13 ms·
Every few years this story resurfaces and always makes me smile.
by relaunched 3y ago
Every few years this story resurfaces and always makes me smile.
- Vipsy 3y agoThis and the "My car won't start after I buy vanilla ice cream"
- RHSeeger 3y agoWhenever I see the email story, I think of the ice cream story. It's another one of my favorites.
- scanny 3y agoFor those who are curious as I was: https://www.managementpro.com/my-car-wont-start-after-i-buy-vanilla-ice-cream-help-me-figure-out-why/ https://www.managementpro.com/my-car-wont-start-after-i-buy-...
- gottorf 3y agoCar Talk is such a legend. RIP Tom, and may Ray enjoy his retirement.
- Recursing 3y agoAnd "OpenOffice cannot print on Tuesdays" https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161/comments/28 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161...
- leoh 3y agoYup. Guess this is yet another moment to tell the next generation about it.
- metaphor 3y agoIncidentally, appears to be only the second time it's been resubmitted in the month of September. The timing is thematically apt.
- blauditore 3y ago> The timing is thematically apt. What do you mean by that?
- badcppdev 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September Every September (in the 90s) a new cohort of University students would start and gain access to the internet, such as it was. Hence the reference to timing
- Sharlin 3y agoAs the Wikipedia article states, it's more about the specific period of late 1993–early 1994 when some large online service providers in the US started providing access to the greater internet, the USENET in particular, and masses of new (and usually clueless wrt established norms and netiquette) internet users flooded newsgroups and forever changed and disrupted their character and culture.
- nemo8551 3y agoTremendous, it’s almost as if this was planned. I await next week’s deployment.
- alexfoo 3y ago
- rolfus 3y agoI'm pretty new to this community and this was my first exposure to this story. It's definitely going into my "anecdotes from the internet" mental repository.
- janandonly 3y agoI came to say this.
- fergie 3y agoAt this point its a part of the HN lore...
- RichieAHB 3y agoI read it every time!
- cbm-vic-20 3y agoI read it evey time I'm flying Mach 3 high above the southwestern US.
- tempestn 3y agoA person could farm karma with an annual calendar reminder to post this. Perhaps someone even is!
- hutzlibu 3y agoThat would be easy to check. But are people really that desperate for virtual points?
- waynesonfire 3y agoI had to install a Greasemonkey script to remove them. I found myself constantly monitoring them. I'm cured now.
- iambateman 3y agoAh, well, not to give a junkie a fix...but...939. ;)
- master-lincoln 3y agowhy would anybody want to do that? I thought karma points above a certain low number don't offer benefits and the number is not visible to anybody but you. EDIT: I just realized it's visible in profiles :facepalm:
- sampo 3y agoThe story would be better, if they had kept the real numbers, and not added fake numbers afterwards (maybe they didn't keep notes, and forgot the real numbers). At the end of the story, that 3 millilightseconds is the one-way distance, and that can't be correct.
- bonzini 3y agoYes, that part doesn't add up. The time from sending SYN to receiving SYN+ACK would be six milliseconds assuming lightspeed between the source and a destination 500 miles away. That said: I know the ending, and by now the details about SunOS and sendmail aren't too interesting, but the "This is the chairman of statistics" line always gets me laughing out loud.
- SiempreViernes 3y agoSee point 8 in the official FAQ http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html