Alnitak

general recent conversations

Discussion on answer by Damon: Wrongf…

Imported from a comment discussion on travel.stackexchange.com...

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2018 17:49

Ironically, that later fact about not being permitted to stay for longer than three months without employment or some suitable means of support is also a big factor in the Brexit vote. There's massive complaints about "freedom of movement" and yet the UK Government never even implemented that restriction.

Discussion on answer by MadHatter: Ho…

Imported from a comment discussion on travel.stackexchange.com...

Alnitak

Jun 12, 2018 10:45

the second paragraph is completely off topic, and more importantly completely incorrect.

Discussion on answer by Rob: Generate…

Imported from a comment discussion on codereview.stackexchange...

Alnitak

Jun 7, 2017 11:09

@NikitaB some of the other commenters appeared to be suggesting that the above method would be a mitigation for the amount of memory needed to shuffle a large sequence. It's not.

Alnitak

Jun 7, 2017 11:09

and FWIW, I'd flunk any interviewee that didn't use Fisher-Yates for this task.

Alnitak

Jun 7, 2017 11:09

@NikitaB whilst it does appear to only call the key generator function once per element, it has to allocate O(n) memory to store the resulting keys, and then still perform an O(n log n) comparison quick sort to achieve the result. The Fisher-Yates shuffle method is far better.

Discussion on question by jy196: I pl…

Imported from a comment discussion on superuser.com/questions/...

Alnitak

Feb 13, 2017 00:02

About 20-odd years ago I was supplied with a PC PSU where one of the molex connectors was mis-wired. That did blow up a hard drive, and I got the supplier to compensate me for the loss of that.

The Comms Room

ServerFault's lobby

Alnitak

Dec 23, 2011 11:37

yes there is - "I've run out of power in my data center - what should I do?"

Alnitak

Dec 23, 2011 11:33

where is everyone?

Alnitak

Dec 23, 2011 10:28

yet another newbie down voting my answer about legal domain names because he can't read the RFCs...

Alnitak

Dec 23, 2011 10:27

arghhhhhh!!

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:33

@BartDeVos hey, you deleted your comment on serverfault.com/questions/95036/…. Now mine makes no sense!

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:14

yes, that's (kindof) the same way as wildcards work in the DNS - they have to match one (or more) labels, not zero labels

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:13

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:13

that's what I thought.

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:12

sure, but a pure wildcard cert with SN "*.example.com" won't also cover "example.com" unless it has it in the SAN, too, yes?

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:09

this is a follow up to @MDMarra's comment on serverfault.com/questions/342586/…

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:08

that's not the question - what if there's no SAN ?

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:06

but would a standalone wildcard for "*.example.com" in the CN without an alt-name also cover "example.com" ?

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:05

assuming your browser supports Subject Alternate Name

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:05

sure, or vice versa

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:03

because the same certainly isn't true of wildcard DNS entries

Alnitak

Dec 21, 2011 15:01

@MDMarra - are you sure that a wildcard cert covers the domain itself too?

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 22:31

My 7 year old daughter has a netbook running Fedora. No windows updates required :)

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 22:29

@TomOConnor thx :)

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 22:15

not just HDDs - those blade servers I mentioned earlier - they were to replace a batch of 5 year old (out of maintenance) blades that all failed with the same voltage regulator fault after a power cycling. Stressing old components just isn't good for them.

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 22:11

that's one of the things I was trying to get TomTom to fix - he talks about "DNS names" and "Zone names" but those aren't the correct terms of art.

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 22:10

A "zone" is a complete domain including an SOA record, per master file format.

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 22:10

WDYM "zone name"?

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 22:09

that's the point of my answer - the DNS spec does allow an underscore, except when the domain name is also a host name

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 22:08

ta muchly

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 22:07

would someone please up tick (my) comment #5 on this answer serverfault.com/a/342287/216 so it gets included in the default list of comments? The other two upvoted comments don't make so much sense without it.

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 21:16

I had a load of BL25p Opteron blades but they all started failing (bad VRMs). Getting the second hand BL20p blades was a great way to get the system working again at negligible cost.

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 21:15

eBay special :)

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 21:14

8 blades, 2 dual core Xeons on each

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 21:14

I got an 8-way pSeries blade system last week for just over 500 quid :)

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 20:58

I see it on my own gravatar

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 20:58

what about mine?

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 20:55

I'm santafied!

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 20:20

Halt and Catch Fire

Halt and Catch Fire, known by the mnemonic HCF, refers to several computer machine code instructions that cause the CPU to cease meaningful operation. The expression "catch fire" is intended as a joke; the CPU does not usually catch fire. In early CPUs The HCF instruction was originally a fictitious instruction, claimed to be under development at IBM for use in their System/360 computers, along with many other amusing instructions such as "Execute Operator". One apocryphal story about the HCF instruction goes back to the late 1960s, when computers used magnetic core memory. The story go...

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 20:20

sounds like the old "HCF" asm opcode ("Halt and Catch Fire")

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 17:38

wish SO didn't hide some comments - makes the thread harder to follow :(

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 17:31

@MDMarra that and the 5 people that thought his (incorrect) comment about SRV records was worthy

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 17:28

what puzzles me is how come he got so many upvotes despite the pwning in the comment thread

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 17:27

@MDMarra ha ha

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 17:26

@MDMarra ah, right. He should pick his battles better.

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 17:25

@MDMarra of course he's fallible. He's talking out of his ass in this particular comment thread.

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 17:23

Ah, people are noticing my discussion with @TomTom again :)

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 15:07

I think they're a little delayed, just like the BBC Micro was :)

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 15:07

not sure when they'll be out yet - due imminently, though

Alnitak

Dec 19, 2011 15:07

tiny little ARM board with Ethernet, USB and HDMI for less than 25 quid