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WTF Delaware?

joshliptzin.svbtle.com

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Re: WTF Delaware?

#71

Post by peterjmag »

deathanatos wrote: post #11

There appears to be a giant on top of the entire website. It's the first non-comment child of : With the CSS of: height: 3000px width: 3000px position: absolute top: 0px z-index: 50000 I do love arbitrary constants. Killing it makes the site responsive. No idea what it's there for. I'm guessing that it should be moved by JS, but the JS is failing. There's a lot of these: Uncaught TypeError: Property '$' of object [ob…

He's been building web apps professionally for over 10 years, and he didn't think to right click somewhere (anywhere) and "Inspect Element"? That's the first thing I did on that page.

EDIT: That came off a bit more snarky (snarkier?) than I meant. To the OP: If you inspect the element, you can then delete it with the backspace/delete key to get to the link that you need, which ultimately leads to a separate subdomain that doesn't seem to exhibit this problem: https://delecorp.delaware.gov/eCorp/LoginAnnualReportsCLF

Don't be too quick to write the site off as "utterly dysfunctional". Any one of us could have made a similar mistake, and once you get past that glaring bug (which only appears on pages served over SSL), it's not bad for a state government site.

Perhaps you or someone else could get in touch with them to explain the issue? http://corp.delaware.gov/contact.shtml

Re: WTF Delaware?

#72

Post by larrys »

incision wrote: post #49

>"Our government has likely forked over millions of our tax dollars (how much did Obamacare cost?) to private contractors in exchange for a site so utterly dysfunctional that it can’t even serve its purpose of collecting those very tax dollars!" Oh wow, a "My tax dollars!" complaint in the middle of a "My tax dodge is inconvenient!" complaint with a little "Thanks, Obama!" thrown in for good measure.

"Our government has likely forked over millions of our tax dollars"

Of course the cliche "shitty little photo sharing startup" runs perfectly all the time 24x7 no down time no code errors.

How about checking back in a day and seeing if the problem has been fixed at least?

So a site isn't working. Happens quite frequently, right? Happened to me trying to access HN last week and a few times before. Happens when I am trying to get to netflix occasionally.

Doesn't mean they aren't aware or aren't working on it. Nice for the OP to try and pile on them of course as if it's all an issue of the government screwing up.

Re: WTF Delaware?

#73

Post by incompatible »

mbesto wrote: post #25
chimeracoder wrote: post #23

> “This application is available daily between 8:00 am and 11:45 pm Easter Time.” I really hope the "Easter [sic] Time" is from the original site, not a typo in the blog. The only other business I've seen do this is B&H[0], which refuses to accept online orders during the Sabbath, as well as during several other Jewish holidays (such as the first and last days of Passover). The only other business I've seen do this w…

Government sites in the UK have been known to do this as well.

Standard Life do it too, for their online account servicing. The website is still up, and you can log in, but it refuses to give you any information.

Re: WTF Delaware?

#74

Post by will_brown »

www.AmeriStartup.com can take care of your Delaware corporate compliance for you if your having issues (Annual Report, Franchise Taxes,Delaware Business License, and Registered Agent Service).

Re: WTF Delaware?

#76

Post by jliptzin »

larrys wrote: post #72
incision wrote: post #49

>"Our government has likely forked over millions of our tax dollars (how much did Obamacare cost?) to private contractors in exchange for a site so utterly dysfunctional that it can’t even serve its purpose of collecting those very tax dollars!" Oh wow, a "My tax dollars!" complaint in the middle of a "My tax dodge is inconvenient!" complaint with a little "Thanks, Obama!" thrown in for good measure.

"Our government has likely forked over millions of our tax dollars" Of course the cliche "shitty little photo sharing startup" runs perfectly all the time 24x7 no down time no code errors. How about checking back in a day and seeing if the problem has been fixed at least? So a site isn't working. Happens quite frequently, right? Happened to me trying to access HN last week and a few times before. Happens when I am tr…

Actually I tried paying yesterday. Today it still wasn't fixed. I'd bet tomorrow it still won't be fixed. You'd think at the height of tax season this would be a priority for whoever is responsible for the site.

Re: WTF Delaware?

#77

Post by incompatible »

aghy wrote: post #26

Seems like their website wasn't suppose to be served over a secure connection, just use http://corp.delaware.gov/paytaxes.shtml and all is fine.

Just as long as there's nothing in your financial information that you consider confidential.

Re: WTF Delaware?

#78

Post by Buge »

burntsushi wrote: post #43
chimeracoder wrote: post #23

> “This application is available daily between 8:00 am and 11:45 pm Easter Time.” I really hope the "Easter [sic] Time" is from the original site, not a typo in the blog. The only other business I've seen do this is B&H[0], which refuses to accept online orders during the Sabbath, as well as during several other Jewish holidays (such as the first and last days of Passover). The only other business I've seen do this w…

I'm a grad student at Tufts, and our online course registration app does this (called "SIS"). You can only register for classes during some time period: 8am to 6pm, I think. It's crazy. Tufts recently hired a huge team to "fix" SIS. It's now called iSIS and you can tell it's still using SIS underneath. (The HTML markup returned is the exact same as before, but it's dressed up a little nicer.) Nuts.

University of Michigan's student business site (registering classes, bills, transcripts, etc.) is closed from 4am - 6am every day and 11pm Saturday - 7:30am Sunday.

I hit this period several times without knowing what was wrong. The warning isn't very obvious.

Re: WTF Delaware?

#79

Post by incompatible »

incompatible wrote: post #77
aghy wrote: post #26

Seems like their website wasn't suppose to be served over a secure connection, just use http://corp.delaware.gov/paytaxes.shtml and all is fine.

Just as long as there's nothing in your financial information that you consider confidential.

Although when supplying information to an organisation which has such as poor approach to running its computer systems, you may as well assume you are making it public anyway.

Re: WTF Delaware?

#80

Post by stygiansonic »

burntsushi wrote: post #43
chimeracoder wrote: post #23

> “This application is available daily between 8:00 am and 11:45 pm Easter Time.” I really hope the "Easter [sic] Time" is from the original site, not a typo in the blog. The only other business I've seen do this is B&H[0], which refuses to accept online orders during the Sabbath, as well as during several other Jewish holidays (such as the first and last days of Passover). The only other business I've seen do this w…

I'm a grad student at Tufts, and our online course registration app does this (called "SIS"). You can only register for classes during some time period: 8am to 6pm, I think. It's crazy. Tufts recently hired a huge team to "fix" SIS. It's now called iSIS and you can tell it's still using SIS underneath. (The HTML markup returned is the exact same as before, but it's dressed up a little nicer.) Nuts.

When I went to Queen's University, the web app for course registration, viewing your marks and other related tasks was rumoured to be a wrapper around a telnet interface. I never got confirmation, but the following evidence was enough for me:

- Fixed number of columns/rows output on a given page and rendered in a fixed-width font so things would align.

- The need to navigate through "pages" of information that were far smaller than what a browser could handle, but would make sense in a terminal window.

- A form-driven interface with buttons for separate actions; the buttons seemingly would map to certain keypresses in a terminal interface.

I'm guessing the original computer-based system provided a telnet interface in the '90s but this was deemed insecure/out of date as the years went by. Not wanting to significantly change the architecture, a web wrapper must have been deemed the best option.

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