The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2014-03-12 Reply Admin

Unless the men are hot.

2014-03-12 Reply Admin

herby:
Rick Harlan:
"The entire mainframe team had pressed their caps lock keys once in 1972, and hadn’t touched them since."
Maybe it's just me, but I thought this was the highlight of the day!
Made my day as well. Of course this assumes that their keyboard had lower case to begin with. Look, if the character wasn't on the 029 keypunch, it might as well have not existed. Now where is the ¢ sign??

Numeric shift key + R.

[image]

2014-03-12 Reply Admin

StateFarmJake:
Anon cow:
MiniMax:
I will work with Sara on any project. She's a pro. Her boss, not so much.

Bonus if she is hot too.

Well, she's a guy, so ....

Then bonus if he is hot too.

2014-03-12 Reply Admin

ubersoldat:
Yes, having mission critical stuff like network printers and plant controllers in the same server seems like a good idea.

Let me quote the Principal Vice President Of IT (Idiotic Terminology): "There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why we should expend VALUABLE RESOURCES on purchasing MULTIPLE SERVERS to service a SINGLE PLANT! THIS WILL HAPPEN OVER MY DEAD BONUS...errr, I mean "body". Yeah, body - that's it...ahem..."

2014-03-12 Reply Admin

Coyne:
Fault code: XFCF - Xmain Forest Consumption Failure.
Either that's the tiniest spooler in existence, or trees flow from Xmain like water.

Paper is expensive these days and conservation is an important initiative. I can see the message to some mid-level manager:

"Remember that printer you refused to buy paper for, to save money from your budget? Well, it caused an outage of the entire plant and we would like to you to absorb the loss in your budget..."

Nope - not gonna happen - because every manager knows that as sure as the sun rises in the morning, it's gonna be their turn to be the goat one of these days - and they know better than to burn bridges.

2014-03-12 Reply Admin

Pista:
ratchet freak:
5 minutes to write out ticket
5 hours of various managers pretending to take care of the problem

1 minute to diagnose problem and fix it

yeah sounds about right

FTFY

Btw, your fix makes me think about this:

When there's a problem that the IT team can't fix, is it the responsibility of the IT Manager or HR? (The responsible IT staffs surely has responsibility so need not be discussed)

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

I'd put a note on each and every printer saying "DO NOT LET ME RUN OUT OF PAPER, THE UNIVERSE MAY IMPLODE"

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

Rick Harlan:
"The entire mainframe team had pressed their caps lock keys once in 1972, and hadn’t touched them since."
Maybe it's just me, but I thought this was the highlight of the day!

That's a worldwide ongoing WTF. The best answer I've got so far is that all-caps is "clearer" (yes, somebody told me that).

So...why don't we print books and newspapers in all-caps?

Maybe the JCL manual was in all-caps, I don't remember.

The person who told me that wasn't old enough to know what JCL is though.

Maybe it's genetic. Some people have the gene, some don't.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT AS STUPID AS THIS WEBSITE *snip, a lot*

This guy apparently has anger issues. I can't even open page 3 of the comments, it breaks IE8 (yes, TRWTF is my government just upgraded to IE8 in 2014).

You know, I am sure that www . justinbieber . com sucks too. Which is why I don't visit the site. Much less leave a comment there. Much, much less go to all the trouble of posting multiple comments there.

Final thought: I am surprised that the user name "by the way alex is a F******" isn't already registered.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
This guy apparently has anger issues. I can't even open page 3 of the comments, it breaks IE8 (yes, TRWTF is my government just upgraded to IE8 in 2014).
You know, I am sure that www . justinbieber . com sucks too. Which is why I don't visit the site. Much less leave a comment there. Much, much less go to all the trouble of posting multiple comments there.

Final thought: I am surprised that the user name "by the way alex is a F******" isn't already registered.

Some people are doomed to be perpetually upset on the internet. Personally I find someone getting angry because they chose to do something that they don't enjoy, is pretty damned funny. These are the sorts of people who put themselves into the paths of fast moving buses, just to spite the bus drivers.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

Another IE8 user here. Have the same issue, glad to know it's not just me.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

da Doctah:
FrankyBoy:
"Could you jump on there and let them know you’re working on it?" ... nope, thats your damn job.
And it's demonstrably untrue. If you're on the conference call to tell them you're working on it, you're obviously not working on it.

It's always a good idea to point this out to people :-)

When people call me and say 'xyz server seems to be down, are you working on it?', the best response is 'well, I am trying to, in between all the phone calls'... Or, if they ask 'when do you expect it to be fixed?', you answer 'it'll be sooner if people stop phoning!' or 'it depends on how many people keep calling to ask how long it's going to be'

PS - I remember spending a few weeks working in a mainframe data centre in 1984 - the printers were awesome beasts! Modern laser printers have nothing on their speed. However, I'm surprised the problem got so far as this - there'd be alerts going off everywhere if a printer ran out of paper!

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

There sure are a lot of angry kids here who can't stand the fact that actual programmers (instead of coders) managed to write applications in the 60s-80s that still function as intended, having paid themselves back decades ago, and really just don't need to be replaced.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

Well, there is UTF-EBCDIC, so even mainframes can use (or at least store) Unicode. If you're that deperate, that is...

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

Fritz:
There sure are a lot of angry kids here who can't stand the fact that actual programmers (instead of coders) managed to write applications in the 60s-80s that still function as intended, having paid themselves back decades ago, and really just don't need to be replaced.

First of all, survivorship bias is rearing its ugly head. And secondly, the hardware to run those systems is hopelessly out-of-date, prone to failure due to simple factors of age, and impossible to replace because it's stupid to build archaic designs just for the handful of people who still use them. So you're stuck with either finding ancient, barely-functional hardware on eBay, using an emulator to run the old code on newer hardware, or replacing the old code altogether. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of those alternatives, but if finding a long-term solution is important, replacing the old code is the most viable.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

Nice to see Akismet doing its job.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

Actually at my first job, we had approximately 30 accounting folks in one building, and there favorite thing to do was spool up long-running print jobs then go to lunch. The print server was also the company file sharing server, cause no one at the company seemed to know about NAS (despite being a billion dollar IBM reseller that would merge with Avnet 2 years later). I was the tech that stayed during lunch, for the sole purpose of making sure that printers didn't jam or run out of paper locking up the file sharing server.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

THE SPOOLER FILES REACHED THEIR MAX

Sounds crazy, and absolutely is a real threat! I've run out of SPOOL before. You can lose your Websphere application which runs under MVS and then you find out you are out of SPOOL. Then you start to wonder how your MVS/WAS/Db2 stack has anything to do with the printer and then you start to think about VTAM.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

anonymous:
Fritz:
There sure are a lot of angry kids here who can't stand the fact that actual programmers (instead of coders) managed to write applications in the 60s-80s that still function as intended, having paid themselves back decades ago, and really just don't need to be replaced.
First of all, survivorship bias is rearing its ugly head. And secondly, the hardware to run those systems is hopelessly out-of-date, prone to failure due to simple factors of age, and impossible to replace because it's stupid to build archaic designs just for the handful of people who still use them. So you're stuck with either finding ancient, barely-functional hardware on eBay, using an emulator to run the old code on newer hardware, or replacing the old code altogether. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of those alternatives, but if finding a long-term solution is important, replacing the old code is the most viable.

Go read up on mainframes. Their chips execute java faster than anything from Intel or AMD. The IBM hardware updates just as fast as everything else. And BTW, IBM invented the concept of backward compatibility with their 360 mainframe. It didn't exist before then. I.E. - the hardware upgrades just fine. Even though your TPF Assembler (ACP) Airline Control Program from the 60s is now being used to as a revolving loan billing system - it still runs on the latest gear.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

I work by a simple rule - if users have a problem they should report it the the help desk and wait for updates, if they phone or email me asking for progress they get told they're waiting my time.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

IBM is more than helpful to help with all of those issues - for a huge fee of course.

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

awesomness is overflowing... Printers connected to the mainframe o_O wtf?

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

Rick Harlan:
"The entire mainframe team had pressed their caps lock keys once in 1972, and hadn’t touched them since."
Maybe it's just me, but I thought this was the highlight of the day!

Same here, +1.

Signed, ex-MF'r

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

Jack of many trades:
When the fuck are mainframes going to disappear? They were useful and relevant 20 years ago. Not now.

I remember the headlines in the mid-90's..."Mainframes are Dead!"

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

Jibble:
Rick Harlan:
"The entire mainframe team had pressed their caps lock keys once in 1972, and hadn’t touched them since."
Maybe it's just me, but I thought this was the highlight of the day!
That's a worldwide ongoing WTF. The best answer I've got so far is that all-caps is "clearer" (yes, somebody told me that).

So...why don't we print books and newspapers in all-caps?

Maybe the JCL manual was in all-caps, I don't remember.

The person who told me that wasn't old enough to know what JCL is though.

Maybe it's genetic. Some people have the gene, some don't.

JCL itself was all caps because card punches were all caps (and most printers were all caps).

The dozen or so JCL manuals weren't all caps (a few printers weren't all caps).

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
I can't even open page 3 of the comments, it breaks IE8 (yes, TRWTF is my government just upgraded to IE8 in 2014).

It breaks in IE10 too. It works in Firefox.

(I upgraded from IE11 to IE10 because IE11 breaks Outlook 2003.)

(Except that my XP machines couldn't upgrade from IE11 to IE10. Guess which IE they've been using. Though I upgraded my wife's XP from IE8 to FF27 because IE8 had too many problems too.)

2014-03-13 Reply Admin

mainframe web developer:
And BTW, IBM *invented* the concept of backward compatibility with their 360 mainframe. It didn't exist before then. I.E. - the hardware upgrades just fine.

I doubt that very much. Before then, some of IBM's mainframes were backward compatible with earlier mainframes. The 360 broke that concept by not being backward compatible with earlier mainframes. Emulators, i.e. special purpose hardware, didn't change the fact that the 360 CPU itself was grossly different. (This subthread discusses software not hardware -- old applications didn't run without emulators.)

(Backward compatibility with peripherals was a different matter. When spoolers brought down the system because 1403 printers were out of paper, 1403s were survivors of an earlier age. 360's had that kind of backward compatibility.)

2014-03-14 Reply Admin

anonymous:
Fritz:
There sure are a lot of angry kids here who can't stand the fact that actual programmers (instead of coders) managed to write applications in the 60s-80s that still function as intended, having paid themselves back decades ago, and really just don't need to be replaced.
First of all, survivorship bias is rearing its ugly head. And secondly, the hardware to run those systems is hopelessly out-of-date, prone to failure due to simple factors of age, and impossible to replace because it's stupid to build archaic designs just for the handful of people who still use them. So you're stuck with either finding ancient, barely-functional hardware on eBay, using an emulator to run the old code on newer hardware, or replacing the old code altogether. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of those alternatives, but if finding a long-term solution is important, replacing the old code is the most viable.

Just about none of this is true vOv

Arancaytar · 2014-03-14 Reply Admin

The entire mainframe team had pressed their caps lock keys once in 1972, and hadn’t touched them since.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME OF GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR? [Y/N]
>

2014-03-14 Reply Admin

Fritz:
anonymous:
Fritz:
There sure are a lot of angry kids here who can't stand the fact that actual programmers (instead of coders) managed to write applications in the 60s-80s that still function as intended, having paid themselves back decades ago, and really just don't need to be replaced.
First of all, survivorship bias is rearing its ugly head. And secondly, the hardware to run those systems is hopelessly out-of-date, prone to failure due to simple factors of age, and impossible to replace because it's stupid to build archaic designs just for the handful of people who still use them. So you're stuck with either finding ancient, barely-functional hardware on eBay, using an emulator to run the old code on newer hardware, or replacing the old code altogether. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of those alternatives, but if finding a long-term solution is important, replacing the old code is the most viable.

Just about none of this is true vOv

A more well-argued rebuttal I've not seen all morning. Thank you sir.

2014-03-14 Reply Admin

anonymous:
Fritz:
anonymous:
Fritz:
There sure are a lot of angry kids here who can't stand the fact that actual programmers (instead of coders) managed to write applications in the 60s-80s that still function as intended, having paid themselves back decades ago, and really just don't need to be replaced.
First of all, survivorship bias is rearing its ugly head. And secondly, the hardware to run those systems is hopelessly out-of-date, prone to failure due to simple factors of age, and impossible to replace because it's stupid to build archaic designs just for the handful of people who still use them. So you're stuck with either finding ancient, barely-functional hardware on eBay, using an emulator to run the old code on newer hardware, or replacing the old code altogether. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of those alternatives, but if finding a long-term solution is important, replacing the old code is the most viable.

Just about none of this is true vOv
A more well-argued rebuttal I've not seen all morning. Thank you sir.

Jew Superallah Obama did 9/11 and the holocaust never happened.
Uhh he didn't and it did.
LOLLERSTRÖMBERG U MAD U SUXIT AT DEBAET

(An excerpt from "Conversations with anonymous", Doubleday 1973)

2014-03-14 Reply Admin

Fritz:
anonymous:
Fritz:
anonymous:
Fritz:
There sure are a lot of angry kids here who can't stand the fact that actual programmers (instead of coders) managed to write applications in the 60s-80s that still function as intended, having paid themselves back decades ago, and really just don't need to be replaced.
First of all, survivorship bias is rearing its ugly head. And secondly, the hardware to run those systems is hopelessly out-of-date, prone to failure due to simple factors of age, and impossible to replace because it's stupid to build archaic designs just for the handful of people who still use them. So you're stuck with either finding ancient, barely-functional hardware on eBay, using an emulator to run the old code on newer hardware, or replacing the old code altogether. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of those alternatives, but if finding a long-term solution is important, replacing the old code is the most viable.

Just about none of this is true vOv
A more well-argued rebuttal I've not seen all morning. Thank you sir.

Jew Superallah Obama did 9/11 and the holocaust never happened.

Uhh he didn't and it did.

LOLLERSTRÖMBERG U MAD U SUXIT AT DEBAET

(An excerpt from "Conversations with anonymous", Doubleday 1973)

You know, I hear that Hitler also liked to randomly change the subject instead of supporting his arguments with facts.

2014-03-14 Reply Admin

Norman Diamond:
By coincidence 1972 was the first time I was able to get lowercase on a mainframe, though it had been available for a few years already to customers willing to pay premium prices.

I modded mine to get the lower case. Only cost about $5.00 in sheet metal and some special time with a tig welder.

2014-03-18 Reply Admin

Norman Diamond:
CigarDoug:
I can't even open page 3 of the comments, it breaks IE8 (yes, TRWTF is my government just upgraded to IE8 in 2014).
It breaks in IE10 too. It works in Firefox.
(I upgraded from IE11 to IE10 because IE11 breaks Outlook 2003.)

(Except that my XP machines couldn't upgrade from IE11 to IE10. Guess which IE they've been using. Though I upgraded my wife's XP from IE8 to FF27 because IE8 had too many problems too.)

It loads, and then my userscript does a combination of Javascript and CSS magic to make it look like this.

2014-03-18 Reply Admin

That was what we used to say 20 years ago.

2014-03-19 Reply Admin

jabrwock:
She shouldn't feel so smug. Who set things up so a single printer failure could bring down the whole plant? I wouldn't want to be her trying to explain that...

Who wouldn't enjoy explaining to a bunch of self-righteous suits that they are responsible for their own problems? Their mission relies upon several single-points-of-failure (SPOFs), with no apparent expectations of failover, and now even their printer is a SPOF.

It doesn't even matter so much if their SPOFs are written in COBOL or Ruby on Rails.

2014-03-19 Reply Admin

mousanony:
...that bullheaded mainframe app analyst a few cubes away from me...
... she doesn't want to make any modification to her beloved system, forcing an "unnecessary" relationship between the two entities

... I hate mainframe apps and devs because of things like these

... Just because their system is three times as old as ours ... doesn't make you right.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Most legacy application system have no unit tests, have been fine-tuned to business requirements for years, and are probably at the heart of 80% of critical business processes. The people maintaining the system probably understand about 20% of what is going on under the hood.

Most new application systems might have automatic unit and regression test suites, reasonable exception handling, and database schemae that Ted Codd would be proud of. The development team probably understands (or can understand) about 90% of what is going on. When those apps do go into production, the company might consider making 10% of critical business processes rely upon them.

So, by all means you should keep your beloved database design pristine. Even though they pay your paycheck, it's just plain wrong to let the business needs of your employer interfere with a good design.

2014-03-22 Reply Admin

Hmm.. how come this sounds sooo familiar ....

2014-03-29 Reply Admin

anonymous:
Do your card payments fail often? Mine never did, only using my regional bank debit card, quite a few times.

Unless your card is issued by the UK banks Natwest or RBS... Then you're used to it. These aren't exactly small banks. They screw up regularly lately.

2014-05-06 Reply Admin

Essex Kitten:
anonymous:
Do your card payments fail often? Mine never did, only using my regional bank debit card, quite a few times.
Unless your card is issued by the UK banks Natwest or RBS... Then you're used to it. These aren't exactly small banks. They screw up regularly lately.

I once had two transactions simply fail to ever post (the purchase was authorised and completed, but the charge never showed up on my account). Different stores, different cards, different banks, different authorisation types (one was credit, the other was debit), and they occurred within about a week of each other.

Then there was an online purchase that I made, and I received the product, but the charges to my credit card were reversed for some unknown reason.

shrug I like free stuff!

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