The dailyWTF in the morning, nice. Guess I can call it quits for the day and go home. My work here is done!

Tsk, Tsk. Bad MsgID! No treat for you! (from Chady Kassouf)

So... since the developer elected to use the question dialog, it wants to know if there is a bad message ID? This must be a new form of error handling, where you ask the user if an error occurred. 

I love these.  I saw a great one the other day too - cant remember where but I need to screenshot it the next time.

 Nothing more ironical than the qality one.  I heart irony
 

This was one of the best Pop-up Potpourri posts yet.  This just made my day.  Thanks.

If Skyfallen is proud to present that the program crashed, could you imagine how proud they would be if the program actually ran? 

Anonymous:

Tsk, Tsk. Bad MsgID! No treat for you! (from Chady Kassouf)

So... since the developer elected to use the question dialog, it wants to know if there is a bad message ID? This must be a new form of error handling, where you ask the user if an error occurred. 

I'm guessing it looks up an error message in a table of strings, but there is no message in the table for that error code -or- it couldn't read the table. The question dialog probably was intended, but the required message text wasn't translated, was omitted, or the developer used the wrong message identifier. Still, the developer should have included the message number in the message so the problem could be tracked down.

OMFG!!!! I could barely contain the laughter on this one. This was definitely one of the better potpourris so far. *thumbs up*

RE: E.J. Gonzalez's

After I graduated from college my parents and I switched my cell phone service so that it was no longer under their family plan.  I had to pay a $200 deposit because I didn't have any credit.

A month later I get my first bill.  The total was somewhere around $90, but for some reason they had subtracted that from my $200 deposit and said that I owed $0.00.  I thought about mailing in a check for $0.00 but decided against it.  A month later I get a call from my service provider asking me if I'm planning on paying my bill.

In the end it turned out that they (obviously) should not have subtracted the amount I owed from my deposit, and were billing me for $90.  However they never sent me an adjusted bill, and had no idea that they ever sent me a bill for $0.00.  About a week after I paid the bill I got a new bill in the mail telling me I had a week to pay my balance or they'd cancel my service. 

I still have that bill somewhere...maybe I should scan it and submit it... 

Anonymous:

I love these.  I saw a great one the other day too - cant remember where but I need to screenshot it the next time.

 Nothing more ironical than the qality one.  I heart irony
 

Ironical?

Wooah. It's like...an ironic statment about irony...my head might explode.
 

Alex Papadimoulis:

 

Come on Rumo, you should know better; no fair downloading Microsoft Munchies 2.0 at work ...

 

Alex could you possibly post the link as a clickable hyperlink. I'm dying to know where it goes, but can't be bothered to type the full URL :)

Alex Papadimoulis:

I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

Wow!  The price of anti-matter sure has dropped lately.

Sunday Ironfoot:

Alex Papadimoulis:

 

Come on Rumo, you should know better; no fair downloading Microsoft Munchies 2.0 at work ...

 

Alex could you possibly post the link as a clickable hyperlink. I'm dying to know where it goes, but can't be bothered to type the full URL :)

I've got nothing else to do.  Just work. 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c717d943-7e4b-4622-86eb-95a22b832caa&displaylang=en

 

For reference, the "Marijuana" download link (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c717d943-7e4b-4622-86eb-95a22b832caa&displaylang=en) is just for Windows Script 5.6.

I'll leave it to someone else to figure out exactly why it got marked as such.

A couple of month ago, I got a rather rude letter from Bell Sympatico saying that my account was $0.00 overdue and that they would cancel my internet service if I dint pay up. I sent them a cheque for $0.00. They seemed to be satisfied with that, and didn't complain again.
 

It's the latest in human-computer system integration.

I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

 

It's probably a mini black hole! 

Alex Papadimoulis:

At first I read the file system as "NSFW."  Maybe Windows knew someone was keeping naughty stuff on there? 

Also, 16 TB free on a 1 TB drive?  Amazing!

That is not anti matter, its doesnt matter, or something similar. ;)

I wanted to know too, so I typed it in:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c717d943-7e4b-4622-86eb-95a22b832caa&displaylang=en

 It takes you to

Windows Script 5.6 for Windows XP and Windows 2000

No obvious dope references on the page.

Captcha: craptastic 

Alex Papadimoulis:

Drew received this error when trying to submit the contact us form of a very well known car company. Poor customer.

Well, Procedure 'procCustomerRequestInsert' expects too much. Procedure 'procCustomerRequestInsert' will just have to take a cold shower and sleep on the couch.

I've been boofed by that Nvidia crap on my home PC. It's really, really annoying.

ssprencel:

Alex Papadimoulis:

Drew received this error when trying to submit the contact us form of a very well known car company. Poor customer.

Well, Procedure 'procCustomerRequestInsert' expects too much. Procedure 'procCustomerRequestInsert' will just have to take a cold shower and sleep on the couch.

 

Best... reply... ever :)

Alex might want to consider not putting ads in Pop-up potpourri... I spent a couple seconds trying to figure out what was wrong with the crackberries (the ad that popped up)... of course, maybe the ad peeps should pay extra.

 

 

ssprencel:

Alex Papadimoulis:

Drew received this error when trying to submit the contact us form of a very well known car company. Poor customer.

Well, Procedure 'procCustomerRequestInsert' expects too much. Procedure 'procCustomerRequestInsert' will just have to take a cold shower and sleep on the couch.

 

RAISERROR ('Headache', 16, 1)

ROLLBACK TRANSACTION gettinSome 

Anonymous:

For reference, the "Marijuana" download link (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c717d943-7e4b-4622-86eb-95a22b832caa&displaylang=en) is just for Windows Script 5.6.

I'll leave it to someone else to figure out exactly why it got marked as such.

 Too many appearances of the word 'hash'?
 

Anonymous:

For reference, the "Marijuana" download link (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c717d943-7e4b-4622-86eb-95a22b832caa&displaylang=en) is just for Windows Script 5.6.

I'll leave it to someone else to figure out exactly why it got marked as such.

Have a look at the source for that page.  It clearly was written by someone who was high.

Who else feels Alex should create an "I Hate WebSense" forum just for all the WebSense WTFs?  I've had Java reference sites blocked by it.

It also blocks NFL sites.  At once place I worked, upper management was sore that they couldn't check their fantasy football stats during the day, so they had the WebSense admin remove that  filter.

WebSense:  when you want to treat an entire adult workforce like toddlers.

Anonymous:

For reference, the "Marijuana" download link (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c717d943-7e4b-4622-86eb-95a22b832caa&displaylang=en) is just for Windows Script 5.6.

I'll leave it to someone else to figure out exactly why it got marked as such.

The register has the scoop:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/04/ms_websense_hash/

Anonymous:

RE: E.J. Gonzalez's

After I graduated from college my parents and I switched my cell phone service so that it was no longer under their family plan.  I had to pay a $200 deposit because I didn't have any credit.

A month later I get my first bill.  The total was somewhere around $90, but for some reason they had subtracted that from my $200 deposit and said that I owed $0.00.  I thought about mailing in a check for $0.00 but decided against it.  A month later I get a call from my service provider asking me if I'm planning on paying my bill.

In the end it turned out that they (obviously) should not have subtracted the amount I owed from my deposit, and were billing me for $90.  However they never sent me an adjusted bill, and had no idea that they ever sent me a bill for $0.00.  About a week after I paid the bill I got a new bill in the mail telling me I had a week to pay my balance or they'd cancel my service. 

I still have that bill somewhere...maybe I should scan it and submit it... 

Get with the program - put it on a wooden table first, ...

Sunday Ironfoot:

Alex Papadimoulis:

 

Come on Rumo, you should know better; no fair downloading Microsoft Munchies 2.0 at work ...

 

Alex could you possibly post the link as a clickable hyperlink. I'm dying to know where it goes, but can't be bothered to type the full URL :)

You know that you can cut-n-paste the link, right?

Alex Papadimoulis:

As reported by Gideon Payne in the 11/17/2006 edition of Owensboro's Messenger-Inquirer, the sun is expected to stop by Earth some time on Monday night; temperatures may warm up a bit ...

I knew global warming would kill us one day.  Thankfully, life can resume as normal the following day.  BTW, how big of a heatsink is needed for that kind of temperature delta? :P

Alex Papadimoulis:

Incase you were wondering why entropy suddenly reverses itself every now and then, it's just Sam C, playing around with Thunderbird ...

oh, so that's how we get back to normal temps!

Alex Papadimoulis:

I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

Okay, who bought all these? You must have been the one who caused the sun to get close to Earth on Monday evening, causing the 3320 degree temps.
 

Anonymous:

ssprencel:

Alex Papadimoulis:

Drew received this error when trying to submit the contact us form of a very well known car company. Poor customer.

Well, Procedure 'procCustomerRequestInsert' expects too much. Procedure 'procCustomerRequestInsert' will just have to take a cold shower and sleep on the couch.

 

Best... reply... ever :)

Thanks.  :)

Anonymous:

You know that you can cut-n-paste the link, right?

You can cut-and-paste links from inside of images now?

The WTF behind the WTF is how the "-693945 Days of Christmas"-site is implemented!

Firefox shows -693945 days remaining.
IE shows 16 days remaining.

So it looks like every browser has its own Christmas.

The reason for this is JavaScripts function date.getYear() which returns 106 (which is 2006-1900) on almost every browser except IE.
Nevertheless the code that calculates and outputs the remaining days is worth its own DailyWTF post.

Saladin:

Anonymous:

You know that you can cut-n-paste the link, right?

You can cut-and-paste links from inside of images now?

<sarcasm>With the right-click OCR function.  Don't you have it to?</sarcasm>

 

Anonymous:

I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

 

It's probably a mini black hole! 

 

Do note the caveat...that the actual product dimension may vary.  I expect by quite a bit. 

Anonymous:

The WTF behind the WTF is how the "-693945 Days of Christmas"-site is implemented!

Firefox shows -693945 days remaining.
IE shows 16 days remaining.

So it looks like every browser has its own Christmas.

The reason for this is JavaScripts function date.getYear() which returns 106 (which is 2006-1900) on almost every browser except IE.
Nevertheless the code that calculates and outputs the remaining days is worth its own DailyWTF post.

 

Thank Jebus for getFullYear(), which has been supported since about 101. 

Alex Papadimoulis:

Drew received this error when trying to submit the contact us form of a very well known car company. Poor customer.

Gees you'd think we computer geeks of all people would have plenty of experience in the proper handling of this error.

try {
customer.requestInsert();
} catch (SexNotSupplied e) {
customer.rubOneOut();
}

Alex Papadimoulis:

Sorry kids, looks like you missed Christmas by ... errr ... a good 1900 years or so ... (from Jeff)

 

This is actually very close to (minus) 1900 calendar years minus one month - the average year in the Gregorian Calendar has 365.2425 days and 693926 / 365.2425 = ~1899.90486. If Christmas 2006 is day 0, this would be around 28.1.107. To know the exact date, it would be necessary to calculate the exact number of leap years in the given period. My guess is that this is caused by a similar problem to the one where the year is "0002". Probably 2006 is stored as 106, and then they forgot to add the 1900 back to get the real year. The fact that adding 1900 years yields a future date seems to be another WTF, because while it is possible that, since the Gregorian Calendar does not actually reach back that far, the Julian Calendar was used for earlier dates, this would yield an even later date because the average number of days in the Julian Calendar is 365.25 days.

Assuming a date handler that's too silly to even calculate leap years, on the other hand, the result becomes greater than 1900 years, but by too much (actually 693926 / 365 is greater than 1901).

So the only way to make sense of this is as a combination of two date WTFs in one neat very large negative number. Of course date handling is one area where programmers are very eager to reinvent the square wheel, so this should probably not come as a big surprise.

Alex Papadimoulis:

As reported by Gideon Payne in the 11/17/2006 edition of Owensboro's Messenger-Inquirer, the sun is expected to stop by Earth some time on Monday night; temperatures may warm up a bit ...

 

 Ha, that reminds me... (of the signature)

Alex Papadimoulis:

I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use? 

You can get them fairly cheap at "Singularities-R-US". 

Alex Papadimoulis:

I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

Hrm, wait a second. If the _package_ dimensoins are 0x0x0, then the actualt product must be _even smaller_! nice! an object with _negative_ dimensions (so, gives more space to the universe), weights 40 tons, and cost only $1.08! sweet! where can i get me one of these?

 

Captcha: error -_-

In my work IT department started using WebSense about year ago. It's still funny to see some usefull pages blocked by their filters (what can be wrong with code snippets?) when quite a lot web-based games / porn sites / online comics / etc. are still available...

But the real WTF is that attempting to post a reply with Opera on the Mac invokes mental behaviour in the forum software.

They may need to check on where the WebSense admin goes on his smoke breaks...

Anonymous:

I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

 

It's probably a mini black hole! 

Note that it's marked as "Hazardous: N."  Apparently, the key to stabilizing black holes is to build them solid-state...

 

What would be the acceleration due to gravity due to that mass at, say, one meter?  Assuming it's a point singularity, I mean.  I could run up the number, and am probably bored enough to do so, but don't feel like it at the moment.

 

According to the Russian in the stack error, Skyfallen's developers are working from an Underground Sanitarium... Might explain a few things.

This is a totally useless dialog.

Just like, when you are in a building with only two floors and you enter the elevator (like a shopping mall); why are there two buttons in the elevator?

Why doesn't the elevator car simply GO to the other floor?

Anonymous:

Alex Papadimoulis:

I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

Wow!  The price of anti-matter sure has dropped lately.

 

Sorry to be pedantic, but you mean strange matter.

Joe figures he'd best uninstall @!$#&%); it's taking a up a whole }}~&&^_!! bytes!

 

16TB free? WHOA! Please give me some of this space, as my 80GB hard drive is full.  I need this at home!

What would be the acceleration due to gravity due to that mass at, say, one meter?  Assuming it's a point singularity, I mean.  I could run up the number, and am probably bored enough to do so, but don't feel like it at the moment.

It doesn't make much difference whether that mass is in a point singularity or a big slab with a center of gravity at the same location.  So the acceleration due to gravity is about what you'd feel from standing next to forty ton concrete wall -- just about nothing.

This reminds me of those commercials that offer a free Crapomatic 5000, just pay an extra $14.95 shipping and handling!  You could really make a fortune shipping pieces of a black hole for $5 a pound.  Splitting it up into manageable pieces might be tricky though.
 

Alex Papadimoulis:

For many, many more, check out the previous article from the series, Pop-up Potpourri: It's Getting a Little NaN Outside

---

I suppose this is a bit late, but Richard was a little suspicious of some of the election results ...

I call shenanigans!  Everyone knows there are no black Republicans...

Anonymous:

What would be the acceleration due to gravity due to that mass at, say, one meter?  Assuming it's a point singularity, I mean.  I could run up the number, and am probably bored enough to do so, but don't feel like it at the moment.

Uh.. not much. You need a lot of mass to generate any significant amount of force caused by gravity. The gravitational force exerted at 1m away is about 2.65 micrometer / s^2