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7:23 AM

Stack Overflow Blog: Helping The Experts Get Answers

Posted by Jeff Atwood on April 5th, 2011

In A Recipe to Promote your Site, Robert provided a great set of guidelines for organically growing your Q&A community. Buried within was this observation:

Reach the right kind of publications and bloggers. Make sure that the key experts in every field know about the site; not just the “Martha Stewart” big names; we want to talk to the people who go to these conferences.

But how do you reach writers, bloggers, and other notable experts in the field?

Help them get answers to their questions, too! …

Rory Alsop

7:57 AM

@Avid - re: security.stackexchange.com/questions/2486/…, did you recreate spam user wildebeest? If not I can just remove this spammer entirely.

Rory Alsop

10:36 AM

actually - they signed up yesterday, only have one post, and it is spam - reckon that deserves a delete

...destroyed

Scott Pack

11:27 AM

@CtrlDot Wow, that's a first :)

Morning gents, and Iszi.

Iszi

11:59 AM

Ooog...

Mandated consciousness at this hour should be illegal.

Scott Pack

12:39 PM

That's what you get for staying out all night drinking.

Iszi

@ScottPack Negative. Stayed up all night watching Merlin and reading Real Life Comic.

Regardless, I'm never in a good mood when it comes to waking up in the morning.

RC SR-71 - I want one! youtube.com/watch_popup?v=SDbQ5xvsrIU

Hm.

Looks like protected tweets can't be OneBoxed?

Scott Pack

Well, you can't even view a protected tweet unless the twit has authorized your account, right?

I really like RLC.

Iszi

I've been digging through the archives the past couple weeks. Getting closer to real-time now. I think I'm in November of 2008.

I've tweeted some of my favorites.

I started following them years ago, then lost track for quite awhile. Still, I can't believe the comic is almost 12 years old!

I think the only webcomic I've ever followed that's older (and is probably next on my list, for archive-diving) is UserFriendly.

Scott Pack

I follow both, but I definitely enjoyed UF a lot more back around 2000-2004

And since he's just been posting reruns for the past couple of years...

Iszi

@ScottPack ?

Seriously?

Scott Pack

12:55 PM

Yeah, something happened in his life and he decided to take a "short hiatus" and ran reruns. About 9 months later he did a short story arc about A.J. becoming an army medic, going to the mountains, getting injured and coming back. Then restarted the reruns.

Iszi

@ScottPack Well, I hope the reruns aren't actually included in the archives. That would get annoying.

Scott Pack

They probably are

Every day the rss feed gets updated with them.

Iszi

Is it just me, or does the UF archive only list years up to '06?

Scott Pack

Looks that way.

However, if you go to Dec 31 2006, and hit "next comic" it will advance.

Iszi

@ScottPack Yeah, noticed that. That can't be when he started doing re-runs, is it?

Scott Pack

1:06 PM

I'm fairly positive it was more recent than that.

Although, I'm thinking late 2009

User Friendly

User Friendly is a daily webcomic about the staff of a small, fictional internet service provider, Columbia Internet. The strip's humor tends to be centered around technology jokes and geek humour. Drawn and authored by J. D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad", it has been running since November 17, 1997. Frazer is one of the few, and first, webcomic creators successful enough to make a living as an artist. It is remarkable for having been updated daily from when it started in 1997 until June 2009 (most webcomics are updated only a few times a week), and for having all previous strips online in ...

The dates are given around paragraph 6.

Iszi

Hah! Love the comic they used for the article image there.

Wow. I'm kinda disappointed to see how the schedule dropped back. Sounds like Illiad hit a huge speed bump in his life.

Scott Pack

So far as I know he never really said what it was either, though I don't follow the blog part.

I appreciate that the guy who does 'Alien Loves Predator' was real frank and up front about what was going on in his life that caused the comic to fade.

Iszi

@ScottPack Neither do I. And now, I kinda wish I had. When someone creates something that you follow regularly, that person does in their own little way become a part of your life.

Scott Pack

Neither of them owe us anything, but it helped me put the phrase "hiatus" in perspective.

Iszi

@ScottPack Never followed that one, but I know of other webcomic authors who have done the same. Greg usually does well to keep his readers in the loop, and Thunt (Goblins Comic) has shared a good bit of his life in the blog portion of his comic also.

Scott Pack

1:17 PM

Greg's done a great job of keeping the comic going no matter what's happened in his life.

Iszi

@ScottPack Or, at least providing amusing fillers with good (if sometimes cop-out-ish) explanations and then guest strips.

Scott Pack

Right. And such instances have been fairly short from what I recall.

Iszi

Generally, hiatuses without any comic at all have been fairly short. He'll run guest strips for a whole week or two sometimes though.

Scott Pack

1:38 PM

Sweet! Empty calendar. Looks like I'll be spending some quality time digging around in the decomm room.

Iszi

2:26 PM

@ScottPack Do you have a lot of virtualization in your environment?

Rory Alsop

2:37 PM

afternoon @Scott and @Iszi

@Iszi - my comic list: Questionable Content, Girl Genius, FreakAngel, Softwe World, Basic Instructions, Cyanide and Happiness, WFHIT, Looking for Group, Menage a 3, Odd Fish, SMBC, Sinfest, Dr McNinja, Perry Bible Fellowship, Unspeakable Vault (of Doom), Romantically Apocalyptic, Wondermark and xkcd

Iszi

@RoryAlsop WFHIT?

@RoryAlsop The only ones I've followed on there are LFG and XKCD. I think I've heard of Questionable Content, but have never been exposed to the rest. Also, SMBC?

@RoryAlsop Howdy-too, by the way.

Rory Alsop

saturday morning breakfast cereal

freakangel is pretty awesome if you start at the very start. once you catch up I think it comes out too slowly

other alternative is buy the gorgeous books (he bundles them up regularly and publishes them)

nice merchandise too

Iszi

What about WFHIT? What's that?

Rory Alsop

oh - it's gone! it was what fresh hell is this

Iszi

If you like Looking For Group, I think you'll like Goblins goblinscomic.com

Rory Alsop

2:49 PM

was quite funny

@Iszi Will check that out this eve

Iszi

@RoryAlsop Sounds like an awesome name for a comic!

Rory Alsop

girl genius online is a good story to go through from the beginning too. Tend to see the steampunk costumes from it at cosplay cons

Unspeakable Vault is a very funny take on Cthulhu etc

Scott Pack

4:31 PM

@Iszi We do, why do you ask?

My comic feed list

Abstruse Goose, Alien Loves Predator, Awesomepedia!!, Basic Instructions, Ctrl+Alt+Del, Daisy Owl, Darths & Droids, Dilbert, DOGHOUSE, Dueling Analogs, Explosm.net, Girls With Slingshots, If You See Something, Irregular Webcomic!, Order of the Stick, Penny Arcade, PHD Comics, PvP, QC RSS, Real Life Comics, Rosscott, Inc., Sinfest, Snowflakes, Something Positive, User Friendly, WTTF, Wulffmorgenthaler, xkcd, Yehuda Moon

@RoryAlsop I used to follow PBF and Wondermark but left them. PBF because they didn't have an RSS feed when I switched to that, and Wondermark because, well, they took too long to read :)

Rory Alsop

5:18 PM

@ScottPack good list. Grabbing now:-)

Scott Pack

I think I need to clean it up. Some of those have faded, and then ones like UF just aren't worth it anymore.

It I was smart, I would dump some of them. It's starting to take a long time to go through in the morning.

Rory Alsop

I tend to skip through them in the evenings or at weekends, as most clients would get upset if I did it at work

Scott Pack

I do it while I'm eating breakfast.

Rory Alsop

ahhhh - breakfast. I remember that:-) Mine currently is at the client's canteen, which is okay actually

Scott Pack

While the old lady is taking her shower and such I take the little one down and we eat. Works out pretty well.

I smell an echo

Rory Alsop

5:29 PM

ooo - the connection here keeps popping up and dropping

easily fixed

Iszi

@ScottPack Holy crap, you guys read a lot of comics!

Scott Pack

My daily comic list was the entire reason I switched to using google reader.

Rory Alsop

'swhat happens when you get old @Iszi

Iszi

@ScottPack You've got almost all of my favorites in there. Darths & Droids, Ctrl+Alt+Del, User Friendly, Real Life, xkcd. Heard of some of the others, but a lot of them are new on me.

Rory Alsop

@ScottPack Most of the entries on my google reader are security blogs

Iszi

5:39 PM

I should probably try using an RSS reader instead of "Morning Coffee".

Scott Pack

@RoryAlsop I've got those in there as well.

Rory Alsop

:=)

@Iszi - it does make life a lot easier

Scott Pack

Indeed.

Throw in the greasmonkey script "BetterGReader" and bam!

Scroll down scanning through titles and hit "mark all as read" when none of them look interesting

Rory Alsop

Will have to look at BetterGReader. I currently just have a reader pane in my iGoogle

same technique though

Iszi

@ScottPack I was curious as to how your security policies compare between VMs and physical machines - particularly looking at "clone" VMs.

There's a debate in the office as to whether a clone VM (essentially, a spare VM copied from an existing one and only kept around as a backup system, as I understand it) should be treated equivalent to a physical backup tape or a full system.

Rory Alsop

5:53 PM

Basically because it could be used as a full system by you, or by an attacker

Iszi

@RoryAlsop "as one" = full system?

There's still some details of the implementation I'm a little fuzzy on, and I'm going to have one of our SAs walk me through it later. But, essentially, if what they show me is that it takes little more than a button push for the system to go live, I'm very inclined to treat it as a complete box.

Rory Alsop

6:16 PM

@Iszi Yes

Scott Pack

6:38 PM

@Iszi We tend not to use full snapshots or clones for that purpose, but I would tend to agree with you.

Depending on your virtualization environment, it EASILY could be a push-button to restart the clone.

Now, the fun part would be what happens w.r.t. MAC addrs and ips.

Iszi

@ScottPack Yeah. That's probably one of the reasons why the SAs really don't want to bring the system up for a vulnerability scan.

Rory Alsop

7:29 PM

@Iszi - my view on this is that because any virtualisation of a server or environment acts like the real one, you need to at least use the same controls you would in the real world, PLUS extra controls specific to the hypervisor

In addition you need to watch out for the fact that your asset register may be volatile and dynamic, which means licencing could be fun

Scott Pack

@RoryAlsop points to his nose

Rory Alsop

And you suddenly get weird segregation of duties issues - in the real world you may have different teams supporting front office, back office, apps etc but in a virtual environment these may be the same team

(must stop talking like an auditor :-)

Iszi

@RoryAlsop I don't disagree at all. The point of contention seems to be when we have to decide how certain virtual elements should be related to real-world counterparts. It seems it all comes down to the implementation details. Depending on how it is stored and configured, a "clone" could be equivalent to either an image on tape or backup server, or a full and complete system on its own.

Rory Alsop

I guess the argument back to them is: a tape could give an attacker data from a fixed point in time, but a VM could give live access as if it were the original server

very different risk profile

Iszi

@RoryAlsop I don't think our concern is so much with "as if it were the original server" as it is "as if it is a full, live system".

Analogy: Giving someone a tape backup is like giving them the trunk (boot) key to your car. Giving them a VM is like giving them the keys to the ignition.

Rory Alsop

7:41 PM

I like that one

Iszi

@RoryAlsop Thanks

Rory Alsop

especially with the translation for us brits :-)

Iszi

@RoryAlsop You're welcome. ;-)

I am indeed gradually learning to adjust myself to a more international audience.

Rory Alsop

LOL

Scott Pack

7:56 PM

It is always good to internalise the linguistics differences between audiences.

Rory Alsop

@ScottPack that sounds...astonishingly deep and meaningful... :-)

(in my head I said huh, what?)

geddit

I'm busy trawling through abstruse goose from the start - pretty good stuff

Scott Pack

I know sometimes you guys use a 'z' and sometimes not. Is that a time to use one?

Yeah, he's pretty clever. He also inserts title text much like xkcd

Rory Alsop

no such thing as a gooze

Scott Pack

I'm thinking virtualise and the like.

Seeing 'analyse' is always one of my favourites.

Rory Alsop

We tend to not use z - 25 seems like a much bettter number of letters. It even divides into 100 correctly

although Microsoft is slowly breaking down barriers by trying to force everyone to use z

bloody spellcheckers

Scott Pack

8:00 PM

I try to avoid use of the letter 'Q'. Except when using the word queueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueueue.

Then I see no way around it.

Rory Alsop

hahahahaha - still smiling at that one

Scott Pack

In other news, why does Windows 7 put the "Eject" and "Format" options right next to each other on the context menu?

Rory Alsop

@ScottPack that sounds like a post-incident question

Scott Pack

Tell me about it.

Rory Alsop

@ScottPack izzat like cow orkers

Scott Pack

8:08 PM

?

Rory Alsop

abou tit

cow orkers

(dilbert-ism)

Scott Pack

Now you're just being silly.

Rory Alsop

8:30 PM

@ScottPack catb.org/jargon/html/C/cow-orker.html

Iszi

8:40 PM

Urgh. If you ever want to get out of work on time on a regular basis, do not include anyone with "Manager" in their title in your carpool.

Scott Pack

I just don't carpool.

That way I can drive home for lunch.

Iszi

4 of us live ~1 hour away from work, and only ~15 minutes away from each other.

Rory Alsop

the first time anyone from my old office wanted a lift I'd corner at high g. They wouldn't want back in my car - then I could drive normally. They used to want me to take huge detours to drop them off (they were all over 16 miles away from me, in the wrong direction)

Iszi

So, it's kinda hard not to carpool. Especially with gas above $3.5/gal.

We've got a supermarket parking lot that's on the way to work for all of us, which is where we park the cars.

Finally. Time to go.

Rory Alsop

ttfn @iszi

Scott Pack

8:59 PM

ta

Athens is a rural enough area that carpooling would be rather impractical.

There are a few IT guys that all live within 4-5 blocks of each other, but our schedules are different enough that it would suck.

Rory Alsop

yeah - that's the other issue. These days more and more places work flexible time/location so you just can't plan for a specific car pool

Scott Pack

10:46 PM

Our IT is spread across two buildings. Two of those guys are in the other building (which is closer) and walk to work. The other guy is my boss who has an....interesting schedule because of meetings.

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