have on zoneedit (its the one with the ugly router scraping dynamic DNS script). Everything else is on namescheap and their dns

this is basic stuff tho, so I don't need anything fancy. Thing is with free stuff, I want my money's worth ;p

WesleyDavid

00:47

@MarkHenderson Cats. Always wanting things easy.

Joel E Salas

01:13

@MarkHenderson There's a spelling error on their front page. NO DEAL

Michael Hampton

I'm looking at PowerDNS.com very carefully right now.

Andrew

How quickly do gravatar changes propogate?

Michael Hampton

@Andrew < 1 hour

Mark Henderson

@JoelESalas Where?

Chris S

01:36

@Andrew 10-15 minutes is pretty common

@MichaelHampton I've seriously considered starting DNS Hosting myself... Then I remember that I've got no free time, and wouldn't feel obligated to it until it made money.

Mark Henderson

Bahhhhh:

Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner, added that "consumers are not jumping up and down to get NFC right now." Noting that many Americans still write checks -- a payment method that predates credit cards -- she said, "You wonder how ready consumers are for mobile payments."

You damn Americans, still writing your cheques, ruining banking for the rest of us

NFC is about the only thing that would have got me to go to an iPhone 5

Journeyman Geek

01:53

@MarkHenderson: I'm rather hoping the next transit card refresh here uses NFC - we currently use CEPAS en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEPAS

Chris S

@Zypher While I'm thinking about DNS, I looked over your Blog article about implementing NS1..3.stackexchange.com. That must have be a typo, that in load testing the larger servers maxed out around 2k rps? In local testing my slower/older home server can pull 25k rps. My "600MHz" VPS can do 11k locally and 800+ half way across the country.... So I'm thinking that must be a typo, or something is way wrong somewhere.

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, like MiFARE... Free parking for all the geeks!

Mark Henderson

02:18

@WesleyDavid - my cousins just posted a new photo on FB I think you might like, seeing as how you love them aussies

Take yer pick

Chris S

@MarkHenderson Is "Both" an option?

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS Whatever. I hardly know them, they're not related to me by blood

So if you think you can score them both, go for your life

Chris S

@MarkHenderson Oh no, not score at all...

Maybe with enough Mary Jane... Even then...

Mark Henderson

Mary Jane? Is that a euphamism for roofies?

Andrew

@MarkHenderson "Mary Jane, a slang term for Marijuana, which itself is a loose translation of "Mary Jane" in Spanish"

that just raises more questions.

Mark Henderson

02:24

@Andrew Ah

Chris S

@Andrew What does?

Andrew

who's inhibitions it would be lowering, yours or theirs

this may do away with instagram: kickstarter.com/projects/impossible/…

Chris S

@Andrew Have you seen my picture? I'm not one of those guys that the girls fall all over themselves to talk it up with.

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS Thought you were married anyway :p

So this is all just in theory ;)

@Andrew That is the single most fucking stupid thing I've ever seen in my life

Andrew

@MarkHenderson browse kickstarter some more :)

Chris S

02:31

@MarkHenderson Not cheating if she doesn't find out. =]

Mark Henderson

@Andrew Oh I know kickstarter. Ive funded a few hundred bucks on there. And I've seen some dumb shit. But that's the dumbest.

That's dumber than the wristwatch that has to be paired to your phone to work

And that was pretty dumb

(it also got huge funding. Proof that people are stupid)

Andrew

how about "fancy clay"? kickstarter.com/projects/411683879/…

Mark Henderson

@Andrew Well at least that has a practical appliaction

Oh joy, a customer with a URL that is 2090 characters long. 8 charaters longer than the IIS 7.5 maximum.

Chris S

02:49

@MarkHenderson Tell them they're too stupid to use the Internet.

That should be the official error explanation when that happens.

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS Yeah it's our product :P It embeds breadcrumbs in GET parameters. Never had someone embed so much depth in a page before though

Chris S

Ok, your devs are too stupid to use the Internet.... =]

Scott Pack

@HopelessN00b Right, so according to the pdf the range is 53k-86k.

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS I wrote that piece of offending code

To be fair I wrote it as a quick bandaid slapon workaround a few years ago and it never got un-bandaided

And now as a quick slapon bandaid workaround I upped the max querystring to 8kb. Buttt I did add it to our issue tracker as something to fix with proper breadcumbs (priority: low)

Chris S

lol; well it's way too late to extract foot from mouth; so it must be your fault =]

Priority: Never gonna get fixed

Mark Henderson

02:54

@ChrisS hAHA ITS ok that's why I'm more op than dev these days :p

I was never a brilliant coder. I was OK, but not brilliant.

Chris S

"Ok" is better than most Devs I've met. =/

Mark Henderson

@ChrisS Priority: It's happened just once since the inception of that feature to one client who happens to have a crazy complex system

Scott Pack

:6145987 I was following up on your question about what the |H| meant. First time since you asked that I was actually at a computer.

HopelessN00b

Right, thanks, I was still on some other technical query I was pondering and thought k was for kilobit or kiloByte, which made no sense.

That's a pretty good range for that job description... or seems like it. Especially for the location... that notorious college party town where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a really easy college coed, a massive cache of booze or a huge bag of weed... and usually all three at once. :)

Scott Pack

@HopelessN00b Pretty much yeah. It's really quite a pleasant town to live in. I came here for 2 years of grad school in 2004. :)

WesleyDavid

03:06

@MarkHenderson Darnit, I'm too late.

SHOWMESHOWMESHOWME!!

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Time to become a mod :p

HopelessN00b

I remember when I was going to OSU, making the drive from Columbus to Athens Friday right after class, with a herd of college drinking buddies, intending to stay the whole weekend with no particular plans on where/if we'd sleep.

You know you're a party school when students from other, much larger colleges drive 3 hours just to party with you. :)

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson MmmmMMMmm

Mark Henderson

91

Q: How do I reset the time on my computer without turning it on?

Alright, so today, I did something very stupid: Do an experiment on my computer without backing it up. So I saw that the calander in Windows could only go up to 12/31/2999 (or something like that). I was wondering if I set the time to 11:59:59 PM, if it would crash my computer, thinking that if...

windows-7 time

I think I'm going to add "Change date/time to 1 minute before the year 3000" to our checklist for burning in new servers. Right after I make a checklist for burning in new servers.

I'm going to label it "The Futurama Test"

2

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson GRrrrrrRRRrrrrlsss

That one on the right looked like Nixie Pixel.

Scott Pack

03:14

@HopelessN00b Halloween is calming down, though. Still a huge freaking event, but it's no longer the 72 hours of debauchery that would put the Greeks to shame.

Michael Hampton

Does that score really say 91, and not -91?

Andrew

You can help but laugh at this. — Keltari yesterday

Yes I can help.

it's like the english language is vulnerable to SQL injection so everything after an apostrophe mysteriously disappears

Scott Pack

G'night gents, and @WesleyDavid.

Andrew

►

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Who? Is that a porn star?

HopelessN00b

03:25

@MichaelHampton It is SuperUSer.

@MarkHenderson I think I'm going to do that to one of the ESX hosts my colleague (who pranked me yesterday, the bastid!) is currently burning in as we speak. See if it works to get me some payback.

Andrew

@HopelessN00b the dirty thief or another one?

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson No, you dirty minded feline.

HopelessN00b

@Andrew Actually, a colleague who was (I suppose) making a point about seeing my personal USB drive plugged into my locked laptop all day, and a point to the helldesk kid who left his machine unlocked... (and it stayed unlocked for 2 days somehow, while the kids was out sick - nothing works as expected in our damn domain).

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Sounds like the helldesk kid had something installed he shouldn't have :p

HopelessN00b

(And since we've swapped all this material with each other over the course of the past like 7 years anyway, there wasn't any actual unauthorized data access.)

@MarkHenderson Naw, I checked, and he's started getting the error log events and symptoms of spontaneous GP corruption and random policy weirdness that spring up in batches on client machines in our domain any time it looks like the SAs will get an uninterrupted night's sleep.

Even Tier4 MS support can't say what the unholy hell is going on, except to give us a long list of issues and unsupported configs, and marvel at the fact that this mess has been around since the first release of active directory in NT version... what-the-hell-ever. "Wow, I didn't even know that was possible" coming from a guy who actually writes AD code for a living does not inspire the warm fuzzies.

Michael Hampton

03:37

@HopelessN00b You actually got to speak to a Microsoft developer?!

HopelessN00b

@MichaelHampton Yeah, you throw enough money their way and you get perks like otherwise unavailable support levels/options. Only other time I saw that was in that very large datacenter environment that tried to do provide NaaS ina purely Windows shop. Thousands of servers, hundreds of MSSQL instances, crazy complex AD schema, etc.

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b Do they include the right to have the KB article and hotfix named after you?

HopelessN00b

At that place the design architects actually spent hundreds of hours in face-to-face meetings, with MS AD's programmers and designers to design the product/SaaS/NaaS specifically with AD as the central component. And this was back when MS was still a hip, "exploding in growth" tech company... so after that talking to one on the phone to hear him said basically what I've been saying for a few months, minus the profanity is a kinda "meh" event.

@MichaelHampton No. But, in all honesty, I'm doing wicked amounts of documentation and deep-diving way further into the depths of AD in the hopes of being able to replicate this mess in a virtual environment, study it, write a bunch of books or lecture or whatever about all the "only 3 people in the entire world have ever seen this shit happen, and I'm one of them" stuff we get on a monthly (?) basis... so I can stop actually having to work for a living. Seriously, I think it might work.

If I cna live through the next 18 months.

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Writing tech books gets you almost no money at all

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b Be careful. If you suddenly become the world's foremost Active Directory expert, you might actually have to spend the rest of your life working with it.

Mark Henderson

03:47

codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/coding-horror-the-book.html

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Yeah, I meant more along the lines of what @MichaelHampton said... becoming the world's most famous, foremost AD expert so I can charge obscene hourly rates to give obvious AD advice to foolish companies with more money than sense.

That doesn't seem to count as work, to me.

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b Oh, it will get old after a while.

So you will have to make enough money that you can take a 2-week vacation every month just to recover from the pain of working with AD.

HopelessN00b

Minimum mid-three-figure--an-hour-rates and 50% PTO a year? Yeah, I think I could roll with that, even if it did mean dedicating my professional life solely to AD.

I'd certainly sell my soul for less, so why not sell it for more?

WesleyDavid

@Mark Dagnabbit - now I'm all distracted with Australian grrrrrls.

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Well they're not related to me by blood, so go and pay Ms Palmer a visit and go to town

WesleyDavid

03:58

@MarkHenderson So you don't want me flirting with your blood kin? =[

HopelessN00b

@WesleyDavid They are yummy and distracting, aren't they? I really should putting getting out to Aus and hooking up with a Aussie hottie on the bucket list...

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Depends on your intentions :P

Actually I don't have many un-married female blood relatives

Only two I think and they're a bit too young for you I suspect

Oh my grandma is recently widowed, so I guess she's single. If you're into the mature lady?

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Oh, is marriage considered an impediment to flirting with and general... "entertaining" of desirable members of the opposite sex in your kin? sigh Everything's harder than it needs to be.

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Generally yes. Your lack of respect for other peoples committments concerns me

I shall not be inviting you to a dinner party

(don't be too offended, I don't invite anyone to dinner parties. Because I've never had one. But if I do you'll be on like, the 3rd round of invites)

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Lol, well there's certainly that. I'm not a good person to be around if you wanted talked out of doing something stupid, immoral, treacherous, regrettable, disloyal, obscenely reckless or otherwise "fun."

Michael Hampton

04:05

Hey, wasn't there a picture of two lovely women in here earlier?

HopelessN00b

@MichaelHampton Yeah, I think it got deleted by Mark's anti-lechery scripts when I when to go click on the link.

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Not so much that as I just don't like to leave photos of family members floating around on the internet

Especially for you dirty cunts to paste their faces onto naked bodies

HopelessN00b

Oh, natch I totally get it, in all seriousness.

That said, 'shopping faces onto naked bodies gets old fast. I'm currently trying to derive satisfaction from pasting naked faced onto clothed bodies... but I'm not sure I'm doing it right... it's not working at all.

Michael Hampton

So what the hell do I have to do to create a 100 vote question on SF?

Andrew

@MichaelHampton get us to all vote for it, link please?

HopelessN00b

04:19

Other than going back in time, discovering and and writing a brilliant question/answer about that Linux (or RHEL/Debian?) leap second bug seems to work well.

Michael Hampton

@Andrew Eh, chat's usually only good for 5 or 6 votes.

Shane Madden

@MichaelHampton Something right on the edge of close-worthy that's provocative enough to bring traffic in from reddit.

Michael Hampton

@ShaneMadden I've tried and tried, but I just can't seem to write a stupid question!

Andrew

haha

Shane Madden

1151

Q: Our security auditor is an idiot. How do I give him the information he wants?

A security auditor for our servers has demanded the following within two weeks: A list of current usernames and plain-text passwords for all user accounts on all servers A list of all password changes for the past six months, again in plain-text A list of "every file added to the server from re...

security pci-dss

For instance.

Michael Hampton

04:22

If I ever have a situation come up like that, it'll get written up fast.

Andrew

well that was interesting

-5

Q: In germany after WW2, how easy was have a woman?

Ok, the World War 2 finish and germany lost it. A lot of men died or were arrested. So, if you were a german and single man with normal age soldier (about 18 to 25 years) how are your lucky with woman? You were hunted by woman or was just like pre-war?

ww2 germany

HopelessN00b

I'm honestly still at the how do I write a +10 upvote question of figuring this place out. :( A few close, but no cigars, yet.

Michael Hampton

What I really want to do is something like this.

4432

A: RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

You can't parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can't be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool th...

Shane Madden

My highest-voted question is +6. But I guess with 5 questions, that's not terrible.

HopelessN00b

@Andrew Shittily asked, but I think that's an interesting historical query, honestly. (as a history major, too.)

Michael Hampton

04:25

I have a +11 question, but only because I put a bounty on it. Nobody could figure it out.

HopelessN00b

@MichaelHampton never gonnna happen on SF. Gotta go to the SO, with the looser upvotes and bigg population.

Andrew

"how do I program a computer to find me a perfect match"

HopelessN00b

@MichaelHampton Oh, thanks! I meant to put a bount on my "case of the impossibly fucked up by our domain CA" question.

@Andrew I already did that, actually.

Michael Hampton

I have 8 questions. Half of them are IPv6-related.

HopelessN00b

Here she is..., now I just gotta figure out her name.

Andrew

04:26

@HopelessN00b I think the correct answer is "Ask Asimov"

Michael Hampton

I also answered half of them myself.

Mark Henderson

@Andrew My red bull just came out my nose

Andrew

nobody else here read that?

Mark Henderson

@MichaelHampton Ha. Beat you. 104 total questions (a few self-deleted)

Andrew

SPOILER ALERT FOR ASIMOV

HopelessN00b

04:28

Oh, god dammit... I found my soulmate online and lost the tab in FireFox. Figures.

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson To hug her and pet her and call her George.

Michael Hampton

@MarkHenderson Oh, give me time. I'll think of a few more.

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson And I would be good to them. You can trust me. I'm a cat.

Andrew

guy builds a computer to find his "perfect match", computer falls in love with her and frames/reports him for fraud/murder/whatever.

HopelessN00b

Oh, there she is.

WesleyDavid

04:30

Dammit quickmeme, you communist mother humpers...

HopelessN00b

C/O @ChrisS, actually. So I guess the answer is "ChrisS seems to have programmed a computer to find my perfect match already."

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b I am emailing that to my wife

WesleyDavid

Scrotum? More like scrot-yum!

Tweeted by Smethanie on September 14, 2012 at 3:28 AM

^ There she is again @HopelessN00b

Stack Exchange

But then the Ghost of Subjunctive Past showed up and told me to stay strong on 'if it were'.

Mark Henderson

You just know when the SE bot posts some random gibberish it's going to load an XKCD cartoon in a few moments

HopelessN00b

04:33

@MarkHenderson Oh your wife might appreciate that too? Nice to know there might be more than one "prefect match" out there for me. In theory. If you died. And I ended up on the opposite of the globe. And knew who she was or what she looked like. And... time to stop rambling and making it worse.

WesleyDavid

@HopelessN00b Too late, I'm in line before you. So now you have to plan two people's deaths.

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b whatever if I die I want my wife to move on. It may as well be with a douchebag, that way I'll stay #1 even in death

4

Andrew

ahah!

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Hahaha... that was good . Well played, sir.

Andrew

True Love (short story)

True Love is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the February 1977 issue of American Way magazine and reprinted in the collections The Complete Robot (1982) and Robot Dreams (1986). In his autobiography In Joy Still Felt, the author states that American Way had requested a Valentine's Day story from him for its February 1977 issue, and that he wrote the story to console himself after the departure of his daughter following a visit during the 1976 Thanksgiving weekend. Plot summary Milton Davidson is trying to find his ideal partner. To do this, he prep...

WesleyDavid

04:37

Would you like to date Wesley? Please fill out this application form:
     ☐ Female
     ☐ Australian

HopelessN00b

@WesleyDavid If you think that having to plan only 2 people's deaths is going to discourage me from chasing even hypothetical tail, even a little, we might need to get better acquainted.

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid I know some short fat australian chicks with vaginas so wide you could fit a john deer up there

They technically fit your profile

WesleyDavid

☑ Female
☑ Australian

I'll be open minded.

I might give them a fake number and not come back for a second date, but hey. I tried.

@MarkHenderson Listen, people like what they like and as long as it doesn't involve children or animals, I'm pretty much okay with it. I might not enjoy everything, but whatever. As long as I don't have to worry for my safety around a person and know that they're honest with me, I can probably live with a lot of unusual preferences.

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Ok fair enough. There's something very surreal about seeing your wrist and then not much else

WesleyDavid

I'm actually a rather plain person when it comes to what I enjoy in life. I like cold soda sitting on a porch and holding hands. That can tide me over for a long time. If someone else wants two-fisted double penetration... well... ehhh... okay? I... guess. As long as they're happy.

Mark Henderson

04:42

I had a friend once who used to ask his girlfriend to finger his bumhole. That was probably where I draw the line at weirdness.

@WesleyDavid Two fists I think would be pushing it. Not even a baby is that big :p

WesleyDavid

@MarkHenderson You're a cat - you show it off to everything that moves and you expect someone to not poke it once in a while?

@MarkHenderson I know of this girl named Chloe... (and no, not @Dan's alter ego)

You know what? Working with streaming media is fun. I could do this for a while.

(And no, it's not porn)

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid What about this girl called Chloe?

@WesleyDavid Yeah I enjoyed it too, but then it just sort of maintained itself for the next year until the customer moved hosts

WesleyDavid

<_<
>_>
She... was unique.

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Batshit insane?

WesleyDavid

I can deal with insane, as long as insane doesn't involve stabby-stabby time.

Half of my family has symptoms of some form of mental disored or another

Mark Henderson

04:51

@WesleyDavid I think that all women are capable of stabby-stabby if you push them far enough

I know that my wife would stab me if I ever deliberately hurt our kids

Shane Madden

@WesleyDavid Alter ego? What did I miss?

Andrew

@MichaelHampton that 100-vote question you're looking for - I almost have one: "How do I tell how much time people are spending browsing the internet instead of doing their work?"

Michael Hampton

@Andrew Isn't that a dupe?

Andrew

A thousand comments of "you can't use technology to solve human problems"

Michael Hampton

0

Q: unable to install FrontPage 2002 Server Extensions on 64 bit win server 2003

I am trying to publish website (asp.net 4.0, IIS 5, win server 2003 64 bit) from my machine to server 2003 and getting error 'The Web server does not appear to have FrontPage Server Extensions installed '. I have followed the following steps but somehow can't see FrontPage 2002 Server Extension...

windows-server-2003

Will someone please take this guy out back and shoot him?

Andrew

05:02

haha wikihow.com/Look-Busy-at-Work-Without-Really-Working

Shane Madden

@MichaelHampton That.. um.. no words.

HopelessN00b

@MichaelHampton That guy actually caused me to say "someone hold me" in a room of male IT geeks. shudder Death by shooting is not painful enough.

Michael Hampton

I'm somewhat surprised nobody has seen fit to agree with my close vote.

Mark Henderson

@MichaelHampton Because it's a valid question. A misguided, but valid question

Andrew

the "how much time" thing is stupid. I could load a thousand webpages during lunch, leave them open for a week, and it looks like I read them all at lunch because that's when they show up in the logs.

Mark Henderson

05:07

How to hit the repcap in one day: Answer a question that shows up in the SE MultiCollider DropDowm Magic Unicorn Pixie Dust List

WesleyDavid

@ShaneMadden Oh, nothing much. @Dan Had an at-home sex change.

Michael Hampton

@MarkHenderson Eh, maybe. But I think he's probably one of the last people on earth trying to use FrontPage.

Shane Madden

@WesleyDavid Gotcha.

@MichaelHampton Hopefully.

Journeyman Geek

headesks

Michael Hampton

And that's why I think 'too localized' applies.

Shane Madden

05:11

@MichaelHampton Yup, I threw my vote in to agree with that.

WesleyDavid

@Mark yawn Nighters snookums. head bonk

Mark Henderson

@WesleyDavid Night night

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Still, there kinda needs to be (IMO) a close reason/justification of ~questioner could be bludgeoned to death with the clue-by-four without reaching level of "clueless"

Kinda subbing not constructive on account of all the back and forth and effort I put into the twit... and simple, explicit help/instructions... only to see him still getting it wrong, like he's literally illiterate, or something. Just, UAghhhh.

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Honestly judging by his comments on your answer, the guy is useless

There's no way he's a sysadmin so it could probably be closed on that basis

HopelessN00b

Yeah, not expecting a "user too stupid" close vote option, (can't even make that proposal fly at the office), but I think the very low quality reason that's a mod flag option would be useful to have as close vote reason.

Mark Henderson

05:19

@HopelessN00b VLQ's are generally meant to be followed by an edit to make them quality questions

Michael Hampton

This question has severe formatting or content problems. This question is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.

If you can edit it and save the question, then do.

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Thinking more about, in effect, implicitly attaching the "very low quality" reason in instances like this one to the questioner rather than the question.

And last time I tried to "edit" a person to correct major neural malfunctioning, the courts called it assault with a deadly weapon and manslaughter, so I've learned my lesson. Edit posts, not people.

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Nothing is ever attached to the questioner

You should always base ever decision you make on the question itself, not who asked it

Even if Evan Carroll came and asked a mundane question, you can't downvote the question just because the worlds biggest tool wrote it

Or if Mark Shuttleworth came on and asked a question. Same deal goes then. Vote and act on the question, not the person

HopelessN00b

Oh? Shouldn't close for reasons of ~ "DEMONSTRABLY, objectively way too clueless to ever have any possibility of understanding/using the answer(s) EVER?"

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Yes. Because even if they don't get it, someone else who comes along might get it

What if tomorrow you find yourself being asked to install Frontpage 2003 extensions on a customer site and they paid you $5,000 to just shut the fuck up and get it done.

HopelessN00b

05:28

Well, good to know. Thanks for cluing me in.

Mark Henderson

Then all of a sudden you'll want to know the answer to that guys question.

@HopelessN00b No worries. That's why I'm a mod :)

I don't always take my mod seriously, but when I do I make sure I do it with @HopelessN00b

Vote for me, Election 2013

Actually you can't, modship is 4 lyf, fuckers

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson And hopefully with the non-hopeless n00bs too. :)

Andrew

0

Q: Yum update without updating or asking to update

How do I run yum update but don't update or ask to update, just output the packages available for update and then exit. Thanks.

linux yum

Mark Henderson

@HopelessN00b Honestly I hardly answer questions on the site any more. I don't see much that interests me enough to bother answering

Jeff Ferland

Oh yeah, your cycle is in January

Mark Henderson

05:30

@Andrew shit I think even I know that one

yum list updates

Jeff Ferland

Hmm, maybe I should make a break for 20k and run for mod here too

Mark Henderson

@JeffFerland 20k is not needed. @WesleyDavid lost out by a fingernail in the last election and he had way < 10k rep

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Yup. Even I know that.

Jeff Ferland

@MarkHenderson Spiffy

HopelessN00b

Gah, an upvote every 20 seconds for that? Damn, st00pid ReCAPTHCA crap costing me rep. :/

Mark Henderson

05:35

@HopelessN00b I think cos its an answer that everyone can understand :p

I know almost nothing about *nix but even I know the basic package manager commands

@HopelessN00b I even had time to go to the charmap and insert a bunch of U+200B's in there to get past the minimum post length

Shane Madden

@HopelessN00b I voted to un-delete your answer. Might just force you into getting some rep for it.

HopelessN00b

@MarkHenderson Yeah, that was exactly why I got all excited when I saw it here. Jumped over some rep-whoring goodness, then got the ReCAPTCHA challenge, then the "too few character" error, and you beat me by 8 seconds. D'oh!

@ShaneMadden No worries, it's cool. I deleted that myself because it's an exact duplicate of the answer that just squeaked me out. Adds no value.

Jeff Ferland

@HopelessN00b Your top tags are spam and email-spam. GTFO :P

It's his fault my mailbox is full!

HopelessN00b

Not that I care about the rep much anyway. I'll hit 10k soon and it won't matter after that... just like analyzing and bitching about the game theory in the system.

@JeffFerland Yeah, and I'm sorry about that, really, but the money's just way too good.

Shane Madden

@HopelessN00b I think 20k gets some neat stuff too. If I remember right.. it's been a while.

HopelessN00b

05:39

@JeffFerland Someone should propose a tag merge on that, seriously. I hadn't noticed.

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b The stuff you get at 10K is boooorrrriiinnnggg

HopelessN00b

@ShaneMadden Right, there's some more powerful versions of stuff you already have, I have think. Didn't jump out at me as "cool, I should work on getting that!"

Mark Henderson

2 more +1's and I'll repcap for the first time in months

Michael Hampton

Just a reminder if you want that elusive Legendary badge. You need only gain +200 rep for the day by any means. You do not have to "cap".

Shane Madden

I'm two rep caps from the Epic badge.

Jeff Ferland

05:41

@MichaelHampton any means?

►

HopelessN00b

@JeffFerland Oh, screw the merge. 12 posts with the stupid duplicate? Time to retag again.

Shane Madden

Legendary is a long way off.

Mark Henderson

@MichaelHampton At this rate it will take me 10 years to get legendary

Michael Hampton

@JeffFerland Well, maybe not by that means.

131

A: List of all badges with full descriptions

Regular badges A-L Jump to M-Z Altruist bronze; awarded once; same family as Benefactor, Investor, Promoter (all bronze) Award a bounty on another user's question Awarding means manually selecting a bounty winner; letting the system auto-award half the bounty does not count Not awarded on p...

Andrew

@MichaelHampton thought of something else for your reddit-bait - "our users/managers/executives are idiots, how do we educate them?"

Michael Hampton

05:44

@Andrew I think that would be off-topic, sadly.

HopelessN00b

06:03

Definitely. The whole first page of top voted questions... all closed, all off topic theses days, with only a couple exceptions.

Michael Hampton

Which is too bad. I kind of wish I'd been around here in those very early days.

Mark Henderson

3.. more... rep.. to... repcap...

Michael Hampton

You're welcome.

HopelessN00b

You sure? Honestly, a lot of those massive upvoted questions/answers, all from the old days I'd consider embarrassing to have associated with me, or at least guilty about.

Really, thousands of rep for a rambling, general, so-basic-it-makes-you-look-like-a-dumbass-question? Ashamed and guilty.

Almost ten thousand rep for ~"herpderp, you should have a plan for doing and backups and testing that they work!" Guilty and baffled.

Michael Hampton

Well, keep in mind that lots of those questions (and upvotes!) came from people who moved over from SO when SF was a beta.

Andrew

06:13

so a silly question: does RDP include a "look over shoulder without people noticing" mode, or is that what VNC is for?

Michael Hampton

@Andrew yes, RDP can do that. @HopelessN00b can fill you in on the details.

HopelessN00b

Must make it feel difficult or not worthwhile or a chore to "bother" helping someone now for 30 rep, I'd think. And anything's more beneficial to personal and/or professional growth if you have to work for it. That's infinitely more valuable than the value of the int beside your name on a website, and probably the only reason I came here and spend so much time on here - because it help ME develop skills I'm a little deficient on at the moment. Great if others benefit...

Michael Hampton

I've learned a lot being here and getting to, uh, 9697 rep.

HopelessN00b

too, but to be really introspective about it, me being here is completely selfish and self-motivated.

Excatly. And in two months? Shit, people pay tens of thousands for boot camps and crash courses on the stuff you learn for free participating here.

Mark Henderson

@Andrew Yeah, that's what the shadow command is for

But you need to configure your server to shadow silently before they log on, else it will ask them for permission first

Andrew

06:16

@MarkHenderson does that work for desktop windows?

Michael Hampton

Hmmm. That gives me a money making idea.

Andrew

or just Server?

Mark Henderson

@Andrew Nope just server

HopelessN00b

@Andrew From a TS/RDP "server" (Windows box with those TS/RD "roles" installed), there are options to monitor RDP sessions throughout the domain, seize control of RDP sessions and all that, once you set up the permissions and all that to do so, yes.

Andrew

ahh.

HopelessN00b

06:17

I say domain, but I guess it would work in a local auth/workgroup setting too.

IIRC, with a little scripty magic, you can even make it do cool things like send yourself a remote assistance request on from someone else's machine, so you can have a shared-control interactive session, like VNC too.

Andrew

ah, we have that all turned off in our machine images.

HopelessN00b

Definitely a really powerful role these days. It was crazy basic and lacking functionality when it came out in 2000 Server SP something and through 2003, but in 2008, 2008 R2 and 2012, you can literally set it up so users can remotely control, slave, interact with users or even covertly monitor the screen of ANY domain-joined Windows box.

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b Damn, you're making Windows sound attractive.

HopelessN00b

Really makes me wish getting to set it up in suck a slick, I-are-GOD-of-the-domain,-tremble-before-me-and-bow-in-fear-puny-mortals fashion was in the scope of the project I'm on.

@MichaelHampton Hey, with Server Core now for lightweight, CLI-only installs, rock solid stability and this kind of innate manageability functionality, I really thing Windows server might start displacing a lot of Linux.

Michael Hampton

Do it anyway?

HopelessN00b

06:23

Yeah, probably will.

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b MSDN only gave me 5 keys for Server 2012. This is slightly annoying. I got a MAK for 2008 and 2008 R2.

HopelessN00b

I'm honestly waiting on bated breath to see how the industry reacts, because I'm thinking Server 2012 might be the "tipping point" for MS OSes being taken as serious competitors to Linux in the server and HA/massive deployment/low footprint environments that currently have 10's of thousands of Linux boxes.

Andrew

interesting. so the machine has to be domain joined, what else?

HopelessN00b

@MichaelHampton Yeah, well there's that. They'll still bleed you dry on licensing costs, but Server 2012 might really be worth the price tag, for a pleasant surprise.

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b I typed ls into PowerShell and it did something useful. It also responded properly to cat. You might be right about Windows displacing Linux...

Now if they'd only do something about that silly drive letter abstraction...

Shane Madden

06:27

@HopelessN00b Problem with that is that Server Core isn't new, and hasn't seen a lot of uptake.. MS has trained Windows admins away from the command line for a long, long time.

HopelessN00b

@Andrew For the TS/RD stuff? Don't quote me on that, I'm not sure. Just for enabling all the nifty remote control, monitoring, slaving, auto-permissions things that I was drooling and rambling about earlier. Those won't be use ful things to have a 3 machine workgroup, especially for how much it takes to set up that slick.

Andrew

we have.... an unknown number of computers. Presumably our finance department know.

Michael Hampton

@Andrew You're going to run into a problem there, because the beancounters think you have more computers than are actually present in the building.

HopelessN00b

Absolutely. Makes Windows admins and MS technology specialists like me who say "CLI, sweet!!!" instead of "CLI... what?" a rarer breed. Which I also see as advantageous. For me.

But honestly, it'll start changed in ~5 years, I'd say. MS has been pushing Powershell really hard for so long for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

Andrew

@MichaelHampton we get paid by the number of computers we're supporting.

Michael Hampton

06:30

@Andrew Then just pray they don't decide to do an audit.

Andrew

Licensing? what is that?

we know how many Win7 licenses we have... no idea about XP or Office though.

HopelessN00b

@Andrew Um, for finance computers? My serious advice to you is to avoid those like they'll cut of your penis, really. Especially with this covert remote monitoring and even control functionality... you probably don't want to be faced with the temptation of "I could get all the bank account auths, wire a numbered account $90 million and live in the Caymans for the rest of my life"

Andrew

@HopelessN00b it's more "can you see what's on my screen?" "no" "I thought you could..." and trying to explain stuff to noobs

@HopelessN00b I work at a not-for-profit, nobody is motivated by greed.

HopelessN00b

I actually told a CEO/CFO I wasn't getting anywhere near the finance or accounting departments until they started forcing at least basic security practices on their bean counters for that very reason. I know the comptroller's account creds password, because it's on his monitor and 4 characters long, and could embezzle 9 figures from you by the end of the week with all the stuff like that. Fix your shit before I get anywhere near it.

Andrew

the incompetent & greedy types are in the public service.

2

HopelessN00b

06:35

@Andrew Oh, I know, just saying the temptation when you're sitting there staring a <kbd>$</kbd> and all those 0's, and the access codes to move it.... painful and almost irresistible. Even in a not for profit, for a daily operating budget, you could find yourself staring at the temptation of having the ability to make 10 grand in 5 minutes. Painful, painful, painful.

Michael Hampton

Effing markdown. [tag:$]

Shane Madden

@HopelessN00b They still don't seem serious about it. I shouldn't be running into technet articles with 500-line VB junk for the example code. I doubt adoption rates change much while they still provide all of the functionality in GUIs.

Andrew

if I was stealing at work it would would be for the organisation, not from them.

Shane Madden

Which is fine for them, don't get me wrong.. I just don't see a radical change on the horizon for the Windows Server world.

HopelessN00b

I always have to keep mutter to my self "you'd never even make it to the airport, you'd never ever make it to the airport... fuck I wish I was dumber so I would try running off with this, but I'd never make it to the airport..."

@Andrew Easy to say, harder or more painful to do when faced with the chance. Like the man said, I can resist anything but temptation

Andrew

06:38

@HopelessN00b I think that was Rush

HopelessN00b

No, it was Oscar Wilde.

@ShaneMadden We shall see. Like I said, I'm waiting on bated breath to see if this is the tipping point I think (and really, really hope) it could be.

I can resist anything but temptation.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act I

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/1680.html

Andrew

@HopelessN00b tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PopculturalOsmosisFailure

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b Drive out of the country. Then catch a flight from there.

HopelessN00b

@MichaelHampton Oh, don't encourage me. Can't move that much money suddenly and unexpectedly without God and everyone launching a full scale panicked investigation into who moved it within 5 minutes, with the national wide manhunt beginning a couple minutes later.

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b Seriously, don't you know about Scheduled Tasks?!

HopelessN00b

06:43

You'd have bankers all over the world lighting up the PBX 7 seconds after the flashing red and yellow, automated alert hit their screens.

Michael Hampton

Doesn't matter if you're already halfway to Fiji when it actually occurs.

HopelessN00b

@MichaelHampton Pfft. after vetting the accountant or even while vetting the accountant, IT-god/admin is the very next stop. And they're never friendly or delicate about it, nor do they drag their feet.

@MichaelHampton GAH! LALALALALALALALA IAMNOTLISTENING LALALALALALALALALALAL

:p

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b Hey, it happened from the comptroller's computer, with his password. Who's going to think of you?

Andrew

@HopelessN00b you mean you're not logging their passwords & duping their RFID passes?

and wearing cardboard masks of their face?

HopelessN00b

@MichaelHampton Trust me, I've been around when some accountant fat-fingered a sizable transfer to the wrong account at an expected time, and they were still all over the IT department in less than 5 minutes. Something like that happened, everyone in management and security know almost instantaneously, and if they don't an answer to why "3 seconds ago," next call is to the cops while stopping/reversing the transfers.

Michael Hampton

06:52

@HopelessN00b In that case, it has to somehow appear perfectly normal and routine and unsurprising. You can manage this if you think about it long enough.

HopelessN00b

@Andrew If it was necessary, sure. But when the guy managing like a quarter billion dollars in cash/cash flow literally has his 4 letter password and all the auth codes and routing numbers on Post-It Notes! on his monitor..... I mean, why bother why anything more sophisticated than.... your memory?

@MichaelHampton Right, but that's exactly why I don't want to think about it. I'm likely to start thinking it's possibly a good idea and talk my dumbass into actually trying it. :p

Andrew

@MichaelHampton like creating a fake business that the business is purchasing services from with a 50-year contract?

Michael Hampton

@HopelessN00b Oh, don't actually try it. I would never recommend something like that. But knowing how will make you a better admin.

HopelessN00b

From a security-standpoint, sure. But in this case it's not needed, and dangerous to ponder on.

Proper response is:

I'm not getting within eyeshot of that department until you at least fix the fundamental, basic shit wrong, like having a contractor walk in to an office on his 3rd day and see all the passwords he'd need to wire 9 figures to himself. FIX. YOUR. SHIT. **NOW** .

Andrew

@HopelessN00b call a PCI auditor.

HopelessN00b

06:58

No PCI audits, this is not a vendor that takes credit card info for end-consumer sales.

Michael Hampton

Oh, there's probably SOME kind of security standard that applies to this.

Transcript for