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Would a modern drive even respond to a low-level format request nowadays?
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A quick Interweb search says apparently so[^].
That surprised me -- as did the idea of paying for an app to do only that.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: remove one card from a deck of punched cards
So it was You, you &%$#*&$% ^%#$*%^*&$# &^$@#^%&^!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Yes, it probably was. 
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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I did that using FORTRAN on a line printer. Went through a box of 11 x 17 paper printing one garbage line per page (can't use the paper again) before they caught it. I believe the printer was bigger than a "Smart" car. Of course that was 30 plus years ago.
Mongo: Mongo only pawn... in game of life.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: remove one card from a deck of punched cards
Two words: floor sort.
Software Zen: delete this;
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... or you can do it like the C guys and use the knowledge from the 60s ignoring everything that came after that. A couple of my coworkers do that.
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Actually, that comment is more nasty than most people around here realize!
One problem is that it isn't limited to the people who grew up at that time: To a significant degree, the same 1960s ideals are held up even for those who receive their education nowadays, as an epitome of flexibility, efficiency and whatnot.
Even people coming out with university level education of today, you frequently see them basing their fundamental understanding of the world on those concepts developed in the 60s or early 70s. Lots of the developments that were made in the 70s and the 80s are essentially overlooked by young people. They take for granted that 'Tbe best will win!' - so those ideas that made it, those surviving through the 90s and into our millenium by defition were 'better' ideas and concepts than those left behind. As if marketing strategies and business forces etc. has no steering affect at all. And maybe more important in this context: As if the academic world is perfectly protected against marketing of adademic concepts and ideological forces.
Surprisingly many of those educated the last ten years have no idea about the concepts and technologies developed in the 70s and 80s. It is not because they have studied and evaluted these concepts, and rejected them because they are too weak: They have never been introduced to them! But they have been introduced to concepts of the late 60s and early 70s and adopted them without any critical evaluation, because no alternative was presented.
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Yeah, I know... And it makes learning C++ needlessly difficulty. Modern C++ is expressive, concise, elegant and easy to read (except template witchcraft) but heaps of tutorials, articles and books still stick to the old style. Sure as hell, any modern C++ compiler will happily eat the very first version of the language (and even more happily eat raw C constructs) and don't even bother throwing a warning similar to "X is deprecated, use Y instead" like I'm used to from my Delphi compiler.
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Welcome to the club. I took 32 credit-hours of math in college: calculus, differential equations, and matrix algebra. The only part I've ever used is the matrix algebra, and that only occasionally.
Most of that part of my brain has been recycled to store old movie lines, atrocious puns, and Dad jokes.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Amazing how much useless junk I remember but yet a lot of times can't remember why I went into the kitchen or wherever.
New version: WinHeist Version 2.2.2 Beta I told my psychiatrist that I was hearing voices in my head. He said you don't have a psychiatrist!
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Mike Hankey wrote: Amazing how much useless junk I remember but yet a lot of times can't remember why I went into the kitchen or wherever.
Somewhat related: This one Norwegian humourist Odd Børretzen in one of his talking blues songs says that you known that you are old when you bend down, say, to tie your shoelaces, and ask yourself if there might be something else that you should do, now that you are down there...
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Wise words
New version: WinHeist Version 2.2.2 Beta I told my psychiatrist that I was hearing voices in my head. He said you don't have a psychiatrist!
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: my memory has a Guinness powered garbage collection function
Elephant elephant elephant, sunshine sunshine sunshine
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You are not a grandpa yet, are you?
The other day, in the coofee corner at work, we were talking about how fascinated kids are if you take them into a real darkroom, in pale yellow/green light, where they can see the magic of a picture growing out of that white photo paper.
Or, in springtime you show them how to make a willow pipe.
Or, you bring your physical core dump to work to show those newly educated kids what "core" really is. The one physical core dump I have saved is a prism about half the size of a beer can, and it stores 1152 bits.
Sometimes I am surprised by how little those youngsters know or what goes on behind the scenes. As an oldtimer, I know, because we had to understand it in the old days. Things like how an interrupt handler is written. How paging works. What information is available in a class object (the first C++ compiler I used compiled to K&R C, and we had a great opportunity to see how OO really works). Very often, when code doesn't behave as they expect, once I tell them about the inner workings, they cheer up - and generally, they write better code after that.
You could say that the knowledge we oldtimers carry very often is context. We know where things fit into a whole. We understand why this and that design decision was made. Then we know how to use it in the way it was intended - or we know that it was not a good design decision, and we should not let it steer us in a wrong direction. We know to see what is the emperors new clothes, hype and nothing more, and to recognize truly innovative ideas.
People tease me for being a "squirrel": I have collected stores of "nuts" (that is, papers, articles, old magazines, whatever) in every available storage space, even on the harddisks of my computer. Honestly, I am surprised myself about how frequently I have to dig into those stores because some question came up at work, or I had to help a friend with an old computer, or my neighbour could make use of some information.
Now that you mention "the maze layout of games": When someone at your workplace, while struggling with some unwieldy problem, makes a sigh: 'You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike', and the other fellow says '...a maze of twisting little passages!', isn't that when you go home to dig up that old drawing of the Adventure maze and show it to the others during the coffee break the next day?
Those things are valuable, enriching the day. Don't be afraid of being the one who contributes to it.
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nice anwser
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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You have forgotten about them anyway.
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legacy code/knowledge
don't know how it works.
don't know who or where it came from.
don't know what connects to it
but it works. so you keep it in fear that by removing it, you don't know what will happen.
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Or not[^] 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Apple maybe cool, but winter is coming...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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And House Stark with it...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Only in the show. Right now Stanis is still alive in the North, and we do not know whose son Jon is. Arya is still on the other continent, and Sansa is still under Littlefinger's finger.
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... But you're really not helping!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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At least in that case your little head will not rule you.
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Ypu paraphrase a quote from something I hate. That'll work.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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