Saturday 7 April 2007

PDP-11 demands shorter workdays!

The PDP-11 at the National Bank of Belgium has succeeded at his demand for somewhat human working hours:

"In normal circumstances, the Internet Application is accessible on all NBB working days from 8.30 to 20.00 hours. From 19h45, however, it will be impossible to start a new session. From 20 hours onwards, the Internet Application becomes completely inaccessible."
That's ok. I mean, it's only just. You could have retired many moons ago, but you're still doing a really useful job.

"The Internet Application has functionalities which mean that the application cannot be available 24 hours a day (or 7 days a week): all annual account files received on the same day must, from a certain moment, be processed so that they can be published in pdf format. Both during and after the processing of the files, which requires a relatively large amount of computer time, various databases have to be updated; some of those databases also have to be modified in the event of new uploads and actions which result in changes to the status of the uploaded files. The only way of avoiding potential conflicts when such a variety of changes are made is to make the Internet Application unavailable for the filing of accounts."

I understand, PDP-11, I understand. Old age. I'm getting awfully close to 2^5 myself. But hey, when...

"Sometimes, it may also be necessary to temporarily shut down the Internet Application during periods when it is normally available. In this event, an appropriate message will be displayed to anyone wishing to use the Internet Application at that moment. If possible, a message will be displayed giving advance notice of the unavailability of the application."

...when you start falling asleep on the job, you might want to start thinking about retirement.

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