Re: Heinlein on automobiles

In article <4a0bb574.83012968@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
fairwater@xxxxxxxxx (Derek Lyons) wrote:

Mike Ash <mike@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <4a0b99a7.75896484@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
fairwater@xxxxxxxxx (Derek Lyons) wrote:

Mike Ash <mike@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

No moving parts may not mean simple, but it does generally mean
reliable. Absent cheap capacitors or the failure of rotating platters,
your PC is likely to last a couple of decades with zero maintenance.

Given that big iron, usually made of sterner stuff than the home PC,
can't last that long without maintenance...

Well, your conclusion is wrong.

I didn't draw a conclusion, I made a statement. Learn to tell the
difference.

Oh please. When you write a half sentence that starts with "Given that"
and ends with "..." then you are making a very strong implied
conclusion. This is a standard feature of English, not something I just
made up. You will not be able to convince me that your command of
English is so poor that you do not know this fact.

In my experience, PCs fail for three reasons: externally inflicted
damage (electrical or mechanical), wear on moving parts, or under-specified
capacitors. Of the three, only that last one is an example of a solid-state
machine failing after normal use, and that's only in machines with (often
deliberate) poor design.

And your experience with detailed forensic examination of PC's is
what? (I.E. working in a computer repair shop since the dawn of PC's
doesn't even remotely cut it as they don't do detailed forensics
there.)

There's no need for a "detailed forensic examination". Having the
machine start working after replacing a part tells you what was broken.
Circumstances surrounding the repair usually tell you the cause. For
example, if you replace the power supply and the computer starts working
again, and it stopped working after the owner's house got struck by
lightning, the conclusion is obvious.

The worst one I had was my own laptop which developed a cracked
motherboard due to a broken structural member and subsequent flexing
when opening and closing the lid. (Those pesky moving parts again.) This
resulted in random spontaneous crashes and took me two months to track
down.

Pick a random PC from the 80s that hasn't been dumped in a landfill or
otherwise destroyed. Odds are quite good that it will still work, except
possibly for the moving parts. Certainly none of my computers have
experienced any failure outside of the categories I mention, and in my
years of working on other people's computers, both as favors and once
upon a time professionally, I never once encountered one that had failed
for a reason other than those.

In all my years of working on computers, I've seen computers under a
couple of years old fail (other than moving parts) routinely and for a
variety of reasons I could physically see and and even larger number
for reasons that I could not see and would likely take significant
engineering effort to determine.

But then I'm honest enough not to groundlessly assume that a failed
cap is under specced.

Yes, just go ahead and assume the claims are groundless. Highly
reputable sources like comp.risks and IEEE Spectrum don't know what
they're talking about. By the way, you might be interested in this
article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Anyway, I'm done with this subthread. You've gone into your typical Jerk
Mode and it's not enjoyable. Feel free to get in the last word.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
.

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