SEARCH:
NAVIGATION:
| Category: | web page | Date of Incident: | 2003.11.15 |
| Company: | Legg Mason Funds | Home Page: | http://www.leggmason.com/capitalmarkets/research/ |
| Section: | Info | URL: | http://www.leggmason.com/tools/data/index.asp |
| OS: | Win XP | Browser: | IE6 |
Legg Mason is a global financial services company with one product: Advice. (From Legg Mason's corporate fact sheet)
It is unusual--well, perhaps I should say it is less usual--for a piece of software, or a web page, to be designed inconsistently. Software architects typically take great care to create a cohesive whole, when possible. Inconsistency typically stems from two sources, either unanticipated (or untested!) data, or from maintenance. The form of this dichotomy indicates that this inconsistency was likely caused by unchecked data (rather than an instance of maintenance--see the PetSmart article).
In the illustration, note the highlighted area indicating that the market is both open and closed simultaneously(!). My guess is that there's one piece of code that notates the window with the open phrase; another piece that notates with the closed phrase, and that testing was lax, limited to market-open hours.
This is such an embarrassing faux pas, and quite easy to find with just a little bit of testing: just the candidate for something that should be tested. Sigh...
