Slashdot Mirror
Ridiculous Software Bug Workarounds?
theodp writes "Ever get a workaround for a bug from a vendor that's so rigoddamndiculous that there has to be a clueless MBA or an ornery developer behind it? For example, Microsoft once instructed users to wiggle their mouse continuously for several minutes if they wanted to see their Oracle data make it into Excel (yes, it worked!). And more recently, frustrated HP customers were instructed to use non-HP printers as their default printer if they don't want Microsoft Office 2007 to crash (was this demoed in The Mojave Experiment?). Any other candidates for the Lame Workaround Hall of Fame?"
HP and Microsoft repeatedly suggest re-installing the operating system to cure a network configuration issue.
urban dictionary = idiots making up words.
At 27 years old I am now an old fart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
Whomever invented that term (rigoddamndiculous) deserves to be ruthlessly beaten in public. Sure it sounds inhumane, but we do need to set an example.
Audio CDs have a secret history of screwing up things, and I'm not just talking about Sony audio CDs.
In practice, step 2. involves sending the request off to the developers where it never gets actioned, ever.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
speaking of HP printers, especially the networked ones, why is it that the network driver is 350 megs in size? I had to download two of those damn things, even after using a custom install option, to remove as much of the cruft as possible I still installed some 700 megs of drivers for two printers, and a scanner.
Guess what happens when the drivers get corrupted. you have to manually uninstall the registry settings and deleted all files manually in order to reinstall the drivers or they won't work.
HP decent printers, Software coded by monkey banging on keyboards.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Profiling has to be done with same flags enabled as for the production code. Otherwise the result will be meaningless.
Because you can't sell bug fixes, only new features!!!
The Good Life
There should be a +1, Sad But True.
- chrish
Software problem: The autorun vulnerability in Windows only fails for CD drives.
Hardware solution: Make a flash drive with an extra partition that presents itself as a CD drive to the OS.
Fixed that for you.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
I am not sure this is management style thinking. This is "do what we are paying you to, and figure out something stupid on your own time." In other words. If the Cd is not required for Notes localization; then right now, I don't care why the CD is causing a problem. Pull the damn thing out and get your freakin' job done.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
If it interferes with normal use, it's a bug. Most users simply _do not care_ about having high quality randomness sources for their keys.
You can't claim something is a bug if its physically impossible to do without it, e.g my computer uses electricity to work or my washing machine gets everything inside it wet!
Frankly, I wish tha tthe "Trusted Computing Platform" circuitry and development had been thrown out much sooner, and the circuitry instead invested in a thermal diode to provide truly random encryption keys.
You could always get a hardware RNG, I'm happy to wiggle my mouse for a bit and save some money.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Oh, 9.04 was crap and everybody knows it. At least on the Intel driver front, and that's just for starters.
They said that about 8.10, and 8.04.
No, it's still management style thinking.
Whether it's being fixed by the localization team or not, the problem still should be fixed before the software goes out the door.
Internal testing of known bugs is a lot better and cheaper than putting out the product, and fixing bugs after the fact.
The developers should have been connected with the localization team, so that the bug could be fixed, as localization was still being worked on.
Even if the ball was started rolling by just pulling one person from the localization team and one developer into a meeting where they could swap information, preferably with a test machine to demonstrate examples on, then it would have been good management.
To just say, essentially "bugger off...that's not in our use case," is poor management in the extreme.
Hence, "management style thinking."
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
It's better to just reinstall, but it's not something that is technically required. I personally reinstall just so that I don't have to worry about inconsistencies popping up latter because I changed a few settings.
Well, that and the fact that an upgrade is a good time to dispose of software that's just sitting there, and a lot less work than trying to track down unused dependencies after you remove said programs.
Problems upgrading ubuntu? How are you doing it? I've upgraded via the alternative CD and also over the web on several machines over the last few years without any problems. Sheesh. My 73yo Dad upgrades the system himself without dramas. Either you're running hardware with hit-and-miss support, or you're doing something weird...
sudo mount --milk --sugar
After upgrading a server, we watched a client verify the server through his daily application. The client entered data and clicked on submit, the next screen appeared instantly. "This is not possible" said the client "it takes about two seconds to submit data to the database"!
"But the new server is much faster!" we said. It didn't matter, the client refused to believe the data was really submitted.
We held a meeting about this 'problem'. One developer suggested to add a two second 'do nothing' loop to the submit button.
So we patched the server and asked the client to verify again. He entered data, clicked 'submit' and was very happy to have his two second delay back! "Now it works..." he said "...now the data is entering the database!".
We admitted our fault (knowing very well that all we added was a two second delay).
cheers
It should have been enough to show him the data was being stored in the DB.
diegoT
-1 pedantic
I don't think === is the behavior he's looking for. He wants to compare things that are not identical types, but have the rules make sense (to him, based on the behavior of other languages he's familiar with). His equals() method might use the === operator internally, in fact.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Argh, I hate this. Why is it that so many programs make copying the formatting when pasting the default? In my experience, it's almost never what I want. Now, granted, I'm a programmer, so I'm normally much more concerned with the content of the text than its appearance. But even when I am created a formatted document, 9 out of 10 times I want the pasted text to confirm to the formatting I'm already using, rather than creating an ugly mismatched clash of styles.
I'm not wholesale against copying formatting, but it shouldn't be the default option. Unfortunately, it's often much more difficult (e.g. 3-4 clicks deep through a menu option) or impossible (falling back to the aforementioned copy-through-notepad hack) to paste without styling.