Is the company I work for unusual or is most corporate data this messed up? Every month I see hundred and sometimes thousands of the same errors. [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Nov 4, 2009 - 16 answers

When is an individual most likely to make a serious mistake (say, on the job or at some task involving risk)? I recall research that suggesting a "seven year rule" that after seven years of doing something, one has acquired enough mastery over the job or task or skill that complacence begins to creep in -- and with it, vigilance drops and disaster ensues. Any leads much appreciated.
posted by adamrobinson on Sep 16, 2009 - 13 answers

How do you increase serendipity? [more inside]
posted by parudox on Apr 9, 2009 - 22 answers

Why does ITunes still play my video files but not sync them to my iPod? [more inside]
posted by notchristopher on Apr 5, 2009 - 6 answers

Can anyone point me to literature about conceptual "sign flipping" or "parity errors" and confusion of opposites in humans? [more inside]
posted by rwhe on Apr 4, 2009 - 30 answers

Why does my logrotate.conf file work correctly when logged in as root, but fail when executed as part of cron.daily? [more inside]
posted by your mildly obsessive average geek on Mar 21, 2009 - 17 answers

How can I figure out if my webhost is blocking Google indexing? A site I manage is listed on Google but any references to it are at least several weeks old. More info inside. [more inside]
posted by tropikal on Feb 21, 2009 - 5 answers

YASTAM (yet another speeding ticket) I received a citation for speeding the other day. All of the "driver" information is correct. (Just about) all of the vehicle information is wrong. Are there any outs? [more inside]
posted by those are my balloons on Feb 3, 2009 - 29 answers

What are innovative ideas for healthcare to save money, increase efficiency and improve outcomes? [more inside]
posted by mintchip on Oct 18, 2008 - 14 answers

Commonly misused phrases or expressions? [more inside]
posted by cosmic osmo on Apr 2, 2008 - 165 answers

I can't believe I'm asking this, but oh well.... Okay, I write and troubleshoot a lot of code in classic ASP and have IIS running on my local machine... [more inside]
posted by SoulOnIce on Mar 19, 2008 - 5 answers

HD DVD errors: normal or just us? [more inside]
posted by starman on Feb 10, 2008 - 8 answers

DIRECTV/Fox Broadcasting Error [more inside]
posted by jonson on Nov 5, 2007 - 8 answers

Specifically I'm looking for the tendency, I believe this is correct, for practitioners in a domain (e.g., surgeons, race car drivers, whatever) to become prone to errors after seven (7) years, owing to perceived expertise, complacence, and that this becomes a particularly dangerous time. Any leads GREATLY appreciated!
posted by adamrobinson on Mar 14, 2006 - 2 answers

I run Abyss Webserver, and of late.. sometimes when I try to rename/move/delete any folder within htdocs folder, it doesn't let me to. It says access denied. I try removing the read-only attrib, and it comes back. [more inside]
posted by Devileyezz on Mar 10, 2006 - 1 answer

I'm using BBEdit to type a long weblog entry. I'm deep in the process of writing, so I don't save for a long time (so no lectures). Finally, when I'm nearly done, I save. I get the spinning beachball of death. I sense trouble, so I try to close other open applications via the dock. No go. The first app I try to close hangs the rest of the system. It's been five minutes now and the spinning beachball of death keeps spinning, but nothing else is happening. I can move the cursor, but mouseclicks do nothing. I have a feeling that the computer will stay like this until I power down or until you, my dear fellow mefites, help me to recover my precious writing. [more inside]
posted by jdroth on Sep 11, 2005 - 19 answers

I popped in a Win2000 disk into my Toshiba laptop (600 Mhz Celeron Satellite). Proceeded to reformat into FAT32 and it claimed that the disk has errors and refuses to format. No information lost but I've been looking at harddrives and they're priced at $65 and higher. Specs for the replacement harddrive are [2.5 inch - ATA-100 - 44 pin IDC - 4200 rpm - buffer: 8 MB]. I don't want to pay that kind of money for a relatively worthless computer. What can I do? Thanks in advance.
posted by SeizeTheDay on Aug 8, 2005 - 3 answers

My friend cannot send emails from his .mac address to my .gmail address. We can send emails back and forth routing to/from different addresses, so it's not our accounts individually. Anybody else have this problem?
posted by billysumday on Jan 12, 2005 - 8 answers

Does anyone still get upset about split infinitives? [more inside] [more inside]
posted by reklaw on Oct 10, 2004 - 28 answers

I'm proofreading an OCR file of a 25-year-old book, and after I fixed it up the company (whose history it is) said I had to put back in all the original (non-OCR) mistakes (words spelled wrong, incorrect tenses, text inconsistencies, semicolons used miserably) for copyright reasons. I told them it's their copyright, and they can do whatever they want with it. No, they say, it's a historical record. It's also their money, so I'll do whatever they want . . . but are they right? Are misspelled words and poor punctuation a copyright issue? [more inside]
posted by LeLiLo on Apr 28, 2004 - 19 answers