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I cannot make up my mind: Is this a funny story, or is it a tragedy? 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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It's only funny 'cause it's someone else's software! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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True! True! 
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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As the Germans say: 'Schadefreude ist die schoenste freude' 
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It was an escape plot that ended in chaos!
Seriously though, the thousands of kids and parents who couldn't get access to their accounts and the cafeteria workers who had to get out the paper and pads were not happy. Now the central office is manually processing thousands of handwritten pages of deposits and transactions in order to get the account balances fixed. She mentioned they would be working today and tomorrow to get it all resolved. Not so funny for them...
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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After trying to use it for a while, I have found that I don't like it. A month ago or so already, it was at a "usable" point. Meaning that I had written some 7k lines of code that enable the use of SSE and AVX intrinsics from C#, sort of (and only in 64bit mode on an AVX-capable CPU but that would have been fixable).
The problem is, it's just too annoying to use. That whole "your code is executed, which build up some intermediate representation which is then compiled" idea does work, but it's really confusing, mainly because assignment at the C# level translates to .. well, nothing. It changes some C#-level variable, which is useful, but corresponds to re-using a name for a new variable, not assigning to the variable with that name. So there is hack to do actual assignment, but it's far too easy to forget to use it (with, at best, a confusing error message if you forget - usually it's a silent bug), and it has confusing semantics anyway. Additionally, passing data in and out is more annoying than it should be.
I thought it might be possible to improve it all with some small changes, but I've given up.
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To be honest I haven't had much opportunity to use SIMD in my general C# use. I've done a few tests for fun and at 200,000,000 integer additions the difference was only 344ms for an array and 302ms for an array of Vector<T> (System.Numerics.Vectors). I imagine it adds up doing continuous processing but I never saw much value for me personally. Of course I'm no expert in this area so I may have missed something.
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It works better when you have a higher arithmetic intensity, if you're only going to add them it really quickly becomes a bandwidth problem instead of a compute problem. It also works much better for smaller elements, and when you can use fancy built-ins that have no trivial equivalent in scalar code, such as saturating arithmetic, sum-of-absolute-differences, pshufb both straight and as parallel table lookup, multiply-high, that sort of thing.
On the other hand, most of that is impossible with System.Numerics.Vectors (it sucks), which is why I tried to do this in the first place.
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I'm working on my next article which will release all the code associated with my app to Open Source (via code project and github). I was going over my site and remembered this nugget where this stand-up comedian explains what it's like to be a _normal_ user and forget your password.
It is hilarious and may remind people inside IT what it's really like to use a computer as a tool instead of treating it like it's your baby.
Really funny.
Forgot Password - YouTube[^]
You will laugh, because it is exactly what happens. 
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And then there was the PHB who needed me to explain why the system wouldn't accept the word "orange" as a password. 
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: needed me to explain why the system wouldn't accept the word "orange"
Well, he just switched it to "chartreuse" and was fine.
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Holy, crap! You're right; "chartreuse" is not on the list! 
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You made me genuinely LOL!
Now, are you serious or not?
I cannot tell. Either way it's funny, but if you are serious, it is may be a bit more funny.
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Glad to be of service.
This particular time I'm serious, but you're right to be skeptical.
OpenVMS has a file named VMS$PASSWORD_DICTIONARY.DATA which is a word list (including some names) that passwords are tested against.
"chartreuse" is one of two words that start with the letter "C" that I know not to be on the list.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: "chartreuse" is one of two words that start with the letter "C" that I know not to be on the list
I, too, am glad to be of service.
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Darn, I could have named my cat underscore. 
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This just happened 6 hours ago when I was helping a friend.
Skype (need I say more?)
- Click "forgot password"
- Are any of these your email accounts?
Cuss out Microsoft - Have you ever purchased any products from Microsoft?
Cuss out Microsoft - Please provide 3 Skype names (I was one, her mom was another, her brother might be a third)
Cuss out Microsoft - Have you ever purchased Skype time. Yes
Cuss out Microsoft
5a. How much and on what date?
5b. How the hell should I know. Back
Cuss out Microsoft - Submit - Microsoft will contact you with your new password in 24 hours.
Cuss out Microsoft
We did that a couple months ago. Microsoft never wrote back.
Solution 2 (as was suggested in the video)
- go to www.skype.com
- click on "Create new account"
- We're sorry, but this feature is temporarily unavailable.
- Cuss out Microsoft
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: This just happened 6 hours ago when I was helping a friend.
Unfortunately, this is happening thousands of times every day around the world. 
Also, that is painful that Solution 2 didn't even work.
It is just too bad that Step 4 cannot really get to the right people at Microsoft.
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So, after a few years as a lurker and 15 years as a member I finally met another CPer yesterday for the first time as it turns out he is working about a mile or so away from me.
Very pleasant Chipotle lunch. 
(It was Jeremy Falcon, btw - cool dude).
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I have met only two or three.
One I was working a couple hundred feet from and another I'm a couple hundred miles from.
I'm unsure whether the guy who introduced me to CP is/was a member.
I have my MVP certificate up in my cube, but no one has ever asked about it.
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It's cool. Give's CP a bit more sense of realism in a way, when you meet the people on it in the real world.
Jeremy Falcon
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Indeed. I had lunch with Nish and his family a while back; it was great.
Software Zen: delete this;
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That's cool man. Nish is someone I'd like to meet as well.
Jeremy Falcon
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I was so about to post this... You beat me to it.
It was awesome meeting you, and glad it was, um... entertaining with the incident that occurred. The story of which probably belongs in the SB. 
Looking forward to the next lunch and hopefully we can find some more CPians in the area.
Jeremy Falcon
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