Posts by Jeffrey Nonken

Re: A Y2.1k problem...

Actually, the fact that 2000 WAS a leap year broke a lot of stuff.

I'm guessing none of you uses end-of-line comments, or you don't align them.

...yeah, I know. High maintenance, frowned upon mightily. I find it very readable, though.

OTOH probably none of you program in assembly, either.

A paper cheque? You poor sod. To (possibly mis-) quote Roosta:

"I only take hard cash. If I can't cut a window with it, I'm not interested."

"Go figure the course humanity is taking."

...That sentence made no sense. Did you mean "coarse"?

Arlo Guthrie may disagree about the number of piles thing.

Re: Things that are foolproof:

Entropy just isn't what it used to be.

Re: How we are all pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered

"I am not a number."

Bwah hah hah hah

Re: Not cool, Reg (esp. Gareth)!

As I understand it -- my information could be out of date -- the doses for the drug are supposed to be extremely low. Yes, you're on speed. No, you're not an addict and you won't manifest the typical effects of taking the drug.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Re: Top-Posting?

Indeed. At least you could put a notice just ahead of the reports mentioning that they're in reverse order so we'll know that going in.

Thanks.

Re: Slightly different

Zymurgy's First Law Of Evolving System Dynamics: Once You Open A Can Of Worms, The Only Way To Recan Them Is To Use A Bigger Can.

"Depending on the quantity of data to be treated, 200 critical devices might be just right. They are all critical, on the other hand if some of them are going down, the others should have absolutely no problem to hold the load. At least in theory."

But that's the whole point: not that they are critical, but they are critical path. Which means that if any one of them goes down, the entire system goes down. These aren't redundant devices -- they're each one necessary for the whole to work.

I never took a statistics & probability class, but if I'm not mistaken, the chances of failure in this scenario increase exponentially with each device added. (If I am mistaken, I'm sure somebody will cheerfully point it out. I just want it to be the guy who actually took S&P classes and not the guy who thinks the probability of getting 10 heads in a row is 1 in 10.)

Re: Scuh-zee IS the official pronunciation in some circles

There's never been a period that I've NOT heard SCSI pronounced that way.

Vowel sounds are frequently added to vowel-deficient acronyms to make them pronounceable. I see no reason SCSI should be any different.

Or inconvenient consonants removed. I leave you with the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, pronounced "Spebsqua," which features both. In the same letter, no less.

Re: No, just....no

Mobile but pressed for time.

Mobile but hate shopping, esp. waiting in line. Me myself personally, I hate waiting in lines.

Only quasi-mobile, e.g. wheelchair-bound. Or not wheelchair-bound, but walking is difficult and/or painful.

There are three scenarios that may not apply to you, but may apply to other people.

"Wow, exchange rates are really volatile these days!"

*snort* Yeah, major upheavals before you can even finish a sentence!

Re: Most/many of us

Sounds great. But one thing spinning rust is better at: high-turnover data. Starting with your swap file or partition.

SSD has a lifetime measured in the number of writes. Data churn will eat through that.

Re: Suggestions for tech firms' hold music

ELO Telephone Line

Re: Quick solution

Sorry, you don't get to decide what my time is worth to me.

Re: Wi-fi, a hostile environment for vinyl

Agreed. It's not likely the WiFi per se, it's something else, or a combination of things. Could be part a circuit in your equipment that happens to be tuned to an unfortunate wavelength and is acting as an antenna.

So many possibilities.

Need input, Stephanie!

Re: A solution.

Your contempt of "most users" notwithstanding (albeit probably not far off the mark), I suggest that anybody capable of programming a spam-bot is likely capable of setting up the aforementioned proxy, and it's the spam-bots we're most concerned with here.

Re: Time to bring in some STALIN to expedite processes

Say what you will, the breaks are a legal requirement. An employer isn't allowed to ignore them just because he's contemptuous of his employees' needs.

I'm sorry, but a flaw in design is still a flaw. Nothing he said contradicts the article.

Not really. IBM was a highly successful marketing firm who sold computers.

Same here. The taxpayers get to pay this fine, no lessons learned, business as usual.

Re: Hardly surprising

You guys are no more a democracy than we are.

"- getting personal and character references from other professional engineers..."

I have to wonder... How did the first engineer get his certification with this requirement in place?

I had something similar happen through Newegg Marketplace, bought a pair of 64GB microSDXC cards and got fakes. My first clue was that they were marked SDHC...

Ran tests (h2testw and FakeFlashTest) and of course they failed. Looked up the part number on the back and discovered that the part in question is used for fake SD cards a LOT. (http://www.happybison.com/reviews/how-to-check-and-spot-fake-micro-sd-card-8/)

After some back-and-forthing (for some reason their e-mail stripped out ALL LINKS as well as inline non-text content making it nearly impossible to send evidence; they ignored it when I said "look up my tumbler post...") I included a text copy-and-paste of the test results. They refunded my money. I wrote a review that explained everything, carefully written in a neutral tone but laid it all out. (Included the fact that they didn't refund the sales tax, though Newegg refunded that later... it was under $2, I wasn't planning to pursue it.) When I checked the review a couple days later to see if the vendor had posted a reply, I found... nothing. It had quietly disappeared. Since I had meticulously kept a neutral tone, avoided accusations and abuse but merely laid out the sequence of events and the evidence I'd collected, I can only assume it had been swept under the rug.

I haven't bought a single item from Newegg since then. If their policy is to silence negative reviews, then I can't trust them.

I've avoided cheap SD cards since then; found an honest vendor on eBay who sells genuine SanDisk media, and have been buying from him ever since. (dz-tech, in case anybody wants to know. No relationship except as a satisfied customer. US-based.)

Re: Spolier Alert - It's a lot

In your next comment you go on to use a possessive "its" with an apostrophe. You might want to check the log in your own eye.

Re: Canada, eh.

"...lack of palm trees..."

You say that like it's a bad thing.

:) Depends on what you grew up with, I guess. I prefer deciduous myself.