The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

herby · 2013-05-29 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
The correct fix would have been to rotate the tablet 180 degrees.

Of course, the next question to ask is:

Which axis?

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

Benjamin Smith:
Steve The Cynic:
WizardStan:
and the VP (who was the problem).
Bosses aren't problems, they are problem solvers.

So how come none of them are capable of solving a problem which requires forethought? As in "hey, I'm going to be in a big presentation tomorrow, and I know that there is a possibility of the technology not working right or my data set having some unexpected glitches in it (look there: a problem, just waiting to be solved) so maybe I should test that my laptop connects to the projector, and try running my presentation on it once, and make sure that the graphs look as I expect them to." If managers actually had ever thought these things, then you could make a case that they are "problem solvers." But delegating each problem to an underling and then leaning on them until they solve it for you is NOT the same as actually solving the problem, despite what they teach in management school.

Or my personal favorite is bosses who can't solve a time and manpower problem. If there is a problem like "the software is six months behind schedule," and it turns out to be because you only hired three developers, your problem is the relative supply and demand of manpower, and the solution is frequently to obtain more manpower. Equally ridiculous are the managers who solved this problem once and they now believe that increasing the supply is the solution for all such problems, so when another project a few years later is again six months behind schedule but already has 100 developers on it, they keep buying more and more manpower when the actual solution is structural and has to do with the way the developers are (or aren't) coordinating their efforts. (Which is why the book "The Mythical Man-Month" had to be written in the first place: because these "problem solvers" just couldn't solve that problem.)

These are high-school- and college-level economics and management problems, but most managers out there couldn't solve this if their careers depended on it. The only reason most managers are still around is because, for no explicable reason, their careers don't depend on it.

TL;DR: If bosses were problem solvers, then the number of problems would have a negative correlation to the number of bosses; in the real world, the reverse is true. QED.

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

anon123:
Before Bob could object, she grabbed his laptop and ushered him down the hall. [...] The VP of Sales snatched away his tablet, not even thanking Bob before he walked inside to give his speech.
TRWTF is obviously that Bob's change altered VP's gender. That's what you get with committing stuff without testing first!

TRWTF is pretentious posters with no reading comprehension skills.

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

Thanatos Complex:
“I’m on the president’s daughter in ten minutes!” The VP shouted.

FTFY

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

I have to laugh at the bad code produced because a shop won't use agile processes.

Gene Wirchenko · 2013-05-29 Reply Admin

QJo:
Am I the only one to recognise the Philip K. Dick reference?

It appears not, but what is the reference, please?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

Anon:
xaade:
... 3. Don't these things always have three points. It is, after all, the VP's presentation. A presentation that's telecast would not be to the VP's boss if Joe Smith can watch it too. So who the hell cares if the underlings see a profit graph. They only want a paycheck. If it is to his boss, then also, why does he need a graph. The only time you need a graph is when you're selling to clients.

Once you reach a certain level of management, no one can read. They must be given Playmobil charts if you want them to understand your presentation.

Captcha: jumentum - Oh man, I'm not touching this one.

They don't even need charts - just as long as there's colour - preferably not red.

True story. We had an inhouse monitoring tool, that among other things had a heartbeat which tested how long a certain operation would take. If that exceeded a certain threshold, it would show a bright red. After some changes which increased the regular effort, the Heartbeat began to consistently exceed the threshold - and although no impace was noticed by users, the monitor-wtaches were concerned "...because there's a lot of red on the monitor...". We fixed it by doubling the threshold at which the output is displayed in red - and everyone is happy once more.

For the non-technical who want to be involved and see everything working, it's important to remember that blue is placid and normal, green means something is particularly happy, yellow/amber means that there's a possible problem, and red means the world is ending. So, there's 2 ways you avoid mass panic:

Having a perfect system that never has any issue whatsoever(and I don't know anyone that would claim to have on)
show lots of green even when there's a problem....

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
The correct fix would have been to rotate the tablet 180 degrees.

Believe me, son, I tried that. But the damn picture on the projector just won't turn. You need to fix this by tomorrow.

flukus · 2013-05-29 Reply Admin

A lot of people seem to be missing the "record sales" part.

The data source is retrieving all data and modifying it to say it's data from 200X. Which produces record sales every year.

Someone probably tried to fix it poperly at some point and the VP wouldn't "accept" the fix.

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

Acutally, this is one that we don't really know much about out of context.

We know that we get a substring of length 10 from the original string. Now some common date formats would be: YYYYMMDD = 8 char (and DDMMYYYY/MMDDYYYY) YYMMDD = 6 char (and variabts) DD MMM YY = 9 char (and possibly 10 if we like le space on le end) DD MMM YYYY = 11 char HHMMSSDDMMYY = 12 char, but 10 without year - and maybe we were trying to replace 12 with 2012 (or something) DDth MMM = 8 char

I'm wondering whether the 2012 is not appending the year per se', but is appending some representation of the FINANCIAL year (in which case it should actually have been changed in July) - in which case it seems a bit odd that it fixed the problem....

Either way, I think there's something more going on here than most of us imagine....

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

Been there:
Someone made something similar at my job. A Perl script had to merge several files into one single output. One of the file names included the current year.
The date was hard coded in the script and the person had added a Wiki page with documentation that said it had to be updated each year in December...

It amazes me that the person was able to know enough programming to parse and read the files, but had never thought of checking if Perl had any functions for retrieving the current year.

But do we need the "current" year, or do we need "the year that we want the stats for"

chubertdev · 2013-05-29 Reply Admin

Speculation:
Acutally, this is one that we don't really know much about out of context.
We know that we get a substring of length 10 from the original string. Now some common date formats would be: YYYYMMDD = 8 char (and DDMMYYYY/MMDDYYYY) YYMMDD = 6 char (and variabts) DD MMM YY = 9 char (and possibly 10 if we like le space on le end) DD MMM YYYY = 11 char HHMMSSDDMMYY = 12 char, but 10 without year - and maybe we were trying to replace 12 with 2012 (or something) DDth MMM = 8 char

I'm wondering whether the 2012 is not appending the year per se', but is appending some representation of the FINANCIAL year (in which case it should actually have been changed in July) - in which case it seems a bit odd that it fixed the problem....

Either way, I think there's something more going on here than most of us imagine....

Yeah, fiscal years are another thing, but can be handled.

   public String getCorrectDate(String str) 
    {
      return str.Substring(0,10) + " " + System.DateTime.Today.AddYears(System.DateTime.Today.Month > 3 ? 1 : 0).Year.ToString();
    }

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
Speculation:
Acutally, this is one that we don't really know much about out of context.
We know that we get a substring of length 10 from the original string. Now some common date formats would be: YYYYMMDD = 8 char (and DDMMYYYY/MMDDYYYY) YYMMDD = 6 char (and variabts) DD MMM YY = 9 char (and possibly 10 if we like le space on le end) DD MMM YYYY = 11 char HHMMSSDDMMYY = 12 char, but 10 without year - and maybe we were trying to replace 12 with 2012 (or something) DDth MMM = 8 char

I'm wondering whether the 2012 is not appending the year per se', but is appending some representation of the FINANCIAL year (in which case it should actually have been changed in July) - in which case it seems a bit odd that it fixed the problem....

Either way, I think there's something more going on here than most of us imagine....

Yeah, fiscal years are another thing, but can be handled.
   public String getCorrectDate(String str) 
    {
      return str.Substring(0,10) + " " + System.DateTime.Today.AddYears(System.DateTime.Today.Month > 3 ? 1 : 0).Year.ToString();
    }

you must be in Asia (or india), UK or NZL. I'm betting NZL.

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

Yup.

Year at the end of date string? Now you're at the mercy of the parsing application to treat it as US or UK date string. ("MM dd yyyy" or "dd MM yyyy")

2013-05-29 Reply Admin

Mitch:
They don't even need charts - just as long as there's colour - preferably not red.
True story. We had an inhouse monitoring tool, that among other things had a heartbeat which tested how long a certain operation would take. If that exceeded a certain threshold, it would show a bright red. After some changes which increased the regular effort, the Heartbeat began to consistently exceed the threshold - and although no impace was noticed by users, the monitor-wtaches were concerned "...because there's a lot of red on the monitor...". We fixed it by doubling the threshold at which the output is displayed in red - and everyone is happy once more.

For the non-technical who want to be involved and see everything working, it's important to remember that blue is placid and normal, green means something is particularly happy, yellow/amber means that there's a possible problem, and red means the world is ending. So, there's 2 ways you avoid mass panic:

Having a perfect system that never has any issue whatsoever(and I don't know anyone that would claim to have on)

show lots of green even when there's a problem....

While I don't disagree with your general point, I must say that your threshold was badly set if it showed lots of red when no actual problems was noticeable. Being a technical person myself, I still prefer to see at first sight (and colors do that) whether there are real problems.

2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Clearly what you need is an IF statement adding 2012 if the date is before the end of 2012 and 2013 if the date is after then.

Matt Westwood · 2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Gene Wirchenko:
QJo:
Am I the only one to recognise the Philip K. Dick reference?

It appears not, but what is the reference, please?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_Wait_for_Last_Year

2013-05-30 Reply Admin

I missed my station because the article was so interesting. BTW, this is the first article that I read after subscribing to the feeds. Good job!

2013-05-30 Reply Admin

foo:
Mitch:
So, there's 2 ways you avoid mass panic: 1) Having a perfect system that never has any issue whatsoever(and I don't know anyone that would claim to have on) 2) show lots of green even when there's a problem....
While I don't disagree with your general point, I must say that your threshold was badly set if it showed lots of red when no actual problems was noticeable. Being a technical person myself, I still prefer to see at first sight (and colors do that) whether there are real problems.

Yo dawg, I see red when I see red, except when I should be seeing red, and then I still see red when I see red.

2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Geoff:
Substituting a fixed string for the year on an otherwise library generated date string (based on the current time?), seems like a really odd thing to do.

But that's the most appropriate thing to do...

If it weren't fixed it wouldn't be fixed.

Silverhill · 2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
R.Flowers:
QJo:
Am I the only one to recognise the Philip K. Dick reference?
Please enlighten those of use who are not Dick-heads.
Google is your fucking friend, shit-for-brains.

When I was scrolling through the comments and stopped at this one, the header was not on screen at the moment. Somehow, though, I just knew that when I checked it, it would be a Matt Westwood comment.

Matt, does someone piss in your Cheerios® every morning? Do you truly think that your writing style adds (positively) to the atmosphere here?

2013-05-30 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
The correct fix would have been to rotate the tablet 180 degrees.

That won't work with tablets that auto-rotate the picture. I suggest tilting the table so that the picture is upside-down and setting up some mirrors.

2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
R.Flowers:
QJo:
Am I the only one to recognise the Philip K. Dick reference?
Please enlighten those of use who are not Dick-heads.
Google is your fucking friend, shit-for-brains.

Exactly what search string do you think would a) find the answer to the question, and b) be thought of by someone who doesn't already know the answer?

eViLegion · 2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Benjamin Smith:
Wow...

Just out of interest... are you currently living in Peru?

eViLegion · 2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Silverhill:
Matt, does someone piss in your Cheerios® every morning? Do you truly think that your writing style adds (positively) to the atmosphere here?

No, he's just an average internet douchebag, who's stupid enough to think that its possible to Google for something when you know exactly nothing about it.

Presumably you're supposed to type "That thing, by Philip K. Dick, which has something to do with some other thing I read on some website somewhere" and as we all know, Google will sort that out.

2013-05-30 Reply Admin

xaade:
... Wait...

If changing the year from 2012 to 2013 made the new sales show up, what happened to the old sales.

Ah, it made the graph look even more skyrockety.

The article very explicitly states that he did NOT just change the date to 2013; he replaced that code with a call to a library function.

2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Ashish Kataria:
I missed my station because the article was so interesting. BTW, this is the first article that I read after subscribing to the feeds. Good job!

It's heartwarming to see how successful Akismet is at preventing comment spam, isn't it?

Flash · 2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Jazz:
...most managers out there couldn't solve this if their careers depended on it. The only reason most managers are still around is because, for no explicable reason, their careers don't depend on it.

This.

chubertdev · 2013-05-30 Reply Admin

hmmm:
chubertdev:
Speculation:
Acutally, this is one that we don't really know much about out of context.
We know that we get a substring of length 10 from the original string. Now some common date formats would be: YYYYMMDD = 8 char (and DDMMYYYY/MMDDYYYY) YYMMDD = 6 char (and variabts) DD MMM YY = 9 char (and possibly 10 if we like le space on le end) DD MMM YYYY = 11 char HHMMSSDDMMYY = 12 char, but 10 without year - and maybe we were trying to replace 12 with 2012 (or something) DDth MMM = 8 char

I'm wondering whether the 2012 is not appending the year per se', but is appending some representation of the FINANCIAL year (in which case it should actually have been changed in July) - in which case it seems a bit odd that it fixed the problem....

Either way, I think there's something more going on here than most of us imagine....

Yeah, fiscal years are another thing, but can be handled.
   public String getCorrectDate(String str) 
    {
      return str.Substring(0,10) + " " + System.DateTime.Today.AddYears(System.DateTime.Today.Month > 3 ? 1 : 0).Year.ToString();
    }
you must be in Asia (or india), UK or NZL. I'm betting NZL.

Nope, just had a Korean client at my last job.

chubertdev · 2013-05-30 Reply Admin

empgodot:
chubertdev:
The correct fix would have been to rotate the tablet 180 degrees.

That won't work with tablets that auto-rotate the picture. I suggest tilting the table so that the picture is upside-down and setting up some mirrors.

"Bug 1354: graph is reversed when using an odd number of mirrors"

chubertdev · 2013-05-30 Reply Admin

Funny that I came across this today.

2013-05-30 Reply Admin

ubersoldat:
The VP of Sales snatched away his tablet, not even thanking Bob before he walked inside to give his speech.

This is TRWTF. Not even a thank you after saving your stupid, non-planning in advance, ass.

Whatever. This IT stuff isn't so hard. It was a date on a presentation. If it was any harder than writing it down with a pen and paper, we'd still be using pens and paper for presentations.

lucidfox · 2013-05-31 Reply Admin

TRWTF is embedding code in XML.

2013-05-31 Reply Admin

mag:
Could someone enlighten me on what the line would have been to correctly pull the date from the standard library in that code context?
I'm not familiar with csharp, and have never seen it embedded in xml. So I'm just curious.

    public String getCorrectDate(String str) 
    {
      return str;	//  trust the Std library 	
			
    }

2013-05-31 Reply Admin

Captain Oblivious:
This IT stuff isn't so hard. It was a date on a presentation. If it was any harder than writing it down with a pen and paper, we'd still be using pens and paper for presentations.

Good luck getting a pen.

[akismet]http colon slash slash thedailywtf.com/Articles/Every-Last-Cent!.aspx[/akismet]

chubertdev · 2013-05-31 Reply Admin

simple:
mag:
Could someone enlighten me on what the line would have been to correctly pull the date from the standard library in that code context?
I'm not familiar with csharp, and have never seen it embedded in xml. So I'm just curious.
    public String getCorrectDate(String str) 
    {
      return str;	//  trust the Std library 	
			
    }

I'd never trust a Std library, no matter what it says.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

What if the string 'str' is null? It'll splatter the yellow all over the page.

2013-06-03 Reply Admin

VP are the funniest when they think that bragging about company's success (record sales and that bullshit) is what bottom-layer employes actually give a fuck about - like I like hearing that your ass is getting rich, motherfucker - gimme a piece and then I'll listen to your crap and look at your stupid chart.

chubertdev · 2013-06-03 Reply Admin

Hasan Nizamani:
What if the string 'str' is null? It'll splatter the yellow all over the page.

Throwing an exception with an invalid parameter is passed to a method is actually the right way to do it. If whatever calls the method can't handle an exception, that's TRWTF.

2013-06-06 Reply Admin

The real WTF is no one here seems to remember that companies operate on Fiscal not calendar years for sales data.

2013-06-10 Reply Admin

Flash:
Jazz:
...most managers out there couldn't solve this if their careers depended on it. The only reason most managers are still around is because, for no explicable reason, their careers don't depend on it.
This.

This what? c'mon lazybones, you could at least type 'What he said' or something

Now Wait for Next GetYear()

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