Recent Posts

1826

Living Room / Re: New Zealand bans software patents

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 18, 2013, 05:24 PM »

But how effective will this be in actual practice?  Doesn't this only apply to such litigation brought to NZ courts and within its bounds?

-wraith808 (November 18, 2013, 12:10 PM)

Yes. It's a start at least, with NZ getting it's own house into more sensible order.

-IainB (November 18, 2013, 02:27 PM)

How many high profile software patent cases have been brought up in NZ court?  Just wondering if this is more of a symbolic win than a practical one?

-wraith808 (November 18, 2013, 04:53 PM)

Think of it as quitting while you're ahead, or nipping something in the bud. They've seen what a total disaster the US has made of SW patents...so they simply avoid that level of mess by learning from the mistakes of another.

Innovation can only flourish when the lawyers are quiet.

1827

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 18, 2013, 06:56 AM »

99% of the time when something isn't working in your house, one of your kids did it.

-IainB (November 18, 2013, 02:01 AM)

We have a special term for that in my house, and it's named after my husband. 

Computing: A printer consists of three main parts:  The case, the jammed paper tray, and the blinking red light.

-IainB (November 18, 2013, 02:01 AM)

5 main parts...all of the above, the empty ink cartridge, and the indecipherable error message that won't go away. 

Computing: If your computer says:  Printer out of Paper, this problem cannot be resolved by continuously clicking the "OK" button.

-IainB (November 18, 2013, 02:01 AM)

But it can be resolved by taking a sledge hammer to a printer, that's obviously full of paper. 

-app103 (November 18, 2013, 04:25 AM)

It is my professional opinion that these last two are indeed correct.

1828

Living Room / Re: YouTube finally forces creation of google+ A/C to comment

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 15, 2013, 09:46 PM »

What annoyed me was having to login to watch a video ... Since when did motorcycle racing become a "monitored" topic?? Is the elementary school PTA handling the rating systems these days? That BS needs to stop like yesterday!

1829

General Software Discussion / Re: central addressbook software for syncing everything with everything

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 15, 2013, 06:43 PM »

Er...here's an odd thing or question:

Since I previously had a Windows Phone 8, all my contacts were perfectly synced on it.  If I login to the Windows Live site on my computer, the same perfectly synced contacts show up.  Now, one would expect to be able to link those contacts to my desktop Outlook 2010...but such an option doesn't seem to exist!  What the Fu--!  Microsoft won't even play nice with itself?  Geez.

-superboyac (November 15, 2013, 06:00 PM)

Hehe I was actually glad none of the crap in my MSN/Hotmail/Live account cluttered up my Outlook ... But I know what you mean. Seems like I did find a way to bounce stuff between at one point, but I think it involved the Zune (or whatever it's called) software and individual .vcf contact files.

-Stoic Joker (November 15, 2013, 06:32 PM)

So how do you keep track of contacts on your phone/computer?  What if you manually add one on the computer?  What if you manually add one on the phone?  Do you keep exporting/importing them with csv files?  What about profile photos?  What about info changing on facebook or linkedin (emails, numbers, etc.)?

-superboyac (November 15, 2013, 06:35 PM)

For our operation (we have Exchange in-house) The Exchange side keeps everything synced between devices, and I just ignore the MSN/Hotmail/Live account that clutters up my phone. I should have tied it to my work live account, but had a stupid moment and plugged in my personal account instead ... And I never got around to flattening the phone (a requirement that truly does suck) to switch accounts.

1830

General Software Discussion / Re: central addressbook software for syncing everything with everything

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 15, 2013, 06:37 PM »

MS hosted Exchange: $4 per user per month - with a 1 user minimum - and it will sync everything with anything (Android/iLife/etc.) on the fly.

-Stoic Joker (November 15, 2013, 06:20 PM)

Where can I find more details on the features?  I'm checking out their website, and the lingo is so stupid and corporate bullshit.  How do the contacts get on the android?  is it integrated, or is it a separate app?  How does it work with desktop outlook 2010?  Photos from facebook?

-superboyac (November 15, 2013, 06:26 PM)

You are seriously being way too kind. It really is total shit.

If you can give me a day or so I can setup a demo acct for you (we're an MS cloud partner) so you can play with a live copy to see if it really does what you want.

1831

General Software Discussion / Re: central addressbook software for syncing everything with everything

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 15, 2013, 06:32 PM »

Er...here's an odd thing or question:

Since I previously had a Windows Phone 8, all my contacts were perfectly synced on it.  If I login to the Windows Live site on my computer, the same perfectly synced contacts show up.  Now, one would expect to be able to link those contacts to my desktop Outlook 2010...but such an option doesn't seem to exist!  What the Fu--!  Microsoft won't even play nice with itself?  Geez.

-superboyac (November 15, 2013, 06:00 PM)

Hehe I was actually glad none of the crap in my MSN/Hotmail/Live account cluttered up my Outlook ... But I know what you mean. Seems like I did find a way to bounce stuff between at one point, but I think it involved the Zune (or whatever it's called) software and individual .vcf contact files.

1832

General Software Discussion / Re: central addressbook software for syncing everything with everything

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 15, 2013, 06:20 PM »

MS hosted Exchange: $4 per user per month - with a 1 user minimum - and it will sync everything with anything (Android/iLife/etc.) on the fly.

1833

General Software Discussion / Re: software to edit pdfs

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 15, 2013, 06:10 PM »

How are your copies of Office 2010 licensed? If you have one of the agreements that includes upgrades (Software Assurance and some others), Office 2013 has native pdf editing that works quite well.

From an administrative standpoint, having less software to maintain is more time to get/keep your head above water.

1834

Living Room / Re: YouTube finally forces creation of google+ A/C to comment

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 15, 2013, 04:54 PM »

And if Outlook.com, etc., were smart, they'd make it easy for you to upload the repository that it's possible for you to download from gmail.

-CWuestefeld (November 15, 2013, 02:10 PM)

If by Outlook.com you mean the hosted Exchange, then yes they have many rather exceptional import options.

1835

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 15, 2013, 07:33 AM »

Like I said earlier - if you find yourself worrying about a drive, it's probably a good time to think about a replacement. Those subconscious trouble signals you pick up are often worth paying attention to once you have some experience under your belt.

-40hz (November 14, 2013, 02:22 PM)

I'll second the voodoo science/trust your instincts (e.g. don't ignore that funny feeling) angle, as it has server me well in the past (and bit me a few time when ignored).

Here's one (along those lines) that happened yesterday. Client has a computer lab with 15 machines, that were all (old) donated boxes because they are a nonprofit outfit. They let another group user their lab for a training session, and after the session, the folks then shutdown the machines to be considerate. The machines were supposed to be left on for the nightly maintenance routines to run ... so that hadn't actually been off for about 6 months.

The next morning - after finally cooling completely overnight - 7 of the 15 machines were completely - hardware failure - dead. 3 HDDs, 2 motherboards, 1 question mark, and we're pretty sure the last one is a zombie because it should have been dead months ago given how flakey it acts.

1836

General Software Discussion / Re: NLB and Load Balancing

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 15, 2013, 07:13 AM »

Yoikes! That sounds more than a little outside my area of expertise or experience. I doubt I could do more than toss out a few generalities about load balancing on that one as given.

Stoic? You maybe wanna tackle it?

-40hz (November 14, 2013, 02:13 PM)

Zoiks! That one is out of my range as well. IIRC everything session wise pivoted on the quorum drive so it would be available to the next machine as/if the load shifted due to a spike or outage. But specifics regarding how to get legacy apps to play nice in that environment I'd be afraid to guess. The Quorum drive sits on the SAN and is the session/connection holding (center of the star basically) area for the front line and backend systems.

NLB over simplified is just an isolated IP network between backend systems that handles only heartbeat packets allowing servers A, B, & C to know if one of them goes down, comes back up, or gets overloaded so they can respond accordingly. The response is/would be to either pluck or hand off some of the machine X session workload which is pooled in the quorum.

Sorry wraith, that's all I got.

1837

Living Room / Re: YouTube finally forces creation of google+ A/C to comment

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 14, 2013, 06:54 PM »

Here's the original - with comments still enabled, and a few more views than the other one ;-)
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=LTq8TrA3hb4

-tomos (November 14, 2013, 06:30 PM)

Thanks tomos!

1838

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 14, 2013, 06:38 PM »

Green bananas.
[...]
"Nah." says the bloke, "I'm just a really bad conductor."

-IainB (November 14, 2013, 02:25 PM)

 

-tomos (November 14, 2013, 04:00 PM)

I'll 2nd that: 

1839

Living Room / Re: YouTube finally forces creation of google+ A/C to comment

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 14, 2013, 06:16 PM »

NSWF (language):

-mouser (November 12, 2013, 09:18 PM)

Bummer...comments and ratings have been disabled for that video ... Guess Google isn't listening through the right hole..

Good voice, can carry a tune, kinda cute ... She should do more videos (hehe).

1840

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 14, 2013, 11:54 AM »

So while the enterprise class drives have sticker shock price tags...

-Stoic Joker (November 14, 2013, 07:02 AM)

I didn't think they were that much more expensive than standard drives for what you were getting when I quick price checked a few online.

-40hz (November 14, 2013, 09:04 AM)

For sourcing your own perhaps not, but if you're configuring a server from Dell/HP/etc. the price jump between it's a disk (300GB $120) vs. nearline (300GB $250) vs. enterprise (300GB $380) 10k/15k speeds) will make most people wince visibly. Now prices given are approximate (based on memory), but the jumps are within $20 of what I ran into last time a configured a server from HP ... And are why I go (7200rpm) nearline for storage arrays.

1841

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 14, 2013, 11:27 AM »

But just sayin' ... the days when they could put comments like that in textbooks, before they were marketing-spinned to death!

-TaoPhoenix (November 14, 2013, 10:58 AM)

Well, I guess that is an indication of how out-of-touch I am with the "Modern World" ... Because I see nothing wrong with the comment what so ever. Then again, I also do not consider political science to be a real science either.

1842

General Software Discussion / Re: NLB and Load Balancing

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 14, 2013, 11:22 AM »

There's not a lot of call for that class of infrastructure in the SMB market around here. While I do remember quite a bit about it from the Win2k exam track (it was covered extensively), I don't really have any practical hands on with it.

However on the bright side, if you give us a thumbnail sketch of what is being proposed...40 and I can walk you through some of the theoretical stuff.

1843

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 14, 2013, 07:02 AM »

Intel has published a good paper on the differences between enterprise and desktop disk drives. 10-pages of good reading for any who might be interested. (Copy attached. It's small.)
 (see attachment in previous post)

-40hz (November 13, 2013, 08:59 PM)

It starts a bit slow, but has some good points on why one should not skimp on hardware. So while the enterprise class drives have sticker shock price tags...there apparently are actually valid technical reasons for them.

1844

Living Room / Re: Security Questions (humor)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 13, 2013, 06:29 PM »

Now That is Funny!

1845

General Software Discussion / Re: The Open Source debate

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 13, 2013, 06:21 PM »

Management are the ones who are peppering the place with Bloody iPads and demanding Bring-Your-Own-Disaster sooner than the infrastructure can support it. Management can't make decisions if they're not informed of the options; they also can't be informed if they have their fingers stuck in their ears because they're not smart enough to understand what they're being told -- or prefer to believe that a deus ex machina will materialise at the 11th hour.

-oblivion (November 13, 2013, 12:44 PM)

+10 - Love your definition of BYOD ... Seriously man, I'm friggin' stealing it! I wish I had a nickel for every time the brass got back from some seminar all wound up over some new fad technology trend that they wanted to throw money at ... That didn't friggin work. I don't care if it'll sell "like hot cakes" if it's only going to require us to hire 6 more people to handle the load of people screaming at us...Then it's a stupid idea.

1846

Living Room / Re: What keys can't fit in your pant pockets?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 13, 2013, 06:06 PM »

I've been in Miami  since February

-MilesAhead (November 13, 2013, 01:41 PM)

Is it still warm down there? Because it's downright cold in central FL right now (I hate winter).

1847

Living Room / Re: What keys can't fit in your pant pockets?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 13, 2013, 11:49 AM »

Key West

1848

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 13, 2013, 11:40 AM »

Gotta stop dwelling in the past I do.

-40hz (November 13, 2013, 09:58 AM)

Na... It's fun! Besides I think you're just screwing with me to make sure I'm awake... ...Which I wasn't...which I guess is why we just had a conversation about basically mythical 5300rpm drives. Instead of the 5400 rpm variety which are actually manufactured. (Tehehe - Oops!)

1849

General Software Discussion / Re: The Open Source debate

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 13, 2013, 11:28 AM »

Quietly reminding certain IT managers that they are there to do what best serves the company and meets the needs of the users is what it's all about.

He "won't allow" something? Lets get real, Napolean...IT works for the organization. Not the other way around. Software decisions are a management not an IT call.
 

-40hz (November 13, 2013, 11:00 AM)

Now Now, we both know that no properly seasoned BOFH is going to automatically accept any decision impacting their systems without a bit of probing to gauge how vested who is in the proceedings.

We just went live with new BI software last week, but while I didn't mind the change...because the old system really did suck. But I fought tooth and nail to keep the systems bolted to the floor at eye level instead of in the cloud where the IT fashion tragic lemming are flocking (to their deaths I hope) by the "thousands" (according to the vendors inflated sales graph).

1850

Living Room / Re: How long do hard drives actually live for?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on November 13, 2013, 07:01 AM »

They usually have more robust motors and spin at the slower 5300 speeds to keep heat and vibration down

-40hz (November 12, 2013, 06:37 PM)

  Where are you finding 5300rpm SATA drives? My WD3200YS RE drives are 7200rpm, and I generally always went for the lower speed drives because I assumed (as you mention) that they'd last longer. Even the Nearlines I used for the storage array of the new server are 7200rpm.

---------------------------------------//----------------------------------------

Also chiming in from the anecdotal department...I've got a couple of consumer level drives in my lab that have been spinning 24/7/365 for close to 10 years. I think they may be zombies...because they should be dead by now...but they just keep going ... Should I shoot them in their little read heads?