The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
Good Lord, an ST-412. I remember having one of those in my PC, way back when, around 1987. It was a loaner, and I bought my own ST-225 to replace it with twice as much storage in half the physical space.
The ST-412 was 10MB, and the one I had borrowed had the unpleasant habit of dropping sectors. The sector would write OK, but after a while it would go bad and fail to read.

And the drive took five minutes to spin up in that PC, because it pulled four amps from the +12V rail when coming up to speed, and the PSU could only barely cope with that.

At the time, I lived in the US, and I scoured Computer Shopper for the replacement. Being a student, I had a limited budget, and I found the cheapest supplier only three miles from home. "I'd like one of these. I'm in the next town, can I come over and collect the drive?" "Of course."

The first hard drive I ever bought was 30 MB and it cost me $340. My current laptop has a 300 GB hard drive. That's 10,000 times as much space, so logically it must be worth 10,000 x $340 = $3.4 million! Apply similar calculations to RAM, CPU, and so forth and I'm sure my laptop is worth at least $10 million. I'm rich!

DWalker59 · 2012-10-05 Reply Admin

"You can hear the whistle blow... 500 miles!"

da da da da, da da da da, ...

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

Well, I've had at least four featured comments already, it seems that this section of TheDailyWTF likes me. I registered in the forums once and I'm not going back though. That place is literally (and I'm using that word in its correct meaning) the most full of assholes place I've ever seen on the Internet.

chubertdev · 2012-10-05 Reply Admin

Captcha:dolor:
Well, I've had at least four featured comments already, it seems that this section of TheDailyWTF likes me. I registered in the forums once and I'm not going back though. That place is literally (and I'm using that word in its correct meaning) the most full of assholes place I've ever seen on the Internet.

The basic premise of the CodeSOD is better than any forum could possibly be.

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

jay:
The first hard drive I ever bought was 30 MB and it cost me $340.

Newbie!

My first disk drive supported 707 individually addressable sectors of 128 bytes each, well, 125 bytes once you accounted for system overhead. So, a grand total of 86.3 KB. Unless of course you set aside space for a file directory when you formatted it. In that case, not so roomy. And no, don't make it bootable unless you don't want ANY space left over.

Although 80K should be enough for anybody, I had bigger dreams, so I wrote my own RAID -1 driver to span a single file across multiple floppys. I remember how impressed I was with my prowess at coming up with a design that could support up to 16 MEGAbytes! Not that I would ever approach that limit. I mean, who wants to keep track of 190 floppies?

And these weren't the old 8 inch floppies either! Nothing but the finest 5 1/4s for me, at a quantity discount price of just under a dollar each.

I was ecstatic! It was sooooooooo much better than my lame cassette tape drive.

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

I accidentally the current screen.

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

TC:
I accidentally the current screen.

You do and you'll clean it up.

2012-10-06 Reply Admin

jay:
The first hard drive I ever bought was 30 MB and it cost me $340.

The first hard drive I ever used could hold about 1 million of today's 8-bit bytes, and the drive was the size of a washing machine. I didn't buy it though, I just used it.

Greybeard:
My first disk drive supported 707 individually addressable sectors of 128 bytes each, well, 125 bytes once you accounted for system overhead. So, a grand total of 86.3 KB.
Although 80K should be enough for anybody, I had bigger dreams, so I wrote my own RAID -1 driver to span a single file across multiple floppys.

That's RAID-0 not RAID-1. RAID-1 provides redundancy, so if one drive fails you can almost always read the data from another drive and make a new redundant copy. RAID-0 spans drives with no extra copies, so if one drive fails then you probably lose everything you had on all of the drives. RAID-0 has a use, if you need speed on the machine you're presently using, and you have your 3 extra copies backed up on offline drives.

Greybeard:
I remember how impressed I was with my prowess at coming up with a design that could support up to 16 MEGAbytes! Not that I would ever approach that limit. I mean, who wants to keep track of 190 floppies?

I must admit that I'm impressed too.

Greybeard:
And these weren't the old 8 inch floppies either! Nothing but the finest 5 1/4s for me,

Oops, I'm not impressed any more. You're not a greybeard after all. You're an imposter.

JiP · 2012-10-06 Reply Admin

It's a 1000000 mile drive. That's not the problem, nor is speedy delivery. Aside from the stated 'Returns not accepted', if it happened not to fit or satisfy otherwise, I would be responsible for the return shipping costs. DHL or UPS wouldn't even give me a quote on that distance, so I decided not to gamble the $24.99 (probably even +p&p) and went to my local store instead. They will let me return anything if it's not OK in any way.

2012-10-06 Reply Admin

jay:
Steve The Cynic:
Good Lord, an ST-412. I remember having one of those in my PC, way back when, around 1987. It was a loaner, and I bought my own ST-225 to replace it with twice as much storage in half the physical space.
The ST-412 was 10MB, and the one I had borrowed had the unpleasant habit of dropping sectors. The sector would write OK, but after a while it would go bad and fail to read.

And the drive took five minutes to spin up in that PC, because it pulled four amps from the +12V rail when coming up to speed, and the PSU could only barely cope with that.

At the time, I lived in the US, and I scoured Computer Shopper for the replacement. Being a student, I had a limited budget, and I found the cheapest supplier only three miles from home. "I'd like one of these. I'm in the next town, can I come over and collect the drive?" "Of course."

The first hard drive I ever bought was 30 MB and it cost me $340. My current laptop has a 300 GB hard drive. That's 10,000 times as much space, so logically it must be worth 10,000 x $340 = $3.4 million! Apply similar calculations to RAM, CPU, and so forth and I'm sure my laptop is worth at least $10 million. I'm rich!

You are rich. Just being in one of the G5 nations puts you in the top five percent of the world, and if you have a good paying job it's not hard to be in the top 1%. But that's just comparing yourself to the wealth of your contemporaries.

I have a car that can transport me 400 miles in about 6 hours between refueling. My apartment is heated and cooled and has hot and cold running water. It takes me about fifteen minutes of labor to clean my clothes for the day, and about five minutes to do dishes.

Then add in health care, education and fitness and the wealthiest kings from a few hundred years ago, with their army of servants, could only boast about having a nicer view.

2012-10-06 Reply Admin

I knew computer technology was secretly send to us by aliens... Which makes it even more of a bargain, since the fuel to send the hard-drive down is more expensive than that ^^

If the distance does not change over time, my best guess would be that they are in stationary orbit over the earth somewhere in a space-ship nods nods

2012-10-06 Reply Admin

Captcha:quibus:
But I would walk 500,000 miles And I would walk 500,000 more Just to be the man who walked a million miles, To deliver a vintage IBM hard drive at your door.

I hope you don't mind if I don't wait the 30.6 years it'll take you non-stop to walk this distance :)

2012-10-06 Reply Admin

product images may differ from real product: epic win! captcha: adblock(good)

2012-10-06 Reply Admin

Has anybody else noticed that PEC Smoke Shop is offering 50% off of their gourmet e-liquid for this weekend only? I am going to take advantage of this killer deal and stock up on some e-liquid. They have over 300 flavors so their has to be something good that they offer. If you want to take advantage of this deal with me simply visit their site at the link below.

http://www.buy-electronic-cigarette.org

2012-10-06 Reply Admin

I proclaim this clever.

2012-10-07 Reply Admin

I wouldn't buy a mouse from the DVD Burner shop. :)

hikari · 2012-10-07 Reply Admin

Lockwood:
The Job Centre Plus had a quite silly entry, which was apparently due to the advert that had been submitted rather than their system.
5 miles within this area, which is on the South coast of England. (No transport, so a very narrow view) Kept returning this company in Germany.

Their search engine is crap: I tried searching for Software Engineering roles within 15 miles of my home town in SE England once; it returned bricklaying jobs in Glasgow.

2012-10-07 Reply Admin

smilr:
It's less of a technology fail - and more of spelling, grammar and understanding of the English language. It contains at least the following errors: "... _a_ UVU student?". "...finish all _you_ math..." and there should be more punctuation than one question mark in 3 sentences.
The thought of learning a large quantity of math in a short time from an organization that obviously doesn't know or care about the above is laughable.

Why? Their specialty is Math, not language....

Also, I think "a" is perfectly acceptable preceding certain U sounds I drive a ute. I go to a University. The foetus grows in a Uterus. There is a unique smell around here. Some German words use an umlaut. It looks like rain, perhaps I'll take an umbrella.

The first four just wouldn't sound right with "an" IMHO - and if you think about the sound, there's almost an invidible 'y' at the front of those words.

2012-10-07 Reply Admin

British Boy:
"... a UVU student" is ok in my book. I assume it's Utah Valley University, and I wouldn't say "an Utah Valley".
TRWTF is that it should be maths and not math

Why should it be maths not math? Math is short for Mathematics. To use Maths you would need an apostrophe to show the middle bit is missing - Math's.

Are you suggesting any word we shorten that contains an S should retain the S? Or are you suggesting Mathematics is plural (in which case is the singular Mathematic?)?

2012-10-07 Reply Admin

Carl:
Damn, if only more ads would tell you where to click. I mean, when there's only one huge shiny button on the screen, how are you supposed to know what to do?

And if they put anything else on it (eg 'OK' or 'Cancel' you'd be complaining that it's not obvious what you're meant to do....*sigh* maybe people like you are TRWTF

Watson · 2012-10-08 Reply Admin

Miguel:
Or are you suggesting Mathematics is plural (in which case is the singular Mathematic?)?

Yes. "Mathematics" is a plural; the singular is "mathematic". But no-one uses the singular form any more because the mathematical sciences turned out to have so much overlap that these days they're all just lumped together anyway.

2012-10-08 Reply Admin

Miguel:
smilr:
It's less of a technology fail - and more of spelling, grammar and understanding of the English language. It contains at least the following errors: "... _a_ UVU student?". "...finish all _you_ math..." and there should be more punctuation than one question mark in 3 sentences.
The thought of learning a large quantity of math in a short time from an organization that obviously doesn't know or care about the above is laughable.
Why? Their specialty is Math, not language....

I agree. They must be very good. So good that people just flock over to their math courses despite the grammar in their advertisement being butchered like that.

In fact, TRWTF is that they bother to even advertise at all.

2012-10-08 Reply Admin

According to some fruit's new nav software, anything is near Zürich, Switserland, right ..? Because Zürich is (fact) on the bottom of the South Pacific. Walk the last 5 miles.

2012-10-08 Reply Admin

Miguel:
Also, I think "a" is perfectly acceptable preceding certain U sounds I drive a ute. I go to a University. The foetus grows in a Uterus. There is a unique smell around here. Some German words use an umlaut. It looks like rain, perhaps I'll take an umbrella.
The first four just wouldn't sound right with "an" IMHO - and if you think about the sound, there's almost an invidible 'y' at the front of those words.

I don't understand; but maybe that's because I went to an iVersity (online) rather than an Un-iVersity.

pscs · 2012-10-08 Reply Admin

Miguel:
Why should it be maths not math? Math is short for Mathematics.

Well, in the given context - that it's from a colony which can't spell because it forgot to import any dictionaries - Math is correct.

But if you were from the mother land, it would be the obviously correct "Maths"

2012-10-08 Reply Admin

smilr:
It's less of a technology fail - and more of spelling, grammar and understanding of the English language. It contains at least the following errors: "... _a_ UVU student?".

Depends on how you say "UVU." If you say "oo voo," then you would want to use "an." If, like what I would bet is the majority of people, you say "yoo vee yoo," then it's fine as-is.

On that note, Dear Non-Native English Speakers:

The word "USB" is pronounced as three letters: "yoo ess bee." It is NOT pronounced "uhzb," and remember that our "U" starts with a consonant sound, so please fer chrissake stop writing "an USB drive."

Silverhill · 2012-10-08 Reply Admin

Watson:
Miguel:
Or are you suggesting Mathematics is plural (in which case is the singular Mathematic?)?
Yes. "Mathematics" is a plural; the singular is "mathematic". But no-one uses the singular form any more because the mathematical sciences turned out to have so much overlap that these days they're all just lumped together anyway.

I call BS on that. "Mathematic" is simply another form of the adjective "mathematical". "Mathematics" is a singular noun, just like "physics", "electronics", "mechanics", etc. That they happen to end with an "s" does not automatically make them English plurals.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Sangwhan Moon got the message all wrong. It's not about space, it's about temperature.

Closing windows and quitting desk accessories makes the computer run cooler and help getting the temperature down to zero Kelvins from the current 1,010,139 Kelvins (which BTW is quite hot).

Memory being freed is mentioned to make you just do it without causing you any panic. Same thing in nuclear power plants: "Core temperature has reached 2000 K, would you mind closing some applications now?"

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Greybeard:
And these weren't the old 8 inch floppies either! Nothing but the finest 5 1/4s for me, at a quantity discount price of just under a dollar each.

You BOUGHT floppy disks? Why? AOL used to send me at least one a week for free. I was always impressed that they performed this valuable service to the IT community.

But hey, if we're going to talk about newbie's, let me tell you about the first computer I ever used. We had ASR 33 teletypes. CDs hadn't been invented yet. I think floppies existed but I'd never seen one. We saved our programs on good, reliable paper tape.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Meep:
You are rich. Just being in one of the G5 nations puts you in the top five percent of the world, and if you have a good paying job it's not hard to be in the top 1%. But that's just comparing yourself to the wealth of your contemporaries.
I have a car that can transport me 400 miles in about 6 hours between refueling. My apartment is heated and cooled and has hot and cold running water. It takes me about fifteen minutes of labor to clean my clothes for the day, and about five minutes to do dishes.

Then add in health care, education and fitness and the wealthiest kings from a few hundred years ago, with their army of servants, could only boast about having a nicer view.

Sure. I had a time a few years back when I ran into some financial problems and I was fretting about how poor I was. Eventually I got my debts paid off, etc, and now looking back, I think to myself: The whole time I was whining because I was so poor, I had a roof over my head, decent clothes, and plenty to eat, which is more than a lot of people have. But beyond that I had a car, air conditioning, cable TV, broadband Internet access for my three computers, etc etc. I was living better than probably 90% of the people in the world. But I was crying that I was poor because I couldn't afford to buy new comforts and toys, but I had to live with the ones I already had.

Watson · 2012-10-11 Reply Admin

Silverhill:
Watson:
Miguel:
Or are you suggesting Mathematics is plural (in which case is the singular Mathematic?)?
Yes. "Mathematics" is a plural; the singular is "mathematic". But no-one uses the singular form any more because the mathematical sciences turned out to have so much overlap that these days they're all just lumped together anyway.
I call BS on that. "Mathematic" is simply another form of the adjective "mathematical". "Mathematics" is a singular noun, just like "physics", "electronics", "mechanics", etc. That they happen to end with an "s" does not automatically make them English plurals.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mathematic http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mathematics http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-ics

2012-10-11 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
Good Lord, an ST-412. I remember having one of those in my PC, way back when, around 1987. It was a loaner, and I bought my own ST-225 to replace it with twice as much storage in half the physical space.
The ST-412 was 10MB, and the one I had borrowed had the unpleasant habit of dropping sectors. The sector would write OK, but after a while it would go bad and fail to read.

And the drive took five minutes to spin up in that PC, because it pulled four amps from the +12V rail when coming up to speed, and the PSU could only barely cope with that.

At the time, I lived in the US, and I scoured Computer Shopper for the replacement. Being a student, I had a limited budget, and I found the cheapest supplier only three miles from home. "I'd like one of these. I'm in the next town, can I come over and collect the drive?" "Of course."

I had a teacher that used to run even then old SCSI drives in his desktop. He told me he had to tap them with a mallet one at a time to get them to spin up because there weren't enough amps in the PSU to do it normally.

Oh man I miss full height SCSI drives and the awesome ZZZZZ sound they made.OR the sound of the floppy technology based MFM drives with all their "gronk"ing. I feel so old

2012-10-15 Reply Admin

That Best Buy "DVD Writer" ad is just BEGGING for someone to write a review...

2012-10-16 Reply Admin

I have no idea why I am Mango Cream. (o^^)o_/

2012-10-18 Reply Admin

Captcha:quibus:
But I would walk 500,000 miles And I would walk 500,000 more Just to be the man who walked a million miles, To deliver a vintage IBM hard drive at your door.

Da lat da (Da lat da), da lat da (Da lat da) Da-da-da dun-diddle un-diddle un-diddle uh da-da Da lat da (Da lat da), da lat da (Da lat da) Da-da-da dun-diddle un-diddle un-diddle uh da-da Da lat da (Da lat da), da lat da (Da lat da) Da-da-da dun-diddle un-diddle un-diddle uh da-da Da lat da (Da lat da), da lat da (Da lat da) Da-da-da dun-diddle un-diddle un-diddle uh da-da

2012-10-23 Reply Admin

[quote user="Steve The Cynic"]Good Lord, an ST-412. I remember having one of those in my PC, way back when, around 1987. It was a loaner, and I bought my own ST-225 to replace it with twice as much storage in half the physical space.[quote]

I remember ST-251 drives... they had a distinctive sound to them when spinning up, with an accompanying click of the stepper motor. One day back in the late 80's I had a customer call with a BIOS error on her 80286 machine, it lost the BIOS config and wouldn't boot. I had a hunch on the type of hard drive the machine had, but wanted to verify... I had her hold the phone next to the PC for 30 seconds and power it on. As soon as I heard the ST-251 spin up I knew what she should enter for the head & cylinder count of the BIOS (remember, back in the old days the BIOS didn't auto-detect that info), once she saved the BIOS it booted fine.

She thought I was part magician and part whack-job for being able to ID it over the phone. :-)

2012-10-30 Reply Admin

Caution

The current comment

2012-12-20 Reply Admin

the machine is probably an emulator, like sheepshaver. basilisk and sheepshaver can do wierd things like this with memory errors that i have seen before. i blame sheepshaver for not emulating ram and instead making the emulated cpus l2 cache the same size as system ram and always returning a cache hit.

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