Gail Shaw wrote:

> And they're telling me how to fix the problem they learned about 5 min
> earlier. *sigh* And that they weren't listening to a word I said.

I just finished replacing 4 old PCs today.

The old machines:

   AMD K6-II, 500 MHz
   128 MB RAM
   S3 Trio3D/2X graphics
   Windoze NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a

The replacement machines:

   AMD Athlon X2 4000+, 2.11 GHz
   1,024 MB RAM
   nVidia GeForce 6100 (I'm not kidding!)
   Windoze XP Service Pack 2

And where all the users delighted? No. Obviously, no. One person 
remarked that logging in to some web app is still slow as hell. (Gee, 
could that be because we have a 2 mbit/sec Internet link shared between 
50 PCs and no web proxy?) Another person complained that they wanted 
newer monitors. And somebody else complained about how long it took to 
log in. (This is likely to be related to their roaming profile. It is in 
excess of 700 MB in size, after all...)

I spend years trying to get my hands on the money to upgrade a tiny 
handful of PCs, and this is the thanks I get. I expected as much...

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"Orchid XP v7" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:471fa866$1@news.povray.org...

>
> You point the rocket at the sky. You propell it.

And as long as the fuel mixture doesn't burn irreguarly, or blow up on the
pad

> As long as it goes in a
> straigh line rather than some other trajectory, you're golden.

Now there's the hard part. Rockets in space where there are no atmospheric
effects are easier than in an atmosphere

> (Admittedly, if you were trying to "hit" something other than just the
> sky, that would be moderately harder...)

Why don't you try it. Build a small rocket and take it out to a nearby moor
to test fly.

Actually, have a look round the net. I know there are amature rocket
enthusiasts scattered round the world. Might be a group near you. If you're
interested in that kinda thing, that it.

>
> As Terry Wogan frequently laments, "everyone's an expert"...

Tell me about it.

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Gail Shaw wrote:

>> As Terry Wogan frequently laments, "everyone's an expert"...
> 
> Tell me about it.

Well.... ;-)

Humans suffer from a scientifically verified phenominon known as 
"confirmation bais". This was stated quite a lot earlier by a guy with 
the improbable name "Sir Francis Bacon". He put it thus:

"quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id poteus credit"

And let's face it, who wants to think they're completely ignorant of 
something? Nobody! So everybody *wants* to be an expert, and are thus 
easily able to delude themselves that they *are* an expert!

(cf. the emperor's magical suit...)

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On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:36:32 +0100, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> If the computers run flawlessly for 3 years, nobody gives a ****. If the
> computers develop one tiny flaw, suddenly everybody hates you.
> Seriously, running computers is an utterly thankless task, and one I
> hope to get out of somebody.

IME it's always been that way - you're doing your job right if nobody 
knows you're there...

Jim

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On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:23:22 +0100, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> And where all the users delighted? No. Obviously, no. One person
> remarked that logging in to some web app is still slow as hell. (Gee,
> could that be because we have a 2 mbit/sec Internet link shared between
> 50 PCs and no web proxy?) Another person complained that they wanted
> newer monitors. And somebody else complained about how long it took to
> log in. (This is likely to be related to their roaming profile. It is in
> excess of 700 MB in size, after all...)

You need to read BOFH if you don't....

Jim

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> One person 
> remarked that logging in to some web app is still slow as hell. (Gee, 
> could that be because we have a 2 mbit/sec Internet link shared between 
> 50 PCs and no web proxy?)

Aha, there is your problem. Web app.

I'm currently working on linking a web forum into the greatness that 
NNTP is. Compare performance of Outlook Express on povray newsgroups and 
a phpBB forum and you'll see a bit of a difference...

(no it's not a phpBB forum I'm linking to NNTP; that would be masochism)

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On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:59:34 -0300, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Orchid XP v7 escribió:
>> One person
>> remarked that logging in to some web app is still slow as hell. (Gee,
>> could that be because we have a 2 mbit/sec Internet link shared between
>> 50 PCs and no web proxy?)
> 
> Aha, there is your problem. Web app.
> 
> I'm currently working on linking a web forum into the greatness that
> NNTP is. Compare performance of Outlook Express on povray newsgroups and
> a phpBB forum and you'll see a bit of a difference...
> 
> (no it's not a phpBB forum I'm linking to NNTP; that would be masochism)

Out of curiosity, which one is it?  vBulletin seems quite good if you 
haven't looked at it...

Jim

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On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:33:52 -0400, Jim Henderson wrote:

> IME it's always been that way - you're doing your job right if nobody
> knows you're there...

To expound on that a little bit, that's the case when you're supporting a 
network; when you're building it, depending on how you go about it, 
that's a different story (doing needs assessments and whatnot gets you 
noticed, but not necessarily in a bad way).

Jim

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Jim Henderson escribió:
> On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:59:34 -0300, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> 
>> Orchid XP v7 escribió:
>>> One person
>>> remarked that logging in to some web app is still slow as hell. (Gee,
>>> could that be because we have a 2 mbit/sec Internet link shared between
>>> 50 PCs and no web proxy?)
>> Aha, there is your problem. Web app.
>>
>> I'm currently working on linking a web forum into the greatness that
>> NNTP is. Compare performance of Outlook Express on povray newsgroups and
>> a phpBB forum and you'll see a bit of a difference...
>>
>> (no it's not a phpBB forum I'm linking to NNTP; that would be masochism)
> 
> Out of curiosity, which one is it?  vBulletin seems quite good if you 
> haven't looked at it...
> 
> Jim

None of those forums have proper threading. People add their posts to 
threads, they don't reply to other posts. Converting that to a tree like 
it's shown on newsgroups wouldn't work at all. Even if the forum 
software stores what post is a reply of which, most people click "reply 
to this thread" when replying to one of the last few posts, breaking the 
chain anyway.

For example here:
http://community.electricsheep.org/node/102
Posts are indented to show correct nesting. That's easy to get working 
in a newsgroup. But most forums are "flat".

The one I want to link to NNTP is pretty much custom software.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/

Posts show "In response to message ####" so that's kinda better. On my 
forum, I removed the "reply to this thread" link completely, forcing 
users to reply to individual posts, instead of throwing posts in the thread.

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On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:51:31 -0300, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> None of those forums have proper threading. People add their posts to
> threads, they don't reply to other posts. Converting that to a tree like
> it's shown on newsgroups wouldn't work at all.

Actually, it can be configured to work properly with NNTP - I'm in the 
process of converting some private newsgroups to use that as a web 
interface.

Jim

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