Acts As Enterprisey



  • While browsing through some rails plugins I stumbled across this beauty: [url=http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/acts_as_enterprisey]Acts As Enterprisey[/url]

    Clearly the author must have been inspired by [url=http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/It_Must_Be_Broken.aspx]It Must Be Broken[/url] 

    It makes me sad to think that this plugin will probably find its use. 



  • brilliant!



  • Regarding It Must Be Broken....

    Back in 1995 or so, I was using a faxmodem.  A lot of folks who regularly used fax machines were completely unused to this concept, and were used to fax machines that did not cache the page before transmitting (as most modern faxes do).  They expected the first page to slide in, the connection to make, and then the page would slide down in a large number of little blurps, with long pauses between the blurps, while the transmitting machine waited for the receiving machine's printer to catch up.

    I was in the process of buying a house.  My realtor had some things to send me, so I had him fax them to me.  Of course, there being no printer involved, there were no flow control signals sent, and the fax shot straight through at lightning speed (at least, as lightning as 14.4kb/s can be considered to be).  They were so surprised, they figured it could not have possibly worked and sent it two more times before calling me to tell me that my fax was broken.



     



  • @shambo said:

    brilliant!

      You misspelled 'brillant'.  HTH!
     



  • @DaveK said:

    @shambo said:

    brilliant!

      You misspelled 'brillant'.  HTH!

     

    Wow.. I've been reading this site for a decently long time, and laughing at all the Paula Bean jokes, but I never, ever, until today, realized that "brillant" was misspelled. Holy!



  • @Critter said:

    Regarding It Must Be Broken....

    Back in 1995 or so, I was using a faxmodem.  A lot of folks who regularly used fax machines were completely unused to this concept, and were used to fax machines that did not cache the page before transmitting (as most modern faxes do).  They expected the first page to slide in, the connection to make, and then the page would slide down in a large number of little blurps, with long pauses between the blurps, while the transmitting machine waited for the receiving machine's printer to catch up.

    I was in the process of buying a house.  My realtor had some things to send me, so I had him fax them to me.  Of course, there being no printer involved, there were no flow control signals sent, and the fax shot straight through at lightning speed (at least, as lightning as 14.4kb/s can be considered to be).  They were so surprised, they figured it could not have possibly worked and sent it two more times before calling me to tell me that my fax was broken.

     

    Now that is an excellent story.  It's not unsurprising that they would have this reaction, though; they had created a model in their heads of what constitutes a normal fax send.  This type of mental model is described brilliantly (yes, with the i) in the book The Design of Everyday Things



  • Minor WTF: Scrollbar in a place where the text actually would fit:

     
     



  • @sinistral said:

    Now that is an excellent story.  It's not unsurprising that they would have this reaction, though; they had created a model in their heads of what constitutes a normal fax send.  This type of mental model is described brilliantly (yes, with the i) in the book The Design of Everyday Things

    The forum software seems to have messed up your link. 



  • @sinistral said:

    Now that is an excellent story.  It's not unsurprising that they would have this reaction, though; they had created a model in their heads of what constitutes a normal fax send.  This type of mental model is described brilliantly (yes, with the i) in the book The Design of Everyday Things

    Oh yes, it's entirely unsurprising. I mean, if I download a file which I know is of reasonable size, and the progress bar hits 100% immediately, I know something's up: something must be broken.

    A WTF reaction is not believing it's not broken, even after copious explanations and showings of proof.
     



  • Once more, with the correct URL...

    Now that is an excellent story.  It's not unsurprising that they would have this reaction, though; they had created a model in their heads of what constitutes a normal fax send.  This type of mental model is described brilliantly (yes, with the i) in the book The Design of Everyday Things




  • @dhromed said:

    Oh yes, it's entirely unsurprising. I mean, if I download a file which I know is of reasonable size, and the progress bar hits 100% immediately, I know something's up: something must be broken.

    A WTF reaction is not believing it's not broken, even after copious explanations and showings of proof.
     

    Agreed.  If you had explained that the other end is a Fax modem, not a machine, which doesn't have to wait for printing, and thus doesn't send any pause signals back, and they still didn't understand, and refused to believe, then that is truly a WTF.



  • Sad thing, I actually knew a couple of freelance developers who do stuff like this Act as Enterprisey thing.

    Now that I think about it, it's been a couple of years since Iast heard about one of them. I guess people grew tired of his slow software and he got jobless due to that.


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