Comment On OH_WELL

IWHFP \o/

Regarding the last image, there is this huge screen in a major road for the viewing pleasure of all commuters stuck in traffic. On several occasions all they get to see is an upside down screen with the start menu button pressed and various site links on the side

My password is incredibly complex. Spaces, non-alphanumerics, all sorts of things. Hey, you try it too! See if it accepts it:

<i>a' or 't'='t</i>

The CVS sign is probably one of four (the upper left corner) that are driven from that one Windows output.

All I could think of for the last was "The real WTF is they didn't use SVN" but then I noticed the error.

Oohh... that Linux screen looks very much like the one I have at home when I fire up my box (Slackware). I do like that funny little Tux at the toplefthand side of the screen...

That "really long string" is probably something buried in malware already on the machine somewhere.

"Windows in the cockpit"? I think that would not be a good thing, IMHO.

Good to see that User ID isn't required.

SpeedRacer:

"Windows in the cockpit"? I think that would not be a good thing, IMHO.

I hope they have windows in the cockpit. It makes it much easier for them to see things like obstructed runways and such.

I think the Windows in the cockpit should be Aero[plane]/Glass type.

Good to see Linux getting some use though. That said, a rollercoaster in Wales I've visited last time had a similar screen for its ride information, only there I could read the error message as well. Something like server not found.

The pilots must get a really good vista with their cockpit windows...

Maybe I ought to stop now. This is turning into a bad eXPerience.

Well, don't hold out on us. Did Alex "want to remove these products now" or not? If so, what happened when he clicked the "yes" button?

Regarding Shane's problem, where's the WTF? It appears he managed to snap a picture in the middle of the machine's boot process; there's no evidence of any error occurring.

Oh, I see; the real WTF is that they used Linux. Got it.

I'm not comfortable with the idea of a pharmacy whose motto is "Expect something extRa". And it's got nothing to do with the font shenanigans.

"Officer, I swear it's just what the pharmacist gave me."

Well, my bank (www.open24.ie) which advertises itself as the "do everything online or by phone" bank, doesn't like upper-case letters or passwords longer than 8 chars. Haven't tried non-alphanumeric but I doubt it'd work.

Oh, and the website doesn't warn you about this behaviour via javascript or a FAQ page, no... It silently discards the characters it doesn't like and let you try your password next time you log in (and fail 3 times, and lock the account).

Gotta love irish banks.

gabba:

Regarding Shane's problem, where's the WTF? It appears he managed to snap a picture in the middle of the machine's boot process; there's no evidence of any error occurring.

Oh, I see; the real WTF is that they used Linux. Got it.

Even if that's how it was designed - Shane said that it crashed - you really think it's valid for a menu choice (play a movie) to result in a restart of the computer? It may not be a problem if you see it, but what about when granny sees it and starts panicking because she thinks she broke it?

Also, IHBT.

What? But I thought Linux never crashed? Only that POS from Microsoft ever crashes!

They didn't do something daft like reboot the entertainment system did they? I've known that done before at the start of a flight.

You think that's bad? I had a recent problem with one of my banking websites (ezcardinfo.com). I set up the account as normal and used a special character in the password, because it'd be stupid not to.

A few months later I tried to enter the password and it did nothing, except a tiny red asterisk appeared after the password prompt. I checked the network monitor on Firebug and it didn't even send the password to the server! If I typed in 'asdf' or something it would send it normally, and tell me it was wrong, but my own password didn't work. Tried several different browsers, fiddled with other settings, no luck.

I spent a while on the phone with tech support and eventually they just gave up and reset it to something like abc123. That way he can log into it normally, and so can I. So he tells me to just change my password a few times to get past the not-recently-used password rule, and I should be fine. I'm halfway through that when I realize that the difference between abc123 and my current password is that my current password has a # in it. I check, and sure enough, any password with a # (or presumably any other special character, but I didn't test them all) is considered 'invalid' by javascript and not passed to the server for validation.

I called them back and told the guy what I found and he said "Oh, of course!" and said that there was another person who had this problem. Apparently the 'no special characters' has been written policy for a while, but it's never been electronically enforced till now. Stupider than the fact that special characters aren't allowed is the fact that they just arbitrarily decided to enforcing the policy, breaking accounts that used them. The stupidest part however is that there was only one other person who uses a special character in their password. I mean, I know the general public doesn't have great password security (take $FAVORITEWORD and append '1') but I am seriously disappointed and a bit worried.

The "no special characters" rule seems to be common to the financial industry... I can't use special characters for my bank account, my three credit cards accounts, or my home loan account (all 5 are through different companies). And, my bank account requires me to use my social security number as the username.

Yet many of these companies want me to go through some long, drawn out process of selecting an image to remember, and choosing answers to 5 obscure questions in case I forget my "secure" password.

I see the difference in the paths. Did he retype it with the period at the end?

Captcha: pecus

Dan:

My password is incredibly complex. Spaces, non-alphanumerics, all sorts of things. Hey, you try it too! See if it accepts it:

<i>a' or 't'='t</i>

That's the same as the combination on my luggage!

AoE message is clearly not a WTF: if you've fscked your hard drive up to the point c:\program files folder is not writable, it's not AoE's installer fault.
It tried to do the best.

About Linux: What's wtfy in that? Someone writing crappy kiosk shell that crashes system? I've seen that with all POSes a lot.

Congo:

Wow, a display that has an error message on it. That never gets old. Always funny fresh and exciting!

Oh by the way... fist!

I think your TDF is set incorrectly.

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_USE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

Two days ago, I was playing Golden Tee in a bar, and the game crashed. It booted up Linux. Sadly, I do not have a picture.

hat:

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SpeedRacer:

"Windows in the cockpit"? I think that would not be a good thing, IMHO.

rain:

Kederaji:

hat:

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_USE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_QUOTE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

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Ilyak:

About Linux: What's wtfy in that? Someone writing crappy kiosk shell that crashes system? I've seen that with all POSes a lot.

You mean it's OK if a kiosk shell AKA USER MODE APPLICATION crashes Linux? WTF is that? If this were Windows, you'd be shouting "Winblows SUXXX", etc.

Anon:

Was that a picture from a Delta flight? I got to see it boot up a modified red hat linux numerous times. Every time my dad wanted to play any of their half decent games, it crashed the screen. Unfortunately, it meant it was no longer possible to switch the cabin lights on or off after reboot, which was the real WTF

I was just going to say this looks like Delta. About 1 hour into the movie it froze. I kindly asked the flight attendent (notice the PC term) what the deal was and she said it happened from time to time. She went up front and sure as shit it rebooted into Linux. I was on the plane with a guy I work with and we both thought it was kind of cool to see it boot up.

Nonetheless it restarted the entire movie so I had to fast forward an hour into it again. I was none too pleased

Kederaji:

hat:

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_USE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_QUOTE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_READ_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

IDK:

Kederaji:

hat:

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SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_QUOTE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_READ_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

IF_LL_COOL_J_WAS_A_STRING_HE_WOULD_SAY_DOING_IT_AND_DOING_IT_WELL

How is not allowing strong passwords a "daily" wtf? I run into this all the time. Heck, one of my credit cards (a major bank with a one-letter ticker symbol) limits me to a *maximum* of 8 alphanumeric characters (no symbols). On the other hand, my 401k recently required that I add a number to my login name, but still limits me to non-symbols for the password.

Ilyak:

AoE message is clearly not a WTF: if you've fscked your hard drive up to the point c:\program files folder is not writable, it's not AoE's installer fault.
It tried to do the best.

If by, "fscked your hard drive up," you mean, "try installing the game from a non-Administrator account," then I fully agree.

I saw the Linux reboot on Delta last week. On the return flight, my wife's screen, but no one else's) crashed and rebooted whenever she select TV.

There is a button for the overhead light. I didn't get any response from the on-screen selection.

The American Express website only allows 8 characters in passwords, and they can only be letters and numbers. And this is a fucking financial institution. You'd think they'd allow strong passwords. Sprint does something similar, but with usernames. Must contain letters and numbers, and the passwords are also 8 character max, no special characters. Retards I tell you, all of them.

I've been running Linux servers for more than 12 years now.

I recall one crash about 5 or 6 years ago when some timestamp within ntp caused a kernel panic. Can't think of any other crashes.

gabba:

Regarding Shane's problem, where's the WTF? It appears he managed to snap a picture in the middle of the machine's boot process; there's no evidence of any error occurring.

Here's a hint: under normal operating conditions, you wouldn't see the boot process.

Oh, and if my bank or CC company did half of the crap that you people mention, I would drop permission for web access, and start looking into other banks.

Nutmeg Programmer:

I saw the Linux reboot on Delta last week. On the return flight, my wife's screen, but no one else's) crashed and rebooted whenever she select TV.

There is a button for the overhead light. I didn't get any response from the on-screen selection.

Apparently on some you can crash the inflight-entertainment system of the entire cabin... Slashdot article and the blog post of the guy who did it.

So single-seat crashing? Nah, not too special. One minute you're trying to play tetris, the next, you kill entertainment for everyone. Alas, it's a simple reset, but would've been an interesting variation of tetris brick...

Worf:

Nutmeg Programmer:

I saw the Linux reboot on Delta last week. On the return flight, my wife's screen, but no one else's) crashed and rebooted whenever she select TV.

There is a button for the overhead light. I didn't get any response from the on-screen selection.

Apparently on some you can crash the inflight-entertainment system of the entire cabin... Slashdot article and the blog post of the guy who did it.

So single-seat crashing? Nah, not too special. One minute you're trying to play tetris, the next, you kill entertainment for everyone. Alas, it's a simple reset, but would've been an interesting variation of tetris brick...

That's actually a pretty amazing WTF - first off, I can't figure out why overflowing a single byte would cause the entire system to crash - including, since it required a full reboot, the kernel. And since it cascaded through all the seats, this is apparently a multi-tasking system. But maybe not Linux, he doesn't say.

Still, userspace programs should never be able to crash the kernel. I can't remember the last time I had a userspace program actually crash a Windows OS since Windows 2000. I've had DirectX programs trigger hardware faults, yes, but I've never actually had userspace software crash the kernel.

Linux, on the other hand, I can routinely crash by resizing windows. Yes. Really. It happened the other day with a machine running Ubuntu 7.10. The only remedy was to reboot, the entire machine froze.

It's not "Lenox Mall" it's "Lenox Square." They get real snarky about that.

alegr:

Ilyak:

About Linux: What's wtfy in that? Someone writing crappy kiosk shell that crashes system? I've seen that with all POSes a lot.

You mean it's OK if a kiosk shell AKA USER MODE APPLICATION crashes Linux? WTF is that? If this were Windows, you'd be shouting "Winblows SUXXX", etc.

ANY operating system (ANY!) can crash due to hardware problems. I envision the console sitting underneath the seats and some toddler peeing in his/her sleep and frying something.

(Yes, it happened to my stuff under the kid in front of me.)

Air Canada's flight entertainment system is embarassingly, ridiculously, hopelessly shitty.
These screens and servers are all mass-produced by Thales Aerospace, but it seems that the individual purchasing airlines must be in charge of developing the platform...

In the last 5 flights I have taken, my entertainment screen has worked properly on only 2 of them (albeit incredibly slowly and without any proper user feedback to tell you it's thinking...touchscreens shouldn't even HAVE a pointer that follows your finger, let alone one that doesn't always turn hourglassed).

Of the 3 remaining flights:
- One stalled and required a reboot.
- One stalled, required a reboot, and then stalled AGAIN at the climax of the film I was watching, and the flight attendant didn't reset it a second time as we were starting final descent maneuvers (I had just enough time to finish the film before the entertainment system would have been shut off for landing, but instead it just hung)
- One was completely offline for the duration of the flight with no hope of recovery.

I've mentioned the always-visible mouse pointer, as well as the lack of proper processing feedback... The visual look of the interface is lovely, the designers did their job, but then they handed the mockups to the developers without discussing transition. It's annoying as hell when you touch a button and can't tell if it read the touch and is processing it, didn't detect the touch and you need to press again, or just hung. The ambiguity between the first two possibilities, coupled with how slow the system is, causes people to hammer on the buttons repeatedly which probably contributes to crashes.

Also, remember that movie that stalled about 10 minutes from the end? I had a connecting flight, and thought I'd watch the end of the film on the next plane. They have play controls with a progress bar, the kind you'd assume you'd be able to touch or drag to skip forward... only you can't. It doesn't do anything. Skipping to any place is obviously possible, because if you stop a film and go do something else and then come back to the film, it will ask you if you'd like to resume where you left off (a great feature really)... But for moving around in a new film, you have crappy, slow, lame fast-forward and reverse buttons only.
I was fast forwarding for 18 minutes (yes, I DID time it, I was frustrated) to get back to the spot where I'd been before, and in the meantime, the poor sucker sitting next to me had been exposed to random frames across the entire film he hadn't seen before.

It seems like the only thing they did right is NOT show the boot-up process like the picture above.

I actually miss the days when the plane had one film that played on all the screens in the cabin. Yes, sometimes the film sucked, but it rarely malfunctioned, and it wasn't so damn frustrating as to counter the point of having it in the first place.
SMARTEN UP, AIRLINES!!

/rant

rain:

Kederaji:

hat:

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_USE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_QUOTE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

SOME_REALLY_LONG_COMMENT_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_READ_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL

In the vein of "Lions and tigers and ..."

SOME_REALLY_LONG_STRING_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_USE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_MY

Hence, Nintendo DS.

Pecos Bill:

ANY operating system (ANY!) can crash due to hardware problems. I envision the console sitting underneath the seats and some toddler peeing in his/her sleep and frying something.

(Yes, it happened to my stuff under the kid in front of me.)

Note to self: refrain from storing luggage under seats.

SOME_REALLY_LONG_COMMENT_THAT_NOBODY_SHOULD_USE_AND_IF_THEY_DO_OH_WELL_WTF