OT "The definition of insanity"

[Christopher Browne]

On Jan 29, 2008 4:37 PM, E K <ekg_ab-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
>
> > "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over
> > and
> > expecting different results."  -- assortedly attributed to Albert
> > Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Rita Mae Brown, and Rudyard Kipling
> > --
> > The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
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>
> This is true only in a world composed of memoryless systems only.
> Even a simple finite state machine produces different output for the
> same input depending on its internal state.

Unfortunately, people often lack useful memory, and this is frequently
true for computer systems.

My N800 fell into a regrettable cycle, yesterday, that was very much
of this sort.

- For some reason, the battery ran out of power :-(.

- I plugged it into a charger, at work, but it fell into an insane cycle:

 - It would start charging
 - As soon as it got a little charged, it would power up the screen
 - This would chew up what charge had been achieved
 - It would then repeat the cycle.

There's some problem with that charger; it's got a somewhat
intermittent connection, which was what prevented the charger from
BOTH charging the battery and powering the screen.

Nonetheless, for a whole working day, I watched the device run through
a "cycle of insanity."  That the N800 has memory aboard did not
prevent it from falling into its cycle.

I had a better charger at home, which permitted it to charge up
properly last night, thus breaking the cycle.  But I had to change
something to stop it from doing the same stupid thing over and over
and over...
-- 
http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
expecting different results."  -- assortedly attributed to Albert
Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Rita Mae Brown, and Rudyard Kipling
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists