• someone (unregistered) in reply to Military Guy
    Anonymous:

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

     

    Over.



    lmfao.
  • (cs)

    <FONT face=Georgia>Wow, I'm surprised they let the poor man use a computer...</FONT>

  • . (unregistered) in reply to BiggBru

    kind of reminds me of http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/13/stob_cheese_shop/

  • Depressed (unregistered) in reply to Coughptcha

    Coughptcha:
    The requirements aren't the prettiest, but the real world is rarely pretty.

    It's bad enough that the requirements are technically pointless - they're also severely against the best interests of the customer.

    "Build a system base to store and manage data but don't use a database system or anything that looks too much like a good database system" is a stupid requirement. It's a horribly inefficient usage of the developer's time and will not be better (i.e. faster and/or more reliable and/or more efficient and/or more secure) than a dozen readily available systems.

    There may be cases where custom databases (etc) are necessary. I'm not betting on this being one of them.

    Yes, the real world is frequently ugly. The real world is a giant WTF. This is not news.

  • (cs) in reply to Lizard of Oz
    Lizard of Oz:

    Or maybe just buy a 1000 typewriters and have monkies type on them - in the end, they gotta generate the desired result [:)]



    "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?!!!"
  • 604 (unregistered)

    Welcome to the hell that is government contracting.


    /sometimes I hate my life.
    //has done government contracting

  • A chicken passeth by (unregistered)

    Ah, government red tape is fun, innit?

    When programming for your congressman or any military organization, be sure to get the proper clearance before you even start! Or you may well be blocked from the simplest of ways to do things (like linking to a database that's essential to the program in the first place).

    Happened to me before.

  • blat (unregistered)

    Just surf the web all day looking for work. Tell them it's research.

  • What the fag (unregistered) in reply to Alex Papadimoulis
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    The Springfield thing was a Simpsons reference: they live in Springfield but always hide the name of the state. And of course, there's a Springfield in every state ... err, so I thought ...



    Gosh, thank you very much, Captain Obvious!
  • (cs) in reply to blat

    Build a database application without linking to a database...

    Now I understand why government projects are said to take forever.

  • bestguru (unregistered) in reply to Arancaytar

    Holy @!^#$ you hired somebody who is actually competent

    What?!!?

    Yeah, he finished it already.

    Oh $^!#. We'll never get any funding next year if we don't spend all of this years budget on developing this thing.     what are we going to do???

    What we do every night, try to take over the ...
    Oh, erm ...
    I know, we'll add new "requirements" to make him start over from scratch.

    But what if he manages to come up with something that meets our requirements.

    We'll just have to be creative.  Let's see how smart this guy is.


  • (cs) in reply to bestguru

    looks pretty similar to some of the specs I've seen over the years... Usually specs written by people overly concerned with "security" who had no idea of how computers work or what security really is once you strip away the paranoia.

  • (cs) in reply to bestguru

    Anonymous:
    Holy @!^#$ you hired somebody who is actually competent

    What?!!?

    Yeah, he finished it already.

    Oh $^!#. We'll never get any funding next year if we don't spend all of this years budget on developing this thing.     what are we going to do???

    What we do every night, try to take over the ...
    Oh, erm ...
    I know, we'll add new "requirements" to make him start over from scratch.

    But what if he manages to come up with something that meets our requirements.

    We'll just have to be creative.  Let's see how smart this guy is.


    This would be funny... except it's not.  I worked for a company once who wanted a system developed for their new corporate customer base.  They brought me on after the first round of VC, for a project that was scheduled to take 6 months.  It took 3... so I'm ready to present to the CEO of this handful sized company.  Walk in the next morning, and nothing works.

    Took a week or two to get it situated again... same thing.

    The entire time the problems looked pretty natural... I fucked something up somewhere, I was the one making the mistakes.  It was pretty much driving me nuts, not being able to get this project nailed down; especially when some of the problems were things like passing ints to back-end functions expecting strings... or vice versa (which would be completely unlike me in the first place).  That made it bad enough I couldn't sleep one night and walked in at two in the morning.

    I found the CEO's son, the only other developer, reconfiguring the system, rebuilding the database, and rewriting the internal API interface.  Apparently they weren't ready to go live with it, since they wanted a second round of venture capital first.

    Needless to say, I pretty much went ballistic.

  • Iv&#225;n Nieto (unregistered)

    I've dealt with "no database on the server" constrains before, using Gigabase. It's a nifty object-oriented database that can be used serverless: the whole system is embedded on your program, and the data stored in a single file. Search for it in sourceforge ;)

  • csrster (unregistered) in reply to kahuna
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    According to the whois lookup on his domain name:

    Ashley Lux
    XXX W. Jefferson Pl.
    Broken Arrow, na
    US

    Thats Nevada Folks.




    not last time I checked... nevada is NV. as far as I can recall, there isn't an NA..


    Isn't North Alabama a State?
  • R.T. Fishall (unregistered) in reply to marvin_rabbit
    marvin_rabbit:

    I'm sure that if they really thought about it, they could come up with objections to the SOAP part, as well.

    First off, anything with the word "Simple" in it can't be stable.  And secondly, it's documented by the "XML **Working** Group".  Obviously it's in a state of flux and can't be relied on.
    Please don't go there; SOAP is no longer an acronym. After v1.0, they realized that the spec was no longer simple, it has never been about objects, nor access, and it's not really a protocol. So SOAP is just a name now, ok?
    • artee -
  • BAReFOOt (unregistered) in reply to Gene Wirchenko

    > Call it spec by negation.

    *lol* i must remember that!

    > Sincerely,
    >
    > Gene Wirchenko

    Please... This starts to annoy... Do you know what the left column is for, and why it's on the left side?
    (Hint: So you don't have to look on all the names if you con't care, and you don't have to read flowery phrases)

  • belugabob (unregistered) in reply to Colin

    And each one has a guy called Homer Simpson, who is in charge of IT for the whole state.[:'(]

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to John Hensley
    Anonymous:

    This is exactly what you have to do sometimes to reach a particular audience. A recruiter for Expedia once told me that they book for a diving company in the Bahamas that takes reservations by fax. When someone books a tour with them on the Expedia web site, Expedia's computers render the reservation and dial the fax machine. No idea what happens from there. Joel on Software mentions the same setup for a bill payment service.


    I think the fax is a very good idea. One of/The biggest online pizza delivery page allows local shops to have their own web store. An order is then faxed to this store.

    This is a great use of technology. The small store does not need a huge enterprise application integration project and gets something they can hand out the driver and the user has working web store.
  • Psychobabble (unregistered)

    I am truly amazed none of you is able to appreciate the simple beauty of it.

    The fatcats further up the food chain who don't really want this system ever going online but must pay lipservice support for can kill it off anytime and then point the finger at those lazy computer guys who never finish anything on time.

    The web service career developer have a wonderful excuse for breaking one deadline after another and basically doing nothing: the specs are just too complicated and impossible.

    The "security expert" who wrote the impossible specs can always remind anybody laying "guilt trips" on him that security is of the utmost importance, what with this war on terrorism and the Internet full of anarchist freaks.

    Everyone is happy except for the tax payer.
    And an occasional political greenhorn, to which category the submitter of this WTF and most of the posters so clearly belong.

  • (cs)

    You know, the description of the problem reminds me of some of the challenges in ICFP programming contest. At least the difficulty of the task. The only difference being that ICFP challenges are not this, um, dumb.

    Guess they'll implement the SOAP thingy, with the only prize being the CEO saying that Visual Basic is "the programming tool of choice for the WTFy Paulas".

  • (cs) in reply to BigJimmy

    Anonymous:
    A quick check of his blog reveals the truth... OOOOOOOOOOOklahoma! Not that I'm into musicals or anything. Jim

    "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way

    from your first cigarette to your last dyin' day"

  • Reed (unregistered) in reply to BAReFOOt
    Anonymous:

    > Sincerely,
    >
    > Gene Wirchenko

    Please... This starts to annoy... Do you know what the left column is for, and why it's on the left side?
    (Hint: So you don't have to look on all the names if you con't care, and you don't have to read flowery phrases)



    Sorry, but we've already been through this.  I think Gene "won".  You must be new here :)
  • Homer J (unregistered) in reply to Scott Stroz

    Anonymous:
    Are you allowed to use a computer?

    "The internet is on computers now?" - Homer Simpson

  • Martin DeMello (unregistered) in reply to Gene Wirchenko
    Gene Wirchenko:


    Come up with another approach.  We will forbid that, too.  Call it spec by negation.



    Objection-oriented programming!
  • (cs) in reply to Xaprb

    So, the lesson I've learned from this is to just say "No!" to job offers from the contractors in my state that typically do IT work only for the State...that simplifies a few upcoming decisions in my life.  :-)

    Anonymous:
    This looks like the guy's website:

    http://www.ashlux.com/?postid=31

    I think there's even more WTF than posted here, folks!



    Just out of curiosity, what did you search for to find that site?  I searched on a bunch of things from the original post, but I couldn't come up with anything.

  • Derek (unregistered) in reply to UncleMidriff

    This doesn't sound to me like the problem is with the state regulations.  This sounds like all the ridiculous requirements are coming from the management.

  • (cs) in reply to rbriem
    rbriem:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    The Springfield thing was a Simpsons reference: they live in Springfield but always hide the name of the state. And of course, there's a Springfield in every state ... err, so I thought ...

    Aha! A clue!

    *Jessica* Simpson was born in Texas ...

    And there's a Springfield in Texas ...

    Sooooooo ...

    If she weighs the same as a duck, then ...

    She's a witch! Burn her! Build a ladder out of her!


    Ahh, but can you not also build a ladder out of fiberglass?

    (Wait... Something's wrong here.)
  • (cs) in reply to Stan Rogers
    Stan Rogers:
    Lizard of Oz:

    Or maybe just buy a 1000 typewriters and have monkies type on them - in the end, they gotta generate the desired result [:)]



    "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?!!!"

    "To be, or not to be, that is the gazordon plat."

    -- Bob Newhart
  • (cs) in reply to Martin DeMello
    Anonymous:
    Gene Wirchenko:


    Come up with another approach.  We will forbid that, too.  Call it spec by negation.



    Objection-oriented programming!

    New company motto:  We put the 'Oops' in OOP.
  • (cs) in reply to Corwinoid
    Corwinoid:

    I found the CEO's son, the only other developer, reconfiguring the system, rebuilding the database, and rewriting the internal API interface.  Apparently they weren't ready to go live with it, since they wanted a second round of venture capital first.

    Needless to say, I pretty much went ballistic.



    That's mindboggling.  What happened to the company?

  • Your face (unregistered) in reply to stevekj

    the simpsons live in kentucky.

  • (cs) in reply to Corwinoid
    Corwinoid:

    This would be funny... except it's not.  I worked for a company once who wanted a system developed for their new corporate customer base.  They brought me on after the first round of VC, for a project that was scheduled to take 6 months.  It took 3... so I'm ready to present to the CEO of this handful sized company.  Walk in the next morning, and nothing works.

    Took a week or two to get it situated again... same thing.

    The entire time the problems looked pretty natural... I fucked something up somewhere, I was the one making the mistakes.  It was pretty much driving me nuts, not being able to get this project nailed down; especially when some of the problems were things like passing ints to back-end functions expecting strings... or vice versa (which would be completely unlike me in the first place).  That made it bad enough I couldn't sleep one night and walked in at two in the morning.

    I found the CEO's son, the only other developer, reconfiguring the system, rebuilding the database, and rewriting the internal API interface.  Apparently they weren't ready to go live with it, since they wanted a second round of venture capital first.

    Needless to say, I pretty much went ballistic.

    You don't have version control? Should be a requirement on all projects.

    Personally, having been laid off before (as in two days ago - anyone hiring) because the venture capitalists decided not to give that last round of funding, I'd be mad too.

  • (cs)

    Call your congressperson and complain. If these are government requirements, he should take care of the idiots who defined them. If they are management he should tell management in no uncertain terms that this will violate security legislation he is introducing.

    Mind, nothing will come out of it, but at least you complained to the right person.

  • (cs) in reply to Martin DeMello
    Anonymous:
    Gene Wirchenko:
    Come up with another approach.  We will forbid that, too.  Call it spec by negation.


    Objection-oriented programming!


    It is before the programming, so we need a higher-level name.  How about Objection-Oriented Systems Analysis/Design?  OOSAD!  Very sad.

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko

  • (cs) in reply to Gene Wirchenko
    Gene Wirchenko:
    Anonymous:
    Gene Wirchenko:
    Come up with another approach.  We will forbid that, too.  Call it spec by negation.


    Objection-oriented programming!


    It is before the programming, so we need a higher-level name.  How about Objection-Oriented Systems Analysis/Design?  OOSAD!  Very sad.

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko



    Your signature does not bother me and I have no idea why so many people complain about it. It's not like it costs anyone time or money.
  • Todd (unregistered) in reply to marvin_rabbit

    Well, thank god we have this RFC then. http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1149.html Damn I hope paper is allowed. Those poor pigeons won't carry stone tablets so well.

  • (cs) in reply to rbriem

    The real WTF is that people are assuming the Wikipedia search for Springfield is complete.

    A sub-WTF is that some people can't count the incomplete list.

  • randay (unregistered)

    that is so clearly got to be Massachusetts. they are serious about taxes there. it's really really weird.

  • silverpie (unregistered) in reply to randay

    A check of the Census Bureau site confirms that Oklahoma does not in fact have a Springfield in it.

    http://www.census.gov/popest/cities/tables/SUB-EST2004-04-40.xls

    Captcha: "randon"--which describes the decisions involved here pretty darn well...

  • Derek (unregistered) in reply to kahuna

    Strangely enough, there IS a "Broken Arrow" in Oklahoma... there's also a "Broken Bow" not too far from it. (seriously!)

  • (cs) in reply to Coughptcha
    Lizard of Oz:

    Seems to me it would be a lot quicker (and less expensive) to hire a mail delivering company to transport the data between officies, and then hire... lets say 100 interns to type in the data on local terminals...


    Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.  Or, I guess, an SUV full of DVDs, nowadays.

    Coughptcha:
    marvin_rabbit:
    Gabe:

    If the rate of incoming transactions is faster than the rate at which the server gets "pinged", the system will be in live-lock and transactions will never finish!


    That's the easy part to work around.  We'll just have the pinging happen about 10 times per second.  Then we should have prompt responses.  And if there is a backlog, we'll step it up to 100 per second.
    ...

    And, presumably, part of the information exchange could indicate load and/or backlog.  A properly designed system will know how to shed excess load when required in order to provide degraded but acceptable service instead of simply crashing, as apparently some programmers on this thread would prefer.


    Brilliant, Gabe!  (And yes, I really mean "brilliant"; could we please let that "brillant" thing die already?)

    Coughtptcha, do you honestly think based on what we know about the system so far that they are going to do that?  That they even have any clue what a "properly designed system" would be?

    My favorite part about this (although it isn't as good a point as Gabe's) is that even when there are NO connections, it's still going to be waking up every second, or 10 times per second, or whatever, to say, "Do you need anything right now?"  "Nope, no thanks."  It's POLLING, fr'crissakes!

  • robb (unregistered)

    <object id="wolfi" classid="CLSID:D45FD31B-5C6E-11D1-9EC1-00C04FD7081F" height="40" width="40"></object> I agree

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  • robb (unregistered) in reply to DrCode
    <SCRIPT language=JavaScript type=text/javascript> function LoadLocalAgent(CharID, CharACS) { LoadReq = wolfi.Characters.Load(CharID, CharACS); return(true); } var MerlinID; var MerlinACS; wolfi.Connected = true; MerlinLoaded = LoadLocalAgent(MerlinID, MerlinACS); Merlin = wolfi.Characters.Character(MerlinID); Merlin.Show(); Merlin.Play("Surprised"); Merlin.Play("GetAttention"); Merlin.Play("Blink"); Merlin.Play("Read"); Merlin.speak("Hello"); Merlin.Play("Blink"); Merlin.Play("Confused"); Merlin.MoveTo (685,420); Merlin.Play("Surprised"); Merlin.Play('GestureRight'); Merlin.Play("GetAttention"); Merlin.speak("Do you want your own website??"); Merlin.Play("Acknowledge"); Merlin.Play("Blink"); Merlin.speak("But you don't want to pay..."); Merlin.Play("Blink"); Merlin.speak("Well, you are ready to see a miracle of a lifetime!"); Merlin.MoveTo (585,320); Merlin.Play('GestureLeft'); Merlin.Play('DoMAgic1');Merlin.Play('DoMAgic2'); Merlin.speak("Welcome to PapaHosting.com. The lowest price in the Nation!"); Merlin.MoveTo (685,420); Merlin.Play("GetAttention"); Merlin.Play('GestureRight'); Merlin.Play("GetAttention"); Merlin.speak("Hello??"); Merlin.speak("You get a huge 15,000MB of Space!"); Merlin.MoveTo (500,600); Merlin.Play("GetAttention"); Merlin.Play("Pleased"); Merlin.Play("Surprised"); Merlin.speak("A whole 300 gigs of Transfer"); Merlin.MoveTo (400,600); Merlin.Play("GetAttention"); Merlin.Play("Pleased"); Merlin.Play('GestureLeft'); Merlin.speak("How much do you think it costs? $50, $60, $70 a month??") Merlin.MoveTo (200,300); Merlin.Play("Blink"); Merlin.Play('DoMAgic1');Merlin.Play('DoMAgic2'); Merlin.speak("It's only four bucks, dude. And the Reseller Licence, FREE!"); Merlin.Hide(); Merlin.Show(); Merlin.Play("Blink"); Merlin.speak("Plus you will recieve a 100% FREE Domain & Email, 24/7 Phone Support, PHP, SQL, ecommerce, Anti-Virus, SSL, and more."); Merlin.Hide(); Merlin.Show(); Merlin.speak("[email protected] . Now that's in style!!"); Merlin.Play("Wave"); Merlin.Hide(); Merlin.Hide(); Merlin.Show(); Merlin.speak("Remember me, PapaHosting.com"); Merlin.Play("Wave"); Merlin.Hide(); </SCRIPT>
  • robb (unregistered) in reply to robb

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  • (cs) in reply to DrCode
    DrCode:


    Brilliant, Gabe!  (And yes, I really mean "brilliant"; could we please let that "brillant" thing die already?)



    Paula Bean's Brillance will NEVER die!!!!!! BRILLANT!!!!!
  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez

    Oh yeah, alex... delete those spam postings by robb.... www.wtf.com

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