Another little Windows Update paper cut
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@Cassidy said:
@ekolis said:
Apparently you can fix this via group policy.
Why isn't this an easy-to-use option? What terrible UI experience! See, just reaffirms my belief in open source shitting all over the end user and not caring.
Windows....open....what....Windows isn't....wuh.....
Master Chief.exe has stopped working.
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@Ben L. said:
Where can I find this "open source Windows"?
Damn, all I get is "auto-restart X-windows"
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@Cassidy said:
Gentoo?
It was the easiest way to get ZFS.
I've had the least number of shared library issues on Gentoo, since everything is compiled from source. And since the endgame on Linux is you always end up compiling shit, it's easier to just go straight there rather than fucking around with binary packages.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I've had the least number of shared library issues on Gentoo, since everything is compiled from source.
I had a mate who's first toe dip into the waters of non-Gates was Gentoo, and he found it surprisingly easy to use - "emerge" was a fucksight easier than RPM dependency hell (this preceeded yum). I found a lot of the layout easy to pick up - I configured apache, squid, proftpd and samba pretty easily.
One of the Gentoo developers was my IRC server admin for some time. She confirmed it's not as hard to use as some people make out.
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You do understand that you talking about Linux doesn't sound like you're doing adminstration or management of a box or VM, but more like performing arcane spells and incantations?
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@Cassidy said:
@morbiuswilters said:
I've had the least number of shared library issues on Gentoo, since everything is compiled from source.
I had a mate who's first toe dip into the waters of non-Gates was Gentoo, and he found it surprisingly easy to use - "emerge" was a fucksight easier than RPM dependency hell (this preceeded yum). I found a lot of the layout easy to pick up - I configured apache, squid, proftpd and samba pretty easily.
One of the Gentoo developers was my IRC server admin for some time. She confirmed it's not as hard to use as some people make out.
I haven't tried a source distro, but now you've got me considering it.
Is it easier to tinker with your installed programs, just tweak and recompile?
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@dhromed said:
You do understand that you talking about Linux doesn't sound like you're doing adminstration or management of a box or VM, but more like performing arcane spells and incantations?
There's supposed to be a difference?
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@joe.edwards said:
Is it easier to tinker with your installed programs, just tweak and recompile?
Yes. Especially if you need a particular set of compiled-in functionality that a binary distro won't provide. And writing ebuilds actually isn't that hard. A long time ago I wrote ebuilds to build and install my company's software so we could deploy it to our 250 production servers that way.
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@dhromed said:
You do understand that you talking about Linux doesn't sound like you're doing adminstration or management of a box or VM, but more like performing arcane spells and incantations?
Well, that's how programmers vs admins thing, admins like to be the arcane wizards of forbidden knowledge that nobody else knows, so that everybody is dependant on them. Programmers just want shit done.
An admin looking to find all the HTTP servers on a /24 would issue a spell like
nmap -sS -Pn -p80 -vvv 192.168.1.0/24, whereas a programmer would write a script to iterate over each IP and try to connect using standard HTTP libraries. This is a practical example of something that happened to me not too long ago, and after giving up in frustration at nmap's manual and Google, I just wrote a short C# program to do this for me.
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@MiffTheFox said:
An admin looking to find all the HTTP servers on a /24 would issue a spell like
nmap -sS -Pn -p80 -vvv 192.168.1.0/24, whereas a programmer would write a script to iterate over each IP and try to connect using standard HTTP libraries.That is right on the money.
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@dhromed said:
@MiffTheFox said:
An admin looking to find all the HTTP servers on a /24 would issue a spell like
nmap -sS -Pn -p80 -vvv 192.168.1.0/24, whereas a programmer would write a script to iterate over each IP and try to connect using standard HTTP libraries.That is right on the money.
This is more accurate: The programmer spends 3 hours jerking off online until the boss pokes his head in and asks if he has that list of servers yet. Then the programmer grabs the first snippet of code from Google that compiles and 3 minutes later the boss gets an email containing a partial list of IPs, from the wrong netblock, separated by tabs. The boss asks if he could possibly get the list separated by commas and the programmer rolls his eyes and tells him to open a bug. Two months later, the bug is closed without comment during the programmer's semi-annual bug closing spree, in the hopes that it will go unnoticed amidst the deluge of bug notification emails.
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That is on the right money.
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@MiffTheFox said:
An admin looking to find all the HTTP servers on a /24 would issue a spell like
nmap -sS -Pn -p80 -vvv 192.168.1.0/24, whereas a programmer would write a script to iterate over each IP and try to connect using standard HTTP libraries. This is a practical example of something that happened to me not too long ago, and after giving up in frustration at nmap's manual and Google, I just wrote a short C# program to do this for me.Surely this demonstrates that admins are also users and want to get shit done, so they fire up a program to do it. Programmers look to building something to do the job and don't realise (or don't even bother to check) that another programmer has already beaten them to the crunch, so invest sizable time and effort in redesigning a circular rotating transportation solution.
When doing websites I was forever hacking up my own PHP until I began to download wordpress/xoops/drupal and hacked around with some custom modules plus CSS. Most of the work I wanted doing had already been done by someone else - quicker and more efficiently than I.
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@morbiuswilters said:
The programmer spends 3 hours jerking off online
Doesn't that make you a little sore?
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@Cassidy said:
Surely this demonstrates that admins are also users and want to get shit done, so they fire up a program to do it. Programmers look to building something to do the job and don't realise (or don't even bother to check) that another programmer has already beaten them to the crunch, so invest sizable time and effort in redesigning a circular rotating transportation solution.
When doing websites I was forever hacking up my own PHP until I began to download wordpress/xoops/drupal and hacked around with some custom modules plus CSS. Most of the work I wanted doing had already been done by someone else - quicker and more efficiently than I.
Well, the thing is, using a complex CLI program like nmap is a subtractive process, while programming is an additive process. For programming, you start with a program that does nothing and add features until it does the task, whereas in using a program like nmap requires knowing all of nmap's features, which ones need to be used and which ones need to not be, and the magic words to make it only do what you want and nothing else.
nmap isn't quicker or more efficient for somebody that doesn't know:
- There is a utility for network scanning called nmap.
- Nmap takes arguments in the form of dash, immediately letter, immediately parameter.
- You must use -sP to stop it from scanning every port.
- You must use -Pn to make it check every machine, otherwise you won't find machines that doesn't respond to ICMP echo requests.
- You must use -p80 to make it only scan port 80.
- You specify an IP range as 192.168.1.0/24, not 192.168.1/24 or 192.168.1.* or even 192.168.1.
I'm not sure if the -vvv is necessary, but the wizard who told me the command said I needed it. If you left out even one of the other parameters, or got it incorrect (like by thinking the parameters are gnu getopt style), the tool would produce the incorrect output, and you might not even be aware. (Even the admin who told me this command remembered -Pn at the last minute!)
Meanwhile, for a script as simple as this, I'm not aware of any slipups this catastrophic. The only error I made was not decreasing the default timeout delay from 30 seconds, and that would have still produced the correct output, but slower.
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@serguey123 said:
@powerlord said:
we're still stuck on Windows XP until later this year
You... are so lucky, we are stuck with XP for the foreseable future, when I mentioned that XP is going out of support, the boss said: "We are good, we negotiated for more time on extended support". Fuck, it will not die! Of course there are reasons for not upgrading like legacy apps but we have been promised that the new (and maybe better) version will come out this year for like 5 years now...Which is why I'm glad that we were allowed to keep our existing IT support team* instead of having to rely on central IT. If we did have to rely on Central IT, we'd probably be getting our systems upgraded to Windows Vista in another 5 years or so.
* They centralized IT support a few years ago when IT merged with DMB to become the Department of Technology, Management, and Budget. I'm still not sure how we got to keep our 2-person support team (1 full time, 1 part time) for our office of 80-ish people.
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Miff,
I've never used nmap before, but after spending a few minutes with it, it seems like you are full of lies.
@MiffTheFox said:
nmap isn't quicker or more efficient for somebody that doesn't know:
- There is a utility for network scanning called nmap.
This is true for literally every program ever. And every thing ever. If you never hear of or discover X, no, you will not be able to use X. So what?
@MiffTheFox said:
Nmap takes arguments in the form of dash, immediately letter, immediately parameter.
I don't think that's true. Some of the options are more than one letter, but if they take a parameter you can have a space optionally.
@MiffTheFox said:
You must use -sP to stop it from scanning every port.
You don't need to know this. You were already going to select just 80.
@MiffTheFox said:
You must use -Pn to make it check every machine, otherwise you won't find machines that doesn't respond to ICMP echo requests.
This isn't true either. I can use just "nmap 176.32.98.166 -p 80" to successfully scan an amazon.com web server, which doesn't seem to be responding to ICMP.
@MiffTheFox said:
You must use -p80 to make it only scan port 80.
What do you want? To not specify the port you want?
@MiffTheFox said:
You specify an IP range as 192.168.1.0/24, not 192.168.1/24 or 192.168.1.* or even 192.168.1.
You can also just list each IP you want. a.b.c.d/N is pretty much the standard way to do IP ranges. And a.b.c.* has pretty obvious deficiencies.
Nmap is not an "easy" tool for sure, but I have a very hard time believing it's easier to write your own. Unless you are paranoid about knowing literally every option, I guess. ('Cause, you know, there are like NO options to learn in the network library & language of your choice.)
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@superjer said:
@MiffTheFox said:
You must use -sP to stop it from scanning every port.
You don't need to know this. You were already going to select just 80.
I think you're right here.
@superjer said:
@MiffTheFox said:
You must use -Pn to make it check every machine, otherwise you won't find machines that doesn't respond to ICMP echo requests.
This isn't true either. I can use just "nmap 176.32.98.166 -p 80" to successfully scan an amazon.com web server, which doesn't seem to be responding to ICMP.
He's right, although IIRC nmap uses more than a simple ping to determine if a host is up. That Amazon machine is probably responding to other ICMP messages. You do need -PN if you want to skip the ICMP step.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Cassidy said:
Admit it. You stole that quote from funroll-loops, right?Gentoo?
It was the easiest way to get ZFS.
I've had the least number of shared library issues on Gentoo, since everything is compiled from source. And since the endgame on Linux is you always end up compiling shit, it's easier to just go straight there rather than fucking around with binary packages.
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@superjer said:
I've never used nmap before, but after spending a few minutes with it, it seems like you are full of lies.
I think you're missing his point entirely.
@superjer said:This is true for literally every program ever. And every thing ever. If you never hear of or discover X, no, you will not be able to use X. So what?
This is exactly what he means. The difference he's outlining between sys admin mentality and programmer mentality is that a sys admin has memorized a variety of succinct commands and their arguments (magical incantations), whereas a programmer has adopted a methodology for telling the computer verbosely what to do.
@superjer said:Blah blah parameters.
Yes, this reaffirms the point.
@superjer said:Nmap is not an "easy" tool for sure, but I have a very hard time believing it's easier to write your own.
It's not easy to write a program that does everything that nmap does, but it is easy to write a program to do what a single parameter-scenario invocation of nmap would do. The sys admin would rather memorize the cryptic command where the programmer knows how to whip up a quick script to do what he wants.
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@DaveK said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@Cassidy said:
Admit it. You stole that quote from funroll-loops, right?Gentoo?
It was the easiest way to get ZFS.
I've had the least number of shared library issues on Gentoo, since everything is compiled from source. And since the endgame on Linux is you always end up compiling shit, it's easier to just go straight there rather than fucking around with binary packages.
Ha ha, I remember 7 year old Slashdot posts, too!
Seriously, though, you're an idiot.
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@joe.edwards said:
@superjer said:
This is true for literally every program ever. And every thing ever. If you never hear of or discover X, no, you will not be able to use X. So what?
This is exactly what he means. The difference he's outlining between sys admin mentality and programmer mentality is that a sys admin has memorized a variety of succinct commands and their arguments (magical incantations), whereas a programmer has adopted a methodology for telling the computer verbosely what to do.
I'm not addressing his whole point here, though. I'm responding to the insane notion that not knowing about a thing is a problem specific to that thing. If you move the goalposts to a sane statement then I'm not interested in arguing against it any more.
@joe.edwards said:
@superjer said:
Blah blah parameters.
Yes, this reaffirms the point.
It reaffirms a DIFFERENT point. What he said was incorrect, it made me question my assumptions, so I checked it out.
@joe.edwards said:
@superjer said:
Nmap is not an "easy" tool for sure, but I have a very hard time believing it's easier to write your own.
It's not easy to write a program that does everything that nmap does, but it is easy to write a program to do what a single parameter-scenario invocation of nmap would do. The sys admin would rather memorize the cryptic command where the programmer knows how to whip up a quick script to do what he wants.
I still think it's easier than writing your own, even for your scenario. And your quick script is only quick by virtue of taking advantage of the same kind of domain-specific magic as nmap, but, in a library you may or may not have memorized as well.
I'm bad at memorization, anyways, so I have to just look it up in both cases.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@DaveK said:
I only remember it. You're living it!@morbiuswilters said:
@Cassidy said:
Admit it. You stole that quote from funroll-loops, right?Gentoo?
It was the easiest way to get ZFS.
I've had the least number of shared library issues on Gentoo, since everything is compiled from source. And since the endgame on Linux is you always end up compiling shit, it's easier to just go straight there rather than fucking around with binary packages.
Ha ha, I remember 7 year old Slashdot posts, too!
@morbiuswilters said:
Seriously, though, you're an idiot.
Touch a nerve did I? Heh.
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@DaveK said:
Touch a nerve did I? Heh.
If everyone I called an idiot touched a nerve, then my nerves would be more touched than a deaf Catholic boy's penis.
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@superjer said:
Nmap is not an "easy" tool for sure, but I have a very hard time believing it's easier to write your own. Unless you are paranoid about knowing literally every option, I guess. ('Cause, you know, there are like NO options to learn in the network library & language of your choice.)
Here's a python script I wrote in five minutes:
import urllib2 import socket
socket.setdefaulttimeout(2)
for i in xrange(0, 255):
try:
urllib2.urlopen("http://192.168.1." + str(i)).read()
print "192.168.1.%d: Yes" % i
except:
print "192.168.1.%d: No" % i
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@morbiuswilters said:
@DaveK said:
Touch a nerve did I? Heh.
If everyone I called an idiot touched a nerve, then my nerves would be more touched than a deaf Catholic boy's penis.
Do they touch the deaf ones more than the deafness-impaired ones?
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@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@DaveK said:
Touch a nerve did I? Heh.
If everyone I called an idiot touched a nerve, then my nerves would be more touched than a deaf Catholic boy's penis.
Do they touch the deaf ones more than the deafness-impaired ones?
I assume so, because people hate the deaf and their accusations will fall on.. impaired ears.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@DaveK said:
Touch a nerve did I? Heh.
If everyone I called an idiot touched a nerve, then my nerves would be more touched than a deaf Catholic boy's penis.
Do they touch the deaf ones more than the deafness-impaired ones?
I assume so, because people hate the deaf and their accusations will fall on.. impaired ears.
If I had said "hearing and hearing-impared", you would know what I meant. What's so hard about this?
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@joe.edwards said:
The difference he's outlining between sys admin mentality and programmer mentality is that a sys admin has memorized a variety of succinct commands and their arguments (magical incantations), whereas a programmer has adopted a methodology for telling the computer verbosely what to do.
This particular sysadmin tends not to bother memorizing command options except for the ones I usually use on commands I use many times per day. I will usually reach first for a reverse incremental search through my bash history and then modify the previously used command line as appropriate. If that doesn't work I'll use the --help option (which most tools support), and if that doesn't work I'll use Google to suggest command names to research and spend a couple of minutes scanning their man pages. I also write scripts to do specialized stuff that I can't quickly find a single command for.
It seems to me that the division between those who instinctively reach for tools like nmap and those who instinctively reach for tools like urllib2 is more a Unix experience vs Windows experience thing than an admin vs programmer thing. Unix has a rich array of specialized programs and a selection of CLI shells that make using those convenient; Windows has a rich array of specialized object libraries and a selection of scripting engines that make using those convenient. Most of the Linux admin I do involves running commands from bash; most of the Windows admin I do involves running vbscript, jscript and the occasional cmd or PowerShell script by double-click or on a scheduled basis.
I would prefer to do more of my Windows work in a CLI because I like CLIs, but I can't get enthusiastic about PowerShell. As a scripting tool it offers me nothing that strikes me as a substantial improvement over vbscript/jscript; as an interactive shell I find it wordy as all fuck and it gets in my way far more often than does bash. The only reason I've started to use it when it's available is that it's not quite as woeful as cmd, regardless of the greatest thing since sliced bread reality distortion field I've seen accompany every MS almost-there-but-missing-essential-Clue knock-off of a core Unix feature since the introduction of subdirectories with DOS 2.0.
Ah, well. It's only been a year since they pushed out their first server OS that they claim you can admin without a GUI. Maybe once enough people have started actually trying to do that, they'll get around to inventing ssh at which point their ssh will suddenly become AWESOME. It might even come with a script editor you can run RIGHT THERE IN THE REMOTE SHELL WINDOW omg omg omg.
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@flabdablet said:
@joe.edwards said:
Shall we play No True Scotsman?The difference he's outlining between sys admin mentality and programmer mentality is that a sys admin has memorized a variety of succinct commands and their arguments (magical incantations), whereas a programmer has adopted a methodology for telling the computer verbosely what to do.
This particular sysadmin tends not to bother memorizing command options except for the ones I usually use on commands I use many times per day. I will usually reach first for a reverse incremental search through my bash history and then modify the previously used command line as appropriate. If that doesn't work I'll use the --help option (which most tools support), and if that doesn't work I'll use Google to suggest command names to research and spend a couple of minutes scanning their man pages. I also write scripts to do specialized stuff that I can't quickly find a single command for.
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@joe.edwards said:
Shall we play No True Scotsman?
Game on!
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@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@DaveK said:
Touch a nerve did I? Heh.
If everyone I called an idiot touched a nerve, then my nerves would be more touched than a deaf Catholic boy's penis.
Do they touch the deaf ones more than the deafness-impaired ones?
I assume so, because people hate the deaf and their accusations will fall on.. impaired ears.
If I had said "hearing and hearing-impared", you would know what I meant. What's so hard about this?
I don't know what you're on about.
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@joe.edwards said:
Shall we play No True Scotsman?
I would, but my Scotsman drank all of my whiskey, decapitated my roommate with a broadsword and ran howling into the night, naked as can be.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@joe.edwards said:
Shall we play No True Scotsman?
I would, but my Scotsman drank all of my whiskey, decapitated my roommate with a broadsword and ran howling into the night, naked as can be.
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@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@joe.edwards said:
Shall we play No True Scotsman?
I would, but my Scotsman drank all of my whiskey, decapitated my roommate with a broadsword and ran howling into the night, naked as can be.
That's not Scotch.
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@morbiuswilters said:
@DaveK said:
Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Plus, you're still a living breathing post from funroll-loops.Touch a nerve did I? Heh.
If everyone I called an idiot touched a nerve, then my nerves would be more touched than a deaf Catholic boy's penis.
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@DaveK said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@DaveK said:
Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Plus, you're still a living breathing post from funroll-loops.Touch a nerve did I? Heh.
If everyone I called an idiot touched a nerve, then my nerves would be more touched than a deaf Catholic boy's penis.
Goddamn it, you're right! DaveK, you have struck a blow to my very heart!
Oh, how did you know of my overwhelming insecurity about which Linux distro I hate the least!? All these years I've been hoping that people would think I just use Ubuntu, praying that my secret perversion would never be brought to light, but you cracked the code!! Somehow you were able to read the tea leaves and divine that I prefer Gentoo and publicly humiliate me!
Please sir, I beg that you stop this vicious assault upon my fragile ego; that you let me leave with the tiny scrap of dignity I have left!!
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@morbiuswilters said:
@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@joe.edwards said:
Shall we play No True Scotsman?
I would, but my Scotsman drank all of my whiskey, decapitated my roommate with a broadsword and ran howling into the night, naked as can be.
That's not Scotch.
Actually, he is. He's from Ullapool.
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@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@joe.edwards said:
Shall we play No True Scotsman?
I would, but my Scotsman drank all of my whiskey, decapitated my roommate with a broadsword and ran howling into the night, naked as can be.
That's not Scotch.
Actually, he is. He's from Ullapool.
So he's a Scotsman, but is he a true Scotsman?
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@morbiuswilters said:
Okay, well, let's get to the Control Panel. Now, I know the Start menu is no-more, but Sony has helpfully installed their own POS replacement which mostly just takes me to VAIO bloatware I wish wasn't installed in the first place. It seems Microsoft has still not learned what a disaster it is to let OEMs "customize" Windows with shit like this.
Remember, Windows 8 is all about corners. Try right-clicking in the bottom-left corner (where Start button used to be). And when you're in a Metro app, try left-clicking the top-left corner.
@flabdablet said:Snark aside: the whole push-the-mouse-to-the-corner thing is a complete pain in the arse when the corner in question actually belongs to a remote desktop window, which is why I was so pleased to find that IObit's Start Menu 8 works as well as it does. It looks just like the Windows 7 one, it can be configured to replace Metro at startup, and it even has a menu item for the control panel labelled "Control Panel".
My preferred Start Menu is StartIsBack, since it seems to be the most similar to Windows 7 Start Menu (I tried several other replacements, including IoBit, but search was more or less broken in all of them). It's not free, but the price is very reasonable.
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@MiffTheFox said:
@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@Ben L. said:
@morbiuswilters said:
@joe.edwards said:
Shall we play No True Scotsman?
I would, but my Scotsman drank all of my whiskey, decapitated my roommate with a broadsword and ran howling into the night, naked as can be.
That's not Scotch.
Actually, he is. He's from Ullapool.
So he's a Scotsman, but is he a true Scotsman?
No true Scotsman drinks whiskey.
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@ender said:
I tried several other replacements, including IoBit, but search was more or less broken in all of them
Works for me:
What broke for you?
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@flabdablet said:
What broke for you?
Doesn't find Control Panel items.
Additionally, it's colour is broken in high-contrast themes.
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@morbiuswilters said:
I assume so, because people hate the deaf and their accusations will fall on.. impaired ears.
You know who else had impaired ears? Van Gogh!
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@ender said:
@flabdablet said:
What broke for you?
Doesn't find Control Panel items.Which ones?
@ender said:
Additionally, it's colour is broken in high-contrast themes.
I'm using it on Server 2012, and the only way I can get any kind of control over themes is by installing the "Desktop Experience" Windows component which I don't want to do because it includes a whole bunch of other crap like Windows Media Player.
I did in fact have Desktop Experience installed briefly, which is how my window borders got to be a tasteful grey instead of standard-issue sickly blue, and how the desktop background got to be a .png of flat standard Windows background blue instead of some wanky not-quite-a-gradient covered in JPEG artifacts. Having subsequently uninstalled it I'm now stuck with those choices, so I can't find out whether the version of Start Menu 8 I have on there is any more broken at high contrast than was the native Windows 7 Start menu.
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@flabdablet said:
Which ones?
My usual test for Start Menu replacements for Win8 goes like this: install Start Menu, install ImDisk, run ImDisk's Control Panel icon once, then type imdisk in the search bar. Results: IoBit, SiB.
The second test is to type aero in the search bar:
@flabdablet said:Having subsequently uninstalled it I'm now stuck with those choices, so I can't find out whether the version of Start Menu 8 I have on there is any more broken at high contrast than was the native Windows 7 Start menu.
Compare the two:
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@ender said:
My usual test for Start Menu replacements for Win8 goes like this: install Start Menu, install ImDisk ...
Thanks for the pointer to ImDisk - I've been relying on WinCDEmu to loop-mount ISO images, for which it works very well, but a general purpose loop-mounter will obviously let me do stuff with Winboxen that I've previously only been able to achieve in Linux. Looks like lots of other useful goodies on Olof's site as well. Nice find!
@ender said:
Compare the two:
Ewwwww.
