The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

It's Easier This Way

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2014-10-27

After more than two years at WTF Inc., I thought I'd seen everything that could be done wrong actually done wrong in the worst possible way. Whether it was DBAs who wcouldn't administer a database if their lives depended upon it, managers who wcouldn't manage anything, or business people who simply could not understand the concept of save a dollar today, spend ten tomorrow to fix it.

After that dalliance, I'm back in my chosen field. While crazy things sometimes get done in insane ways, it's usually in the name of beating the competition to market, and (almost) always with the understanding that it will be fixed later - at a price.

39 comments - Last comment @ 2014-10-28

Parallel SQL Queries

by snoofle in CodeSOD on 2014-10-20

Daniele worked at a pharmaceutical firm that had an old web application that allowed commercial customers to look up information. Since the data was quite complicated, there were numerous fields that needed to be queried in order to populate the form.

Unfortunately, as the amount of data in the system grew, the time to load the form grew as well. And grew. And grew.

59 comments - Last comment @ 2014-10-21

Bazooka Proof

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2014-10-14

Back in early 2000, Clint interviewed for a position as a software developer for a mid-sized engineering company of about 200-plus people somewhere in the deserts of Kerblekistan, located in very close proximity to the Elbonian mud fields. Everyone there, especially the women, was used to living in harsh conditions, and had grown extremely rugged as a result. The Kerblekistanis and Elbonians had been enjoying an uneasy peace, but kept a wary eye out for less-than-peaceful activities...

During the interview, the development team was ready to hire him when one of the bosses burst into the room and interrupted the interview to introduce himself. When he discovered that Clint had an IT background, he became very excited. They temporarily needed a network administrator until they could hire someone permanently, so for the first three months, Clint was assigned to be a network admin.

65 comments - Last comment @ 2016-12-01

Oh So Secret Passwords

by snoofle in Feature Articles on 2014-10-08

Our long-time friend, GRG, is back again, this time with tales of ~~anti~~ security...

A very long time ago, he worked at a University Computer Center. At the time, the school was the proud owner of two huge, hulking mainframes. (The faster of the two was big, gray, probably designed by a guy named Seymour, and was the fastest computer in the world for several years!) Unfortunately, the operating system was rather bare-bones. Thus, although you couldn't do much, you could do it without fear of the OS getting in your way. For example, you could store files (one directory per user), compile FORTRAN or COBOL or Pascal programs, or run SPSS, and that was about it. Unless you were willing to creatively think outside the box...

38 comments - Last comment @ 2020-01-01