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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: 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]
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (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]