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posted by on Monday February 15 2016, @04:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the exemplary-mtbf dept.

The can of worms we opened when we learned of the server switched off after eighteen years and ten months' service is still wriggling, as a reader has contacted us to tell of nearly 30-year-old laptops still in service.

Reader "Holrum" says he has "a couple dozen Toshiba T1000 laptops from the mid [1980s] still fully functional (including floppy drives)".

The T1000 was introduced in 1987. [...] The machine was one of the very first computers to use a clamshell form factor. [...] It also offered a rather archaic LCD display, as illustrated.

[...]The machine ran MS-DOS 2.11 on a ROM [and] came with a colossal 512kB of RAM [...] and a single 3.5-inch floppy drive.

Holrum says the T1000s are taken offline every few years for just the few minutes required to replace the NiCad batteries and give them a clean before they are returned to duty as process monitoring terminals.

Previous: Beat This: Server Retired After 18 Years and 10 Months


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @07:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @07:43PM (#304830)

    Emphasis on one.

    The appended nym notion worked for nearly 2 years before one individual with the maturity of a 14 year old and a correlating amount of time on his hands decided to repeatedly demonstrate what an asshole he could be.

    ...and most Soylentils are too timid to mark his comments SPAM.

    Additionally, I have explained my philosophy on signups multiple times.
    Surely tangomargarine has seen at least 1 of those.
    Maybe he was just in the Slow Class in school.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 1) by turgid on Monday February 15 2016, @08:19PM

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 15 2016, @08:19PM (#304846) Journal

    I liked to think I could tell the difference between the real and fake posts quite easily. Maybe I was over confident? The troll ones always looked conspicuously immature.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @09:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @09:38PM (#304881)

      Yeah, usually the troll posts amount to nothing more than 'cocks' (which is apparently a reference to this irc post? [bash.org]) and for a while it was just random words.

      --OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Monday February 15 2016, @08:56PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday February 15 2016, @08:56PM (#304865) Journal

    Cool story gewg_. That's not how the Spam moderation works.

    Your problems could be easily solved with a user account, and one has been reserved for you. Nothing about your approach or outrage makes sense, don't kid yourself otherwise.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @10:22PM (#304905)

      not how the Spam moderation works

      Repeated abuse, repeatedly marked as abuse, gets that IP address blocked. Right?

      If this is not correct, you could explain what you believe the misunderstanding to be.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 15 2016, @11:00PM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 15 2016, @11:00PM (#304930) Homepage Journal

        The spam moderation, at most, can cut down on the number of times someone can post per day. Sufficiently negative karma can get you limited to N posts per day (or possibly rolling 24h period). At least I think it still works that way on the production servers. We may have disabled that functionality or tweaked it into non-functionality for TOR users since their address pool is exceedingly small. For honest to flying spaghetti monster spammers we just manually and permanently block the address and/or subnet.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @11:24PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @11:24PM (#304937)

          For honest-to-flying-spaghetti-monster spammers we just manually and permanently block the address and/or subnet

          Are Spam-mod'd posts automatically logged centrally?
          ...or does one of the staff have to encounter that during his own reading of threads?

          SPAMmy (below) linked back to 1 of his word-salad posts.
          That linked post is still marked Spam but hasn't been deleted.

          There have been a bunch of such posts by that individual (whose intention is to inject noise into threads), with those posts mod'd similarly.
          There are also a bunch that use a particularly distinctive 2-word phrase, also mod'd as Spam.

          If the Spam mod was meant to limit abuse, it doesn't seem to be especially effective in the case of this serial abuser.

          -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 15 2016, @11:38PM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 15 2016, @11:38PM (#304946) Homepage Journal

            We have an admin page that logs all spam mods so we can double check them for abuse. When a bunch show up, it's a clue something's going on.

            That linked post is still marked Spam but hasn't been deleted.

            Dude, we don't delete posts. Not even spam posts. The only thing we'd ever delete is something that unquestionably either breaks or causes us to break the law.

            It's doing what it was meant to. Giving you lot a tool to mod it down without using another mod incorrectly and giving us a central place to watch for it so we can wield the ole IP block hammer if we decide it's warranted. One, two, or even dozens of useless posts spread out over time aren't going to get you IP blocked though. That takes either proper commercial spam or large amounts of useless posts over a short period of time.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @11:56PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @11:56PM (#304962)

              Yes. My error.
              According to what I understand, intentionally-injected noise which is marked as abuse should be getting mod'd to -10.

              ...and, again, a serial abuser should have been banned.

              -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 16 2016, @01:39AM

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday February 16 2016, @01:39AM (#304996) Homepage Journal

                Ahh, there's a misunderstanding there. The -10 is to the person getting modded's karma. In this case that ipid. The score to the comment is still a -1 so that multiple instances can be stacked on for additional karma hits.

                Yeah, already laid out the instances where we'd ip/subnet ban someone and this guy don't fit. Hell, you've gotten more spam hits than anyone of late. Or at least someone signing your name has. There haven't been enough of them to bother even looking at the ipid though, so I haven't.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @06:40AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @06:40AM (#305078)

                  you've gotten more spam hits than anyone

                  Not I. I don't recall ever getting one.

                  Or at least someone signing your name has

                  Bingo!

                  haven't been enough of them to bother

                  Hmmm. I've seen a bunch.
                  There have been a lot of -1 mods for SPAMmy as well--but using other descriptors.
                  Like I said, some folks are timid about using the Spam mod even when it clearly applies.
                  Ah, well.

                  Thanks for splainin'.

                  -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Monday February 15 2016, @09:42PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Monday February 15 2016, @09:42PM (#304883)

    I probably keep forgetting it because it's such a dumb reason it immediately escapes my memory after I read it.

    So you're one AC signing your posts claiming to be another AC. There's just too many layers of indirection for me to put any faith whatsoever that you're the same person. Sounds like this one "asshole" was just demonstrating the weakness of your posting system. But no, he's the asshole; we shouldn't reconsider. And I'm the asshole now for bringing it up again.

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @09:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 15 2016, @09:46PM (#304886)

      You really think a person leaving comments like this [soylentnews.org] (under my nym, I might add) isn't an asshole?

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:42AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:42AM (#304980)

        There can be more than one asshole.

        -- SomeAsshole_

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:44AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @12:44AM (#304982)

          Uh, you don't get to bring friends.

          -- Willson_

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @07:21AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 16 2016, @07:21AM (#305084)

          There can be more than one asshole.

          -- SomeAsshole_

          We are legion! We poop, and we don't forget. Expect us.