Comcast, I Ridicule Thee!

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

(x-posted to mock_the_stupid and/or hisamishness)

Kind of a self-aimed rant in the community, but what the hey... it's Tech and it's Fucked Up!

Ok, so maybe it's more be being tired and pissed, but hey...

Comcast - I Ridicule Thee.

I can -- almost -- accept that handing payment that consists of non-folding money to a young, minimum wage, cashier will often as not provoke a deer in the headlights look. I can handle the idea that the guy walking the floor in a Best Buy or Circuit City doesn't have all the technical media standards memorized, or that a comp-u-hell-in-a-box worked might not know BGP or the OSI layers...

BUT DAMMIT! I EXPECT CORPORATE LEVEL WEB PROGRAMMERS TO UNDERSTAND MATH!

Comments

[tmesser.livejournal.com]

I ran into that a couple weeks ago and honestly didn't think anything of it. Desensitized by morons, perhaps?

[gotica.livejournal.com]

Or you are in credit by $128 and it doesn't show properly so it is telling you the right thing..


*devils advocate*

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Which is itself so mind-bogglingly stupid as to rival the original complaint.

What you have just posited, of course, is a failure to be able to discern that $amount_due > 0 or not. You might think a bank would want to know that sort of trivial detail.

If the account was in credit (i.e., the bank owes you money), then the amount due should be $0.00, TYVM. Failing to display a minus sign is bad enough, but failing to notice its existence is unforgivable.


I see your devil, and raise three devas and a genius locus.

[gotica.livejournal.com]

I wasn't saying it was a good thing (please excuse me as I feel that your post was a tad agressive in my direction).

I've see the omissible minus sign and a system that tried to auto debit for the amount that was in credit at one of the places I've worked previously. It was also a place where anyone could pull up all the existing credit card debits that had been made, and export it to a portable document... and then there was the guy who would watch snuff at work.. uh yea.. good ol days

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Now the routing tables have been restored upstream, I have my internets back and can reply.

I didn't mean to snark at the clueful. It's just that I have a vanishing small tolerance level for stupidity. Practically a negative tolerance. (The difference between zero and negative tolerance, my theory holds, is that where you do not accept something at Tolerance = 0, at Tolerance < 0 you actively go and hunt down the stupid for blood sport).

And to answer your comments that you have seen it before: That something is mind-bogglingly stoopid is, unfortunately, not enough to have prevented it from implementation. The evidence lies all around us. Hail Eris!

Nuke the fsckers from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[jerith.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's doing a string comparison instead of a numeric?

[lihan161051.livejournal.com]

**cringe** LOL

[jerith.livejournal.com]

I've seen this in way too much production code written in languages that "helpfully" perform random type coercion for you without asking.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Sounds likely. Lame.