Feature Articles

Excitement was in the air. It was the turn of the century and the dot-com boom was in full effect. The bubble just kept growing and growing, and it was probably invincible! The consulting company that Chris G. worked for had gotten their largest contract yet — the first they'd ever had in the seven figure range. Their goal? Build a sister site for a major investment bank that would serve news and analysis on the latest in the investment world.

Jared D.'s time at the hardware store's paint department was mostly uneventful. At 16 years old, he worked over the summer to make some extra money before starting his sophomore year of high school. Day in, day out he'd guide customers to rollers, brushes, primers, tapes, and sponges. It wasn't as boring, though, when he got to use the paint machine.

It's time once again to announce a new locale branch: The Daily WTF: Edition Française at fr.TheDailyWTF.com.

A few years ago, Rob Bateman worked as a programming lecturer at Bourenmouth University. Like many instructors, Rob put his notes, assignments, and resources on his webpage, available for all to see. It wasn't anything particularly interesting or exciting, mostly just stuff like this...

In April of 2004, Cleveland, OH became much more awesome. You see, that was the opening day of Notacon, the annual un-conference conference centered around technology, philosophy, and creativity. This year's event - Notacon 5 - will run April 4th thru 6th, and I have the honor of being one of the speakers.

When Chris walked off the platform with a computer science degree in hand, he knew one thing for sure: He'd have to start all over again in the business world. And with a dizzying smorgasbord of technologies and a whole world of concepts never broached in school, Chris knew he'd need guidance from a mentor.

The early 1970's sure were fun. Of course, I'm not quite old enough to know that first hand – and, based on the last reader survey, neither are most of you – but, longtime reader and contributor G.R.G. certainly remembers. You see, by that time, computers were starting to become a novelty.

In the Stargate SG-1 universe, The Replicators are an incredibly formidable AI race. Made up of small, interchangeable blocks that communicate through subspace across the galaxy, replicators can form into just about anything, from crazy little spider robots to androids to entire fricken spaceships. Worse still, the replicators consume virtually everything in their path to create more replicators, and adapt to and integrate any technology they come across. Oh yes, they make the Borg seem like kittens.

Life was good for Jeremy. He'd just landed a good job with interesting coworkers in a nice, newly-remodeled office. His cubicle was at the perfect distance between the elevators, bathroom, and snack machines. His boss respected him, his coworkers wouldn't hesitate to help him, and it was work that he genuinely enjoyed.

When the H.R. director calls to rhetorically ask “can you come to my office for a chat… right now,” the conversation that follows rarely goes well. When one gets that call, goes to the office, and then finds two uniformed officers waiting, that conversation almost certainly never goes well. It sure didn’t for Steve.

In Leon's country, most government institutions are legally obligated to disclose certain data on the internet — their structure, responsibility, public competitions, general announcements, and so on. Leon worked for a company that did government work exclusively, and during a lull in their normal projects, they noticed an unfilled niche — software designed specifically to make sharing of this information easy.

'Maximum Number of Emails Per Hour Has Been Exceeded?' What the hell? The head of Golficionados was not pleased. He called James to get it fixed.

When Russ started at InsuraCorp (as I'll call it), one thing was immediately apparent: There were two classes of programmers. The "rock stars," who were recruited from top universities and given first-class accommodations, like windowed offices with brand new computers and dual 21-inch LCD monitors; and the "dinosaurs," who were cramped in dimly lit cubicles each about the size of a refrigerator box. The dinosaurs were lucky if they had a fully working keyboard for their Windows 98 workstations.

"My company has a historical division between the IT Department and the Web Department," writes D. S. Black. "The IT Department does all the normal 'IT' stuff, while the Web folks mostly do non-technical like designing websites, creating simple databases, and configuring web servers. As a result, we've had a few web administrators who haven't quite been All There when it comes to things like reusable libraries, sensible documentation, and database design."