Sure, the problem is probably not Machine X can't connect to Machine Y, and more likely to be VLAN 17 can't initiate a connection to VLAN 56 over port 8080, but maybe you're the only one at your company who needs to make that particular connection at that time.

And you call it in and the network engineer will ask some questions:

a1. Has this ever worked in the past? (they will always answer "yes")
a2. When was the last time you know it was working? (50% "yesterday" 50% "last week")
a3. Has anything changed on the boxes or were they moved? (100% no nothing same as always)

b1. Is this a new install? (95% of the time this will be the problem but they will only admit it 1% of the time)

But if your network has dozens of VLANs, multiple gateways and complex firewall rules, it very well could be a network issue that so far only you have experienced.

And the change control logs should IMMEDIATELY show you where the problem is, in that case.

In my example, if VLAN 17 and VLAN 56 are QA networks, there's a reasonable chance your network team won't give a shit and it'll take them a week to even take a look, so it's probably worthwhile as a sysadmin to make sure that A) Machine X is actually sending the data out the network interface and B) Machine Y isn't receiving the data and just discarding it.

That's the problem. Change control shows no changes on 17 or 56 in the last 6 months.

The alarm systems show no changes.

I can pull up the data on the ports X & Y are using in 30 seconds. No errors showing.

In another 30 seconds I can check all the stats for 17 & 56.

The network is SIMPLE! It really is. Troubleshooting a connection issue takes a few minutes at most.

In your example, the sysadmin will just say "the network is the problem" when the REAL PROBLEM is that the LATEST UPDATE of his app means it now listens on 443 instead of 8080.

And a quick Google search will bring up page after page of references to that just using the app name and the app version number.

If there really is a "network problem" then it won't be just your machine that cannot connect to some other machine.

It would be lots of people and/or machines that would not be able to talk to lots of other machines and/or people.

And the network rarely experiences "problems" that only show up after you've applied a patch.

Bad things come from network and systems folks not understanding each other.

As a network engineer, I can quote almost EXACTLY what the sysadmin will say. Understanding them is easy.

Communicating something they do not want to hear is the issue.

Don't talk nonsense and dress it up as "scientific". "Scientific consensus" is just the modern phrase for what Karl Popper called "the republic of science". People who complain about the meaning of either term are not scientists, they are usually partisan political hacks who have never heard of Karl Popper and think AGW is a some kind of gigantic conspiracy to take away their SUV.

Of course we're not on a balloon, everyone knows we are the raisins in an expanding pudding.

Is there any other kind?

Nothing to do with tone deafness. If you weren't exposed to an Asian language as a child then your brain simply won't hear some of the sounds in Asian languages, in fact your brain actively filters out the unfamiliar sounds as "noise". The same is true for Asian children, which is why virtually ALL Asians have trouble with "R" and "L" sounds. It's all about how your neurons are wired in the first few years of life, it's why a 2yo can become fluent in a new language in a matter of months while an adult may take years or even decades to achieve "native" fluency.

I saw a short doco about a guy who taught his toddler to speak Klingon. The kid loved playing the Klingon "game" up until the age of 3, then suddenly refused to play the Klingon game with dad. Turns out that Klingon is great for describing life aboard a star ship but was useless to the toddler because there were too many everyday things that did not have a Klingon word ( eg: no word for "cookie" ). At 3 years old the kid had already worked out what many geeks (and the submitter) still struggle with, English is useful, Klingon is not.

If you are going to blame Clinton (or Bush) for the GFC, then logically you must credit Obama with fixing it.

Really, that was her job?

...and gravity, it is a model that fits our observations.

sudo security find-certificate -a -Z -c "CNNIC ROOT" /System/Library/Keychains/SystemRootCertificates.keychain | grep SHA-1
sudo security delete-certificate -t -Z 8BAF4C9B1DF02A92F7DA128EB91BACF498604B6F /System/Library/Keychains/SystemRootCertificates.keychain

Until Apple work out a way of avoiding the command line like this, they won't be ready for the masses.

A modern $200 video card has more raw processing power than any supercomputer built before 2000.

The number of entry points into programming that are available on the internet is staggering to someone like me who learned basic on a Apple II. The only "problem" these days is picking the entry point. Minecraft is a great pick for a child but not if the kid isn't interested.

What points? He called the GP a liar because he hasn't got a fucking clue what he talking about.

Why is that a bad thing? If I am going to be judged by an algorithm, don't you think I should know what the parameters are? How can I ever rectify a problem parameter if I don't know what it is?

There will always be cheats, you can't eliminate them all you can do is minimise their damage. There comes a point when the efforts to catch cheats outweighs the benefits, the system itself suffers as the rules and parameters expand in an attempt to catch every last petty cheat. The US health system(s) are a prime example, both private and public systems spend an inordinate amount of resources on lawyers and accounts that do nothing except look for ways to deny coverage / payment. It ends up costing the honest players up to 10X what it does in comparable countries such as Australia, but it still hasn't eliminated cheats.