scary

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stuck
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scary

Post by stuck »

This is actually serious so the Admins might want to move this to a more appropriate board.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... am-majorca

Ken

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Re: scary

Post by HansV »

That was a near miss!
Best wishes,
Hans

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Re: scary

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stuck wrote:
09 Apr 2021, 07:13
This is actually serious so the Admins might want to move this to a more appropriate board.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... am-majorca
Hi Ken.
Is this a light-weight call for me to ferret out a link to the Gimli Glider incident again?
I ask because I think that that link glided into view and landed here only a month or so ago.
(signed) "Five Foot Six" of Bonavista.
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Re: scary

Post by stuck »

Humans eh?

Don't let them near a computer, they'll only screw it up.

Ken

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Re: scary

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stuck wrote:
09 Apr 2021, 11:17
Humans eh? Don't let them near a computer, they'll only screw it up.
Ken, you know of what you speak!
I am battling with a web site this very morning.
Now I am still using Word2003, so it can be argued that I am not the world's most technologically advanced human, but still and all …
:ranton:
I went to a web site yesterday to book an appointment for people 70+ years of age. I am 74.
At 9pm last night I received by email a confirmation number, saved it, and sat back thinking “Now they will email me and tell me where/when to go for my shot”.
Not to be!
This morning another email with a different code, telling me to “click on this link”, type or paste etc as shown in the image below.
Untitled2.png
(1) I tried pasting (I am 70+, eyesight etc) but the form didn’t accept the paste.

(2) I carefully typed in the string, laden with Os-that-could-be-zeroes and Qs-that-could-be-Os (70+, eyesight etc) (A)

(3) I wondered why they don’t know about the TRIM function; we have had it in Word2003/VBA for almosty twenty years now.

(4) I chose as a location Bonavista, for that is where I live. As the web site learned last night. Cabot Stadium is on the outskirts of town, so I prayed that I wouldn’t be given an appointment when I would have to walk in the snow/sleet/hail/rain etc up the other hill in town and then walk back.
Untitled3.png
(5) My prayers were answered because there are no appointments currently available!

(6) I am to check back regularly, where “regularly” is undefined, so at this point it seems to me a lottery, and the winners will be those who have nothing better to do but click mindlessly on a link with one eye on the 72” flat screen TV sports channel.

(7) I, of course, am a busy man with diatribes to compose.

(8) Nothing stops me, so I dialed the toll-free number in the most recent email. A nice man answered and told me that “all our lines are busy” call back later (Lottery #2), no voice-mail, but some welcome advice that I could go to the web site, throw a six, and start all over again.
It seems to me that the original applications are punched onto 80 column cards and submitted as a batch run around 8pm, hence the results at 9pm at night time. I could be wrong; they might be using the newer 96-column punched cards.

(9) By now you will have noticed that there is/was no calendar whereby one could choose a date/time, so had I got through I most likely been given an appointment here in Bonavista for the two weeks I will be in St John’s getting the remainder of my teeth yanked out and replaced with plastic.

I am, as you have by now guessed, ticked off, that in this modern day and age a major health institution (well, the most major one in Newfoundland) can’t provide a computerized system that serves the people who it is supposed to serve.
If I were not a bitter, twisted old man, I would hint that these hurdles are meant to slow down applications to protect the pollies who have not ordered or obtained enough vaccine for immunization.
I despair at the state of computing after a mere sixty or so years of development.

(A) To please the shes that punch they keys remember these:-

If these rules you will apply, you will get An I for an “eye”and an O for an “oh!”

This little poem specified how we were to pencil-write our symbols on the FORTRAN and COBOL and assembly-language pads in the late sixties. It seems nothing much was learned from those days.
It didn’t help that the US machines used slashed zeroes differently from the UK machines, but I am over that little snit now.
:rantoff:

Yours cheerfully
Chris

(later) An email from Tom: “I got a call from a lady named Lindsay who said my appointment was cancelled because I was not in the target range. She told me that when the 60-70 came up I should register and I would be emailed a link to book an appointment. I explained your issue and she said must be a glitch. She wants you to call her at …
So I did.
Linda said I should not have been at the Cabot place, that is for the youngsters. I pointed out that I did just what the email/web pages told me to do.
Linda said I should not have been at the Cabot place, that is for the youngsters. I pointed out that I did just what the email/web pages told me to do.
Linda said I should not have been at the Cabot place, that is for the youngsters. I pointed out that I did just what the email/web pages told me to do.
Finally she agreed that the system was screwed up.
Then she gave me an appointment for next week.
We swapped stories about the hospital and appointments for blood work; her appointment was for the 19th, way past mine for the 8th.
In checking my details Linda told me that we shared the same birth day, so we have made a date to meet and celebrate on that day.

C.
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Re: scary

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Oh dear :sad: In that case you won't want to hear then that:
a) I was able to officially book my first COVID vaccine dose via the official website about a week before it was officially announced that my age range was eligible to use the site.
b) The website was painlessly simple to use AND having given me a date for the first dose, it allowed me to proceed to book the date for my second dose.
c) My wife had a similarly simple experience when she got her invite to book a few weeks later.

Ken

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Re: scary

Post by GeoffW »

There was no online procedure for us. We have to book in person or by phone.

But then, in Australia, there's not the urgency of many other countries.

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Re: scary

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Just to prove how inferior our non-state-run medical system is in the US, I was notified by my primary care physician to book an appointment in December last which I did online. I received the first Pfizer injection on 15 January and the second on 3 February, 3 weeks later, all arranged online and carried out exactly as predicted at a site 1 mile from my home and with no incremental cost to me. Yes, I am in the over 75 years of age cohort. In fact, if The Good Lord is willing, I'll be 80 next year.

Too bad we have such an unreliable system, eh?

As to Ken's OP what's a ton more or less to a Boeing 737 (which I suppose was NOT a MAX). Don't forget that computer software controls landings, take offs and in flight operations of modern passenger aircraft in the first world. Let's hope it is not reliant upon 80 or even 90 column punched cards as OMG and I so well remember.
Last edited by BobH on 09 Apr 2021, 18:06, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: scary

Post by John Gray »

Please make sure that there are no extra spaces at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the code
I have seen this sort of things before on web pages. Just how difficult is it programmatically to remove spaces from a string?

And the whole question of estimating accurately the weight, height, and other parameters, of a population of variegated individuals is a more difficult problem than the article seems to realise...
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Re: scary

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stuck wrote:
09 Apr 2021, 15:54
Oh dear :sad: In that case you won't want to hear then that:
c) My wife had a similarly simple experience when she got her invite to book a few weeks later.
Au contraire, Mon Capitaine
:mice: I :mice: have a [blind] date with a woman for the first time since I arrived here to live over two years ago.
:crossfingers: I just hope that Walkham's cafe is open on that day :crossfingers:
Otherwise we will have to chat in the lobby of the post office.
Assuming that that is open.
Cheers
Chris
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Re: scary

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BobH wrote:
09 Apr 2021, 17:00
Too bad we have such an unreliable system, eh?
Yes, Bob, all very well etc etc, but is it metric? :evilgrin:
As to Ken's OP what's a ton more or less to a Boeing 737 (which I suppose was NOT a MAX). Don't forget that computer software controls landings, take offs and in flight operations of modern passenger aircraft in the first world. Let's hope it is not reliant upon 80 or even 90 column punched cards as OMG and I so well remember.
Well, much as I hate to remain on topic, i have long pondered why each taxi-way doesn't have a weighbridge at each end so that the final gross weight can be recorded immediately prior to take-off (or cancelled take-off if deemed necessary).
"Cost" is the most likely reaction, but really, how expensive is it compared to the accused high fees that airports charge nowadays.
And as my accountant used to say, also Mr Feld my high-school maths teacher, it's always best to compare any numeric to one obtained by alternate means.
Of course, you wouldn't want to have one number calculated in metric and the other in Imperial. :flee:
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Re: scary

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From Options, by Robert Sheckley:
"Stand up and be counted," Mishkin's father had said to him. So Tom Mishkin stood up to be counted, and the number was one. This was not very instructive. Mishkin never stood up to be counted again.
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Re: scary

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John Gray wrote:
09 Apr 2021, 17:22
Please make sure that there are no extra spaces at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the code
I have seen this sort of things before on web pages. Just how difficult is it programmatically to remove spaces from a string?
Well John, first you have to join Eileen's Lounge, then you have to work out how to start a thread, then make the first post and ask if this is the correct forum etc and if not ask admin to move it, and hope that tomorrow you can find it if moved, and then you have to ask there is a TRIM function for Java, or javascript, or whatever an InputBox is programmed in on a web page, assuming of course that there IS an InputBox function for web pages, and then you have to work out what time zone Wageningen is in, and the difference between that and Walla-Walla or wherever you live, make a stab at Han's alarm clock setting, set your alarm, then turn the bedside light back on and scribble a note reminding yourself just why you have woken up at this ungodly hour of the night (to see if Hans has replied with a nifty bit of web code) etc etc etc.
It is not a simple matter to reduce a string by extraneous terminal spaces.
And the whole question of estimating accurately the weight, height, and other parameters, of a population of variegated individuals is a more difficult problem than the article seems to realise...
Now John, here we must part ways. :grin:
As planes grow larger, the problem becomes easier, for the population of passengers on a plane is growing larger (in numeric terms).
No longer are the six wicker chairs arranged under the wing so that travelers can sit in the shade until ninety minutes before take-off. Now the passengers are herded into four hundred numbered stalls, having already been milked of cash for their baggage.
A larger population means that the Bell Curve or Poisson's Distribution or Baye's Theorem or Grimm's Law or whatever, is so much more dependable in terms of predicting net weight based on an average weight of an airport population.

Statistically speaking,
Chris
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Re: scary

Post by ChrisGreaves »

HansV wrote:
09 Apr 2021, 19:26
From Options, by Robert Sheckley:
"Stand up and be counted," Mishkin's father had said to him. So Tom Mishkin stood up to be counted, and the number was one. This was not very instructive. Mishkin never stood up to be counted again.
:clapping: :clapping: :chocciebar:
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Re: scary

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Yes, Chris, the US medical system is, indeed, metric. I contend that it is part and parcel of their drive toward obfuscation just like their use of Latin, special symbols, and their own vocabulary. IOW, it's a damnable plot!!!

Many decades ago, when I was nominated for a school class office, I had to give a speech to the student body. My Dad, fount of all wisdom in my callow youth, said that there were but 3 requirements for a successful speech in those circumstances:
1) Stand up to be seen.
2) Speak up to be heard.
and
3) Shut up to be liked.

I followed that advice - after recounting it to my audience - and won the office. :grin:
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Re: scary

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Chris: I would refer you to The Register, and more particularly to the comments which follow the article (293 at the point of typing).
I'm not sure that every comment says that you are wrong, but their normal gaussian distribution should be enough to convince you of your lack of right-ness...
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Re: scary

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John Gray wrote:
10 Apr 2021, 06:54
Chris: I would refer you to The Register, and more particularly to the comments which follow the article (293 at the point of typing).
I'm not sure that every comment says that you are wrong, but their normal gaussian distribution should be enough to convince you of your lack of right-ness...
Great Article!
On a related note, it's always struck me as rather odd that airlines are always so eager to weigh checked luggage down to the gram and charge extortionate fees because weight is so important to the ability to fly, but they don't care in the slightest how heavy the actual passengers are, or how heavy the rest of their luggage is. Weighing passengers has obvious PR problems because fat people will complain that the laws of physics are discriminating against them. But even without opening that can of worms, I could check a bag full of helium balloons into the hold and take a bag full of gold bars as my cabin bag and no-one would bat an eye, but if I swap those bags around suddenly it's a huge problem because of the excessive weight.”
But see also I weighed my bag before I left home. Twenty pounds or close to it.
Many good thoughts in here amid the dross (“excess baggage”)
I would be happy with weighing passengers as they go through the bing-bong machines, coupled with the bar-coded boarding pass that would do a good job of showing assigned mass to each seat; the occasional seat-exchange shouldn’t causes us worry here.
I was a little puzzled as to how the Trade Unions got involved, but the fog drifted off the runway half-way through.
I got as far as the text “The semi-colob at the end of the line caught me out so often!” in the discussion oif syntax/semantics in, I think, “1980's Basic v 2020's Python” and ran out of cofee; then I needed an extra "f" in it; never got back to bed.
Sorry
What was your point again?
Cheers
Chris
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