Comment On Six Copies, Please

Originally posted by "snoofle" ... [expand full text]
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Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:02 • by Monkios
O-M-G ...

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:03 • by A. Friend (unregistered)
Maybe it was a hint, like "I'm not your secretary, print your own copies if you need them."

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:04 • by sweavo (unregistered)
Hahah, yes but she came half way... I'LL do the copying if YOU do the printing

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:04 • by Junkieman
Maybe they were using m$ outlook, it allows you to ctrl+drag attachments into the same email to create duplicate copies... i use that feature *all the time* when co-workers ask for multiple copies ;)

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:05 • by sweavo (unregistered)
Back in '92, when Object Linking and Embedding was new and exciting, I caught myself embedding WAV files in a word document I was intending to send by snail mail.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:09 • by jgayhart
Though I have heard a lot about it, I have never seen anyone mistake a CD tray for a cup holder. I have seen money in floppy drives though.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:09 • by Outlaw Programmer
I think there are lots of people that have trouble understanding the relationship between print documents and digital documents.

I worked as a "copy boy" at a law firm a few years ago and saw similar things. Sometimes lawyers would send me a Word doc and ask me to print, say, 500 copies. Sometimes they would send me a stack of 500 pages and ask me to scan them in and e-mail them the PDF.

One day, a woman comes down and asks me to scan in a bunch of stuff to make a PDF. I'm happily scanning this stuff until she realizes there's a typo or something in the document. "Luckily," she says, "I've got the Word Doc this stuff came from on this floppy here!" She whips out the floppy and makes the change, then tries to print out the document so I can scan in the new version.

At this point I stop here, and explain that Word has a feature where you can convert .doc files straight into PDF form, no scanning involved...

The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure 99% of the physical documents sent down to me were from Word files that were printed out just moments before...

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:10 • by Anon (unregistered)
"Coffee cups on the PC's cup holder."
I'm guessing you meant CD-ROM drive tray... seen that one myself LOL

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:12 • by Calli Arcale (unregistered)
174654 in reply to 174652
I've seen it, but only where it was intentional (i.e. CD-ROM was broken anyway, and the user figured at least this way it was good for something -- and good for a laugh as well).

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:21 • by Pyro (unregistered)
174655 in reply to 174651
You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:23 • by Lars Vargas
She was being efficient.

You only had to print each copy once, instead of one document six times. Printing a document six times might wear our the ones and zeros.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:28 • by Drum D.
174658 in reply to 174655
Pyro:
You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.


OK, but that's only the first step.
2. Take 35 other pictures, to make the film complete
3. Get the film role to the next supermarket to have the negatives processed.
4. Get the pictures a few days later
5. Make b/w copies
6. Scan the copies

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:33 • by Carra (unregistered)
Printing out a Word document to convert it to a pdf, now thats a real WTF.

I mean, "I'll need 6 copies" and she sends 6, that's only logical!

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:34 • by Happy Programmer (unregistered)
I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

We had a good laugh about that one :)

CAPTCHA: bene

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:43 • by BinaryPhalanx (unregistered)
174661 in reply to 174657
Lars Vargas:
She was being efficient.

You only had to print each copy once, instead of one document six times. Printing a document six times might wear our the ones and zeros.


Worn out binary gets stuck sometimes. That's why old computers crash more!

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:47 • by BrainyRon (unregistered)
Sounds like half of the clients where I work...amusingly, the government jobs tend to be the most ignorant in this respect.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:57 • by jmj (unregistered)
heh, I was expecting the last line to say that she sent six separate emails.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 10:59 • by Neil (unregistered)
Why not just email the thing to begin with and avoid the paper?

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:06 • by Jasmine (unregistered)
174667 in reply to 174660
Happy Programmer:
I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

We had a good laugh about that one :)

CAPTCHA: bene


Oh come on! You are making that up...

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:12 • by Grovesy
174669 in reply to 174667
Jasmine:
Happy Programmer:
I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

We had a good laugh about that one :)

CAPTCHA: bene


Oh come on! You are making that up...


I remember a story from my Dad back when fax machines first appeared in the UK... they started to fax a a letter through it and the secretary screamed 'no that's our only copy'.... I think it's more of an urban legend, but still good.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:21 • by KG (unregistered)
174672 in reply to 174669
Grovesy:
I remember a story from my Dad back when fax machines first appeared in the UK... they started to fax a a letter through it and the secretary screamed 'no that's our only copy'.... I think it's more of an urban legend, but still good.


I used to believe that fax machines worked by sending the physical documents through the power lines. I was 6 at the time :)

I remember thinking to myself: "How does the paper fit inside a power line? Is it rolled up really tight?" LOL, good times.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:26 • by snoofle
174674 in reply to 174660
Happy Programmer:
I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

We had a good laugh about that one :)

CAPTCHA: bene

You might appreciate this

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:26 • by Bob (unregistered)
174675 in reply to 174672
At one time I thought I could save disc space and electricity by using all caps.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:30 • by GalacticCowboy
174676 in reply to 174651
Outlaw Programmer:
I think there are lots of people that have trouble understanding the relationship between print documents and digital documents.

I worked as a "copy boy" at a law firm a few years ago and saw similar things. Sometimes lawyers would send me a Word doc and ask me to print, say, 500 copies. Sometimes they would send me a stack of 500 pages and ask me to scan them in and e-mail them the PDF.

One day, a woman comes down and asks me to scan in a bunch of stuff to make a PDF. I'm happily scanning this stuff until she realizes there's a typo or something in the document. "Luckily," she says, "I've got the Word Doc this stuff came from on this floppy here!" She whips out the floppy and makes the change, then tries to print out the document so I can scan in the new version.

At this point I stop here, and explain that Word has a feature where you can convert .doc files straight into PDF form, no scanning involved...

The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure 99% of the physical documents sent down to me were from Word files that were printed out just moments before...


Actually, the entire field of law is filled with this sort of WTF. The reason is that they need physical evidence, and an electronic copy is apparently only "valid" if it is a copy of a physical item. I recall at one point during a patent infringement suit, we had to go through about 200 boxes of printed source code. It would have taken an hour or so to do electronically but instead we were there for a week. Some of the boxes also had the floppies or CDs that contained the original files, which was helpful.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:36 • by Some E-Mailer (unregistered)
174677 in reply to 174660
Happy Programmer:
I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...


Yeah, I tried that too. It got returned. Something about insufficient postage. :-(


Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:37 • by snoofle
174678 in reply to 174676
GalacticCowboy:

Actually, the entire field of law is filled with this sort of WTF. The reason is that they need physical evidence, and an electronic copy is apparently only "valid" if it is a copy of a physical item. I recall at one point during a patent infringement suit, we had to go through about 200 boxes of printed source code. It would have taken an hour or so to do electronically but instead we were there for a week. Some of the boxes also had the floppies or CDs that contained the original files, which was helpful.

I suppose it could have been worse; there might have been pictures of the pdf files created from scanned pictures of the disks on wooden tables...

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:39 • by operagost
174679 in reply to 174658
Drum D.:
Pyro:
You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.


OK, but that's only the first step.
2. Take 35 other pictures, to make the film complete
3. Get the film role to the next supermarket to have the negatives processed.
4. Get the pictures a few days later
5. Make b/w copies
6. Scan the copies

You're both clueless. Come to the swamp shack. I video in my docs. Then I add them to all-docs.txt. Search them with Desktop Search. Much easier. Stop by. I'll bring you up to speed.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:43 • by savar
174680 in reply to 174651
Outlaw Programmer:


At this point I stop here, and explain that Word has a feature where you can convert .doc files straight into PDF form, no scanning involved...

The sad thing is, I'm pretty sure 99% of the physical documents sent down to me were from Word files that were printed out just moments before...


Law offices are notoriously technology-backwards.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:47 • by Patrick (unregistered)
174681 in reply to 174643
A. Friend:
Maybe it was a hint, like "I'm not your secretary, print your own copies if you need them."


Or she could not be a bitch and say, "Hey, I'm busy would you mind running off the copies."

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:48 • by Maurits
174682 in reply to 174680
savar:
Law offices are notoriously technology-backwards.


Which may be why you never hear of a law office losing years of customer data due to a server crash and inadequate backups.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:49 • by campkev
Reminds me of the time I had to call Micro$oft about an issue. Turns out they needed a non-disclosure agreement from my company. Except he's not allowed to email it, he has to fax it to me. So I give him my fax number and a few minutes later I get the document twice over the fax machine. Figured that he wasn't sure it went through the first time and faxed it a second time to be sure or something like that. Called him back to let him know I got it. While we were talking, I mentioned the two copies. "Oh yeah," he says."There's one for you to sign and fax back and another for you to keep."

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:50 • by Mike (unregistered)
I know the whole "cupholder" joke has been around for a long time...but has anyone actually tried it? Actually works quite well when you have paperwork spread all over your desk.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:50 • by mudkipz (unregistered)
174685 in reply to 174675
Bob:
At one time I thought I could save disc space and electricity by using all caps.


You can save disk space over using regular casing, if you compress your files. Using call caps lowers a document's entropy, which implies that it is more compressible.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:53 • by splaestro (unregistered)
174686 in reply to 174660
Happy Programmer:
I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...


And no doubt she put the envelope on a wooden table when addressing it...

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 11:59 • by Anonymous Coward
174687 in reply to 174660
Happy Programmer:
I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

We had a good laugh about that one :)

CAPTCHA: bene


My mom, she printed out the Word document, put it on a wooden table, photographed it, developed it, scanned it and sent it as an attachment.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 12:08 • by FIA (unregistered)
174689 in reply to 174685
mudkipz:
Bob:
At one time I thought I could save disc space and electricity by using all caps.


You can save disk space over using regular casing, if you compress your files. Using call caps lowers a document's entropy, which implies that it is more compressible.


I've heard that eating a balanced diet and taking regular exercise can help to lower your entropy too. Dunno if it's true though.

(Sorry, that was a bit random wasn't it?)

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 12:13 • by Jay (unregistered)
A few years back someone in my office tried to copy a file to a floppy, but it was too big. So a co-worker suggested, "Why don't you try using a smaller font?"

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 12:16 • by Jay (unregistered)
I used to work for a company that had a contract to repair damaged computers for a local college. We got lots of entertaining problems. For example, we once got a computer where someone had stuffed four floppies into the floppy drive and they were all now well jammed in there. (These were the old 5.25".) I couldn't help but wonder, Was somebody trying to follow install instructions that said, Insert disk #1 ... Insert disk #2 ... Insert disk #3, and the instructions didn't say to remove the previous disk before inserting the new one?

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 12:20 • by KT (unregistered)
174695 in reply to 174658
Drum D.:
Pyro:
You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.


OK, but that's only the first step.
2. Take 35 other pictures, to make the film complete
3. Get the film role to the next supermarket to have the negatives processed.
4. Get the pictures a few days later
5. Make b/w copies
6. Scan the copies

6. Go to 1;

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 12:22 • by Outlaw Programmer
I'm almost starting to think that most application functions need to have the word "copy" in their names somewhere. For example, instead of "Attach" it would be "Attach Copy." Instead of "Send" it would be "Send Copy." There's this fundamental idea in computing where you're always just duplicating the data, not sending the only existing object. I think this is what trips most people up.

My uncle has a hard time understanding this. For whatever reason, he can't understand the idea of "installing software." To him, if the CD isn't in the drive, then the software can't possibly work. He doesn't understand that notion of copying the data from the CD to some internal storage no matter how many times I try to explain it. God help me if I ever try to tell him that the sound system in my car has a hard drive in it...

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 12:27 • by GalacticCowboy
174697 in reply to 174693
Jay:
I used to work for a company that had a contract to repair damaged computers for a local college. We got lots of entertaining problems. For example, we once got a computer where someone had stuffed four floppies into the floppy drive and they were all now well jammed in there. (These were the old 5.25".) I couldn't help but wonder, Was somebody trying to follow install instructions that said, Insert disk #1 ... Insert disk #2 ... Insert disk #3, and the instructions didn't say to remove the previous disk before inserting the new one?


Probably trying to solve the "disk full" problem by adding more storage capacity...

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 12:33 • by Someone You Know
174699 in reply to 174690
Jay:
A few years back someone in my office tried to copy a file to a floppy, but it was too big. So a co-worker suggested, "Why don't you try using a smaller font?"


One of my co-workers, a web designer, once gave a mockup of a new design to a customer and was asked if he could give it "a warmer font". My co-worker considered telling her that she should leave her monitor on for a while before viewing the site.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 12:44 • by Tei (unregistered)
I am on tons of mail list with people that *always* make topposting, and have absolutelly zero idea what is quoting, bottomposting or nettiquete.
I try to teach these people to remove the ad's, or to reply only to whatever is really replying. But Is imposible.

EMAIL IS DYING!!, email netiquette has become a unknom art!!

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 12:49 • by Agrona (unregistered)
This has been a dilbert cartoon for years...

the PHB asks for a fax on colored paper, several e-mailed copies, etc.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 13:07 • by The Masked Director of Development (unregistered)
Years ago at a small company we were all under indescribable stress. The chief EE had to fax an important document to a customer. He put the document in the fax, started to walk away, then shouted, "S***! I didn't make a copy first!" and ran back to yank the paper out of the fax rollers.

We just looked at him in silence. He stood there stunned at what he had just done, and started laughing with us.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 13:11 • by Andrew (unregistered)
174708 in reply to 174674
snoofle:
Happy Programmer:
I'll never forget the day my mom tried to send her first e-mail... She had printed out the Word document, put it in an envelope, written the e-mail address on the envelope and stamped it. The she put it in her floppy drive...

We had a good laugh about that one :)

CAPTCHA: bene

You might appreciate this


TRWTF is the pathetic attempt at copy-protection on that page. All your cartoon are belong to us hahahahaha!

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 13:16 • by Wickerman (unregistered)
We had a large print job that we had to run, but our high-speed printer was down. The only way to get it done was to print it on some slow desktop printers. I overheard a co-worker say to the person who was to run the job, "Get a couple of extra boxes of paper, because it'll take more to print on those small printers."

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 13:20 • by Devilfish (unregistered)
174711 in reply to 174655
Pyro:
You scan documents? WTF? Everyone knows the best way to get a document to electronic form is taking a picture of it on a wooden table.


WTF = Wooden Table Frenzy ?

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 13:22 • by jkupski (unregistered)
174712 in reply to 174710
Wickerman:
We had a large print job that we had to run, but our high-speed printer was down. The only way to get it done was to print it on some slow desktop printers. I overheard a co-worker say to the person who was to run the job, "Get a couple of extra boxes of paper, because it'll take more to print on those small printers."


It's not that it will take more paper to print out (and doubt the user meant it that way, though you never can tell) but that the desktop printers probably had significantly less paper capacity than your production machine, and would likely needed to have been restocked one or more times during the print job.

That's not really a WTF as opposed to a slip of the tongue.

Re: Six Copies, Please

2008-02-01 13:34 • by Zylon
174713 in reply to 174690
Jay:
A few years back someone in my office tried to copy a file to a floppy, but it was too big. So a co-worker suggested, "Why don't you try using a smaller font?"

That actually could make a document slightly smaller, by reducing the number of line breaks.
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