• akatherder (unregistered)

    The Iraq voter registration refers to expatriates living in Detroit who could vote in Iraqi elections

  • (cs)

    Ah, retail taxonomies. We had a client who had an employee consistently placing toilet cleaner supplies
     in the 'executive pen and pencil set' category.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    Anonymous:
    The Iraq voter registration refers to expatriates living in Detroit who could vote in Iraqi elections


    You don't get humor, do you?
  • Jeremy (unregistered) in reply to Anon

     

    Anonymous:

    The Iraq voter registration refers to expatriates living in Detroit who could vote in Iraqi elections



    You don't get humor, do you?

     

     
    Since this is "The Daily WTF" wouldn't it only be funny if you know...it was a bug?  Otherwise any odd headline could make it.
     

  • Adrian Martin (unregistered)

    What format will that album be available in? Can i wait 18 years for it!

  • akatherder (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    The Iraq voter registration refers to expatriates living in Detroit who could vote in Iraqi elections


    You don't get humor, do you?

    I understand what the headline means and I understand how it could be otherwise interpreted.  I think the real meaning is far clearer than the geographic mayhem that could be misinterpreted.  Either way it isn't a bug and even though I "get it" I don't think it's all that funny.

    I'm not trying to make a big deal.  I'm just clarifying for those who might not know.  Yeesh.
     

  • (cs) in reply to akatherder

    You can e-mail Kathy to find out how she can be converted to an int:

    [email protected]

     

  • Jeremy Bowers (unregistered) in reply to Jeremy

    The WTF is that somebody apparently didn't realize that Iraqi expatriates could vote.

    Amusing, but not really computer related, and it's odd to be laughing at the submitter rather than the submitted. Nothing at all like trying to imagine a -1x-1 monitor.

    (Given that it wasn't a computer fluke at all, but a submitter fluke, no, it doesn't really belong here. Trying to say "Don't you get it?" doesn't really work, 'cause the more you know, the less funny it is. The whole "Don't you get it?" appeal-to-embarrassment is supposed to work the other way around.)

  • (cs) in reply to Jeremy Bowers

    Anonymous:
    The WTF is that somebody apparently didn't realize that Iraqi expatriates could vote. Amusing, but not really computer related, and it's odd to be laughing at the submitter rather than the submitted. Nothing at all like trying to imagine a -1x-1 monitor. (Given that it wasn't a computer fluke at all, but a submitter fluke, no, it doesn't really belong here. Trying to say "Don't you get it?" doesn't really work, 'cause the *more* you know, the less funny it is. The whole "Don't you get it?" appeal-to-embarrassment is supposed to work the other way around.)

    Who cares if it's not computer-related, as long as it's something that might make somebody else scratch their head? I got the joke, as somebody who was unclued might -- why are Iraqis voting in Detroit? I also knew why Iraqis were voting in Detroit, since the media hammered the fact that Iraqis expats would vote in Detroit and several other cities across the country.

    I think the whole complaining-something-isn't-a-wtf-or-isn't-a-technology-wtf is kinda old. Let's just laugh and move on, shall we?

  • quotequad (unregistered)

    Strangely, if you search for "Kathy Milde" you do actually get something.

  • (cs) in reply to Earl Purple

    i guess someone did... she's recognized by the database now.
    how barbaric, turning your employees into numbers!
     

  • Scott B. (unregistered) in reply to onitake

    I got Kathy's number at the Christmas party last year.

  • Mario (unregistered) in reply to Adrian Martin
    Anonymous:
    What format will that album be available in? Can i wait 18 years for it!
    There's a Belgian artist, Vitalski, who is going to make a theatre performance of Dali 11 may 2040. And he recommends you buy your tickets now: VrtNieuws.Net.
  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    And I thought Chicago was the Windy City. At least Adrian Ritchie and all the other folks from Guernsey shouldn't have any trouble flying a kite ... with an 80,000 ton weight attached to it ... [image]

    You could hold the kite down with one of these transistors from The -693926 Days of Christmas.[image]

  • ike (unregistered)

    The search fails when "of", "the", etc are used. Presumably, these words are removed from the query, after they have been counted as part of the query.

  • (cs) in reply to quotequad

    Anonymous:
    Strangely, if you search for "Kathy Milde" you do actually get something.

    But it is even worse than that:

    1. Search for "Kathy" and you'll find that all occurrences of the word are marked in bold font.

    2. Search for "Kathy Milde" and find that all occurrences of the word "of" are in bold.

    WTF!

     

     

  • (cs) in reply to ike

    Anonymous:
    The search fails when "of", "the", etc are used. Presumably, these words are removed from the query, after they have been counted as part of the query.

    Not quite "health" returns the syntax error regarding Kathy, too..

     

  • (cs) in reply to quotequad

    Anonymous:
    Strangely, if you search for "Kathy Milde" you do actually get something.

     Sounds like some joker thinks database normalization is just as useless as validating your data fields before you put them in the database.

    I see this kinda crap all the time, unfortunately.
     

  • tanisha (unregistered) in reply to Earl Purple

     

    >You can e-mail Kathy to find out how she can be converted to an int:

    >[email protected]

     

     

    Do we have someone here from Austrelia who can call her  8226 6599 ?

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Stuart Cambell got a rather bizarre response when searching for "rights of private practice" at the Department of Health's website. And yes, as of this date, the error is a live one. Go ahead, search for something yourself.

    [image]

     At first, I didn't scroll down far enough, and thought the WTF was the image of the three smiling fruit or whatever they are.

    What are they, BTW? Why the heck is this image displayed at the top of the search results?

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    I get it! The Real WTF™ is that a weather site for Jersey, England is displaying the wind speed in miles per hour instead of kilometers per hour.

     

  • (cs) in reply to kmactane
    kmactane:

     At first, I didn't scroll down far enough, and thought the WTF was the image of the three smiling fruit or whatever they are.

    What are they, BTW? Why the heck is this image displayed at the top of the search results?

    They're apples, and every time you search, you get a different freaky apple image. I've gotten a good half dozen, and should really stop refreshing the page for apple images and get back to work.

  • Calli Arcale (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:
    And I thought Chicago was the Windy City. At least Adrian Ritchie and all the other folks from Guernsey shouldn't have any trouble flying a kite ... with an 80,000 ton weight attached to it ...

     

     

    So Earth has dethroned Neptune as having the fastest winds in the solar system?  Must be global warming.  (Neptune's winds are estimated to be somewhere from 1200 to 1500 MPH.  That's a pretty damn windy day over in Guernsey!)
     

  • Malfist (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    People, please do not set your monitor's resolution to -1, -1. Sure, it's fun to watch your (well, your employer's) monitor implode into a single pixel, but the resulting singularity that gobbles up the rest of existence is a bit of an inconvenience for the rest of us. Thank you BCS for pressing "Cancel".

    [image]

     

    The sad thing, it's already selected, notice Apply is greyed out.

     

    captcha: craptastic [software]

  • (cs) in reply to kmactane
    kmactane:

    I get it! The Real WTF™ is that a weather site for Jersey, England is displaying the wind speed in miles per hour instead of kilometers per hour.

     

     

    No, miles are used more frequently than kilometers in England for measurements of distance and speed. 

     http://www.highwaycode.gov.uk/09.htm

    (check the "speed limits" section)
     

  • (cs) in reply to Malfist

    The -1 x -1 resolution is what shows up when you try to change the display properties while connected remotely via terminal services.

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    This may be my favorite error message of all time ......

  • psmears (unregistered) in reply to John Bigboote
    John Bigboote:
    kmactane:

    I get it! The Real WTF™ is that a weather site for Jersey, England is displaying the wind speed in miles per hour instead of kilometers per hour.

     

     

    No, miles are used more frequently than kilometers in England for measurements of distance and speed. 

     http://www.highwaycode.gov.uk/09.htm

    (check the "speed limits" section)
     

    Yes... and, for what it's worth, Jersey isn't in England (it's not even part of the UK). It even has its own internet top-level domain, .je... 

     

    -P 

  • (cs)

    Wait... that's not a font.  Someone actually wrote out the buggy text by hand without noticing.

    WTF.

     

  • (cs) in reply to John Hensley
    John Hensley:

    Wait... that's not a font.  Someone actually wrote out the buggy text by hand without noticing.

    WTF.

    Happy to have you abord John.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered)

    Actually, there is a kids book called 'Wicked Words' (It's a Horrible Histories special) and it's quite possible that it has a sequel (i.e. 'More Wicked Words') which may partially explain how that particular book got labelled as childrens (it doesn't explain how someone managed to use that information to put it in that category without actually looking at the book). Of course it could be an automation error in that it looked up the title and grabbed the rest of the information from a database without further checks against say... the author (a bit like CDDB lookup telling you that Total Annihilation disc 1 is a Disney soundtrack, which it used to do a while ago)

  • James Ingram (unregistered)

    Interestingly, if you google for "Kathy Milde" (including quotes), we find that she works for that department.

     

    I love the text on this page:

    http://www.health.sa.gov.au/Default.aspx?tabid=52&mid=449&ctl=ViewDetails&ItemID=1540&PageIndex=0

     
    which says:

    "<font face="Arial" size="2">Enquiries: Contact Kathy Milde for the Jpeg of the board (listed below) on 8226 6599"</font>

    Wow. 

  • MarMor (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Actually, there is a kids book called 'Wicked Words' (It's a Horrible Histories special) and it's quite possible that it has a sequel (i.e. 'More Wicked Words') which may partially explain how that particular book got labelled as childrens (it doesn't explain how someone managed to use that information to put it in that category without actually looking at the book). [...] 
    No, obviously the title is used as primary key. And why not? Nothing could possibly go wrong.

    Captcha: clueless (who, me?)
  • (cs) in reply to MarMor
    Anonymous:
    Actually, there is a kids book called 'Wicked Words' (It's a Horrible Histories special) and it's quite possible that it has a sequel (i.e. 'More Wicked Words') which may partially explain how that particular book got labelled as childrens (it doesn't explain how someone managed to use that information to put it in that category without actually looking at the book). [...] 

    No, obviously the title is used as primary key. And why not? Nothing could possibly go wrong.

    Captcha: clueless (who, me?)



    No, it's not that obvious. The bookseller likely has a big list of all the books they own, and a license to a data feed full of all kinds of book-related data that's not otherwise available. (like Muze, or AMG, or IMDB, or numerous other media services) In order to figure out which product numbers in their catalog match which rows in their data feed, they may employ some algorithm which checks for matching ISBNs, and matching authors and titles lacking ISBNs. If either data feed is incomplete, you get weird things like this.

  • SomeCoder (unregistered)

    On the hand written one, I bet what happened is they have essentially what are "keyers" in some country like China who simply gets the print out from the computer, hand-copies the text and stuffs it into an envelope.

     Having dealt with Chinese keyers, I can say that their instructions are generally "Key as seen" (or "write as seen") so they aren't supposed to make ANY judgement calls reguarding what is right or wrong.  Just copy it down and be done with it.

    This doesn't make this any less of a WTF (the program that spit it out to the keyers has a WTF in it), but that's probably how it ended up hand written :)

     Also, I love the really windy city.  84,285 MPH winds are probably a, what, Catagory Infinity hurricane? :)

  • Complete Looney (unregistered) in reply to tanisha
    Anonymous:

     Do we have someone here from Austrelia who can call her  8226 6599 ?

    While I live in Australia, and even in Adelaide (note the 8 at the beginning). I'm not calling anyone. And I suggest you don't either. 

  • Richard (unregistered)

    I am actually the Richard from the third popup....sorry Eli...we only ever saw that popup on a mchine with a broken hard-drive up until we shipped the game....if you patch it will go away....

  • Doug (unregistered) in reply to MarMor

    I particularly enjoyed that the publisher was 'Virgin Books'.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    The Iraq voter registration refers to expatriates living in Detroit who could vote in Iraqi elections


    You don't get humor, do you?

    So which part is supposed to be funny, people being forced out of their homelands by a ruthless dictator, or people participating in the democratic process?

  • (cs) in reply to ssprencel
    ssprencel:

    Happy to have you abord John.

    Nobody else seems to have specifically mentioned it (or said anything else about that entry). You've heard of handwriting capture fonts, have you not?

     

  • (cs) in reply to John Hensley

    Do handwriting capture fonts have multiple shapes for each letter, so that it looks like real handwriting? (Seriously, tell me. I've never used one.)

  • Mr. Nobody (unregistered) in reply to James Ingram

    It's my hypothesis that Paula changed her name to Kathy. After all, this one's a varchar and the last one was a string literal.

    In an unrelated note, I love the picture of the little man being blown away by the hurricane. I wish more weather services used cool graphics like that. It could be interesting to watch the Weather Channel when they're warning people to avoid lightning or whatever if they provided nice little warning graphics like that...

  • (cs) in reply to SomeCoder
    Anonymous:

    On the hand written one, I bet what happened is they have essentially what are "keyers" in some country like China who simply gets the print out from the computer, hand-copies the text and stuffs it into an envelope.

     Having dealt with Chinese keyers, I can say that their instructions are generally "Key as seen" (or "write as seen") so they aren't supposed to make ANY judgement calls reguarding what is right or wrong.  Just copy it down and be done with it.

    This doesn't make this any less of a WTF (the program that spit it out to the keyers has a WTF in it), but that's probably how it ended up hand written :)

     Also, I love the really windy city.  84,285 MPH winds are probably a, what, Catagory Infinity hurricane? :)

    Not necessarily, to be a category infinity hurricane, one would naturally have to assume an infine wind speed.  Since the wind speed is a finite value, one would have to have a finite numerical classification.  as there is a new classification every approx 20 mph in wind speed, i would suggest a class 4,211 hurricane, though anything above 155 mph is still only considered a class 5.

  • rob_squared (unregistered) in reply to nwbrown
    nwbrown:

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    The Iraq voter registration refers to expatriates living in Detroit who could vote in Iraqi elections


    You don't get humor, do you?

    So which part is supposed to be funny...

    I know!  I know!  Trying to have a political discussion on a techie site that has WTF as part of its domain name!
     

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to redtetrahedron

    I've never used a custom handwriting font, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think I read that to simulate real handwriting multiple versions of the same letter are used.

  • Renan renan_s2 (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    People, please do not set your monitor's resolution to -1, -1. Sure, it's fun to watch your (well, your employer's) monitor implode into a single pixel, but the resulting singularity that gobbles up the rest of existence is a bit of an inconvenience for the rest of us. Thank you BCS for pressing "Cancel".

    [image]

     

     

    Something is wrong here, at least for me. Why does the combo box say "Multiple monitors" and the visual representation of the monitor setting shows only 1 monitor?

     

    CAPTCHA: poprocks.  

  • rob_squared (unregistered) in reply to Renan renan_s2
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    People, please do not set your monitor's resolution to -1, -1. Sure, it's fun to watch your (well, your employer's) monitor implode into a single pixel, but the resulting singularity that gobbles up the rest of existence is a bit of an inconvenience for the rest of us. Thank you BCS for pressing "Cancel".

    [image]

     

     

    Something is wrong here, at least for me. Why does the combo box say "Multiple monitors" and the visual representation of the monitor setting shows only 1 monitor?

     

    CAPTCHA: poprocks.  

    Well, since its monitor 2, its actually there, but since the size is -1...
     

  • Gnudiff (unregistered) in reply to Drahflow
    Drahflow:

    Anonymous:
    Strangely, if you search for "Kathy Milde" you do actually get something.

    But it is even worse than that:

    1. Search for "Kathy" and you'll find that all occurrences of the word are marked in bold font.

    2. Search for "Kathy Milde" and find that all occurrences of the word "of" are in bold.

    Not only that, but even though the abstracts of the pages returned by search are texts of articles/news... the links actually all point to another (same for all results) page!

     

  • Tobias (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Stuart Cambell got a rather bizarre response when searching for "rights of private practice" at the Department of Health's website. And yes, as of this date, the error is a live one. Go ahead, search for something yourself.

    [image]

     

    The first thing I tried to search for was 'john', which produced the following error message:

    Syntax error converting the varchar value 'media unit' to a column of data type int.

    So it is not only humans they are trying to turn into numbers.

  • (cs)

    I wrote to Amazon, asking what this 2025 date was all about. Here's there response:

    Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience you may 
    have experienced.

    Our latest information indicates that "I Sing The Body Holographic" 
    has not yet been released and the expected release date is not 
    known.  The 2025 date is displayed until our suppliers are able to 
    provide us with a specific release date.

    As soon as an actual release date has been determined for this item, 
    we will add that information to our web site.

    While we do still hope that copies will be made available, we cannot 
    provide more precise information about the fulfillment of the order.

    So, umm, is 2025 like infinity, so that the undecided release date will definitely be <= that date.

    :) 

     

  • Graq (unregistered) in reply to rahuja
    rahuja:

    I wrote to Amazon, asking what this 2025 date was all about. Here's there response:

    Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience you may 
    have experienced.

    Our latest information indicates that "I Sing The Body Holographic" 
    has not yet been released and the expected release date is not 
    known.  The 2025 date is displayed until our suppliers are able to 
    provide us with a specific release date.

    As soon as an actual release date has been determined for this item, 
    we will add that information to our web site.

    While we do still hope that copies will be made available, we cannot 
    provide more precise information about the fulfillment of the order.

    So, umm, is 2025 like infinity, so that the undecided release date will definitely be <= that date.

    :) 

    If Amazon's system works in any way like the system I wrote for an online company that used to sell books, then it works by being giving stock updates from their suppliers. These stock updates contain a complete list of all the books currently available (even if the stock level is zero). Each product has a release date. The <i>suppliers</i> often have system where they <b>must</b> enter a date. Some enter 00-00-2008 (if they know it is coming up next year some time). Others fix the release date to some (moving relative) date in the future. Others just manually key in some futuristic date.

    So, I suppose one cannot blame Amazon entirely. They could build something to cater for stupid release dates, but I'm guessing that, at the moment, they are just the messengers.

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