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I'm surprised they can do anything at all with their unholy marriage of CICS, PowerBuilder, COBOL, and whatever else they've got mixed in there.
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Sander Rossel wrote: My guess is that my old ID is a primary key in a SQL database
I think you give them too much credit. More likely, it's a non-index field splattered across hundreds of tables in a completely denormalized way, without any naming consistency and certainly no foreign key references or integrity checks.
Or even better, it's all stored as ISAM data with a COBOL back end processing CSV formatted records.
This is based on my experience (no, not 30 years ago, but ONE year ago) on how the insurance industry and related industries, like risk rating systems, work. It's funny (actually not) looking at the REST API's that thinly wrap what is obviously callbacks into the archaic COBOL record management system.
Thank god I'm not working in that industry anymore. Never again!
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I guess I'm an optimist 
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I'm calling it a gain
The number that you give customers (on your invoices) is no longer the number you use to deal with the government.
Makes it that little bit harder to impersonate - a scammer trying to receive say your refund (if they intercepted your mail), or a scammer contacting you pretending to be the govt in their correspondence (i.e. it won't have that number ("re: your account: 123456" - that they pulled from your invoice) that is between just you and the govt).
Message Signature
(Click to edit ->)
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I don't think that's ever been an issue before.
If it would be that easy they wouldn't use the number at all.
But I like your positive attitude.
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But you have all the fun of it!
In Word you can only store 2 bytes. That is why I use Writer.
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The number of times I have heard "but it will never change" over the years is frightening. The user demand that a phone number/user name/country name/postcode etc be used as a primary key has annoyed me for decades and it still keeps happening.
A couple of years ago I walked away from a project because the PM insisted that all lookup master tables use the string as the PK.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Yeah, I know!
I once had a discussion with a "database specialist" (a name that he got because he couldn't write code, but he could write SQL  ) and he really made it a point that we should make some functional field a PK, but only in that one table.
He wasn't susceptible to any logic like "but we shouldn't use a functional key in case the functionality changes" (will never happen), "but it's inconsistent with the rest of the database" and "but using an arbitrary ID isn't more complicated for me, the developer, while it gives us all flexibility in the future" 
That whole project never finished and the client got all his money back.
I quit the company before that time though 
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Ah one of the benefits of being old and respected is you can call out idiots like that and have someone listen (most of the time). Having the balls to walk away also helps.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Got my first "social insurance number" (SSN) at 15 for a part-time job. Everyone gets one eventually if they expect anything to do with government.
Then with the equivalent of VAT (i.e. GST) every corp and self-employed got a "business number" (BN).
It's all about "entities".
My SSN represents "me", so I can collect benefits and pay taxes, and deals with "employee / employer" relationships..
My "self-employed / professional" BN gets me to file GST, but allows me to report that on my personal (SSN) filings.
My "corporate" BN was used to create an entity that was needed to deal with companies that would only deal with other corps while flowing all that income to my "self-employed" BN so I wouldn't have to do a pile of corporate filings (i.e. zero net income for the corp).
Easy.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it.
― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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Sander Rossel wrote: "we can't make it more fun, but we can make it easier."
Apparently, they can't make it easier either
No, the proper response is "then why don't you?"
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Key of Solomon contains 5 semi-circle (8)
5 - penta
semi-circle: cle
Key of Solomon contains pentacle.
Now tell me I am off this duty for tomorrow.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
modified 17-Oct-19 10:43am.
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Added
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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lw@zi wrote: Now tell me I am off this duty for tomorrow.
Nope. You made the age old mistake of thinking that a bunch of software developers are familiar with an obscure medieval grimoire.
Now, had you picked something from K&R ...
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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It was either that or some Math book dealing with geometrical patterns. I went with other one.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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I re-Read the C Programming Language occasionally - a great book
"We can't stop here - this is bat country" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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lw@zi wrote: Now tell me I am off this duty for tomorrow.
Nah! You just solved your own puzzle and it's WSO. 
But look at it this way; it doesn't matter if someone solves your CC tomorrow, you won't be setting one for Monday.
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A funny thing happened to me on the way to work...
In the middle of working on a set of problems I despise having to shutdown and restart things when I change location. And all of us know when we put Windows <anything> into sleep mode, it's a hit/miss proposition, mostly a miss.
So this AM I need to pack up and head for the lab, some work going on my Win10 machine and one VM running. I suspend the VM and sleep the desktop.
The desktop never wakes up correctly, the Vm snaps to attention. So how is it that VMware can sleep a VM and Microsoft has never managed to do so?
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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charlieg wrote: The desktop never wakes up correctly, the Vm snaps to attention. So how is it that VMware can sleep a VM and Microsoft has never managed to do so?
The VM is just virtually asleep. A real OS has hardware to deal with 
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Yeah,
VMWare emulates a very small number of BIOS and EFI. Microsoft Windows has to deal with thousands of BIOS,EFI,UEFI versions that have various sleep states. Unfortunately when these BIOS vendors incorrectly implement or misreport the capabilities Windows gets the blame.
It seems like everytime I log into the codeproject forums someone is attacking the operating system I helped build. Not sure why I even come here anymore.
Best Wishes,
-David Delaune
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Well ... some of it is jealousy, some of it is "It's the year of Linux!" (again, again, again, again, ... repeat ad nauseam)
But a lot of it is not to do with Windows at all, but the lack of care MS have taken with the UI and actual usability in a rush to move in directions a desktop OS probably shouldn't go. Win8 was an attempt to force a desktop OS into a Mobile device: it failed there, and reduced usability on the desktop at the same time. 8.1 didn't reverse that, Win10 didn't either - because I suspect MS will not admit it made a mistake. Not the first time for that either...
That pisses people off: they loved Win7, because it worked, and looked good, and was easy to use. It had flaws, yes - but it was genuinely better than its "replacement".
That's not a Windows-the-operating-system problem: at that, Win10 is pretty solid. It's a UI problem compounded by bone headed corporate stubbornness.
Don't take it personally is all I can say!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Randor wrote: It seems like everytime I log into the codeproject forums someone is attacking the operating system I helped build.
It helps when you stop acting like a crazy mother that takes any criticism as an attack on her baby. This particular baby can be very annoying at times, even without the little annoyances that have been built in deliberately.
Randor wrote: Not sure why I even come here anymore.
Masochism? perhaps you miss the soapbox where you could get plenty of that? Seriously, do you really think that everyone here is just lurking to get a good shot at you. Shirley there are at least a few around who actually may have something to say.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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CodeWraith wrote: It helps when you stop acting like a crazy mother that takes any criticism as an attack on her baby.
Says the guy who calls anyone saying something nice about Microsoft a raging fanboi.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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ZurdoDev wrote: Says the guy who calls anyone saying something nice about Microsoft a raging fanboi.
Nah, not just any fanboi. Only those that think they are the high priests of their own religion and cry for the inquisition when they spot a disbeliever.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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