Author Topic: the worst piece of software  (Read 9123 times)

Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #125 on: 20 October, 2021, 10:18:35 pm »
Did anyone encounter HavenTree EasyFlow ?  Not great software (but probably revolutionary for its day), but the user manual was brilliant, worth the cost of the software. It included this licence and disclaimer text : -

Licence
This is where the bloodthirsty licensing agreement is supposed to go, explaining that Interactive Easyflow is a copyrighted package licensed for use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do.

We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around pirating copies of Interactive Easyflow; this is just as well with us since we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of making anything out of all the hard work.

If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not. Just keep your doors locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.

Disclaimer
We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide. If Interactive EasyFlow doesn't work: tough. If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing.

This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese.

We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted. We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the attack shark at which point we relented.
Rust never sleeps

StuAff

  • Folding not boring
Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #126 on: 20 October, 2021, 11:04:59 pm »
Did anyone encounter HavenTree EasyFlow ?  Not great software (but probably revolutionary for its day), but the user manual was brilliant, worth the cost of the software. It included this licence and disclaimer text : -

Licence
This is where the bloodthirsty licensing agreement is supposed to go, explaining that Interactive Easyflow is a copyrighted package licensed for use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do.

We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around pirating copies of Interactive Easyflow; this is just as well with us since we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of making anything out of all the hard work.

If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not. Just keep your doors locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.

Disclaimer
We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide. If Interactive EasyFlow doesn't work: tough. If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing.

This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese.

We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted. We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the attack shark at which point we relented.
;D :thumbsup:Possibly the funniest software documentation since Infocom…

Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #127 on: 20 October, 2021, 11:18:21 pm »
The algorithm behind this https://ledcalculator.net/#p=12&v=3&c=1000&n=9&o=w

It is hopelessly misleading at best, and will often come up with designs that would be very sensitive to small supply voltage changes. No account is taken of tolerance of components. It says that it is using 5% tolerance resistors, but it's just using the E24 range and tolerance isn't used.

If the power supply voltage is an exact multiple of the LED voltage, the series resistor will be 1 Ω, whatever current is called for.

There is no attempt to keep the LED string lengths the same, so it will suggest a string of three LEDs in parallel with a string of just one LED, where two strings of two would use just as much power, need fewer values of resistors to be obtained, and the current would change less if the voltage changed.

The entry fields don't allow resolutions less than 0.01 V, with annoying pop-ups if that is tried, which must have taken time to program, in order to make the results look pretty, when they should have spent their time making the whole thing work.

But they've got a button to acknowledge the cookies that shouldn't be there in the first place, so it must be good.
Quote from: Kim
Paging Diver300.  Diver300 to the GSM Trimphone, please...

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #128 on: 20 October, 2021, 11:22:09 pm »
I really hope that's been written by a 14 year old hoping to scrape up enough ad revenue to fund a new Arduino, and not someone who should know better...

Beardy

  • Shedist
Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #129 on: 21 October, 2021, 11:36:30 am »
One does sometimes wonder if we are being watched

For every complex problem in the world, there is a simple and easily understood solution that’s wrong.

Wombat

  • Is it supposed to hurt this much?
Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #130 on: 22 October, 2021, 07:53:24 pm »
I've just remembered the horror that is Acronis True Image.  Now if any kind of software needs bulletproof reliability it’s backup software but ATI required you to run the “Install-Repair” wossname about three times a week and frequently wouldn’t recognise as valid the backup it did yesterday.  Eventually I threw it away and installed Macrium Reflect Free instead, which has the dual advantages of:
  • price, and
  • functionality

I'm glad I'm not the only one suffering with Acronis True Image deciding it can't find its own backup despite it being right there, on the drive you're showing me, called "backup", yes, that one!  I may investigate your alternative.
Wombat

Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #131 on: 22 October, 2021, 08:25:49 pm »
Hmmm. Interesting. I've tried using Acronis and gave up because I thought I was dim.
Rust never sleeps

vorsprung

  • Opposites Attract
    • Audaxing
Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #132 on: 22 October, 2021, 09:20:18 pm »
The problem with this thread is that all software is a terrible

I should warn you that I work for "Oracle Cloud Infrastructure"

I've heard the average employment period at Oracle is 2 years, after which very little has been achieved and former staff members run away as fast as they can.

Source: MS SQL Server Fansites admittedly.

I've been there 18 months
And I currently have three job applications appending

Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #133 on: 26 October, 2021, 08:50:11 am »
The problem with this thread is that all software is a terrible

I should warn you that I work for "Oracle Cloud Infrastructure"

I've heard the average employment period at Oracle is 2 years, after which very little has been achieved and former staff members run away as fast as they can.

Source: MS SQL Server Fansites admittedly.

I've been there 18 months
And I currently have three job applications appending
That is one of the funniest things I've seen today.

What happened to Oracle? I used to work on software that had an Oracle DB as the back end. Erm, 18 years ago? Oracle databases had the reputation of being fast, robust and tunable. Mind you, the software I was involved with had the most awful design. All business logic and data relationships were encoded in the front end, written in visual basic and SQL queries. That's right, the data relationships were encoded in the SQL queries.

Maybe it should be a candidate for 'worst software', certainly under the hood.
<i>Marmite slave</i>

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #134 on: 29 October, 2021, 11:05:59 pm »
Other databases overtook oracle in stuff like security (I was quite incredulous to discover than oracle still has a 1-1 relationship between user and schema in 2019, I mean sql server had proper separation of data objects and users since... Erm since before the turn of the millennium I think)
It also doesn't help when the people running and writing the dbs have been working like oracle did when it first came out right enough.
Aparently a lot of our older systems did similar shite with the super expensive database that's really good at doing data relations sidelined for the cold fusion code to manage that...

I've started seeding questions like wrf are we using relational for this document?
Although to be fair sql server and oracle are probably good enough at document and kvs that we don't need to hybrid our dbs and it sounds increasingly likely the nex titerstion of our main application will actually be processing data rsther than just digging it out of mumps... Which is totally not fun...

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Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #135 on: 29 October, 2021, 11:46:12 pm »
It's being required to enter 6 and three quarter hours as 6.75, c'mon :demon:
I remember my mum complaining about this way back in the 1980s, when it was all on paper.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

FifeingEejit

  • Not Small
Re: the worst piece of software
« Reply #136 on: 31 October, 2021, 07:52:00 am »
The only computer program I've found to be vaugely tolerable for time maths was written for Casio.

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