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Perhaps this TDWTF article is what you were thinking of?

      --- Mr. DOS

What is a "COBOL interface"?

Fair point, but I was referring to MBGMorden's old COBOL app, with a "clunky interface", which was later rewritten as a Windows app.

Perhaps it'd be better if it had been straight ported? Then again, that's a WTF all its own.

I've seen less than a paragraph, unless you mean you wrote a bunch of text, then deleted it.

It looks kind of absurdly verbose -- makes Java look good. If your point was making something maintainable, that even a newbie can pick up later, you fail. What does this do?

DISPLAY SPACES

Half of it is just weird compared to an alternate version. The other half is just unnecessary.

There's also a classic WTF in there -- the For-Case paradigm. Here, some simple Ruby, if you really want to have that many special cases:

99.downto(3) do |bottles|
  puts "#{bottles} bottles of beer on the wall, #{bottles} bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around, #{bottles-1} bottles of beer on the wall."
end
 
puts '2 bottles beer on the wall, 2 bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around, 1 bottle of beer on the wall.'
puts '1 bottle of beer on the wall, 1 bottle of beer. Take one down, pass it around, no more bottles of beer on the wall.'
puts 'No more bottles of beer on the wall, no more bottles of beer. Go to the store and buy some more, 99 bottles of beer on the wall.'

That's essentially what the "pretty" version is doing -- but when you've got over 20 lines just allocating memory, that's not particularly pretty or maintainable.

The only reason I can think of including those special cases in the loop itself, is if you wanted to actually refactor it a bit:

def bottles count
  case count
    when 1
      '1 bottle'
    when 0
      'no more bottles'
    else
      "#{count} bottles"
  end
end
 
99.downto(1) do |count|
  b = bottles(count)
  puts "#{b} bottles of beer on the wall, #{b} bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around, #{bottles count-1} bottles of beer on the wall."
end
 
puts 'No more bottles of beer on the wall, no more bottles of beer. Go to the store and buy some more, 99 bottles of beer on the wall.'

None of the other examples made any sense.

Now, look at my last example, there. Imagine you had no clue what the program was supposed to do. Show me an example of a COBOL version that's even half as readable.

I mean, if nothing else, it's got the verse actually there in one line that almost says what you want...

Because it was tried. And it was discovered that users don't read.

No. It was discovered that badly written dialogs using jargon and concepts that the average computer user has no hope of understanding were being ignored.

Software is soft, it can be anything we want it to be but many poor programmers (not to mention certain astroturfers) prefer to point the finger at users instead. Most of the time it's incompetent programmers guiding the user into making bad choices, not the user's fault at all. I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked to help solve a computer problem and ended up having to apologize for some stupid dialog or icon that actually caused the problem in the first place.

Incompetent programmers program as if users are perfect and never make mistakes (while simultaneously claiming they are "professionals" and it's the user that's always at fault), that computers are at the center of users' lives, that users really like spending hours reading idiotic instructions for arcane, unnecessary procedures and that users have the jargon and knowledge of a multi-year computer course. Not to mention users expected to be time travelers because they should've known the instructions were coming after the point where they were needed. The dailywtf has some funny ones (including comments from unintentionally funny incompetents) however that just scratches the surface.

It's called designing software for your target audience. Some programmers should try doing it sometime. I'm tired of mediocre programmers with an inflated view of their own competence trying to blame others for their failings.

---

Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.

That one deserves an article at http://thedailywtf.com/.

Not putting the production server in a separate, locked room:
Sounds careless, but may be excused by the lack of available facilities (as in, only one suitable server room.

Not even signs on the machines that say which is the development server and which is the production server:
Priceless example of stupidity.

Sounds like you need an ITAPPMONROBOT

There's servers in the wild, and then there's this guy's problem.

That's bitten me once -- and only once -- since I started doing it.

My bank requires security questions.

It then picks a random security question when I login, as part of their wish-it-was two-factor authentication scheme.

No quack.

Never look at thedailywtf.com then!

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Source-Control-Shingle.aspx

Nice ideas, but there are flaws so big you could drive an 18 wheeler through them.

Could we at least start by replacing the freaking pin numbers with something meaningful? A four digit numeric does NOT make a password FFS!!

Remember the user. If we make the password/pin to big, it will be hard to remember for a major segment of the users. What happens then is it gets written down, and from my experience, more than few will just write down on the card itself. This makes everyone less secure, as thieves will realize this rather quickly and start stealing the cards, by force if necessary. And they won't stop to check first if your card has your pin number written on it or not.

Maybe next, we could graduate the bank's computers from Windows 2000 up to something remotely sane - like Redhat SEL.

While I certainly think this is a great idea, it solves very little. The problem is the end user's computer is getting compromised, not the banks' computers, at least as far as the article is concerned. (Yes, I know about Heartland.) Now, the banks could definitely improve transaction security...

The idea of a biometric ID in conjuntion with a reasonably secure password hash has it's appeal, as well. If my bank would use it, I'd install a fingerprint reader on my HOME computer. Businesses should just jump on that idea - it's a small price to increase security dramatically.

Fingerprint readers have been beaten many times already. I won't list all the ways and times, but I will give a link to one such story. But let's say you can magically make a cheap fingerprint reader that is totally unbeatable. Guess what? At some point, the fingerprint reader has to convert the fingerprint into electronic data and transmit that. I doubt it will take the bad guys very long to target this link in the security chain.

...no unix-like machine is open to as many exploits as Windows is...

That should read no properly configured unix-like machine is open to as many exploits as a fully patched, properly configured Windows is. Remember that many, perhaps even a majority, of the exploits take advantage of already patched holes.

They use wish-it-was two-factor

Two-factor authentication is when authentication requires two different factors of authentication. Some possible factors of authentication are something you know (PIN numbers, passwords, usernames, secret answers to questions arranged in advanced), something you have (smart card, key fob, pass-card, a special piece of hardware, a SSL certificate loaded on a device that you can't read), something you are (biometric identification, facial, voice, fingerprint recognition, hardware that reads your GPS position to verify you are at home, a phone number that checks your ANI caller ID information)

Most banks only require something you know. The security question/answer dialogs that are commonly used are equivalent to a second password, granted: a second password that is likely to be a lot less secure.

Issues like the 'temporary passwords' on your key fobs being discovered when you use them can be defeated, by only allowing the password to be used once. If an attempt to use the temporary password is used again, or an attempt is made to use any incorrect temporary password, then all active sessions should be logged out.

In addition both sessions should be warned about the attempt, and that their computer station may be compromised, they should update their antivirus and antispyware scanners, disconnect from the internet, and perform a full scan.

the issue is that mumps is that it is a fuckin' awful language that no sane person would want to use ever.

... then the fine folks at SpellStar came up with their version of relief: http://img.thedailywtf.com/images/mark/Mr_Magenta_Personal_Folder/notRolaids-small.jpg

It could have been worse...

"Do not take things out of context! What the document says is companies might save some money if they hire foreigners on F-1 or J-1 visas. It is just so foreigners _who_study_in_the_United_States_ can find a job since employers seem to be under the impression that hiring a foreigner is a hassle."

With the way the recession is currently in the US, it makes no sense for the US govt. to not only allow, but, in some cases expedite bringing foreigners in (or letting them in willy nilly across the border illegally) to fill jobs that our own citizens are in desperate need of...

I don't see that a state funded school should be allowed by the taxpayers of that state to promote the hiring of foreign people over US citizens either...that's not what my tax dollars should be going for...

"Do not take things out of context! What the document says is companies might save some money if they hire foreigners on F-1 or J-1 visas. It is just so foreigners _who_study_in_the_United_States_ can find a job since employers seem to be under the impression that hiring a foreigner is a hassle."

With the way the recession is currently in the US, it makes no sense for the US govt. to not only allow, but, in some cases expedite bringing foreigners in (or letting them in willy nilly across the border illegally) to fill jobs that our own citizens are in desperate need of...

I don't see that a state funded school should be allowed by the taxpayers of that state to promote the hiring of foreign people over US citizens either...that's not what my tax dollars should be going for...

If these so called foreigners are US graduates, and are as competent or perhaps even more so that their "native" counterparts, I don't see what the problem is. Almost every foreign student in a US grad school that I've known have come from 1) top notch undergrad schools in their home countries and are 2) among the creme-de-la-creme.

Now more than ever, as we not only have a recession, but also losing economic growth and scientific and industrial edge to other countries, it is this time, now that we need more Ajay Bhatt's and less Brilliant Paula's.

There is a difference between reasonable protectionism, specially on agriculture and certain types of blue collar manufacturing. It is quite another to go "ZOMG! YER TOOK MAH JAHB!" at importing top-notch scientific talent, and, why not, allow employers to reduce cost in new hiring, which allows to increase net profit and mitigate the risk of having to cut down on the employees they already have.

Your tax dollars should be going to promote the increase of talent in this country, be it native or imported. Worried that a company might hire foreign students over you? Then be better than them, scientifically, academically and technologically.

Understand this. It's not the average student that makes it to a grad school in this country. There are freaking tens of thousands competing academically. Only those with potential, more than the one demonstrated by many slashdoters, who get a visa to study here and get a scholarship based on merit. While most "natives" try to find ways to get a master without writing a thesis (if they ever get that far), these foreign students are the ones that write and publish papers.

Look at the top notch engineers in Lockheed Martin, Motorola, GD and the like. Guess what? They were once foreign students, foreigners who have contributed more to this country than the Im-a-taxpayer-yer-took-mah-johb crow. Most likely those same students are going to be the next inventors or professors (which is what this country need the most) as opposed to those that are currently worrying about losing their current jobs to the evil offshore dudes in Bangalore.

If you are an average professional, don't worry too much about competing

The programmers should have used HASH(Firstname + Surname) for the key instead, at least make The Daily WTF!

If this is an example of your writing, then I highly doubt that you actually have anything close to publication, or at least anything that anyone will pay to read. I have seen grade-school children with a better grasp of grammar and sentence structure. It's a very good thing that you seem to enjoy reading your own books, because I'm sure that you'll be the only one that does.

I think my favorite "sentence" is "Her refusal to return to the workforce following Andreinne's entrance into school at that obscenely expensive school on 18th street that would have been nicely tackled by Andrea's old salary--instead she was at home, finding herself, while Neil continuted finding his way through all the stresses of work, keeping that automatic deposit automatically depositing."

I do have to give you points for the quality Web 0.1 implementation though, good work on that. Perhaps you should go into web design instead of writing.

Doesn't solve the "will they fit in with the rest of the team" problem.

Sites like http://www.thedailywtf.com/ are chock full of examples of people who were perfectly competent but were also prima donnas who believed they were brilliant and everyone around them stupid.

Paula, is that you?

Sorry to reply to myself, but here's another link you should look at. The first story in there describes exactly why finally blocks should never be used as a poor man's transactions system.

It's easy, really. All you need to do is use a fake address which happens to be exactly the same as your real address.

It's as simple as closing a user's browser window without using Javascript.

A worse, even more directly related item on The Daily WTF.

Directly related item on The Daily WTF.

The more fine-grained the requirements you can punch into your brute forcer, the faster the hash goes down...

      --- Mr. DOS

Directly related item on The Daily WTF.

The more fine-grained the requirements you can punch into your brute forcer, the faster the hash goes down...

      --- Mr. DOS

Explain the Cobol thing!

Not that I like it either, but it's sure going to be funny for others to read, or maybe it's worth a post at The Daily WTF.

I'd say DECnet.

Well, there are donkeys with satellite Internet: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Virtudyne_0x3a__The_Digital_Donkey.aspx
(Don't miss out on the other parts of the series. It's a great read. And I can assure you that I checked it, and it is true.)

Digital Donkeys!

Yes, acknowledged at the link in my comment :-)

("The Clbuttic Mistake" on thedailywtf.com.)

Well played, but I think you may have swiped the idea from here.

http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Behavioral-Deficiencies-.aspx

Seriously...

How hard is

If "A" A = A + 1 elseif "B" B = B + 1 elseif "C" C = C + 1 endif

???

I can see you've never read http://thedailywtf.com/ For some so-called programmers, it's impossible.

Sounds like this system:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Rutherford,-Price,-Atkinson,-Strickland,-and-Associates-Dentistry,-Inc.aspx

Obviously we need an entropy generation program that feeds it the input from simulated mouse waggling. We can use /dev/urandom as the input! Of course, we have to take care to make it more randomer.

Don't do that. The extra entropy will feed right back into /dev/urandom before you know it you will have this perpetual entropy generator massively increasing entropy in the universe then it will all be over.

Obviously we need an entropy generation program that feeds it the input from simulated mouse waggling. We can use /dev/urandom as the input! Of course, we have to take care to make it more randomer.

That's not the UI. That's just avatars. The UI is the part that tells you you are now on Blu!

Now, the question would be whether or not they forward-only encrypt the answer and verify it much like a password or if it's stored in clear text that any numbnutz with DB access could poke around.

I found recently that Comcast prevents you from using a password longer than 12 characters for your comcast.com account. As far as I can tell, that means they're storing passwords in plaintext - I can't think of any other reason to impose a maximum password length.

I also wrote about American Express' password idiocy (it's even worse than Comcast) several months ago.

Until companies can store passwords securely, how can I even maintain a dim hope that my "secret" answers (which can likely be Googled with ease) are stored securely?

Stargate was better: Code of the replicators.

On that note, would you mind telling me what it is that Visio does?

Visio is a type of vector-art program specifically designed for making diagrams. The textbook example would be a flowchart, but the most common usage seems to be things like network diagrams. (Of course I worked with network people...) It has dozens of "sets" of shapes for use with any kind of diagramming out there, and they all have the correct "connectors" and text labels and such in-place, so it's really easy to create a powerful diagram from scratch.

It has a lot of cool features, for example, you can point it at a SQL database and it'll automatically populate a diagram with all your tables and relations. I use that one all the time.

You can also script it, like you can most Office applications, to make horrible abominations unto God: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The_Customer-Friendly_System.aspx

Ooops, it's actually four articles: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Virtudyne_0x3a__The_Founding.aspx
Well worth it, though.

tl;dr: They flushed $200M down the toilet in the attempt to built a MS Office killer in Visual Basic 6, and ended up attaching computers to donkeys in the Himalaya. No shit!

Already done in a virtuosely WTFy way: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Virtudyne_0x3a__The_Gathering.aspx
(Read the 3 articles. It's the best WTF you will ever have had. :)

Here.

Come on, everybody knows that there are no developers in Africa. It must be Nigerian scam!

Sure, fingerprints are 'unique', but we only sample a few points... It's actually possible to be wrong.

It's really easy to be wrong when it's used incorrectly.

Read the Daily What-the-Frel http://thedailywtf.com/ This will teach you more in a day's reading about the real world of computing than you will learn in a year on a Master's. And you will enjoy it or be horrified, either way you'll have more fun thn writing a Master's thesis.

He's talked about PSNR plenty of times as a way to compare implementations and codecs.

Feel free to point to them...

Let's see what a quick search turns up...

"Unsurprisingly, the encoder I develop for completely trashes every commercial solution I've put it against. I'm not sure whether this speaks for our effectiveness or that everyone else just sucks. Though my own research suggests its because everyone seems to think that PSNR == quality, which is a recipe for visual disaster."
http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/9331/173944.aspx#173944

"x264's recent psy optimizations have proven quite definitively
that one can achieve greatly improved visual quality while decreasing
both PSNR and SSIM"
http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/x264-devel/2009-February/005624.html

package test;

public class _3dRealmsBean {

private String _3dRealms = "Brillant";

public String get_3dRealms() {
return _3dRealms;
}
}

(original)

Well... Swine Flew

No, the pig go. The dove fly:

The pig go. Go is to the fountain. The pig put foot. Grunt. Foot in what? ketchup. The dove fly. Fly is in sky. The dove drop something. The something on the pig. The pig disgusting. The pig rattle. Rattle with dove. The dove angry. The pig leave. The dove produce. Produce is chicken wing. With wing bark. No Quack.

I believe the above passage is a prediction of this epidemic by the nascent brain of Skynet.