The ANZ in Australia had a classic case. A chronic gambler, whose bank account was so far in the red due to overdraws, bank fees etc, did not give up.
He tried to get some money out of the ATM and it worked! A bug in the code meant that even though he had a negative balance, due to code that was designed to stop bank fees piling up on bank fees, the fact that he was withdrawing from an account with a negative balance meant that he could withdraw as much cash as he wanted, it was not debited to the bank account.
All the bank knew was that ATMs were being drained and they had now idea who it was or how.
Security guards at a casino actually watched this guy standing at an ATM, slowly draining it for about an hour. That was the only reason they caught him.
If he hadn't been so dumb, this could have gone on for years.
Of course, he just blew all the money on gambling and had nothing to show for it.
Why is it that this one story in particular has multiple page widenings, not modded to -1? Is it because page wideners are actually paid to harass/. and especially stories that AOL doesn't like? No other stories today are suffering this problem. Just a theory, but the truth is out there.
I have to agree, upping the RAM could be worth while. Depending on what the company uses the machines for, many of them may be quite alright as they are. Do a performance evaluation first.
Is the CPU being maxed out? Is the HD light on all the time? Are the Hard Drives nearly full? Who is actually complaining? See how they work and what is actually annoying them. Maybe the LAN and servers are what needs to be upgraded.
You could well find that 7200 40GB drives and extra RAM actually solve most of your problems.
No, touch metal!, to ground yourself. Before I touch anything that might be static sensitive, I always touch a piece of grounded metal first, (usually the case will do). This will discharge any static that has built up inside you.
Apart from not being stupid, don't worry too much about static discharge. It is usually pretty easy to tell if you should worry.
For example, if you touch a metal doorknob after walking over the carpet and get 'zapped'. This will blow something for sure.
That's what I want to see, the original stuff was much sharper and funny. Kind of like the difference between the movie version and TV versions of MASH.
I have seen exactly the same behaviour from large companies, don't kid yourself. From other posts here, it appears that the democratic process has been subverted and is not working.
It is pricey, but it did work. There is really no difference between as/400 and Unix to the end user, they just want something they can count on to manage a database reliably and well. I happen to know of a customer that tossed out an as400 for a unix system. Total disaster, costing millions of dollars. Most of them just wanted the as400 back. And just because you have an as400 doesn't mean you have to use reel to reel backup, that was the customers choice. Once you get to city sized systems, support and reliability are always going to cost a premium, you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise.
It is the people holding the purse strings who should get the boot in this case.
Refurbished only means, "we have a bunch of these out the back that we bought cheap, if one fails, we'll just give you another one". The most refurbised ever means is it actually got wiped with a cloth dipped in metho.
Because you can't automate 'reel to reel' tape backups.
This appears to be a typical case of accountants gone mad, saving money on paper, but ending up costing a lot more in a disaster situation. The fact that they have a reel to reel tape for backup, ( I recall a/. article announcing the end of manufacturing reel to reel tapes just a short time ago), means that you have a situation where accountants have gone mad.
They would also typically have grossly underpaid computer staff who have hit rockbotton in morale as well. IBM would have tried many times to tell them they aren't really saving any money by acting the way they have, but IBM can't actually make them act reasonably. Maybe the accountant is a secret agent for Bin Laden.
I have seen this kind of behaviour many times before. Like when I worked for a major insurance company that had a dinosaur IBM mainframe still chugging away in the corner for the end of month run, when they had much more powerful IBM mainframes running everything else, just because the old machine ran DOS and they hadn't converted the programs to run on MVS yet. There was only one guy left who even knew how to repair it, and no parts.
Or a major, multinational manufacturer, when we upgraded an old machine, some bright spark from the customer had the bright idea of using the old 1GB disks in the new machine and saving one 9GB disk cost. The amount of time it took to work around this imposition, in terms of backing up the old system to the new, meetings, hassles, the disks dying anyway over time, etc, cost more than the $5000 saved.
A shame that this topic appears to be 100% trolls. I did some embedded programming for about six months in between work as a SAP techie, (basis, for those in know). I had a lot of fun, programming a box that was using a GSM modem to count traffic out in the desert and send the figures out to a central collection site.
Heaps of fun, like being payed to play with Lego all day.
The only problem was it didn't pay as well as SAP does, which is really pretty boring. And I had to program it in C, which is really just a glorified universal assembler. The central computer was using Delphi, which is really a great development tool, combining the Ease of VB with the Power of C++.
No, just sick of seeing numerous fungicidous globs of matter forming ever increasing mounds of goop on train floors, and footpaths, (sidewalks for you people in other parts of the world), on handrails, on seats, etc, etc. I could go on, but I am sure you can fill in the rest.
I read in the paper (somewhere), that for the London ring road to have traffic the density that it had soon after it was built, the ring road would need about 20 lanes each direction.
I strongly suspect that all posts in this vein are purely the work of residents of the USA, where screwed up sexuality is de rigeur for many social groups. Is this true?
Cool, I looked up that reference, and found it on Google in here. I am going to add this site to my list of favourites, it is something I have been wanting for years, as an ex-Christian.
Excellent for taking videos of head lice. These are semi transparent, so you get to see the insides moving food around, heart pumping etc. Helps to convince your kids it's worth getting them out of their hair.
Australian consumers have generally been open to a form of monopoly, that has been tolerated for years. Local wholesalers buy 'exclusive' rights to a product, then charge whatever they want. Since no one else can legally import the device, there is no competition to set a fair price. The fact that there are many retailers to consumers covers up the fact that they all buy from the one source.
This situation is being addressed slowly, for example, in the case of CDs. However, it is a practice that is going away to slowly.
When someone else does a backdoor deal, for example, and imports direct from, say, Singapore at the price they pay, the newspapers are full of articles about 'grey marketing', and local wholesalers getting ripped off. Yeah, right, they cannot sit back on their fat a*** and get paid a fortune for shipping in a container every now and then.
*True Story*. When I worked at one electronics retailer, he used to open up the dot matrix printer boxes, rip out the enclosed paper tray, and sell it separately. When I asked him why, he said that that was what the wholesaler used to do before he found the alternate source for the similar printer he was importing.
Australia is surrounded by a lot of water, and is at the edge of the world, so we also get a lot of junk dumped here that can't be sold overseas.
Finally, Myers is just a big dinosaur that cannot control it's inventory well, and always charges top dollar. In about six months time, the QX3 will be marked down by 10%, then 20%, then in about four years time, will be thrown out at 50% off.
If you look around, you should be able to find QX3 for a lot less. It depends on how much time you have to poke around in the other shops.
The article keeps referring to records, although he obviously means CDs. However, that sets off an interesting train of thought. An LP turntable that runs at 1,000 rpm or so. Good for ripping the old LP collection.
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He tried to get some money out of the ATM and it worked! A bug in the code meant that even though he had a negative balance, due to code that was designed to stop bank fees piling up on bank fees, the fact that he was withdrawing from an account with a negative balance meant that he could withdraw as much cash as he wanted, it was not debited to the bank account.
All the bank knew was that ATMs were being drained and they had now idea who it was or how.
Security guards at a casino actually watched this guy standing at an ATM, slowly draining it for about an hour. That was the only reason they caught him.
If he hadn't been so dumb, this could have gone on for years.
Of course, he just blew all the money on gambling and had nothing to show for it.
Looks like his daughter is a good place to start getting tough on crime. (Funny, I just can't see it happening).
Why is it that this one story in particular has multiple page widenings, not modded to -1? Is it because page wideners are actually paid to harass /. and especially stories that AOL doesn't like? No other stories today are suffering this problem. Just a theory, but the truth is out there.
Is the CPU being maxed out? Is the HD light on all the time? Are the Hard Drives nearly full? Who is actually complaining? See how they work and what is actually annoying them. Maybe the LAN and servers are what needs to be upgraded.
You could well find that 7200 40GB drives and extra RAM actually solve most of your problems.
Apart from not being stupid, don't worry too much about static discharge. It is usually pretty easy to tell if you should worry.
For example, if you touch a metal doorknob after walking over the carpet and get 'zapped'. This will blow something for sure.
Damm moderators, where are they when you need them. I coming back later, when I can look for something worth reading.
That's what I want to see, the original stuff was much sharper and funny. Kind of like the difference between the movie version and TV versions of MASH.
I have seen exactly the same behaviour from large companies, don't kid yourself. From other posts here, it appears that the democratic process has been subverted and is not working.
It is the people holding the purse strings who should get the boot in this case.
Refurbished only means, "we have a bunch of these out the back that we bought cheap, if one fails, we'll just give you another one". The most refurbised ever means is it actually got wiped with a cloth dipped in metho.
This appears to be a typical case of accountants gone mad, saving money on paper, but ending up costing a lot more in a disaster situation. The fact that they have a reel to reel tape for backup, ( I recall a /. article announcing the end of manufacturing reel to reel tapes just a short time ago), means that you have a situation where accountants have gone mad.
They would also typically have grossly underpaid computer staff who have hit rockbotton in morale as well. IBM would have tried many times to tell them they aren't really saving any money by acting the way they have, but IBM can't actually make them act reasonably. Maybe the accountant is a secret agent for Bin Laden.
I have seen this kind of behaviour many times before. Like when I worked for a major insurance company that had a dinosaur IBM mainframe still chugging away in the corner for the end of month run, when they had much more powerful IBM mainframes running everything else, just because the old machine ran DOS and they hadn't converted the programs to run on MVS yet. There was only one guy left who even knew how to repair it, and no parts.
Or a major, multinational manufacturer, when we upgraded an old machine, some bright spark from the customer had the bright idea of using the old 1GB disks in the new machine and saving one 9GB disk cost. The amount of time it took to work around this imposition, in terms of backing up the old system to the new, meetings, hassles, the disks dying anyway over time, etc, cost more than the $5000 saved.
I think you are getting Swtizerland and Sweden confused.
Heaps of fun, like being payed to play with Lego all day.
The only problem was it didn't pay as well as SAP does, which is really pretty boring. And I had to program it in C, which is really just a glorified universal assembler. The central computer was using Delphi, which is really a great development tool, combining the Ease of VB with the Power of C++.
No, just sick of seeing numerous fungicidous globs of matter forming ever increasing mounds of goop on train floors, and footpaths, (sidewalks for you people in other parts of the world), on handrails, on seats, etc, etc. I could go on, but I am sure you can fill in the rest.
Bank of America, is that run by the same people who run Air America?
FROM WEDNESDAY'S STAR
Safety concerns prompt change for spur linking I-65 in Boone County to the Indianapolis bypass.
After we have finished with banning smoking, I want to start on gum.
I read in the paper (somewhere), that for the London ring road to have traffic the density that it had soon after it was built, the ring road would need about 20 lanes each direction.
I strongly suspect that all posts in this vein are purely the work of residents of the USA, where screwed up sexuality is de rigeur for many social groups. Is this true?
Cool, I looked up that reference, and found it on Google in here. I am going to add this site to my list of favourites, it is something I have been wanting for years, as an ex-Christian.
I think the modern bad guy is the Arab.
Excellent for taking videos of head lice. These are semi transparent, so you get to see the insides moving food around, heart pumping etc. Helps to convince your kids it's worth getting them out of their hair.
This situation is being addressed slowly, for example, in the case of CDs. However, it is a practice that is going away to slowly.
When someone else does a backdoor deal, for example, and imports direct from, say, Singapore at the price they pay, the newspapers are full of articles about 'grey marketing', and local wholesalers getting ripped off. Yeah, right, they cannot sit back on their fat a*** and get paid a fortune for shipping in a container every now and then.
*True Story*. When I worked at one electronics retailer, he used to open up the dot matrix printer boxes, rip out the enclosed paper tray, and sell it separately. When I asked him why, he said that that was what the wholesaler used to do before he found the alternate source for the similar printer he was importing.
Australia is surrounded by a lot of water, and is at the edge of the world, so we also get a lot of junk dumped here that can't be sold overseas.
Finally, Myers is just a big dinosaur that cannot control it's inventory well, and always charges top dollar. In about six months time, the QX3 will be marked down by 10%, then 20%, then in about four years time, will be thrown out at 50% off.
If you look around, you should be able to find QX3 for a lot less. It depends on how much time you have to poke around in the other shops.
The article keeps referring to records, although he obviously means CDs. However, that sets off an interesting train of thought. An LP turntable that runs at 1,000 rpm or so. Good for ripping the old LP collection.
No, I think it is his 100X CD-ROM hitting the fan.