Recent Posts

2826

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 04, 2012, 08:38 AM »

So, just buy 2 then? Or 4 for mirrored raid?

-Renegade (August 03, 2012, 01:30 PM)

  ...A 4 drive (RAID1) mirror?

-Stoic Joker (August 03, 2012, 02:26 PM)

Umm...Maybe Renegade is thinking of a RAID-10 (aka: "striped mirrors") since he's talking four disks?

-40hz (August 03, 2012, 04:32 PM)

I Know ... I was just having a spot of evil fun poking him with a stick. We used the same configuration back when I first started where I'm at, but I had to switch it to a RAID5 due to space constraints.

I'm actually thinking of using it on the new rack system/virtualization/private cloud project if it gets off the ground for better redundancy since the performance numbers on RAID6 appear to be a bit (Um...) inflated. Not to mention the whole IOPS/spindle contention bla, bla, bla thing. Plan is to come out of the gate with about 8 or 10 virtual, on 3 physical, with a 3TB SAN...and leave room for an IT lab.

2827

General Software Discussion / Re: Activate/deactive a windows service with a script

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 04, 2012, 08:19 AM »

net stop [service name]
net start [service name]
net restart [service name]

2828

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 03, 2012, 02:26 PM »

So, just buy 2 then? Or 4 for mirrored raid?

-Renegade (August 03, 2012, 01:30 PM)

  ...A 4 drive (RAID1) mirror?

2829

General Software Discussion / Re: Immersive Explorer: Oh God why?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 03, 2012, 11:43 AM »

I'd suggest Windows IdiotBox

-40hz (August 03, 2012, 09:12 AM)

Wasn't that "common law" trademarked to mean television back in the 70s? ...We can't be confusing the old people now...that's just not nice.

2830

Living Room / Re: Windows 8 Metro has gone ...

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 03, 2012, 11:38 AM »

They were probably hoping for a payout... I can't see any other reason they would wait so long.  Or is that overly cynical...

-wraith808 (August 03, 2012, 07:49 AM)

+1 - These days I don't thing there is any such thing as being "overly cynical". We're getting down to the point where all there is left is sheep and skeptics.

2831

Living Room / Re: Dropbox Security Failure

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 03, 2012, 07:13 AM »

Well... Here's what I find troubling:

Our investigation found that usernames and passwords recently stolen from other websites were used to sign in to a small number of Dropbox accounts

-The Article

Passwords were stolen from "other websites" ...(Hm.../...And the buck pass goes for the long bomb!)... Anytime something is worded that carefully...somebody is full of shit.

The confusion is being caused by that key yet carefully misworded statement.

2832

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 02, 2012, 01:53 PM »

^So what's your take on the programs output, should he draw three, hold, or fold?

2833

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 02, 2012, 01:27 PM »

I'm getting a "caution" in "reallocated sector count" - what does that mean?

-TaoPhoenix (August 02, 2012, 11:02 AM)

You are running out of spare sectors, which is one of the signs of the end for the drive.

-Stoic Joker (August 02, 2012, 11:39 AM)

Maybe you can give me a little more detail.  Like xkcd's jokes about graphs with no axis labels, the caution drive is listed at "97" (of what?) reallocated sectors, with the "threshold of 36" (of what?). But the data drive is listed as "good" with reallocated sectors at "100" (of what?) with a "threshold of 5". Why So Different? So how is one Caution and the other good?

-TaoPhoenix (August 02, 2012, 01:07 PM)

I was responding to only the "caution" and "reallocated sector" parts. I know nothing about the software other than this morning I learned that Mouser thinks it's really cool. HDDs keep a pool of spare sectors that can be reallocated when one of the normal use sectors (fails/dies/expires) goes poof. Once that starts happening it's generally best to go shopping for a replacement. The intricate details involving how many are where and what's the magic number for too many I've not a clue on ... I'm a network guy...not a hardware guy. But I have seen a lot of disk failures, and they're generally not real slow...

2834

General Software Discussion / Re: mswin vs linux in academia

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 02, 2012, 11:53 AM »

with the only difference being in speed and hair loss/frustration.

-Renegade (August 02, 2012, 11:23 AM)

I was actually sitting here trying to figure out what hair frustration was...

Mind = Lost; send brightly colored string.

2835

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 02, 2012, 11:39 AM »

I'm getting a "caution" in "reallocated sector count" - what does that mean?

-TaoPhoenix (August 02, 2012, 11:02 AM)

You are running out of spare sectors, which is one of the signs of the end for the drive.

2836

Living Room / Re: Should we Prue-emotively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 02, 2012, 11:36 AM »

Perhaps wear & tear from regular use increases the likelihood of a "busy" drive failing. But in my experience it hasn't worked out that way. I strongly suspect variations in manufacturing and quality control have more to do with a drive going south than wear and tear does.

-40hz (August 02, 2012, 09:47 AM)

That tracks with my experience also. The head/platter relationship is zero contact, so nothing there can really "wearout". But if the thing is spinning, the bearings are making physical contact, and are indeed wearing slowly out.

Only exception I can think of is if something is being badly overused so the read/write lifetime is exceeded in a localized fashion. Like an XP SP2 machine with 256MB RAM from the factory ... They seemed to have an odd habit of blowing a hole in the drive wear the pagefile wasn't anymore.

2837

Living Room / Re: Should we pre-emptively retire old hard drives?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 02, 2012, 06:45 AM »

Personally, I only replace things when they either die, or get flaky, but I'm also a big fan of hot-swapable hardware RAID. however I have run across folks that used the MTBF as a replacement point for drives in their companies (high end commercial) SAN. I'm sort of torn as to the logic in that as it seems to me that you'd just be swapping one evil (disk failure), for another (RAID rebuild) ... either of which has potential to end catastrophically.

Perhaps in mission critical high availability systems it would be best to schedule ones performance hiccup outages by replacing drives on a preemptive basis (at considerable co$t...). But outside of that it strikes me as a bit wasteful and rather silly. Did I mention I tend to be just a tad on the cheap side..?

2838

General Software Discussion / Re: Immersive Explorer: Oh God why?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 01, 2012, 09:46 PM »

Also, I kinda like the Metro visual style.

-f0dder (August 01, 2012, 01:53 PM)

Nice to know there's at least two of us that do.

-Stoic Joker (August 01, 2012, 05:00 PM)

I don't have anything personally against the look of Metro. Especially since I prefer "flat" icons over the more popular beveled or 3D variety. What I do object to is the way Metro works - or more correctly, being forced to toss out my current workflow just because Microsoft decided to arbitrarily change the entire user "experience" without so much as a "by your leave." And to add insult to injury, for no real reason other than to do something different to create the appearance they're somehow innovating. And don't even get me going about their closed ecosystem plan for the Metro workspace...

-40hz (August 01, 2012, 06:10 PM)

(qualifier aside-> Like I said two of us. 

2839

General Software Discussion / Re: Immersive Explorer: Oh God why?

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 01, 2012, 05:00 PM »

Also, I kinda like the Metro visual style.

-f0dder (August 01, 2012, 01:53 PM)

Nice to know there's at least two of us that do.

Welcome back!

2840

Living Room / Re: Google Fiber

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 01, 2012, 07:06 AM »

It looks to me like Google (a) doesn't just provide a network port for bulk tapping; and (b) vets each request for info. That's not as good as taking a stand for what's right, but it's a heck of a lot better than we get from ATT, Verizon, etc.

-CWuestefeld (July 31, 2012, 06:31 PM)

Agree. But it's only a matter of time before 'the powers that be' get the wording and constitutional overrides fully worked out. Once the laws are less 'ambiguously worded' Google will roll over. Which is the problem with not taking a stand for what's right. So while I agree with you that Google has done more, it's still more of a rear guard action IMO than a brave confrontation. Being more than a little cynical these days, I also suspect Google is more interested in doing what they think they can get away with rather than doing what they obviously know is right.

-40hz (July 31, 2012, 06:45 PM)

So in short, their copious mound of freshly mined data is far to succulent a target for the alphabet soup crowd to pass up. Yes?

2841

Living Room / Re: New version of Chrome can WATCH and LISTEN

« Last post by Stoic Joker on August 01, 2012, 06:56 AM »

How else are they going to get enough research data to develop the coffee mugs that display contextually relevant advertising based on your real life conversations with friends, family, and co-workers? 

-app103 (August 01, 2012, 06:27 AM)

Now that, is a horrifyingly accurate assessment.

2842

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 30, 2012, 12:16 PM »

So the contestants are given trinkets for theirown "safety" ...

-Stoic Joker (July 30, 2012, 06:46 AM)

Well, that's my conjecture, don't know if there's any truth behind it
Personally, if I got an olympics medal, I would never sell it regardless of its value, so I'd actually prefer getting a cheaper medal and some money, since the medal is just sentimental.

-jgpaiva (July 30, 2012, 09:27 AM)

Understood, but it fit nicely with my dim view of corporate attitudes.

2843

Living Room / Re: Olympic Gold Medals a Whopping 1.34% Gold

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 30, 2012, 06:46 AM »

So the contestants are given trinkets for theirown "safety" ... Yeah, there's some badly spin doctored bullshit. Kids spend the entirety of their young lives training for a shot and end up (basically) getting a stick of gum for their efforts - Yeah, Yeah, Yeah...endorsement deals are great if they want to spend even more time towing the corporate image line. But that doesn't really reward their efforts ... It just gives them a "golden" opportunity to be a shill. Hay...maybe if they were paid shit for that also, they couldn't afford to get into so much trouble ... That'd be a win/win ... Not!

2844

Living Room / Re: Show us a photo of your mutt or other creatures..

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 27, 2012, 05:56 PM »

New addition to the family really likes the water. My brother shot the video (and is narrating).

2845

Living Room / System Administrator Appreciation Day

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 27, 2012, 03:08 PM »

As today is System Administrator Appreciation Day, I'd like to say thanks to the DC Admins.

And to my fellow BOFHs whose companies forgot them today (Yeah mine too), we can just appreciate eachother.

Yey us! 

2846

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 4Videosoft iPad Manager for Mac and PC Free Today 2012-07-26

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 26, 2012, 11:41 AM »

Now there's a product that should easily sell itself. It's just like iTunes but doesn't suck!

Let us know how it works (I've nothing to test it on...), I'd love to have an alternative I could recommend to clients.

2847

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

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 26, 2012, 11:10 AM »

OMG [FacePalm]

2848

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

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 25, 2012, 12:21 PM »

[edit] I'm taking this too seriously, though

-jgpaiva (July 25, 2012, 12:11 PM)

 

2849

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

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 25, 2012, 11:53 AM »

How about these words: The 10 Coolest Foreign Words The English Language Need.

-Arizona Hot (July 25, 2012, 11:19 AM)

Actually I found #1 (Desenrascanco) rather interesting considering I'm half Portuguese ... and tend to function best in chaos. One of my favorite sayings is: The only thing you can plan on is that nothing will go according to plan.

 

2850

Living Room / Re: Krikorian, AMC Ban Masks and Fake Guns from Theaters

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 24, 2012, 05:25 PM »

I was pondering that seeming conflict in the testimonies also ... That does make more sense to me also