• (cs) in reply to Onanymous Coward
    Onanymous Coward:
    Xythar:
    I can only assume it has something to do with the hard "s" sound in German being written with a beta symbol (an alternative is "ss" when the beta is not available)

    No! ß and ß are two entirely different letters,

    ß and ß are different, but I'm pretty sure ß and ß are the same letter. ;)

    Edit: Ah, I see now; the forum sotware replaces beta with the sharp-s. What the fuck? Why?

  • W (unregistered) in reply to foxyshadis
    foxyshadis:
    What the fuck?
    No, worse than failure!
  • csrster (unregistered)

    public class CalibrationStatus {

    private String[] values = {"1950", "1990", "FileNotFound"};

    //etc ....

    }

  • BlueMoon (unregistered)

    If the code 99 means "no calibration needed" they did the change in '97/'98, could it not be that some devices already had a calibration date of '99, when they were on a one or two year calibration scheme??

    This means that changing all '99 to '50 (the new 'no calibration needed'-date) would make the devices that have to be calibrated yearly, set to 'no calibration needed' too. Big WTF.

    That was why they were doing it on a device at the time bases.

    Blue

  • Greg (unregistered) in reply to maht
    maht:
    Surely the most recent year that has passed i.e. 96 rather than 50.

    That gives you an extra 45 years to get the job done next time.

    Ok, I'll bite...

    I very much hope that you are not a software designer or meant this as a joke. If you had understood the article, and your cognitive system was still on-line by the time you started formulating your response, you might have inferred that there might have been devices with a legal 96 value, since they were calibrated in 1996. And that would be: (a) good (b) wrong (c) none of the above (d) all of the above

    CAPTCHA: Prove that you're not a robot. Don't repeat CAPTCHAs.

  • (cs)

    The real WTF is that he didn't fix the Y2K problem properly.

  • (cs)
    I’ve found that the feeling of meaninglessness comes especially after the “Deployment Celebrations” of some big, “productivity-increasing” system. Congratulations! We saved MegaCorp shareholders millions each year in labor costs, and we got a fantastic bullet point to put on our resumés. But we also put an entire floor of nice, hardworking people out of work. Now, I’m sure a lot of you have felt this sense of meaninglessness as well.
    In my experience, well working "productivity-increasing" applications acutally save jobs and often even create new jobs. There is no place for unproductive "hard work" in a competition-driven economy.
  • (cs)

    "you cannot teach two old dogs new tricks"

    nuff said

  • Dave Grant-Wilkie (unregistered)

    When I first started programming full time, I noticed our senior accountant going through a weekly printout (about two inch thick) adding up some of the figures. On questioning him, it transpired that he needed the total cost amounts for each type of component which he then transferred to another report, he then discarded the printout. The following week we printed out a one page summary instead of the usual reams. I also spotted him going through another, equally thick, weekly report putting a 1 in front of some of the figures. As costs had gone up some of the fields were now too small and the figures were being truncated. My colleague increased the field size and removed the problem. The senior accountant was actually pleased by all this as he then had to find something else to do for three days each week, but we consoled ourselves with having helped to save the rainforests!

  • bobbo (unregistered) in reply to Id rather be sleeping
    Id rather be sleeping:
    pimp^D^D^D^Dcontracting firm

    Didn't you mean "pimp^H^H^H^Hcontracting firm"?

  • s (unregistered) in reply to sjs
    sjs:
    mav:
    *sniffle* thats cute.

    CAPTCHA: poindexter

    C'mon now, isn't it just a bit crazy making me enter a 10 character word?

    Yet you voluntarily typed it again in your message, then proceeded to bitch about it costing you an additional 50-ish keystrokes. Well done moron.

    Nope, he didn't want his effort of typing such a long word to go to waste, so he copy-pasted it after typing it into the captcha box.

  • Booya (unregistered)

    I would be saying to my boss, I have done x many changes today and now I have y to go and Iv done z many more then usual. Really All the changes would have been made. so I can pretend to be working hard. HA..

  • Damo (unregistered) in reply to BlueMoon
    BlueMoon:
    If the code 99 means "no calibration needed" they did the change in '97/'98, could it not be that some devices already had a calibration date of '99, when they were on a one or two year calibration scheme??

    This means that changing all '99 to '50 (the new 'no calibration needed'-date) would make the devices that have to be calibrated yearly, set to 'no calibration needed' too. Big WTF.

    That was why they were doing it on a device at the time bases.

    Blue

    That's what I was thinking... What if there were devices that actually needed calibrating in '99. Now they won't be done for another 51 years.

    No quack.

  • Alan (unregistered)

    Our company has a deployment system, which is set up to deploy one piece of content at a time, to lots of different sites for a range of dates.

    Recently, we have taken on a bunch of clients who wanted things done in a different way, They wanted to deploy one bit of content every day, at only one site.

    Using the old system, they guy who uses the software would take about an hour to deploy a months worth of content to one site. We have 80 sites, so it was taking up nearly half his week.

    So I just gave him a new tool, in which he selects the site, then the dates, then assigns content to each date. It now takes 5 minutes to do a months deployment.

    He insisted on hugging me.

    (And no, he isnt getting fired - he has a whole bunch of other more interesting duties he can now do)

  • (cs) in reply to bobbo
    bobbo:
    Id rather be sleeping:
    pimp^D^D^D^Dcontracting firm

    Didn't you mean "pimp^H^H^H^Hcontracting firm"?

    That's for when "pimp^Wcontracting" just doesn't do it for you... What did ^D do? I only vaguely remember µemacs codes

  • (cs)

    Regarding any issues with 99 being a duplicate or "real" date. Louis and Frans would have no way of telling whether it was the real date or whether it should be bumped to 50 either. Unless, of course, they were familiar with all 30,000 devices on a carnal level. So the automated update didn't do anything that they wouldn't have done one-by-one.

    I find it a bit odd that he just had access to this database server without asking anyone (and thereby drawing suspicion). I'm sure that far more insecure things have happened, but they aren't supposed to.

  • (cs) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    I find it a bit odd that he just had access to this database server without asking anyone (and thereby drawing suspicion). I'm sure that far more insecure things have happened, but they aren't supposed to.

    Database server? For dBASE files? Highly unlikely (unless you were using the Advantage Database Server with Clipper).

    The way I read it, this was probably a DOS based application, most likely written in Clipper or FoxPro. It was a monolithic executable just copied to a directory on the (probably Netware) server and run from there. Every user who had access to the executable also had to have read/write access to the directory.

  • (cs)

    Holy schnikeys...this isn't a WTF at all...its the opposite! An FTW or something...

    I dont even know how the hardened, cynical members of this forum are going to respond to such a positive story. Maybe you old-timers can answer this for me: is this what the whole world was like before the business analyst was born?

    My friend works for a medial organization doing research, and they have some 3000 odd xrays that need to be cropped and resized. She knows how to do it in Photoshop, but they force her to use Gimp (which is a bad word at medical institutions, by the way) because "it produces smaller files". Luckily she pawned the work off onto a grad student. Jesus...this is 2007 for chrissakes.

  • Rich (unregistered) in reply to savar
    savar:
    My friend works for a medial organization doing research, and they have some 3000 odd xrays that need to be cropped and resized. She knows how to do it in Photoshop, but they force her to use Gimp (which is a bad word at medical institutions, by the way) because "it produces smaller files". Luckily she pawned the work off onto a grad student. Jesus...this is 2007 for chrissakes.

    Is there any judgement involved in the cropping or is it cookie cutter work? ImageMagick might be a lot more productive.

    Rich

  • (cs) in reply to savar

    Ah, yes. Jargon in other contexts can be a problem. Like "default" or "application" in a loan office, "terminal" in a hospital and so on. Some religions frown on the term "icon."

    At least the Gimp is highly scriptable. In the unlikely case that you wanted them all cropped and resized the same way, you could script the whole batch.

  • (cs)

    Ah, it's nice to have a story with a happy ending for once. :)

  • Pig Hogger (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that the kid did not get blasted for it.

  • ruff (unregistered)

    no matter what you say, it was nice of him to use his time and skills to help people, especially since he had no obligation to do so.

  • (cs) in reply to hung
    hung:

    Wow. After reading that first bullet point, I've never seen anybody so afraid of change before in my life.

    I love the irony that a manifesto written talking about how bad technology is, is converted to HTML and posted on the internet.

  • PseudoNoise (unregistered)

    A friend of mine (not a programmer) was at a temp agency and was hired to do some work (supposed to be 2 weeks) to update a company's database. I believe it was kept in an excel file (yeah, I know). We were adding a new area code here in San Diego so all the records had to be updated.

    She was given the list of which prefixes corresponded to the new area code, so she went about creating a filter to select those, then replaced all the area codes. I think it took about an hour. Double-checked her work, went back to her boss and said, "OK, done -- what next?" "Um...we were expecting that to take 2 weeks. We don't have anything else."

    D'oh!

  • S|i(3_x (unregistered)

    This is more of a FTW!

  • (cs) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    Regarding any issues with 99 being a duplicate or "real" date. Louis and Frans would have no way of telling whether it was the real date or whether it should be bumped to 50 either. Unless, of course, they were familiar with all 30,000 devices on a carnal level. So the automated update didn't do anything that they wouldn't have done one-by-one.
    It was my understanding that marking devices as being due in 1999 hadn't happened yet, but was quickly approaching.

    So, before they could start marking actual devices with 99, they had to change all of the old 99 devices with 50.

    In short, everything marked 99 at the beginning of our story was intended never to be serviced already, and our hero is just that- a hero.

    I hope he enjoyed the coffee. I would have asked for pizza. :)

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered)

    Ferdy is awesome.

  • sammy (unregistered) in reply to Steve
    I came here more than fifteen years ago, not really intending to stay for more than a couple of years. One of the first projects on which I worked involved developing some imaging and animation tools and I really didn't think too much about it until I happened to be chatting with the scientist involved. He mentioned that the visualizations I was doing helped him see new things and he mentioned that it added to our understanding of Alzheimer's Disease.

    That's excellent, Steve.

    My first job was working for a university - not coincidentally, the same one from which I graduated. It was a great way to pay the bills & deal with tuition, and I liked the idea of doing something in academia.

    Now I'm working in "the industry," but what I work on is an imaging and workflow system for radiology. So whenever I feel down about work, I remind myself that if I do my job right, I'm helping doctors to better help their patients. That's usually enough to pick me up off the floor. (Not that the job is bad generally - just that some days I'd rather not get outta bed. ;) )

  • nocaster (unregistered) in reply to Ilya

    Therein lies the problem. Devices with "99" did not need to be calibrated and since the real 1999 was approaching it needed to be fixed. This really isn't that hard to grasp...really.

  • YodaYid (unregistered)

    So why didn't the two engineers (or the software vendor or anyone else besides Ferdy) have any clue how easy it was to update all the devices in one shot?

    Re Meaninglessness in general in the original post, I would say that if someone's job can be replaced by a 17 line script, they probably won't miss it... Of course some people really need the money, but the whole point of automation is to give machine-like tasks to machines. No human wants to do a machine-like task.

  • YodaYid (unregistered)

    Sounds like they won't have a problem until 2050, which is better than the current 2038 bug ;-)

  • (cs) in reply to Peter Harrison
    Peter Harrison:
    ... The good thing is that the slow half of the workforce was now paid less, and therefore left. Basically it was used to push the workers harder and eliminate those who didn't perform 100%. Good for the companies concerned, not so good for the workers.

    Well, now, I'd have to call that a "good" thing. Yes, 50% of the workforce was canned. But the factory is now able to produce more, with fewer people. Now the "slow" workers are available to make t-shirts (instead of sending the job to china) and we're ahead of the game.

    Yes, I would rather make a highly-paid, laid off engineer make T-shirts to earn his unemployment than to let him sit at home and collect. The value of technology is not that it puts people out of work, it's that it produces more with the same amount of work. We need to learn this, and adapt to it, and make it work for us.

    Captcha? No point.

  • Andrew (unregistered)

    Just FYI, your fancy-dancy-schmanzy scrolling "Whats New" box thingy on your http://inedo.com/ homepage doesn't scroll in Firefox. WTF?

  • htg (unregistered) in reply to ElQuberto
    ElQuberto:
    He should of calibrated it to 30 so that he'll have a job like this when he wants to retire

    WTF does "should of" mean as a grammatical structure within the English language?

  • Valacosa (unregistered) in reply to Tukaro
    Tukaro:
    akatherder:
    Regarding any issues with 99 being a duplicate or "real" date. Louis and Frans would have no way of telling whether it was the real date or whether it should be bumped to 50 either. Unless, of course, they were familiar with all 30,000 devices on a carnal level. So the automated update didn't do anything that they wouldn't have done one-by-one.
    It was my understanding that marking devices as being due in 1999 hadn't happened yet, but was quickly approaching.

    So, before they could start marking actual devices with 99, they had to change all of the old 99 devices with 50.

    In short, everything marked 99 at the beginning of our story was intended never to be serviced already, and our hero is just that- a hero.

    I hope he enjoyed the coffee. I would have asked for pizza. :)

    I agree.

    With the date thing not being outed as a WTF and all, and with the statement that this took place "sometime back in the 70’s or 80’s", 99 not yet being a valid date is strongly implied. What kind of equipment only needs to be calibrated every quarter century if it needs calibration at all?

    I don't know what it is, but people who frequent this forum try and poke holes in the story, in a vain attempt to prove that they are smarter than everyone else here. "Ooh, you thought of a use-case which assuredly does not exist! I'm so impressed!"

    I will eat crow if someone can name a single piece of equipment which is serviced no more frequently than every 15 years. In the meantime, I'll just assume everyone who raised the '99 issue just didn't read the story carefully.

  • neverposted a comment before (unregistered)

    now i get those captchas... i think

  • neverposted a comment before (unregistered) in reply to neverposted a comment before
    neverposted a comment before:
    now i get those captchas... i think

    oh no.. I still dont.. sorry

  • PC Paul (unregistered) in reply to Xythar
    Xythar:
    clbuttic:
    MeaningleBneB.aspx? What's up with that?

    I can only assume it has something to do with the hard "s" sound in German being written with a beta symbol (an alternative is "ss" when the beta is not available), which looks a little like an uppercase B. Why TDWTF decided to do this for the filename is beyond me however.

    I think there must be some point between the story being written and it appearing on the site where it is sent to Germany, printed out , placed on a wooden table, photgraphed, and then that photo is OCR'ed.

    Seems obvious to me.

  • Da' Man (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that thanks to Ferdy, these guys were probably made redundant - just before retirement age.

    • "Thanks Ferdy, here is your coffee!"

    Captcha: bling!

  • Hruntio (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    Just FYI, your fancy-dancy-schmanzy scrolling "Whats New" box thingy on your http://inedo.com/ homepage doesn't scroll in Firefox. WTF?
    What makes it better is the text that gets cut off being about effective websites.
  • Yorinaga (unregistered)
    now that has meaning

    Louis and Frans were no longer necessary to re-code everything, and were fired the next day.

  • Ren (unregistered)

    I get a warm, fuzzy feeling whenever I read this story. As in "this is how it's supposed to be"

  • cn (unregistered)

    i'm in the exact same situation and while this article is probably 1/N number possible posts on the same topic, it's nice to read and doesn't make me want to quit my job... just one day more :D

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