You didn't give us a challenge, you didn't give us sufficient information. I'll just pick one at random.

Sarah, Sara, Zara, Seraiah, Sarai.

I really liked PayPal's solution for limiting risk when paying sites that didn't support PayPal. Their Virtual Debit Card product was great. I could provide whatever information I wanted, restrict the virtual card to exactly the amount of the transaction, and optionally allow it for recurring transactions. They were awesome, especially when purchasing from small companies with very little information about if they were legitimate or not.

PayPal if nice and all, but plenty of people fall for the common traps, like variations on the domain name which are phisher traps.

People here were generally better at avoiding scams, but that doesn't help the > 90% of the population who never check.

One does not simply invite the Romulans.

The rejections you got may not have been because you didn't know a specific answer to a very technical question.

Something I've come across in the past is something similar. It's not knowing the specific answer. Sometimes it's knowing what specific answer *they* want.

For example, "How can you change the IP on a current RHEL or CentOS box".

There are a bunch of right answers.

• edit the appropriate /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* file.
• system-config-network
• /usr/sbin/system-config-network
• use ifconfig directly (not durable through a reboot, but ...)
• change the static entry on the dhcp server for that network interface
• modify it in cfengine, and wait for it to update.

... and those could all be wrong. That particular shop may say "We don't trust ifcfg-eth*", "system-config-network mangles the file format", or even "we don't use those files, we use /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1, that the old admin 10 years ago wrote". It could even start with "fill out the production change review forms, and submit them to the change review committee".

Some places insist that you use the full path to scripts, in case someone else put one farther up in your path (like /bin/). Some don't allow sbin to be in the user's path at all. And of course, if you failed to say "use sudo", you're one of those renegade admins who thinks they can run commands as root. Not knowing *their* method, even though you've never worked for them, is enough to fail an interview.

When I've been interviewing people, I don't work from a hard set of answers. If the interviewee comes close enough, they got it right. If they gave the "system-config-network" answer, I'd just ask "Do you know what files that modifies related to IPs?"

I've interviewed with Google a few times. One of the questions they asked was "How does telnet work?" I answered, and the interviewer asked me the question again. I gave the brief description, the detailed description, all the way down to the opening of sockets and how TCP works. Finally I just had to tell him, "I'm not sure what you're looking for in the answer. Can you please clarify the question?" He didn't. I don't know if that was a pass, fail, or just a stress question.

There was a lovely country club where I lived for a while. Out of curiosity I stopped by. It was only something like $5k/yr. I could have afforded it, but I didn't see any good reason to get a membership. They had a pool. I had a pool. They had a golf course. I don't play golf. They had tennis courts. I don't play tennis. They had their bar and sitting room. I have booze and a TV at home. They offered free wifi to members. I had Internet service at home. The buildings and grounds looked very nice. That only goes so far. "Ok, I'm sitting in a nice building."

I can't see wasting money just to say I have money to waste.

That doesn't sound terribly useful then, does it.

There would be easily missed negatives too. Are they suppose to wear one on both hands, or just their strong hand? When I was training, we had to practice both strong and weak hand firing, so we were just as proficient with either one. If they're only monitoring the strong hand, people will plan on using their weak hand to fire.

The alien terrorists are bombing us. We need body cavity searches at all airports and major highway intersections!

It's a good thing it didn't hit the US. If I've learned nothing else from Hollywood, I've learned this... If any object strikes another object moving faster than about 20 feet per second, there will be a huge explosion.

Except for the very very rare incidents which are strictly for comedic value.

Did Netcraft confirm it?

Well, his CR32032 would be amazingly rare. :) I'd guess if he was serious, he's 12 and has never gone shopping on his own.

Out of morbid curiosity, I searched "CR32032" on Amazon. I think that's the first search I've done there, that only came up with one item.

That's strange. I've never had a seller demand anything from me. About half of the purchases I've made recently gave me positive feedback as soon as the received payment.

Here's my experience. Buy something from eBay or Amazon.

Well, we've bought a lot of batteries from various people I've been harvesting laptop batteries for the 18650 cells to put into phone recharging backs so we can play Ingress for effectively limitless hours, and for eCigarettes. That's given me a look inside them, and what condition the actual cells are. Leftovers, I sell to friends and friends-of-friends at cost.

The recharge packs I have take 4 18650's, so if I get 2500mAhcells, I have a 10000mAh pack. I went with carriers that have a physical on/off switch, rather than the soft switch like the Anker has, so they can sit a long time without discharging. I haven't needed to change batteries on them yet.

Generally, I buy from eBay. I'm looking for the higher cell counts, and aiming for about $1 to $1.50 per cell. So a 8 cell pack I want to spend $8 to $12 on.

When I crack them open (always more work than it sounds) they all have the standard overheat sensors, which was the concern before about exploding batteries. They have all been wired well. Out of say a couple dozen packs, I received one that had a dented cell in it. It didn't hurt the performance of the cell, but since it was dented, I refused to use it or give it to anyone. Some of them, I've damaged the wrapper, so I re-shrink wrap if I'm in urgent need of them, or I dispose of them.

Regardless if it says on the listing that it's an OEM or 3rd party pack, almost all of them have had no-name cells in them. I did get a few true Sony, Panasonic, or Sanyo cell, but they are rarer.

They've all tested out to be the listed capacity, and they all have worked at the expected life expectancy.

The only big exception was the battery for my old cell phone. It originally came with a 1400mAh battery. The only cheap seller listed 1600mAh for about $10/ea. I used them, and they were fine, but they only lasted as long as my original battery when it was new. When they finally started failing, I pealed the stickers off, and the original markings showed they were 1400mAh batteries. If I had been paying extra for the extra capacity, I may have been upset. Since I just needed batteries that worked, it didn't matter much.

I played Ingress a *lot* with my phone though that period. That draws a lot of power, so I kept a couple spare batteries in my pocket all the time so I could swap them as needed.

My new phone came with a much larger battery (part of my selection criteria), and I don't play as much. I let it charge in the car when I'm driving. If I'm walking, still carry the external pack, just in case I need it.

So.. Pick something cheap on eBay. Look for listing saying they're "new". Don't expect a higher capacity batter to be any better than the original battery. Since you're looking for cheap, you can generally afford to get a spare. :)

It's good for your house too. I've seen houses where the homeowner never ran their A/C and they were proud that they saved money. They also had problems with mold, paint peeling, drywall falling apart, and various wood things in their house warping.

At one place I lived, there were ceiling fans throughout the house, which was nice. There were also some on our back porch. The ones inside stayed in almost original condition. The ones outside had rust on the metal parts, and the blades warped.

But this was a discussion about datacenters, so I talked about the corrosion problems with IT equipment.

Well, both sides get charged. We're all either charged on capacity or 95th percentile throughput.

I've never known a residential provider to charge for used throuhgput, because people have a hard time understanding it. People would flip out if their bill was $20 one month, and $300 the next. Rather, residential providers do a bit of math. They look at their bill, the aggregate bandwidth used, and the total Mb/s available to customers. Of course, they tag on a nice profit. There are additional considerations, like what do they need to provide extra services like IPTV, how much does it cost to maintain existing circuits, add new circuits, keep employees paid, travel costs for technicians, etc, etc, etc...

So, you get a nice low flat rate, because consumers don't use 100% of their bandwidth 100% of the time. Basically, they oversubscribe. If they do it right, you never know. If they do it wrong, you have shitty service and everyone complains.

At the datacenter we have equipment, we pay for the rack, power, and on the 95th percentile utilization of that circuit. So if we idle everything for a month, we barely pay anything. If we dump all the load to that datacenter,

If you're running a business where you need to be in a datacenter, your business model better cover all your costs. Otherwise, you'll be out of business quick.

No one gets a free ride. You pay for your end-user line. I pay for the line my server is one. Everyone's paid, and everything works.