The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

DZ-Jay · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

chb:
USPresident.current - 6:
I do hope you're just as reactionary in your daily life. React first, think never, right?

Some of your other work,
"Hey, that's an ugly baby."
"I discovered this force of attraction between masses. It's sort of the reason we don't all just float away from Earth. I'm still working on naming it."

hmmm...
something that makes you stick, non-floating

like gravy.

let's call it, hmmm..

gravy -ty :-)

Hahhaha..... I gotta remember this one! :)

dZ.

DZ-Jay · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

WIldpeaks:
DZ-Jay:
res2:
Anonymous:

What we call "A bridge to far" software.

Does anyone remember the end of that one?

I've always wondered where "far" was...

Isn't "far" in the eye of the beholder?

...or something :)

dZ.

Naw, that's "booty"...

or something. :)

dZ.

You mean "in the eye of the beer holder" [:)]

DZ-Jay · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

WIldpeaks:
DZ-Jay:
res2:
Anonymous:

What we call "A bridge to far" software.

Does anyone remember the end of that one?

I've always wondered where "far" was...

Isn't "far" in the eye of the beholder?

...or something :)

dZ.

You mean "in the eye of the beer holder" [:)]

Naw, that's "booty"...

or something. :)

dZ.

P.S. Damn, I missed the scrollbar. He, he, he.

brazzy · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

MagicalKyle:
OK. Access / SQL Server I can handle (not bad as a quick, basic frontend).

VB6 COM I can handle (legacy business logic that no-one wants to pay to rebuild).

C# / XML I can handle, although why they didn't just rewrite the stuff from the previous step I don't understand.

But a flipping WORD DOCUMENT? That just exceeds the bounds of good taste.

I can't stop shaking, seriously. This is scary...

I agree completely. Actually, I think that's the only WTF part of the story (but a pretty big one). Most people here seem to think that Initech App, Intertrode App and Corporate App #2 do nothing except pass the data and add to the complexity. But as Dylan's post indicates, their actual job is completely abstracted away here when in reality passing on the piece of data is just a small part of what they do.

But application logic in a Word document as part of a backend process - that alone is definitely WTF-worty, and IMO comfirms that the Intertrode people were right: the Initech developers' competence in application development IS comparable to that of monkeys.

2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Okay, just a second. I'm not saying this approach is glamorous, but did anyone here bashing stop to think for a second that maybe, just maybe there was a reason why things had to be done this way?

Like missing or stolen source code at various times along the way, for example.

I have had to create such crappy solutions before because of similar problems. We can all say that they should throw it out and start over, but the sad truth is that rarely are IT budgets so large that you can recreate enterprise applications every couple of years for the new wiz-bang technologies.

I mean, if you see VB6 lying anywhere along a chain, it's probably an old system, one where source code is probably missing, and one that's too costly to replace...

This is the real world people. Top on top of patch is the way things work, and we have to work in them, despite what we might want to do "if it was our company".

KenW · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

dubwai:
KenW:
The actual "serious" database, written to by the Java app, contained a single table. That table contained a single column, which was a VARCHAR2(2048) or some such nonsense; the same data returned to the Delphi app was written in a single row in this table.

Slow down. Are you suggesting that you can have more than one table with more than one column? Is that even a good idea?

The app used two separate Oracle databases. One (the one used by the Delphi app) had a single table with a single column. The other, used by the Java tier, was somewhat normalized; it was used only for reporting.

2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Rube Goldberg would be proud! 8-|

dubwai · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

emptyset:

and that's precisely how this relates to the WTF. we can't ignore that some great (expensive) intellectual effort was undertaken to produce two big applications that do nothing more than shift data around. an agreement was made to pay more people more money to develop this system than if they had taken a more direct route. and this is a system that almost worked. now, imagine this happening in various stages all over the industry, and imagine all the systems that get abandoned or replaced. nothing is being done on a grand scale! it's awesome!

my claim is that this doesn't really matter. the important thing is that those people got paid and then used that money to consume.

I would rack this one up to being ripped-off. It's like buying a Jaguar in the 80's or 90's. It costs a lot more and breaks down more than a decent economy car but you still feel like you go your money's worth because it comes with a bunch of unecessary crap.

christoofar · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
emptyset:

but see, this is the underlying problem in today's WTF. Y gets the girders from Z, who just pulled them out of big boxes. software is a lot like this. lots of things appear to be happening, but the reality is that several people are being paid to just turn around and consume things.

This is not news. Probably 80% of workers nowadays don't produce anything of physical value, just abstract services. There's just so much efficiency that there's no reason for everybody to concentrate on converting basic materials into consumable goods. A few people take care of the basic stuff and the rest can earn their pay by doing useless stuff like being sports therapists, dog psychiatrists or PHP programmers.

This is quite true. Most people who live in New York are working in areas that don't actually produce anything of physical value... but instead, they help mediate the price of things that have a percieved value.

If you're wondering what I'm talking about... it's financial instruments and commodities.

Otis Mukinfus · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

Sales info->Custom Databases->Flatfiles->Network->DB2 Database->Flatfiles->Network->Server->Parsing Process->Informix Database->Perl Scripts->Flatfiles->Automated Email to Customer->Parsing Process->Database->Customer's custom requests system->Customer.

A truely multi-tiered (distributed) application [8-|]

2005-08-25 Reply Admin

I don't think it's entirely far to start making WinDoze(TM) type comments when the problem is clearly a case of a simple task getting out of control.

I've seen the same level of idiocy in (almost) entirely *x systems: no technology is immune to abuse or mis-use by the truly determined...

dubwai · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

christoofar:

This is quite true. Most people who live in New York are working in areas that don't actually produce anything of physical value... but instead, they help mediate the price of things that have a percieved value.

If you're wondering what I'm talking about... it's financial instruments and commodities.

What's 'physical value' as opposed to 'perceived value'?

foxyshadis · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Just today, I dug up the "Little button that could" story from thedailywtf archives. I thought that was just the *perfect* example of How to Do Things in Modern Windows Way(tm).

But now here is definitely something that *truly* does things in The Modern Windows Way(tm).

Now, excuse me, I think I'll stick to working with these proto-ancient *nix things. I just hope I am allowed, one day, to approach one of these Modern Windows Coders and explain to them what exactly a pipe does in *nixes. Or that even Windows has some facilities that actually allow to move data from one thing to another without systematically screwing the data through dozen different APIs. In one way.

I've seen some integrations existing only as cron jobs that call a few bash scripts (separated by 5-10 minutes to make sure they don't overlap), stuffed with sed, awk, grep, inline perl, and netcat, piped to hell and back, cleartext passwords, multiple coding styles, useless comments, grandfathered-in bugs, calls to other scripts, ancient executables with long-lost source, bizarre filesystem mappings and dependancies, have to run as root, and generally cause the server to hang near 100% for a few minutes.

I could have submitted a disk image of this server and won the dailywtf award.

They could have skipped a whole step if the required XML was typed by secretaries right into the word document. Imagine how much more efficient it would be! ... Sadly, it might be.

christoofar · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

dubwai:
christoofar:

This is quite true. Most people who live in New York are working in areas that don't actually produce anything of physical value... but instead, they help mediate the price of things that have a percieved value.

If you're wondering what I'm talking about... it's financial instruments and commodities.

What's 'physical value' as opposed to 'perceived value'?

Physical value would be producing something tangible that is physically there that has a value, such as a car. Percieved value, such as a stock (which is intangible) is something that is more of an "idea" than something real.

A stock is just a claim of ownership of a company, you really don't have any of the company's assets. Even if you get a stock certificate, that isn't real either--it's just proof of your claim to a share of the company.

That's different than value fluxuation, which is influenced by supply/demand or is fixed. Tons of New Yorkers do nothing but work in the business of trading these types of assets around (in a stock market--commission) and selling them to buyers (brokering, which also has commissions) and determining their worth (analysis--which you have to pay to see) and offering advice (again, more commissions).

Mung Kee · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
I don't think it's entirely far to start making WinDoze(TM) type comments when the problem is clearly a case of a simple task getting out of control.

I've seen the same level of idiocy in (almost) entirely *x systems: no technology is immune to abuse or mis-use by the truly determined...

It's not "far" or even "fair".

Mung Kee · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

christoofar:
dubwai:
christoofar:

This is quite true. Most people who live in New York are working in areas that don't actually produce anything of physical value... but instead, they help mediate the price of things that have a percieved value.

If you're wondering what I'm talking about... it's financial instruments and commodities.

What's 'physical value' as opposed to 'perceived value'?

Physical value would be producing something tangible that is physically there that has a value, such as a car. Percieved value, such as a stock (which is intangible) is something that is more of an "idea" than something real.

A stock is just a claim of ownership of a company, you really don't have any of the company's assets. Even if you get a stock certificate, that isn't real either--it's just proof of your claim to a share of the company.

That's different than value fluxuation, which is influenced by supply/demand or is fixed. Tons of New Yorkers do nothing but work in the business of trading these types of assets around (in a stock market--commission) and selling them to buyers (brokering, which also has commissions) and determining their worth (analysis--which you have to pay to see) and offering advice (again, more commissions).

I would tend to agree with dubwai on this. There is no such thing as physical value, especially with cars, since they among the most negotiable items you can buy. They're worth whatever you can get someone to pay for them. You might argue that the physical value is the cost of production but this certainly doesn't exist at the consumer level. Even a "dollar store" doesn't have physical values. One consumer walks right by a product that he/she deems a ripoff, while another thinks it's a good deal and buys it.

dubwai · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

christoofar:
dubwai:

christoofar:

This is quite true. Most people who live in New York are working in areas that don't actually produce anything of physical value... but instead, they help mediate the price of things that have a percieved value.

If you're wondering what I'm talking about... it's financial instruments and commodities.

What's 'physical value' as opposed to 'perceived value'?

Physical value would be producing something tangible that is physically there that has a value, such as a car. Percieved value, such as a stock (which is intangible) is something that is more of an "idea" than something real.

A stock is just a claim of ownership of a company, you really don't have any of the company's assets. Even if you get a stock certificate, that isn't real either--it's just proof of your claim to a share of the company.

That's different than value fluxuation, which is influenced by supply/demand or is fixed. Tons of New Yorkers do nothing but work in the business of trading these types of assets around (in a stock market--commission) and selling them to buyers (brokering, which also has commissions) and determining their worth (analysis--which you have to pay to see) and offering advice (again, more commissions).

But what value of something physical or not is completely determined by our perception. Why are diamonds more valuable than quartz? It's because we assign value to them. There's nothing inherently valuable about anything, whether it is a concrete object or not.

Financial services workers are in the information business. Really, we are too. Software really isn't a physical Object.

dubwai · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Mung Kee:
I would tend to agree with dubwai on this. There is no such thing as physical value, especially with cars, since they among the most negotiable items you can buy. They're worth whatever you can get someone to pay for them.

Good example. Even more elucidating is that the moment you drive a new car off the lot, it's value decreases drastically. This decrease has nothing to do with any phyisical change to the car. It's purely because it becomes 'used' or 'pre-owned'.

emptyset · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

dubwai:
But what value of something physical or not is completely determined by our perception. Why are diamonds more valuable than quartz? It's because we assign value to them. There's nothing inherently valuable about anything, whether it is a concrete object or not.

this is why libertarians will lose. i had loads of fun flaming a libertarian on the newsgroups one month. he was convinced silver had 'intrinsic value'. i imagined him sitting at home in front of his fireplace, with a beagle at his feet, a rifle across his lap, dressed up entirely in civil war regalia humming dixie and surrounded by bullion.

see, the way i see it, prices aren't set because that's what the consumer is willing to pay. the consumer doesn't have a choice in the matter. it's all about forcing/brainwashing somebody into paying a premium, or better yet, just blindly giving money away in exchange for no goods/services.

it's just one big interconnected system of cartels. to keep it (lightly) on-topic, since you guys have much <3 for oracle, that's a pretty good example.

christoofar · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

You may be confusing how much the value is with what the value is tied to, or even what kind of value (emotional, economic, etc). I could be more explicit and just say "value attributed with a physical object" vs. "value associated with an abstract concept" to be clearer.

The car still has a real value. It was produced at N cost and sold at Y price and can be resold at Z price, and of course when you say "the car is worth $B", B refers to Z.

The PRICE at which you can get it for had you sold it changes constantly. Same as a stock, except that you are placing value on something which physically doesn't exist anywhere, so it has 0 cost and a fixed initial (the IPO) price.

Brokerages and exchanges make money by siphening off dollars from the transactions of buying and selling stock, and offering "phantom" services tied to that practice (again, more intangibles). The stock itself represents the capital in the company, which does exist... so you could determine a "real value" by looking at the balance sheet, subtracting liabilities from the company's assets, then dividing that by the number of shares that exist. However, the exchange price reflects how much people feel that one particular unit stock is worth at any given time.

Have we strayed off-topic too far now? :-)

2005-08-25 Reply Admin

That sounds like one confused libertarian to me. If anything libertarianism absolutely denies the intrinsic value of goods. If someone can sell a random chunk of granite to people for $5000 then so be it because that is what the market supports. If on the other hand, people view a particular brand of cars as untrustworthy or unreliable and refuse to buy them if they are priced more than $15000 then so be it, the car is worth less than $15000 no matter how much time, effort, and raw materials went into making it. In a purely capitalist economy, a cornerstone of libertarianism, things are worth whatever the market says they are worth.

Mung Kee · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

christoofar:

Have we strayed off-topic too far now? :-)

I think so, but I think we've already beat this architecture <the original WTF> into submission.

Walloon · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Is this some new kind of multi-tiered architecture??? Rube Goldberg would have been proud! That must be what happens when you let people with MBA's and computer science degree start messing with computers.

dubwai · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

christoofar:
You may be confusing how much the value is with what the value is tied to, or even what kind of value (emotional, economic, etc). I could be more explicit and just say "value attributed with a physical object" vs. "value associated with an abstract concept" to be clearer.

The car still has a real value. It was produced at N cost and sold at Y price and can be resold at Z price, and of course when you say "the car is worth $B", B refers to Z.

How is that different than Saying the broker executed X actions at a rate of Y which a consumer paid Z price?

If no one wants a car, it's price drops to 0. Actually a car's price can drop below 0 i.e. you have to pay someone to take it away. The fact that the car is tangible has no bearing on whether it has a real value. If there were no conscous beings to determine the value of an Object, it has no value. Value is all in our heads. A prefect example is information. Information is extremely valuable. What's more valuable: a can of coke or the secret formula? Is the can of coke's value more 'real'?

christoofar:

The PRICE at which you can get it for had you sold it changes constantly. Same as a stock, except that you are placing value on something which physically doesn't exist anywhere, so it has 0 cost and a fixed initial (the IPO) price.

That's a pretty confused view of what a stock represents. A stock is a portion of ownership in a company. Hopefully that company exists and generally the cost to create that company is greater than 0.

christoofar:

Brokerages and exchanges make money by siphening off dollars from the transactions of buying and selling stock, and offering "phantom" services tied to that practice (again, more intangibles). The stock itself represents the capital in the company, which does exist... so you could determine a "real value" by looking at the balance sheet, subtracting liabilities from the company's assets, then dividing that by the number of shares that exist. However, the exchange price reflects how much people feel that one particular unit stock is worth at any given time.

I don't see what your point is. Let's say I buy a plane for $100,000. My cousin goes in with a friend and they buy a plane for $200,000. Somewhere, there is a contract that says he owns half of the plane that he paid $100,000 for. Is his ownership less real than mine? If not, how is that different from a stock?

Brokerages are providing a service. They make execute the trade that you are not able or willing to make yourself. Their customers are willing to pay a price that represents the minimum value that they associate with the service. If the buyer of these services did not feel the service was worth the price they paid, they would (if rational) not pay it. If that weren't true, brokerages could charge any price they like.

redwards · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

christoofar:
I could be more explicit and just say "value attributed with a physical object" vs. "value associated with an abstract concept" to be clearer.

What's the real difference? They are both largely arbitrary.

christoofar:
Brokerages and exchanges make money by siphening off dollars from the transactions of buying and selling stock, and offering "phantom" services tied to that practice (again, more intangibles). The stock itself represents the capital in the company, which does exist... so you could determine a "real value" by looking at the balance sheet, subtracting liabilities from the company's assets, then dividing that by the number of shares that exist. However, the exchange price reflects how much people feel that one particular unit stock is worth at any given time.

Seems like you're agreeing but have yet to realize it. The price of anything reflects how much (or many) people are willing to pay. This explains why my fiance's Louis Vuitton (the one I plan to shit in as soon as I get a chance) costs over $1k more than our pure leather couch.

christoofar:
Have we strayed off-topic too far now? :-)

Jes! Keep this to a low whisper. This whole thing works because an overwhelming majority of people really believe a 1,300 sq. ft. house in So Cal is worth as much as a 4,000 sq. ft. house in Texas (I threw up in my mouth when I found this out).

By the way, anyone in the market for a 1,300 sq. ft. house?

brazzy · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
That sounds like one confused libertarian to me.

Is there any other kind? :)

Actually, it's not completely wrong. Percieved value is determined by supply and demand. With paper money, both supply and demand are non-intrinsic, and on the supply side the government uses this to influence the economy. Libertarians hate governments, so paper money is bad.

OTOH, gold has an intrinsically limited supply - thus its value is at least "half intrinsic". Of course that means nothing as long as the demand is non-intrinsic.

ammoQ · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

dubwai:
A prefect example is information. Information is extremely valuable. What's more valuable: a can of coke or the secret formula? Is the can of coke's value more 'real'?

The value of "Coca Cola" is not the formula, it's the brand. Let imagine you secretely buy 1000 bottles of Coke and transfill them into bottles labeled
"D&A's Real Cola". Of course this cola is made from the original secret recipe, but it's unlikely you can sell "D&A" for a better price than any other no-name soft drink. On the other hand, if you have a recipe that tastes like Coke, and fill it into well faked "Coke" bottles, you could sell it (that is, until they catch you) for the price of real Coke - no matter if your recipe is identical to Coke's or not.

Mike R · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

dubwai:
But what value of something physical or not is completely determined by our perception. Why are diamonds more valuable than quartz? It's because we assign value to them. There's nothing inherently valuable about anything, whether it is a concrete object or not.

Financial services workers are in the information business. Really, we are too. Software really isn't a physical Object.

That reminds me of how stupid the automobile business is: Which car sells for less:

A car owned by Joe Sixpak that has sat in a garage for a year and only has 10 miles on it.

or

A car owned by a dealership that has sat on the lot for a year, but has not yet sold and has 10 miles on it from test drives.

Mike R · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

dubwai:
Good example. Even more elucidating is that the moment you drive a new car off the lot, it's value decreases drastically. This decrease has nothing to do with any phyisical change to the car. It's purely because it becomes 'used' or 'pre-owned'.

punched quote on the one message, read above.. haha

brazzy · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

christoofar:
Anonymous:

This is not news. Probably 80% of workers nowadays don't produce anything of physical value, just abstract services. There's just so much efficiency that there's no reason for everybody to concentrate on converting basic materials into consumable goods. A few people take care of the basic stuff and the rest can earn their pay by doing useless stuff like being sports therapists, dog psychiatrists or PHP programmers.

This is quite true. Most people who live in New York are working in areas that don't actually produce anything of physical value... but instead, they help mediate the price of things that have a percieved value.

If you're wondering what I'm talking about... it's financial instruments and commodities.

You're both wrong. Neither sports therapy nor stock brokerage is "useless" or has an "imagined value". One improves the health, happiness, and thus the productivity of people... some of whom produce physical goods. The other determines the allocation of resources towards producing physical goods. Basically, the point of the whole stock market is to steer the economy towards producing things according to demand (= half of "value"), and being able to change production as demand changes.

You're right in that productivity is so high that relatively few people can produce everything that everyone needs. But exactly because of that high productivity, it's more and more important to make sure that the right stuff is being produced and that people stay happy and healthy and don't disrupt this relatively delicate high-productivity production environment. This makes sense economically - and apart from that: what's more important, people's happiness or economical efficiency?

Mike R · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

redwards:
By the way, anyone in the market for a 1,300 sq. ft. house?

Heh. My apartment is bigger... sure, I don't have equity in it, but I pay significantly less per month than I would on that house!

tiro · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

So do you work for Initech or Intertrode? Either way, good job with the diagram!

On a related note, it took until page 3 for the first attempted WTF justification! That's how you know it must be bad.

Anonymous:
Okay, just a second. I'm not saying this approach is glamorous, but did anyone here bashing stop to think for a second that maybe, just maybe there was a reason why things had to be done this way?

Like missing or stolen source code at various times along the way, for example.

I have had to create such crappy solutions before because of similar problems. We can all say that they should throw it out and start over, but the sad truth is that rarely are IT budgets so large that you can recreate enterprise applications every couple of years for the new wiz-bang technologies.

I mean, if you see VB6 lying anywhere along a chain, it's probably an old system, one where source code is probably missing, and one that's too costly to replace...

This is the real world people. Top on top of patch is the way things work, and we have to work in them, despite what we might want to do "if it was our company".

2005-08-25 Reply Admin

The value of something depends on how well it fills a need, based on <a rel="nofollow" href=""http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs"" target="_blank" title=""http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs"">Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Different products/services fulfill different needs, and the more important that need, the more we're willing to pay. So if you were on a desert island, you'd pay anything to get some food and water. The "Executive Services Plan" of a credit card company won't interest you so much. But if you have all the food you can eat (like most of us do), you're going to focus on higher-level needs like social interaction and self-esteem. In which case some premium service might float your boat (i.e. fulfill some need). So the more modern an economy is, the more important perception is, since basic, intrinsic needs like food and shelter are already taken care of.

--Daniel T

p.s. This reminds me of an article I read a while back about some people in Los Angeles giving homeless people makeovers, presumably to boost their self-esteem.

John Smallberries · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

redwards:
This whole thing works because an overwhelming majority of people really believe a 1,300 sq. ft. house in So Cal is worth as much as a 4,000 sq. ft. house in Texas (I threw up in my mouth when I found this out).
By the way, anyone in the market for a 1,300 sq. ft. house?

By the way, anyone wanna live in Texas in any size house?

dubwai · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

John Smallberries:
redwards:
This whole thing works because an overwhelming majority of people really believe a 1,300 sq. ft. house in So Cal is worth as much as a 4,000 sq. ft. house in Texas (I threw up in my mouth when I found this out).
By the way, anyone in the market for a 1,300 sq. ft. house?

By the way, anyone wanna live in Texas in any size house?

So you can ride your mountain bike around your yard?

christoofar · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

John Smallberries:
redwards:
This whole thing works because an overwhelming majority of people really believe a 1,300 sq. ft. house in So Cal is worth as much as a 4,000 sq. ft. house in Texas (I threw up in my mouth when I found this out).
By the way, anyone in the market for a 1,300 sq. ft. house?

By the way, anyone wanna live in Texas in any size house?

Hmm I did. The price was nice, but driving 2 hours just to go ANYWHERE interesting was a real put-off. That's what you get when you live in a state larger than the size of France.

redwards · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

dubwai:
So you can ride your mountain bike around your yard?

I believe you mean "yer"* yard.

*not sure of the exact spelling.

Mike R · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

John Smallberries:

By the way, anyone wanna live in Texas in any size house?

Why would anyone want to live in So Cal in any size house? I've been there and I'm not impressed.

redwards · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Mike R:

Why would anyone want to live in So Cal in any size house? I've been there and I'm not impressed.

So...what are you saying? You don't wanna buy it?

Richard Nixon · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
That sounds like one confused libertarian to me. If anything libertarianism absolutely denies the intrinsic value of goods. If someone can sell a random chunk of granite to people for $5000 then so be it because that is what the market supports. If on the other hand, people view a particular brand of cars as untrustworthy or unreliable and refuse to buy them if they are priced more than $15000 then so be it, the car is worth less than $15000 no matter how much time, effort, and raw materials went into making it. In a purely capitalist economy, a cornerstone of libertarianism, things are worth whatever the market says they are worth.

Keep in mind that you're getting the libertarian's argument from the guy on the other side of the argument and previously mentioned guy is still discussing that argument.

Furthermore, this is very similar to when someone tries to tell me about a game they played and how cool it was when they shot the other guy or some such nonsense. Sure, it might have been fun at the time for that player but hearing about it is incredibly boring and uninteresting to me and raises a few red flags in my mind about the person who feels the need to discuss such exploits.

christoofar · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

tiro:
So do you work for Initech or Intertrode? Either way, good job with the diagram!

On a related note, it took until page 3 for the first attempted WTF justification! That's how you know it must be bad.

Anonymous:
Okay, just a second. I'm not saying this approach is glamorous, but did anyone here bashing stop to think for a second that maybe, just maybe there was a reason why things had to be done this way?

Like missing or stolen source code at various times along the way, for example.

I have had to create such crappy solutions before because of similar problems. We can all say that they should throw it out and start over, but the sad truth is that rarely are IT budgets so large that you can recreate enterprise applications every couple of years for the new wiz-bang technologies.

I mean, if you see VB6 lying anywhere along a chain, it's probably an old system, one where source code is probably missing, and one that's too costly to replace...

This is the real world people. Top on top of patch is the way things work, and we have to work in them, despite what we might want to do "if it was our company".

This is an old and very tired justification you hear from the business management involved in just WTFery. These same idiots (most likely) ever compiled the TCO for the new WTF solution they created versus scrapping out the solution and going to an elegant one, they are only focused on the up-front costs of the new one.

This solution will persist until one or more of the following events occur:

a) The business can no longer find support when this integration fails (and this one probably fails daily, judging from how f***'d up it is and job titles such as "Integration Analyst"), causing outages that may (negatively) affect revenue.
b) The system starts producing incorrect, unreliable results and/or munges data in a way that users cannot workaround
c) The business can no longer keep personnel handy to keep this solution working (they keep quitting, or applicants keep passing up the job in favor of career-building work instead of WTFery)
d) Quick-N-Dirty changes to the system become impossible to make, or require the hiring of more QA people to vet out bugs (eating into that cost savings by not rewriting the system)
e) Regulatary changes occur which force the business to use a different solution

I usually find (d) will usually cause a system like this to be scrapped most of the time, and almost certainly a combination of (a) (b) and (c) will do it after a long enough time period. However, after the system is discarded, sometimes the business will just go back to doing things manually.

christoofar · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

dammit, the "edit" button doesn't work on this site. arg!

This is an old and very tired justification you hear from the business management involved in this WTFery. These same idiots (most likely) never compiled the TCO for the new WTF solution they created versus scrapping out the solution and going to an elegant one, they are only focused on the up-front costs of the new one.

Mike R · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

redwards:
Mike R:

Why would anyone want to live in So Cal in any size house? I've been there and I'm not impressed.

So...what are you saying? You don't wanna buy it?

No. Its overpriced.

2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
where's ASP/ASP.net, J#, Excel, Powerpoint? You have to complete the happy MS family picture!

Oh, that picutre isn't complete until you can fit Front Page in.

ok
dpm

dubwai · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Mike R:
redwards:

Mike R:

Why would anyone want to live in So Cal in any size house? I've been there and I'm not impressed.

So...what are you saying? You don't wanna buy it?

No. Its overpriced.

Inventories are rising. Time on market rising. It's become more widely perceived that the housing market is in a bubble. I think it's smart to stay in your apartment for a while if you are in a 'hot' market area.

redwards · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

dubwai:
Mike R:
redwards:

Mike R:

Why would anyone want to live in So Cal in any size house? I've been there and I'm not impressed.

So...what are you saying? You don't wanna buy it?

No. Its overpriced.

Inventories are rising. Time on market rising. It's become more widely perceived that the housing market is in a bubble. I think it's smart to stay in your apartment for a while if you are in a 'hot' market area.

Gee...ah, thanks fella's. Really, thanks. How about you tell everyone. Now I gotta go troll codeproject for suckers.

Richard Nixon:
Furthermore, this is very similar to when someone tries to tell me about a game they played and how cool it was when they shot the other guy or some such nonsense. Sure, it might have been fun at the time for that player but hearing about it is incredibly boring and uninteresting to me and raises a few red flags in my mind about the person who feels the need to discuss such exploits.

Wha...wha...huh? So, wait - your friend not only won't let you play the game but he won't let you watch either? You just have to get it third person from him? You need to get new friends 'cause that sucks. So many questions. Does javascript have anything to do with this? Is he/she a friend or relative? does it make things awkward between you two? What do your other friend's think about th...um...you do have other friends right? Can we take this offline 'cause I need to know what's going on.

What was the WTF anyway? Oh yeah, the diagram. I actually have some experience with this. My high school coach would try to run that play at least once a game. Never worked.

Ridiculous.

I freakin' hate that guy.

Richard Nixon · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

redwards:
dubwai:
Mike R:
redwards:

Mike R:

Why would anyone want to live in So Cal in any size house? I've been there and I'm not impressed.

So...what are you saying? You don't wanna buy it?

No. Its overpriced.

Inventories are rising. Time on market rising. It's become more widely perceived that the housing market is in a bubble. I think it's smart to stay in your apartment for a while if you are in a 'hot' market area.

Gee...ah, thanks fella's. Really, thanks. How about you tell everyone. Now I gotta go troll codeproject for suckers.

Richard Nixon:
Furthermore, this is very similar to when someone tries to tell me about a game they played and how cool it was when they shot the other guy or some such nonsense. Sure, it might have been fun at the time for that player but hearing about it is incredibly boring and uninteresting to me and raises a few red flags in my mind about the person who feels the need to discuss such exploits.

Wha...wha...huh? So, wait - your friend not only won't let you play the game but he won't let you watch either? You just have to get it third person from him? You need to get new friends 'cause that sucks. So many questions. Does javascript have anything to do with this? Is he/she a friend or relative? does it make things awkward between you two? What do your other friend's think about th...um...you do have other friends right? Can we take this offline 'cause I need to know what's going on.

What was the WTF anyway? Oh yeah, the diagram. I actually have some experience with this. My high school coach would try to run that play at least once a game. Never worked.

Ridiculous.

I freakin' hate that guy.

Your humor fails to deliver on a number of levels.

Mung Kee · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

redwards:
You just have to get it third person from him?

Actually, it's first person, since the friend will be referring to himself as "I". If he starts referring to himself in the third person though, beware. That's the first sign of schizophrenia. That's what Mung Kee thinks anyway.

emptyset · 2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Richard Nixon:

Keep in mind that you're getting the libertarian's argument from the guy on the other side of the argument and previously mentioned guy is still discussing that argument.

no i'm not. there was a clear winner.

Richard Nixon:

Furthermore, this is very similar to when someone tries to tell me about a game they played and how cool it was when they shot the other guy or some such nonsense. Sure, it might have been fun at the time for that player but hearing about it is incredibly boring and uninteresting to me and raises a few red flags in my mind about the person who feels the need to discuss such exploits.

there are a lot of red flags raised often in a lot of minds. ironic words on a forum making fun of people's programming incompetence. isn't *all* incompetence fair game, Richard Nixon?

2005-08-25 Reply Admin

Mike R:
The mind boggles!

A cup of SQL server sprinkled with a dash of access, mix thoroughly with VB6 with a touch of MS Word, top with C# and pour into an XML document and bake in an ATL interface with a COM workflow component until crisp and golden brown. Serve hot with a cup of Java.

I'm manfully restraining the urge to projectile regurtitate...

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