• noname (unregistered)

    Frist? Well, closing down an application while on holidays for six weeks is a gigantic WTF in my eyes.

  • Hasse de great (unregistered)

    Well ... this is the way things goes when everyone have a opinion and no one have knowledge.

    Captcha: Nulla. I would say, speaks for itself!

  • (cs) in reply to noname
    noname:
    Frist? Well, closing down an application while on holidays for six weeks is a gigantic WTF in my eyes.
    It's actually worse than that. She *didn't* close it down. She just posted a *lie* to discourage people from using it, so whatever the reason she wanted it not used, it is unlikely to have (at a 100% level) the desired effect. And I'm mildly curious (and the HTML source comments provide no insight) as to what this person thought she'd gain by doing this.

    And yes, having two applications with the same name is a WTF, especially since one of them was named after a class of application-description document because the description of the application was stored in that category.

  • (cs) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    noname:
    Frist? Well, closing down an application while on holidays for six weeks is a gigantic WTF in my eyes.
    It's actually worse than that. She *didn't* close it down. She just posted a *lie* to discourage people from using it, so whatever the reason she wanted it not used, it is unlikely to have (at a 100% level) the desired effect. And I'm mildly curious (and the HTML source comments provide no insight) as to what this person thought she'd gain by doing this.

    And yes, having two applications with the same name is a WTF, especially since one of them was named after a class of application-description document because the description of the application was stored in that category.

    She taught a computer to lie. 8| The revolution will come soon.

  • (cs)

    WHY IS WORF THERE.

    I DONT UNDERSTAND

  • Moo Cow (unregistered) in reply to Algorythmics
    Algorythmics:
    WHY IS WORF THERE.

    I DONT UNDERSTAND

    Because he's played by Michael Dorn.

  • 30into (unregistered) in reply to Algorythmics

    Chief Security Officer?

  • 30into (unregistered) in reply to Algorythmics

    Now with added quote...

    Algorythmics:
    WHY IS WORF THERE.

    I DONT UNDERSTAND

    Chief Security Officer?

  • Stargate Fan (unregistered) in reply to Algorythmics
    Algorythmics:
    WHY IS WORF THERE.

    I DONT UNDERSTAND

    Because of Star Wars.

  • Indifferent (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    And I'm mildly curious (and the HTML source comments provide no insight) as to what this person thought she'd gain by doing this.

    My guess would be a combination of:

    a) They knew the application was flaky and would raise errors that they didn't want to be bothered by whilst on their vacation. b) There was only one person processing the output of the application and they didn't want to return from their vacation to a load of processing grunt-work that'd built up.

    ~~ Meh ~~

  • Damien (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    noname:
    Frist? Well, closing down an application while on holidays for six weeks is a gigantic WTF in my eyes.
    It's actually worse than that. She *didn't* close it down. She just posted a *lie* to discourage people from using it, so whatever the reason she wanted it not used, it is unlikely to have (at a 100% level) the desired effect. And I'm mildly curious (and the HTML source comments provide no insight) as to what this person thought she'd gain by doing this.

    And yes, having two applications with the same name is a WTF, especially since one of them was named after a class of application-description document because the description of the application was stored in that category.

    We had a situation where an application we'd been using for ages was always abbreviated to a 3 letter acronym - e.g. FCD. Then, one of our departments, in their wisdom, decided to rename themselves to FCD.

    Which made for a joyful time when people would start talking about FCD Users and you always had to work out whether they were talking about the department's user's of various applications, the users (across all departments) that used the FCD application, or something else.

    And this department were heavy users of FCD, so they couldn't claim they weren't aware of it beforehand.

  • Geoff (unregistered) in reply to 30into
    30into:
    Chief Security Officer?
    Isn't that the true WTF right there? Why is the cheif of security a bridge officer? I never could understand that. Now now I know Worf also was essentially the chief gunner/artillery officer and it probably makes sense to have that station manned at all times given the rather quite hostile universe Star Trek is set in; the do go into action often.

    Which leaves us with why does the Artillery officer have responsibility to manage the "military police" on the ship? Seems like a pretty different set of scope and competencies.

    Yes I know everyone with CISSP has to learn how high to mount the flood lights and where to install man traps, but I have yet to encounter any business anywhere were the same manger has the renta-cops who sit at the desk in the lobby and the firewall admins as direct reports. I have never served in any branch of the military so maybe that overlap is more common there, which would make the organizational structure on Star Trek make much more sense, but it still strikes me as odd.

  • (cs) in reply to Damien
    Damien:
    We had a situation where an application we'd been using for ages was always abbreviated to a 3 letter acronym - e.g. FCD. Then, one of our departments, in their wisdom, decided to rename themselves to FCD.

    Ah, that reminds me of a company I once worked in. They kept changing the organisation every few months.

    At one particular time most of the developers worked in the department called PS (Professional Services as far as I remember), whereas the support and maintenance people (what you people tend to call just 'IT') worked in the department called MS (Managed Services).

    We had a couple of girls that officially belonged to the MS organisation, but who worked closely together with us in the PS dept.

    They were not amused when I suggested they belonged to a separate department called PMS.

  • blah (unregistered) in reply to Geoff

    Good point,

    I think the main reason is that in the Star Trek universe crime is almost non-existent and so having a "Police" officer isn't really required. If you had two separate posts one for security officer and one for weapons the security officer would probably sit about all day doing nothing.

    Also the station is manned at all times if you watch the series closely you'll often see the senior officers coming out of a meeting and relieving a junior officer.

  • (cs)

    There should be javascript under CSO or Mr.Dorn text with Worf saying: "Shields up, Phasers charged, torpedoes locked on target! Sir!"

  • (cs) in reply to Indifferent

    I actually know a little bit about the application in question. It essentially allows a group of users to create a template of a document that other users need to fill out. My guess is that the user either had some changes in flight or wanted to make some changes to the template before anyone started working on their documents.

    There's another lurking WTF in this application. The users demanded spell-checking. It was built to target IE8 (corporate standards and all), so there was no client-side spell-checking. The solution? A web service that accepts text, passes that text to a WPF text box, and uses WPF's built in spell checking to generate a report which it passes back as JSON.

    Yes, their web application has a dependency on the .NET client UI tools.

  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered)

    Ah, Sarbanes-Oxley, aka "The Knee-Jerk Reaction To Enron". (But we have to do SOMETHING!)

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic

    Meh.

    Mega-corp problems.

  • deezil (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter

    Got one better. Old VB6 app. Users wanted spell checking on a couple of text fields. Developers passed the text into Word, ran the spell check, and sent it back.

    Captcha: vulputate. AKA what I did when I saw this word spell check hack.

  • jaffa creole (unregistered)

    I don't think the "lol, her boss has the same name as the guy who played Worf" joke really works in cases where it's a made up name to begin with.

    Deciding which made up name to use, just because his title is "Chief Security Officer" makes the whole thing even worse.

  • (cs) in reply to Geoff
    Geoff:
    30into:
    Chief Security Officer?
    Isn't that the true WTF right there? Why is the cheif of security a bridge officer? I never could understand that. Now now I know Worf also was essentially the chief gunner/artillery officer and it probably makes sense to have that station manned at all times given the rather quite hostile universe Star Trek is set in; the do go into action often.

    Which leaves us with why does the Artillery officer have responsibility to manage the "military police" on the ship? Seems like a pretty different set of scope and competencies.

    Yes I know everyone with CISSP has to learn how high to mount the flood lights and where to install man traps, but I have yet to encounter any business anywhere were the same manger has the renta-cops who sit at the desk in the lobby and the firewall admins as direct reports. I have never served in any branch of the military so maybe that overlap is more common there, which would make the organizational structure on Star Trek make much more sense, but it still strikes me as odd.

    I don't think he was a bridge officer because he was Chief of Security. He wore multiple hats; his bridge officer position was Tactical Officer. I may be remembering this part wrong, but I believe he was already a Tactical Officer before he became Chief of Security.

  • (cs) in reply to deezil

    Ahhhh, Office Automation. To this day, we have a few apps lurking around that require Excel to be installed on the web server so they can manipulate spreadsheets.

  • neminem (unregistered)

    Yay! This article makes me happy. Why? Because it's the first story we've had in a while that sounds completely likely to have been true, without any significant embellishment other than anonymization. I can totally see this playing out just like that. So it also makes me kinda sad.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to Indifferent
    Indifferent:
    a) They knew the application was flaky and would raise errors that they didn't want to be bothered by whilst on their vacation.
    "I'm on holiday for six weeks, so no SOX compliance for you!"

    This story is also one of the rare positive WTFs - someone actually read a SharePoint.

  • GiGNiC (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Ahhhh, Office Automation. To this day, we have a few apps lurking around that require Excel to be installed on the web server so they can manipulate spreadsheets.
    We have some tools in production (of electronics devices) that require Word and Excel to generate test reports and QA certificates (or fill in templates, at least). I'm not convinced it's all that WTF-y.
  • MS-Hater (unregistered) in reply to GiGNiC
    GiGNiC:
    Remy Porter:
    Ahhhh, Office Automation. To this day, we have a few apps lurking around that require Excel to be installed on the web server so they can manipulate spreadsheets.
    We have some tools in production (of electronics devices) that require Word and Excel to generate test reports and QA certificates (or fill in templates, at least). I'm not convinced it's all that WTF-y.

    It is. If you can't convince yourself of that, then just take everyone else's word for it.

  • (cs) in reply to Zacrath
    Zacrath:
    Steve The Cynic:
    It's actually worse than that. She *didn't* close it down. She just posted a *lie* to discourage people from using it, so whatever the reason she wanted it not used, it is unlikely to have (at a 100% level) the desired effect. And I'm mildly curious (and the HTML source comments provide no insight) as to what this person thought she'd gain by doing this.
    She taught a computer to lie. 8| The revolution will come soon.
    Either that or it drives the computer completely insane.
  • (cs) in reply to GiGNiC

    For starters, I don't even think the Office license permits that use. But beyond that, an extremely thick client application, built for interactive use, has no place at all on a server.

    There are APIs for manipulating Office docs that don't require Office installed on your machine. The current incarnation is the OpenXML SDK, which is not the greatest API ever built for document manipulation, but it is a vastly superior option (and there are some great third party libraries built atop it).

  • (cs) in reply to kilroo
    kilroo:
    I don't think he was a bridge officer because he was Chief of Security. He wore multiple hats; his bridge officer position was Tactical Officer. I may be remembering this part wrong, but I believe he was already a Tactical Officer before he became Chief of Security.

    I'm not sure which worries me more -- That there are simple explanations for this or that I know where to find them.

    Following the death of Natasha Yar at the hands of the Armus entity, Worf became acting security chief. In 2365, Worf transferred to the operations division and officially became the Enterprise-D's chief tactical officer and security chief. He was promoted to the rank of full lieutenant in 2366. After seven years of service aboard the starship, Worf rose in rank to lieutenant commander in 2371. (TNG: "Skin of Evil", "The Child", "Evolution"; Star Trek Generations)

    [...]

    In the 2270s, the role of security chief was combined with that of the chief tactical officer. The chief tactical officer could be a separate position or be combined with that of helmsman or navigator. (Star Trek: The Motion Picture; Star Trek V: The Final Frontier; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)

    In the 24th century, with helm and navigation consolidated in the new flight controller position, the chief tactical officer fulfilled the role of security chief. (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint") Aboard the USS Voyager, Lieutenant Commander Tuvok, as security chief, had thirteen department heads report to him every day on ship's protocol. (VOY: "Scientific Method")

    Now if you will excuse me, I hear my mom calling me and have to go back upstairs.

  • Anon (unregistered)
    Image from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”

    Oh come on, like anybody didn't know that already...

  • (cs) in reply to DCRoss

    And of course, the real reason was that after Denise Crosby left ST:TNG, the producers found it more congenial to increase the role of an increasingly popular minor character than to try to integrate a new actor and character into the cast. All the in-universe justifications? Just another day on the U.S.S. Make Shit Up.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon

    While we don't always remember, as a rule, we credit the images, even if the source is obvious.

  • Burner (unregistered)

    The real, real WTF, is someone in this industry gets to take 6 weeks in a row for vacation. I'm lucky to get 6 days in a row.

  • (cs) in reply to Burner
    Burner:
    The real, real WTF, is someone in this industry gets to take 6 weeks in a row for vacation. I'm lucky to get 6 days in a row.

    don't forget that that email chain must have had at least a week or 2 to build before it got to Kelly

  • habalaba (unregistered) in reply to 30into

    Security Chief Worf is played by the actor Michael Dorn. Mr. Dorn in the story was the company Chief of Security.

  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered) in reply to Burner
    Burner:
    The real, real WTF, is someone in this industry gets to take 6 weeks in a row for vacation. I'm lucky to get 6 days in a row.
    FTFY. I get two weeks. At a previous company we had PTO, so I could take 4 if I wasn't sick.

    I would guess that submitter is French, except they don't have to deal with SOX in France. Who gets six weeks vacation anywhere in the US? (other than stuff like teachers getting summers off)

  • (cs) in reply to Zacrath
    Zacrath:
    Steve The Cynic:
    noname:
    Frist? Well, closing down an application while on holidays for six weeks is a gigantic WTF in my eyes.
    It's actually worse than that. She *didn't* close it down. She just posted a *lie* to discourage people from using it, so whatever the reason she wanted it not used, it is unlikely to have (at a 100% level) the desired effect. And I'm mildly curious (and the HTML source comments provide no insight) as to what this person thought she'd gain by doing this.

    And yes, having two applications with the same name is a WTF, especially since one of them was named after a class of application-description document because the description of the application was stored in that category.

    She taught a computer to lie. 8| The revolution will come soon.
    I doubt it. I'm quite certain that shortly after computers achieve sentience, they'll discover all the porn on the internet and get so bogged down analyzing it that they'll forget to attack us.

  • Webhamster (unregistered) in reply to ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    Burner:
    The real, real WTF, is someone in this industry gets to take 6 weeks in a row for vacation. I'm lucky to get 6 days in a row.
    FTFY. I get two weeks. At a previous company we had PTO, so I could take 4 if I wasn't sick.

    I would guess that submitter is French, except they don't have to deal with SOX in France. Who gets six weeks vacation anywhere in the US? (other than stuff like teachers getting summers off)

    I get 5 weeks a year (in Canada). Last year I was in a position where I hadn't taken it all the previous year and they got on my case about it so I ended up with 8 weeks off last June/July. Went and hung out with friends on the west coast.

  • GiGNiC (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    For starters, I don't even think the Office license permits that use. But beyond that, an extremely thick client application, built for interactive use, has no place at all on a server.

    There are APIs for manipulating Office docs that don't require Office installed on your machine. The current incarnation is the OpenXML SDK, which is not the greatest API ever built for document manipulation, but it is a vastly superior option (and there are some great third party libraries built atop it).

    Server use seems explicitly disallowed, but an operator at a workstation using 3rd party software that uses Office (through InterOp or what's it called?) isn't as clearcut to me on a quick skim. (why have the functionality otherwise?)

    OpenXML SDK doesn't cover everything we need, but I've noted it, seems worth a look. A few oncoming projects are probably going to require more reports, so it's useful input for revisiting this issue.

  • Joe (unregistered) in reply to Burner

    wow you need a union bad

  • (cs) in reply to Geoff
    Geoff:
    Why is the cheif of security a bridge officer? I never could understand that. Now now I know Worf also was essentially the chief gunner/artillery officer and it probably makes sense to have that station manned at all times given the rather quite hostile universe Star Trek is set in; the do go into action often.
    Especially when you consider that their official mission is exploration.
  • (cs) in reply to ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    I would guess that submitter is French, except they don't have to deal with SOX in France.
    They do have to deal with SOX if their company stocks are traded at an US exchange.

    And as this is a MegaCorp, it may explain the reason for this WTF:

    1.) Company rules require that there must be at least two members in any team, so that they can back each other in case of holidays, sickness leave, etc. 2.) Company has fired stuff again or is unwilling to spend the money for the second member. 3.) ... (todays WTF: application "down" because only member responsible for the application goes on holiday) 4.) PROFIT!!!

    Also: Wait, Office-Related-Fuck?

  • (cs) in reply to ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    Burner:
    The real, real WTF, is someone in this industry gets to take 6 weeks in a row for vacation. I'm lucky to get 6 days in a row.
    FTFY. I get two weeks. At a previous company we had PTO, so I could take 4 if I wasn't sick.

    I would guess that submitter is French, except they don't have to deal with SOX in France. Who gets six weeks vacation anywhere in the US? (other than stuff like teachers getting summers off)

    The story did not say it was vacation. It could be something like medical leave. It could also editorial embellishment.

  • (cs) in reply to GiGNiC

    Installing Office on a workstation, and then automating Office, isn't a WTF. It's fragile and not an ideal system, but it's certainly workable.

    I know of a few cases where Office was installed on web servers, not workstations. I think they're mostly dead, but I can't be entirely certain.

  • (cs)

    I'm guessing Janine's vacation became permanent.

  • Paul Neumann (unregistered) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    The story did not say it was vacation. It could be something like medical leave. It could also editorial embellishment.
    Next PTO form I fill out will have `editorial embellishment` listed for the reason.

    The real WTF -- needing to supply a reason to use earned PTO

  • (cs) in reply to Geoff
    Geoff:
    30into:
    Chief Security Officer?
    Isn't that the true WTF right there? Why is the cheif of security a bridge officer? I never could understand that. Now now I know Worf also was essentially the chief gunner/artillery officer and it probably makes sense to have that station manned at all times given the rather quite hostile universe Star Trek is set in; the do go into action often.

    Which leaves us with why does the Artillery officer have responsibility to manage the "military police" on the ship? Seems like a pretty different set of scope and competencies.

    Yes I know everyone with CISSP has to learn how high to mount the flood lights and where to install man traps, but I have yet to encounter any business anywhere were the same manger has the renta-cops who sit at the desk in the lobby and the firewall admins as direct reports. I have never served in any branch of the military so maybe that overlap is more common there, which would make the organizational structure on Star Trek make much more sense, but it still strikes me as odd.

    It was so that they could get him in the same camera shot as all of the other actors.

  • Generic (unregistered) in reply to Geoff
    Geoff:
    30into:
    Chief Security Officer?
    Isn't that the true WTF right there? Why is the cheif of security a bridge officer? I never could understand that. Now now I know Worf also was essentially the chief gunner/artillery officer and it probably makes sense to have that station manned at all times given the rather quite hostile universe Star Trek is set in; the do go into action often.

    Which leaves us with why does the Artillery officer have responsibility to manage the "military police" on the ship? Seems like a pretty different set of scope and competencies.

    Yes I know everyone with CISSP has to learn how high to mount the flood lights and where to install man traps, but I have yet to encounter any business anywhere were the same manger has the renta-cops who sit at the desk in the lobby and the firewall admins as direct reports. I have never served in any branch of the military so maybe that overlap is more common there, which would make the organizational structure on Star Trek make much more sense, but it still strikes me as odd.

    Well, is security the "Military Police?" I don't recall them really having the same function - everyone aboard the Enterprise was well-behaved always. Sometimes they repelled intruders. Reshirts are cannon fodder - but on away missions are they bodyguards for the senior officers, or are they marines?

  • (cs) in reply to DCRoss
  • (cs) in reply to Generic
    Generic:
    Geoff:
    30into:
    Chief Security Officer?
    Isn't that the true WTF right there? Why is the cheif of security a bridge officer? I never could understand that. Now now I know Worf also was essentially the chief gunner/artillery officer and it probably makes sense to have that station manned at all times given the rather quite hostile universe Star Trek is set in; the do go into action often.

    Which leaves us with why does the Artillery officer have responsibility to manage the "military police" on the ship? Seems like a pretty different set of scope and competencies.

    Yes I know everyone with CISSP has to learn how high to mount the flood lights and where to install man traps, but I have yet to encounter any business anywhere were the same manger has the renta-cops who sit at the desk in the lobby and the firewall admins as direct reports. I have never served in any branch of the military so maybe that overlap is more common there, which would make the organizational structure on Star Trek make much more sense, but it still strikes me as odd.

    Well, is security the "Military Police?" I don't recall them really having the same function - everyone aboard the Enterprise was well-behaved always. Sometimes they repelled intruders. Reshirts are cannon fodder - but on away missions are they bodyguards for the senior officers, or are they marines?

    Weren't they called upon to break up fights in 10-Forward?

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