• eug (unregistered)

    WHoah what an epic fail

  • (cs) in reply to weee
    weee:
    Xepol:
    "Rob":
    However, it's a corporate thing, a decision that may have been good several years ago but isn't now, and changing it would involve too much paperwork.

    That's why you don't ask, you just do. Push a new improved system into place and document how to use it as part of a "service maintenance release to address critical security issues".

    Problem solved and no one asks questions - anyone who does you simply point to the bit about critical security issues, which from the way this system appears to be designed would be honest. After all, you have a legal requirement to protect the company from security vulernabilities (and the truth about how you fixed them if being honest prevents it).

    Then, pretend everything continues to work the old way and sit back and enjoy all the new free time.

    Bravo! Thats what I would do! :D overnight preferably.

    captcha: slashbot - not

    Why d'you think I have time to read wtf.com? There's an awful lot to be said for working for people who only know enough about what you do to know they can't do it :-)

  • (cs) in reply to eug
    eug:
    epic fail

    gb2/b/

  • (cs)
    ROR (Return On Résumé)

    Pet peeve of the day: defining an acronym in an article and then never using it again.

    This public announcement was brought to you by the -f command line switch.

  • (cs) in reply to SamP

    In the English language, the male pronoun is correct usage when the gender of the person to which it refers is unknown. Blame our patriarchal society.

  • Flasher T (unregistered) in reply to Licky Lindsay
    Licky Lindsay:
    Needs more wooden table.

    Needs more cowbell!

  • Flasher T (unregistered) in reply to ImaSwitch
    ImaSwitch:
    When a user is ready to publish his blog post, she simply goes to “set post status” and selects “published” from the drop down list.

    The real WTF is the gender change of the user in question in the instructions.

    A cardinal rule of tech writing: never attribute to the author's incompetence that which can be adequately explained by corporate policy - such as using genders intermittently.

  • Flasher T (unregistered) in reply to simon
    simon:
    Kev:
    ImaSwitch:
    The real WTF is the gender change of the user in question in the instructions.

    I see that type of writing all the time - better than the "he/she"; "his/her"; "s/he"; "(s)he" alternatives that get used.

    I suspect this may be a (overly) politically correct americanism? I much prefer "they".

    Ugly as well. Grammatically, the default masculine is perfectly correct, and makes the text a lot more readable - political correctness hasn't been around long enough, and weird constructions that require conscious thought of the reader should be avoided...

    Captcha smile. Awww.

  • (cs) in reply to David Vallner
    David Vallner:
    eug:
    epic fail
    gb2/b/
    needs moar rules 1&2.
  • JokerPokerUberSmoker (unregistered) in reply to Frenchier than thou
    Frenchier than thou:
    Grumpy:
    Was the company name in the last paragraph supposed to be anonymized?

    I don't think so, since Akamai is one of the biggest mirror-server farms on the 'net.

    This line just makes me cringe ...

    "Sometimes, for whatever reason, some files don’t make it too all the Akamai servers, so it’s a good idea to check each server individually after this copy occurs."

    I used to work with a site that used Akamai as an edge caching service. They have over 18,000 servers located all over the world, how on earth can it be "a good idea to check each server individually".

    Captcha: Doom ... exactly how poor Rob must be feeling.

  • Wildpeaks (unregistered) in reply to Atrophy
    Atrophy:
    MS Ninja:
    Needs more MS Access.

    And some XML.

    And possibly a wooden table.

    No quack.

    That about cover it?

    </sarcasm>

    You forgot Brillant.

    No quack.

  • (cs) in reply to ThomsonsPier
    ThomsonsPier:
    In the English language, the male pronoun is correct usage when the gender of the person to which it refers is unknown. Blame our patriarchal society.
    Hrm. First of all, it's just a word, and I don't know anyone that reads a sentence with the word 'he' in it (with no antecedent, indicating generic human) and thinks "Oh, my, this sentence is excluding females!"

    Also, for the people that think you should be able to replace singular pronouns with forms of 'they': I find breaking plurality rules to be far more egregious than perhaps offending people who think you're intentionally degrading social status of a demographic by not using a particular pronoun.

    If you really want to be gender neutral, use the noun "A person" instead of the gender-specific pronoun. It's generic, correct part of speech, and doesn't require an unnecessary reeducation program. If you're talking about a blogger, simply write "the blogger". The extra characters required to type that, and extra time to read that, over a pronoun such as 'he' or 'she' or whatever, is probably irrelevant.

    It's actually fairly simple to remove gender pronouns from speech without sounding awkward; it just takes a few seconds of paying attention until it becomes second nature.

  • (cs) in reply to ben_
    ben_:
    I like how he depends on an obvious security vulnerability to get his job done.
    The only potential "obvious security vulnerability" is changing the ID in the url, is that what you're referring to? There's no indication in the post that this would work if he were not logged in as the administrator. And the fact that other administrative actions (like approving a post) require obscure steps (unsetting and resetting the same status the user set it to), implies that this is more likely to be a bad/nonexistent user interface than a security problem.
  • Saublogn (unregistered) in reply to "Rob"
    "Rob":
    Haha, if only it were that easy. The server I work directly on is in my office and is managed by a guy I barely know. He looks after the software and stuff. The server it gets pushed to is in another country, managed by somebody I only know by name. And it does a lot of different things. The server after that is outside both my country and company, and I wouldn't even know who to talk to.

    Long story short, it's a long chain that's completely out of my, and everybody else's hands. :(

    You just need to save each new blog entry on BLSRV01. There's no need for the other servers to know the internal fomat (for once, it's useful).

    The daily WTF recommends you using 

    File->Save as
    on receiving the emails, don't trust those 
    wget ´sed url-on-email´ -O /mnt/BLSRV01/
    , they make things far too easy!

  • (cs) in reply to "Rob"
    "Rob":
    James:
    This reads like a joke, but I have the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that it isn't.

    ...

    The most infuriating part is that there are dozens if not hundreds of prominent blog "engines"/backends that people actually thought through and designed well, many of which are even free (in both senses of the word). Why anyone would continue to use this hodgepodge of horseshit is so far beyond me it gives me a headache just to think about it.

    I know CAPTCHA posting is frowned upon, but this is too good: I got "vern", and the system does sound like something Ernest P. Worrell might have designed.

    Rob here,

    It's not a joke, and it wasn't free.

    However, it's a corporate thing, a decision that may have been good several years ago but isn't now, and changing it would involve too much paperwork.

    I wonder if this problem could be approached from a different angle. Find a good replacement blogging software. "Sell" it to the bloggers (authors) and let them pressure the management for a change. The more people complain about the current system the better. They might even blog about it! You will probably have to be creative in presenting the advantages of the new blogging system such that the users see it as a benefit to them. For example, system reliability means that all of their posts actually get posted and not lost. System security means that no-one can maliciously impersonate the blog authors. Removing the HTML conversion mess means the blog posts look the way the authors intended them to look. The last thing I can think of is something about simplifying the editing process and thus allowing for more blog posts in the same time period.

  • (cs) in reply to Kev
    Kev:
    When a user is ready to publish his blog post, she simply goes to “set post status” and selects “published” from the drop down list.

    I see that type of writing all the time - better than the "he/she"; "his/her"; "s/he"; "(s)he" alternatives that get used.

    I think English needs a new pronoun for a single, third-person of unknown sex. While proper English says to use 'he', 'his', etc. -- let's face it -- in this day and age that just doesn't fly (however ridiculous that may be). It's why so many people mistakenly use 'them', 'their', etc. I hereby propose simply 'e':

    "When a user is ready to publish e's blog post, e simply goes to "set post status"..."

    Of course, that could just be somebody with an accent saying "he". But that just reduces the number of people that have to actually learn the new rule. ;) That and it's fun to say.

  • (cs) in reply to c
    c:
    I would issue all the users with a digital camera, they could then write thier blogs in Word (or whatever), take a picture of the screen and then post that.

    Would save a lot of hassle.

    I think you mean MS Works... by far the best word processing software available!

    Oh, and the security thing? There are no problems, it was a secure password!

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Sounds like (even) a Domino app would be better :-)

  • Jim Bob (unregistered)

    I'm gay

  • (cs) in reply to too_many_usernames
    too_many_usernames:
    Hrm. First of all, it's just a word, and I don't know anyone that reads a sentence with the word 'he' in it (with no antecedent, indicating generic human) and thinks "Oh, my, this sentence is excluding females!"

    I'm all for the creation of a new set of gender-neutral pronouns applicable to people, as long as they don't sound too stupid. In the meantime, I suggest we resort to using 'it' and offend everyone equally.

    "When a user is ready to publish its blog post, it simply goes to “set post status” and selects “published” from the drop down list"

  • "Rob" (unregistered) in reply to plouj
    plouj:
    I wonder if this problem could be approached from a different angle. Find a good replacement blogging software. "Sell" it to the bloggers (authors) and let them pressure the management for a change. The more people complain about the current system the better. They might even blog about it! You will probably have to be creative in presenting the advantages of the new blogging system such that the users see it as a benefit to them. For example, system reliability means that all of their posts actually get posted and not lost. System security means that no-one can maliciously impersonate the blog authors. Removing the HTML conversion mess means the blog posts look the way the authors intended them to look. The last thing I can think of is something about simplifying the editing process and thus allowing for more blog posts in the same time period.
    As much as I like how the idea sounds, it's just not feasible. There are too many bloggers (hundreds) who've been trained on this software, there are too many people who are trained on the editorial end, and this whole thing is working well enough to not require a change. The bottleneck isn't the time to post, that's fairly quick when you get used to it (and problems are surprisingly rare); rather, it's the frequency that authors write.
  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to ThomsonsPier

    Actually, in English, the masculine pronoun "he" is correct usage when the gender of the person it refers to is unknown. Masculine being a grammatical gender, NOT a statement about the male or femaleness of the subject. English just happens to only have three such categories that align with real life gender somewhat more often than some other languages. Swahili has eight "genders," I believe.

    Why else do you think people refer to ships as "she?" The politically correct pronoun concept is based on appalling stupidity and ignorance.

  • Sgt. Preston (unregistered) in reply to ImaSwitch
    ImaSwitch:
    When a user is ready to publish his blog post, she simply goes to “set post status” and selects “published” from the drop down list.

    The real WTF is the gender change of the user in question in the instructions.

    Randomly choosing and changing genders in writing is some peoples' idea of non-sexist gender neutrality. I call it ludicrously confusing.

    In English, we have pronouns for three genders: male, female, and neuter (i.e., genderless). We need a fourth set of pronouns for 'gender-indeterminate': maybe female, maybe male, maybe neither, we're just don't know and perhaps don't care. For gender-indeterminate subjects and objects, I propose a combination of 'she', 'he', and 'it': 'shit'. How much more politically correct can we get than that?

  • Sgt. Preston (unregistered) in reply to simon
    simon:
    Kev:
    ImaSwitch:
    The real WTF is the gender change of the user in question in the instructions.

    I see that type of writing all the time - better than the "he/she"; "his/her"; "s/he"; "(s)he" alternatives that get used.

    I suspect this may be a (overly) politically correct americanism? I much prefer "they".

    "They" drives me crazy!! "He" is singular. "She" is singular. "It" is singular. "They" is plural. Do we really need to throw grammar out the window in the name of gender neutrality?

  • dmw (unregistered)
    When a user is ready to publish his blog post, she simply goes to “set post status” and selects “published” from the drop down list.

    I usually make everything plural:

    When users are ready to publish their blog posts, they simply go to “set post status” and select “published” from the drop down list.

    It's gender-neutral without offending the grammar police.

  • Maciej (unregistered) in reply to Sgt. Preston
    Sgt. Preston:
    "They" drives me crazy!! "He" is singular. "She" is singular. "It" is singular. "They" is plural. Do we really need to throw grammar out the window in the name of gender neutrality?

    "They" is a perfectly acceptable third person singular. Think of it as a word with two meanings. It doesn't bug you when "read" is used for two tenses, does it?

    When you use a singular "they", everybody knows what you mean, and use of the word as such was common and accepted hundreds of years before any of the feminist debates that are accused of introducing it. Shakespeare uses it, as does Jane Austen and the King James Bible. I think that one can also make the case that it carries more information than the gender-neutral "he", as it explicitly communicates that the gender of the person in question is unknown or immaterial.

    If you don't like to use it in such a way, that's fine, I avoid constructions that I find unpleasant all the time, but do recognize that it's a stylistic choice.

    <Queue debate on prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar>

    Some links: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austhlis.html http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/?date=19980501 http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001582.html http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/they.html

  • (cs) in reply to dmw
    dmw:
    When a user is ready to publish his blog post, she simply goes to “set post status” and selects “published” from the drop down list.

    I usually make everything plural:

    When users are ready to publish their blog posts, they simply go to “set post status” and select “published” from the drop down list.

    It's gender-neutral without offending the grammar police.

    But apparently it does offend the grammar police. It probably offends them as much as removing the singular second person pronoun and replacing it with the plural did a while back.

    On another note, using a third person pronoun without an antecedent is wrong. That drives me nuts, as it's quite confusing.

  • (cs) in reply to "Rob"
    "Rob":
    Haha, if only it were that easy. The server I work directly on is in my office and is managed by a guy I barely know. He looks after the software and stuff. The server it gets pushed to is in another country, managed by somebody I only know by name. And it does a lot of different things. The server after that is outside both my country and company, and I wouldn't even know who to talk to.

    Long story short, it's a long chain that's completely out of my, and everybody else's hands. :(

    Who except Microsoft actually needs a system this complicated? I'm pretty sure the MS Blogs don't work this way (else their blog comment system wouldn't work as comments would vary mirror to mirror), so I am guessing that you could just get a server somewhere setup with blog software and push html redirect pages to the old server pages and then suggest people change their bookmarks.

    Describe it as part of the security changes.

  • ThingGuy McGuyThing (unregistered) in reply to Pineconius
    Pineconius:
    Kev:
    When a user is ready to publish his blog post, she simply goes to “set post status” and selects “published” from the drop down list.

    I see that type of writing all the time - better than the "he/she"; "his/her"; "s/he"; "(s)he" alternatives that get used.

    I think English needs a new pronoun for a single, third-person of unknown sex. While proper English says to use 'he', 'his', etc. -- let's face it -- in this day and age that just doesn't fly (however ridiculous that may be). It's why so many people mistakenly use 'them', 'their', etc. I hereby propose simply 'e':

    "When a user is ready to publish e's blog post, e simply goes to "set post status"..."

    Of course, that could just be somebody with an accent saying "he". But that just reduces the number of people that have to actually learn the new rule. ;) That and it's fun to say.

    I agree that we need a new pronoun. I would find it useful to be able to differentiate between he (He) and he (gender-neutral).

    The best suggestion I've heard is ey, eir, em - basically take they/their/them and drop the "th". It fits in well with some people's current usage of "they", and feels quite natural.

  • Longtime C guy (unregistered) in reply to ThomsonsPier

    Actually, it is correct usage in every language I know: Spanish, French, Italian.

  • (cs) in reply to AdT
    AdT:
    The Accounts & Passwords stuff was a nice introductory triple-WTF.

    I could not fathom why everyone's password hint was their first name, when that provides no hint whatsoever for the shared common password.

  • Just Wondering... (unregistered) in reply to ImaSwitch
    ImaSwitch:
    <snip> The real WTF is the gender change of the user in question in the instructions.
    In the beginning, God created programmers, and saw that they were basically good. But creating programs that never get used is boring, so God created users, and saw that they were bad; but their stupidity gave the programmers amusement and so He decided that it was ok to leave things be.

    Moral: it's ok to write good code to do bad things to the users, as long as the programmers get a chuckle out of it!

  • Jim Bob (unregistered) in reply to Just Wondering...
    Just Wondering...:
    ImaSwitch:
    <snip> The real WTF is the gender change of the user in question in the instructions.
    In the beginning, God created programmers, and saw that they were basically good. But creating programs that never get used is boring, so God created users, and saw that they were bad; but their stupidity gave the programmers amusement and so He decided that it was ok to leave things be.

    Moral: it's ok to write good code to do bad things to the users, as long as the programmers get a chuckle out of it!

    I'm gay like this gay guy who put that gay text on my screen

  • Saublogn (unregistered) in reply to wbrianwhite
    wbrianwhite:
    AdT:
    The Accounts & Passwords stuff was a nice introductory triple-WTF.

    I could not fathom why everyone's password hint was their first name, when that provides no hint whatsoever for the shared common password.

    As the password is common and everyone knows it, there's no need for a password hint. Instead, the hint is meant to remember you the user you should type in the box. See ho wit makes sense?

    Fill the password and have the hint tell you your name, ie. all the passwords names. Useful when you want to find new blogs.

  • digislave (unregistered) in reply to Ben4jammin
    Ben4jammin:
    However, it's a corporate thing, a decision that may have been good several years ago but isn't now, and changing it would involve too much paperwork.

    Ah yes...I'm sure we've all been there before. Paperwork in triplicate requiring God's signature I'm sure.

    Where I work it would require God's and Satan's signature side by side on the same document, and they never see eye to eye.

    The worst part is they both insist on showing up to technical meetings. Neither can stay on topic, and neither should even be speaking.. of course God thinks he knows all and needs to control everything, Satan is always playing the devil's advocate.. we haven't come out of a meeting having accomplished anything productive yet.

  • (cs) in reply to Kev
    Kev:
    ImaSwitch:
    When a user is ready to publish his blog post, she simply goes to “set post status” and selects “published” from the drop down list.

    The real WTF is the gender change of the user in question in the instructions.

    I see that type of writing all the time - better than the "he/she"; "his/her"; "s/he"; "(s)he" alternatives that get used.

    Of course learning proper English grammar is rarely an option. After all, English does have a gender neutral pronoun.

    -Me

  • (cs) in reply to Sgt. Preston
    Sgt. Preston:
    simon:
    Kev:
    ImaSwitch:
    The real WTF is the gender change of the user in question in the instructions.

    I see that type of writing all the time - better than the "he/she"; "his/her"; "s/he"; "(s)he" alternatives that get used.

    I suspect this may be a (overly) politically correct americanism? I much prefer "they".

    "They" drives me crazy!! "He" is singular. "She" is singular. "It" is singular. "They" is plural. Do we really need to throw grammar out the window in the name of gender neutrality?

    "They" IS the singular pronoun. It's perfectly correct.

    -Me

  • (cs) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    Actually, in English, the masculine pronoun "he" is correct usage when the gender of the person it refers to is unknown.

    Actually, in English, the gender-neutral pronoun is "they" Yes, this is the same word as the plural pronoun, but it is correct to use it when referring to a singular subject when the gender is unknown.

    -Me

  • Sgt. Preston (unregistered) in reply to its me
    its me:
    anonymous:
    Actually, in English, the masculine pronoun "he" is correct usage when the gender of the person it refers to is unknown.

    Actually, in English, the gender-neutral pronoun is "they" Yes, this is the same word as the plural pronoun, but it is correct to use it when referring to a singular subject when the gender is unknown.

    -Me

    If "they" is a both a singular pronoun and a plural pronoun, why does no one say "they does", "they is", or "they has" when using it as a singular? The use of the plural conjugations of verbs indicates that "they" is not being used as a singular, but is being used as a plural in a manner that is inconsistent with its antecendent. Disagreement in number is clear.

  • Squeegy (unregistered) in reply to ImaSwitch

    It was probably added on by a feminist who took over from there, and was immediately fired and replaced.

  • Tofino (unregistered) in reply to danfiru
    danfiru:
    Licky Lindsay:
    Needs more wooden table.

    AHHAHAHAHA.... dying... laughing...

    Me too! Also, can't wait for that Simpsons movie and more of the fresh comedy stylings of Eddie Murphy!

  • Obi Wan (unregistered) in reply to Jon

    Um, "he" was the administrator, "she" was the user. :P

  • "Rob" (unregistered) in reply to wbrianwhite
    wbrianwhite:
    AdT:
    The Accounts & Passwords stuff was a nice introductory triple-WTF.

    I could not fathom why everyone's password hint was their first name, when that provides no hint whatsoever for the shared common password.

    That's another WTF that I may not have spelled out clearly. On this system, the "password hint" is the same as the "hidden question answer" on other systems. In other words, if you want to reset the password, you have to put in the password hint. So there was a time when, if the user changed its password hint and forget h(is/er) password, the account was beyond recovery (without URL-hacking). :)

  • (cs) in reply to Sgt. Preston
    Sgt. Preston:
    its me:
    anonymous:
    Actually, in English, the masculine pronoun "he" is correct usage when the gender of the person it refers to is unknown.

    Actually, in English, the gender-neutral pronoun is "they" Yes, this is the same word as the plural pronoun, but it is correct to use it when referring to a singular subject when the gender is unknown.

    -Me

    If "they" is a both a singular pronoun and a plural pronoun, why does no one say "they does", "they is", or "they has" when using it as a singular? The use of the plural conjugations of verbs indicates that "they" is not being used as a singular, but is being used as a plural in a manner that is inconsistent with its antecendent. Disagreement in number is clear.
    No, but nice try.

    As a previous post has pointed out, the distinction between "you" and "thou" disappeared in the English language (outside of the various Authorised Bibles) around about the seventeenth century. Just one of those things -- and, oddly enough, quite similar to the current osmosis between he/she and they, in that it removed a level of deference implicit in the language.

    "You" is now both singular and plural. It now takes the plural version of the (irregular) verb, rather than indicating its origins by, for example, expressing a concept such as "you dost," rather than "you do." Well, it has to pick one. The use of "they" with the "plural" form of the verb is equally natural: as you point out, it would sound silly with the singular. The problem, as I see it, is that the English language is distinctly poor in conjugations in the first place (which rather leads into the him/her discussion). Since there is no natural singular form for the verb to take, it might as well take the natural plural form. Don't think about it as confusing the singular with the plural -- which it obviously isn't -- just think of it as a new and (temporarily) irritating coinage.

    That would be language as they is spoke. (Sorry: she.)

    I don't see a problem with "they" as in "one of them thar users out there." Occasionally it might get silly, such as when referring to one of the past Presidents of the United States as "her," but ... let's not go there. In general, if it reads OK, it is OK.

    ... and, incidentally, nobody seems to have mentioned the extreme readability of the "previous guy's" contribution in the original post. It even makes sense, in a weird, twisted, and confessional way. I can only imagine the great, boiling sense of rage that he/she/it/they had when contemplating the monstrosity that they had to document.

  • D.T.N. (unregistered) in reply to Licky Lindsay
    Licky Lindsay:
    Needs more wooden table.

    Needs more cowbell.

  • D.T.N. (unregistered) in reply to xtremezone
    xtremezone:
    ...

    More like: ... --- ...

  • (cs) in reply to Irrelevant

    Wow, I can't believe someone would deploy a system like that on purpose! It almost sounds like a test/proof-of-concept that ended up getting left in place and pressed into production (we've all seen THAT before).

    Irrelevant:
    David Vallner:
    eug:
    epic fail
    gb2/b/
    needs moar rules 1&2.
    Part of me wants to respond with 'sage' here, but I won't.
  • maed (unregistered)

    I really like this system, seems like the one truly logical way to do it. Anyone know if it's a free CMS?

  • (cs) in reply to SuperousOxide
    SuperousOxide:
    "When a user is ready to publish its blog post, it simply goes to “set post status” and selects “published” from the drop down list"

    When referring to users, I think this is a perfectly acceptable approach.

    anonymous:
    The politically correct pronoun concept is based on appalling stupidity and ignorance.

    I would argue that the currently most accepted correct approach is also based on appalling stupidity and ignorance, especially as "they" as a gender-neutral, singular pronoun was perfectly acceptable for centuries.

  • (cs) in reply to Jim Bob
    Jim Bob:
    I'm gay

    I know son, and me and mom are just fine and dandy with that. Hell boy, you go get yourself just as much ass-penis action as you can handle. You know we'll always be proud of you.

Leave a comment on “Lord of the Blogs”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article