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Admin
wow, i really feel sorry for steve. i hate going through code as it is let alone something as poorly written as that.
as for CC card numbers, thats a mistake a 12yo makes when creating scripts for people. a sure WTF!
frist lol
Admin
Who needs MUMPS for this kind of thing? I see it all the time in MySQL databases.
Admin
Great. Now that they have a web server written in MUMPS, they can write a server-side MUMPS parser, so all of their web apps can be written in MUMPS as well.
Admin
99,9% uptime means whole 8 hours of downtime per year P.S. Freights
Admin
I kept accidentally reading:
ASI think I my error may have been more correct...
Admin
Admin
What's with the wiki [[ ]] markup?
Admin
Ouch... yeah, you definitely /don't/ need MUMPS for this kind of thing. In fact, I'd call this a case of someone not really understanding how to use MUMPS... MUMPS uses a hierarchical database, not a relational one, so there's no need for this "namespaced columns" anti-patters. The "table" could have just had children for each hour, and each hour having the date/time/user/comment children beneath it. Even then, there's probably an even better way to handle it, that's just off the top of my head.
Or at least, so says this PHP programmer... :P
Admin
That sounds very very very familiar.
Admin
The real WTF is how this boring article got published. Can't we have some programming based murder mystery or something? Really, nobody cares about MUMPS, we want murder.
Admin
What, credit card fraud and embezzlement not good enough for you?
Admin
did tyson murder steve after learning that steve had deleted his stolen credit card stash?
Admin
This article is really strange. Either they're using some other version of MUMPS that I'm not aware of, or they don't know MUMPS. I've been working at this hospital for about 6 months doing mostly MUMPS programming.
The MUMPS "database" is set up around the idea of globals that are stored on the drive. Globals are prefixed with "^" to identify them as being a global. Globals act kind of like a multi-dimensional array. The example given of the loop
Actually means
A loop would look something like
In pseudo code that would be
With all that said, MUMPS works, and it works well. It's just a nightmare to know where all the data is coming from (at least in the product we're using). We have a several thousand page document that documents where all the data is stored.
It's possible that they are using a newer version of MUMPS called Caché, and they can access the database layer that sits on top of the globals. If you care Caché is object relational, which makes for some interesting compatibility issues over ODBC.
Admin
I'm waiting for R Madness. Seeing that there are no stories of that kind, I can safely assume that I get my MSc degree one day...
Admin
No, unless there's rape, murder and a bit of comic tomfoolery it's not good enough.
Then raped his corpse?
Captcha : sino - onis - onus - anus - anal rape.
Admin
Ha! I think I interviewed with this company a couple of years ago. The large wood-paneled group meeting hall, the MUMPS-based medical software and the cult-like atmosphere are all eerily familiar. Glad I turned down their offer. I'd hate to have been in Steve's shoes. And to all the other employees there, "Get out while you still can!"
Admin
I'd take x * 1.3 * 0.7 over x any time
Admin
No, he just bit his ear off.
Admin
At the next status, it was reported that the staff was not making their deadlines. Senior management wanted proof. The PHB brought them into the cubicle farm only to discover the bodies.
ominous Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnn
Take it morbius...
Admin
Bludgeoning with a hatchet is the real WTF.
Admin
Congratulations on the promotion Mark, I hope your articles are better than your comics (I'm joking, I love MFD really...)!
Admin
(x * 1.3 * 0.7 is x * 0.91)
Admin
Just replace all mentions of MUMPS with blow job and the story is much better!
Admin
I am amused.
Admin
I guess the question to ask after reading this horror story is: did the system work? And did it work any better after it was audited (modulo removing the credit card numbers, which is certainly a Good Thing, though, given the load of other personal information in the system may have been largely moot from an identity theft standpoint)?
Sometimes, as ugly as a system might be, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Just sayin'.
Admin
So, working in a red taped filed corporate environment on a proprietary, poorly implemented system is a WTF? I thought this was the model that the entire for-profit IT industry was based on.
Admin
When I read that line about hiving off the numbers "just in case", a chill ran down my spine!
Nothing I despise more than "job-safers", refusing to document and obsfucate so management won't fire their sorry asses!
Admin
You've got to love an environment that allows you to create unnamed columns in your database tables. Stitch THAT, maintenance programmers !
Admin
In the mid-nineties I worked tech support for a (then) huge online service/ISP. Think "had been-around-a-long-time-and-not-AOL".
Anyone working support (tech and customer) could access any credit card number for any member because everything was stored for us to see.
Of course, nobody ever used an annoying customer's card details to sign up to porn sites. Oh no.
Admin
Bagels and T-shirts... no shit?
Admin
Our SAP system (cue: "TRWTF is SAP") has over 70,000 tables, with the vast majority of table names having five characters or less.
I refuse to believe that you could gather any group of SAP developers who can tell what even 10% of those tables are for.
Admin
We were waiting for a victim who says he wants a "murder".
Seeeeeeeen one around here?
Admin
If all table names are <= 5 alpha characters then that gives you 32^5 = 33,554,432 different table names. Surely SAP needs more tables!
Admin
Nobody in accounting ever noticed?
Admin
Better yet convert SAP to Chinese or some other ideographic language with 15,000+ characters.
Bounty of Tables!
Admin
I really don't see the point of analysing MUMPS "tables" as if they were structured like relational databases instead of B* tree's that they are.
Admin
Admin
Let's see:
The Real WTF: Why was he not fired on the spot? People get fired for far less than that!
Admin
"To summarize, if you’re associating MUMPS with the awful disease of the same name, you’re very close."
Not hardly, the disease has been nearly eradicated.
Admin
If they are alpha characters, where do you get 32 possibilities? What alphabet are you using? Last I checked the Latin alphabet had 26 if only one case is allowed, 52 if we distinguish. Greek has 24. Russian has 33. ...
Admin
You said "status"... chuckle
Admin
Polish and estonian, for example. Mostly the latin alphabet but with a bunch of extra letters and a few missing. I'm sure there are others with the same letter count.
Admin
Admin
Clearly you had your morning coffee before commenting. I, sir, did not.
26^5 = 11,881,376
There. Fixed it. Now someone call SAP, we kan haz lots mor tablez!
Admin
I'm guessing snoofle is a programmer at Bethesda ( that's a dumbing down of video games zing for the grown ups in the audience ).
Also, I'm calling shenanigans. If the CASTLE team was able to create and orphan hundreds of such horrible, terrible tables over decades, then surely the code would be riddled with useless references to these tables, nasty side effects, etc. Doing the analysis and testing to safely remove these tables from production would not be a project that one person could step in and do in a few months.
Admin
Epic fail!
Admin
Seriously now, you're just effing with my head for sport, aren't you?
Admin
PS. CAPTCHA = "Eros"....yeah baby YEAH!
Admin
A Pickaxe type tool?
Admin
If I recall correctly they serve-d moderately OK from their Compu-ters (and made me go back to BBS use as it was seriously cheaper)..
Having everything accessible isn't news. I once audited a big law firm which handled gazillion dollar cases. When I took their IT apart I discovered every single senior partner (the ones collecting the real big bonuses) had their harddisk shared at the root "so the techies could fix things easier" - and they bought that line, hook, line and sinker. Needless to say, that was the first to go once we had a support process set up..
:-)