• (cs)

    Am I missing something? Surely 'Knowledge Essentials' should just have been a stripped-down version of 'Knowledge' with a new simple UI. (In fact, all you need to do is change the UI really; code the user cannot access does not matter.) If Dave's Company, already with an advanced program, wrote a worse version from scatch, then THAT is TRWTF.

    EDIT: First...sort of

  • (cs) in reply to m0ffx

    Except that the existing product required extensive migration effort for the client that was not required in the lite, yet-to-be-developed version.

  • (cs) in reply to Kelsey Grammar
    Kelsey Grammar:
    "...help Mark and I tell these stories..."

    Me. Help Mark and me tell these stories.

    Sheesh.

    Grammar Nazis. Shit.

  • frits (unregistered) in reply to hoodaticus
    hoodaticus:
    Kelsey Grammar:
    "...help Mark and I tell these stories..."

    Me. Help Mark and me tell these stories.

    Sheesh.

    Grammar Nazis. Shit.

    Discussion over!

  • Not quite Alex (unregistered)

    MORE ARGUMENTS PLEASE!

    They're great fun to read, especially as one or both sides never actually bother reading what the other side says.

    Oh, and I get the feeling a lot more people might submit stories if they weren't so horrifically 'edited' by Alex to exaggerate circumstances or flat out lie about them. And lets not even go into the grammar and spelling mistakes.

    P.S. This is not an attack as such, I do enjoy reading the site, but it is tiresome watching interesting and varied stories being forced into Alex's VERY SPECIFIC writing template. Please could you just let the stories be told in the voice of the teller?

  • (cs) in reply to Not quite Alex
    Not quite Alex:
    MORE ARGUMENTS PLEASE!

    They're great fun to read, especially as one or both sides never actually bother reading what the other side says.

    Nice!

    Not quite Alex:
    Oh, and I get the feeling a lot more people might submit stories if they weren't so horrifically 'edited' by Alex to exaggerate circumstances or flat out lie about them. And lets not even go into the grammar and spelling mistakes.

    P.S. This is not an attack as such, I do enjoy reading the site, but it is tiresome watching interesting and varied stories being forced into Alex's VERY SPECIFIC writing template. Please could you just let the stories be told in the voice of the teller?

    I enjoy this site as well, and I think that part of that is due to the editing. Do you think that the solution may be to get more writing templates involved, besides Alex's? Because they're recruiting.

    To Kelsey Grammar: There's an incomplete sentence in my comment; you may want to comment on that.

  • Worf (unregistered)

    Selling something that doesn't exist is common.

    After all, the largest software make in the world sold their product without actually having it - they bought it after they closed the deal.

    (Microsoft sold MS-DOS to IBM, before they even had DOS. They bought QDOS afterwards.)

  • secundum (unregistered) in reply to Mark Bowytz
    Mark Bowytz:
    frits:
    Meh. Par for the course.

    Oh Yeah? Think that you can do better? Go ahead and tell Alex!

    Ran out of "stories", dincha?

    I bet the new project is to quickly spin up a new company and produce as many WTFs as possible, to backfill material... Better plan than bowytzing sidebar stories, i guess....

  • oppeto (unregistered) in reply to Anonymously Yours
    Anonymously Yours:
    nico:
    Anonymously Yours:
    What the hell? Why did my Jabberwocky post get deleted? If you're going to start randomly enforcing constraints on the comments the least you could do is actually write them down in the policy. You know, so you don't discourage people from feeling like they're pissing away their time if they put any effort into their posts.

    "Coming soon" doesn't exactly tell me what should and should not be in a comment. If your long-term readers get the impression their comments will be deleted on a whim you can expect a lot more "FRIST" quality posts.

    Love when people think they're part of a conspiracy.

    <snip>

    And probably your comment just got lost thanks to the marvellous WTF code that manages comments on this site

    Noticing my comment was deleted (along with 4 others) about 15 minutes after posting it (and reading it, and getting a response to it) is a far cry from calling conspiracy.

    nico:
    You know, Internet is not a democracy. He has all the right of removing any comment he doesn't like for whatever reason from his site, and guess what: he doesn't even have to inform you about it.
    This knee jerk reaction shows you have completely misinterpreted the purpose of my comment. It was a reminder about human nature. When you randomly, silently punish people and give them no indication of what behavior is appropriate, you discourage their participation.

    The Internet is not a democracy is an idiotic slight to make. You realize you're talking to fellow programmers here, right? Regardless, it is obvious Alex wants public participation, indicated by the existence of a Comments section in the first place, and since the Internet is not a tyranny either he can't force people to participate. That means meeting people halfway by making rules, putting them somewhere they can be read, and enforcing them. Nothing kills your membership faster than random arbitration.

    I don't think it's inappropriate to ask that, if I am to be punished, I have some clear guideline to avoid punishment again in the future. Your response is wholly inappropriate and your smug tone is unjustified.

    Captcha: Bene - fitting, in a sense, for this comment.

    --

    Note from Mark: Deleting != Punishment. In general, comments that contribute zero to the conversation get whacked. If you disagree, by all means, REPOST. Common sense rules apply with regards to how a comment's value is judged.

    Oh, Mark!

    We can always count on you for our daily dose of arbitrary pettiness.

    I wish there were an API for receiving notifications of which posts offend Mark's delicate sensibilities and get whacked! I'd use it to generate entropy for my comment-submitting AI!

  • DAN (unregistered) in reply to egg
    egg:
    Why work on a new special project when you could just bring back MFD?

    Fuck you, sir. Fuck you.

  • Mike (unregistered)

    This is all standard operating procedure in the business world. Every company I have worked for has scammed their customers on the front end of projects, and most of the time the product is delivered within the customers' expectations in the end. When it isn't, an apology and rectification is usually sufficient.

  • db (unregistered) in reply to anonymous coward
    anonymous coward:
    Back in the dot com heyday, this kind of stuff was pretty common.

    When my old company was in a time crunch to get software in the hands of customers, they would sent out unburned CDs instead of the latest software in order to get a few more weeks of development time and bug fixes.

    When I got a blank CD in the post as a new release of some plotting software I quietly cancelled the support contract and changed to another vendor. I considered it the last of a string of grave insults I was getting instead of actual support and that complaining was pointless.

  • nulla (unregistered) in reply to No
    No:
    ARGHHHHHHHHHH WHY I DO ALWAYS MISS BEING FIRST!!
    You should launch your own website. There you can be first every time.
  • GVX (unregistered)

    Yeah. I work for a company that does this all the time.

  • (cs) in reply to GVX
    GVX:
    Yeah. I work for a company that does this all the time.

    It's called "Just In Time Delivery".

  • (cs) in reply to TongueInCheek
    TongueInCheek:
    With a bit of snipping....
    Anonymously Yours:
    The Internet is not a democracy is an idiotic slight to make. You realize you're talking to fellow programmers here, right? Regardless, it is obvious Alex wants public participation, indicated by the existence of a Comments section in the first place, and since the Internet is not a tyranny either he can't force people to participate. That means meeting people halfway by making rules, putting them somewhere they can be read, and enforcing them. Nothing kills your membership faster than random arbitration.
    While Alex has a comment section, it is his site, and he has every right to remove comments for any reason. This may include that they contribute nothing to the thread, or that he just doesn't like you, or almost anything else...You dismiss the OP's statement of "The Internet isn't a democracy" by basically agreeing that it isn't - how puzzling? You agree that the admin has ultimate power over THEIR site, yet you still insist you have been unfarily treated??? "Nothing kills membership..." - Seeing as it says 'Unregistered' next to your name, I would suggest you aren't a member.... Further, perhaps the idea IS to drive people away if they post rubbish I have no objection to admins culling 'guest' posts (including my own) with more stringent application of rules than for members. Perhaps if you were a registered member, you would have recieved some notification as to why your post was deleted - but I'm sure you'll agree that when you post anonymously, you would be a little difficult to contact.
    Anonymously Yours:
    ...snip... Your response is wholly inappropriate and your smug tone is unjustified.
    ...snip...

    I don't see any smug tones in the OP's posts (although this one, perhaps) - they merely pointed out that you are complaining that a post you made anonymously was deleted because the site owner didn't like it, and that the owner had every right to do so. Deal with it!!

    You use the word OP alot. I don't think it means what you think it means.

  • James (unregistered)

    So the moral of the story is that your mom was mistaken, and two wrongs (well, two WTFs) really do make a right. I love a happy ending!

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    this story reminded me-again-of several stories i've read where the opposite happened: JUST before making several big sales, someone said "our next system will be better", so the would-be clients decided NOT to buy, and waited for the next system...then they made the SAME mistake AGAIN...and went bankrupt without ever making a single sale... just like this comic: http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-04-21

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