The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Save the Project for Failure

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-01-31

If it takes two contract developers six months to drive a project to failure, then four developers should be able to fail in half the time! Josh assumed that was why he and Sam were carted out to the client site and tossed into the oubliette of the PowerPac project. They were armed with nothing but a rusty spoon and a requirements document so old it needed to be stored in an oxygen-free environment.

The original development pair was Sally "I can code but I'm more of a designer" Jorgensen (the CEO's daughter) and Billy "I taught myself HTML in a week and am now a programmer" Jorgensen (the CEO's brother). They ran the project exactly like you'd expect such a dynamic duo to run it- directly into the ground. By the time Josh and Sam joined, it was already well past deadline and over budget.

128 comments - Last comment @ 2012-02-15

Sketchy Skechers.com

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2012-01-26

Imagine yourself as an eager, young developer. After many long months of self-study, you’ve carefully honed your craft and have skillfully mastered virtually all development technologies from enterprisey to hipster. Your twelve-page résumé could land you a job anywhere, and as it would happen, the job you decided to take was at a highfalutin consultancy filled with like-minded developers who were almost as skilled as you.

You and you cohorts could build anything. Literally, anything: a software cure for cancer; a software cure engine that could dynamically load cure plug-ins at runtime to cure anything; or even a software engine factory that could dynamically create engines that could dynamically load plug-ins that could do anything.

191 comments - Last comment @ 2024-04-28

Support The Daily WTF in Supporting the Support SOPA Movement

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2012-01-18

It’s January 18, 2012 and, while most of the internet has decided to blackout their sites in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), we’re taking an opposite stance and are whiting-out The Daily WTF in support of SOPA supporters.

If there’s one thing that SOPA proponents like myself and SOPA opponents can agree on, it’s that PROTECT-IP and the Stop Online Piracy Act have little to do with protecting intellectual property and stopping online piracy.

341 comments - Last comment @ 2013-07-16

Terrorists!

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2012-01-17

“She’s convinced that terrorists have compromised her computer,” Tom Davidson’s colleague – a front-line helpdesk technician – reported, “best I can tell, it’s some sort of virus problem, or something. It’s is a bit out of my league, but I’m hoping you can help.”

As a junior sysadmin for a mid-sized university, Tom found himself playing second-tier helpdesk support more often than not. He didn’t mind – it was certainly better than first-tier, after all – and he appreciated solving the unique problems that were escalated to him. The terrorist virus was definitely one such problem, and it was nothing he had heard of before.

84 comments - Last comment @ 2017-12-10

Classic WTF: Rutherford, Price, Atkinson, Strickland, and Associates Dentistry, Inc

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2012-01-12

I'm at CodeMash today (stop by the Inedo booth if you're there!), so I thought it'd be a great time for this classic. Rutherford, Price, Atkinson, Strickland, and Associates Dentistry, Inc was originally published on January 30th, 2008.

July 19th, 2004 marked a new chapter in New Portlandopolis’s rich dentistry history. It was on that day that the bitter rivalry between Dr. Rutherford, DDS; Dr. Price, DMD, DDS; Dr. Atkinson, DMD; and Dr. Strickland, DDS/DDS-PhD, had finally come to an end. Though there’s much debate on what exactly started the feud, everyone knows what brought the dentists together: the nationwide “denta-corps” that can out-price, out-service, and out-anything their small, family dental practices.

142 comments - Last comment @ 2022-12-26

The Shredder

by Remy Porter in Feature Articles on 2012-01-10

The company break room was, well, a company break room. Dull grey walls, acoustical tile dropped ceiling, burned coffee and a motivational poster featuring a sun setting over a beach. Leo sipped his coffee, pulled a face at the bitter taste, and muttered to Mike, "This sucks."

The Carribean island of Curaçao is known for sandy beaches, oil refining and open-air brothels. It's also notable for being a key junction where fiber lines from around the world branch off through the Americas. That last bit means that it's a popular location for running global datacenters. Leo's employer was a global business, and had not one, but two datacenters located on the island. The production datacenter handled millions of dollars of transactions every day. The backup datacenter didn't- in fact, it was being decomissioned, starting on this particular Monday.

145 comments - Last comment @ 2017-02-07

Server Tent, Bridging The Gap, and More Server Set-ups

by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles on 2012-01-04

"I'm just a software guy, so I don't know much about wiring and whatnot," writes Chip, "but I'm pretty sure this isn't a good way to build out a server closet."

97 comments - Last comment @ 2012-02-15

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