from the better-for-the-computers-to-crash-than-the-planes dept.
Delta Airlines began cancelling thousands of its flights on Wednesday, April 5, 2017, blaming the resulting delays on thunderstorms at its Atlanta hub (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/business/delta-flights-canceled.html). The airline still has not recovered as of Saturday, April 8 — already this morning, Delta has cancelled another 275 flights.
The resulting chaos at airports has been extensively documented in a flyertalk thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta-air-lines-skymiles/1834788-april-5-2017-delta-cancels-300-flights-due-thunderstorm.html). The thread contains pictures of people sleeping on airport floors, reports of 20-40 hour call wait times, and claims that Delta's crew-scheduling computers have crashed. In a thread at Airline Pilot Forums (http://www.11alive.com/news/local/long-lines-reported-saturday-morning-at-atlanta-airport/429759800), Delta employees are posting about waiting for work and not being called in.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @06:51PM (6 children)
Of all the ways to include "links" in the summary, putting them in plain text then enclosing them with parenthesis seems to be the WORST option.
Those then not only run off the right side of the page (for me), they also aren't auto-converted to clickable hyperlinks.
Stating my preference once again: Construct proper hyperlinks with proper link text which contains white spaces.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday April 09 2017, @08:24PM (2 children)
I don't know what Browser/OS combination you are using, but for my setup, I can select the text of the URL, drag it up to the tab bar, where a new tab will open on the URL.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @08:53PM
Yeah, that will work.
With a no-spaces string, I like it when I can just double-click that to highlight it.
With a parenthesis at the start of the string, that won't work; I have to carefully mark the significant part.
That still leaves what the "link" does to the S/N page.
I use NukeAnything Enhanced.
I can mark and remove a bunch of a super-long hyperlink (to eliminate the horizontal scroll bar and narrow the width of the page to that of the window), with that hyperlink still being valid/dragable/clickable.
Can't use that trick with super-long plain-text "links".
I still fondly remember when the site did the break-long-strings-at-the-right-margin thing in HTML and not via CSS.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday April 09 2017, @09:30PM
That doesn't negate anything the GP said, though. And it's almost exactly as irritating as selecting, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-T, Ctrl-V, compared to just clicking a hyperlink.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by charon on Monday April 10 2017, @05:59PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday April 11 2017, @06:54PM (1 child)
When I (not the OP) originally saw the story - direct from the RSS link - the URLs weren't linkified.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by charon on Wednesday April 12 2017, @12:39AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @07:10PM (1 child)
Almost every time I see one of these articles, specifics about WHAT software/hardware is at the heart of the problem is omitted.
* If the OS is an element in the failure (e.g. poor security; easily pwned), include that.
* The NAME of the software app/suite would be interesting.
(Repeated occurrences of the -same- name would be a significant indicator.)
* Who maintains the stuff?
The customer/user/company itself? How big is the support staff? Can personnel be reassigned to this problem?
Is the vendor of the stuff maintaining it?
Does a subcontractor maintain it?
* Was there a recent update/upgrade/change to the underlying system or was it just a failure of data input personnel?
* Was it a hardware failure and was that actually weather-related or attributable to a specific event/circumstance?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday April 09 2017, @07:18PM
If it's big and there's an outage, IBM is almost guaranteed to be involved, likely with one of their lovely mainframes. Good reliable hardware, but historically running OSes that seem to actually *encourage* user error. The only way to actually keep their uptimes as good as they can be is to never change anything, the mainframe motto.
Not that I'm bitter.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @07:44PM
Delta is in the process of upgrading their entire infrastructure and this **MAY** have been a result of a failed and overly aggressive deadline along with an inability to understand all of the app dependencies. Delta has taken a project that should have been done over a three year period to six months. This is in large part to the winning bidder promising more than they can deliver. Lesson: More people does not mean success and poor project scoping spells disaster. Expect more of these incidents this year.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 09 2017, @07:50PM (1 child)
If it's a weather delay, the airline isn't responsible for refunds (or course still have to reschedule). But if it's their own internal error, I believe that will cost Delta a lot more. So we are not likely to hear any admission of guilt.
(Score: 1) by qzm on Monday April 10 2017, @04:22AM
This is EXACTLY the point here.
Delta appear to be trying to foist the cost on to travel insurance (where people have it), or their own customers.
If they admit to an internal problem, they must provide alternative flights, refunds, perhaps even accommodation costs, etc.
Sounds like a perfect use for a class action - if only the fecking lawyers wouldnt just negotiate themselves a multimillion dollar settlement, then give the people $5 vouchers that take 3 weeks of work to claim.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Sunday April 09 2017, @09:50PM
Russian hackers!