• Knuckle Dragging Neanderthal (unregistered) in reply to trwtf
    trwtf:
    Knuckle Dragging Neanderthal:
    I do believe your fucking imagination exceeds your capacity for rational thought. There is plenty of information online (and in books) about Plato and the Sophists. However, I'm having trouble finding any direct correlation to this thread of nonsense. Please cite the debate you find similar to the one here. Or are you just name-dropping philosophers to sound learned?

    Information online is as useful as information in the books on my shelf. It's only useful to me if I've read it, understood it, and connected it to other information also in my head. To believe that you know as much as another because you can use a search engine to track down their references is the common idiocy of the current day, and it is no less idiocy for being commonly held. Intelligence is not composed of facts, but it requires a body of facts in order to be of any use. You may be an intelligent person, but if you can't see the connection between the preference for the use of the word "sophisticated" and its etymological roots in the dispute betwen Plato and the Sophists, it suggests that you see no connection between yourself and the past. This alone does not make you stupid, and I won't suggest that it does, but the fact that you find a respect for learning contemptible does not give me great hopes of discovering hidden reservoirs of intelligence in the shallow pools of your conversation.

    Thanks for strengthening the correlation between vulgarity of expression and emptiness of thought, but it's already pretty well established. You don't need to make the point any further.

    I don't know from all that.

    Are you providing information about the debate between Plato and the Sophists?

  • Bobby (unregistered) in reply to kikito

    Someone needs to find Richard and cut off his fingers so that he can never write code again.

  • Richard (unregistered) in reply to Bobby
    Bobby:
    Someone needs to find Richard and cut off his fingers so that he can never write code again.

    No! Not my fingers! ... errr, is what the guy would say.

    It wasn't me, honest!

  • yet another Steve (unregistered) in reply to WhiskeyJack
    WhiskeyJack:
    trwtf:
    I really hope you don't use that cursed abbreviation in actual speech. There's little in this world more pathetic than a grown man who would like to use the word "fuck" but dares not. (hey, at least it's a different sort of language nit-picking)

    That's how the term popped into my head, and I felt the humour was in the fact that it conjures up the obvious meaning without, well, being obvious about it. And it can be said in (reasonably) polite company.

    Like a few months ago we were looking at quotes for some simple concrete foundation work. For the exact same work, Company A quoted $8,000, company B quoted $10,000, Company C quoted $27,000. Company C clearly wasn't actually interested in doing it.

    Still reading comments, so forgive me if somebody has already mentioned this but... The company C contractor is planning on subbing to the company A contractor and splitting the profits with the decision maker, right?

    captcha: suscipit -- somehow sounds right for this post...

  • ih8u (unregistered) in reply to cheap
    cheap:
    the real WTF is he only charged $250 for someone who was desperate and had a system as hideous as that.

    I can't believe no one has handled this. Maybe the fact that it was wrong was too obvious. Maybe I haven't figured out how to read and track comments. Just in case someone does think you're correct ...

    By actually fixing it AND charging a seriously lower fee, he has catapulted himself to the front of their list as far as consultants. Also, consider the number of referrals he may get to other companies.

    This couldn't have escaped you ... could it? Or do you subscribe to the idea that you should market widgets for $1 billion each -- then you only have to sell one.

  • ih8u (unregistered) in reply to yet another Steve
    yet another Steve:
    WhiskeyJack:
    That's how the term popped into my head, and I felt the humour was in the fact that it conjures up the obvious meaning without, well, being obvious about it. And it can be said in (reasonably) polite company.

    Like a few months ago we were looking at quotes for some simple concrete foundation work. For the exact same work, Company A quoted $8,000, company B quoted $10,000, Company C quoted $27,000. Company C clearly wasn't actually interested in doing it.

    Still reading comments, so forgive me if somebody has already mentioned this but... The company C contractor is planning on subbing to the company A contractor and splitting the profits with the decision maker, right?

    captcha: suscipit -- somehow sounds right for this post...

    If they were, they're stupid. Why (unless their worried about the quality of company A's output) would they pay more to company C?

    For the same quality, do you like to spend more? If so, I'll go buy something and sell it to you for triple the amount I paid ... or quadruple (I'm flexible).

  • trwtf (unregistered) in reply to ih8u
    ih8u:
    yet another Steve:
    WhiskeyJack:
    Like a few months ago we were looking at quotes for some simple concrete foundation work. For the exact same work, Company A quoted $8,000, company B quoted $10,000, Company C quoted $27,000. Company C clearly wasn't actually interested in doing it.

    Still reading comments, so forgive me if somebody has already mentioned this but... The company C contractor is planning on subbing to the company A contractor and splitting the profits with the decision maker, right?

    If they were, they're stupid. Why (unless their worried about the quality of company A's output) would they pay more to company C?

    Did you get to the part about "splitting the profits with the decision maker" yet?

  • DexB (unregistered) in reply to kikito
    kikito:
    "Sometimes, bad software can be profitable"

    Just to give some context to that phrase: Selling drugs or killing people can be profitable sometimes, too.

    This is the fundamental truth of any type of consulting: you would not believe the obscene amounts of money that can be (and are, on a daily basis) made if you have no scrupules whatsoever. You would have to be very good at killing people to come close.
  • (cs) in reply to ih8u
    ih8u:
    By actually fixing it AND charging a seriously lower fee, he has catapulted himself to the front of their list as far as consultants. Also, consider the number of referrals he may get to other companies.

    This couldn't have escaped you ... could it? Or do you subscribe to the idea that you should market widgets for $1 billion each -- then you only have to sell one.

    No, that didn't escape me. In fact, it was a consideration in my suggestion of raising the rates. If I'm going to be the first guy on their list to call, to deal with an ugly, painful piece of crap that was intentionally engineered to be difficult to modify, then I want to be paid well for the work.

  • yet another Steve (unregistered) in reply to trwtf
    trwtf:
    ih8u:
    yet another Steve:
    WhiskeyJack:
    Like a few months ago we were looking at quotes for some simple concrete foundation work. For the exact same work, Company A quoted $8,000, company B quoted $10,000, Company C quoted $27,000. Company C clearly wasn't actually interested in doing it.

    Still reading comments, so forgive me if somebody has already mentioned this but... The company C contractor is planning on subbing to the company A contractor and splitting the profits with the decision maker, right?

    If they were, they're stupid. Why (unless their worried about the quality of company A's output) would they pay more to company C?

    Did you get to the part about "splitting the profits with the decision maker" yet?

    Of course, the underlying assumption is that the decision maker is not the person actually paying the bill... (which, in the corporate world, it very seldom is)...

  • (cs) in reply to yet another Steve
    yet another Steve:
    Of course, the underlying assumption is that the decision maker is not the person actually paying the bill...
    Or specifically that they're spending company money to which they don't have access for person purchases (even if they do sign the checks). If the crook gets a good portion of it back under the table, they get to spend it on whatever illegally-afforded activities/items they want.
  • (cs) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    You'd have to be sociopathic to produce a system that rubbish and then try and charge that much for fixes!
    FTFY
  • (cs) in reply to the beholder
    the beholder:
    I believe the actual story said eight hundred or even eight thousand tables. It makes a lot more sense.
    Yes. Even "eighty" would make sense, as that's almost certainly more tables than you'd need, even with a fully normalized database, for an app like this.

    It'd be nice if someone with appropriate access would edit the story to correct that.

  • Jane (unregistered)

    Richard Sounds like a Dick

  • anon (unregistered)

    passed != past

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to MichaelWojcik
    MichaelWojcik:
    the beholder:
    I believe the actual story said eight hundred or even eight thousand tables. It makes a lot more sense.
    Yes. Even "eighty" would make sense, as that's almost certainly more tables than you'd need, even with a fully normalized database, for an app like this.

    It'd be nice if someone with appropriate access would edit the story to correct that.

    If it's incorrect it's deliberate - all stories are anonymised "to protect the guilty" or rather, to protect the guy that ratted out the guilty. Sometimes the anonymisation will change a number of relevant details about the system so it's not impossible that the "8" tables was actually a completely different number. Just go with it, enjoy the spririt of the stories without getting too caught up on the details.

  • Kidd Chaos (unregistered) in reply to neminem

    As it turns out, after word got out, a bunch of other people wanted the feature too, and now it's being sold as a real addon for the current version that only costs a small fortune (we sell to government organizations and giant megacompanies; we don't do "cheap"), and was reimplemented so that it wasn't hacked together in a few days.

    So our tax dollars are being wasted. Thanks a bunch to all involved.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to RandomUser423706
    RandomUser423706:
    I fear this can lead to little else but great evil, but (for MSSQL): EXEC sp_msforeachtable 'SELECT * FROM ?'

    That ROCKS!! I've often wondered if there was a simple way to do that.

  • Shnaz (unregistered)

    In this case, killing Richard might be both profitable and ethical...

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