You're right, it's supposed to be upgraded in the near future. I missed that bit, sorry 'bout that.
It's also true that many organizations don't upgrade things because they continue to run worry-free for ages, therefore upgrades aren't seen as necessary.
Upgrades & security patches often get overlooked because of the old saying - "If it isn't broken, don't fix it!"
"The computer software that crashed and grounded Comair's entire fleet on Christmas Day was an antiquated system due to be replaced in the coming months."
First paragraph. I had just forgotten about it by the time I got to the *end* of the article. 6am + ADD - caffeine = me missing that bit. My bad.:P
On Christmas Day last Saturday, Comair Airlines had to completely stop flying all of its planes due to computer problems. Comair blamed the computer problems on their pilot scheduling software being overloaded after bad weather earlier in the week forced many flights to be rescheduled. Comair now hopes to have all of its 1,100 daily flights restored by tomorrow.
An article which was published today at the Cincinnati Post Web site provides some interesting details of a software failure in Comair's pilot scheduling software:
How it happened
http://www.cincypost.com/2004/12/28/comp12-28-2004.html
According to the article, Comair is running a 15-year old scheduling software package from SBS International (www.sbsint.com). The software has a hard limit of 32,000 schedule changes per month. With all of the bad weather last week, Comair apparently hit this limit and then was unable to assign pilots to planes.
It sounds like 16-bit integers are being used in the SBS International scheduling software to identify transactions. Given that the software is 15 years old, this design decision perhaps was made to save on memory usage. In retrospect, 16-bit integers were probably not a good choice.
An anonymous message posted to Slashdot the day after Christmas first described the software failure at Comair:
Maybe the existing system was working just fine? Upgrades too expensive?
Perhaps this was something that they never anticipated in a thousand years?
I bet *now* they'll upgrade, but until this particularly hairy situation arose, they didn't really see a need to upgrade a computer scheduling system that had been working great for them.
Dunno why this is interesting, aside from seeing "16 bit" in the headline.
The number of people with iPods on BART is catching up to the number of morons that look confusedly at their cell phones when they lose calls in the Transbay Tube.:-)
Very true, but do you really think that "more bandwidth" was *not* on their minds?
I can't think of many other reasons to get in to a cable modem to dick around with it. I'm sure there are a few that people will come up with, but I chalk it up to the "Eh, who cares?" file.:P
I used to work for the company that owns freeflixtix.com, evivaclub.com, & tenspot.com - the premise was simple. Sign up, refer 5 friends, and get free movie tickets. All of the information was happily sold off to "3rd party marketing partners" and the list (over 7 million people when I left) was also used for the company's spamming arm, Moxio (or Bonus Bonez, whatever they're calling it now) - you and your referrals all got the spam. Lots of it. If you cancelled your freeflixtix.com account, your referrals (and usually you) still got tons of spam. Your address (email, phone number, AND mailing address) was sold off already.
Yes, people eventually did get some free tickets after jumping through "partner" hoops..some requiring you to keep the "trial" for 2 weeks or more, or to give up MORE personal info & credit card numbers.
It's worse than the "freecreditreport.com" scam that requires you to sign up for Equifax's "Credit Monitoring Service" and more spam.
Is there any way that Slashdot can simply dump any post that has that ponzi scheme as a sig?
You just mentioned prior art. Definately a cool idea an it would be nice if some were produced, but if it is, will we know?
Slashdot needs a "Follow-up to Silly Patent" section so we can all see if prior art was ever brought up and whether or not it was successful in court or not.
I just wish that getting it to put Sent Items on the IMAP server was a matter of a checkbox instead of a huge pile of rules. I use 100% IMAP. I don't want to see Outlook's own Inbox and stuff, only what's on the server. Outlook's local Inbox is also the cause of confusion for many end users that try to use it as an IMAP client. "Where's my mail? It's all gone!" they scream, when in fact they were just checking the wrong "Inbox."
It says "available" in Korea. Doesn't always mean that it's going to be their target market. I *did* TFA, thank you very much.
I'm well aware that CC doesn't have a monopoly in the rest of the world, but in the countries I've lived in (outside of the US) - radio was also pretty crappy. Too many adverts, not enough useful content and/or music.
Japan is also a huge market for the iPods, as is Canada and Europe.
I'd hardly say that the iPod fails in a niche because it doesn't have an FM tuner. This is also *not* the first unit to have an FM tuner. So, I highly doubt it'll be an "iPod Killer" simply because it has FM radio capabilities.
There's a Samsung MP3 player that also have built in voice recording capabilities. It certainly isn't an iPod killer either.
Basically, I'm getting sick of seeing every new mp3 player that comes out being heralded as "the next iPod Killer" when so far, none of them have even come close.
It's not worthless at all considering that the primary market for "iPod Killers" is the United States & Canada.
The FM band is different in Japan. (Peaks out in the low 92.5 range, if I recall correctly) Did you know that? This product's FM tuner would be useless there.
Isn't that why we're all ditching existing radio and getting Sirius/XM?
If I want to get a small handheld device to listen to Clear Channel schlop and commercials all day, sure, this will be great. But no, I wanted music, so I bought an iPod.
Really. Having an FM tuner is almost a non-feature. It looks like some drone in marketing said "Hey, let's throw an FM tuner on it! iPod doesn't have one of those! It'll be the iPod killer cuz it has teh FM tuner!!"
Uhh... I'm all for fire, but I'd prefer to make the fire while I'm actually camping. Previous experience with taking fire anywhere turned out to be disasterous.:-)
I'm afraid to ask about the beans... I'll stick to the S'mores.
Hands down. This kicks more ass than anything that has ever kicked ass before.. including the wheel.
I just hope that it doesn't taste as ass nasty as the Wolfgang Puck soups do. Those soups are almost as bad as Dinty Moore products.
Now, I doubt that I'd grab one of these in the morning but taking a case or two of them on weekend camping trips would be nice, especially when camping in cold weather.
To me (and many others) that's still a far cry from "Red Hat supports Spamassassin." what exactly about it do they support? Seems to be nothing more than the basic "rpm -i spamassassin-2.63.rpm" and that's about it.
I'd hardly call that supporting the product. I would certainly not tell management that "Red Hat supports Spamassassin" if that's all I was getting from them...
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, it's supposed to be upgraded in the near future. I missed that bit, sorry 'bout that.
It's also true that many organizations don't upgrade things because they continue to run worry-free for ages, therefore upgrades aren't seen as necessary.
Upgrades & security patches often get overlooked because of the old saying - "If it isn't broken, don't fix it!"
Oh, you're quite welcome. Be sure to stay tuned for my next opinion piece regarding "World Peace in 6 Easy Steps."
"The computer software that crashed and grounded Comair's entire fleet on Christmas Day was an antiquated system due to be replaced in the coming months."
:P
First paragraph. I had just forgotten about it by the time I got to the *end* of the article. 6am + ADD - caffeine = me missing that bit. My bad.
Here's the original post:
4 .html
1 85556
s ID=2275
Hi,
On Christmas Day last Saturday, Comair Airlines had to completely stop
flying
all of its planes due to computer problems. Comair blamed the computer
problems on their pilot scheduling software being overloaded after bad
weather earlier in the week forced many flights to be rescheduled. Comair
now hopes to have all of its 1,100 daily flights restored by tomorrow.
An article which was published today at the Cincinnati Post Web site
provides some interesting details of a software failure in Comair's pilot
scheduling software:
How it happened
http://www.cincypost.com/2004/12/28/comp12-28-200
According to the article, Comair is running a 15-year old scheduling
software package from SBS International (www.sbsint.com). The software has
a hard limit of 32,000 schedule changes per month. With all of the bad
weather last week, Comair apparently hit this limit and then was unable to
assign pilots to planes.
It sounds like 16-bit integers are being used in the SBS International
scheduling software to identify transactions. Given that the software is 15
years old, this design decision perhaps was made to save on memory usage.
In retrospect, 16-bit integers were probably not a good choice.
An anonymous message posted to Slashdot the day after Christmas first
described the software failure at Comair:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134005&cid=11
Earlier this year, an overflow of a 32-bit counter in Windows shut down air
traffic control over southern California for 3 hours:
Microsoft server crash nearly causes 800-plane pile-up
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?New
This problem occurred because of a known design flaw in older versions of
Windows:
http://tinyurl.com/5n9gc
Richard M. Smith
http://www.ComputerBytesMan.com
Maybe the existing system was working just fine? Upgrades too expensive?
Perhaps this was something that they never anticipated in a thousand years?
I bet *now* they'll upgrade, but until this particularly hairy situation arose, they didn't really see a need to upgrade a computer scheduling system that had been working great for them.
Dunno why this is interesting, aside from seeing "16 bit" in the headline.
I thought that I held the record for the biggest cache of seemingly useless information, but I tip my hat to you, sir. :P
Heh, for a bullshit question, you sure did blow it - it's "Sacramento" - not "Sacremento" :-)
Ah, now for the ultimate trivia - what city was the *first* capitol of California?
The number of people with iPods on BART is catching up to the number of morons that look confusedly at their cell phones when they lose calls in the Transbay Tube. :-)
Very true, but do you really think that "more bandwidth" was *not* on their minds?
:P
I can't think of many other reasons to get in to a cable modem to dick around with it. I'm sure there are a few that people will come up with, but I chalk it up to the "Eh, who cares?" file.
Remember these cable modem tweakers that were raided by the FBI?
Someone on here had 510-THE-SCAM registered for Safeway and encouraged others to use it.
:)
I use it all the time and still get my Safeway discounts.
Now if only I could score the receipt that said I bought enough deli sandwiches to get my free one, I'd be a happy camper.
I used to work for the company that owns freeflixtix.com, evivaclub.com, & tenspot.com - the premise was simple. Sign up, refer 5 friends, and get free movie tickets.
All of the information was happily sold off to "3rd party marketing partners" and the list (over 7 million people when I left) was also used for the company's spamming arm, Moxio (or Bonus Bonez, whatever they're calling it now) - you and your referrals all got the spam. Lots of it. If you cancelled your freeflixtix.com account, your referrals (and usually you) still got tons of spam. Your address (email, phone number, AND mailing address) was sold off already.
Yes, people eventually did get some free tickets after jumping through "partner" hoops..some requiring you to keep the "trial" for 2 weeks or more, or to give up MORE personal info & credit card numbers.
It's worse than the "freecreditreport.com" scam that requires you to sign up for Equifax's "Credit Monitoring Service" and more spam.
Is there any way that Slashdot can simply dump any post that has that ponzi scheme as a sig?
You just mentioned prior art. Definately a cool idea an it would be nice if some were produced, but if it is, will we know?
Slashdot needs a "Follow-up to Silly Patent" section so we can all see if prior art was ever brought up and whether or not it was successful in court or not.
Now *that* would be a useful section..
I just wish that getting it to put Sent Items on the IMAP server was a matter of a checkbox instead of a huge pile of rules. I use 100% IMAP. I don't want to see Outlook's own Inbox and stuff, only what's on the server. Outlook's local Inbox is also the cause of confusion for many end users that try to use it as an IMAP client. "Where's my mail? It's all gone!" they scream, when in fact they were just checking the wrong "Inbox."
Just a few little quirks like that...
It says "available" in Korea. Doesn't always mean that it's going to be their target market. I *did* TFA, thank you very much.
I'm well aware that CC doesn't have a monopoly in the rest of the world, but in the countries I've lived in (outside of the US) - radio was also pretty crappy. Too many adverts, not enough useful content and/or music.
Japan is also a huge market for the iPods, as is Canada and Europe.
I'd hardly say that the iPod fails in a niche because it doesn't have an FM tuner.
This is also *not* the first unit to have an FM tuner. So, I highly doubt it'll be an "iPod Killer" simply because it has FM radio capabilities.
There's a Samsung MP3 player that also have built in voice recording capabilities. It certainly isn't an iPod killer either.
Basically, I'm getting sick of seeing every new mp3 player that comes out being heralded as "the next iPod Killer" when so far, none of them have even come close.
It's not worthless at all considering that the primary market for "iPod Killers" is the United States & Canada.
The FM band is different in Japan. (Peaks out in the low 92.5 range, if I recall correctly) Did you know that? This product's FM tuner would be useless there.
So my point is not worthless at all, yours is.
Isn't that why we're all ditching existing radio and getting Sirius/XM?
If I want to get a small handheld device to listen to Clear Channel schlop and commercials all day, sure, this will be great. But no, I wanted music, so I bought an iPod.
Really. Having an FM tuner is almost a non-feature. It looks like some drone in marketing said "Hey, let's throw an FM tuner on it! iPod doesn't have one of those! It'll be the iPod killer cuz it has teh FM tuner!!"
Yawn.
Reuters story said that the girl was sent to Canada, and the guy was in deeeep trouble at home. Both of them were students at a private school, too.
:D
So this can only mean one thing - Hot Indian babes *do* put out!
Can I outsource myself to India now?
You mean "all about pervasive advertising.."
We'll see a lot more advertising pushed along with the content as well.
Uhh... I'm all for fire, but I'd prefer to make the fire while I'm actually camping. Previous experience with taking fire anywhere turned out to be disasterous. :-)
I'm afraid to ask about the beans... I'll stick to the S'mores.
Hands down. This kicks more ass than anything that has ever kicked ass before.. including the wheel.
I just hope that it doesn't taste as ass nasty as the Wolfgang Puck soups do. Those soups are almost as bad as Dinty Moore products.
Now, I doubt that I'd grab one of these in the morning but taking a case or two of them on weekend camping trips would be nice, especially when camping in cold weather.
And gmail is no better off than a homebrew setup. These same "avoid spam" rules can be applied to *anything*
/,, who knows.. it's been happening more & more.
Why this useless blog entry actually made it onto
It's a brain dead article. Yes, I read it. It should be filed under the "Well, duh.." category.
To me (and many others) that's still a far cry from "Red Hat supports Spamassassin." what exactly about it do they support? Seems to be nothing more than the basic "rpm -i spamassassin-2.63.rpm" and that's about it.
I'd hardly call that supporting the product. I would certainly not tell management that "Red Hat supports Spamassassin" if that's all I was getting from them...
Exactly! I just don't see the big deal about gmail at all. It's yet another free email service, all of which are totally useless to me. *shrug*
:)
:P
This article could be "How to avoid spam on Yahoo" - just don't bother with Yahoo.
(how'd you guess my profession anyway?)
Just don't use 'effin Gmail! GAH! Just because everyone and their cat has 50 gmail invites to give out doesn't mean that you have to use it.
SpamAssassin is catching nearly 100% of the spam bound for my regular personal email account. I don't need Google's help with that.