• (cs)

    Boy, I can summurize all the comments posted here with two words: SPECIFICATIONS and EXPECTATIONS

    Neither was managed on this project.

  • raveman (unregistered)

    did programmers report that the company was cheating goverment? i think they should, since the client was an a-hole and sent bug reports and not feature requests. The story proves that when you act like .... you get treat like a .... Project Leader should not akcept bug reports, since there were not bugs and i would like to see the client go to court and talk how hes cheating the goverment.

  • asifyoucare (unregistered) in reply to [twisti]

    Interesting - at what point does "doing what the customer wants" become "aiding and abetting"?

  • billswift (unregistered) in reply to Fred

    by Fred Does anybody here who is crying "tax fraud" actually know that this is tax fraud?

    No?

    I didn't think so.

    I don't know about the coupons angle, but knowingly charging the incorrect amount of sales tax to a customer, whether or not it is passed along to the state tax men, is against the law, at least in Maryland.

  • DStaal (unregistered) in reply to PhillS

    Because they couldn't buy new ones of the old system when it broke or they expanded. And they were expanding.

    They wanted the old system, but it was no longer avalible, so they asked this guy to make something sufficiantly similar.

  • Anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to asifyoucare
    asifyoucare:
    Interesting - at what point does "doing what the customer wants" become "aiding and abetting"?

    At exactly the point where the customer wants a feature that violates a law. There are cases in which minor violations are sometimes disregarded if either party can be thought not to be (fully) aware of the law in question, but the law tends to be quite clear on these issues.

  • Anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to eric76
    eric76:
    Anonymouse:
    Yes, specifically requesting a feature that calculates incorrect sales tax is highly illegal. In the end whatever sales tax Uncle Sam gets is most likely calculated from the total of taxable sales without all the rounding errors.
    What sales tax does the federal government collect? Has the Fair Tax passed?

    Yes. I wrote that without checking up on the specifics of tax collection in the US. Indeed sales tax is the domain of the state, and Uncle Sam refers to federal government. Most countries don't have that distinction, you know. ;)

  • Rhialto (unregistered)

    The real WTF is (and I never thought I'd write this) that you Americans have to put up with advertised prices which don't match what you have to pay! Over here in Europe (and I suspect in most of the rest of the world) the tax (if any) is always included in the price. In fact, if I were in a shop, saw a cd with a price tag of EUR 10,00, and had to pay EUR 12,00 at the till, it would probably be called fraud. Yet that is exactly what happened the one time I visited the USA... (modulo the currency and the numbers)

  • (cs) in reply to Rhialto
    Rhialto:
    The real WTF is (and I never thought I'd write this) that you Americans have to put up with advertised prices which don't match what you have to pay! Over here in Europe (and I suspect in most of the rest of the world) the tax (if any) is always included in the price. In fact, if I were in a shop, saw a cd with a price tag of EUR 10,00, and had to pay EUR 12,00 at the till, it would probably be called fraud. Yet that is exactly what happened the one time I visited the USA... (modulo the currency and the numbers)

    Oddly enough, there is one thing you can buy in the United States for which the sales tax is pretty much always included in the advertised price: gasoline.

  • Worf (unregistered) in reply to Rhialto
    Rhialto:
    The real WTF is (and I never thought I'd write this) that you Americans have to put up with advertised prices which don't match what you have to pay! Over here in Europe (and I suspect in most of the rest of the world) the tax (if any) is always included in the price. In fact, if I were in a shop, saw a cd with a price tag of EUR 10,00, and had to pay EUR 12,00 at the till, it would probably be called fraud. Yet that is exactly what happened the one time I visited the USA... (modulo the currency and the numbers)

    Yeah, it's slightly strange. It also makes for fun comparisons on prices as we don't realize how much taxes you guys pay. After all, the "Europe Premium" on products we see could just be if you add in the 17% VAT and import duties to the price.

    But the main reason is that taxes vary wildly in North America. While in Europe the sales taxes may be fairly static across the country, the US has state sales taxes plus county or city sales taxes. The result is that you can have 8% tax in one place, then go a bit further along in the same state, and suddenly have 8.9% taxes. Which makes it hard to do anything since you can't advertise prices anymore since they can vary so widely between places in the same state. Repeat across multiple states...

    In Canada, it's a bit easier since the tax rates are nominally static, but the list of goods that are taxed varies between the federal and provincial taxes (so while most are charged both, there are often items charged none, or one or the other). When retailers want to have a promotion, they usually just discount the federal tax...

  • (cs) in reply to ashkelon
    ashkelon:
    When I asked how an actual shelf inventory could ever be less than zero (in effect 10 - 10 = -10), the accounting team told me it was to adjust for a well-known bug in IBM systems which gave a result of 0 for 10 - 10.

    10-10=0 is a bug, huh? Bean counters said that?

    Not all of the bugs in the system were software related...

  • Llama (unregistered)

    Here's a WTF within the WTF:

    "...training programs for these registers..."

    You need to take classes to learn how to use these glorified doorstops?! I thought all you had to do is throw a few punches at it like an old TV!

  • Joe (unregistered) in reply to VGR
    VGR:
    Joe:
    Well-designed user interfaces don't need any training,

    Sorry, but you're absolutely wrong. A well designed user interface is one which achieves its goals. The amount of training required may or may not matter with respect to the goals.

    I'm afraid you're the one who is in the wrong here. This is an unfortunate and tragically widespread fallacy about software, and it's the reason we have so much bad software in the world: programmers learned in school that a functionally correct program is the extent of the assignment, and they go on to believe in a professional environment that functionally correct is all that's required for software to be any good. Thus usability is ignored.

    No, I'm not wrong. And neither are you for that matter. Whether or not a program is functionally correct has nothing to do with how the user interacts with it. An app can meet it's requirements and contain the needed functionality, but if the user has trouble interacting with it then it doesn't meet its potential. To a user, the interface IS the application. You're right about what they teach in school. In my Programming 101 course at school I always included error checking in my C assignments. Then I learned that professors didn't even care about that. They just wanted to make sure we were using getchar() and printf() correctly. It wasn't until senior year in my GUI senior project that a professor began drilling into our heads the importance of error checking for user input.

    VGR:
    Joe:
    In some situations, it's acceptable to have a learning curve to the UI because efficiency is more important to "learnability". That's usually the case in something like a data entry app whereby after a brief training period, the user can enter data quickly. This is as opposed to using a wizard to walk the user through whereby it'd be easier to use the first time, but cumbersome once the user knows what he's doing. Another example would be the use of a graphical calendar users can click on to select a date versus a text box for them to enter one in. In the aforementioned data entry app, it's more efficient to enter the date in a text box than to have to click on a graphical calendar. Even though the calendar is easier to use for the first time because it presents the user with the options, the text box is more efficient for heavier usage and therefor a better control to use for this given need.

    This is a black-and-white fallacy. Most programs which have wizards do not require the use of the wizard. (Programs whose only UI is a wizard are almost universally reviled.) A field which has a graphical calendar usually allows typing in the date directly instead of using the graphical calendar. I don't know what leads you to believe that an intuitive UI cannot be an efficient UI, but it's not the case.

    You're missing my point a little bit. Yes, a good application allows for both quick input (text field) and the graphical input (visual calendar). However, what I'm saying is that one is easier to use whereas the other is more efficient. That doesn't mean you can't have both. Orbitz for example lets you use both and I love it. If I know I want to fly somewhere in a few weeks for a weekend getaway, I don't know the exact dates, I just know it'll be a Friday to Sunday flight. The graphical calendar displays the possible input values which is preferable to me having to go elsewhere to find the exact dates. However, in subsequent visits to the website, it's easier for me to just punch in the dates into the text boxes now that I know what they are. No one said you can't have both. However, in some situations you might want to only use 1 of the 2. Very specific, internal only company applications would be one example of such specificity in the interface design.

    VGR:
    Joe:
    Another situation where "learnability" is not the most important thing would be military hardware. With military hardware, it's expected that during downtime soldiers can train to use the hardware. Also, ease of use is not the most important factor. Efficiency and effectiveness (2 different things) are more important. In the use situations for that kind of hardware, a soldier's life depends on the efficiency and effectiveness of the UI. He can train to interact with the UI with a blindfold on during downtime. But during armed conflict, "it has to work".

    This is unfortunately an established dogma of military customers. It's still not true. Efficiency and intuitiveness are not mutually exclusive at all. Usually keyboard mnemonics and accelerators go a long way toward making something usable by new users and power users alike. Tooltips, used judiciously, also help, and of course actual help screens are for the very new users.

    "Efficiency and intuitiveness are not mutually exclusive at all" Who said they are? I didn't. I said that one can be more important than the other and that that guides the design. As to your point about an interface being conducive to use by power users and new users alike, you're right. An ideal interface shows the possible options to new users, while allowing keyboard shortcuts to power users. Menus are an example of what's called "Instruction Mode". In this mode, the possible inputs are presented to the user. It's assumed the user doesn't know the possible commands, so they're exposed to him.

    VGR:
    Joe:
    Contrast that to a situation where "learnability" is the most important factor, even above efficiency. One example would be a kiosk at an airport to pick up tickets. In that situation, the ability to use the interface without prior training is more important than its efficiency. So what if the user has to click a few extra times? So long as he can use the interface the first time he sees it, then it's a well designed UI. He may never again use that interface. Make it easy to use regardless of any additional steps needed.
    Some people fly a lot. They will get very irritated if they have to go through unnecessary steps (like reading the same mandatory introductory help they've read a hundred times before) each time they get their tickets. A good UI allows the user to not only bypass such a thing, but also to set a preference so that the unwanted text is never seen again, unless later requested explicitly.

    You're right about the bypassing of the help screen. But I never mentioned any kind of mandatory help screens either. Once again, we're not in any disagreement. There are situations such as an airport kiosk where the quick ability to learn the application is far more important than efficiency. I'm not saying you should saddle the interface with garbage. You can't argue that efficiency is more important than learnability in that instance. Now, what to do about repeat users; businessmen who fly frequently? Good question. Once again, the design has to accomodate both. How about if the system knows based on past flight history that the user who just entered his identifying information (credit card, name, etc.) is a frequent flier and presents an appropriate interface? That's one solution.

    I'm not saying that you should throw out one design principle in favor of another. That's foolish. I'm simply acknowledging the reality that in design, you have to accomodate competing and sometimes seemingly mutually exclusive requirements. As such, you sometimes have to decide which is more important than the other.

    VGR:
    Joe:
    Here's another use situation. Hotel room keycards. In that situation, most users will be using the keycard for the first time. Does the strip go in on the left or right? Does it matter if the card's up or down? Do you have to push it in and immediately pull it out? Does it matter? In that situation learnability is the most important factor. However, for a home based keycard system, users would be more tolerant of having to learn exactly which way the card went into the slot because of repeated use. It'd still be important, but less so.

    True, but that isn't an excuse. The designer of the keycards and reader was lax, if the user needs to guess at all. For a push-in-pull-out card reader, an arrow on one end of the card would have done a world of good, especially if it had a slight relief so the user notices it as soon as they hold the card. For a swiping reader, the magnetic strip makes it clear which side is swiped, the card reader should clearly show which way the strip needs to face (and many of them do, I find), and swipe direction usually doesn't matter, since both work.

    I never said it's an excuse. Once again, we don't disagree. When you study Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things, he clearly states that if your door requires text, then the design is a failure. Same goes for something like a card reader. If it requires instructions written on the reader, the interface is inferior. This is especially damaging at a hotel whose customers are foreign travelers who don't speak English well.

    Once again, certain requirements take precedence over others. In the hotel room situation, you're dealing primarily with first time users. Therefore the interface has to be usable upon the first attempt. Contrast this with users of a keycard for home use or commercial use whereby they are repeat, daily users. It matters less if they fumble around their first time. After that, they're all set. That's not an excuse for a bad design however.

    VGR:
    Joe:
    User interaction design is one of my skill sets. It's amazing how much more complicated it is than I ever thought. Statements like yours are made by people ignorant of UI design. That's not a bad thing, which is why I'm trying to correct you.
    I get the feeling you're not as up to speed on UI design as you think you are. Read the User Interface Hall of Shame sometime. It holds up quite well despite its age. Your perceived necessary dichotomy between intuitiveness and expedience will bring down the quality of your software.

    If the Hall of Shame's sibling document tree, the User Interface Hall of Fame, were still taking submissions, I'd nominate the Sheetz Made-To-Order customer touchscreen terminals. Sheetz tends to do business is areas with rather low levels of education, and yet I've never seen anyone have any trouble placing an order. I was blown away the first time I used a terminal. It's completely intuitive and it's very efficient. (The food isn't very healthy, though.)

    "Your perceived necessary dichotomy between intuitiveness and expedience will bring down the quality of your software."

    To clarify, I don't beleive they're exclusive of one another. I strive to accomodate both. I'm simply stating that they are not always of equal importance.

  • david (unregistered)

    Australia: either line item or whole of invoice acceptable: http://www.ato.gov.au/corporate/content.asp?doc=/content/mr200036.htm

    Note also on the same page that the rounding rule was changed -- from a rule that was easy and exact and favoured the taxpayer, to a rule that is almost impossible to get exactly right when using floating point numbers. But there is going to be a couple of cents difference between the two calculation methods, so who's counting?

    Fortunately, as in other tax jurisdictions, they won't prosecute as long as it's reasonable, in good faith, reported accurately, and you aren't pocketing the difference.

  • Anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to Worf
    Worf:
    Yeah, it's slightly strange. It also makes for fun comparisons on prices as we don't realize how much taxes you guys pay. After all, the "Europe Premium" on products we see could just be if you add in the 17% VAT and import duties to the price.

    But the main reason is that taxes vary wildly in North America.

    But that sounds like a very compelling reason to strictly advertise the price including all applicable sales taxes, with the net price printed alongside it for those who are comparing prices or plan to deduct the sales tax.

  • Simon O'Doherty (unregistered)

    I had a similar issue some years back with regards to what the customer wants.

    They had to enter data into a mainframe and the program was written back in the 70's or so. The work involved typing in reports which were nicely written into one field like so..

    435835034954371934054354305625728454356284526345384560...[so on]

    Those numbers above would in fact be 16 or so separate fields. Nothing else on the screen, no prompts, etc.

    So I created the data entry system to perfectly match the form on screen. Entry of the data would be the same and shouldn't be an issue as most data entry people wouldn't look at the screen while typing.

    The people typing the stuff in refused to use it. They had me make the exact same UI as before they would touch it.

  • ashkelon (unregistered) in reply to taodude
    taodude:
    10-10=0 is a bug, huh? Bean counters said that?

    Not all of the bugs in the system were software related...

    No kidding. I had to sit in a meeting once where one of the retail staff asked if they could have a report sorted diffently -- current sortation vs. breaks causing a 1K page report with at most 2 items per page.

    Senior IT staff member sincerely told the retail staff that yes, it was VEY difficult to change the order of items on a report, and no, we would not waste programming effort doing it (we were using syncsort, mind you).

    Retail staff went hurrying back to their department to cut up this weeks' report and paste it back together in the order they needed it.

    When I could control myself I asked why in god's name -- and the same highly paid senior staff person (who told me about the IBM "bug") reminded me that things like sortation "may be easier now on IBM, but we must remember that sortation on HP mainframes (which they had replaced 10 years prior) was much more difficult" and we didn't was the retail staff just asking for "any old thing they could think up".

    The operations staff used to send the same senior staff person cockroaches by interoffice mail. Any wonder?

  • Your.Master (unregistered) in reply to Anonymouse

    In Canada, if I'm in British Columbia and buy from NCIX.com, I pay BC's PST & Federal GST. If I'm in Ontario buying from the same BC-only place, I pay only GST. If I have certain special statuses, I might not pay GST (but if I'm in BC I still need to pay PST; otherwise not).

    There's four prices there, full of a jumble of letters, when some other provinces call PST by another name or combine PST and GST into HST, making the particular letters somewhat unfamiliar to some. Furthermore, this confusion means that coupons either have to print four price reductions or just print the reduction of the pre-tax price.

    Or, alternatively, they could report fewer prices to cut down on immediate confusion and leave the consumer responsible for determining their total price. Hypothetically, they could report any of those prices and a smart person could figure things out. But with the pre-tax price, it's a simple multiplication of a known constant each time rather than messing with division and remultiplication. Besides which, it allows them to report lower prices.

    All that said, in Ontario at least stores have the option of rolling the tax into the price or keeping it separate. The mess gets confusing enough that most stores opt for keeping it separate and reporting the pre-tax price. Those who remain have to weigh the advertising value of "tax included!" or "pay no extra tax" or "we'll pay your tax!" against reporting lower prices, and go either way. After all, here, force of habit leads one to assume that you add tax, and you'll often not read the "pay no extra" part.

    Gas is pretty much always sold tax-inclusive. Some arcade & family centre type places also do this for their "restaurant" and snack bars, presumably to simplify things so kids can buy junk. There's at least one chain shoe store that advertises loudly that they pay the tax for you (in reality it's just rolled into the sticker price), and there are often sales that amount to paying the sticker price without the normally applicable taxes.

  • MasterOfObvious (unregistered) in reply to Anonymouse

    sales tax Uncle Sam gets

    As of 2007, the United States Government does not levy a sales tax for consumer purchases.

  • Willllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll (unregistered)

    In the UK the proper tax calculation is per item. Or at least it was way back in 2004, the last time I was in good old Blighty.

  • anish (unregistered) in reply to Sekon D Liaf

    I completely agree. This article shows why rest of world considers us snobs. Given the limited information in the article we concluded what an idiot the customer is. There may be several reasons why they want to keep the system the same. How can they compare data when the report logic changed? Has anybody thought about the cost of retraining the employees? 1000 employees x $10 x 3 hours = $30000 = lots of money. Not including the overhead of revising processes and mistakes made at Pos. Also regarding tax, multiple items are taxed at different rates. Food has less tax than luxury items. This kind of thinking where one thinks they know better than the customer especially after reading a small article is what creates WTF situations in the first place.

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