On 9/28/2012 9:13 PM, cogoman wrote:
> On 09/27/2012 09:41 AM, Dave Caroline wrote:
>> I would work better if you switch it on!
> There is someone at work who has done it to me so often that the first
> thing I say to her is "Did you plug it in? Did you turn it on?"
>
>     One day she came to me and said something like "The computer's stuck
> in DOS.  Fix it!"
>
>     Did you plug it in? Did you turn it on? I asked.
>
>     "Yes I plugged it in and turned it on!" She confidently affirmed.
>
>     I went to check it out.  She hadn't read the screen which cryptically
> said that there was no video signal.
>
>     Text, not a wallpaper, looked like DOS to her.  The old AT style
> computer had just been replaced with an ATX style computer at the same
> station.  I went back and told her I just turned it on (and told her
> where to do it herself).  She HAD turned on the power strip associated
> with that system.

I'm sure we all have funny stories along these lines concerning other 
users just as I suspect we tend to suppress such stories about ourselves:-)

Just last night I added a 2nd SATA drive (so I could run Yocto; see 
emc-developers) only to have my system fail to recognize it. The drive 
was all cabled up. It took several moments to realize I'd connected the 
drive to a SATA power-adapter cable but neglected to connect the other 
end of the adapter to a spare power connector. Seems I was too busy at 
the time getting the drive fastened in its slot. Sigh.

>
>
>     I used to program GenRad in circuit testers, and the language allowed
> you to use any base for a number you wanted.
>
> b'10110111'       o'267'       and       x'b7'
>
> all represented the same number.  The gotcha for me was that if you left
> the base designation out, it took the number to represent a pin on the
> device you were testing.
>
> If I said addr=2      instead of addr=d'2'      the software would
> dutifully look to see what value was on pin 2, and apply that value to
> the address bus (inserting as many preceeding zeros as necessary).
>
>     That one bit me regularly, and all too often.

This, on the other hand, is a good example of a truly egregious 
human-computer interface problem. The GenRad folks should have been made 
to suffer, preferably in one of Dante's inner circles of hell. Stop me 
before I start spouting about notable disasters---some fatal---that 
involved such stupidities.

Regards,
Kent


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How fast is your code?
3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production.
Find out how slow your code is with AppDynamics Lite.
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;262219672;13503038;z?
http://info.appdynamics.com/FreeJavaPerformanceDownload.html
_______________________________________________
Emc-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users

Reply via email to