[SATLUG] San Antonio's Daily WTF

[R. Tyler Ballance]

So, I've been actually working and slacking off on my "man this is so  
messed up I better have a beer and tell the LUG about" duties :)


Today, San Antonio's Daily WTF ENTERPRISE EDITION!


I have been working with this one client since about September, or  
maybe early October. Given the obvious lack of technical knowledge,  
I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt I mean, they are  
only a software and managed services company, so I should keep my  
expectations low. Just this week however, I have made a major break  
through, I walked a tech through an installation process of openSUSE  
10.1 on a machine so I could then set it up for VPN (openvpn) for my  
own purposes so I could finally access parts of their enterprise  
denied to me previously.

With this new machine, and a gateway, I _finally_ had access to their  
Subversion repository, which I had not been "allowed" to access  
previously. See, I'm developing an application that is helping to  
steer the company into the growing open source (primarily Linux)  
market, therefore it is only logical that my source code not be  
integrated at all with the rest of theirs, leaving me to commit  
everything to my local Perforce repository, and rely on emailing  
source snapshots if/when I needed to collaborate with another  
developer. Not only is this a good appetizer WTF, it's an enterprise  
WTF.

With access to the Subversion repository, I started checking things  
out, and looking for more information, specifically documentation on  
their systems that had been kept hidden from me from a vindictive  
member of management (another WTF entirely). I found myself looking  
in the directory titled "website/" and this company, like some open  
source projects, didn't rely on any sort of dynamic content  
management system, they relied on periodic checkouts of flat-static- 
HTML from Subversion to deploy on their publicly facing website  
(borderline WTF).

I found some files that looked interesting, namely because of  
their .mht file extension (Microsoft web archive it seems). After  
rummaging through some of these, and verifying that these were on the  
public website, I was forced to walk to the fridge and grab a beer,  
reclining slightly in my desk chair in amazement. Here are a choice  
selection of the web archive titles, and the pages they archived:


Multi-threading Basics: --url snipped--
What is a thread?: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/ 
threads/definition.html
The Advantages of Multi-threaded Applications: --url snipped--


The first and the third URLs are snipped after I did a quick Google  
search to ensure anonymity and found out that Google had magically  
discovered these pages and by searching for the documents in some  
cases these web archives were amongst the first results, even higher  
than the original article.

Most nights I work (I prefer it to working during the day), so I'm  
starting to drink at what is equivalent to 8-9am for most of you day- 
workers. No good will become of this.


In software, the difference between regular, and enterprise level is  
only in the size of the WTF.


Go go gadget Shiner Bock, Cheers.

R. Tyler Ballance: Lead Mac Developer at bleep. software
contact: tyler at bleepsoft.com | jabber: tyler at jabber.geekisp.com