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  • Locked thread
mysteryberto
Apr 25, 2006
IIAM

peak debt posted:

The scanner hardware is cool but hearing the word Kofax p much gives me PTSD now.

What problems have you had with Kofax? The Fujitsu scanner connecting to Kofax VRS with an ISIS driver which then presents itself to the scanner application does seem a little clunky but it does work well.

BTW Fujitsu is moving away from Kofax VRS with their new scanners and instead using PaperStream IP. This is basically Fujitsu's version of Kofax VRS and replicates the functionality without the complexity. You only have to install one driver and you're set.

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mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Wrath of the Bitch King posted:

So far I've come up with this being a Layer 6/Layer 7 conflict due to a failed half-replication within the critical application directory.

It sounds more like a Layer 8 issue to me. Only your peers have even heard of the OSI Model.

lazercunt
Oct 26, 2007

It was a narcotics raid, not a Fritos raid.

AlternateAccount posted:

There are companies that do nothing but take giant old boxes of your medical records and turn them into nice, neat, searchable PDFs.

I know I'm a couple pages late, but here in big tobacco, all documents related to the sale or marketing of tobacco products are held indefinitely. Considering the big judgment against RJ Reynolds from the 90s that went out of class action and is being appealed, indefinitely is understandable.

Sir_Substance
Dec 13, 2013

baquerd posted:

As a software engineer, not having local admin rights means I quit. In return, if I have to go to IT for any reason other than to get licenses or hardware, you may fire me.

I also am a software engineer, historically a contract one. I take a passive aggressive approach to this. Generally, I try to use my own equipment anyway, because it's set up the way I like. If I can't, I ask for local admin. If it's refused, that's fine.

When I need Valgrind installed, I'll post a ticket for it, and then I'll play games on my phone while I wait for it to be installed, and I will continue billing you while I do it. I'm here at your request, doing the work you ask, and I will definitely follow your procedures and policies, but dealing with your bullshit isn't a free extra.

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

Sir_Substance posted:

I also am a software engineer, historically a contract one. I take a passive aggressive approach to this. Generally, I try to use my own equipment anyway, because it's set up the way I like. If I can't, I ask for local admin. If it's refused, that's fine.

When I need Valgrind installed, I'll post a ticket for it, and then I'll play games on my phone while I wait for it to be installed, and I will continue billing you while I do it. I'm here at your request, doing the work you ask, and I will definitely follow your procedures and policies, but dealing with your bullshit isn't a free extra.

Please dox yourself so people know not to hire you.

"I play games on my phone while I bill you" -> contract terminated

"I'm a special snowflake who can't work on other tasks while I wait for another team" -> contract terminated

"I bring my own device onto your network" -> contract terminated

I know this sounds harsh, but you are eminently replaceable. Devs are as bad as sales sometimes.

Sickening
Jul 16, 2007

Black summer was the best summer.
The babies that people turn into when they don't have the rights to something. poo poo never changes.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...
To be fair, I'm also a software engineer, and the last place that I worked which didn't provide admin rights or the equivalent to your own machine (Sarnsung) did it because they had the DRM from hell on their Windows Laptops, and you had to specifically request permission to be able to flash firmware onto devices and do your loving job, because CORPORATE ESPIONAGE! This is the same place that had one Perforce login/password per lab, because getting your own login was a true horror, so you can imagine how well that kind of stuff worked out.

After that, I started working at companies (Amazon, Google) which assume that if you're making six figures for doing computer stuff, then you're probably a big boy with some sort of brain stem, and you can mostly figure out how to janitor your own computer wrt installing development software and manage to not run every single toolbar you can find. The helldesk still exists for events out of the ordinary (hard drive failures, reality checks) but we don't need to submit a ticket to install software to do our jobs.

I understand where you guys are coming from in not giving out local admin, but sometimes it's ok :shobon:

CitizenKain
May 27, 2001

That was Gary Cooper, asshole.

Nap Ghost
Outside user support is the one of the new and upcoming banes of my existence. We have a server that is used for sharing important/private documents with people outside or company for all kinds of reasons. It works pretty simple, you press a button in outlook, it tags the email, goes through exchange, gets sent to our mail gateway which grabs the email and forwards it to this box. The box stops the email and sents a notice to the external person to click a link, login and get their message. It works like webmail, works pretty well and generally dozens of people use it daily.

However, I've been getting whiny emails from some internal people complaining that some special snowflake users can't reach the website, and we need to fix it right now. I test internal, external and even from my phone, site works. I respond saying its something with their computers, and there isn't much I can do, they should call their own IT department. However, since these people are not just snowflakes, they are VIP snowflakes, I get to call them up and try to figure out why things aren't working. First person, using XP. Second person, using XP. Third person, no one knows, they are on vacation for a couple of weeks. 4th person is using Windows 8.1. A coworker is using an old spare that is still running WinXp, and dammed if the site doesn't work for him either.

I tell the WinXp people are essentially out of luck, XP isn't supported and isn't getting updates. One of the people complains saying that their computer has worked for years and they don't want to buy a new machine. This person is a the head a local company and likely makes more money in one year then I make in 5, and they are whining about having to upgrade a computer that is likely 7 years old.

The Win8 person I just don't care.

For those talking about not having rights to use programs, we have a fun thing where marketing/graphic design people are hired so work doesn't have to shipped outside the company all the time. However, there doesn't seem to be a way in our company to order these people the hardware or software they need, and they usually quit in frustration in a few months. We had a person trying to use Creative Suite over a goddamn Citrix session on a thin client, because gently caress them I guess. Also we block image search sites and some stockphoto sites at the webfilter, because images are bad. I feel bad for these people, they just want to do the job they were hired for, but corporate inertia treats everyone like everyone does simple data entry all day.

CitizenKain fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jul 24, 2014

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl
And I'm also a software Dev. I get it, in that I also have certain tools I like more than others.

But it's extremely rare to be put into a position where you literally don't have the tools to do your job. Maybe not the tools you like, and submit a ticket to get them, but there almost certainly is a tool as part of their developer build which will work, and pitching a fit because you're a diva who absolutely must have intellij instead of eclipse (or whatever) is just being immature and unethical.

I agree that you should be able to be your own computer janitor. I don't believe you should stage a passive-aggressive protest if you aren't. Do your job or find a new one with working conditions you like.

Sickening
Jul 16, 2007

Black summer was the best summer.
I was in a company that went from a transition of everyone having admin rights to nobody having local rights. The software devs were the primary reasons they went away. None of what they did was unique to their group, but they definitely were the worst offenders for the following.

1. Disabling virus scan (Shouldn't be affected by local admin, but the version we were using had workarounds you could abuse with local admin)
2. Installing licensed software over our allowed licenses.
3. Installing non-approved software
4. Computers cases left open with hodge podge of personal hard drives and hard drives stolen from other old computers.
5. Attempted GPO sabotage using local gpo.
6. Personal firewalls to prevent scans.

I am sure there were others but honestly that was enough. I do understand that these issues are also managerial issues and not just technical ones, but some duties just make sense to segregate.

It just seems it boils down to how quickly valid requests are being handled and how often people are being big man babies because "I shouldn't have to ASK :bahgawd: !!"

I personally would love to give out admin rights and not bother with all the drama around it. I do however put having a more stable environment above that in most situations.

Sir_Substance
Dec 13, 2013

evol262 posted:

"I play games on my phone while I bill you" -> contract terminated

Let's be clear on this:

If you think I'm going to pretend to work so you feel like you are getting your moneys worth while I wait for your IT people to do something I should be able to do myself, you're crazy. If I have something else I can do, I'll do it. But if I don't, get real buddy.

If you think I'm going to but a big ol' 3 hour break in my billing cycle for the same reason, even though I am required to stay where I am because I don't know when IT will get around to it, you're still crazy. It's not like I can leave the premises and do what I want while I wait for you to pull your collective fingers out.

Your process is your problem.

If your local admin matters that much, then people billing you for the holdups it causes should not be a problem. If it matters little enough that my billing you because it's causing delays is a "contract terminated" case, then give me the sodding admin rights.

If you want to have your cake and eat it too, your business is made of princesses, and we are not going to get along, so we'd never have a contract in the first place because sparks would have flown before the signature was down.

Sickening posted:

It just seems it boils down to how quickly valid requests are being handled and how often people are being big man babies because "I shouldn't have to ASK :bahgawd: !!"

The flip side of that point of view is that for a developer, having to ask a third party every time you want to install something is pretty much like having a builder have to ask someone every time they want to use a new tool on a building site.

The list of crimes you've given can certainly cause headaches, I can see that, but removing local admin is not a viable solution, it's just a handballing technique. It's tipping the trouble bucket from one location to another. A sandboxed environment would be a far more sensible approach, but hey, that takes :effort: to set up, it's easier to just revoke local admin rights, trouble bucket fills the developer side. Developers start using their own hardware and doing silly things with VM's, trouble bucket tips the other way. Lets not fix things, or anything, how about we just keep throwing this grenade until it takes someones hands off?

Sir_Substance fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Jul 24, 2014

Dr. Arbitrary
Mar 15, 2006

Bleak Gremlin
If there's other work you can be doing, then it'd be really bad to just sit around.

But if you've set clear expectations for what equipment and access you need, and they don't hold up their end, that's their problem.

It's the same in any business, if you schedule someone to do some work and on the day of the appointment you aren't ready, you still pay.

spankmeister
Jun 15, 2008






CitizenKain posted:

Outside user support is the one of the new and upcoming banes of my existence. We have a server that is used for sharing important/private documents with people outside or company for all kinds of reasons. It works pretty simple, you press a button in outlook, it tags the email, goes through exchange, gets sent to our mail gateway which grabs the email and forwards it to this box. The box stops the email and sents a notice to the external person to click a link, login and get their message. It works like webmail, works pretty well and generally dozens of people use it daily.

However, I've been getting whiny emails from some internal people complaining that some special snowflake users can't reach the website, and we need to fix it right now. I test internal, external and even from my phone, site works. I respond saying its something with their computers, and there isn't much I can do, they should call their own IT department. However, since these people are not just snowflakes, they are VIP snowflakes, I get to call them up and try to figure out why things aren't working. First person, using XP. Second person, using XP. Third person, no one knows, they are on vacation for a couple of weeks. 4th person is using Windows 8.1. A coworker is using an old spare that is still running WinXp, and dammed if the site doesn't work for him either.

I tell the WinXp people are essentially out of luck, XP isn't supported and isn't getting updates. One of the people complains saying that their computer has worked for years and they don't want to buy a new machine. This person is a the head a local company and likely makes more money in one year then I make in 5, and they are whining about having to upgrade a computer that is likely 7 years old.

The Win8 person I just don't care.

So let me get this straight: you have a website, and it only works on Windows Vista and Windows 7?

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

I've been on all sides: desktop admin, server admin, and dev.

I appreciate that it's easier to have things the way you like them. And it sometimes takes time to get up to speed with tooling. But there is almost always something more productive you can be doing than loving off on your phone. That's basically it. "I don't have exactly what I want so onto my phone" is pretty much never appropriate.

If you're new to the team and getting your environment set up, you can be reading docs, roadmaps, requirements documents, or code to onboard. If you've been there for a while, there are 100% odds you have other tickets or stories to work on. You don't have to "pretend" to work. At all points in your employment, there is actual work you could be doing.

You are the princess here, not the business.

"B-but I have to go through processes!" Welcome to working for a company. You don't have to agree with their processes, but you need to learn to work inside them.

Doing "silly things with VMs" is generally OK from all sides, and we've all done it. Last time I worked in a very restricted environment, I installed a VM where I had local admin so I could update the vSphere client without opening a ticket. If I would have plugged in my own hardware, I would have been escorted from the building in less than 30 minutes (yes, IS would have caught it almost immediately), no matter how much more convenient it would have been or how stupid I thought it was that I had root on thousands of production servers and could have crippled their business (for a few days anyway) in 5 minutes but I couldn't get local admin. Again, it's called being a professional.

Your "builder" analogy is also terrible unless, in the same analogy, you assume that builders are given an empty toolbelt. But developers are not, except at the most terrible companies with virtually no in-house development.

Bluntly, get over yourself.

hanyolo
Jul 18, 2013
I am an employee of the Microsoft Gaming Division and they pay me to defend the Xbox One on the Something Awful Forums
I've been lucky enough to have admin rights everywhere I worked, I think I could cope without it though if I had the right tools installed for me. Then again I controlled the whole company's Internet access so I had bargaining power (skip the proxy, be able to use steam, SSH to your qnap/sickbeard/linux box at home, etc.). I honestly don't think I could work somewhere where your IT departments didn't trust and/or do favors for eachother.

I do miss the Friday arvo beers/dota2/cs:s games at my old job sometimes :smith:

spankmeister
Jun 15, 2008






evol262 posted:

Bluntly, get over yourself.

Emptyquotin' this.

lampey
Mar 27, 2012

CitizenKain posted:

Outside user support is the one of the new and upcoming banes of my existence. We have a server that is used for sharing important/private documents with people outside or company for all kinds of reasons. It works pretty simple, you press a button in outlook, it tags the email, goes through exchange, gets sent to our mail gateway which grabs the email and forwards it to this box. The box stops the email and sents a notice to the external person to click a link, login and get their message. It works like webmail, works pretty well and generally dozens of people use it daily.

However, I've been getting whiny emails from some internal people complaining that some special snowflake users can't reach the website, and we need to fix it right now. I test internal, external and even from my phone, site works. I respond saying its something with their computers, and there isn't much I can do, they should call their own IT department. However, since these people are not just snowflakes, they are VIP snowflakes, I get to call them up and try to figure out why things aren't working. First person, using XP. Second person, using XP. Third person, no one knows, they are on vacation for a couple of weeks. 4th person is using Windows 8.1. A coworker is using an old spare that is still running WinXp, and dammed if the site doesn't work for him either.

I tell the WinXp people are essentially out of luck, XP isn't supported and isn't getting updates. One of the people complains saying that their computer has worked for years and they don't want to buy a new machine. This person is a the head a local company and likely makes more money in one year then I make in 5, and they are whining about having to upgrade a computer that is likely 7 years old.

The Win8 person I just don't care.

For those talking about not having rights to use programs, we have a fun thing where marketing/graphic design people are hired so work doesn't have to shipped outside the company all the time. However, there doesn't seem to be a way in our company to order these people the hardware or software they need, and they usually quit in frustration in a few months. We had a person trying to use Creative Suite over a goddamn Citrix session on a thin client, because gently caress them I guess. Also we block image search sites and some stockphoto sites at the webfilter, because images are bad. I feel bad for these people, they just want to do the job they were hired for, but corporate inertia treats everyone like everyone does simple data entry all day.

Why wouldn't Windows 8 be supported? Why wouldn't anything that can run a modern browser be supported for reading email?

Prosthetic_Mind
Mar 1, 2007
Pillbug

evol262 posted:

Your "builder" analogy is also terrible unless, in the same analogy, you assume that builders are given an empty toolbelt. But developers are not, except at the most terrible companies with virtually no in-house development.

Valgrind is one of the most common and widely accepted tools for profiling program performance on linux as well as a lot of debugging stuff. I can't say what else he had or didn't have available, but not having that available is like sending a builder out without a tool he cannot do the job without. I also don't have any idea how you expect someone to write, test, and debug an installer without the ability to actually run it on their system.

It can be a rough middle ground, some devs can be awful, but some of us have IT experience as well.

Devs need the tools and access to do their jobs, but they also need oversight to make sure they're not compromising their systems and they're following policy. If there isn't some level of trust and understanding between the departments then whatever solution is implemented is going to cause problems for at least one of the parties, and at best is going to cause inefficiency in time and money.

If people are cannibalizing other machines without permission, blocking antivirus and/or loving with things past their local computer without authorization they probably need to be fired, no matter what department they are in.

Hawzy
Dec 13, 2002

lampey posted:

Why wouldn't Windows 8 be supported? Why wouldn't anything that can run a modern browser be supported for reading email?

Win 8 person prob just needs to add the website to the compatibility view list. I swear to god anytime IE11 has a problem with any website this is the cure all.

spankmeister
Jun 15, 2008






Hawzy posted:

Win 8 person prob just needs to add the website to the compatibility view list. I swear to god anytime IE11 has a problem with any website this is the cure all.

Or maybe the website is poo poo because it doesn't work on a modern browser?

Swink
Apr 18, 2006
Left Side <--- Many Whelps

spankmeister posted:

Or maybe the website is poo poo because it doesn't work on a modern browser?

Hey now. You're both right!

IllusionistTrixie
Feb 6, 2003

So I'm trying to identify why when I enable mcafee move on this server, the web app it runs instantly turns to crap. Pages take forever to load and it's just obviously sluggish as hell. I stumble across this.



I'm wondering if the twenty gig log file that seems to be written to for every transaction might make the offload AV process choke somewhat. I actually hope that is the case, as otherwise I'm stumped.

Duckbill
Nov 7, 2008

Nice weather for it.
Grimey Drawer

Hawzy posted:

Win 8 person prob just needs to add the website to the compatibility view list. I swear to god anytime IE11 has a problem with any website this is the cure all.

I've seen worse. One of our internal development tools will only work properly (as in, the entire menu doesn't show up so you can't do anything) if you set compatibility to IE7.

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA
May 29, 2008

I contract in government doing web dev stuff now and it took me 3 weeks to get chrome/firefox installed and 6 weeks to get virtualbox installed so I could have a local dev environment. Who gives a poo poo? There was lots of stuff I could do while I was waiting and none of it involved petulantly screwing around on my phone.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

Duckbill posted:

I've seen worse. One of our internal development tools will only work properly (as in, the entire menu doesn't show up so you can't do anything) if you set compatibility to IE7.

Your web devs are probably busy playing on their phone

Eldritch BiLast
Jul 7, 2009

Pummel Sylvanas
Melee Range
Instant

Hawzy posted:

Win 8 person prob just needs to add the website to the compatibility view list. I swear to god anytime IE11 has a problem with any website this is the cure all.

IE11 uses a user agent string to request the same version of the page that is delivered to Chrome/Firefox. If your webmail page doesn't support Chrome or Firefox, which is understandable, considering internal business pages are hell, then maybe it may be time to upgrade.

P.S. Blowing off people who use Win8 is bad and congrats on not doing your job.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Xenoletum posted:

P.S. Blowing off people who use Win8 is bad and congrats on not doing your job.

Yeah this, being all :smuggo: about making the lives of the people you're employed to support painful is the definition of the IT guy stereotype.

GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

Any of you heard of Miracast or Widi? CEO wants to wirelessly connect to the big 50" LCD he has in his office.

Zero VGS
Aug 16, 2002
ASK ME ABOUT HOW HUMAN LIVES THAT MADE VIDEO GAME CONTROLLERS ARE WORTH MORE
Lipstick Apathy
Corporate told us we can finally purchase replacements for all PCs that are over 5 years old. We have like 200 Dells and maybe only 20 of them are newer than that. If I have all my service tags in a text file, is there a way to run a bulk query to figure out which are newer than 5 years old? I'm seeing some scripts on Google but I'm not sure what is current and I figure someone here must run bulk queries occasionally.

Edit: Hmm, maybe I can have some account manager sucker at Dell do the work for me... he's going to sell a bazillion workstations.

Zero VGS fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Jul 24, 2014

EAT THE EGGS RICOLA
May 29, 2008

Zero VGS posted:

Corporate told us we can finally purchase replacements for all PCs that are over 5 years old. We have like 200 Dells and maybe only 20 of them are newer than that. If I have all my service tags in a text file, is there a way to run a bulk query to figure out which are newer than 5 years old? I'm seeing some scripts on Google but I'm not sure what is current and I figure someone here must run bulk queries occasionally.

Edit: Hmm, maybe I can have some account manager sucker at Dell do the work for me... he's going to sell a bazillion workstations.

Use pdq inventory.

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer

GreenNight posted:

Any of you heard of Miracast or Widi? CEO wants to wirelessly connect to the big 50" LCD he has in his office.

Widi is basically an adapter that receives proprietary signals and outputs over HDMI. It's been a feature if not standard in many laptops these days, but I can't for the life of me ever think of a workable need for it until your mention of it.

Would a Chromecast suffice? It's probably cheaper than any Widi adapter for a TV out there.

GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

As far as I know you can't mirror your desktop via Chromocast. He wants to use it for Powerpoints and so forth without connecting the HDMI or VGA cable.

The other problem with Chromecast is that it doesn't play nice with our wifi setup.

Factory Factory
Mar 19, 2010

This is what
Arcane Velocity was like.

GreenNight posted:

Any of you heard of Miracast or Widi? CEO wants to wirelessly connect to the big 50" LCD he has in his office.

Miracast (which WiDi is now compatible with) does what it says. It's somewhat laggy, so it's not great for gaming, and it's not as clear as HDMI since the video stream is h.264 compressed, but that aside it's pretty cool. WiDi requires Intel HD Graphics with Quicksync and an Intel WiFi NIC in Windows 7 and 8.0. AMD, Nvidia, and Intel GPUs all work with Windows 8.1's built-in Miracast support (without any particular NIC required), as long as the drivers are current (Nvidia's support is newest - as of 340.43 Beta).

There isn't a particular load on infrastructure since video is sent via an ad-hoc connection, but it does require some of the NIC's attention so it's not impossible to come up with bandwidth limitations.

On many systems, it basically just works, especially with Windows 8.1.

Here's the Windows blog entry on built-in Miracast support.

E: Chromecast has a beta feature for full-desktop streaming, but it doesn't use GPU acceleration so it's kind of poo poo, especially on thermally-constrained dual-core laptop CPUs.

Wrath of the Bitch King
May 11, 2005

Research confirms that black is a color like silver is a color, and that beyond black is clarity.
WiDi is standard on the Surface tablets and is being pushed as a part of Windows 8.1 in embedded devices. The miracast devices are typically just receivers that hook to the display via HDMI and connect via a proprietary wireless signal through the WiDi radio in the client device.

We use them extensively at one of our locations and they work pretty well, but keep in mind the receivers are not particularly reliable from a hardware perspective. Asus makes a good one, but stay away from anything StarTech. My experience is that the quality of service you get swings wildly based on the hardware manufacturer.

GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

I appreciate the info. He has a docked Surface 2 Pro so it seems WiDi would be the way to go.

Lord Dudeguy
Sep 17, 2006
[Insert good English here]

GreenNight posted:

As far as I know you can't mirror your desktop via Chromocast. He wants to use it for Powerpoints and so forth without connecting the HDMI or VGA cable.

The other problem with Chromecast is that it doesn't play nice with our wifi setup.

Chromecasts can do desktop streaming, but it's flakey as all hell.

dorkanoid
Dec 21, 2004

GreenNight posted:

I appreciate the info. He has a docked Surface 2 Pro so it seems WiDi would be the way to go.

I use the Netgear PTV3000 with my Surface Pro 2, which works tolerably well. Some times it just straight up refuses to connect though, which leads to having to reboot both :(

The Pro 2 does not actually support WiDi, only Miracast, as it doesn't have an Intel wireless card.

GreenNight
Feb 19, 2006
Turning the light on the darkest places, you and I know we got to face this now. We got to face this now.

dorkanoid posted:

I use the Netgear PTV3000 with my Surface Pro 2, which works tolerably well. Some times it just straight up refuses to connect though, which leads to having to reboot both :(

The Pro 2 does not actually support WiDi, only Miracast, as it doesn't have an Intel wireless card.

Ahh okay. Good to know. A new firmware came out for that back in May, so that might help with the rebooting.

Klenath
Aug 12, 2005

Shigata ga nai.

Zero VGS posted:

Corporate told us we can finally purchase replacements for all PCs that are over 5 years old. We have like 200 Dells and maybe only 20 of them are newer than that. If I have all my service tags in a text file, is there a way to run a bulk query to figure out which are newer than 5 years old? I'm seeing some scripts on Google but I'm not sure what is current and I figure someone here must run bulk queries occasionally.

Edit: Hmm, maybe I can have some account manager sucker at Dell do the work for me... he's going to sell a bazillion workstations.

You mean do a bulk Dell warranty / ship date lookup kinda thing?

I use this, which you can feed a text file with tags for bulk lookups: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dellwarrantychecktool/

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evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

Prosthetic_Mind posted:

Valgrind is one of the most common and widely accepted tools for profiling program performance on linux as well as a lot of debugging stuff. I can't say what else he had or didn't have available, but not having that available is like sending a builder out without a tool he cannot do the job without. I also don't have any idea how you expect someone to write, test, and debug an installer without the ability to actually run it on their system.

It can be a rough middle ground, some devs can be awful, but some of us have IT experience as well.

Devs need the tools and access to do their jobs, but they also need oversight to make sure they're not compromising their systems and they're following policy. If there isn't some level of trust and understanding between the departments then whatever solution is implemented is going to cause problems for at least one of the parties, and at best is going to cause inefficiency in time and money.

If people are cannibalizing other machines without permission, blocking antivirus and/or loving with things past their local computer without authorization they probably need to be fired, no matter what department they are in.

Hi, I'm a developer for Red Hat. I'm familiar with Valgrind. It's an absolutely invaluable tool for dynamic code profiling, and I'm not going to say it isn't, but by the time you need Valgrind, you've already written and compiled code. So you're already working on the codebase, so work on something else while you wait for Valgrind to do performance analysis, or review tickets, or other parts of the codebase. Plus, Linux is the worst-case situation, since any developer who's not able to grab a tarball and "./configure --prefix=/home/yourusername" has other problems. There are very few developer tools which need root. Sure, bootstrapping gcc is ridiculous and takes forever, but you almost certainly have gdb and a compiler already available.

This "but I'm writing an installer!" or "I'm writing a driver!" nonsense... no, you aren't. I mean, it's possible, but the vast majority of development can be done through building/running the project in Visual Studio, building per-user in Linux/UNIX, etc. For those cases where you actually are writing a driver, hopefully your company has not hamstrung you. But you probably have another dev box on your desk where you actually have admin to test it. If you're actually writing a software installer (ClickOnce or whatever), you probably have local admin.

"Software installers" on Linux don't require root to test -- dpkg and rpm both support installing as a non-root user in a non-root directory. There are various problems with it, mostly around dependency resolution and forcing, but testing the "installer" in this case is 99% "rpm --dbpath /home/youruser/lib/rpm --relocate|--prefix ..." and looking to make sure the %pre and %post scripts ran. If you don't need those, rpm2cpio works just fine. dpkg has similar options.

If you're writing an honest-to-god installer, VMs are excellent. Or, if you're developing against specific hardware, you probably have that at your desk.

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's a canard, and 99% of development doesn't need local admin. The 1% where it does, you probably already have it or an alternative machine.

But I'm not really on about admin for developers. I don't think they (we) need it, but it's useful in many cases, and I see few reasons why devs shouldn't have it.

I'm on about being a queen, and deciding that it's really your right to waste your employer's time and money like there's nothing else you could possibly be doing other than pretending to work while you wait for the IT peons to respond to your ticket, so you may as well play games on your phone. And I'm on about feeling justified about subverting company policy and IT security because you just must have things set up just the way you like them, so you bring in your own machine where your workflow can be exactly right. It's counterproductive, reflects badly on the developer community as a whole, is unnecessarily acrimonious (especially from the devs who've never tried to manage hundreds or thousands of machines and have no idea why those policies exist in the first place, or why they should be subject to them because they're clearly superior beings), makes you look inflexible in a role which is predicated on flexibly solving problems, and it's unprofessional.

All of us spend some time loving around every day, in every IT role. It helps combat mental fatigue, there's things to research or problems you've never seen before and you end up on the forums here or Reddit or whatever, and it's an accepted cost of doing business. I'm not saying everyone should be working 8 "solid" hours a day (I mean -- few of us do, at least consistently). But being :smuggo: about how you're going to play games on your phone while you wait for a utility (and one which magnified runtime by an order of magnitude and may leave you sitting on your rear end some more if you're profiling a non-interactive application) when the odds of you actually being blocked (no compiler, no access to source control, whatever) are slim to none is indefensible.

Rant over.

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