Gah! You am dumb!

[the_eggwhite]

You want to restrict access to this page to a certain group of people. Fair enough... That I can do.

What's that? You want people who are not in that group to have to enter a username or password to get in, but the people who are in that group to just be able to go in with no questions asked? What do we know about the people who are in this group? Do they any common identifying features? No? Can I send them somewhere else first so that I can set up a cookie which identifies them as a part of the group? No?

How the hell am I supposed to distinguish between people who are meant to be able to read it and people who aren't if I'm only allowed to ask for a login and password from those who are not meant to be there! What's more, why the hell am I asking for a username and password from people you don't want to give access to?

I know! I'll just install this psychic powers patch to the server... No, it's not a random number generator... not at all...

Bah! Stupid people! Think things through before you come to me and say "do this now or I'll complain!".

Comments

[sea-cucumber.livejournal.com]

I have a similar stupidity at work, people keep asking me what prices are for things they want printed, so I say how many do you want done? And they reply that they don't know as it depends on price!
But we can't get a price unless we know how many! aaaaagh!
I swear nobody reads my emails! :'(

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Indeed... at least with that one you stand a chance of saying something like:
well, the price scale might look a bit like this:
<100 full-colour - £A
100-200 full-colour - £B
200-500 full-colour - £C
500+ full-colour - £D

With mine it's a case of:
"It's not possible"
"Why not?"
"Because it can't be done."
"Why not?"
"Because computers aren't psychic"
"I don't like your attitude!"

(although it's not gotten that far... They've currently gone a bit quiet.)

[themadone.livejournal.com]

Heehee. I know the feeling.

Psychic computers

[eharris.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the only solution that would work.

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." Is the sort of error message that would need to be given.

I have come across a logic design that was great, with the small exception that one part of the system needed to know what state a bit was going to be on the next clock cycle. The "ESP Bit" that indicates what the state of a bit is going to be in the future, very useful, but unfortunately we've found no way of implementing it yet.

A machine built from a load of those would then be psychic though.

Re: Psychic computers

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Completely unrelated... Whereabouts are you guys living at the moment? I've kind of lost track!

Re: Psychic computers

[eharris.livejournal.com]

Duxford, just to the south of Cambridge where the Imperial War Museum aerodrome is.

Having been at home during several air displays, I can assure you that a Tornado at 100 feet and going very fast is *very* loud!

[barty.livejournal.com]

Sometimes people become surprisingly stupid when specifying software. I think they would probably notice their error if they asked you to build a physical safe that only required a combination if you weren't allowed to open it.

To impliment their design, you could just give everyone in the world access to the 'restricted' page without any sort of authentication challenge. You won't get caught immediately since your clients are obviously important enough to be included in the restricted group. Eventually, someone with at least a minimal level of intellegence will looks at the page and realise what you've done, at which point it becomes their problem.