Recent Posts

2026

General Software Discussion / Re: Replacing the Control Panel

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 20, 2013, 05:32 PM »

My brain lacks that filtering mechanism and as a result it collects as much information as I can handle. One side effect of that is an inability to recognize basic problem solving strategies. I simply have to dive in headfirst and work things out as I go. Until I get at least most of the way to the end I literally can't decide which way I'm going.

I compensate by assembling and refining complex systems in my head. At any given time at least 2 or 3 different parts of my brain are analyzing all the data that comes in from completely different perspectives. Once I've figured out the big picture I apply it to the challenge at hand and then use it to formulate a solution. And yes, it's just as complicated as it sounds whether I'm redesigning fundamental features of Windows or picking out which flavor of Linux to put on my file server. That took me about a month BTW.

-Vurbal (August 20, 2013, 01:11 PM)

Hell, with that description...I think we have the same strategy. I tend to start by overloading with insanely tangential minutia and then letting the project define itself on the fly.

2027

Living Room / Re: Make an original joke or riddle

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 20, 2013, 11:15 AM »

Best Joan Baez song = The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down

-tomos (August 20, 2013, 08:10 AM)

Definitely one of the better songs I've had stuck in my head this week ... Thanks!

2028

Living Room / Re: Edward Snowden's Email Provider Shut Down Rather Than Comply With Feds

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 19, 2013, 11:39 AM »

From a security standpoint you'd have to be slap whacky to believe that cloud hosted anything is going to be more secure. It's a larger tastier target, with an exponential increase in moving parts exposure, and lines of responsibility that are as thin as air.

2029

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome’s insane password security strategy

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 18, 2013, 01:07 PM »

Wired's response is basically, "Shut up. This is normal."

-Renegade (August 17, 2013, 10:55 PM)

Wired is no longer Wired as many of us remember it - and hasn't been since 1998. Wired is now owned by Advance Publications and managed by their Conde Nast <*choke*> subservient subsidiary company.

Need more really be said?

 

-40hz (August 18, 2013, 11:54 AM)

So you're saying that the downside of being "wired" is a matter of who's finger is on the button at the end of the cattle prod wires?

if <Kzzzzeeeeeerrrrtttt> (Resistance == futile) got it;




...Yes I've been drinking.  

2030

Living Room / Re: Hacker Posts About FB Flaw to Zuckerberg's Wall (gets way worse)

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 18, 2013, 08:11 AM »

This is exactly why security experts should instead of reporting bugs to companies, should just sell exploits to criminals. If companies won't act in good faith, why should any security experts?

-Renegade (August 17, 2013, 11:28 PM)

That's been tried already ... The NSA screwed them too.

2031

Living Room / Re: *Email privacy and security survey*

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 16, 2013, 06:54 PM »

I'm in favor of the single use ephemeral "reset" password scheme.

-Stoic Joker (August 16, 2013, 03:52 PM)

What is this?

-wraith808 (August 16, 2013, 03:58 PM)

A really bad (rushed...) description of something we've all seen many times?

Most sites if you click the lost password link send a reset password link to the accounts Email address that typically expires in 24 hours or less and allows the user to change their password to something that isn't lost.

I've done a variation on that for clients (in a pinch) if I know they are sitting there waiting/trying to login. I log into the server, set their account to require a pw change on next login, and then Email the password to where ever they would like because it ain't gonna be any good in less than 60 seconds anyhow.

I really don't think there is a truly secure way of sending passwords. You can try encrypting it sure...but then what do you do with the encryption key (Infinite loop anybody?)?? So it's really just best to minimize the exposure window by keeping the timeline as tight as possible.

2032

Living Room / Re: Google: Gmail users shouldn't expect email privacy

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 16, 2013, 06:34 PM »

Last I heard if you leave something for your neighbor in their mailbox, that ain't got a stamp on it ... It's a felony. Pretty much anything that involves a mailbox (including kicking one) is considered a felony, because the mailbox itself is considered federal property.

-Stoic Joker (August 16, 2013, 03:47 PM)

Fine! Let's change my example to hand to hand delivery and keep the post office, postal workers, mailboxes, all federal property and anything related to such, out of it.

-app103 (August 16, 2013, 04:04 PM)

  (hehe) Actually I understood and agree with you initial analogy ... I was just commenting on the tangent. 


You see despite the popular quest for deeper meaning, I'm actually quite happy with simple straightforward examples. It's basically the difference between short stories and entire novels. While both can make an excellent point, only one of them makes your head hurt in the process.

2033

Living Room / Re: *Email privacy and security survey*

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 16, 2013, 03:52 PM »

I know what it is, but I am not using it.

-Jibz (August 16, 2013, 12:25 PM)

+1 - Because all encrypted communications do is draw unnecessary attention to your activities, and regardless of what you use it's not going to stop an elite focused (governmental...) attack. So the bulk of it strikes me as a waste of (cycle) time.

-Stoic Joker (August 16, 2013, 01:57 PM)

I don't think it would be a waste of time if one were a business and it was used for securely transferring password information between you and a client, but in the case of businesses that deal with common people that don't have any clue what PGP or an alternative is, or don't have what they need to use it installed, then it certainly makes things much more difficult to transfer that type of information securely (which is a problem I am facing right now, and to which I have not found a free easy moron-proof cross-platform solution)

-app103 (August 16, 2013, 02:07 PM)

I'm in favor of the single use ephemeral "reset" password scheme.

2034

Living Room / Re: Google: Gmail users shouldn't expect email privacy

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 16, 2013, 03:47 PM »

Last I heard if you leave something for your neighbor in their mailbox, that ain't got a stamp on it ... It's a felony. Pretty much anything that involves a mailbox (including kicking one) is considered a felony, because the mailbox itself is considered federal property.

2035

Living Room / Re: *Email privacy and security survey*

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 16, 2013, 01:57 PM »

I know what it is, but I am not using it.

-Jibz (August 16, 2013, 12:25 PM)

+1 - Because all encrypted communications do is draw unnecessary attention to your activities, and regardless of what you use it's not going to stop an elite focused (governmental...) attack. So the bulk of it strikes me as a waste of (cycle) time.

2036

Living Room / Re: Google: Gmail users shouldn't expect email privacy

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 16, 2013, 11:29 AM »

I'll just leave this here...
 (see attachment in previous post)

-app103 (August 16, 2013, 08:29 AM)

ROFLMFAO!!! That is BRILLIANT!! Seriously, I'm so frigging tired of having that conversation I could scream ... I'm going to have the graphics department blow that up to poster size and hang it in my office!

  Thank You!!! 

2037

Living Room / Re: Please help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 15, 2013, 06:51 PM »

Seems like Supermicro motherboards, even if it says ATX, may not truly be standard:

-superboyac (August 15, 2013, 05:13 PM)

hehe No ... But they are really nice. My server has been running on one for years. Their cases are quite nice also ... Very well made.

2038

Living Room / Re: Ridiculous complaint argues free software is a form of predatory pricing

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 15, 2013, 12:58 PM »

If I said what I was thinking right now it would probably melt a hole in the internet.

2039

Living Room / Re: Why I Idolize Larry Ellison...

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 15, 2013, 12:56 PM »

Would someone please check Renegade's back yard for a large seed pod ... I think he's been replaced.

-Stoic Joker (August 15, 2013, 11:31 AM)

Don't worry, my child. One day you too will find faith, and perhaps even become exulted in His Holiness Larry Ellison's clergy, like myself, as an Elliphant. The inner mysteries of the goodness of mass surveillance will be revealed to you, oh unbeliever, and to all!

-Renegade (August 15, 2013, 11:57 AM)

Ya know...normally... For something like this ... I'd say to alert the authorities, because obviously we're under some type of attack. But these days there's really no point in wasting the dime...because they're obviously behind it.


So... If somebody would be kind enough to flip on the bat(shit crazy)-signal, to dispatch an Anonymous deprogramming team to Ren's place ... That would be swell.

2040

Living Room / Re: Why I Idolize Larry Ellison...

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 15, 2013, 11:31 AM »

Would someone please check Renegade's back yard for a large seed pod ... I think he's been replaced.

2041

General Software Discussion / Re: Replacing the Control Panel

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 15, 2013, 06:36 AM »

Devices and Printers: I have no idea what problem this applet was intended to solve. I can launch the Add Hardware and Add Printer wizards directly but it would be nice to have a general printer management program. If not, maybe I'll just ignore it altogether and be happy things are a little simpler.

-Vurbal (August 15, 2013, 12:07 AM)

Have you seen the Print Management console? It's buried pretty deep, but well worth looking for...and it's part of Windows 7.

2042

General Software Discussion / Re: 'non-religious' religious head's-up

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 14, 2013, 02:20 PM »

Now that is an interesting point to ponder.

2043

Living Room / Re: Please help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 14, 2013, 12:03 PM »

Never tried RAID5 under software although I'm told by others that it's been reliable. There is a performance hit. But on a single user server (hmm...now that's an odd phrase) it shouldn't be a significant factor. However, I would still be concerned about the number of drives you try to incorporate under soft RAID. I'd worry with anything over three - and definitely not go past five drives in that scenario.

-40hz (August 14, 2013, 07:22 AM)

MB integrated Software 3 disk RAID 5 here ... Anything SB needs to know about it is contained in the (I think 4 page) thread here about when I goofed replacing a blown drive with the wrong type.

The third and final disk from that array blew just last week and replacement (with the spare I had on hand) went quite smoothly.

+1 to the 3 disk soft RAID max.

If I go with Windows Server 2012 and their Storage Spaces, here are my notes from that:
http://technet.micro...ibrary/jj822938.aspx

Mirror
Stores two or three copies of the data across the set of physical disks.
Increases reliability, but reduces capacity. Duplication occurs with every write. A mirror space also stripes the data across multiple physical drives.
Greater data throughput than parity, and lower access latency.
Uses dirty region tracking (DRT) to track modifications to the disks in the pool. When the system resumes from an unplanned shutdown and the spaces are brought back online, DRT makes disks in the pool consistent with each other.

Requires at least two physical disks to protect from single disk failure.
Requires at least five physical disks to protect from two simultaneous disk failures.

Use for most deployments. For example, mirror spaces are suited for a general-purpose file share or a virtual hard disk (VHD) library.

There are three options: mirror, parity, simple.  So they are recommending mirror for my setup.

-superboyac (August 14, 2013, 09:25 AM)

??? Mirroring for a VHD library? Library meaning storing them only, or running them from that location? Mirroring cuts spindle count in half which will severely limit the number of VM's you can comfortably run simultaneous.

2044

Screenshot Captor / Re: Strange problem with default screenshot directory on network drive

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 14, 2013, 11:47 AM »

I've actually seen quite a bit of odd/ill behavior with Windows (waking up cranky) in general if the My Documents folder is moved to a network drive (which also kills the start menu auto-search/indexing feature). This is due to Windows not always having the share access reopened completely before an application tries to get there.

If you browse to the network located My Documents folder, right click it, and select 'Always available offline'. It will enable the Client Side Cache (CSC) for all the files stored in the network location, and I suspect it may eliminate the errors.

Note: I've not tried using the above for this specific case, I'm only stating that it has resolved this type of behavior for me several times in the past.

If you have a large amount of data on the network drive, it will vary close to the same amount of space on your computer to cache it locally. So if you have a really large amount of data it would be prudent to only cache specific troublesome subfolders ... Instead of the entire My Documents parent folder.

2045

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows "Blue"

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 14, 2013, 11:26 AM »

To paraphrase a nugget of wisdom from Despair.com...

-Vurbal (August 14, 2013, 08:48 AM)

I Freaking Love That Site!

2046

Living Room / Re: Please help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 14, 2013, 07:00 AM »

i mean, there must be a reason why the enterprise users don't do that kind of stuff.

-superboyac (August 13, 2013, 05:34 PM)

(Short answer> Battery on the RAID controller allows the cache to be written to (array) drives safely in the event of a power failure.

(However> MS was touting the performance/convenience of their new Server 2012/Hyper-V soft RAID/disk pooling feature for enterprise class deployments at the last show I went to.

2047

Living Room / Re: Licensing Developers?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 13, 2013, 11:52 AM »

And hey... don't you work in IT?

-Renegade (August 13, 2013, 10:12 AM)

Define "Work".

Hmmm... Are you licensed?

-Renegade (August 13, 2013, 10:12 AM)

To kill...yes.

Do you follow proper regulations?

-Renegade (August 13, 2013, 10:12 AM)

My Rules ... I make them up!

Are they just leaving the chaos and anarchy of the wild, wild west to you?

-Renegade (August 13, 2013, 10:12 AM)

Continue that line of questioning, and I'll counter sue you for leaking trade secrets.

Hmmm... I bet if you were properly regulated, you'd change your tone(r) pretty darn quick...

-Renegade (August 13, 2013, 10:12 AM)

It's not so much that I buck the system ... I just like to follow the rules that they forgot about. So, good luck with that...you could be the 847th person to fail at said task...

2048

Living Room / Re: Anti-Tracking Smartphone Pouch

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 13, 2013, 11:16 AM »

Well if "Nothing to hide" is their justification for this crap...I think we should get a few million people together and show up at the Whitehouse completely naked.

We put all the 300+ pounders we can find in the front rows ... And carry signs that say we'll get dressed when you stop being so F'ing nosey!!

2049

Living Room / Re: Licensing Developers?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 13, 2013, 06:48 AM »

Fine, if we're going to start regulating mythical threats, let's bring back the dangers of dandelion snorting campaign.

2050

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 13, 2013, 06:35 AM »

Talk about the fox guarding the hen house ... Yeish!