• ping floyd (unregistered) in reply to Marvin the Martian
    Marvin the Martian:
    Bob:
    something that is less taxing on my patience - lion taming, for example.

    I fear you are making the classic mistake of confusing lions with anteaters.

    Actual lions evoke a lot of emotions, but bored annoyance is not a very common one, or not for long.

    True. I think he'd make a nice chartered accountant!

  • (cs) in reply to Agent R
    Agent R:
    Our CURRENT issue tracker is built on Lotus Notes! This is a Fortune 500 transportation company!

    So, that narrows it down to Ryanair or Greyhound...

  • Just Some Guy (unregistered) in reply to brazzy

    Bugzilla and Trac either support those features out of the box, have readily available modules for free download that handle them, or can be easily altered manually (since they're both Open Source and well written). I'd personally be lobbying to use a system that everyone else is familiar with lest I be trapped into a not-invented-here hellish career.

  • Bobbo (unregistered) in reply to 008
    008:
    oipoistar:
    I bet someone will think that now scanning his comment on a piece of paper and posting that picture here will make a witty comment.

    Damn, forgot to quote.

    I don't even see why there are two buttons, reply and quote. Why would you want to refer to somebody's message but not include the context of the original?

    Why not just have one button that does what 'quote' does?

    Hey Alex, are you listening??

  • Jonathan (unregistered) in reply to LieutenantFrost

    It's ok I will call BS. The filing cabinet room is too elaborate.

  • Bruce W (unregistered) in reply to Bert
    Bert:
    Notes Caution: You have to take enough drugs to deaden the SQL/Relational part of your brain before you design your Notes database. It is a field-based, document database. Trying to implement a relational design will kill any hope of a good Notes application.

    From 1995 to 2002 I worked for a massive company that lived by Notes. Several times we had to correct our HR recruiter and get him to stop saying to candidates, "yeah! If you like working with relational databases you'll love it here because we use Lotus Notes!"

    Actually, I liked Notes for most applications (I avoided Notes development like the plague, though). But I had tell a lot of the True Believers I worked with that not everything is a Notes database.

  • (cs) in reply to wtf
    wtf:
    SenTree:
    PS a 'resistor' is a hardware thing, for you Enterprisey guys ;)
    Well yeah, but the question is what it does! I've never seen resistors do anything, they just all sit there between the other parts and waste the current...
    Resistance is futile! You will be incapacitated!
  • BarbarianHunter (unregistered) in reply to LieutenantFrost

    the date on the handwritten note is 2/3/06 the date on the printout is 2/6/06.

    ergo: shenanigans!

    How did the handwritten note predate the printout it is written on?

  • A Gould (unregistered) in reply to LieutenantFrost
    LieutenantFrost:
    I want to call BS on this. I really do. Unfortunately, I've ran into too many people who do stupid crap like this to not believe it.

    Seeing stuff like this makes me want to change careers to something that is less taxing on my patience - lion taming, for example.

    Possibly air traffic control.

    I can't count the number of times I've seen processes devolve from digital to paper, because people want a physical stack of work to "prove" something got done.

    Of course, eventually someone wants to aggregate stats from the work, so everything gets typed back in anyway...

  • Jakeson (unregistered) in reply to LieutenantFrost
  • Jessica (unregistered) in reply to ping floyd
    ping floyd:
    Marvin the Martian:
    Bob:
    something that is less taxing on my patience - lion taming, for example.

    I fear you are making the classic mistake of confusing lions with anteaters.

    Actual lions evoke a lot of emotions, but bored annoyance is not a very common one, or not for long.

    True. I think he'd make a nice chartered accountant!

    Don't you mean the clbuttic mistake?

  • sewiv (unregistered)

    We unfortunately use Notes here, and I am repeatedly astonished at how bad the UI is. A mail reader that doesn't support "sort by subject" out of the box? F9 for refresh? F5 for logout? If you turn on "new mail" notification, it steals focus to notify you, even stealing it from itself?

    It's like someone who had never used a Windows program or a mail reader designed it.

  • John (unregistered)

    This sparked off a memory from my first job.

    I used to be webmaster for an online web conferencing service for management training and development. We had a simple form people could use to get in contact with us. Name, contact details, that sort of thing - and a big Submit button at the bottom of the form.

    One day, we received a fax copy of the form. Someone had printed out a screenshot of the completed form and faxed it to us rather than click Submit. Best of all, our fax number was nowhere on the website.

    Okay it was 1997 and not everyone was au fait with the Web, but still...

  • DribbleDropper (unregistered) in reply to BarbarianHunter
    BarbarianHunter:
    the date on the handwritten note is 2/3/06 the date on the printout is 2/6/06.

    ergo: shenanigans!

    How did the handwritten note predate the printout it is written on?

    You may want to compare the date on the top and the bottom of the printout, according to which 2006-02-06 == 6/02/2006 which is thus before 2/03/2006 == 2006-03-02.

  • (cs) in reply to A Nonny Mouse
    A Nonny Mouse:
    i'm currently working off a 13 sheet excel project plan. it uses 11 different background colours, one for each resource. i'm pink *twinkle*
    With the wrong plan, you could be much worse off ... you could be white, orange, brown or blue. Goodness knows, you might even be blonde, which I always thought was significantly less macho than pink.

    Good luck on surviving the project, though.

    (Wanders off, singing "Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right...")

  • ianb (unregistered)

    How can you get to bug 5751 without somone noticing....?

  • Navillus (unregistered) in reply to BarbarianHunter

    Because of the way different parts of the worl record date. The computer is probably set to the wrong region. Here in Aust I would write Jan 12th as 12/1/2008 whereas if the computer was set to the US as a region it would be 1/12/2008 - Wow! They are a little ahead of us over there!

  • (cs)

    You guys are missing the simplicity of this design. This provides automatic bug locking right out of the file cabinet. Do you want somebody else being able to say a bug is fixed while you were working on it? Of course not. You can even lock the entire database with just one key. Now that's continence.

  • silent tone (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    sure, laugh at the first paragraph, but i used to work for a company that did that. it was a web development firm, and clients would email the developers directly, and it was up to the developer to find someway to keep track of tasks. and most of us choose some unique method with flagging stuff in outlook.

    the most frustrating thing is that there's no way to track any meaningful metric(like how many work items you're responsible for). i left on vacation for a week which ruined my system. I never quite got control of it afterwards.

    I work at a huge company and my department still uses email tracking. I think I'm the most advanced developer, using an Outlook flagging system. My boss is in no hurry to change because email tracking was an upgrade from taking issues over the phone with the inevitable lying by the users when they want something changed.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to DribbleDropper

    Confused with ISO dates, are we? 2006-04-06 is Feb. 6, 2006; 2/3/06 is Feb. 3, 2006. Last I checked Feb. 3 is before Feb. 6.

  • A Different Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    Confused with ISO dates, are we? 2006-04-06 is Feb. 6, 2006; 2/3/06 is Feb. 3, 2006. Last I checked Feb. 3 is before Feb. 6.
    And if you're from any country other than the USA, 2/3/06 is Mar. 2, 2006, which, last I checked, comes after Feb. 6.
  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    Confused with ISO dates, are we? 2006-04-06 is Feb. 6, 2006; 2/3/06 is Feb. 3, 2006. Last I checked Feb. 3 is before Feb. 6.

    Dates on the thing:

    Created "2006-02-06" Last modified "2006-02-06" Printed "6/02/2006" "Updated" "2/3/06" (Although a little hard to make out, could be 3/3/06?)

    If you use M/D/Y dates (for the two ambiguous dates) then apparently this was written on before it was printed (Printed 2 June, handwritten 3 Feb, created 6 Feb, WTF)

    But using D/M/Y it makes perfect sense. It was created and printed on 6 Feb, then updated on 2 March.

    Actually the fuzzed out URL looks like http://bugzilla.xxx.com.au/ to me (the xxx could be anything) where D/M/Y dates make sense.

  • Bill Hirst (formerly Izzy) (unregistered) in reply to TakeASeatOverThere

    Dumb? Maybe just not paying attention. I wrote a couple checks dated January 3, 1900 even after working on Y2K bugs for a few weeks. The Millenium rolled over in spite of my goof, and the bank just wrote in the correct date.

  • Westley (unregistered) in reply to Codes 4 $
    Codes 4 $:
    I have a buddy mucking about with the notes API to prove he can make a better mail interface than the one that ships. It's painful to watch.

    The 21st century called... They're wondering why your buddy hasn't shown up yet.

    Seriously though. Time to work on something a little more recent... like PowerBuilder.

  • MG (unregistered) in reply to DribbleDropper
    DribbleDropper:
    You may want to compare the date on the top and the bottom of the printout, according to which 2006-02-06 == 6/02/2006 which is thus before 2/03/2006 == 2006-03-02.

    Heh, nice catch. Another WTF within a WTF.

    Captcha: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to sewiv
    sewiv:
    We unfortunately use Notes here, and I am repeatedly astonished at how bad the UI is. A mail reader that doesn't support "sort by subject" out of the box? F9 for refresh? F5 for logout? If you turn on "new mail" notification, it steals focus to notify you, even stealing it from itself?

    It's like someone who had never used a Windows program or a mail reader designed it.

    To be fair, Lotus Notes had their mail client set up with the F5/F9 hotkeys first...

  • Pseudonym (unregistered) in reply to MG
    MG:
    DribbleDropper:
    You may want to compare the date on the top and the bottom of the printout, according to which 2006-02-06 == 6/02/2006 which is thus before 2/03/2006 == 2006-03-02.

    Heh, nice catch. Another WTF within a WTF.

    Captcha: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

    I'm pretty sure that's actually 3/3/06, albeit with terrible handwriting. But I've never known anyone to give a 2 a tail like that (Look closely at the bottom)

  • (cs) in reply to FDF
    FDF:
    You can't build non-crap on top of crap.

    That doesn't stop people trying. I mean look how many "applications" are out there that "require" MS Access. Or worse... A specific (sometimes 5-10 year old) version of MS Access.

  • Byron (unregistered)

    the text of the article is a complete work of fiction, not of my doing.

    here's the real story:

    a different team where i work were dragged kicking and screaming into using an electronic bug tracking system. apparently they "didn't have time" to migrate from their paper based system.

    years later i discovered a bookshelf full of folders, with printouts from bugzilla such as the one i scanned.

    that's really it.

  • ajk (unregistered) in reply to Bert
    Bert:
    On NOTEs. We are using an in-house Notes app for bug tracking. It is a fully indexed, searchable DB with about 20000 documents. It can perform very complicated queries in seconds, including wonderful things like "mouse NEAR scroll". They have implemented an exclusive locking scheme to avoid the concurrent update issue another user mentioned. I am dreading moving to a web-based application because I don't see an easy way to copy/paste screen shots to a web app.

    Notes fat client: Alt+PrntScrn, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V.

    WebApp: Alt+PrntScrn, Run Paint, Ctrl+V, Save the file to disk, exit Paint, Click on Attach, browse for the file, Upload.

    So everybody who reports bugs needs Lotus installed? cough

  • SnowyOwl (unregistered)

    FWIW: Bugzilla team went half-serious on that:

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430508

  • (cs)

    I refuse to believe this. It is not possible. I would find it easier to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

  • Nico (unregistered)

    This is the first time I'm doubting something posted here. I can't believe someone who develops software is able to be so stupid.

  • LKM (unregistered) in reply to Bert
    Bert:
    I am dreading moving to a web-based application because I don't see an easy way to copy/paste screen shots to a web app.

    Notes fat client: Alt+PrntScrn, Alt+Tab, Ctrl+V.

    WebApp: Alt+PrntScrn, Run Paint, Ctrl+V, Save the file to disk, exit Paint, Click on Attach, browse for the file, Upload.

    Try FogBugz. Besides from being extremely simple (and thus suitable for non-programmers), it comes with a cool little Screenshot utility which makes attaching screen shots to issues, or opening new issues with screen shots very simple. You can even crop and mark stuff right within the utility, and it works on Windows and OS X.

  • suls (unregistered) in reply to LieutenantFrost

    no way.. it can't be true.

  • Phil (unregistered)

    In 2006 I was recruited by a company I used to work for. They won a contract to implement this Retirement reform government decided that life assurers must cater for.

    The life assurer in question, had their own Lotus Notes built in-house application. Being greeted with this app you could tell some ancient cobol programmer was assigned to build it(there were many of those folks still around). No dashboard or personalized view. Instead you we greeted with every issue in the company. The process was painful as well.

    I did considerable begging for something more useful <shameless_plug>Jira</shameless_plug>. There was support from most of the developers but the contracting company(at that point they were managing the project before the life assurer took over management) decided to use their tried and tested excel spreadsheet way. I insisted that the 1980's were over, but to no avail.

    I was moved onto back office system with my co-conspirator as we were 2 disruptive elements on that team. As we required a few additional resources the life assurer assigned some other their people to our back office team. One of the requirements was that if there was an error processing requests coming through from the main application to back office was to log there error somewhere for a manual process to resolve it. Various ideas were punted as to how errors were to be reported. But I had an old agenda that needed visiting :-) I suggest that the error is an issue that needs to be resolved perhaps it should be logged into an issue tracking system. They all liked this, and we had a conference call with the people who maintained their Lotus Notes application. The flat answer was NO! Also even if the request was approved to add in such functionality it would take 8 to 10 months to implement(Seems our project was taking up most of the budget for the year and certain IT projects were badly affected and certain people very upset).

    The chap the life assurer had assigned to us, Brendan, was still keen on the idea. Now was the time to reveal the true intent and showed him Jira. He was excited and started pushing from his end to get approval for a license.

    2 months later it was late December and I was finishing up for the evening and I had misfortune of running into PHB(Contracting house big wig who was originally managing the project) in the gents(Appropriate place for him to reside really). So he is being rather jovial and says:

    "Phil, I hear you are still beating this Jira drum!"

    "Yes, excel files cannot be read by Quattro pro 3, so I would like to use something more recent."

    "HAHAHAHAH, tell you what if you get said company to buy a license, I'll buy you a bottle of whisky"

    Not missing a beat : "Fine, a bottle of Suntory Yamazaki 18 year old"

    PHB : "Done"

    3 months or so later, a license was eventually purchased. Oddly enough, with our new PM when she brought issues to developers attention, she would refuse to enter it directly into Jira(meeting rooms had wifi, and she always brought her laptop) complaining she had her M$ project to update and that this was extra overhead. It should be said my motivation at this point was extremely low as this project had turned into a death march. I only was able to use Jira for 3 months before I decided I had, had enough.

    As for the whiskey, the twit only ponied up for the 12 year old...was better than nothing I suppose.

  • (cs) in reply to ExpatEgghead
    ExpatEgghead:
    I refuse to believe this. It is not possible. I would find it easier to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
    You mean you don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?! Heretic!
  • Iceman (unregistered) in reply to Marvin the Martian
    Marvin the Martian:
    Bob:
    something that is less taxing on my patience - lion taming, for example.

    I fear you are making the classic mistake of confusing lions with anteaters.

    Actual lions evoke a lot of emotions, but bored annoyance is not a very common one, or not for long.

    Ever considered a career in chartered accountancy?

  • (cs) in reply to SenTree
    SenTree:
    PS a 'resistor' is a hardware thing, for you Enterprisey guys ;)
    Wow ! Excellent set of responses to a throwaway remark, guys. That's made my day.
  • Dingus B. Uttwipe (unregistered) in reply to Joe Luser
    Joe Luser:
    wtf:
    SenTree:
    PS a 'resistor' is a hardware thing, for you Enterprisey guys ;)
    Well yeah, but the question is what it does! I've never seen resistors do anything, they just all sit there between the other parts and waste the current...
    Resistance is futile! You will be incapacitated!

    I couldn't resist answering...

  • (cs) in reply to oipoistar
    oipoistar:
    I bet someone will think that now scanning his comment on a piece of paper and posting that picture here will make a witty comment.

    and I bet that comment will be featured.

  • (cs)

    The real WTF is that there is an MS-Word file (probably containing screenshots) as testing cases

  • Mania (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    Confused with ISO dates, are we? 2006-04-06 is Feb. 6, 2006; 2/3/06 is Feb. 3, 2006. Last I checked Feb. 3 is before Feb. 6.
    I never did understand middle-endian. It makes the least sense of the lot.
  • (cs) in reply to Joe Luser
    Joe Luser:
    Resistance is futile! You will be incapacitated!
    Straw poll - if assimilation is unavoidable, choose one:

    Seven of Nine, Six of One, Alice Krige, Irish Girl

    Extra points for recognising the middle two without using a search engine.

  • Ivan Alfaro (unregistered)

    Freaking hilarious, please tell me the guy was fired on the spot.

  • (cs) in reply to SenTree
    SenTree:
    TakeASeatOverThere:
    How can anyone in the world be so dumb and not forget to breathe?!
    I've (semi-)seriously considered a test schedule along the lines of: 1. Place DUT on bench. 2. Breath! 3. Connect power cables between DUT and PSU. The RED wire goes to + and the BLACK wire to -. Don't forget to make sure the insulation (that's the plasticky stuff on the outside) is removed from the core (that's the shiny metal bit) at each end of each wire. 4. Breath!

    and so on. Seriously, we make small batches of semi-custom industrial sensors, but the production test department has been de-skilled to the point where the 'technicians' don't even know what a resistor does. Fault-finding consists of randomly changing components and then giving up and throwing it to us in R&D. I could go on...

    PS a 'resistor' is a hardware thing, for you Enterprisey guys ;)

    Breath? Do you mean Breathe? They are different words! Different parts of speech, even.

  • (cs) in reply to A Nonny Mouse
    A Nonny Mouse:
    i'm currently working off a 13 sheet excel project plan. it uses 11 different background colours, one for each resource. i'm pink *twinkle*

    "I don't want to be Mr. Pink!"

  • (cs) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    SenTree:
    TakeASeatOverThere:
    How can anyone in the world be so dumb and not forget to breathe?!
    I've (semi-)seriously considered a test schedule along the lines of: 1. Place DUT on bench. 2. Breath! 3. Connect power cables between DUT and PSU. The RED wire goes to + and the BLACK wire to -. Don't forget to make sure the insulation (that's the plasticky stuff on the outside) is removed from the core (that's the shiny metal bit) at each end of each wire. 4. Breath!

    and so on. Seriously, we make small batches of semi-custom industrial sensors, but the production test department has been de-skilled to the point where the 'technicians' don't even know what a resistor does. Fault-finding consists of randomly changing components and then giving up and throwing it to us in R&D. I could go on...

    PS a 'resistor' is a hardware thing, for you Enterprisey guys ;)

    Breath? Do you mean Breathe? They are different words! Different parts of speech, even.

    That's a total pet peeve of mine. "Breath" vs "breathe". That along with "lose" and "loose".

  • mathew (unregistered) in reply to sewiv
    sewiv:
    We unfortunately use Notes here, and I am repeatedly astonished at how bad the UI is. A mail reader that doesn't support "sort by subject" out of the box? F9 for refresh? F5 for logout? If you turn on "new mail" notification, it steals focus to notify you, even stealing it from itself?

    It's like someone who had never used a Windows program or a mail reader designed it.

    1. Notes Mail supports sort by subject in the default design. You just click on the Subject column. (True in Notes 7 as well as the current Notes 8.)

    2. F9 for Refresh? Exactly the same keystroke as Outlook 2003 you mean? Yeah, how terribly non-standard.

    3. You know that a focus-stealing dialog box is only one of the available options for notifying you of new mail, right? I mean, other mail clients have a focus-stealing dialog option too.

  • (cs) in reply to mathew
    mathew:
    1. Notes Mail supports sort by subject in the default design. You just click on the Subject column. (True in Notes 7 as well as the current Notes 8.)

    1. F9 for Refresh? Exactly the same keystroke as Outlook 2003 you mean? Yeah, how terribly non-standard.

    2. You know that a focus-stealing dialog box is only one of the available options for notifying you of new mail, right? I mean, other mail clients have a focus-stealing dialog option too.

    F9 works in Outlook 2003. I mean, if you have ill-acquired habit of hitting it. Nevertheless, F5 is shown as a shortcut for Refresh in View menu, which means it is a preferred key.

    Don't tell me about sort by subject. In any half-decent email program, the sort would ignore RE:, FW: prefixes, to be useable. I'm glad that in Release 7 it finally works. In older releases, all Re: and Fw: messages were stuck under R and F.

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