Saw the article, immediately had to think of The Daily WTF:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/10/30/starpath-glow-in-the-dark-roads-provide-energy-free-illumination
Posts made by Gabelstaplerfahrer
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Brilliant pebbles, literally...
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RE: Need some1 to help with mathmatics.
To store them in one integer, you add the different values. Say:
A/C (1) + Roof rack (32) = 33To decode them:
33 && 1 = true (A/C)
33 && 32 = true (Roof rack)The same is/was done for Windows mouse button events. All buttons would be encoded in one byte, and you simply AND the byte with the different button constants (left button = 1, right button = 2, middle button = 3 etc) to find out which combination of buttons was being pressed.
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RE: API from hell
@rudraigh said:
I actually need to know. We are in the process of checking out a bunch of ERP solutions and one of my least favorite, so far, is SAP. Oracle Financials also has a stench around it. We already have relationships with CGI and SunGard. Please tell me it's not CGI. I had high hopes for them.
If you're in manufacturing, give Epicor a chance to demo their software. They aren't built with accounting in mind as their first goal, but with manufacturing in mind. We chose Epicor because of their demos, their documentation, their user base and their price. In a few months I'll know more about the actual software but they seemed to be the best for a business our size.
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RE: Epicor - is this the ERP system we want?
Also, I found Gartner's Magic Quadrant report for "ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies" of 2010. Looks like I have some more reading to do.
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RE: Epicor - is this the ERP system we want?
Epicor is big, but Sage is bigger (I think). They tailor to different sized businesses, and SAP is marketed towards the largest businesses out there. I know it's all Oracle based, and the implementation takes years.
I was told we are a $10M business with $100M problems, so (and I know from experience) a $5-25M business solution won't cut it. We currently have a system that doesn't support half of what we do. Major growing pains!
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Epicor - is this the ERP system we want?
I'm in the process of finding a suitable ERP system for our company - apparel, 100 employees, from manufacturing + import all the way through retail + ecommerce / 10M sales/yr. Since we're doing everything ourselves except for some of the production, we need basically everything that any ERP system can offer us, and hence, we can't get stuck with the wrong one or we're screwed.
Epicor gave us a demo, and as demos go when done well, they can be pretty impressive. The system seemed very competent, well designed and support a very good workflow. But is what we saw real? Or is it all lies (which I doubt)?
Now I don't know if any of you guys have experience with ERP systems, but if you do: please respond. We're looking at a 100-200k expense here and I'd like to know about oddball systems, rollout experiences, Epicor-related experiences and SAP horror stories.
Since ERP systems are not the main theme here on The Daily WTF, I feel that they are under-exposed. Why that is, I don't know since almost every 5+-employee business should have at least a small ERP system and I would expect more WTF stories from that corner of the business software world (other than Oracle stuff)...
What we liked about Epicor was the way parts and inventory were handled and tracked, the warehousing, project and purchasing planning, accounting, the knowledge base/issue tracking, and the search feature. Oh and the web interface.
We don't like the price tag.Anyway: if you have anything that could potentially be interesting to hear about, say it here.
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Some people... (web design/customers)
I got the following forwarded to me from CS:
"Hi, I placed an order online. But I may have made a mistake. It was like ordering in the dark, since your pages show up as gray on black, they are unreadable on this laptop in the sun."How do you deal with that as a web designer/IT person?
I'm seriously considering calling Kenmore asking them why my fridge is empty... it should be full of beer! Something's wrong!
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RE: FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
For the record, every page I save gets a little makeover. But I'm not going to rebuild every page by hand. Eventually the site will be replaced anyway so for now I'll just deal with it.
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RE: FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
@derula said:
It's "only" five tables and one paragraph, after all.
True, that doesn't make it right though... it further proves why tables don't work for layout purposes :) Tables are just a big pain because browsers will always try to control them which makes the programmer jump through hoops to take control again (hence millions of spacer .gif's) and the net result is that the universe weeps. Separating content from formatting is not a new concept... 50 kB of HTML is just too damn much!
Oh, and that paragraph was entirely accidental too. No paragraphs for me! Nooooo, <span class="dealerheader"> is all I get. No semantic HTML whatsoever. Anywhere. On the whole site, all 50 3-year-old pages. Blegh. -
FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
Best browser in the world? Check.
Best HTML "debugger"? Check.
Agonizing pain behind the eyes caused by years of built-up frustration with bad HTML? Check.Incompetent web designers. Is it legal to shoot them? After all, bad HTML is life threatening to whomever maintains the website.
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RE: Gotta love people who don't upgrade
@Dudehole said:
You sure about that? I'd thought Microsoft would have wanted to bury 1.1 underground by now.
I think .NET Framework 1.1 aged very well. If I had to, I would still use my old copy of Visual Sudio .NET 2003 for a project. I can't say the same for Delphi 7 :D -
RE: MS DOS, meet Website. Website, meet MS DOS.
Yeah, it gets worse: the BSoD is a Win98/ME screen, not NT. Those appeared so often it didn't even count as a screen of death, merely a screen of unconciousness. Besides, that's 11 years ago, surely nobody uses Win98 anymore! :D
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RE: Layoffs Needed
@dhromed said:
@undrline said:
[firefox screenshot]
Do you often accidentally click the close button on a tab? Inquiring minds want to know.
It also begs the question: "Ever heard of middle-click?"
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RE: Duke Nukem Forever: Did Not Finish
About time. Management reminds me of my former boss! And I mean: remind as in Carbon Copy. Wow. Good thing I never cared about Duke Nukem.
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RE: Is it just me...
I am stupefied. HP has put a tool on their website, waaaay back in 2005 actually, that fixes the scanner problem. It's called the LaserJet Fix Scan Utility, and for once, it's not bloatware. The tool can be found here, and if the link doesn't work, it can be found at the bottom of the page where your drivers can be downloaded. Suggestion: unzip the .exe in a folder and run the .exe from there, the utility doesn't need to be installed.
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RE: Where do they FIND these people?
@vt_mruhlin said:
@Gabelstaplerfahrer said:
Dude... IV means 4, the difference is 73, not 74.
You must be using one of those obsolete web browsers that doesn't intuitively insert <sarcasm> tags where appropriate.
I will admit that sarcasm and irony can be hard to detect. I almost feel stupid. Almost.
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RE: Where do they FIND these people?
@vt_mruhlin said:
Answer: FORTRAN-77 is 74 more than FORTRAN-IV.
At least you know they're good at math.
I don't really see questions like "What is the difference between FORTRAN and COBOL?" as relevent to anything though. You might as well have asked them what the difference between apples and oranges is.
(disclaimer: I don't know any COBOL, only did the minimal FORTRAN in college. If they're distant cousins or something, maybe I'm wrong)
Dude... IV means 4, the difference is 73, not 74.
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RE: Is it just me...
@lolwtf said:
... You can't run it backward, you can't pull the paper back out (rrrrriiiip), and it's riveted together so you can't open it up. ...
Big LOL at the rivets, that just nails it. So yes, HP definitely gets top three positions for both worst hard- and software ever made, regarding to printers at least. We should make a Wikipedia article just for that.
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RE: Is it just me...
@obediah said:
@Gabelstaplerfahrer said:
<font size="1">OR IS HP'S SOFTWARE THE WORST SHIT EVER DESIGNED?</font>
I'm not sure about that, but back in the 90s I noticed that for every piece of software IBM provided for AIX, HP provided a very broken clone for HP-UX.
Well that just makes sense, you gotta have the same features as the comp'tition! Because that's what you can put on the box, it makes for a nice list. The features don't have to actually work, just like with the printermestuction apparatus here. The box doesn't have to say it all works. The box just has to look better than the competition. "I can print!" "Oh, I can print in COLOR!" "Pick me! Pick me! I can scan!" "No I can scan AND I have a paper feed!" - and instead, the humble matrix printer just churns out print after print for 20 years straight, on the same ink ribbon...
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RE: Is it just me...
I don't know if that's true, I quite like HP's printserver firmware, strangly enough... but yes, most vendors' extra software feels like an afterthought. "The product is finished and works, let's ship it. Oh shit, the software isn't ready. Ah well, let's press the CDs anyway, long live the internet!" And then they forget to actually patch the software.
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Is it just me...
<font size="7">OR IS HP'S SOFTWARE THE WORST SHIT EVER DESIGNED?</font>
I've been trying to scan from a laserjet 2840, and it's impossible. The driver cd contains more than 400 MB of complete and utter waste of perfectly good bytes.The crap from this cd simply cripples the pc, it installs it's own (ancient) java runtime, needs extra firewall configuration, installs several system tray monitors and a thousand drivers. And it still doesn't work. I'm going to kill someone.
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RE: Windows XP RAID and USB installation WTF
A long time ago I learned the value of the BIOS setting 'USB Legacy Emulation'.Don't leave it on AUTO if you are able to set it to ON, it saved me countless headaches.
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RE: Web Design 101
'Web'-designers working with AI, I have five years experience with those people and working with their designs!
Their 'workflow' always results in a patchwork of automatically created layers with manually aligned elements (working very precise means: zooming in to 1600% and then aligning manually), embedded texts converted to outlines (try to translate those texts!), slightly slanted lines (somehow they never get the hang of drawing perfectly straight 90 and 45 degree angles) and oval 'circles'. The worst thing are imported bitmaps, scaled without regard for their exact aspect ratio.
I once completely redrew the whole design in Photoshop, pixel by pixel. The result is still on-line: check GEOS. It's obvious that the icons for Scope through News haven't been redesigned.
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RE: DD-WRT users
I bought a 54GL too, for the same reason. It's great software, DD-WRT. Easy to use, very clear interface and loads and loads of extra settings. You can even overclock the Broadcom processor and adjust the power of the wireless antenna. If you like to tweak, this is the nicest software you can get in a (cheap) router, I think.
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RE: Salary - WTF or not? $45k job in US for a Dutch guy
Yeah, it's near Seattle, about 50 miles to the west. Also, the marketing part is something I'm not experienced with. On the IT-end however, I've got about 6 years of experience, but these guys have a small infrastructure and are using Macs. They are paying for the 'import' stuff.
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RE: Salary - WTF or not? $45k job in US for a Dutch guy
Well the 'management' is in reality just 'the guy who does this stuff', I got a more detailed job description that I've yet to read. It's not actually management but more similar to what you say you have. Job titles these days... they're not really what they sound like most of the time.
But yes it really is not the main deciding factor, it's just part of the whole thing but it does matter of course. I should know in advance if I have to live in a dumpster or can afford to buy or rent an actual apartment or condo :)
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RE: Salary - WTF or not? $45k job in US for a Dutch guy
Good point about Monster and HotJobs, I'll check them out.
Concerning the rate of $ to €, that's of less importance but I am aware the rate is changing fast. All that matters to me is what it'd mean for me when I'll be there. So a comparison to other jobs is a good way to measure.
The guy over there was (i think) pretty honest to me, he told me the salary is not comparable to bigger companies, but it may grow depending on growth of the company and how I'll be able to help the company to a better direction.
Not that it's going bad as it is, but I know the company well enough to say they really need the position fulfilled. Whether I'm the guy they really need is a different story altogether, but that's unrelated to my salary question.
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RE: Salary - WTF or not? $45k job in US for a Dutch guy
@dhromed said:
...
But, of course, salary is by far not a primary reason to move to the states. :)
I'm very much aware of that, but aside from this being a life changing choice I wanted to know how much the better salary alone weighs in as good reason.
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Salary - WTF or not? $45k job in US for a Dutch guy
I (being a Dutch guy) got an offer for $45k/yr plus benefits for marketing/IT manager and (some) product development at a company in WA, 40-50 employees.
I'm quitting my job here in the Netherlands so my question is, having no experience with jobs and salaries in the US, is this a normal salary, or how does it compare for similar situations?
This company produces a certain type of clothing and related products, and they need a guy to fulfill their needs regarding aforementioned positions.
I know the CEO and COO of this company in person and have been there twice so it's not an unknown company in itself.
My current salary in NL is much lower (even converted from $ to €, a factor ~1.5).
So I need to know if this is a good, bad or average offer, and worth the move to the States or not.
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RE: You wanted WHAT PAGE???
The Real WTF is that this was a JPEG first, then saved as GIF. But ok, it's cropped and I can read the text.
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RE: Google Oops
I guess nothing happened after opening Firefox. Either that or he's still waiting for some very long timeout.
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RE: Steam owns the internet...
I can't count the times I've seen bad throughput calculation results...
also, 438 TB of storage is hardly all storage in the world... My PC alone has 1,5 TB
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RE: HP hard drive diagnostic mis-procedure
I like the "See ProLiant Server Troubleshooting Guide"-line: it says "Get lost!"
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RE: This makes me seriously doubt the mental capabilities of an ex-collegue...
But it's just wrong. If forms just query data the cancel button shouldn't be there and if the button is there it gives a sense of security, knowing that what you did can still be canceled.
The form I'm talking about contains critical settings, change one innocent looking check box or radio button and the application grinds to a halt, bombarding the user with error messages he can't get out of, because of WTF timers performing tasks that crash.
It's just, I am lacking the time and willpower to share everything that's wrong about this application with you guys, but really, it's bad. And I've been a reader of this site for quite a while now...
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RE: This makes me seriously doubt the mental capabilities of an ex-collegue...
oooooooh don't worry about that, it's certainly not the worst thing I had to put up with.
It is just another silly line of code and I wanted to share it. The whole project is riddled with things like that and real WTFs like a 9 MB, 4 dimensional global array of which the meanings of the dimensions are unclear.
A while ago I posted (or wanted to post) another little gem:
procedure TMaintenance.OKBtnClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
Close;
end;
procedure TMaintenance.CancelBtnClick(Sender: TObject);
begin
Close;
end;well, you get the point I guess.
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RE: This makes me seriously doubt the mental capabilities of an ex-collegue...
A little explanation might be in order:
- ControleNames is both Dutch and English
- Locate performs some select function in an ADO dataset, so naturally loCaseInsensitive makes it case insensitive
- NAAM_CONTR is Dutch, abbreviated and in upper case (I HATE UPPER CASE!)
- monster_ID is Dutch and ID is not an acronym but an abbreviation and should be cased Id, so it should have been SampleId
- and, well... UpperCase(...) in a case insensitive search, well, that just makes me wonder...
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This makes me seriously doubt the mental capabilities of an ex-collegue...
if DbForm.ControleNames.Locate('NAAM_CONTR', UpperCase(monster_ID), [loCaseInsensitive]) then begin (...)
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RE: *this* is how you get Windows users to switch to Mac...
My eyes start to feel weird after reading white on black. And when I look somewhere else, I feel like having window blinds in front of my eyes because all the lighter text lines are 'burned in' somehow.
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RE: Double check, just in case...
maybe the programmer had the same problem: he wrote the CASE, completely forgot about it and typed the IF
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A Viagra ad on the front page?!
Seriously guys, you have to do better than that! The 3M screen damage thing and the Coverity thing are okay but Viagra?! :-|
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RE: War on right clickers, tides have turned!
And what about the EYE-POPIN' templates?
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RE: Screenshots 0.1
Yes, and rotated! I love that.
And also, note that my screenshot is a jpeg saved with MS Paint. For that authentic feeling.
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RE: Screenshots 0.1
Now that is a proper 0.1 screen shot, although no wooden table was involved.
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RE: Screenshots 0.1
That's actually a very high definition 0.1 screenshot! It's probably lossy, even more so because you made a screenshot of your mail program with your screenshot, but it's really not that bad! I am missing that 'bad lens, noisy sensor, shaky hand' quality.
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RE: WTF happening in real time as I write this
Ah, so the backronym for MB would be Musiness Bachines if I understand this WebSphere thing right.
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RE: Magazine ad WTF
Thanks for this ad, it's a gem. And scanners are for
pussiespeople with too much desk space. -
RE: Millions of records...
Hehe, NO, you forgot about the 174,887,470,365,513,049 possible combinations of all 10 letter positions with 53 possible characters...
So, 53^10 * 5 colors * 6 shapes = 5,246,624,110,965,391,470 combinations.
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RE: Dot dot dot dot
Well, if you create bytes out of them and take the remaining three bits as some checksum, you get, in hex:
20 05 F4 78 BD checksum 4 and
E5 0B 9D 1A E7 checksum 6
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RE: Worlds dumbest IDE
Well, I know that Delphi users are not compatible with Visual Studio users, but I am using both for some time now and I can tell you, I want to get rid of Delphi ASAP. It's not the little things that differ, it's just that it's really clear to me how much energy Microsoft puts in its IDE to make it better. All the tiny little additions, the slightly better intellisense, the native .NET support and good help system, they are things that just make me happy as a developer.
Of course every program can have its bugs but I think it's really clear why Borland tried to get rid of Delphi (and why it didn't succeed in doing so...)