The Whiteboard

I have uncontrollable rage

2

user41796

@maple_shaft whatever we did, we're extremely, extremely sorry. Please don't ban us.

I took this damn job without realizing that they don't even let developers install tools and software on their workstations

user41796

6:49 PM

And we tried to get Shog to give us more close votes so we can moderate better, but he wasn't persuaded

I have to wait

a week

user55340

@maple_shaft unfortunately, thats not too uncommon.

so that a support tech

manually installs

the fucking JDK on my workstation

user55340

I had to fight tooth and nail to get admin access on my machine at Employer^^.

user41796

We have to get a special override so we can have admin permissions

6:50 PM

I tried and they denied me

they denied me

then they pinged me for installing software in my Users directory

and removed it all

user55340

(They decided to give it to devs once one guy put in requests for 30 pieces of software and libraries and got them approved by management as necessary)

@GlenH7 you are so bad

user41796

@maple_shaft You got anything better to do in the meantime? :-D

@MichaelT Other groups tried that too and they just ended up increasing the SLA to 45 days

user55340

@maple_shaft Ahh, see, then you give that as a status report to project management and business...

6:52 PM

@GlenH7 I don't want to be fired and prosecuted

user55340

"I am sorry, I won't be able to work on your project for at least 9 business weeks because the SLA for the software that I need to be able to develop it has an SLA of 45 days..."

user41796

"So, let's see what the opportunity cost is on 45 days worth of delay ...."

user41796

@maple_shaft All these constraints people keep applying to my solutions.... What's up with that?!?

user55340

If it is important enough, then the business will say "we are willing to take the risk that this developer will mess up his machine if it means getting the software with one less quarter of delay."

I tried even getting them to install VirtualBox on my workstation so I can do what I want and they said it is insecure because I can create other entities on the network that do not have adequate controls

so i can't even do local vms

user41796

6:54 PM

"Oh, I want the recycling bin intact."
"Oh, I don't want the neighborhood leveled"
"Oh, I don't want white phosphorous laying around the neighborhood."
Sheesh! HOW CAN I DESIGN UNDER THOSE CONSTRAINTS!!!!

user55340

(I read that as VMS and wondered about that old digital product...)

@MichaelT How old are you ;-)

user41796

@MichaelT that would be one way to stay under the radar

user41796

VMS isn't that old...

user20683

I saw a COBOL VMS book when I went coat shopping at Goodwill

user55340

6:56 PM

I'm 40 (41 in less than a month)... but the address of my first email account was where my father worked... and you sent email to leading with 'IN%'

user55340

(the IN% part was for because the vax didn't have access to the internet directly, so that instead it delivered it to the machine known as IN, which knew how to deliver it to the rest of the address... the '%' part is like 'CC' with postal mail)

@maple_shaft sorry to hear that :/ not being able to do your job because your it dept doesn't trust you really blows

user55340

@GlenH7 open VMS is still kicking in some areas.

user55340

Wikipedia says latest release of OpenVMS was June 21, 2010...

user41796

I used to work on a cross-platform backup application. Oh the howling when they ended support for VMS....

user55340

6:58 PM

but then VMS was owned by Digital which became owned by Compaq... which became owned by HP... and well... we're waiting.

I have to take a paycut to get a real job

strange how that works

I hate Pittsburgh

user20683

@maple_shaft Find remote work?

no wonder this bank pays me so much. Nobody wants to put up with their blatant disrespect for software developer

s

user20683

@maple_shaft Bank...*gives all the hugs*

@WorldEngineer Its not enough hugs

my soul is dying

user20683

7:01 PM

@maple_shaft It's gonna be okay

but less importantly, my skills are becoming soft

no

user41796

@maple_shaft Are you allowed to bring a personal laptop into work?

more importantly

the spirit is willing but the skills are soft and bruised

user55340

remote desktop off a tablet device?

thought about it

I heard that is what some people do

user41796

7:02 PM

Oh! can you RDP?

user55340

Can you run an application off a thumb drive? Can you stick a portable vm on that?

I could possibly open rdp to my home from a tablet or pesonal laptop

their firewall would prevent me from SSH'ing to my linux, or FTP or RDP

user41796

Amazon and Azure have virtual workstations for exactly this purpose

I already tried the first two

user41796

Trying to think of an equivalent RDP over HTTPS then...

user41796

7:04 PM

Azure may support that.

Can't run or copy files from a usb device, it gets flagged and my manager has to write a report to defend me

@GlenH7 I was told I might be able to fool the firewall if I listen for RDP on port 80 from my home router

Have you thought about challenging the IT lead to a duel for admin rights?

4

user20683

I assuming that management ran into some security consultant and then wrote rules without considering the implications?

@WorldEngineer Pretty much

user41796

@WorldEngineer financial firms are notorious for crazy amounts of lockdown

user55340

7:06 PM

btw, @maple_shaft you can take out your rage with some (binding) delete vote therapy... looking for one more on programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/257159/…

user41796

implications be damned as the potential risk is perceived to be too great

@GlenH7 well duh, have you seen office space?

user20683

@Ampt victory = [duel(it_lead) for admin_rights in workplace]

@MichaelT Deleted

that felt good

damn good

user55340

As I said...delete vote therapy... stay away from the tequila though.

user41796

7:07 PM

@MichaelT No, no! Point him to the delete queue!

speaking of tequila, where has Yannis been, anyway?

user41796

@maple_shaft so port 23 (SSH) is definitely blocked?

@GlenH7 port 22 and port 22225 is

user55340

@Ampt he shows up from time to time... I've seen him on some delete and close votes... he was even in the review queues the other day.

port 21 isn't blocked for some ftp sites though but because my dns to my home router is [subdomain].webhop.me

user41796

7:10 PM

Got that backwards - 22 is ssh.

user41796

You can run putty / ssh over 21

I think they dont like the webhop.me dns name

user55340

@Ampt You can still see his smiling face on the reopen queue at the tail end... close vote moves a bit faster.

user41796

you just need to configure the server that's listening to listen on 21

@GlenH7 don't think it is a port thing

they fundamentally dont like my ip address or dns name

user55340

7:11 PM

Can't you tweak your sshd config to listen on 443 instead of 22? And then use ssh with a specific port?

user55340

Granted, that type of activity on 443 might also raise some eyebrows.

@MichaelT going to try that now actually

user41796

@MichaelT requires deeper packet inspection which they may not be doing

user41796

Websense (for example) has two modes. One where they scan they headers and another where the check the formatting

user55340

@GlenH7 constantly open stream has different characteristics than https does.

user20683

7:12 PM

web.archive.org/web/20140625075055/http://…

user41796

employer^^ had swapped their config to go after deeper inspections and hosed a bunch of things we were running over 443

@WorldEngineer I have been playing with list comprehensions lately and they're pretty slick. Have to stop myself from making everything a list comprehension at this point

user20683

neat little copernican and tycho models of the solar system

So you're saying the earth is the center of the solar system? I knew it

user41796

And I can't tell for certain if azure will run the RDP session through the browser. I'm pretty certain you can invoke an RDP session through the browser but I don't know if that's a separate invocation of mstsc or not.

7:16 PM

crap

it doesnt work

how do they know?

they must have blacklisted my ip

user41796

@maple_shaft deep packet inspection or whitelisting of IPs

user41796

Amazon's workstations appear to require SSH or RDP

user41796

That said, you could create a VM instance when you're on a more permissive network. Then log into that machine and configure SSH to listen to 21. Then at work try an SSH to that IP addr. That would avoid any potential issues with redirects from a home ISP

user55340

10

Q: Pirrational Numbers

Pi is an irrational number, which means that its decimal representation never terminates or repeats itself. Pi truncated to 41 decimal digits (40 places) is 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971. If we ignore the decimal point and list the digits as a sequence of positive integers, avoidin...

code-golf pi

user55340

There's a haskell solution in there for those who like that type of mind twisting.

7:19 PM

it never repeats itself? I'm pretty sure that's mutually exclusive with never terminating

@maple_shaft There is always bring laptop from home, don't connect to network, do personal projects. Don't hide the fact that when you are using your laptop it means that you are waiting for IT to allow you to perform work. Provide nice graphs of time spent working vs. waiting for IT. Explain that you are happy to work with IT even if it means not working, but you want to make sure no one is surprised.

@Ampt never infinitely repeats itself.

user55340

@Ampt badly phrased, but it isn't a repeating sequence out to infinity.

Ok, that's what I thought

user55340

> If we ignore the decimal point and list the digits as a sequence of positive integers, avoiding duplicates, we get 3 1 4 15 9 2 6 5 35 8 97 93 23 84 62 64 33 83 27 950 28 841 971 (OEIS A064809).

@GlenH7 How can they deep packet inspect SSH?!

user55340

7:20 PM

oeis.org/A064809

@maple_shaft they probably kill it at the handshake

user41796

@maple_shaft 21 is normally FTP, right? An SSH packet doesn't look like an FTP packet

they have Man in the Middle though

@Ampt crap

user55340

Note that its '15', rather than '1 5' because '1' was already part of the set.

7:21 PM

your right

so theres not a lot they can't do

user20683

@Ampt If you want to get really bendy, try this: test_ordered_dict = collections.OrderedDict((zip(key_list, value_list)))

user55340

Easy to do... I recall a security.SE question on it.

user41796

and / or they ought to be running a whitelist for FTP addresses anyway

user55340

They just send a reset at as soon as its attempted to be open.

user41796

7:22 PM

open outbound FTP is a recipe for a security disaster

user41796

keeping in mind that FTP passes the password in cleartext

whatsisname

yeah anyone using FTP for anything other than anonymous access is a chump

psh, passwords don't need encrypting anyone. I have mine on a post it note on my Monitor!

user15026

@Ampt ....this happens at my office all the time

@AshleyNunn Put that under reasons to be "sick" for a day.

7:26 PM

@maple_shaft - Even if you find a way to SSH, you're at risk of being accused of deliberately evading their controls by technical means, which isn't unambiguously not a felony. Not worth that even you are just trying to do your job.

user20683

@psr It's not unambiguously not a federal felony

double negatives should be a felony.

user41796

and triple negatives?

user15026

@Ampt That list is VERY long.

@GlenH7 Death penalty.

7:27 PM

@Ampt In this case the fallacy of the excluded middle applies.

@AshleyNunn cough man, I think I'm getting sick just thinking about it

user15026

@Ampt The only problem is that this is a job I can technically do from home in my bed....

@AshleyNunn The one you have right now? Or the one you want?

user55340

Password of the day: "contagious pneumonia". Tomorrow's password: "ebola meningitis"

user15026

@Ampt The one I have, so being "sick" to find another is tricky

7:30 PM

@AshleyNunn Hmm, if you can also sleep you may have something.

user15026

@Ampt I did get the afternoon off when my eyes did weird blurry things.

Not that I've done any of those before...

user15026

@Ampt I didn't figure ;)

user20683

@Ampt I ain't never not known nothing that I ain't never not known.

user15026

@WorldEngineer twitches

user15026

7:33 PM

Bad man.

user55340

@AshleyNunn Literally?

@MichaelT Yes.

user15026

@MichaelT I did flinch a little, yes

Since Literally Literally doesn't mean Literally.

user15026

The English major in me does not like how he is torturing the words.

user55340

7:34 PM

I was more going for the words that make english majors cringe... literally.

user41796

I'd support flagging that previous comment from World as offensive

user20683

@Ampt But it might mean it literarily

user55340

user15026

@MichaelT You are mean.

user15026

@MichaelT ....that comic was torture to read.

user15026

7:35 PM

(Although I still love her your/you're comic, but I am not sure it is safe to post :P)

user15026

@WorldEngineer >.>

user15026

I don't like you anymore.

user55340

Btw, Kingdom of Loathing has a test to get onto chat... lets see if I can find it (haven't played KOL in a LONG time)

user20683

@AshleyNunn Uh huh