• jay (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    A sexist comment about men would still be a sexist comment. Same rules apply to all.

    No, they don't.

    Maybe if the universe was fair they would. But in the actual universe that we live in, they don't.

    Count the number of TV commercials where a bumbling idiot of a man needs his wife to bail him out (normally by showing him the product that he should have bought). Now count the number of TV commercials where a bumbling idiot of a woman needs her husband to bail her out. We've all seen hundreds of type 1. Can you name three of type 2?

  • jay (unregistered) in reply to lucidfox
    lucidfox:
    Mo6eB:
    It's like crazy women. The crazy-awesome sex makes the temporary relationship worth it.
    Ah, it just isn't TDWTF without a random sexist comment.

    This was not a sexist comment, as it made no generalizations, good or bad, about women. It was about crazy people. If anything, it's a mental-healthest comment.

  • jay (unregistered)

    You think it's scary to see how crummy the IT systems are that are used to manage your money?

    Hey, I used to work for a company that sold computer systems to doctors. Talk about scary.

  • Jazz (unregistered)

    Where's the WTF? This is standard operating procedure for large enterprise IT:

    1. Spec out a project for a system
    2. Look at the estimate to do it right
    3. Decide that's too much money to spend if the executives want their annual yachts
    4. Contract it out to someone who does a half-assed job at half-price
    5. Wait for system to fail
    6. Spend even more money fixing whatever the failure broke

    This is what executives do every day. I'm still not seeing the WTF. Unless the WTF is management in its entirety.

  • jay (unregistered)

    Did I miss it? I don't think this story ever said what his estimate to do the work right was. I wonder if it was less than 14 million pounds.

    It routinely amazes me how people will balk at spending a million dollars to protect an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. It's like refusing to get an oil change for your car because, hey, the oil change costs 30 bucks, and it's not like that $30,000 car might be damaged in any way just because you never change the oil, right?

  • Dominic (unregistered)

    Use COBOL, problem solved

  • (cs) in reply to Jazz
    Jazz:
    4. Contract it out to someone who does a half-assed job at half-price

    half-assed job? that's optimistic.

  • (cs)

    As it turns out, worrying about the $14M was like worrying about a few drops of rain...just before falling off the dock into the lake.

  • (cs) in reply to Jazz
    Jazz:
    Unless the WTF is management in its entirety
    It is.

    Management high up in the food chain of major banking and financial institutes is a network of 'old boys' that all have each other's back (either willingly or because the other party has dirt on them) and that exists solely to keep each other in power.

    Until this changes all blame and accountability for fuck-ups on magnitudes that would have left third-world countries bankrupt can be deflected, redirected, or otherwise be eliminated. The lack of repercussions means there is no motivation to choose for quality of service or lower risk. Simply go for what makes you most.

    It's unbridled capitalism at its finest and at its morally worst.

    The only way to break through that is by systemically breaking down the circles of power the sector has constructed. Good luck with that when these people are as well-connected politically as they are. You'll get nowhere fast.

  • A Different Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    Ah, the good old days, before proof-of-work public ledgers.

    Your comment was too subtle to spark a flamewar. Allow me:

    [image]
  • Rollyn01 (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev

    That's marketing. Actual performance will vary from sooty to somewhat ehh.

  • Rollyn01 (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    Jazz:
    4. Contract it out to someone who does a half-assed job at half-price

    half-assed job? that's optimistic.

    That's marketing. Actual performance will vary from sooty to somewhat ehh.

  • Rich (unregistered) in reply to Quango

    On the (upcoming) HP-Compaq merger...

    "The visual I see is a slow-motion collision of two garbage trucks--and they are just about to meet bumpers."

    -- Scott McNealy

  • (cs) in reply to Rollyn01
    Rollyn01:
    chubertdev:
    Jazz:
    4. Contract it out to someone who does a half-assed job at half-price

    half-assed job? that's optimistic.

    That's marketing. Actual performance will vary from sooty to somewhat ehh.

    The contract work I've seen performed can only be described as "these people have no previous experience working with code in their lives."

  • Julius Caesar (unregistered) in reply to Ragnax
    Ragnax:
    It's unbridled capitalism at its finest and at its morally worst.

    The only way to break through that is by systemically breaking down the circles of power the sector has constructed. Good luck with that when these people are as well-connected politically as they are. You'll get nowhere fast.

    I agree, except that it's not really unbridled capitalism. In a pure capitalist system, nobody is "too big to fail." All failures are allowed to happen without any government intervention. What we have now is crony capitalism, where political connections can shield you from failure.

  • MerchantBanker (unregistered)

    I work in a large Bank. This isn't WTF. This is daily life...

  • Jim (unregistered) in reply to lucidfox
    lucidfox:
    xaade:
    Women say [who?] they don't need men. [citation needed]
    Fixed
    Lesbians?
  • (cs) in reply to xaade
    xaade:
    Andrew:
    xaade:
    lucidfox:
    Mo6eB:
    It's like crazy women. The crazy-awesome sex makes the temporary relationship worth it.
    Ah, it just isn't TDWTF without a random sexist comment.

    So if a woman made that comment about men, (Because I've heard something of the like.) then it's what? A regular comment?

    Women say they don't need men. So men say, why have a relationship for anything more than sex.

    A sexist comment about men would still be a sexist comment. Same rules apply to all.

    Geez. So, in order to justify PC sexism (and I'm not talking about being sexually harassed at work), you're going to suggest that such a statement as above, if reversed to apply to men, should be offensive to men to the point where they feel unequally treated and deserve an apology.

    What the hell happened to men?

    They started paying attention to the prattling of women. Bad mistake.

  • verily (unregistered) in reply to Jazz
    Jazz:
    Where's the WTF? This is standard operating procedure for large enterprise IT:
    1. Spec out a project for a system
    2. Look at the estimate to do it right
    3. Decide that's too much money to spend if the executives want their annual yachts
    4. Contract it out to someone who does a half-assed job at half-price
    5. Wait for system to fail
    6. Spend even more money fixing whatever the failure broke

    This is what executives do every day. I'm still not seeing the WTF. Unless the WTF is management in its entirety.

    Just because it is standard operating procedure dore not mean it's no WTF.

  • Stanford Style (unregistered) in reply to Doug

    106A ftw

  • mark (unregistered)

    I see lucidfox returns and is already fighting all comers for being heterosexual males.....

  • You're mom (unregistered) in reply to Julius Caesar
    Julius Caesar:
    I agree, except that it's not really unbridled capitalism. In a pure capitalist system, nobody is "too big to fail." All failures are allowed to happen without any government intervention. What we have now is crony capitalism, where political connections can shield you from failure.

    But companies can make horrible products and still survive without government protection. Look at, for example, Oracle.

  • Ted (unregistered)

    TRWTF is finance, all of it.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to jay
    jay:
    You think it's scary to see how crummy the IT systems are that are used to manage your money?

    Hey, I used to work for a company that sold computer systems to doctors. Talk about scary.

    Talk about scary?

    I did some outsourcing work for a company that makes lots of kinds of machinery including medical equipment. I worked with divisions of that company other than medical equipment so I don't know for sure if that one division is the same as the others ... I don't know for sure, but the thought sure is scary. I am really glad I didn't see that company's name on anything in the hospital where I had heart surgery.

    I also used Windows CE in some arcane machines. In Windows CE, Ctrl+Alt+Delete doesn't have a defined meaning, so it doesn't bring up a task manager, but it did hang the machines when some I/O devices sent input that accidentally happened to map onto Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Later I read that some medical equipment uses Windows CE. I wonder if they sanitize input from their arcane I/O devices. Talk about scary.

    Therac-25 is still alive.

  • Sean Farrell (unregistered) in reply to Norman Diamond

    Talk about scary. I work for a company that does the entire IT & control infrastructure for industrial plants and power plants. It amazes me every day that the software actually works in the field... Tried to diagnose one run time component with App Verifier; it did not even get past the splash screen and App Verifier refused to continue. Real vulnerabilities (stux cough net) don't amaze me... If I was in the business of selling vulnerabilities I would be rich... no... I have to painfully fight for each fix of the system, "because the customer got used to the bugs".

  • صور مشبات (unregistered) in reply to Doug

    صورمشبات .مشبات . ديكورات مشبات .صورمشبات http://shomane.blogspot.com/

    صورمشبات http://12abjdhoaz.blogspot.com/

  • (cs) in reply to Ted
    Ted:
    TRWTF is finance, all of it.

    It's a perversion of math.

  • ForFoxSake (unregistered)

    Which bank was that so I can close my account if it didn't auto-close?

  • (cs) in reply to ForFoxSake
    ForFoxSake:
    Which bank was that so I can close my account if it didn't auto-close?
    The final paragraph subtly suggests that it might be RBS.
  • Geoff (unregistered) in reply to Sean Farrell
    Sean Farrell:
    Talk about scary. I work for a company that does the entire IT & control infrastructure for industrial plants and power plants. It amazes me every day that the software actually works in the field... Tried to diagnose one run time component with App Verifier; it did not even get past the splash screen and App Verifier refused to continue. Real vulnerabilities (stux *cough* net) don't amaze me... If I was in the business of selling vulnerabilities I would be rich... no... I have to painfully fight for each fix of the system, "because the customer got used to the bugs".
    Although going off topic here, this reminds me of a friend who was programming a PC hooked up to a dynamometer for testing cars. Run program, dynamomenter spins up and up ... and up - thank goodness for the manual kill-switch before it blew up!
  • michiel_ph (unregistered)

    What's wrong with comments in dutch?

  • Ubiquitous (unregistered) in reply to Doug
    Was Karel a robot?
    "Who's better at math than a robot? Robots are MADE of Math!"
  • James (unregistered) in reply to Rich

    -- Scott McNealy the guy who sold Sun Microsystems to Oracle. Sun was doing nothing but inventing awesome technology while blogging a lot but selling hardly anything. Oracle buys them out and the Oracle culture scared the computer scientists so bad, they almost all jumped ship to go work on their babies that Sun previously open sourced rather than become corporate drones.

    Meanwhile Oracle bundles their big bloated expensive Apps and databases with big expensive hardware and goes for product placement in Marvel Comic movies. The rest of the world heads for the cloud.

    Me thinks these banks need the Oracle big iron just to deal with their insanely inefficient legacy code!

  • Amen (unregistered) in reply to Doug

    Was this Ulster Bank?

  • Dave (unregistered)

    Royal Bank of Scotland

    explains why I'm now a part owner

  • a (unregistered) in reply to MerchantBanker
    MerchantBanker:
    I work in a large Bank. This isn't WTF. This is daily life...

    Doesn't that make this a Daily WTF?

  • vtsj (unregistered)

    "Bankieren Integratie Tool"

    People who can't spell composite words correctly apparently also can't code worth for shit.

    Ongeletterden.

  • psuedonymous (unregistered)
    Then £14M vanished. Someplace over the North Sea, the data ceased to exist.
    No, it was just turned into an Eagle by an angry out-of-work Norse god who couldn't get an airline ticket.

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