Root Access

7:00 PM

We use a lot of closed-source tools that can change the nature of our work potentially drastically if we change versions and they have a lot of specific dependencies. If something gets screwed up, lots of people are disrupted and valuable engineering time is wasted.

So it really makes sense.

I mean, when I run finger | wc -l on this server, it shows 110 users are logged in. :P

Or, there's 110 sessions, anyway.

And that's just this particular server. There's others.

allquixotic

that looks like too much dependence on a single logical OS instance :/ should probably break that up into VMs

Ben Richards

Actually not. They're just terminal machines. We have compute machines and filers as well. It's very distributed. If we ran all of our tools on this particular machine it would be really bogged down and resource use would skyrocket.

allquixotic

I trust it's a really huge honking server?

ahh

Ben Richards

Distributed computing.

It's a must in this industry. We're running simulations of hardware designs. Very compute intensive stuff.

allquixotic

I'm sure @Bob would love access to some of those beefy compute nodes for his formal methods solver/prover thingy that eats gigabytes of ram and takes hours to run on a trivial piece of a program

Bob

7:07 PM

-_-

allquixotic

sorry for waking you at like OMG AM

oh. it's Saturday. Nevermind

Ben Richards

Oops I somehow enabled screen reader. I don't know how.

But it's cool because it's reading aloud everything I type.

Bob

nah, been playing with this tablet

allquixotic

lol

Ben Richards

lol

Bob

7:10 PM

trying to run down the battery

allquixotic

the Note 4 builtin calculator has a screen reader enabled with no way to disable it

Ben Richards

So yup.

allquixotic

on Verizon, anyway

Bob

spotify is a pain in the arse with touch

allquixotic

four! five! times! three! zero! minus! sine! one! seven!

Ben Richards

7:11 PM

What's the keyboard shortcut to disable accessibility mode? I typed it accidentally.

Bob

you ever tried it on your Surface?

allquixotic

i think so

but i rarely use my smurface at as a touch device

Bob

it keeps resizing

Ben Richards

Whenever a new message appears here it says "zero new line".

Bob

ended up pulling out a mouse to fix it

allquixotic

7:12 PM

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

enjoy that ben? :P

Ben Richards

It's not reading your messages. It just says "zero. new line."

:P

allquixotic

highlight my message

Bob

suisuisuisuisuisuisuisuisuisuisuisuisui

Ben Richards

lol

I wish I could record this for you

allquixotic

is it saying SWAAAAH ? :D

soy soy soy soy soy soysoysoysoysoy

Ben Richards

7:14 PM

Sounds like "sooshooshooshooshooshooshooshoo"

more like "soshooshooshooshooshooshooshooshoo-ee selected"

Bob

soi soi soi soi soi soi soi soi soi

allquixotic

nananananananananananananananananana baaaa tman!

Bob

►

allquixotic

nananananananananananananananananana soyman!

Ben Richards

There turned it off. It was narrator. Dunno how I started it. Windows key shortcut? It was stuck briefly.

Ah <kbd>Win</kbd>+<kbd>Enter</kbd>

Bob

7:18 PM

> It’s a 25Wh battery, which is significantly lower-capacity than the 42.5Wh unit of the iPad 4 and the 33.3Wh one in the Nexus 10. The commendable performance is down to the lower-resolution screen used here, as well as the battery efficiency of both Windows 8 and the Atom processor.

Ben Richards

Oh yeah, that doesn't parse on here :/

Bob

huh. Win8 regarded as more power-efficient than mobile OSes?

that's new

allquixotic

> lower-resolution screen

Ben Richards

Why?

allquixotic

> battery efficiency of ... the Atom processor

Ben Richards

7:20 PM

Windows has been progressively getting more and more power efficient.

allquixotic

I'd blame 95% of it on that, rather than Windows

Ben Richards

They have a long term project (MinWin) of rearchitecting the OS to remove extra cruft and making it more efficient. That's why Vista took so long. And why 7 uses fewer resources out of the box than Vista. And ditto for 8.

MinWin

MinWin is a term used informally by Microsoft to describe the kernel and operating system components that form the basis of releases of Microsoft Windows starting with Windows Vista. The term was first used in 2003 to describe approximately 95% of the common components of the operating system, but has over time come to refer to a significantly smaller portion. Its most recent and most well-known variation was a minimalistic, self-contained set of Windows components that shipped as part of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. == Background == Through the history of Microsoft Windows, the core of...

Bob

@allquixotic that's another upset - Intel's now a serious competitor with mobile CPUs... GPUs could use more work though

Ben Richards

Basically, they saw the scalability and modularity of Linux (with separate terminals, window managers, etc) as a really good idea and wanted to go the same route with Windows.

"In October 2007, Eric Traut, a developer at Microsoft, demonstrated a self-contained MinWin system, made up of about 100 files, on which a basic HTTP server was running.[10] Traut noted that MinWin takes up about 25 MB on disk and has a working set (memory usage) of 40 MB. It lacked a graphical user interface and is interfaced using a full-screen command line interface. "

I would love to see that as a standalone product. Too bad they have no plans.

allquixotic

just realized that was a bad onebox

i need a mod to edit that message to un-onebox it

Ben Richards

7:25 PM

I just think MinWin is super cool. Would love to see it turn into a modular windows release a la Linux and enable 3rd party window managers and such.

That'd be fun

A command-line Windows with 3rd party window managers and other components. Dang, I'm getting a nerd-gasm thinking about this. :P

Windows 8.1's per-display DPI scaling is a good start, but they need to fix scaling of WM elements as well. :|

It still sets the size of WM elements according to the DPI scaling on the main display. So if I want to use my tablet screen as the main display, I either have to set scaling for the tablet screen too small or deal with massive WM elements on my large external displays.

allquixotic

7:42 PM

that, and you still have to logoff to change the DPI

Wayland, Mir and even Xorg don't have that problem IIRC

DragonLord

It used to be even worse

You previously had to reboot to change the DPI

Several configuration changes in Windows that used to require a reboot now require the user to relogin

Ben Richards

Yeah

DragonLord

Language changes are another example

Setting the system to use another language only requires you to relogin

Ben Richards

Though with X, if you change the DPI, you do still have to restart your applications to get the new scaling settings. If they follow them. At least I don't have to when moving windows between one monitor and another w/ different DPIs on Windows.

DragonLord

The problem with changing DPI dynamically is that applications expect to not have the system DPI change on them while running

Ben Richards

7:45 PM

Their DPI/scaling system and APIs was originally designed with single monitor setups in mind. That's not the case anymore.

DragonLord

Windows 8.1 has new APIs to allow apps to properly handle this situation, though

Ben Richards

Yeah. They're partway there.

allquixotic

I think the runtimes beneath WPF and even Winforms are able to adjust the DPI dynamically now

but if you have old 32-bit WinAPI code that calls CreateWindowEx, you're kind of up a creek

Ben Richards

Apple got lucky in that they decoupled resolution/dpi with application/desktop drawing, so they get scaling for free, provided the art assets are high enough resolution to not look ugly.

DragonLord

msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/…

Ben Richards

7:48 PM

Though that does still mean a lot of apps will look really ugly if they aren't designed with scaling in mind. :P

My main gripe is that the system DPI is still fixed to whatever the primary display is set to.

I have 2 large displays at 96DPI and the tablet display at 200DPI or something all next to each other. I'd prefer the tablet display as my main, but that'd make all my taskbars and icons set to 200DPI too.

I could set the taskbar to be on the main display only but most of the time I'm using it on a secondary display so that's not a good solution.

DragonLord

On my laptop, system DPI is 120, but my 21.5-inch Acer full HD IPS display runs at 96 DPI

Laptop display is 15.6-inch, also full HD

Ben Richards

I'll do 85 DPI on my old Lenovo since it has a 1366x768 15" display (which is a dumb idea, should be 1680x1050 at least).

Which I also want to throw Linux on eventually but I've been super lazy. :P

DragonLord

@BenRichards 1680x1080 is a 16:10 aspect ratio, rare in modern laptops

Awal Garg

Intel Linux Users!!!! 01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/2014/…

DragonLord

Commonly, 1600x900 is used as an intermediate resolution

Ben Richards

7:52 PM

@DragonLord I know, but I prefer it.

16:10 is > than 16:9 for laptops

Awal Garg

finally!

DragonLord

@BenRichards Even the 18.4-inch monsters use 16:9

Alienware used to provide 16:10 as an option (1920x1200 display resolution) for some of their high-end laptops

Ben Richards

1366x768 isn't even either of those. It's a weird non-rational aspect ratio. Just because it was easy to mass produce panels at that resolution.

Awal Garg

btw, guys, I got a new laptop today...running ubuntu 14.04. How do I go about transferring my files from my old pc to new one via ethernet?

DragonLord

@AwalGarg Not familiar with Linux system transfers

Awal Garg

7:54 PM

I tried the samba thing which I found from googling, but it didn't work :(

Ben Richards

old laptop running windows?

I haven't used it in a while, but if you have a Windows share, Ubuntu should be able to see it if you go through nautilus (is that still a thing? Dunno about their Unity or whatever environment)

Awal Garg

old pc, dual booting windows 7 ultimate, and ubuntu same version

DragonLord

What I did was hook up an Ethernet cable between the two computers (with modern NICs, you don't need a crossover cable), set up the C$ administrative share on the old computer, and mapped it as a network drive on the new computer.

Awal Garg

ok.

Lemme try that out, thanks :)

Ben Richards

Usually I just use flash drives or USB hard drives :P

DragonLord

7:59 PM

@BenRichards It's way faster to transfer data over Gigabit Ethernet—no flash drive needed

@AwalGarg It's tricky, though

Ben Richards

@DragonLord I know, but it's also more work than I care to do for a one-off task. :P

DragonLord

You need to set up the permissions on the old machine and allow remote access from the new computer

Awal Garg

@BenRichards I don't have a usb hard drive big enough to get all the data at once, and I am not transferring 200gb data in 8gb chunks :P

!!afk

Ben Richards

:P

I probably would just set up the old PC with an ssh server and use fstab or something. And then keep it as an ssh server for funzies.

Bob

8:17 PM

@JourneymanGeek apparently Xiaomi is making 16000mAh packs

Stack Exchange

Stack Exchange Network Status: Elastic Search Maintenance Sat, November 22nd

posted on November 21, 2014

1:00PM (18:00 UTC) - 3PM (21:00 UTC) We will be upgrading our Elastic Search cluster from 0.9x to 1.4 this Saturday November 22nd. During this upgrade we need to spin down the whole cluster to do the upgrade. This will cause outages in all search related functions on our sites and via the API: Site Search Help Search API Search Chat Search We only expect less than 1 hour of downtime, but …

DragonLord

8:33 PM

@Bob I'd just get an Anker power pack

Trusted brand, reliable performance, high efficiency

Can't go wrong with the #1 charger brand on Amazon

I have a 12000 mAh pack (an earlier revision of the second-generation Astro3) and it is outstanding

allquixotic

@DragonLord I have the same but the latest second-gen AFAIK

Bob

@DragonLord Implying Xiaomi isn't.

DragonLord

@allquixotic The latest version is 12800 mAh (new Li-ion cells) and all ports have PowerIQ

Bob

The Xiaomi power packs are very well regarded... if you can get a genuine one. And I know a trusted supplier of those.

Also, I've just about given up on ordering off Amazon. Nothing ships here.

allquixotic

@Bob what about the AUS post? :P

DragonLord

8:36 PM

Didn't know Windows can set up folder redirects for you

Bob

@allquixotic $30 extra?

DragonLord

windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/…

Bob

The genuine Xiaomi pack costs $25 including postage

allquixotic

...on an $800 graphics card, why not :D

Bob

(10400mAh one; higher isn't available just yet)

allquixotic

8:36 PM

I'm hmming and hawing about maybe a R9 295X2 for xmas

DragonLord

I suspect the system moves all the content and resets the underlying NTFS junction point to point there

Is that how folder redirection works?

Bob

@allquixotic I'm not gonna be spending that much on a graphics card any time soon :P

allquixotic

will possibly sell my R9 280X and HD7970 if anyone is game

DragonLord

@allquixotic Also, do you have a power supply capable of pushing 500 watts through two 8-pin PCIe power connectors?

Bob

@DragonLord That's not generic.

"My Documents" is a special folder.

The way Win7+ treats it is really quite confusing.

There's a My Documents junction, a real Documents directory, and a fake My Documents name for the real directory when viewed within Explorer.

DragonLord

8:39 PM

@Bob I know how to set NTFS junction points for normal folders, but the Documents/Music/Pictures/Videos/etc. folders are specially handled.

Bob

Oh, did I mention it's not treated like other junctions? The junction itself is special in some way.

DragonLord

@Bob That's what I meant.

Bob

I liked how Vista handled it more. It was just named Documents, no fake name.

allquixotic

@DragonLord I have a 1250W Corsair PSU. It'll work.

highest-end series they have available

Bob

@DragonLord msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/… msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/…

Ben Richards

8:41 PM

Oh god, on my Win7 laptop, the "Desktop" folder in \Users\Ben ended up somehow getting linked to a "My Music" folder somewhere and everything got royally screwed up.

Bob

Specifically, see FOLDERID_Documents

Ben Richards

I had to go tweak the registry and deep dive into how those folders and file views were configured because they didn't do anything in the standard way that other folders have.

Eventually I fixed it. Somehow. Had to trace UDIDs and mess with obscure registry entries

DragonLord

UUID?

Ben Richards

Yeah, that

The Desktop folder, specifically, is treated extra-extra special, too.

So it was doubly annoying :P

allquixotic

> According to the same folks at overclockers.ru AMD has three new graphics cards in the works. The R9 290X successor based on the Bermuda GPU , The R9 380X based on Fiji and the R9 370X based on Treasure Island. And the R9 380X should be released by Feubuary next year if everything goes according to plan.

The new series of graphics cards is supposed to be the first ever to feature TSMC’s new 20nm manufacturing technology as well as 3D stacked HBM memory. The R9 390X reference design is also rumored to feature a form of AMD’s hybrid “Hydra” liquid cooling currently reserved for AMD”s flags…

Ben Richards

8:43 PM

I have no idea what happened to cause this. I hadn't turned the laptop on for months and it probably happened long before that and I just didn't notice since I mainly used the laptop for work and didn't use the music library a lot then

allquixotic

definitely waiting for the 390X

the 390X should be "the" Star Citizen card that can comfortably run it... and I'm pretty sure a 3770K is still enough on the CPU side

Bob

@allquixotic Nvidia's Pascal is due 2016 :\

allquixotic

390X should blow the GTX 980 out of the water. new architecture FINALLY after a trillion years of waiting

DragonLord

@Bob If I understand it correctly, when you redirect the folder, the system moves all the data to the new location and resets the junction point there. Am I right?

Bob

@DragonLord I'm not sure what that redirection does, sorry. Never tried it.

Test it in a VM?

Ben Richards

8:48 PM

I think in NTFS, it doesn't care where on disk the data is, it just remaps stuff in the tables, right?

I'd think changing a junction does the same?

DragonLord

@BenRichards ...except that the Documents/Music/Pictures/Videos/etc. folders could be redirected to another volume or even to a network location.

It sure looks handy for users with a SSD+HDD setup

Ben Richards

Yes, well if you're moving the files to a different volume, then that's something else entirely :P

DragonLord

What I would do is redirect Music, Pictures, Videos, and Downloads to the hard drive, keeping Documents on the SSD along with the OS and apps.

Bob

If the SSD is small enough that redirecting parts of the user profile is required, consider using it as cache only.

DragonLord

@Bob I'd do this even with a 1 TB SSD

Large static files benefit little from being put on an SSD

They're best put on the less expensive mechanical storage

Bob

8:51 PM

@DragonLord Depending on your backup scheme, an SSD is likely safer.

DragonLord

The fast SSD space would then be usable for big applications like games.

The whole system would get backed up periodically to an external hard drive or NAS.

Bob

Also, spreading data across two drives with links between them has a fair bit of potential for disaster.

DragonLord

My future desktop setup would probably have a 512 GB SSD and 2 TB HDD.

Again, OS, apps, and documents go on the SSD; music, pictures, videos, and downloads go on the HDD.

Bob

@DragonLord Yes, bulk data storage like that is fairly standard, but I'm not sure I'd recommend linking the profile directories.

DragonLord

I'll use the File History feature to maintain old revisions on one external hard drive, and system image backups are taken every one to two weeks onto another external hard drive or an NAS.

allquixotic

8:56 PM

that's thinking rather small, isn't it?

I'd get a 2 TB SSD when they come out, and a 6 or 8 TB HDD

Bob

Better to just create separate directories manually.

Also, yea. I have at least 6 TB of data by now :P

DragonLord

The HDD part might be larger, but I don't think I'd need more than 512 GB for an SSD

Many people get by with 256 GB.

allquixotic

more cells == longer time til wearout, assuming the write duty cycle is the same

Journeyman Geek

;p

and faster.

DragonLord

@allquixotic Not an issue with Samsung SSD 850 PRO with 3D VNAND.

allquixotic

8:58 PM

@DragonLord the 850 pro isn't immune to wearout; in fact, there are enterprise SSDs that can handle way more abuse than the 850 pro

it's just the best consumer-targeted SSD thus far

DragonLord

It's not like I'm going to put more than the rated 40 GB per day for ten years

Besides, Samsung says that number is just to separate the consumer products from the enterprise products

Samsung has an SSD 850 PRO in internal testing with >8 PB of writes on it

allquixotic

I should probably get a 1 TB 850 PRO for Christmas instead of a new video card, and block-level copy my system volume over after non-destructively resizing it down

to do it in-place, I'll need to non-destructively resize it down to a value less than my current usage, then make a new partition, copy off about 2 TiB of data onto the new data partition, then copy the EFI system partition and the <1 TB system volume to the 850 Pro, then re-expand the data partition on the mechanicals back to full size

Bob

@DragonLord The biggest risk with SSDs isn't NAND wear. It's controller failure.

DragonLord

anandtech.com/show/8216/…

@Bob That's still my biggest concern.

Bob

NAND wear is predictable. And takes quite a while.

DragonLord

9:02 PM

Firmware plays a big role, too

Bob

Controller failure... as random as HDD failure, and even more catastrophic (unless you want to pay professional recovery, in which case it might be better).

allquixotic

I should just bite the bullet and get an Adaptec 8405 like Psycogeek did... then I will be able to make my SSD a flash cache drive

I have a spare x16 2.0 slot but dunno if the 8405 can operate with only 4 lanes enabled (GPUs eating most of the lanes)

Bob

I want more PCIe lanes... but enthusiast mobo prices are ridiculous.

allquixotic

either that or do nothing until I can afford a Haswell-E or Broadwell-E system with more lanes, then upgrade everything at once

ditto

Bob

I'm still on Sandy on the desktop :P

CPU's still going strong.

The biggest problems are probably cooling, GPU and storage. In that order.

Ben Richards

9:10 PM

I got a Dell PC in 2008ish and it has a Conroe in it IIRC (Core 2 Duo). It's still running strong. My parents are using it now as their desktop. Replaced their old Windows XP Pentium 4 machine which was just slow and old and XP.

I think it was the E6550

DragonLord

3

Q: Do higher-capacity SSDs last longer?

I've been wondering about this for some time: Do higher-capacity SSDs last longer than smaller ones of the same type under the same operating operations? I would want to believe so because a larger SSD has more memory cells available, but is there anything with the higher-capacity SSDs or flash ...

Journeyman Geek

Heya @BenRichards

Ben Richards

Heya @JourneymanGeek

Journeyman Geek

And core 2 duos are tanks

Just replace the storage every half decade or so ;p

Ben Richards

Pretty much

Though I think I reverted back to the original HDD in it when my WD Green drive I bought for it died.

It's got maxed out RAM and an upgraded graphics card from 2009ish and I did upgrade it to W7 from XP. It is still running like a tank.

Oh also added a hot-swappable 2.5" drive bay and use that for local backups (redundantly stored to our NAS)

Their Pentium 4 was still running solid though. It just was really slow and with a maximum of 1GB of RAM, a fully updated Windows XP was just too much for it.

And I tried everything. :P

Well, a clean fully updated Windows XP with nothing else was just barely all it could handle.

Journeyman Geek

9:26 PM

Its probably the ram. My dad's c2d laptop is crawling

Ben Richards

It was. I opened up system monitor and would watch it swap to kingdom come.

Journeyman Geek

Might buy ninja upgrade it when I get a job

Ben Richards

When I built my gaming desktop I gave them my Dell. It's got 4 GB of RAM w/ Windows 7 on that Core 2 Duo and is sitting pretty.

Just gotta keep the dust and dog fur out.

Was worse when it was on a carpet. It's now on a wood floor, so less static.

Oh fun! If I use <Win>+<Down> to minimize my top window and it switches focus back to my fullscreen VNC session, the win key gets stuck as far as windows is concerned and triggers hotkey shortcuts if I click back to Windows and start typing.

Windows is better about the stuck modifier keys issue but it still is so buggy :|

Journeyman Geek

lol

Especially in blow out season? ;p

Ben Richards

Yep, very reproducible.

Huskies never stop shedding. They just slow down for a while. :P

Literally

Journeyman Geek

9:31 PM

;p

DragonLord

Because of my personal bias, I can't tell how "visible" I am on the site

How do I compare in terms of "visibility" or "fame" to, say, @allquixotic or @JourneymanGeek?

These are some of the names I see very often on the site doing community moderation work

How well-known am I?

Journeyman Geek

@DragonLord: pretty simple test would be to see how many people you don't know comment on your blog ;p

DragonLord

@JourneymanGeek On Super User, that is.

Journeyman Geek

@DragonLord: yeah. That's what I mean ;p

allquixotic

@DragonLord bout half as many answers on the mainsite and around 65% as many answers on meta, though your highest upvoted answer is... way, way more popular than my highest upvoted answers

and you have a footprint on MSE while I don't

I guess I'm mostly known as a chatter and (lately!) a meta participant; most of my answering is from 2012-2013

Journeyman Geek

9:44 PM

Chat seems to help visibility.

No idea why, its not that used

allquixotic

I reckon a lot of people peek at chat without saying anything and we never notice them

Journeyman Geek

Plausibly

allquixotic

just looking at the chat userlist now, about 30% of them I haven't heard say anything in the past few days, at least not while I'm awake

Journeyman Geek

Man, I'm super nervious XD

More or less.

allquixotic

I'd be "nervious" [sic] if I were applying to GOOG, too

Awal Garg

9:48 PM

@DragonLord thanks, that worked :)

Had to meddle quite a bit, though.

Journeyman Geek

Naw

This one's somewhere else ;p

allquixotic

ahh

Journeyman Geek

This is at a VFX firm, Applied on thursday, directly to their head of IT

Interview's monday

allquixotic

VFX?

Journeyman Geek

I had the lucky confluence of they wanting someone who knows linux, and someone who needs a job

allquixotic

9:52 PM

ahh

4

Journeyman Geek

Visual effects

So, tons of storage and rendering hardware, lots of linux boxen running things like maya and renderman

allquixotic

you know I'm just going to say ahh a bunch of times now until someone stars it

3

ahh

4

Journeyman Geek

I'm kinda excited.

allquixotic

thankies

should be possible to scrape a linux-box-going-into-retirement off the bottom of the barrel, too, maybe

with ONLY 4x Tesla cards or something

Journeyman Geek

lol

allquixotic

9:55 PM

might be first-gen Teslas but I'm sure you'd find a use for about 5 TFLOPS

Journeyman Geek

;p

Ben Richards

10:10 PM

I wonder if I should file the stuck windows key thing as a bug for tightvnc. And if I can.

Journeyman Geek

Sounds like it

why VNC?

Ben Richards

Because I can't report it to Windows, and also it could be related to VNC's key trapping.

Journeyman Geek

no no

I mean why use vnc? ;p

Ben Richards

Because Fluxbox doesn't work with NX since we upgraded our servers to SL6 and we have no idea why. And we don't have xrdp on these servers (though they thought it was cool and said they'd evaluate it). And we also don't have xsm installed so while remote X kinda works I can't save sessions. :P

Journeyman Geek

ahh

NX3 is depreciated anyway

Ben Richards

10:19 PM

Yeah, it wasn't by choice :P

I know, but they changed the licensing model apparently so they were saying they weren't sure if they were going to get NX4. I don't know details about that decision though.

Journeyman Geek

hmm

try another vnc client?

Ben Richards

I could but TightVNC is nice. Do other clients support xrandr?

Like if you resized the session?

DragonLord

Inspired by @DavidPostill's pro forma comments, I've expanded my comments a bit

/* Question posted as answer to question */
Unfortunately, this doesn't answer the question. If you'd like to ask a *new* question, click on the **Ask Question** button at the top of the page and enter your question. This area is for answers, so your post will likely be deleted shortly.

/* Comment posted as answer to question */
Unfortunately, this doesn't answer the question. If you have a question or concern about another post, please post a comment to that post—you can always comment on your own posts, and you can [comment on other people's posts](superuser.com/help/privileges/co…

Ben Richards

Aha

Well, we're using TightVNC server :P

If they ever do roll out xrdp on our servers though I'm switching to that :P

DragonLord

DavidPostill uses "This is not an answer to the original question."

I have "Unfortunately, this doesn't answer the question. ... This area is for answers, so your post will likely be deleted shortly."

Feedback?

Journeyman Geek

10:26 PM

I think he's using the standard per forma comment script

DragonLord

Updated the "comment as answer" comment:

> Unfortunately, this doesn't answer the question. If you need clarification or have a question or concern about another post, please post a comment to that post—you can always comment on your own posts, and you can comment on other people's posts once you earn 50 reputation. This area is for answers, so your post will likely be deleted shortly.

Ben Richards

Gonna go so I can finish up work and then go home! See ya!

DragonLord

> Unfortunately, this doesn't answer the question. If you need clarification or have a question or concern about another post, please leave a comment on that post—you can always comment on your own posts, and you can comment on other people's posts once you earn 50 reputation. This area is for answers, so your post will likely be deleted shortly.

Canadian Luke

10:42 PM

DOJ Tells Apple that Kids will Die because of their encryption

DragonLord

@CanadianLuke This is why I've played devil's advocate when it comes to companies tightening security and privacy for their services and devices.

There is a genuine concern.

Canadian Luke

I believe the blame is in the wrong place

allquixotic

@DragonLord There is also a genuine concern that the police may not even be aware of a kidnapping or potential problem with a child, with their family or someone they know, and the police can't just barge into someone's house and search it unless they have reasonable suspicion and a Judge gives them a warrant. Should we let police just barge into anyone's house at any time for any reason, now, too?

"Children will die" is the oldest trick in the book. Fascists use it to justify ever-tighter policies that curtail freedom to give them more access to controlling citizens' lives.

See past the lies.

DragonLord

Sorry for the bizarre messages.

I lost my temper for a moment

allquixotic

For a moment, I thought your account really was compromised...

DragonLord

10:58 PM

In any case, I think both sides of the argument need a serious look. Privacy matters a lot, but it needs to be balanced with legitimate law-enforcement needs.

allquixotic

@DragonLord There's a balance somewhere, but it should be informed by looking to the past: both history in general, to observe the trends of information control that have actually been enforced in previous societies that we have unambiguously identified as authoritarian (and, last I checked, we don't want to become authoritarian.. do we?), and to look back at the principles the country was founded on, which made it successful, etc.

A law enforcement officer could justify absolute control over every citizen's every muscle movement as being in our best interest.

They wouldn't be wrong that with that level of control, there would be less crime, and "fewer dead children".

Canadian Luke

"A country willing to give up a little liberty to get a little security deserves neither"

4

allquixotic

But are you willing to live in that society? I'm not.

DragonLord

@CanadianLuke The question is not that we need 100% liberty, as the quote suggests

It's striking the right balance

allquixotic

I wouldn't want to live in a society where law enforcement officers didn't exist, or had no power to enforce any laws even if they were staring a crime in the face, either. The extremes are silly. But people are correct to "see the writing on the wall" and observe that change over time, especially in the past 50 years, has been steadily marching towards the extreme of authoritarianism.

The best way that we can obtain balance is to basically enforce the "yo-yo effect" through shifting political winds. One administration comes in and is pro-authoritarian, enacts a bunch of laws and policies in that direction. Then, later, another administration comes in and turns things around the other way. Repeat ad nauseum.

The problem is when you get 5, 6, 7 administrations in a row moving in the same direction.

As long as we keep moving back and forth and staying somewhere "in the middle", we're fine. Once we lock in to one specific philosophy and move perpetually toward that, we'll eventually end up with either no law enforcement, or true authoritarianism. Both are dystopian.

After Reagan, Daddy Bush, Clinton, W, and Obama have all been pro-authoritarian, I think it's time we head back towards a sane middle ground for a bit.

DragonLord

11:17 PM

@allquixotic ...and I think this is due to the pressure growing global terrorist threats have placed.

10-15 years ago, it's al-Qaeda.

Today, it's Islamic State.

We're faced with increasingly well-armed terrorists who pose a serious threat to the integrity of civilized society.

Securing society against the terrorist threat while not infringing on individual freedoms and privacy is not easy.

Hennes

@allquixotic Peekaboo!

Psycogeek

11:58 PM

@allquixotic and quick fix economy stuff, presidental patch jobs, instead of long term things. Even the "threats" are part of short term economy boosts, most of the cheap trick stuff no longer works , so being a historically correct, may very well be histerically wrong.

DragonLord

Got #StarbucksGold just one month ago, and thanks to bonus Stars, I think I've already requalified for Gold. Unbelievable.

Tweeted by fierydragonlord on November 20, 2014 at 11:24 PM

I don't even have my Gold card yet.

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