Quick [tech] Questions Thread

[Sheepherder]

It already is a buzz word.

I saw some LG panels like that the other day.  $150 for an IPS seems like a great deal, until you read the specs.

[Salamok]

I just read a review of a Dell 23" e-IPS monitor with a 6-bit display Fucking marketing people. If you want to get an IPS display you'll need to verify that it's an 8-bit display.

not just the 23" I have seen many posts saying that the quality on a u2412 is significantly less than a u2410 (2410 usually sells for about $150 more on Dell's site).

[Trippy]

Yes the U2412 is apparently a 6-bit display as well. Oh well...

[Trippy]

Upon reading further, is IPS the way to go, then?

Yes get something like a Dell U2412M U2410M (the 2412 is a 6-bit display).

[Ironwood]

So the machine just packed in.  Not mine, the wifes WoW station.  Big ole blank screen.

Disks fine, memory fine, video and monitor fine.  CPU hot as a motherfucker.  Looked like it just burned itself out.

Cocksuckers.

Now I'm trying to do an in place upgrade of XP without an A drive for the Raid drivers.  Fuck me.

I suppose my question is :  Why does this shit happen to me ?  And does anyone have any bright ideas about the drivers ?

[Trippy]

There's a way to make your own XP install image that slipstreams the drivers but I've never tried it before.

Edit: never even

[Ironwood]

Yeah, I was hoping to avoid that.  It's one of those 'I only have one Floppy Drive' type deals and I'd rather not rip shit apart.

I suspect a quick linux boot might do it.

[Salamok]

It wont accept a usb stick as a source for drivers during install?

[Engels]

It wont accept a usb stick as a source for drivers during install?

Not XP. A solution may be to purchase a USB floppy drive, so long as your system recognizes it as such, you can install the raid drivers from that.

I had a program to make slipstream Winxp cds, but its at work, and I can't remember the name. It was a bit fiddly, and took a bit of  praying, but if that's the only recourse, I can dig it up.

[Ironwood]

I got it sorted.  Took more than an hour due to swapping one fucking Floppy Drive about.  Also, the driver disk I made was corrupt the first time.

If this is New Year, you can shove it.

 

[Sky]

Don't use RAID for an xp wow station?

[Engels]

Its not about using raid, its about the chipset storage controller, which can be set to raid or AHCI, but regardles, WinXP will need 'pre-os' drivers. Some machines let you go to 'legacy' mode on the controller, which would sometimes let XP see the HD, but most of the times, its either raid or AHCI, and you will need the drivers for it.

[Yegolev]

Isn't there a linux client for WoW yet?

[Engels]

Isn't there a linux client for WoW yet?

[Margalis]

My internet connection is super slow all of the sudden. I can't watch streaming video at all and podcasts that used to download in 40 seconds now take 12 minutes.

But if I run a bit torrent client I get the same speed there I always did. Maybe a time of day thing? (I have a cable modem) Is there some way to diagnose whether this is my machine, my router / cable modem or some stop along the way?

[Trippy]

What numbers are you getting from speedtest.net?

[Margalis]

Ping: 25ms

DL Speed: 0.57 Mbps
UL Speed: 0.92 Mbps

Definitely not my computer because my 360 can barely load images for the dashboard.

[Viin]

Restart your router(s)?

[Margalis]

Tried a bunch of the obvious things, talked to Time Warner, they did something, seems better, will talk to them about line test tomorrow.

Seems like their problem probably.

[Sheepherder]

Note the asterixes in the second screenshot?  Those are dropped packets, a large number of those tend to indicate bad news.  Also, I redacted a bunch of hops in the tracert, you should do the same if you post text or screencaps.

[Chimpy]

Note the asterixes in the second screenshot?  Those are dropped packets, a large number of those tend to indicate bad news.  Also, I redacted a bunch of hops in the tracert, you should do the same if you post text or screencaps.

Having a dropped packet near the terminus of a trace is not uncommon, all that means is the device doesn't respond to pings. With a trace, having big spikes in time between hops is what is most worrying.

Marsalis: did you run a speed test directly connected to the modem and get different results?

[Margalis]

It seems mostly better now. Connecting directly to the cable modem didn't make any difference. Guy on Time Warner's end worked some magic remotely.

[Lantyssa]

Can anyone recommend a good content filter program for Exchange 2003?  Other features are fine, but being able to keep our people from sending out sensitive data is the most important thing.

I wanted to go with CodeTwo's product, but it seems to only be for 2007/2010.  (Their disclaimer product is pretty slick and simple.)

[Chimpy]

Does anything support Exchange 2003 anymore?

[Lantyssa]

I hope so...

We don't need anything complicated, just the ability to block emails containing a SSN or CC.

[Ironwood]

GFI was always best for 2003, but I'm not sure quite what features it has anymore or what you're after.

Maybe using MEHS gateway would work.

[Lantyssa]

GFI has been forbidden.  I'm after what I said in the previous post.

Ability to block, or redact, any email sent containing credit card or SSN information.

[Ingmar]

Do you have a current spam filter for incoming mail? Your cheapest option might be seeing if you can leverage that for outgoing filtering as well.

[Yegolev]

Sounds dangerously close to "write a perl script".

[Sky]

HOWDY!

[Lantyssa]

Do you have a current spam filter for incoming mail? Your cheapest option might be seeing if you can leverage that for outgoing filtering as well.

We had a filter.  Then they went out of business a few months ago.  Presumably.  Their web page is still up, but we've been unable to contact them for some time.

A spam filter that can do outgoing is fine, too.  It's just we don't really need spam filtering, so it's already overkill.  At this point, I'll take a suggestion for anything that's reasonably cheap and easy to use, as long as it also meets our (I would think) simple requirements.

Sounds dangerously close to "write a perl script".

It is.  Or "write a lexer".  Delving into figuring out how to code for Exchange, SMTP, or whatever probably isn't feasible, either.

[Ingmar]

How many mailboxes do you have? Postini (shut up Ironwood  ) is pretty cheap ($5/user/month with discounts as you go up in accounts) and can do outgoing and incoming filtering. Bonus is that the processing all happens offsite so there's no load on your mail server itself and if your internet goes down, they spool up your mail for you til it comes back again instead of just having it bounce.

[Lantyssa]

Off-site is not an option, unfortunately.  I could suggest it were I feeling particularly mischievous or wanting to encourage the boss to have a reason to drink, but it'll be shot down.

[Sheepherder]

http://www.mydlp.com/
http://www.clearswift.com/products/mimesweeper-for-smtp
http://www.nemx.com/products/SecurExchange/index.html
http://us.trendmicro.com/us/products/enterprise/scanmail-for-microsoft-exchange/
http://www.vircom.com/en/products/

It's all my Google-fu and almost complete ignorance of the topic could turn up.  MyDLP is open source and apparently their Microsoft Exchange help info is under construction, so probably not an easy solution.

[Salamok]

I would think if you used an appliance it wouldn't matter so much what mail server you were using.  We had a Barracuda spam/antivirus appliance that worked great, I did not use the outbound mail filter policies but it looked like it was meant for what you are looking for.