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Stupid licensing requirements. We have some scientific software to measure stuff. This requires a license file for the software and individual licenses for the individual measurement elements, so far, so standard. It also requires a £3000 microscope. Time to upgrade the PC I reinstall the software on the new PC late on Friday afternoon and it won't activate so I contact the company concerned and the engineer who takes my call promises to get back to me with the procedure and he does. With a quote for £200 / $335 to generate a new license file. Fortunately this is sent to me via email so the swearing is confined to the office. As its now Monday morning and I now have some time to look into it, 5 mins of digging and the licensing is based off the MAC address of the PC. Change the locally defined MAC to match the old PC and everything works. Why would they even bother? How much money are they making on this?
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Aug 11, 2014 15:15
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seadweller posted:Stupid licensing requirements. Reminds me of someone that has me repair their computer. Eventually, it boiled down to needing to be wiped and a clean OS install - problem is that he uses a program called Chief Architect which can only be reinstalled so many times before you have to call the company for a new license key. Alright, no problem, let's call them up before we start so we have the key in hand (or on it's way, however they do it) when we're ready to reinstall... Except nope, he gets on the phone and tells me they want $1000 for a new key. That's over half of the cost of the new version. That's why they do it, because if it's someones livelihood they'll pony up the cash.
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Aug 11, 2014 17:14
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A thing so annoying you almost wish for a dongle instead.
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Aug 11, 2014 17:23
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It might be time to  ! My boss put in his notice last week and I'm the most qualified for his position. I'd be inheriting a lot of half-assed and half-finished projects but I know I can do them better.Pissing me off this morning: Having four switches in the same lab die all within two days of each other. It must be warranty season. On the up side, this lets me convert it over to gigabit instead of the 10/100 nightmare it currently is.
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Aug 11, 2014 17:37
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wrt windows 8 and needing a microsoft account: You can get around that - any time you're going through the Windows 8 setup menu, disconnect the computer from the internet. If it can't see the internet, then the only accounts it'll try and work with are local ones. This doesn't excuse the problem, mind you. It's still stupid as hell.
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Aug 11, 2014 18:34
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josiahgould posted:Reminds me of someone that has me repair their computer. Eventually, it boiled down to needing to be wiped and a clean OS install - problem is that he uses a program called Chief Architect which can only be reinstalled so many times before you have to call the company for a new license key. Alright, no problem, let's call them up before we start so we have the key in hand (or on it's way, however they do it) when we're ready to reinstall... Except nope, he gets on the phone and tells me they want $1000 for a new key. That's over half of the cost of the new version. That's why they do it, because if it's someones livelihood they'll pony up the cash. It's also because their market is extremely limited, so they need to charge a whole lot for the line to even be profitable.
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Aug 11, 2014 19:21
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President Ark posted:wrt windows 8 and needing a microsoft account: You can get around that - any time you're going through the Windows 8 setup menu, disconnect the computer from the internet. If it can't see the internet, then the only accounts it'll try and work with are local ones. Actually you don't even need to do that.. During setup, it will ask if you have a MS account, click the option to Create A New MS Account. When it gets to the account creation screen there will be a link at the bottom that says "Continue Without a Microsoft Account". When you click that it will allow you to create a local account to use.
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Aug 11, 2014 19:34
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Customer Logic: I don't want to pay $150 monthly fee for putting an SSL cert on a load balancer, so what I will do instead is pay $1200 six times to make six separate ssl certs for six servers behind a load balancer. EDIT: There's actually a decent accounting reason for this, but it will start me on a rant about opex vs capex and how retarded accounting rules that are inflexible are. nitrogen fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Aug 11, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 20:15
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Stick it to the man!
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Aug 11, 2014 20:28
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nitrogen posted:Customer Logic: If you are getting $1200 for an SSL certificate, I need to re-think my idea of doing that as a business for people because 
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Aug 11, 2014 20:51
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The SSL cert is gold plated.
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Aug 11, 2014 21:18
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Moey posted:The SSL cert is gold plated. or just says verisign on it
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Aug 11, 2014 21:24
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EV certs are the scammiest scam that ever scammed ...said the risk analyst at a financial institution 
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Aug 11, 2014 21:51
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Antioch posted:EV certs are the scammiest scam that ever scammed EV Certs in a nutshell. Browser: How do I know I can trust you? Website:  Browser: Works for me.
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Aug 11, 2014 22:32
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Galler posted:Probably going to have to have one of my co-workers break into my desk and get my super secret post it. Yup, talked a coworker through breaking into my desk and retrieving my password. Good news though, he couldn't read my about half of it but was able to give me enough pieces so I could figure it out. Now I'm back in, "productive," and he doesn't know my password*.  *still changing it of course and bribing/thanking him with lunch. This hotel is way too classy for me. Most of the people around here are in nice suits and dresses and the hotel food is hilariously expensive. There's a Panera in the lobby and all kinds of places within walking distance though so that's nifty. Got a good instructor for this course and the course itself is pretty good. IT can be pretty awesome. If you're in a lovely position then keep tossing resumes out there and hopefully you can strike gold like I did.
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Aug 11, 2014 22:34
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Building got hit by lightning at 3:30. Burning smell huge flash thunder scared every one. 7 computers went down. NIC's were bad. Luckily we have 5 spare Optiplexes and just swapped HD's and got them back in business. Also lost a card in the phone system so there are some phones out as well. Phone place will be there first thing in the morning, and I next-day-air some Intel gigabit cards from NewEgg so I can get the other machines up in the morning. Got everything buttoned up just before 5:00, the grumpy-rear end old owner comes down to bitch. "This shouldn't have happened blah blah you need to protect this from happening again" Lighting hit the loving building! We have our poo poo on UPS's, no servers or switches were affected, poo poo just jumps through the wires what can you do? "Wellll there seems like something you can do to prevent it from happening in the future I expect you to look it up" 
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Aug 11, 2014 22:39
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Bob Morales posted:Building got hit by lightning at 3:30. Burning smell huge flash thunder scared every one.
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Aug 11, 2014 22:42
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Bob Morales posted:"Wellll there seems like something you can do to prevent it from happening in the future I expect you to look it up" Get quotes to surround the building with a Faraday cage.
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Aug 11, 2014 22:48
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Join the exciting world of Information Technology, where a best case scenario just isn't quite good enough.
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Aug 11, 2014 22:59
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Nine months into someone else's project....quote:Oh and there is a problem with resourcing because the dev lead is going to be away next week doing an introduction to Java course so he can start doing code reviews. 
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Aug 11, 2014 23:27
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Lightning rods, lots of them.
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Aug 11, 2014 23:34
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Pissing me off: the sun. Temperatures are threatening to break triple digits for the first time this year, so of course the A/C in our server room has gone out. And since everybody in town is having HVAC problems, we might not be able to get it fixed until tomorrow. There are thunderstorms predicted for tonight and tomorrow, so we may even get a little bit of what Bob Morales is getting. Fingers crossed!
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Aug 11, 2014 23:57
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Powerful Two-Hander posted:Nine months into someone else's project.... Oh, I see you're working with one of the many wonderful people that I've rejected during the phone screen stage of the interview process!
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Aug 12, 2014 00:39
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I got sent for training to a hotel on Wall Street. Ordered a burger from the hotel restaurant, walked in, in a shirt and jeans to a bunch of people in three piece suits. Felt like a scumbag.
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Aug 12, 2014 00:49
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Partycat posted:I got sent for training to a hotel on Wall Street. Ordered a burger from the hotel restaurant, walked in, in a shirt and jeans to a bunch of people in three piece suits. Felt like a scumbag. You were on Wall Street, I would imagine you were the only person there who wasn't a scumbag.
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Aug 12, 2014 00:54
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anthonypants posted:It sounds like the owner just wrote you a blank check. Pfff. This guy wouldn't even buy a paging system for the warehouse.
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Aug 12, 2014 00:59
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Bob Morales posted:Pfff. This guy wouldn't even buy a paging system for the warehouse. Open up a coat hanger and tape it to his window sill.
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Aug 12, 2014 01:01
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beepsandboops posted:Pissing me off: the sun. Temperatures are threatening to break triple digits for the first time this year, so of course the A/C in our server room has gone out. And since everybody in town is having HVAC problems, we might not be able to get it fixed until tomorrow. Portland?
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Aug 12, 2014 03:02
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Century Link, what the gently caress is wrong with this company. We are getting a DSL connection put in a mall type building, I give them the street address, the building number, the phone number they need to call for building access, the people who they need to see. Everything, just show up, go to the telco building and put in a goddamn dsl connection, and mark it, or put in a biscuit. Instead, this guy shows up in one of our buildings down the street, asks if this is where the DSL is going, is told no, and leaves. He calls no one. I don't find out until today as I'm trying to get poo poo ready as I have to drive 8 hours to put in the equipment this is for. All they had to is call. One phone call to any of the names on the list and we'd be good, but nope, gently caress reading, I work for Century Link. At least it isn't Frontier.
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Aug 12, 2014 05:33
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Bob Morales posted:"Wellll there seems like something you can do to prevent it from happening in the future I expect you to look it up" Mr. Meanieface suggests:  In a two-foot to four-foot grid on the roof, lay half-inch thick bare wound copper lines. At those two foot to four foot intervals, lay lightning rods. Ground all that to the ground. Cover the wire with gravel. He says this is how the electric co protects their transformers. I dare you to quote it out to the boss. 
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Aug 12, 2014 06:32
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Partycat posted:I got sent for training to a hotel on Wall Street. Ordered a burger from the hotel restaurant, walked in, in a shirt and jeans to a bunch of people in three piece suits. Felt like a scumbag. Ignore them. They just aren't rich enough to dress relaxed - you are! (at least that's what they'll think)
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Aug 12, 2014 07:46
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thebigcow posted:A thing so annoying you almost wish for a dongle instead. Oh this PC has a dongle for another piece of software; however to avoid paying for the new version and a new dongle involves installing the demo version of the new software (64 bit) which does not work with the dongle. Then installing the old software also 64 bit (which if installed first fails to find the dongle on win 7 64) it now can see the dongle because the 64 bit drivers are updated in the demo version and stay in place when the old 64 bit software is installed as well. The manufacturer approves of this work around after we found it. The two pieces of software are on the same PC its fantastic.
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Aug 12, 2014 10:17
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meanieface posted:Mr. Meanieface suggests: Either this or lightning rods. Make it have so many lightning rods that the building will look metal as gently caress.
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Aug 12, 2014 10:22
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Surge protector for every outlet? Maybe $50 a pop.... How many outlets could you have? 500? 20,000? Get Dave from accounting to run some numbers.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:17
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CitizenKain posted:Century Link, what the gently caress is wrong with this company. We are getting a DSL connection put in a mall type building, I give them the street address, the building number, the phone number they need to call for building access, the people who they need to see. Everything, just show up, go to the telco building and put in a goddamn dsl connection, and mark it, or put in a biscuit. Turns out that being named Qwest didn't actually have anything to do with the company being complete poo poo. Who knew? Edit: Oh, it was acquired, not renamed. Well, whatever.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:06
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Swink posted:Surge protector for every outlet? It didn't come from the power lines, it came from the network/phone cables
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Aug 12, 2014 13:26
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All these years and I've still not figured this one out: how you you answer "why did that happen? There must be some reason it happened" to something like an Office application freezing up with no clear reason? It just... does? poo poo crashes or locks up sometimes at random, not always with a message or log that can be interpreted in any meaningful way. It's been a fact of computing since the beginning. Especially if it has Microsoft written on it (but Apple and Linux desktop software can be just as bad with "unexpectedly quit"s and segfaults). You can say it's a buggy piece of crap, but then the angry and frustrated manager grilling you over it then demands to know why you gave them a buggy piece of crap in the first place, and you have to try and explain that there isn't really a decent alternative and even then there's no 100% guarantee it'll never ever crash or lock up and... stop asking, k?! If it's crashing and hanging with regularity then yes there may be some reason that can be identified such as faulty RAM or malware. But when it's just "it crashed once" and it's fine the other 99.9% of the time... I don't know? Maybe if this was NASA or a nuclear submarine or something we'd have written everything ourselves, with ludicrous amounts of logging and failsafes and be able to justify and carry out an investigation and hand over a 600 page dossier and recommendations for being certain it will never happen again. But we're not NASA, and Word locking up and causing a bit of an annoyance is not quite the same as accidentally starting WW3 or blowing up a space shuttle.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:52
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Solar flares
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Aug 12, 2014 14:14
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Negative emotions causes a reduction of positrons. Only positive emotions can restore the number of positrons required for correct functioning. To prevent this from occurring in the future, think only happy thoughts, and NEVER angry thoughts! 
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Aug 12, 2014 14:23
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From several pages back:TheFuzzyLumpkin posted:Ahahahaha, are you in the greater Boston area, by any chance? Somebody did that to me at my last job and I went off on him. Especially since I didn't have a closed office, so anybody could have heard the conversation if I was starting. Yup! I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same guy. For content: Our only mechanical engineer left. We design a product that is a real thing made of matter. Who is going to update the drawings? Ryzic is good with computers! Not loving likely.
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Aug 12, 2014 14:27
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