The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2017-06-23 Reply Admin

Yep, it was a Linux (or at least *NIX) guy. But he simply wouldn't tell me what kind of superior system he was using. Must be something super special, super secret, super super tool.

kurkosdr · 2017-06-26 Reply Admin

Are people who fill their desktop with icons really that stupid as we programmers think? Because OSes are gradually moving away from the idea of having things nested inside things which are in turn nested inside other things (such as deeply nested directories and elaborate start menus with multiple levels) and moving towards "quick access" where everything is less nested (one level or so) and accessible by search.

Maybe it is only us programmers who are obsessed with things being in the right place, even at the cost of access speed, and ordinary users (that we are supposed to serve) don't really want that. Was the boss really that stupid for wanting his most-used icons to have zero-level nesting so he doesn't have to traverse levels every 10 seconds or so?

Though I think he should have been smart enough to specify "screen space".

2017-06-26 Reply Admin

kurkosdr, the boss may be thinking that Shawn should be smart enough to know what he is talking about.

2017-06-28 Reply Admin

You probably mean 4MB? in DOS days 4GB was basically 'infinite' and did not happen in PC s :-)

2017-06-28 Reply Admin

My desktop gets cluttered over time with icons which are put there by installers and such programs. Since I always open everything fullscreen I hardly every see the Desktop, so it doesn't really bother me. Every once in a while I just grab everything and dump it in a folder named 'Crap' which is then the only thing visible on the desktop. I used to just drag them to the 'recycle bin' , but then I later found out a 4GB download was accidentally saved on the desktop and I needed to get it all over again)

2017-06-29 Reply Admin

one of the earlier comments reminded me of a story: a manager demanded to have the fanciest computer in the building-JUST so he could brag, he NEVER used the one he had, and everyone in IT knew it...so they gave him a fancy-looking one that was COMPLETELY BROKEN! i mean, they took a pile of broken parts and assembled them to make a computer without a single functional component! and.he.never.noticed!

2017-07-11 Reply Admin

I worked with a marketing director (named Calvin Klein, which always made me smile) that got a fancy new 32 inch CRT monitor. This was the early 90s, it weighed a ton and cost as much as a used car. But his PC could only do 640x480 and he was bummed since there wasn't any more budget to get a new video card. So, he gave me money out of his own pocket to get one that would do, I believe, 1024x768. He was thrilled.

2017-08-16 Reply Admin

This reminded me of something. Maybe not particularly interesting, but the last job I had was in this small company that had like 3 developers working, and 3 managers.. So one time i went to talk with the boss about salary, and some project that was going slower than expected. I was pretty stressed out and thinking about the technical/political stuff, and then the bosses secretary popped in, asking if her computer could be fixed. He looked at her like "I have some important business here", then back at me in a confused look. I decided to just go check it.

She had this nice office space, and a big expensive monitor, hooked up to decent looking desktop laptop on the table. So I looked at it and asked what's wrong, and she tells me the screen is partly gone. I was trying to figure it out for a minute, everything seemed fine, I was starting to question my computer support abilities, but then I came up with the dumbest, and really the only option left...I clicked on the option to DUPLICATE desktop, on laptop and monitor, and that was it, that was what she wanted. Somehow she, or someone else, managed to extend the desktop.

What sense did it make? None. How did I feel that this person had better equipment than programmers? Quite disheartening. I had to leave the place some time later. It was nice and cozy, but not good for sanity.

2019-05-29 Reply Admin

DOS, $300 for 256 kB and 4 GB max memory? That didn't happen. I'd believe 4 MEGAbytes.

I Need More Space

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