More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

nitrogen posted:

Today I learned that there's actually a name for these cable leads (the cloverleaf/mickeymouse and the kettle.)

I still dont know wtf a telefunken cable is. (Is it a variant of XLR cable, or is that just what you brits call XLR cables?)

I think it's like the "clover" cable, but with two leads, like most older radios/stereos use

# ¿ Oct 21, 2013 12:39

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 10:19

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Cryptolocker scares me. I know we have backups of everything + shadow copies enabled, but the cleanup would still be horrible.

99% of our data is in Excel files on a server - is there any way at all to protect them?

...or a way to notice that cryptolocker has started encrypting? Like placing a file in a catalog as a "canary" and have some service monitor it for modification or something?

# ¿ Oct 23, 2013 16:57

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

thebigcow posted:

%appdata%\*.exe for xp and %appdata%\roaming\*.exe or just %appdata%\*\*.exe for vista or newer

or so i've been told.

Would that also kill Chrome?

Sickening posted:

All you can do is limit access.

Each user has access to 10+ GB of Excel files

That's why I thought of making some sort of "canary file" - a file that never should be touched in normal situations, and some kind of alert as to which user accessed it. Here I'm assuming that encrypting all 10-15-20-30 GB of Excel files takes a considerable amount of time, and this would give us time to turn off the infected computer and only have to do a partial restore.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2013 18:42

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Sickening posted:

Does every user need access to every file? If yes, then your hosed. If no, then you can segment directories and make changes to access accordingly.

Probably not every file, but the overlap is significant enough that it's a problem.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2013 19:13

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

MW posted:

It should be noted that this is the minimum that a company must follow. Plenty of companies give you full pay for the full duration of the first 14 days. Though I'm not certain of the limits, I'm pretty sure that what the state reimburses you after 14 days is only a certain percentage of your salary up to a maximum. I believe you a given 80% of your salary up to ~30k SEK (equivalent to about $55k), which is really quite low. A developer for example might expect to earn ~50-60k SEK, or about $100k usd yearly in Stockholm (capital).

I...think some of your numbers are off by a factor of 10?

# ¿ Jan 12, 2014 15:13

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

This seems like a good time to point out that you can prevent the java installer from trying to install malware

(though of course that's only going to work as long as Oracle lets us...)

# ¿ Jan 16, 2014 19:39

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA posted:

Another mission-critical app requires R51, so I have R45 on a VM and R51 on a workstation.

Most R51 issues can be solved by going into the "Configure Java" start menu item (that I didn't even know existed before), and click the entirely new button under Security: "Edit Site List..."

At least even the worst Java application I touch work "OK" if I add all the URLs to that list.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 07:32

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

anthonypants posted:

It's in the changelog, but 7u51 blocks unsigned and self-signed applets on the High security setting.

Yeah, it sucks

We use Check Point Connectra for our VPN (not my choice) which at the moment requires being added to the site list, and invokes two "allow/block" prompts.

I've started using a Linux VM and the command line version of the Connectra SNX software just so I can avoid that...

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 07:53

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

less than three posted:

Oh God, we use Connectra and I haven't even thought to try using it since the update. It already had like 4 prompts between Windows 7 and Java, before this update.

It works, but I prefer running it in my Linux VM - download the snx_installer.sh, run, apt-get a bunch of packages since snx is 32bit, and I use 64 bit linux, and after that I can run snx from the command line to connect, no java necessary.

I really wish it was possible to invoke the SNX that's installed on my Windows computer the same way, without having to visit the web page

...or maybe that is possible somehow already?

# ¿ Jan 22, 2014 10:18

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

mysteryberto posted:

The exception list is stored per user in the appdata folder.

You can also create a deployment properties file and store it in C:\windows\sun\java\java. This file can include an exception list file location and also suppress the forced update warnings every time Java is updated to the new version.

Alternatively you can use rule sets if you have a certificate from a CA:
https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/entry/introducing_deployment_rule_sets

Really this all boils down to a bunch of old applications that are dependent on old versions of Java or old Java security rules. For months applications that were going to be blocked displayed warnings in red letters "this app will be blocked in a future release fix your poo poo". People kept ignoring it and now it's a big issue.

I'm not in IT, but nobody uses CheckPoint from their office computers, so it's a bit trickier than just having an exception list deployed to everyone.

Anyhow, I also found that after R51 had been installed, reverting to R45 did not help at all - the site list was necessary even then.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2014 07:42

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Lum posted:

Ongoing theme I know, but this one is a little more odd than most. First the obligatory..

gently caress Printers!

gently caress Konica's lovely incomplete PostScript implementation in particular.

This is a system I set up 10 years ago, and still support. We're doing some slightly unusual stuff, but it's 100% valid PostScript Level 2. The postscript is generic, not targetted at any specific model. Over the years a variety of Ricoh printers have come and gone and it's carried on trucking just fine.

Kyocera also does this, their "KX" implementation of postscript is OK...except that certain PDFs we create (from Adobe Indesign/Illustrator) actually hard-crashed the printer. When you tried printing, it would spit out a few pages, then show "ERROR Please turn the printer off and on again with the power button". Tried about a million different drivers, no luck, the only solution I found was to open the PDF in some kind of opensource PDF reader, re-print it to PDF, and then print it from Acrobat - but of course that hosed up the colors/fonts/illustrations/everything...

# ¿ Jan 28, 2014 20:15

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Lum posted:

Do they contain binary PostScript, or EPS files that contain binary PostScript.

Illustrator loves to produce those and it fucks up a lot of things.

If you need to de-poo poo such a job, I would recommend setting up a virtual printer that uses RedMon to chuck the job into GhostScript, convert to some other format (pdfwrite, ps or ljet4) and pass it on to the real printer.

This can be set up on a print server in such a way that it's entirely transparent to the end user.

This will work for other stuff beyond handling binary postscript. I've used to to send my hosed up PostScript jobs to a printer that is PCL-only due to Canon wanting to charge extra for PostScript support.

We actually just let the (quite expensive) contract expire, bought a cheap color laser, and save money by having a nearby company print any "designed stuff" (and let them deal with the complexity of printing a PDF).

# ¿ Jan 28, 2014 20:39

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Humphreys posted:

You would think a printer could print files created using the proper software wouldn't you?

I've had the exact same problem many many times in the past. gently caress PDFs (more than printers)

I would at least expect it to handle things a bit more gracefully than "I give up, I'll just beep continuously and refuse new print jobs until you hard reboot me".

# ¿ Jan 29, 2014 11:02

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Trizophenie posted:

Like plugging the front USB onto a Firewire header like a colleague of me did some time ago. That fried one of our sticks aswell. Why do USB and Firewire headers on mainboards have the same pin blocked again?

Also I think there are two ways to wire the USB header on the motherboard? I distinctly remember my last mb coming with an adapter for each of the USB headers, at least...

# ¿ Feb 23, 2014 22:01

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Computer viking posted:

On a HVAC note, I'm in a five year old building , where the one thing we've never been able to fix is the thermostats. There are little spinny wheels in every office that go from blue (freezing) to red (quite chilly). We've long ago bought (baby blue) fleece sweaters for everyone, but my fingers and toes still go a bit numb after a while. I'm waiting for summer, when I can take breaks outside to thaw out a bit.

At least we've been able to nudge it up enough that the coldest offices are no longer at 16C (61F).

And you call yourself a viking!? :v:

# ¿ Mar 27, 2014 14:49

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

NullPtr4Lunch posted:

Every couple of months I go on a googling spree to see if anyone's made a distributed shared highly-available filesystem that will run on Windows machines so I can put a few hundred terabytes of unused sales POS disk space to good use.

So far, no dice.

iSCSI target on each machine, then software RAID across it! :v:

# ¿ Apr 28, 2014 21:56

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Dilbert As gently caress posted:

If the director says working from home today is fine, your reply to the email I sent saying working from home is fine, and my status is "working from home".

Why would you call me at 830am and ask me where I am?

"while you have the freedom to work from home, it's expected that you show restraint and come in to the office all days"

(I've seen logic like that applied before)

# ¿ May 16, 2014 15:24

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

spog posted:

Checked by default

And what do those mere three lines of T&C actually contain?

code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft]
"SPONSORS"="DISABLE"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\JavaSoft]
"SPONSORS"="DISABLE"

# ¿ Oct 21, 2014 13:41

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

skooma512 posted:

I hate how Windows Update just shits the bed and there's nothing you can really do.

It's usually Windows 7. Won't scan for updates, won't accept manually downloaded updates, SFC detects problems but can't fix any of them, fix it tools do nothing, everything is a black box and I can't see what's going wrong. At least when APT goes stupid you'll get an error message.

Is the time (and/or time zone) is correct? That's something like 99% of my WU failures, the computer somehow being too far out of sync with the time server.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2015 20:07

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Ynglaur posted:

How do you like Asana? I'm supposed to evaluate it as a project management tool this week. Nobody bothers reading MS Project documents, so we're hoping something new and Not MS Project will be better adopted.

We've been running Asana for our 5 developer team for a few months (since whenever they changed their UI) - before that we ran Trello only.

So far it's really good for our work flow, fairly straightforward to add and assign tasks. The progress view is nice, but in the whole thing seems to be geared towards projects that have a defined end. We have a continuous project that will "never" end, which I haven't found a good way to put into any of the web based tools I've tried (but at least Asana doesn't complain about it).

All in all, very happy, and we're still on the free tier. I would like to have a way to add read-only users without having to pay for a full user, but all in all it works for our team (and seriously, not very expensive).

# ¿ Jan 3, 2016 16:48

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Bob Morales posted:

Can't open this file in Excel because it's XHTML instead of XLS, like it's not even the same binary format. You have to open it with IE or as an Outlook attachement (this just started happening last week from this website we use). The website tech support guy is telling me "the latest microsoft office update" is the problem. Sure.

So the guy sends me a screenshot of his Mac opening it. And he gets the same error message when opening the file (extension doesn't match the filetype)

We actually have a somewhat similar problem, but from the other side; our web page has (via some pre-packaged jquery addon with our charting library) delivered "XLS" files (that actually were XHTML files); they work in any browser/version of Excel we can think of, but one user absolutely can't open the files as of "a few days ago". (No Macs involved)

This doesn't really help, I'm afraid - but there's something recent in an update of either Office or Firefox that changes how it downloads those files.

Yes, they're not "proper" XLS files, but it's the only way of making a file that opens in Excel, has formatting, and can be produced in pure Javascript*, as far as I can tell.

_{*) yes, yes, I know - I didn't set the requirements.}

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 22:22

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Sheep posted:

I'm drinking non-alcoholic tea and flipping through an RHCE study guide while I sit around ~~imageing~~waiting for Windows to install from media on 8 laptops because we don't have images.

I should probably just run MDT on my own machine at this rate, pfft.

Edit: I closed the book and am installing MDT, screw ever doing this by hand again.

Edit2: I like how out of the box DeploymentWorkbench is broken unless you use that script from deploymentresearch to fix share permissions.

I'll be in the same boat soon, setting up 10+ identical computers. Due to coinciding with a server migration I won't have access to the regular imaging features - is installing MDT on a desktop the best way to get all computers up?

My original plan was something like installing one computer "perfectly", then cloning the disk via a bunch of USB sticks. (I'm not in IT, just got stuck with the task...)

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 07:13

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Sheep posted:

If you're not going to be doing this again in the future it may not be worth your trouble messing with MDT, and installing one computer and then sysprepping it before cloning it out via external hard drive might be a better option.

But for MDT yeah you can just install MDT and ADK on your local computer. When you get asked for credentials during install just use your username, password, and name of your local computer instead of domain so it can load up the necessary stuff. And don't forget to run this script on your deployment share or nothing will work. You can follow this guide for a quick walkthrough of getting things going.

Thanks!

Which way will let me make an image that can be used by WDS later? It's not available at the moment, but will be later (potentially for the last half of the computers, or at least for any future ones).

edit: To be precise, I want to have some way to preinstall Office, Chrome, antivirus, some random third party software we use (Notepad++ for instance), and some in-house Office plug-ins.

dorkanoid fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Aug 20, 2016

# ¿ Aug 20, 2016 22:17

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 10:19

dorkanoid: Dec 21, 2004

Sheep posted:

Looks like MDT will do this for you but I've not messed with it enough to get to that point as I am not trying to work on the weekend if I don't have to.

Me neither, however since this is way outside my usual responsibilities, I do this for fun (and I'm even out of the office for another week).

Trip report: MDT seems nice once you grasp how it wants stuff organized

Just testing outside a domain now, with virtual machines, and it seems to be a good way to build a base image - though when I get back to work, the challenge will be to get everything I want into it... So far my test has Chrome, 7-Zip, Notepad++, Java - I'm not bothering to find the install files for Office, AV, etc. right now.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2016 19:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > More shit that pisses you off: What does that say about the quality of your emails?