Ridiculous Software Bug Workarounds? 655
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?"
Run Windoze much?? (Score:5, Insightful)
HP and Microsoft repeatedly suggest re-installing the operating system to cure a network configuration issue.
rigoddamndiculous ? (Score:4, Insightful)
urban dictionary = idiots making up words.
At 27 years old I am now an old fart.
Ok, (Score:2, Insightful)
Whomever invented that term (rigoddamndiculous) deserves to be ruthlessly beaten in public. Sure it sounds inhumane, but we do need to set an example.
Re:Don't have the details (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't have the details (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok, (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you we should kill them. Language, the English language anyway, is so widely used that correctness is usually defined as an use such that audience is not distracted from the intended message. That means there is lots of flexibility to get creative with spelling in certain situations. It may on occasion be acceptable or even appropriate to make up new words or use existing words in very unconventional fashion with alternate meanings implied. These things are all ok to do provided that you know your audience will pickup on it without extra effort on their part.
Due to all of the above its a simple fact there is going to be some symbol creep, from time to time new words will be created. Its also true others will fall into disuse although more gradually due to their appearance in print. I am no language snob that is insisting we should all run around talking and writing the way Jane Austin did 160 years ago or even Fitzgerald did eighty years ago. Its ok to make up some words with your pals because they share enough experience with you they will know them.
Here the poster has made a terrible choice and he proves he knows it by virtue of him having referenced it. I should not need a dictionary to read your mostly informal Slashdot post. That is not to say I never will but if I do it should have been something I would have reasonably been expected to know, and therefore could find in my own dictionary rather they Urban. Beyond that the word does not flow well at all. Its hard to speak and hard to read. It adds nothing in particular to the more accepted expression "that's God damn ridiculous" and offers us a savings of only a few syllables. If it actually better conveyed the authors emotional response, or helped to clarify which specific definition he or she wanted us to use it might have value. It does non of these things, its utter rubbish and should never be repeated.
This is how the language is destroyed rather than evolved.
Re:HP Printers and Windows are a No Go (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Profiling /= Debugging (Score:5, Insightful)
Profiling has to be done with same flags enabled as for the production code. Otherwise the result will be meaningless.
Re:Don't have the details (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you can't sell bug fixes, only new features!!!
Re:Ok, (Score:3, Insightful)
Melodramatic much?
Honestly, expletives tend to be low-meaning and high-nonsense sections of language, and meaning there was perfectly clear, and would have been if he hadn't referenced it. Mildly annoying is the worst this is.
Now, that's not to say that the youngsters AREN'T destroying the English language. Heck, as a teacher, I SAW it. But "ri-goddamn-diculous" isn't a big deal.
Re:RE (Score:5, Insightful)
There should be a +1, Sad But True.
Re:U3 "smart" flash drives (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Don't have the details (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Profiling /= Debugging (Score:2, Insightful)
The VC++ optimizer can do some wacky things, like using EBP for computations instead of its normal use (or is it ESP? I forget), that I would expect to break any profiler that cares about that sort of thing. And the stack is mostly what a profiler cares about, so...
Some of these things work by instrumenting binaries. They need some semblance of predictability. So turn off the optimizations and profile it that way.
And instrumented code is NOTHING like real production code, optimized or not. You're looking for problems with the number of times things are called, not with the raw time it takes to do them.
Re:wiggle their mouse continuously (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Run Linux much? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:rigoddamndiculous ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I will say that self documenting words (just like self documenting code) require a minimum intelligence level.
And perspective, context. "Search that man" means something different when uttered by a customs official, somebody playing hide and seek or a police officer.
My hard-learned experience is that in natural language we need a reasonable amount of redundant information in order to capture the intended meaning.
I'm wondering what percentile of the US population you represented to get the "fan fucking" + "elastic" conclusion.
I'm sorry, I live completely outside that IQ-Gauss curve - hint: non-US
Re:Don't have the details (Score:3, Insightful)
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."
Re:rigoddamndiculous ? (Score:3, Insightful)
When Bono said "fucking brilliant" at the Golden Globes, it was clear to any reasonable person that he meant the word as an adjective to brilliant, not as a sexual reference.
Maybe he just likes to watch fireflies do it.
Re:Run Linux much? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Run Linux much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:two second 'nop' (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Run Linux much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:PHP's == operator (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:rigoddamndiculous ? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's because you're a too fucking young fucker. During our grandparent's fucked time, vocabulary freedom was much more restrictive and anything fucking remotely related to fucking (as in 'sex') was just not a verbal option.
Truth is, young fucker, that our last generations have fucking lost the sense of good grammar and verbal expression. Reducing sentences to the simplest denominator ('fuck') works for the unwashed masses too.
Try Shakespearian speak to see how many people will understand you.
And yeah, this is fucked up.
Paste formatted (Score:4, Insightful)
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.