Actually running a remote desktop session (inside a remote desktop session) on a wooden table would be quite the impressive feat.
Posts made by Heron
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RE: Exception: welcome!
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RE: BSD's Shutdown Module
Well good thing GCC warns me about the implicit function definition, so I would realize the mistake and correct it - and there would be no problems. So why would I be screwed again? The compiler does what it's supposed to - it warns me there may be a problem, even though it's valid code.
In any case, the point is largely academic - I'm obsessive about including the right headers, so it's not a situation that's likely to arise.
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RE: BSD's Shutdown Module
@tdb said:
The C language allows implicit declarations of functions. The return type of such a declaration is int. I'm not sure of parameters, but they're irrelevant for this problem. Thus, missing <stdlib.h> will result in an implicit declaration of int malloc(). Now, assigning an int to a pointer is an error, so compilation would fail without the cast. But! By doing the typecast, you're essentially telling the compiler to STFU, and so it does, accepting your code. GCC indeed does still give a warning, but it's only a warning, and can be turned off or ignored.
This would also be the reason for being screwed up on m68k or LP64, I believe.
Ah, but it does give a warning - thus notifying the programmer that there is a problem (even if that problem compiles into something resembling valid assembly). Any programmer worth his or her salt will fix the cause of the warning...
(edited to add:)
I didn't even compile with -Wall or -Werror, which are fairly standard practice among programmers using gcc (including myself). People who use -Wall don't turn off warnings; that would defeat the purpose of -Wall.
Also, it's not the typecast that makes the compiler accept the implicitly declared function; if you compile the same code without the cast, it will still compile, and you'll get the exact same warning.
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RE: BSD's Shutdown Module
Yeah, that code sample doesn't make pointer size assumptions...
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RE: BSD's Shutdown Module
heron@taim ~ $ cat /tmp/temp.c
int main()
{
double* b = (double*)malloc(sizeof(double));
free(b);
return 0;
}heron@taim ~ $ gcc /tmp/temp.c
/tmp/temp.c: In function 'main':
/tmp/temp.c:3: warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function 'malloc' -
RE: BSD's Shutdown Module
So the cast is not only redundant, it's dangerous since your compiler fails to warn you that you haven't included <stdlib.h> (as I indicated.)
How on earth would a cast to (double*) cause the compiler to not warn you about a missing header? (For the record, gcc does give a warning, with or without the cast.)
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RE: The NumLock Obstacle
@Zemm said:
I used to have a keyboard that pressing the "volume up" would bring up the "save as" dialogue in Word if you didn't install the crazy drivers that used over 50MB of RAM. (This was the days of Windows 98 and those megabytes were precious)
The media keys on the front of my laptop (play, pause, stop, volume controls) do funky things in Valve's Source engine games. E.g. in Counter-Strike Source, pressing the mute key brings up the in-game voice-radio menu, and pressing play/pause brings up the in-game buy menu. They still control Media Player though, even though CS:S has side effects...
I haven't really tried them in other games, but I'm sure other games do the same sorts of things.
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RE: The NumLock Obstacle
The Real WTF is that some of you think a web form sends along the scan codes for "home" and whatnot when num lock is off.
Home moves your cursor, it doesn't add the scan code for "home" to the input box.
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RE: The NumLock Obstacle
@henke37 said:
Newsflash for non-laptop users: numlock will make the right end of the letters turn into digits. Also, for the normal numeric keyboard, it becomes cursor keys. So obviously they needed cursor keys!
Actually on my laptop, I have to push the blue Fn button to use the right half of the keys as the numeric keypad, regardless of whether NumLock is on. If NumLock is off, it behaves just like a regular keyboard's numeric keypad behaves when NumLock is on.
YMMV, of course.
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RE: A securerer login page
@Flatline said:
Really? We use Blackboard as well, and I've always noticed changes updating instantly.
I guess I'm just taking that professor's word for it, I don't know from personal experience.
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RE: A securerer login page
We use Blackboard too. I feel your pain. At least our Math department got so fed up that they rebelled and set up a Moodle server.
Oh, and just to add to the WTFness of Blackboard, it turns out that when a teacher needs to make a correction to anything posted on his or her Blackboard class page, the corrections are not pushed to the students until sometime around 2am the next morning. One of my professors last semester was angered by this quite a bit.
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RE: Singing in the rain...
@dtech said:
I blame the lack of a proper English word for "particles/droplets falling out of the sky" for it.
In dutch we have "neerslag" which means exactly that. It's usually used as a synonym for rain but can also be used for e.g. hail or snow. After Chernobyl the news even spoke of radioactive "neerslag" (radioactive particles falling out of the sky)There is one, if "precipitation" isn't good enough for you (from dictionary.com):
sleet
- Precipitation consisting of generally transparent frozen or partially frozen raindrops.
- A mixture of rain and snow or hail.
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RE: American Express WTF
Except you're completely ignoring the fact not providing any defense (i.e. "insulating people from the consequences of their actions") is more expensive than providing a few relatively meager lines of defense. Remember, it's not the end-user that suffers for getting his bank password stolen - it's the bank, which has to pay back the end-user. Or do you think the bank shouldn't have to pay people back? What do people do who get mugged and get their wallets stolen? Should they have to pay for it?
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RE: American Express WTF
I wouldn't be so much concerned about an over-the-web brute-force attack as about someone getting ahold of the password list - if they have a length and character restriction, they're most likely storing them in plaintext (after all, if they're storing a hash there's no reason to put a maximum length restriction, or a character restriction). That, of course, is not safe.
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RE: American Express WTF
As I said, Weng, people can set up payment of other services using the AmEx online account, so they would, in fact, have access to your money. Stop acting like it's idiotic to be concerned about security.
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RE: American Express WTF
@dtech said:
In that case, would you mind if someone paid your bill for you?
Fair question... however the online account lets you set up the payment of other (non-AmEx) bills using your card. So, for example, using nothing more than the AmEx online account, I can set up recurring payment of my cell phone bill, my netflix bill, my cable tv and internet bills, etc etc. In other words, it does give people some access to my money.
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RE: American Express WTF
Transfers? I'm talking about logging on to americanexpress.com to pay my American Express bill.
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American Express WTF
I'm registering an AmEx online account so I can pay my bills on the internet. One would expect that a company that has a large interest in security would require difficult-to-guess passwords:
A bonus WTF is the "password strength" meter. Any valid 6-character password gets one bar, any valid 7-character password gets two bars (or three if there is more than two numbers in the password), and any valid 8-character password gets one bar plus the number of digits in the password (up to four bars, of course). It doesn't appear to care whether the digits and letters are intermixed or not, or even whether the letters and digits are different. Thus, "aaaaa555" is rated as a four-bar password.
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RE: Self-WTF
@Nelle said:
i've heard that one before ... for me the wheel of time series is kinda like the OPs loop ...
Indeed we have all heard it before; however, I'm inclined to believe Brandon...
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RE: Self-WTF
@Kyanar said:
That's all she has to complain about? Wow. My biggest complaint is that the series was never finished, because the author up and died on us.
I talked to Brandon Sanderson yesterday (yes, in person). He's working on the last Wheel of Time book (well ok, it will be two books), he's 2/3 of the way done with the pair (he has 396,000 words written), and the first one should be published in November. And don't worry, he's obsessively referring to Robert Jordan's notes and recordings to make sure he gets the story right ;)
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RE: Self-WTF
@bjolling said:
I've read Ed Greenwood's "Cormyr Saga" and although I generally enjoyed the story, I got annoyed with the way he portrays the women in his books. Every single one of them is a geek's dream come true instead of a real character. But his story-telling is fantastic.
My wife is reading the Wheel of Time right now, and her biggest complaint is that the women don't act like real women would act, so I know what you mean.
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RE: Self-WTF
@amischiefr said:
I've heard the Wheel of time series is great, but how are the Terry Goodkind books? Personally I am an R.A. Salvatore and Ed Greenwood kind of guy, just my taste. Do you think I would like the Goodkind books?
I'm not very familiar with R.A. Salvatore or Ed Greenwood, but what durendal.mk3 says is probably fairly accurate. (I've never read Ayn Rand though, so I can't vouch for that personally ;)
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RE: Self-WTF
@bjolling said:
After reading the Mallorean about 15 years ago, I accidentelly stumbled upon the "Lord Of the Rings" trilogy. After exploring all of that universe (anyone tried the Silmarilleon?) I bought some of Brandon Sanderson's books but they ended up unread on my bookshelf (right next to my "Teach yourself Visual C++ .NET in 24 hours") because Terry Pratchett's discworld series is way more fun.
I sort of have four entire rows on my bookshelf taken up by four different series: bottom shelf is the Wheel of Time, next up is the Lord of the Rings (including the History of Middle-earth), next up is the Shannara series, and on top is the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind - that series was fantastic, I might add.
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RE: Self-WTF
@DaEagle said:
Now go and check out the Axis trilogy by Sara Douglass :)
My next task is actually reading all of Brandon Sanderson's books before he finished book 12 of the Wheel of Time. I'm going to his book signing on Saturday, too :)
I'll put Sara Douglass on my (rather long) backlog, though.
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RE: Self-WTF
@belgariontheking said:
@Heron said:
production is testing, for this particular web application.
RUN, MOTHERFUCKER! RUN FAR AND RUN FAST!Yeah... I'm leaving in April, after I graduate. I'm going to much greener pastures (both in terms of pay and in terms of company quality)... Amazon's keeping a seat warm for me.
Oh, and off-topic, I just finished reading The Malloreon :)
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RE: Self-WTF
It was caught in testing ;) That is, production is testing, for this particular web application.
That said, I should have tested the search functionality myself with more than one condition before I called the task done...
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Self-WTF
I got to work this morning to find an e-mail in my inbox from my boss informing me that the new search feature I had implemented for our customer database was giving "out of memory" errors. Experimenting with the search led me to the conclusion that if I was putting more than one search condition in the WHERE clause of the SQL query, I would get the out of memory error.
Well, I went through the following stages: 1) rewriting the SQL query (it actually is more efficient now), 2) blaming MySQL for epic failing, 3) blaming my web host for limiting my server process to 64MB of RAM, and 4) blaming PHP for epic failing. This took about two hours.
The problem, of course, was here in my own code:
$query .= $conditions[0];
$i = 1;
while($i < count($conditions))
{
$query .= ' AND '.$conditions[$i];
}
I decided after that that I'm no longer allowed to blame anyone besides myself until I've 1) actually read the error message, and 2) read through my code six times.
(I later changed it to $query .= implode(' AND ', $conditions), if you're curious.)
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RE: How to compare data
@tster said:
Sometimes you can't fix bugs because other layers or processes are counting on those bugs being in place. Windows has lots of hacks in it where they continue reproducing bugs from previous versions for specific pieces of software. Not that this is what your boss was doing, but I just wanted to say that there could be a reason for this.
Well he insisted on it because we were filtering existing addresses in the database against the output of the program, and he didn't want to change the way the filtering was done. Ah well. I'm glad I left that job behind for greener pastures...
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RE: How to compare data
@jetcitywoman said:
Seriously. I had to read the program through three times, and also run it in debug to figure out how in hell it worked. And then I ran it and my program in a "deathmatch" against the same data. Different results but it would have taken too long to figure out exactly why. But after getting the basica logic flow.. I don't really need to know why. It's trash
I did the same thing at a job two years ago. My boss had written an address-mashing program in C several years prior (he's not a very good programmer) so he wanted a new one written, with the idiotic stipulation that the results be the same. I wrote a program in C++ that did approximately the same thing, but I couldn't figure out how to reproduce some of the bugs his code had, so he wouldn't let us switch to it for actual data processing...
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RE: Poop competency: Expert
So I guess that means that Blu-Ray's JVM is run in software? (Or was I dreaming when I heard that Blu-Ray stuff is done in Java?)
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RE: Poop competency: Expert
bstorer,
I don't know of any in particular; I was just repeating what my cousin (who I regard as a Java fanatic, and would therefore know things like this) told me. In any case, some googling turned up this almost worthless quote:
From the EE Times: "Several vendors currently offer hardware JVMs as either ICs, silicon intellectual property (IP) or both."
I asked my cousin if he knows of any specific examples, but he hasn't responded yet. I'll post again if he knows of any.
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RE: Poop competency: Expert
Some high-end servers have hardware JVMs in them, so in those cases Java isn't necessarily a bad choice (as far as execution speed goes).
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RE: Odd date format
@campkev said:
@Monkios said:
J'imagine que ça veut dire que Bob Smith est un copain de James Bond ...
I guess it means that Bob Smith is a friend of James Bond ...
Thanks for that enlightening and relevant addition to the conversation
I'm guessing Monkios was referring to "009" being related to "007". It was random, but not unrelated.
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RE: US DMV WTF
My mom once lost her driver's license on a Delta flight. Needing a new one, she looked in to what she needed to do in order to replace it. Step one was, she needed a copy of her birth certificate, which she didn't have. Then she had to find out what she needed in order to get a copy of her birth certificate. Step one, she needed her driver's license. You can see the problem. Thankfully Delta found her license on a flight and mailed it to her.
Yes, she was aware there are other usable documents. For various reasons none were available.
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RE: When Non-Technical Folks Enforce Rules for Technology
I'm reminded of the 6-person company I worked for a year ago. The PC I was given to do my work on was an aging Pentium III (yes, three) whose video card somehow managed to do 1280x1024. I started bringing in my laptop to do work on, since it was faster, had more ram, had more hard drive space, and had better screen resolution. Its network card was probably faster too (it matters when you're throwing several-hundred-MB files around all day). My productivity soared (i'm not even being sarcastic!).
About four months later I got an e-mail from the boss saying "Laptops, flash drives, and iPods are no longer allowed. Except for my laptop. And [the lead programmer]'s laptop." Note that only three of us brought laptops, including the boss and the lead programmer, and only the other peon brought his iPod. The rule was clearly targetted at the two of us.
I asked the boss about it, bringing up everything from the productivity boost I had gained to the crappiness of the Pentium III machine to the spirit of the rule (I keep my computers secure). His reply was "a client wanted assurance of a security policy being enforced, and that no data would be stolen." The lead programmer - who was present for almost all meetings with almost every client - told me that no client had requested such a policy. I would also like to point out that we had permission to ssh in to the server from off-site, not to mention that we could FTP to anywhere from on-site, so if we were dead-set on stealing data then banning USB drives would do nothing to prevent it. I'd be willing to bet that if the same server is still running there, then my ssh login is still enabled...
I'm still confused why that boss did that.
Other WTFs from that boss:
- Hiring me and the other peon at $X/hr, then sending us an e-mail saying "I'm looking for people to work here to do [half as much work as us peons] for $(X+2)/hr. Send them my way if you know of anyone."
- Telling the secretary that he thought I had messed up the database one day and was too scared to come clean (I hadn't touched that database in weeks at that point).
- Yelling at the other peon for screwing up a database import that the peon had never done before, when in fact the peon followed the boss' instructions to the letter - the boss' instructions were missing a vital step.
- Claiming the marketing guy was worthless, when in fact the company's business more than quadrupled shortly after the marketing guy was hired.
- Refusing to give the marketing guy a full sales commission because he couldn't answer all the minor technical questions and had to transfer the prospective clients to the boss for those answers.
- Giving us a $1/hr raise after the lead programmer quit in an attempt to appease our disgruntlement... I guess he realized that if he lost us too, he'd have four workloads to do by himself. (It didn't work... I gave notice a few weeks later).
- Refusing to give me work to do during my last three weeks of employment there after I gave notice, despite him being overwhelmed with three workloads and despite me asking several times an hour for an assignment the entire time.
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RE: Security protects only up to 8 "crackers"
TRWTF is storing passwords in plaintext.
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RE: Please visit Bookmark not defined
@belgariontheking said:
While I was at Miami University, my college (Engineering/Applied Science) made a deal with this "academic alliance" to get all of us students free software. I got a whole bunch of products made by Microsoft, with the most notable exception being Office. In there, yes, I could download DOS 6.22, and yes, I did.
That's MSDNAA and it's fairly standard for a university to provide MSDNAA access to its technology students. The only Microsoft software not provided through MSDNAA is MS Office. All software obtained through MSDNAA is for noncommercial use only.
See, that way they get you hooked on their software so that when you get out into the real world, you have to buy it to keep using it.
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RE: Please visit Bookmark not defined
I remember *making* 3.5" install floppies for Win95 from the .cab files in the windows setup folder.
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RE: What's worse than a web host failing to keep your site up?
Alright morbiuswilters, next time rather than give the simplest, easiest method I can come up with to monitor whether a remote system is alive (which, by the way, is better than not monitoring it at all), I'll be sure to write a 30-page instruction manual to cover every contingency.
Jerk.
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RE: What's worse than a web host failing to keep your site up?
I'm not getting paid to sit here on the wtf forums to describe in detail how a properly set up sysadmin monitoring system should work, so I just described something simple. But pings are better than nothing; and obviously if an app is capable of popping up a notification on the sysadmin's desktop, it is capable of sending said sysadmin an email or a page or an SMS message or a kick to the groin, if that's what you want.
Don't be so quick to insult people.
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RE: What's worse than a web host failing to keep your site up?
Actually I would expect that the monitoring system be monitored as well by a person whose job is to monitor things. Something as simple as a ping every 15 or 30 seconds would suffice, with a little balloon on the sysadmin's desktop that pops up if the monitoring system doesn't respond. You know, watching the watchers and all that jazz.
Oh, and PeriSoft, I would suggest changing who you do business with ;)
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RE: What the cat
@joe.edwards said:
This could be potentially offensive. Especially to ugly people.
Imagine having your own picture show up on one of those things, and having to choose three pictures that *aren't* your own...
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RE: Internationalization is not good for Postal Services!
@medialint said:
Then of course there's Utah.
I live in Utah, you insensitive clod!
Seriously though, I don't know of any streets named based on mile markers (no streets with fractions), what we do have is a grid system - so 9000 S is farther south than 8000 S, 1300 E is further east than 700 E. I don't see what's so confusing about that (there are only two or three streets that don't follow the grid), and it's easier than having to just learn where all the streets go and where they all connect like you'd have to do in most other places. You can just get an address and even if you've never been to that area before you'll know how to get there.
On a somewhat unrelated note, if I got a job offer outside of Utah I'd probably take it, just to get out of Utah... Every time I move away from Utah I end up back here a few years later. I've lived in Hawaii (three years), Switzerland (three years), and the Dominican Republic (two years), and I ended up back here going to school.
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RE: IE6 WTF
I got an "Action canceled" page as well when going to "about:cheese".
My IE is version 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254.
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RE: Yet another public BSOD
I bought this Dell laptop in March of last year, and it just barely BSOD'ed two weeks ago for the first time (thanks, Netflix!) and then again last week (thanks, DrScheme!). Of course, it's a laptop, so it's continually being rebooted, hibernated, standby'ed, reinstalled, Vista'ed, de-Vista'ed, Gentoo'ed, de-Gentoo'ed, re-Gentoo'ed, and so on, all the while dual-booting with XP...
I saw frequent BSODs on a machine whose hard drive was dying, but it was an old Pentium III that was being used far past its useful days. The machine would randomly BSOD when reading large files from the hard drive (e.g. starting Diablo II). My old laptop (now my wife's laptop) running XP will BSOD if I leave it running for more than a few days, but it's not consistent... I think that's a RAM issue, but I'm too cheap to buy RAM for a laptop that rarely gets used.
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RE: Mashup Challenge $100,000 prize - WTF if Spectate Swamp wins?
Insulting and belittling others is a symptom of a superiority complex ;P I do have a slight superiority complex, but it's more fun to see it as "I just dislike stupid people".
If you make it clear you're joking, we'll get it. Better luck next time.
Also, medialint, that's hilarious :)
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RE: Mashup Challenge $100,000 prize - WTF if Spectate Swamp wins?
@MasterPlanSoftware said:
Apparently, the problem lies in you then. The joke was applied the correct way. You took it seriously. I cannot help you there. Sorry.
Well that's exactly my point, that I took it seriously. One skilled in the art of sarcasm does not have trouble getting the reader to take it as a joke. If your comment was taken seriously, it is because you did not properly apply your sarcasm. Therefore, you fail at sarcasm.
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RE: Mashup Challenge $100,000 prize - WTF if Spectate Swamp wins?
@MasterPlanSoftware said:
It was a joke...
Let me explain, and completely ruin it:
Your skills in the realm of sarcasm have degraded to the point of nonexistence. Probably because you spend too much time responding to trolls, and sarcasm doesn't work on them. (Yes, that's a trollish thing to say but I'm not a troll. You just rub me the wrong way.)