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The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

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Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#181

Post by Symbiote »

JonathonW wrote: post #166
hga wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The D.C. Metro system was planed in the '60 and constructed in the '70s, with the first operations starting in 1976. It too is based on electro-mechanical relays, although it's more ambitious, after the operator closes the doors and sees all is fine, he hits a "go" button and the system automatically takes the train to the next station, avoiding collisions as long as the "is there a train in the next segment" sensor…

The DC Metro actually (mostly) hasn't used their automatic train control system in full automatic mode since a collision in 2009 that killed nine (for which the ATC system was directly responsible; a faulty circuit both forced a train to stop and rendered it invisible to the control system). Safe train control seems like it needs a little more sophistication than '60s or '70s tech was able to give. For one, it's comm…

The Victoria Line was the first automatic railway, opening in 1968. There have been no accidents.

The system was replaced a couple of years ago with a new one, to allow an even higher frequency of service.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_line

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#183

Post by Laforet »

kragen wrote: post #155
grayclhn wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overengineeing doesn't take nearly as much skill as you'd think. It would be pretty easy for any of us to design a wall that, if left alone, would last for thousands of years.

You would think, but often things fail in unexpected ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_pest is destroying thousands of die-cast zinc-alloy toys from the 1930s to 1950s. Zinc alloys are pretty corrosion-resistant, so this was a surprise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate_film#Decay_a... is destroying a lot of historically important documents in libraries that were laminated in acetate during the 1…

Zinc and zinc alloys are also known to produce whiskers slowly (or rapidly if subjected to temperature/stress cycles) which can short circuits over time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_%28metallurgy%29

This is especially a problem in RoHS compliant appliances as the common additives, i.e. lead, used to supress whisker formation in solder cannot be used.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#184

Post by pronoiac »

rogerbinns wrote: post #56
ErikRogneby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the national do-not-call list for clueless tech recruiters?

I maintain one at http://www.rogerbinns.com/blocked_recruiters.txt My resume has a "note to recruiters" attached. It is very clear if a recruiter has made any effort to read any of that. The clueless ones end up in the list above. http://www.rogerbinns.com/recruiters.html

Oof, I recognize one of those, from an email today. I'd thought I was talking to an internal recruiter... Incidentally, you have some duplicates.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#185

Post by Abraln »

artmageddon wrote: post #113
logfromblammo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add "Crystal Reports" and "MUMPS" to the "do not put on resume" list. I never even actually worked with Crystal Reports. A long time ago, I made a bunch of similar resumes that each included one thing extra on them, because I was curious about what I could be learning to get better response rates. The Crystal Reports variant produced a deluge of the worst-sounding jobs touted by the most clueless recruiters. And that…

It seems like everyone wants resumes in Word format. The one time I tried to send a PDF the recruiter nearly treated it like it was some unknown format and asked me to resend as Word.

If what I have heard is correct, it is because some resumes scanning softwares have trouble with PDFs. They often default to asking for Word because they know it works.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#186

Post by cptnbob »

bigger_cheese wrote: post #170

My work is pretty bad. We have a box running windows 3.1 hooked up to an instrument on our plant. The answer I got when I asked about it was it has a proprietary ISA DAQ card in it with 'flaky' drivers' that prevents us upgrading it. It's a non critical instrument but is providing 'useful' data I think its some type of microwave radar measurement instrument - very specialised hardware. It's been working well since th…

One of our clients still has a DOS box connected to a 14.4k modem that we have to drag EDI interchanges off. You wouldn't believe how much it cost to get a modem and POTS line installed in our DC so we could talk to it. There's a windows service written in .net that talks to it via a serial port and POSTs it to a REST endpoint.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#187

Post by spacecowboy_lon »

jholman wrote: post #149
warfangle wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similarly embarrassing state of affairs is the train traffic control system used by the NYC subway system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA

Wow. Their end-goal upgrade, the one that they've installed on one line, and are installing on everything else looks so antiquated. My city's subway/elevated train system will be 30 years old this December. Train control is fully automated ; there are no drivers on trains, and in normal operation there is no remote (human) operator either. It's been automated for 30 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vanc…

You know that the 30's gear on the Tube was more reliable than the 1970's stuff?

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#188

Post by bdonlan »

jholman wrote: post #149
warfangle wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similarly embarrassing state of affairs is the train traffic control system used by the NYC subway system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjx3S3UjmnA

Wow. Their end-goal upgrade, the one that they've installed on one line, and are installing on everything else looks so antiquated. My city's subway/elevated train system will be 30 years old this December. Train control is fully automated ; there are no drivers on trains, and in normal operation there is no remote (human) operator either. It's been automated for 30 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vanc…

The problem with some of these old lines is that they might have level crossings in which pedestrians or cars might occupy the tracks - so someone needs to be there to stop the train if that happens. Fully automated systems like the SkyTrain or Japan's Yurikamome line have grade-separated tracks (and in some cases platform gates as well) to ensure that sort of incursion doesn't happen.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#189

Post by DavidPlumpton »

mindcrime wrote: post #142
logfromblammo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add "Crystal Reports" and "MUMPS" to the "do not put on resume" list. I never even actually worked with Crystal Reports. A long time ago, I made a bunch of similar resumes that each included one thing extra on them, because I was curious about what I could be learning to get better response rates. The Crystal Reports variant produced a deluge of the worst-sounding jobs touted by the most clueless recruiters. And that…

Add "Crystal Reports" and "MUMPS" to the "do not put on resume" list. And RPG/400. I took two semesters of that in college, but (thankfully) never got roped into programming in it professionally. I'm honestly not sure you could pay me enough to write RPG code, even if you were Bill Gates. Just thinking about using SEU (Source Entry Utility, IIRC) to program in that column oriented nightmare gives me the heebie-jeebie…

Somebody should create a CV with years of experience in all the worst technologies and circulate it through all the worst recruiters and see what happens.

Re: The most obsolete infrastructure money could buy – my worst job ever

#190

Post by jackgavigan »

kjs3 wrote: post #150
jackgavigan wrote: post #46

In a previous life, I was a systems engineer at a company[0] that had several client with what would be charitably termed "legacy" systems, including SCO UnixWare and "Olivetti Unix". 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10048801

Is that Olivetti X/OS or their SVR4 port. X/OS is really legacy.

It was the late '90s so it was probably the SVR4 port (I actually think a lot of those "ports" were little more than rebranding).
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