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Admin
What's wrong with $\LaTeX$?
Admin
Absolutely true, but I've worked for plenty of companies that can't grasp that elementary logic.
Supposing you're paying your programmers just $15 per hour. If you can get remotely competent people for less than that, please don't tell my boss. Suppose a programmer asks for a piece of software that costs $500 and, after studying the matter, you conclude that it will only save 1 hour per week. Even in that close-to-worst-case scenario, the software will pay for itself in 9 months.
But companies often just don't see it that way. They just see "extra expense". They figure that they're paying the programmer anyway, so that's a sunk cost and doesn't count, but this additional expense is "real money".
I've had plenty of times when I've had to beg and plead to get tools that cost a few hundred dollars. And often I'd beg and plead and still be told no.
I wonder if other professions go through this. Like, if a delivery man said, "Hey boss, you know, rather than me carrying merchandise all over town on foot, it would really help if the company bought a truck ..." Do they tell him that this is an unacceptable expense and he should just learn to run faster while carrying thousand-pound loads? Tell him that, maybe, they'll consider buying him a little red wagon to carry the stuff around in? Yes, I'm being deliberately ridiculous, but I wonder if there are examples like that in other professions.
Admin
Wow, someone suggests writing documentation in Word rather than on sticky notes pasted to a whiteboard, and the response is to debate whether Word is the best possible tool for the job? If you can't convince the boss to buy a copy of Word, do you think you're going to convince him to buy some fancy tool?
Seriously, I've written plenty of documentation in Word. Is it the best possible tool in a collaborative, fast-moving environment? No? Is it adequate in a typical environment? Yes. At least I've always found it so.
There's an old saying: Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Admin
I don't not believe that.
At my company, for reasons known only to 1 person who will not change the build image, our PCs are set so there's 1 HDD which is 250gb in size. 20gb is given to C: and the rest is unallocated / D:.
Why? "that's all they neeed"
What about when they try to save stuff locally? "they shouldn't."
No, but they do. They're users. They don't always use the network drives. "they shouldn't."
No, I know, but ... they're users. They /do/. Why not just... it's just wasted space???!! "they shouldn't.
Fine, I'll go spend 20 mins deleting profiles and temp files and stuff. "you shouldn't have to"
No, but I do, because of service packs, patches and new software, Windows 7 can't really 'run' on 20gb, not efficiently. "you shouldn't have to"
....
In the end I got the night shift to, where requested, change partition sizes to fill the remaining 230gb of unused space.
Admin
I think many of you are missing the point that this story has been embellished beyond all reason.
This TDWTF once met the original story, albeit very briefly. Then this TDWTF got on a bus and traveled 1,100 miles away from the original story. Then (ahh...!) this TDWTF met another story, settled down, bought a small house and they had many little stories together. Possibly even a poem.
Then, after many years, this TDWTF turned up on these hallowed pages and presented itself to us all. By then, of course, any resemblance to original stories, living or deceased, was only fleeting.
Admin
Yes, but it's still almost always about software.
Admin
At the same time, if he's not willing to invest in a few software licenses to make his staff's lives easier, then I can't imagine he's willing to spend money in other areas. Like benefits and salary, for one.
Admin
If that was where all the information about the game was, then I can understand the crying.
I can only hope he learned his lesson about keeping things backed up and stuff.
Admin
She was apparently fresh out of college. Unfortunately many new grads don't have their bullshit meters properly calibrated.
Admin
Given how non-technical this guy seems, do you really think he'd know what the hell a Wiki is?
Anyways, I'm pretty sure her point was to get the notes/documentation off of the sticky notes and into something digital and readable
Admin
Of course: it's the thing that runs that Internet encyclopedia!
Admin
Even better, Windows has electronic sticky notes - tree-efficient and the best of both worlds!
Even so, I can't seem to break my pre-Vista habit of right-clicking todo.txt into existence on my desktop and using Notepad. I guess I am a bit inflexible.
Admin
Captcha jugis: continual, ceaseless, perennial, constant.
Admin
If there's no competent technical leadership on the team to make that call (and the other far more technical calls that Brad can't / won't), then it doesn't matter because you'll never ship anything anyway.
The issue isn't that Anita didn't organise a wiki - she's a fresh grad - the issue is that no-one did.
Admin
"If you can’t do your job with the tools you have, what kind of a programmer does that make you?”
I believe the answer to that one is "professional"
Admin
LibreOffice, WebIssues and GanttProject, and you're good to go. Total cost: the download time that it takes to drink a cup of coffee.
Admin
Oh, what am I saying. A post complaining about Word (or word processors) was likely to have been written by a monkey banging on a keyboard - or a human who could be mistaken for one.
WordPad is ok for YOU, monkey-boy, some of us actually know what we're doing.
Admin
there are plenty of free programes that will create post it notes on computer. in fact the notes are even yellow to make them look more like post-it notes.
and if post-its were enough for boss (as it seems that's how he organised his thoughs) then wordpad/notepad or whatever simpel text editor would be enough on computer.
furthermore, as others mentioned quite a few good free DMS or bug tracking/idea tracking software (such as the one for launchpad) exist that will make documentation more coherent. and as last option wiki and similar seem like a good option.
there are so many free alternatives out there.
@libre office - to me it seems like MS office 2003 only enhanced. it has many functions of later MS offices but it does things differently. so for peopel that never used MS word 2003 or earlier it might be confusing.
OMG there is no ribbon!!!
Admin
Oh please. Libre Office is a toy. It has tons of useless features, and yet isn't half as useful as the 13 year old MSO 2000. Yet every time someone complains about it, the reply is "shut up because it's free". Genius!
Admin
Admin
Eugh... what the shit is going on at everyone else's jobs? How aren't you roshambo-ing your bosses constantly?
Everywhere I've worked, I've had full rights over my machine, and can install anything for which I have a license (e.g., the free stuff). I will also get a licence purchased for me if I make request for something backed up with a genuine business case.
Hell, we had 2 days where we all split into teams of 4 and had to "make a game" in that time. I asked for some software for that and got it, and that was just for 2 days of messing around... it has never been used since.
I'll smug off now.
Admin
So they where working agile with a kanban board, what is wrong with that?
Admin
The name is the first phase! If you don't have a name how will you know what ti make?!
Admin
I was about to suggest this. Of course, this story is so bizarre it has to be fiction.
...right?
Admin
Possibly... Then again, it might be more likely that they wasn't the newest in M$ shop of horrors they call operating systems.
Admin
You forget that, by virtue of being a boss in the first place, he's supposed to already know that his Post-Its are fucking retarded. He shouldn't need to hire someone to tell him what's in front of his face.
If you're a manager and you don't already know what you need to know, then you shouldn't be a manager, for the same reason that you don't hire developers who don't know how to program, or house painters who don't know how to paint, or line cooks who don't know how to cook.
Admin
I don't think this is a matter of Word being "the good" and other tools being argued to be "the perfect." I think this is a matter of "why buy a $500 chainsaw when what I need is a $2 screwdriver?"
Office is expensive and stubborn. LibreOffice is cheap and stubborn. Notepad is cheap and bare-bones. Wikis are cheap, flexible, and fairly feature-rich. There shouldn't need to be a debate over which solution, if any, is "perfect," when it's immediately apparent that one of the solutions are horrible. Literally any solution other than buying Office will be roughly as functional and hundreds of dollars cheaper. It should be a no-brainer.
Admin
Admin
There is some point of balance between what a manager needs to know (or learn!) vs. what they should hire someone for. A manager who knows too little is an expensive figurehead. If the manager knows too much, their employees will feel like their knowledge is under-utilised because of their boss's micro-management.
Of course, the idea that anyone would need to be told that sticky notes are not an effective communication tool for messages of non-trivial complexity is what makes the story entertaining. The concept applies in many cases, but becomes quite comical at the extreme where the boss is virtually brain-dead and hires people to do all of his thinking for him.
Admin
I went paperless years ago. Nowadays, I write notes directly onto my desk with a pencil. The writing tends to wear off after time, which is also about the same time I no longer need them. Important notes get written near the monitor base or under the keyboard.
Admin
well my reply is going to be that we had no problem editing a 240 page book in writer with pictures, various types of fonts, paragraphs, styles and numbering. it worked quite well. and it was fast. and PDF export feature compressed it really well.
i guess you know the origins of Open and then Libre office, how the original Sun's office was developed in sync with MS office and then later all about the lawsuit against MS when they basically stole its features and didn't implement compatibility as agreed??
anyway i use both. don't see too much difference. especially in writer. i will not complain. if you don't like it. i will just say use what works for you. but then again i started to brush my editing skills with MS wordstar 3.0 and for graphs the quatropro was a standard at that time... so no wonder LO is fine for me :-)
i still remember the complaints people had about ribbon in 2008.
anyway there are also Kingoffice (which lokos like MS office) and Another LO/OO version with a very different interface. forgot what is called but i think it came from IBM's Lotus notes.
Admin
Nice story bro... but I call BS. "Free space" is calculated in clusters, which are groups of sectors. Sectors are typically 512 bytes in size. Clusters of sectors, even on old 5.25 inch floppy disks, were at least 2 sectors in size. On FAT-formatted hard drives, more sectors per cluster are used.
The real WTF is that you claimed 500 bytes. That's less than a sector worth. The FAT file system used by Windows doesn't cater for sub-sector space allocation.
Admin
What the hell's wrong with using Notepad++, or even Notepad or Wordpad if you're really stuck?
Admin
Admin
Admin
Ironically, we currently use a software application called 'Trello' for all our software development project management and bug tracking where I work, which essentially is like a virtual board of sticky notes :O
Admin
Rhode Island software developer here - that's not what happened at all, that's how Schilling spun it in his own head. He blamed the governor for saying publicly that there were solvency issues right when he thought he was on the cusp of a deal that would provide more cash, allowing him to rob Peter to pay Paul. There were issues - the check for the very first payment to the state bounced. The governor mentioned the tentative release date of their big game, and Schilling freaked, thinking this helped his competitors plan against the game.
The real issue was that top management had no idea how to run a company. They bypassed the start-up mode, where everything's on a shoestring, and went right to big company mode where everything's top-shelf and money flows like water. They were completely unrealistic about how hard it is to compete in the video game market, and what the expected returns would be. Their first game sold OK (1.3 mil copies) but weren't able to put any of the earnings from that into future development because they'd already spent it all and then some.
The former governor who had made this deal was an idiot with no idea how capricious the game industry is, all he knew was that he was getting to hang out with a sports star. (BFD.) He's yet to make any statement about his screwup, over a year afterward. He pushed this sweetheard deal through, and left us holding the bag.
The best summary I've read on this (and I've read a lot) is here: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2012/07/38-studios-end-game/print/. It's a fascinating lesson how how not to run a business.
Admin
FTFY. Unfortunately this silly board has no strikethrough tag (HTML doesn't work either) so you'll have to use your imagination.
Admin
Man, that state's been exploding since I left (no connection).
Admin
So we are back at "My girlfriend burned a day at the office because she is incompetent and is now blaming Libre Office for it". Because, you know, LO can do this just fine. Did it just the other day.
But this is typically for people like your girlfriend who seem to be fixated to a specific tool. People used to word complain about missing features in LO which are there, People used to Photoshop claim they have a hard time using Gimp and that it misses features too.
Truth is: People are lazy and can't be bothered to learn something new. It is far more easy to blame the tool than to acknowledge the own slow going and incompetence.
Admin
It has; and fitting the theme of the site, it is the most-WTFy syntax a strikethrough tag can ever have.
Admin
I just arrived a couple months ago; if it's been "exploding" lately I would have loved to have seen it before it did...because it's still a HELLLL of a lot better than where I came from (Pennsylvania)!
Admin
Well there's something that made me chuckle...
Admin
Yes, idiots like this exist outside IT also. Reminds me of two cases in the past in two separate taxi companies.
First genius was too cheap to buy a navigator, insisting that professional driver should know his way around without one. While true in the city itself, customers do go distances exceeding 100km regularly, which gives you one heck of a radius to memorize.
Second biz-wiz figured that having reverse (or front) sensors in taxi is waste of money as driver should be able to estimate distance without such extra tools. Time spent on being super careful while inching out after sending a granny through tight spaces on some apartment complex apparently couldn't have been spent on anything else, like getting new customers? Despite the care, surprisingly scratches and dents did magically appear out of nowhere by themselves, fixing of which surely was also FOC. (No culprit found means nobody found to pay the repairs also)
Then again, first warning should've been seeing cars such as Toyota Avensis or Daewoo^MChevrolet Epica instead of something usable being passed off as a taxi...
captcha: decet. decet and profit!
Admin
well i used to work in a company like that. the CEO which was the guy who supposed to have the money con me to work at his place.
his methodology: "lets sit together around a whiteboard", "i'm the one who will do the talking", "say that you liked my idea".
we were more than 10 guys 1 year ago until he and his partner split up. i took the place his partner was working on, and was the worst mistake I've made. I didn't get paid for 3 months until i get a better job in a non games related industry
eventually he release like 6 games, which none made any money. he still owes me 10 grands, and several more to the other guys who used to work with him because everyone eventually leave him alone and sue him :)(i was the first one)
yeah that's the reality of some entrepreneurs of the game industry
Admin
Pretty much all of the developers in the state knew the employers, just because there were so few back then. Circa 2005ish.
Admin
[color=black;text-decoration:line-through]
Oh my fucking god, you're right. That's purely terrible.
Admin
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Admin
While it sounds like the boss is misguided in his reason for despising Windows, he is still right to do so. Microsoft refuses to abide by UNIX standards, the win32 C API is a mess, and the whole pile of crap is closed source and costly! libreoffice and OpenOffice.Org are far superior to MS Office in every way. Most importantly, they are scriptable in python and several other languages your girlfriend should be familiar with, whereas Office is only scriptable via VBA (which no one outside a padded cell knows). If a feature she wanted was missing, she should have taken the C/C++ source, coded up the feature, recompiled and gone on from there-- half a day at most, and only a one time task. With Office obviously you don't have the source so you are paying to be unable to add custom features... why would anyone do that?
Admin
Thank god there is a software company in the world that isn't run by sperglords.