Comment On Does Not Compute: Crunchies, Virtual Returns, & More

Firs... ah forget it, I've gone to get a Crunchie!

I couldn't recycle my previous comments as somebody emptied the bin yesterday!

Email filters - gotta wonder about a woman who'd dump a guy (b/c he didn't respond to an email) without first picking up the phone...

Maybe Steve is better off...

Please return the drawing as soon as possible.

Maybe Steve is unhappy because Kathy gave him a virus.

I remember the "I Love You" virus. It hit the company I was working for. My office was next door to that of a technologically challenged marketing type. About 8:30 AM he came to my office and asked me if I could help him with something. He showed me an email with the subject "I Love You" and said, "It's got an attachment on it, but I can't get it to open." I asked, "Do you know the sender?" and he said, "No, that's why I'm so curious to see what it is."

I cautioned him not to open it or try anything further with it, just wait and let's see what develops over the next hour. Sure enough, about 15 minutes later came the warning that the company was experiencing a virus infection, and not to open any emails with the subject "I Love You".

Ah, regular expressions. Cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

Captcha: transverbero - an action word having undergone sex change surgery. How this is appropriate, I do not know...

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

50% Opacity:

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

Well, they couldn't give you a Trash can, because Apple had a monopoly on those. ;)

50% Opacity:

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

In case you're not trolling, it recovers space on your filing system. Yeah, not obvious, but logic trumps obviousness in this industry.

50% Opacity:

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

How about "Purgatory" instead?

This is thedailyWTF that I've been missing…great stories!

The one about returning the csv reminds me of a time I was working on a problem and my boss made me call Microsoft support. During the process, there was some agreements to be signed. The MS guy couldn't email it as an attachment for some reason, he had to fax it. When he faxed it, he faxed two copies of it. When I asked him about it, figuring it had showed as not going through the first time or something, he said, "Yes, one is for you to keep and the other is for you to sign and fax back."

ATimson:

50% Opacity:

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

Well, they couldn't give you a Trash can, because Apple had a monopoly on those. ;)

I've always been irritated by the politically correct "recycle bin".

Are you saying that Apple had some sort of trademark on Trash can?

GeOS had a Trash can.

During the I Love You virus I emailed a letter to the editor to of my local paper pointing out how it was Microsoft's fault. Unfortunately the email was rejected because it mentioned the name of the virus.

For virtual return, maybe she wanted you to send it to her so she knew exactly which numbers to cancel?

Jeff:

Ah, regular expressions. Cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

Captcha: transverbero - an action word having undergone sex change surgery. How this is appropriate, I do not know...

It isn't. And no one cares about your captcha.

jonnyq:

ATimson:

50% Opacity:

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

Well, they couldn't give you a Trash can, because Apple had a monopoly on those. ;)

I've always been irritated by the politically correct "recycle bin".

Are you saying that Apple had some sort of trademark on Trash can?

GeOS had a Trash can.

"When Microsoft made Windows 1.0, they copied as much of the look-and-feel of the Mac OS as they legally could. This did not, however, include the Trash Can: the concept was new enough that a direct analogue would probably have led to a copyright infringement lawsuit."
from http://everything2.com/title/trash%2520can

Would you believe it, even by the time of windows 95, Microsoft feared apple (or at least their lawyers)?

According to Wikipedia, Apple indeed have a monopoly on Trash can:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycle_bin_(computing)

Unfortunately the email was rejected because it mentioned the name of the virus.

Well, that's what they told you.

The latest story reminds me on userfriendly:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20000511

*sigh*

I think several of these WTFs highlight failures in the software, not the people.

For "Host is Busy", a company making restaurant management software should know what a restaurant means by host, and regardless, using "host" is way too techie.

Better to say something like "master computer" with some explanatory text like "many restaurants keep this computer in the back office".

Same goes for the recycle bin. I saw the comments about the look'n'feel issue, but recycle is clearly wrong. The user's assumption was not unreasonable in that case.

jonnyq:

I've always been irritated by the politically correct "recycle bin".

They should provide several Recycle Bins at least to be perfectly correct.

[ Words Files Recycle Bin ]
[ PDF Recycle Bin ]
[ JPG/JPEG/PNG Recycle Bin (no JPEG 2000) ]
[ GIF/Flammable Material ]
[ mostly green (>50%) RAW files ]
[ .xlsx, .docx - please call for special pickup ]

50% Opacity:

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

The thing is, if they named it 'trash', they'd probably get complaints that the computer was throwing away their space and would ask if they needed to buy a new hdd.

Bellinghman:

50% Opacity:

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

In case you're not trolling, it recovers space on your filing system. Yeah, not obvious, but logic trumps obviousness in this industry.

That seems neither logical nor intuitive to me.
Erasing != Recycling

The Director of IT where I once worked had set down a rule that Outlook was not to automatically clear out the Deleted folder at any time.

He was rather fond of being able to file his important stuff with one click. Yes, he clicked Delete to save his important messages.

In a very odd way I can see his point but that's only after repeatedly hitting my head on my desk for about half a hour.

Excellent.

Or we call call it "waste basket"...

Bellinghman:

In case you're not trolling, it recovers space on your filing system.

Peter:

...if they named it 'trash', they'd probably get complaints that the computer was throwing away their space...

Did I miss the memo that stated that free space works like anti-matter now?
Recycling bits into anti-bits that you can throw away?

Thoroughly confused.

ATimson:

50% Opacity:

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

Well, they couldn't give you a Trash can, because Apple had a monopoly on those. ;)

So why didn't they simply name it Garbage Collector?

BB:

According to Wikipedia, Apple indeed have a monopoly on Trash can:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycle_bin_(computing)

hmm, I'm fairly sure it was called Trashcan on the Amiga OS in the 80s.

The Virtual Return story sounds very familiar. Was it recycled from another WTF post?

Dave Rolsky:

I think several of these WTFs highlight failures in the software, not the people.

For "Host is Busy", a company making restaurant management software should know what a restaurant means by host, and regardless, using "host" is way too techie.

Better to say something like "master computer" with some explanatory text like "many restaurants keep this computer in the back office".

They should have just used "server".

I usually hold down shift when I hit delete anyway

MrsPost:

The Director of IT where I once worked had set down a rule that Outlook was not to automatically clear out the Deleted folder at any time.

He was rather fond of being able to file his important stuff with one click. Yes, he clicked Delete to save his important messages.

In a very odd way I can see his point but that's only after repeatedly hitting my head on my desk for about half a hour.

I'm curious... What did he do with unimportant e-mails taht he didn't want anymore?

Bellinghman:

50% Opacity:

I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?

In case you're not trolling, it recovers space on your filing system. Yeah, not obvious, but logic trumps obviousness in this industry.

It doesn't recover the space until you empty it. It's exactly like a pre-stage of /dev/null. The Win32 equivalent of "are you sure?" for deleting files.

50% Opacity:

That seems neither logical nor intuitive to me.
Erasing != Recycling

What, is the trash can actually hauling the bits of your hard drive out to the street? Erasing a file marks the bits as able to be used by something else. Recycling. I know, big stretch, try to do it...

vt_mruhlin:

For virtual return, maybe she wanted you to send it to her so she knew exactly which numbers to cancel?

Which would still beg the question why wouldn't she just use the copy of the file in her 'out box' so to speak if sheed needed the numbers, and simply have him destroy the copy he recieved instead?

Guesser:

I usually hold down shift when I hit delete anyway

well aren't you the clever one

Crunchies: took the help-desk guy a lot longer than me to figure out what he meant. As soon as the word "internet" came up...

ILOVEYOU: Not buying this one for a second. What kind of love letter starts with ILOVEYOU in all caps and no spaces? I'd expect that from a signing gorilla but not a human being.

I've always been irritated by the politically correct "recycle bin".

Me too! On my computer it's the "Flaming Tire Pile", and every time I add something, a seagull drops out of the sky and dies on the taskbar.

Anonymous:

ILOVEYOU: Not buying this one for a second. What kind of love letter starts with ILOVEYOU in all caps and no spaces? I'd expect that from a signing gorilla but not a human being.

But this was Back In the Day. I didn't grow up in a tech-savvy household, and thought the entire Internet was AOL and that e-mail addresses were roughly the same as regular addresses (i.e., required a bit of legwork to get). To us uber-noobs, an e-mail was like a regular letter or a good, solid handshake, back before medical miracles and Nigerian princes began to fall into our Inboxes like rain.

akatherder:

Dave Rolsky:

I think several of these WTFs highlight failures in the software, not the people.

For "Host is Busy", a company making restaurant management software should know what a restaurant means by host, and regardless, using "host" is way too techie.

Better to say something like "master computer" with some explanatory text like "many restaurants keep this computer in the back office".

They should have just used "server".

"Server" is also a term used to describe people who work in a restaurant. See also waiter/waitress.

Travis:

I've always been irritated by the politically correct "recycle bin".

Me too! On my computer it's the "Flaming Tire Pile", and every time I add something, a seagull drops out of the sky and dies on the taskbar.

Me three! I run with the crowd though so on my computer a little Bill Gates douses the document with gasoline then sets it afire, then the vapors flash and Bill goes up in flames too. I think my computer senses the insult though, because after he crumbles into ashes I get a stop error and I'm forced to reinstall windows upon reboot. Needless to say I only empty my recycle bin once or twice a year.

cparker:

akatherder:

Dave Rolsky:

I think several of these WTFs highlight failures in the software, not the people.

For "Host is Busy", a company making restaurant management software should know what a restaurant means by host, and regardless, using "host" is way too techie.

Better to say something like "master computer" with some explanatory text like "many restaurants keep this computer in the back office".

They should have just used "server".

"Server" is also a term used to describe people who work in a restaurant. See also waiter/waitress.

Whoosh!

cparker:

akatherder:

Dave Rolsky:

I think several of these WTFs highlight failures in the software, not the people.

For "Host is Busy", a company making restaurant management software should know what a restaurant means by host, and regardless, using "host" is way too techie.

Better to say something like "master computer" with some explanatory text like "many restaurants keep this computer in the back office".

They should have just used "server".

"Server" is also a term used to describe people who work in a restaurant. See also waiter/waitress.

Woosh!

akatherder:

Dave Rolsky:

I think several of these WTFs highlight failures in the software, not the people.

For "Host is Busy", a company making restaurant management software should know what a restaurant means by host, and regardless, using "host" is way too techie.

Better to say something like "master computer" with some explanatory text like "many restaurants keep this computer in the back office".

They should have just used "server".

In case that wasn't a lame joke:

...that would be the person who "serves" the food. You may call them waiters, as waiters are often also servers.

Congrats, you just replaced one person that the manager needs to check with a dozen.

As someone mentioned, they should have used "host computer" to alleviate confusion.

dumb terminal

Apparently it wasn't just the terminal.

Myrmidon:

vt_mruhlin:

For virtual return, maybe she wanted you to send it to her so she knew exactly which numbers to cancel?

Which would still beg the question why wouldn't she just use the copy of the file in her 'out box' so to speak if sheed needed the numbers, and simply have him destroy the copy he recieved instead?

Well if she's sent him multiple batches, and isn't sure which customer was supposed to have gotten the batches she got... (still, she could ask him for some kind of batch ID).

Or maybe whatever system actually sends out the files generates them on the fly. While it may have bugged out and sent something to the wrong person, maybe it logs everything as having happened just fine. Or maybe it only sent half an order. etc.