• Haligonian (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    Haligonian:
    Annapolis Royal NS is a tiny little community. There is no Annapolis.

    The closest theatre is in New Minas.. Even 20 years ago, there's a drive-in in cambridge but no multi screen theatre.

    Obfuscation?

    Indeed. I find it funny that so many people are trying to research the fiction of this article against reality.

    My best friend is from the next town over, I grew up an hour west, now live an hour and a half east of there.

  • Friedrice The Great (unregistered) in reply to Coyne
    Coyne:
    Matthew:
    There could be a whole category of TDWTF where a screensaver on a server is the problem. Definitely not the first one of these.

    I don't know...there's been a lot of mention of screen savers, yes, but OpenGL screensavers. Maybe OpenGL is the TRWTF?

    Hmm, back in Win95 days, I had a graphics card designed for use with CAD software. It had accelerated 3D hardware support and OpenGL built into the card. The CAD software would just hand it a display list and the card would fly through it without any CPU. Was a very good performer on my old 486 machine ...

  • (cs) in reply to Haligonian
    Haligonian:
    chubertdev:
    Haligonian:
    Annapolis Royal NS is a tiny little community. There is no Annapolis.

    The closest theatre is in New Minas.. Even 20 years ago, there's a drive-in in cambridge but no multi screen theatre.

    Obfuscation?

    Indeed. I find it funny that so many people are trying to research the fiction of this article against reality.

    My best friend is from the next town over, I grew up an hour west, now live an hour and a half east of there.

    From Annapolis Royal, NS, right? I hope you're not thinking of the Annapolis in the article, because that's probably an arbitrary name used by the author who isn't even aware than an Annapolis Royal exists in NS.

  • mick (unregistered)

    I'm sure there was one like this a couple of weeks ago.

    Now I go count how many others have already said the same thing.

  • r6y (unregistered) in reply to Fritz, a.k.a. Fritzo
    Fritz:
    The RWTF is that this wasn't terribly written and actually contained a funny line.
    where? I missed it....
  • Splatmandeux (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    New ticket created: application prevents screen saver from running
    Lol. That would've been the likely outcome. The monitoring systems were designed to run 24x7.
  • low blow (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    drake:
    JW:
    This link (among others easily findablethrough Google), briefly discusses why using "ghetto" to mean "low calss, dangerous" is problematic.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/offensive-words-_n_4144472.html

    (Briefly, since the original definition of "ghetto" was "part of a city where a minority dwells", then using it to mean "low class" is the same as saying "minorities are low class".)

    Thank god for left wing blogs that tell us what words we can use, and what health care we want!

    Thank god for rednecks who look upon education and social advancement with contempt. Otherwise we civilised people would have nobody to despise.

    And you're the reason why soon costumes of any sort will be banned because they might offend someone. To hell with it, let the whole world wear a uniform lest someone attire offends someone.

  • boogers (unregistered) in reply to DAVe3283
    DAVe3283:
    Kivi:
    JW:
    Since the original definition of "ghetto" was "part of a city where a minority dwells", then using it to mean "low class" is the same as saying "minorities are low class".)
    Etymology is not destiny.
    Thank you! It baffles me how many people think that the etymology of a word has some bearing on its current social meaning. It does not.
    When Johnny comes marching home again, Hurrah! Hurrah! We'll give him a hearty welcome then Hurrah! Hurrah! The men will cheer and the boys will shout The ladies they will all turn out And we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home.

    The old church bell will peal with joy Hurrah! Hurrah! To welcome home our darling boy, Hurrah! Hurrah! The village lads and lassies say With roses they will strew the way, And we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home.

    Get ready for the Jubilee, Hurrah! Hurrah! We'll give the hero three times three, Hurrah! Hurrah! The laurel wreath is ready now To place upon his loyal brow And we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home.

    Let love and friendship on that day, Hurrah, hurrah! Their choicest pleasures then display, Hurrah, hurrah! And let each one perform some part, To fill with joy the warrior's heart, And we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to Yazeran
    Yazeran:
    Yep.. Been there done that.. :-)

    In my case it was a big server ment to be used for numerical calculations (think FEM analysis and the like).

    Most of the time it just sat ther doing nothing on all of it's 4 CPU's, and as I had an account there, I set up 4 instances of SETI (nice -19 mind you so not to 'be in the way').

    But the powers that be din't like their server always showing up in the monitoring systems as maxed out on CPU usage....

    I did get a fairly good score before they noticed however....

    Yazeran

    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.

    #

    TRWTF here is SETI and not something more useful like GIMPS or Seventeen Or Bust.

  • mike (unregistered) in reply to Nova Scotian
    Nova Scotian:
    Correct, there is no Annapolis, Nova Scotia.

    Annapolis Royal is a tourist area, not much else. Annapolis Valley covers a fair size area of the province, apple orchards as far as the eye can see plus lots of small towns, also a large undergrad university and some colleges.

    My guess is that it was actually the "Valley" as we call it around here. Though I really doubt there are any hookers to be found except for the rug making kind.

    is there a euphemism in there?

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to low blow
    low blow:
    QJo:
    drake:
    JW:
    This link (among others easily findablethrough Google), briefly discusses why using "ghetto" to mean "low calss, dangerous" is problematic.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/offensive-words-_n_4144472.html

    (Briefly, since the original definition of "ghetto" was "part of a city where a minority dwells", then using it to mean "low class" is the same as saying "minorities are low class".)

    Thank god for left wing blogs that tell us what words we can use, and what health care we want!

    Thank god for rednecks who look upon education and social advancement with contempt. Otherwise we civilised people would have nobody to despise.

    And you're the reason why soon costumes of any sort will be banned because they might offend someone. To hell with it, let the whole world wear a uniform lest someone attire offends someone.
    goodness me, it must be Village Idiot day on the internet.

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to low blow
    low blow:
    QJo:
    drake:
    JW:
    This link (among others easily findablethrough Google), briefly discusses why using "ghetto" to mean "low calss, dangerous" is problematic.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/offensive-words-_n_4144472.html

    (Briefly, since the original definition of "ghetto" was "part of a city where a minority dwells", then using it to mean "low class" is the same as saying "minorities are low class".)

    Thank god for left wing blogs that tell us what words we can use, and what health care we want!

    Thank god for rednecks who look upon education and social advancement with contempt. Otherwise we civilised people would have nobody to despise.

    And you're the reason why soon costumes of any sort will be banned because they might offend someone. To hell with it, let the whole world wear a uniform lest someone attire offends someone.
    goodness me, it must be Village Idiot day on the internet.

  • fred (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    low blow:
    QJo:
    drake:
    JW:
    This link (among others easily findablethrough Google), briefly discusses why using "ghetto" to mean "low calss, dangerous" is problematic.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/offensive-words-_n_4144472.html

    (Briefly, since the original definition of "ghetto" was "part of a city where a minority dwells", then using it to mean "low class" is the same as saying "minorities are low class".)

    Thank god for left wing blogs that tell us what words we can use, and what health care we want!

    Thank god for rednecks who look upon education and social advancement with contempt. Otherwise we civilised people would have nobody to despise.

    And you're the reason why soon costumes of any sort will be banned because they might offend someone. To hell with it, let the whole world wear a uniform lest someone attire offends someone.
    goodness me, it must be Village Idiot day on the internet.
    indeed, and they're double posting too....

  • No Grammy please (unregistered) in reply to Matthew

    Hence, a sequel?

  • nosleepdemon (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that The Cleaner waited 10 minutes for the screensaver to trigger a second time instead of changing the timer.

  • D B (unregistered) in reply to QJo
    QJo:
    faoileag:
    belzebub:
    I'm missing the last part - where upon his return, James is told that the system is down again and the customer has filed a complaint against him for breaking their screensaver, which - thank you very much - was working thr whole time just fine. They were fortunately able to restore the full glory of the screensaver in a few hours. Incidentaly the system failed just about 10 minutes after screensaver was fixed, which proves that James didn't fix anything, has meddled with their state-of-the-art screensaver and probably just got lucky. After replacing VGA card with OpenGL-capable one, James was fired for improper sexual behaviour (the hooker called him gay) and was killed by meteorite from mars. The (proper) End.
    Nice try. But you forgot the president's daughter.

    "The president called, complaining that James had mistaken his daughter for a hooker -- she was only trying to get a lift out of the place, where she had (long story) found herself. Ten minutes after James had driven off, she was murdered by a mob of the various assorted ne'er-do-wells who frequent such an insalubrious location."

    I love it!!!

  • Rick (unregistered)

    At least he didn't have to walk that 500 miles, or 500 more.

  • Emu (unregistered) in reply to Zathras
    Zathras:
    Probably a stupid question, but why would a screensaver that's written in OpenGL - and therefore is presumably running on a GPU, rather than a software renderer - use up all the CPU time?

    Chances are that the server didn't have any hardware acceleration. Don't forget that this was around 95-96 and that was before the original Voodoo accelerators, the ATI Rage3D cards were just released...

  • Garion. (unregistered)

    I swear I remember this happening. I worked for a company that was acquired by Tickets.com, but this was before the acquisition. And it wasn't movie theaters, but theaters in general.

    We had just converted our server software from AIX and other UNIX to WinNT, and this was probably one of the first deployments. We actually had both X86 and POWERPC versions for WinNT 3.11. On the clients, we used dos packet drivers.

  • mjb (unregistered) in reply to noaunda

    This is well known. I ran into it with our servers too.

    Here's an MS article that even mentions the issue in some detail

    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc751009.aspx

  • Mick R (unregistered) in reply to Chris

    Grand Theft Cron, perhaps?

  • (cs) in reply to Zacrath
    Zacrath:
    I don't see how "The cleaner" is bad ass. Perhaps the author meant "bad as".
    Without wanting to quote xkcd, think a moment about what becomes of "bad-ass cleaner" if you apply the move-the-hyphen-one-word-to-the-right rule...
  • Tintin (unregistered) in reply to nosleepdemon
    nosleepdemon:
    TRWTF is that The Cleaner waited 10 minutes for the screensaver to trigger a second time instead of changing the timer.

    What if it wasn't the screensaver.

    If you change the environment and do a flawed test, then you may establish that the screensaver now doesn't cause a problem - but you'll miss that other thing that still happens after 10 minutes and still breaks the system.

    They didn't know for definite that it was the screensaver, it was just a strong suspicion, so waiting 10 minutes was the correct way to test it.

  • (cs) in reply to Yazeran
    Yazeran:
    Yep.. Been there done that.. :-)

    In my case it was a big server ment to be used for numerical calculations (think FEM analysis and the like).

    Most of the time it just sat ther doing nothing on all of it's 4 CPU's, and as I had an account there, I set up 4 instances of SETI (nice -19 mind you so not to 'be in the way').

    WOW! You are TRWTF!
    info coreutils nice:
    Niceness values range at least from -20 (process has high priority and gets more resources, thus slowing down other processes) through 19 (process has lower priority and runs slowly itself, but has less impact on the speed of other running processes).
    So you actually ensured your SETI is "in the way" of every other process running at default priority!

    Search for extra-terrestrial intelligence? Of course has highest priority, because terrestrial intelligence is totally missing where this stuff runs!

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    anonymous:
    Splatmandeux:
    I once worked on a SCADA system (water treatment plant) that had this problem. Whenever the CPU on some node would stay at 100% for "too long" an alarm would go off, under the assumption that "something bad is happening".

    Had a site where the user at an "operator station" (running NT4) changed the screen saver to the Pipes, causing a predictable amount of chaos.

    Back in those days (mid 90s), decorative screen savers were typically designed to use as much CPU as possible. After figuring it out, the customer actually had the gall to file a bug stating that the system should be usable with the Pipes screen saver.

    So? Disable the screensaver while you're running like my video player does. Bug closed.

    New ticket created: application prevents screen saver from running

    This is by design. Ticket closed.

  • QJo (unregistered) in reply to Anonymouse
    Anonymouse:
    Zacrath:
    I don't see how "The cleaner" is bad ass. Perhaps the author meant "bad as".
    Without wanting to quote xkcd, think a moment about what becomes of "bad-ass cleaner" if you apply the move-the-hyphen-one-word-to-the-right rule...
    Now you're just being a douche.
  • (cs) in reply to Rick
    Rick:
    At least he didn't have to walk that 500 miles, or 500 more.
    Nor did he fall down at the hooker's door...
  • (cs) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    chubertdev:
    anonymous:
    Splatmandeux:
    I once worked on a SCADA system (water treatment plant) that had this problem. Whenever the CPU on some node would stay at 100% for "too long" an alarm would go off, under the assumption that "something bad is happening".

    Had a site where the user at an "operator station" (running NT4) changed the screen saver to the Pipes, causing a predictable amount of chaos.

    Back in those days (mid 90s), decorative screen savers were typically designed to use as much CPU as possible. After figuring it out, the customer actually had the gall to file a bug stating that the system should be usable with the Pipes screen saver.

    So? Disable the screensaver while you're running like my video player does. Bug closed.

    New ticket created: application prevents screen saver from running

    This is by design. Ticket closed.

    New ticket created: this is unacceptable. Please resolve.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    anonymous:
    chubertdev:
    anonymous:
    Splatmandeux:
    I once worked on a SCADA system (water treatment plant) that had this problem. Whenever the CPU on some node would stay at 100% for "too long" an alarm would go off, under the assumption that "something bad is happening".

    Had a site where the user at an "operator station" (running NT4) changed the screen saver to the Pipes, causing a predictable amount of chaos.

    Back in those days (mid 90s), decorative screen savers were typically designed to use as much CPU as possible. After figuring it out, the customer actually had the gall to file a bug stating that the system should be usable with the Pipes screen saver.

    So? Disable the screensaver while you're running like my video player does. Bug closed.

    New ticket created: application prevents screen saver from running

    This is by design. Ticket closed.

    New ticket created: this is unacceptable. Please resolve.

    Ticket closed: This was not part of the design requirements and will require contract re-negotiation.

  • Mr Pimp (unregistered) in reply to Chris

    He means he sent her off to another job over the radio.. Silly person.

  • KingBeardo (unregistered)
    After dispatching the hooker

    Good lord, he didn't have to kill her!

  • KingBeardo (unregistered) in reply to pif
    pif:
    heh:
    the wtf is having desktop on server...
    TRWTF is having a graphic card at all on a server!

    They probably didn't have a GPU, and that was (a lesser part of) the problem; if the machine had a dedicated graphics card the pipes rendering shouldn't have consumed a high percentage of CPU cycles. If OpenGL had to fail over to software rendering via the CPU, however... well, obviously the server shouldn't have been running any screensaver anyway

  • (cs) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    chubertdev:
    anonymous:
    chubertdev:
    anonymous:
    Splatmandeux:
    I once worked on a SCADA system (water treatment plant) that had this problem. Whenever the CPU on some node would stay at 100% for "too long" an alarm would go off, under the assumption that "something bad is happening".

    Had a site where the user at an "operator station" (running NT4) changed the screen saver to the Pipes, causing a predictable amount of chaos.

    Back in those days (mid 90s), decorative screen savers were typically designed to use as much CPU as possible. After figuring it out, the customer actually had the gall to file a bug stating that the system should be usable with the Pipes screen saver.

    So? Disable the screensaver while you're running like my video player does. Bug closed.

    New ticket created: application prevents screen saver from running

    This is by design. Ticket closed.

    New ticket created: this is unacceptable. Please resolve.

    Ticket closed: This was not part of the design requirements and will require contract re-negotiation.

    New ticket created: this is part of your support contract. A system that your company implemented has a flaw that allows the server to crash.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    anonymous:
    chubertdev:
    anonymous:
    chubertdev:
    anonymous:
    Splatmandeux:
    I once worked on a SCADA system (water treatment plant) that had this problem. Whenever the CPU on some node would stay at 100% for "too long" an alarm would go off, under the assumption that "something bad is happening".

    Had a site where the user at an "operator station" (running NT4) changed the screen saver to the Pipes, causing a predictable amount of chaos.

    Back in those days (mid 90s), decorative screen savers were typically designed to use as much CPU as possible. After figuring it out, the customer actually had the gall to file a bug stating that the system should be usable with the Pipes screen saver.

    So? Disable the screensaver while you're running like my video player does. Bug closed.

    New ticket created: application prevents screen saver from running

    This is by design. Ticket closed.

    New ticket created: this is unacceptable. Please resolve.

    Ticket closed: This was not part of the design requirements and will require contract re-negotiation.

    New ticket created: this is part of your support contract. A system that your company implemented has a flaw that allows the server to crash.

    Ticket closed: the crash flaw has already been fixed with a patch which prevents the screensaver from starting while the system is running.

  • Paul Neumann (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Rick:
    At least he didn't have to walk that 500 miles, or 500 more.
    Nor did he fall down at the hooker's door...
    Was it a green door which he did not fall down at?
  • Aninnymouse (unregistered)
    While parked at the side of a street in the downtown area consulting a map, James was approached by the hooker.

    "Hey sexy, need some directions?"

  • Pedant #94 (unregistered) in reply to JW

    Original definition: Ghetto, Venice.

    http://goo.gl/maps/DPi9W

  • iggy (unregistered)

    these kind of failures are hard to find.

    one time we had a really bad issue, depending on who left the server, some services were not reacting within time.

    the solution was a malfunction mouse on the PS2 port which cause quite a lot of interrupts putting the last system selected on the KVM switch to be up to 100% CPU.

    the mouse then was put out of business by cutting the cable.

  • RockyMountainCoder (unregistered)

    Happens all the time. I had to fly 3 hours on "The Local" from Houston to Nashville to tell a record company that their conference room television was broken.

  • me (unregistered) in reply to Chris

    Frankly, I'm puzzled by the description of this place as "seedy".

  • Neil (unregistered) in reply to no laughing matter
    no laughing matter:
    Yazeran:
    I set up 4 instances of SETI (nice -19 mind you so not to 'be in the way').
    WOW! You are TRWTF!
    info coreutils nice:
    Niceness values range at least from -20 (process has high priority and gets more resources, thus slowing down other processes) through 19 (process has lower priority and runs slowly itself, but has less impact on the speed of other running processes).
    So you actually ensured your SETI is "in the way" of every other process running at default priority!
    nice -19 is shorthand for nice -n 19 or nice --adjustment=19 so it decreases the priority.
  • dna (unregistered)

    I remember having read the (almost) same storie. I can only assume it was here. It was not exactly the same, because in the other one, someone was putting back the screen saver after

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to dna
    dna:
    I remember having read the (almost) same storie. I can only assume it was here. It was not exactly the same, because in the other one, someone was putting back the screen saver after
    http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/A-Fat-Pipe.aspx

    Unrelated text so that Akismet doesn't think this comment is spam
  • vg.gvavv (unregistered)
    No, not Julia Roberts...visualize Jon Voight.

    What does this even mean?

  • DrEvil (unregistered) in reply to Walky_one
    Walky_one:
    TRWTF was actually that "Pipe" screen saver. Many people had it active in those days and it regularly caused problems. I honestly don't know how anybody can be stupid enough to build a screen saver that needs a whole computer for himself to run.
    -- MA WHOO HA HA HA HAAAA!!! All part of my evil plan to create havac throughout offices around the world!
  • AZ (unregistered) in reply to Norris

    That was a common misperception about SETI@Home. It really only needed a small amount of data every few hours. Your DSL problem was probably people on napster.

  • Dominic (unregistered)

    "The pipes screen saver. It uses OpenGL. And because of that, when it was active it took 100% of the server's CPU."

    Although I know the old pipes screensaver used up 100% of the CPU, how exactly does this relate to openGL? If it uses openGL, it should be rendered on the videocard not the CPU?

  • AnnaExpat (unregistered) in reply to Haligonian

    Closest theatre except for, say, King's Theatre? i.e. Located in downtown Annapolis Royal since 1921?

    King's actually does have a little alleyway that leads to its side entrance, so the story sounds plausible. Even with the hooker.

    (I expect the "6 site installation" referred to 6 theatres run by the company in nearby towns up and down the Annapolis Valley)

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Chris

    Well, what can I say? IT takes all kinds.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)
    As James made his way to the next site, the thought about how he was going to explain to his manager to explain that he had just flown 500 miles to turn off a screen saver.
    If I were his boss, I'd be asking why he didn't delete the screensavers as well to prevent the problem in the future.

    It's pretty obvious how the problem started.

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