Up to Something

I hate Microsoft. I truly do. These assholes are simply unbelievable. I cannot articulate the fury and frustration which I feel at this moment. Seriously. The insanity of whatever policy drives them is beyond the measure of intelligent people.

I cannot write a scathingly witty post about overcoming them. I have redacted this blog once, but this is beyond endurance.

A client has a Windows 2003 SBS network. They started out on “Volume Licensing”, and the previous admin upgraded to a “2003 SBS R2 Retail” license. Let me tell you - THAT was a joke. You pay Microsoft to run an install off of a CD labeled “R2 Technologies”. This ~$400 investment runs in about 10 minutes or less. The largest change is the “2003 SBS R2” BRANDING. The f*ck*ng BRANDING. That’s right - half a dozen pictures which appear in places.

Whatever, we commenced the upgrade and transition to the Transition Pack. This leveraged our current investment, and actually allows us to virtualize. The problem is that the Transition Pack doesn’t ship with an Exchange 2003 cd.

I do not have enough swear words to make this pain go away. Anyone who knows ANYTHING knows you cannot remove DS from an Exchange Server. You must first uninstall Exchange. Then you may remove/demote/whatever. Then you simply reinstall Exchange.

In our case, we want to move Exchange to server Two, DS to server Three and deprecate server One. We cannot. We don’t have the media. The Exchange media which came with the SBS install requires installation on Windows 2003 SBS. Anyone who tells me I didn’t plan ahead and “see what I got” deserves to be anally raped by rabid coyotes.

This is so stupid and frustrating. I paid $1400.00 to get a two CD pack which migrates SBS 2003 to 2003 Standard. It also came with paper that allows me to migrate Exchange 2003. Oh, and the “rights” to “buy” media from a “fulfillment” center.

Ripping off a product managers head and sh*tt*ng down his throat is more like fulfillment here.

Why is it that normal people don’t run more successful projects? See this ticket regarding Paludis. Paludis is a C++ replacement for Portage. Portage is a squirrels nest and even though the ebuild system is pretty nice, portage itself is pretty lame.

Disclosure

In the interest of fairness, I would point out: The Paludis site flatly refuses to say anything about the project. Therefore being run by a complete asshole isn’t contradictory to any previous statements.

Summary

The gist of the ticket is that Paludis doesn’t support certain types of parallelism and the developer(s) refuse to do anything sane in order to prevent, notify or clearly document the danger of it. This danger is apparently readily realized by users.

Examples of sanity might be:

• Warn people it’s not supported.
• Make some sort of method for restricting parallel execution.
• ADD A NOTE TO A FAQ

Evidence

What does the Paludis think of a notice about the dangers of parallel runs of the software they publish:

chaoflow: “What about preventing parallel paludis runs or at least a FAQ or some other way of explicitly telling people, that parallel paludis operations are not supported?”
ciaranm: “Preventing parallel runs is a security hole. And an FAQ entry is pointless – parallel executions are fine so long as they stick to certain operations.”
chaoflow: “Wouldn’t it be nice to have documented, which operations are fine for parallel execution?”
ciaranm: “Not really. If you don’t already know, you shouldn’t be doing it at all.”

Very Dense

This is clearly beyond the scope of Paludis. See this conversation:

chaoflow: “What about preventing parallel paludis runs?”
ciaranm: “Preventing parallel runs is a security hole.”
chaoflow: “Could you elaborate on that?”
ciaranm: “It’s an inversion. A non-root user can obtain the locks and prevent root from being able to do anything for an arbitrarily long time.”

This stunning display of logic and intellect is what passes for success over at Paludis. Even I can think of a few methods to help prevent this:

• Make an override mechanism. Easy enough, right?
• Enable super-users to kill the offending process.
• Put the lockfile in a secured-location.
• Use shared memory, and make use of ipcrm to kill rogue locks.
• Observe that a security /hole/ involves some sort of exploitation of a system. A DoS involves prevention of normal operation. This doesn’t even make a legitimate DoS.

Blackhole

The stupidity doesn’t end there:

chaoflow: “And way way better would be some simple locking inside of paludis preventing bad things from happening.”
ciaranm: Paludis is not there to protect you from yourself.

ciaranm must see this as an incredibly clever way of saying “go f* yourself.”. ciaranm seems to be an incredibly dense idiot. Why is an f’d up system preferable to some logic which may lead to the inconvenience of cleaning up a rogue lock?

Paludis IS a security hole - It just might fuck up your system, if you run it in parallel with itself, but it certainly won’t try to tell you that. I am guilty too.

We win again. I wanted to run Scalix for a client, inside of a VE/CT/whatever, and I tried using Fedora Core 7 to do so. I was unable to make the installer work and didn’t see much in the way of help from Scalix. Here is a link to the Bugzilla page. (Login Required) Here are the important bits. Aside from discouragement I didn’t get anything from Florian… Nothing except responses that was. No one else seems to give a damn if I even exist.

Whatever. The point is that with some minor extra-effort, Scalix does indeed work inside of an OpenVZ container on Linux. My host OS is gentoo, running 2.6.18-028stab053.

The Scalix package is pretty great, just up the Java memory once you have it running. The instances (two) on a system shared by two different companies work great. We migrated to Scalix from Kolab. Outlook users (all two) are happy. Thunderbird users didn’t see too much of a change.

Yay for us.

Typo is a Rails app. Rails is a Ghetto. While I’m not sure what it has to do with torturing the Jewish people, I think that Zed might be a Jew. I digress.

Rails is clearly caught in a ghetto. It’s strange and suffers from strange documentation. One example of something well-known only to Rails people are the DB Migration steps:

• 1. backup your db
• 2. Install your update / new instance / whatever
• 3. issue “rake db:migrate”

It wasn’t known to me. Apparently it wasn’t known to most of the Internet. How did I find the magical command “db:migrate”? I found it with the same steps I used to find almost all things about Typo: I crawled through blogs and groups and everything else. I have never found a single site that had concise documentation. Everything is simply people blogging about how a particular problem was solved. I have never found any upgrade guides. This search also found me another goodie: purge your sessions table before the 5.0.3 startup.

I think that the entire Rails documentation process is based on hype. Either you pay attention to the hype, or you’re doomed. The way to understand it is to use it. The way to use it is either bloody or all-consuming. The hype is how the word is spread. Once I knew how to use the secret db:migrate, I found TONS about it.

Typo is the child of Rails. I couldn’t find an upgrade guide, but I did find an upgrade guy. David, the Nihilist, Gibbons. He is my Typo/Rails upgrade guy. He has worked with Rails and for a while was the best sysadmin that PlanetArgon ever had. David has helped me with more simple problems than I can count.

The last problem which I had was errant notifiers in Typo. I tried (and failed) to post comments. I tried to see what was failing. I turned on debug mode. Nothing. Not a damn thing. I went into settings attempted to disable notification. It didn’t work, but I didn’t notice. Still no debug messages.

Well, at length David did a little SQL magic.

update users set notify_via_jabber='f';
update users set notify_via_email='f';

Wow. Well, his history with Typo gave him something that I didn’t have: a mistrust for the admin interface. I don’t blame the Typo people for this crap, but I do blame the lack of docs for everything else. I guess it’s time to get out of the ghetto.

I was literally looking for a “change-log” type document describing the differences between Java 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6. This was what I found.

I am having more and more problems with OpenDNS. I have dropped it’s usage at my house, and I am dropping it all my business locations. Your “website is down thing” is not only a huge pain in the ass, but it’s generally wrong.

1 in 10 are right. The other 9 are erroneous reports that Google spreadsheets or docs or gmail is down. It’s asinine. I have been using OpenDNS for a long time, but this shit is busted.

I use Verizon at home, and my colleagues use Comcast and Qwest and SpeakEasy. All of us are having an escalating case of the “not-quite-working-rights”. Cliff - my friend - dropped you last week due to spurious outage reports. Once I get redirected to your site, I have a whole new dimension of pain, since it poisons my DNS servers. I want to shout expletives [at you] when DNS get’s hosed. I want to make hating your service a religion. It’s funny how aggravating DNS anomalies can be. I would rather deal with my providers consistent shit than someone else’s bowel-cramping madness.

I loved your past client-centric focus. I loved the speed and response time. Your service was great. You are ruining DNS.

• Signed Frustrated-beyond-the-point-of-reason

The only people on the planet interested (consciously) in worshiping and serving lower forms of life are PETA wackos. However, the folks at Verizon want you to know something: When you call them, you are on equal footing with machines. Call with any problem: New service, old service, complaint, billing, whatever. The cooly superior mock-human voice answers and immediately attempts to gently “take command” of the conversation. She doesn’t understand, she has no sanity or insanity. She cannot hear you. It’s a feeble fakery.

She comprehends nothing except one or two word statements. Like an NSA voice monitor, she waits for ‘trigger’ words to stimulate a response. Yet, she STOPS to give assent to your individual words. “Ok, I think you want to …..”. The herky, unnatural slow pace of the conversation is mind-numbing. There is nothing elegant about it. She tries to emulate the flow of conversation, only when she cuts off mid-word, it’s eerie.

In science fiction every reasonable robot is servile in all circumstances. Apart from the violent kill-them-all types, the most dangerous types are just like the Verizon helper. In “good” robots, the demeanor, though placid, can often be mistaken for more human failings e.g. arrogance or said superiority. However, time and again they bear out the simple nature and duty of caring for the humans they obey.

The ‘naughty’ robots, hereafter “VBots” live in a sick little world of pure logic. They are simple or complex, either have emotions or don’t. However, their defining characteristic is an absolute absence of compassion or empathy. This becomes a malfeasant danger when it’s coupled with absolute certainty of being correct (in the complex type), or abysmal limitations in the Verizon type.

The voice on the phone is not cool or confident. It’s a cast iron bitch. Oh she will talk with you. But f*ck you if you think this is going your way. She forces you into a rote pattern of behavior. Sneering at mumbled/cursed/shouted requests for a human, her lack of inflection hints that you’re below average for requiring human assistance.

Beginning in the call centers of antiquity, managers have sought for sovereign control of each call.
Inbound

• Keep those call times down.
• Stay on target.
• Avoid lengthy greetings
• Never admit wrong doing
• Apologize only in vagaries.
• Keep those call times down.

Outbound

• Stick to the script, blah, blah, blah.
• Maintain control of the call, move in the direction you want.
• Never allow the mark to answer ‘no’.
• Stick to the script, blah, blah, blah.
• Always ask pointed questions, which dictate polite responses, not refusals.
• Act suprised when they change directions in tone or don’t stick with the program, etc.
• Stick to the script, blah, blah, blah.

You have the idea. A talented agent can coax you into any place he wants and make you feel as if it’s your idea. Managers hate these people, but that’s not important right now. What is important? These talented people are able to do what machines cannot: Keep you under control without subjugating you or pissing you off.

Deep in the surgically sterile world of evil, emotionless IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems are made to hate you. Sometimes, it’s sheer desperation for someone to pick up the damn phone, but most often, it’s because IVRs hemorrhage less money on consumer happiness than those underpaid, over-worked sweat-shop workers who live in the call center.

The machines can’t despise you, because the machines can’t ‘do’ anything. They don’t exist as a conscious being. Like unto flu viruses are these machines.

A virus can serve life, or tear it down. Viri are essentially self-replicating processes which do something constructive for the bigger picture or break it apart. The destructive virus, like a brain child of entropy, is bent on consuming, disorganizing and killing any living body more complex and larger than itself. Viruses tend to cause FEVERS - doing thier part in the much feared HEAT DEATH of the Universe. IVR’s generate massive amount of CPU, RAM and hard drive heat. DACs and ADCs are more lik exhaust manifolds than a chips. In other words VBots are just like the viruses. At the end of thier wicked road is the death of everything. And Verizon is helping.

Next time you call a machine, relax - tension creates more body heat and tears you down. Try to cool off and don’t fret about the IVRs, that heat death is millions of years away.

I hate Verizon for this crime against humanity. Even if I go on using their product. Who shall I complain to? The Internets, that’s who.

There are a number of articles on removing Symantec AntiVirus silently. There is a link to thread on avoiding MSI uninstall reboots. There are good suggestions and some bad. Mostly it’s simple. Cleaning up SAV w/o a prompt, password, or user-required action is a little non-trivial.

Someone else did the heavy lifting. You must instruct Symantec to ignore the uninstall password, and that is easily accomplished via a reg-hack. However, reghack via GPO is a PITA. Google turned up: Policy Maker (Registry Extension). This is not news. NEWS is that it farking crashes as soon as you try to use it. Well, it crashed if you have IE7 installed.

Ironically, perhaps, you must update the registry to make this work. Specifically you must disable object caching in IE7 for mmc.exe. (This is too precious). Microsoft Article (which OUGHT to be LINKED from the Webpage of the tool, or included in the installer, given how long IE7 has been out) #938611 - GP Snapin Crash fix.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_OBJECT_CACHING]
@=""
"mmc.exe"=dword:00000000

.. or how to share folders from Windows 2003 with Macs via AFP/MacFile/File Services for Machintosh

I don’t know what I missed, but this is the one type of sharing that requires using Computer Management.

Right-Click My Computer, Click Manage. Click on Shared Folders. From there you can right-click white space and use New Share to create new shares. The third screen in the dialog allows you to pick Windows, Mac or both.

Truly malicious people are not all that common. In the real world Hanlon’s Razor holds very true indeed. In some of my more recent business dealings, I have come away demonized and to some degree, demonizing. However, in light of that most excellent piece of thought I have realized something: Malice only truly comes after a wrong - Real or Perceived.

How can someone you have actually had a close relationship with for years suddenly become convinced you are the Devil Incarnate? Some things are easier seen than explained and some things you have to take as a matter of course. I have fought the battle against bitterness last year (2006), and now, as the new year starts and the 0ld year passes from fresh memory, I have had to fight it again. Walking away from anything or anyone, in bitterness, is unmitigated stupidity.

Some people are just foolish, and some people are maliciousness-in-waiting. Having covered the injuries of the past with pride and lies, they are embittered by wounds to which they foolishly hold. Pride is the ultimate lie, the refusal to be seen for who you are. I would say, the refusal to be seen as you are in the eyes of God.

It’s sad when relationships die. It’s more sad when you let yourself become bitter. Bitter people are toxically infected with a disease that destroys all relationships, present and future. So, whatever comes, don’t be bitter, forgive your enemies and be yourself.