Comment On Sunited States of Americans

I love it.

Obviously the maximum limit of 1 copy to be printed is a security concern. Having extra copies of paperwork around just leads to carelessness and lost documents.

I also applaud the developers concern for the environment, obviously trying to save the trees here

Even though the shot of the ATM is probably fake it made me laugh.

I dont see the issue with the printer... it's just being environmentally friendly: Do you really want 8 copies? =P

When will people learn that blindly replacing things is not a good idea? I'm just waiting for a WTF post about a company that emails all their employees their "Genderual Harbuttment" policies.

Last time an ATM went wrong on me it rebooted into the service menu. I toyed with the idea of fooling around, but decided on just shutting it down in the end.

I can't stop laughing at that ATM. It's probably fake though..

How do you shut down an atm?

I'm always surprised by the number of software developers who still need to learn that the 'humourous error message' is never as funny as they think it is. For God's sake, employ a bit of professionalism when writing your public-facing apps. You may have just gotten out of school but you are out of school so grow up already.

What is your favorite or lucky number?

6969

Eric:

How do you shut down an atm?

A hammer usually does the trick.

ZoFreX:

Last time an ATM went wrong on me it rebooted into the service menu. I toyed with the idea of fooling around, but decided on just shutting it down in the end.

Eric:

How do you shut down an atm?

Clearly it was an option in the service menu. Makes perfect sense to me.

Anonymous:

ZoFreX:

Last time an ATM went wrong on me it rebooted into the service menu. I toyed with the idea of fooling around, but decided on just shutting it down in the end.

Eric:

How do you shut down an atm?

Clearly it was an option in the service menu. Makes perfect sense to me.

Or you just unplug it.

Hayden Realtors are really desperate; offering clothing (Suit) to retail/owner/occupied/investor.

Spivonious:

Anonymous:

ZoFreX:

Last time an ATM went wrong on me it rebooted into the service menu. I toyed with the idea of fooling around, but decided on just shutting it down in the end.

Eric:

How do you shut down an atm?

Clearly it was an option in the service menu. Makes perfect sense to me.

Or you just unplug it.

Bo-oooring.

If your ATM tells you to f off, there's only one answer: RPG!

PS., Gosh, where are the super fun frist posts about maximum 1 frists, or the really creative inside jokes about embedded filesystems? What a disappointment...

I remember a story about the programmer who got so annoyed at end users complaining about cryptic error messages ("IMR 23/45 #AA4G") that he rewrote many of them to, for example, "I'm sorry, but I can't find the file you were looking for. I'm just a poor computer without much common sense. So please be sure you have typed in the name of the file exactly, including making sure the capital letters are all in the correct place. Thank you, Your Computer."

Later that day, he noticed that there was a large number of system errors -- the users were INTENTIONALLY causing errors because the messages were so entertaining. ("Hey, look what it says when you divide by zero!") It was an Easter Egg hunt. The programmer received many complimentary notes.

As I recall, the programmer said, "On that day I started thinking about systems from the end user's perspective. It made me a better programmer."

Maybe it's just urban legend, but the story itself has made me a better programmer.

egc52556:

"I'm sorry, but I can't find the file you were looking for. I'm just a poor computer without much common sense. So please be sure you have typed in the name of the file exactly, including making sure the capital letters are all in the correct place. Thank you, Your Computer."

Good idea, although most of us would probably go over to the dark side. The message would be something like "Not this shit again. Really? You can't type the file name properly? Isn't that what you're paid for? I swear to god if one more GED-carrying drone screws up today I'll let the whole office now about the furry porn.

I'M WATCHING YOU."

Don't see a problem with the six flags ticket. The barcode at the top is the only piece that matters and that looks fine.

It's a typo. He didn't shut it down, he shot it down.

A program concerned about end users? I MUST be an urban legend.

your_mom:

A program concerned about end users? I MUST be an urban legend.

s/program/programmer/

egc52556:

I remember a story about the programmer who got so annoyed at end users complaining about cryptic error messages ("IMR 23/45 #AA4G") that he rewrote many of them to, for example, "I'm sorry, but I can't find the file you were looking for. I'm just a poor computer without much common sense. So please be sure you have typed in the name of the file exactly, including making sure the capital letters are all in the correct place. Thank you, Your Computer."

The correct answer, Goldilocks, is messages that explain things in a way the user can understand without trying to be humorous. Sometimes that message should be "unknown error" because you cannot think of and special case everything without inappropriately vast effort. Obviously, for shrinkwrap software, the "unknown" percentage should be small.

<sarcasm>trwtf is having 23 as a favorite number.</sarcasm>

Anon:

Don't see a problem with the six flags ticket. The barcode at the top is the only piece that matters and that looks fine.

Exactly. Joe computer user just drove two hours with a vanload of kids, all primed to have megafunpark megafun, and you're going to tell him to put the kids back in the van, drive home, figure out why his printer driver loses its mind (with a roomful of restless, screaming, bored, megafun-deprived kids), reprint the ticket, bring the kids back for four hours less megafun. Yeah that would be good public relations. OF COURSE you accept the ticket.

No WTF here.

sayno2quat:

When will people learn that blindly replacing things is not a good idea?

For me, the answer was "my first year on the job". For the people who ensure my job security, the answer is "learn?".

The mp3 version of the ".pdf.pdf" bug has been seen before too: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Best-of-Both-Worlds.aspx. (Just found it by hitting Random Article.)

zeno:

<sarcasm>trwtf is having 23 as a favorite number.</sarcasm>

It is at a triangular site where Broadway and Fifth Avenue—the two most important streets of New York—meet at Madison Square, and because of the juxtaposition of the streets and the park across the street, there was a wind-tunnel effect here. In the early twentieth century, men would hang out on the corner here on Twenty-third Street and watch the wind blowing women's dresses up so that they could catch a little bit of ankle. This entered into popular culture and there are hundreds of postcards and illustrations of women with their dresses blowing up in front of the Flatiron Building. And it supposedly is where the slang expression "23 skidoo" comes from because the police would come and give the voyeurs the 23 skidoo to tell them to get out of the area.

Meta-Y? That's yank-pop...

TRWTF is after changing it's name to worse than failure, the daily WTF shows an image saying FUCK YOU. Inconsistency?

zeno:

<sarcasm>trwtf is having 23 as a favorite number.</sarcasm>

Blimey. Do we have to use <sarcasm> tags now? Good job I've never used sarcasm on this site.

Oh dear, there I go again

Regarding the maximum print number, there was a time when printers could only print one page at a time, or even just one line at a time. Your software needed to send the strings and wait for the printer to report that it is ready for more. If you wanted multiple copies, it would just loop. This sucked for single threading OSs, but multi-threaded OSs got around this by creating a new process which would monitor a print queue.
Eventually printers came along where you could dump the entire job to it and say "print this X times". It would not surprise me in the slightest if Microsoft changed their print queue assuming that all printers had this multi-print feature, and removed the old "loop until done" way of doing it completely.

If you're going to fake a screen shot, at least try to match the fonts.

lesle:

zeno:

<sarcasm>trwtf is having 23 as a favorite number.</sarcasm>

...it supposedly is where the slang expression "23 skidoo" comes from...

Silly me - here I thought it was a reference to Discordianism.

SR:

zeno:

<sarcasm>trwtf is having 23 as a favorite number.</sarcasm>

Blimey. Do we have to use <sarcasm> tags now? Good job I've never used sarcasm on this site.

Oh dear, there I go again

Not to mention it's redundant, the comments section of TDWTF has a master sarcasm tag, first child of the body tag.

Hatterson:

Obviously the maximum limit of 1 copy to be printed is a security concern.

I'm going for anti-piracy here. What legitimate reason could you have for wanting to print more than one copy?

Access denied.

Harry Carey:

Not to mention it's redundant, the comments section of TDWTF has a master sarcasm tag, first child of the body tag.

Heh. We should use <sincere> or <no-really-I-mean-it> tags.

Seminymous Coward:

The correct answer, Goldilocks, is messages that explain things in a way the user can understand without trying to be humorous. Sometimes that message should be "unknown error" because you cannot think of and special case everything without inappropriately vast effort. Obviously, for shrinkwrap software, the "unknown" percentage should be small.

"Unexpected" rather than "unknown". Didn't the system tell it what kind of error it was? Bring back the days of the MSDOS extended error information, where the flat code space was broken down into broad classes of errors, together with hints as to the general action the program should take in response.

I always like to see the Windows system message for a sharing violation: "The file is in use by another process". Great, which file, and which process? Or the message from Explorer (not IE) when you copy a directory tree and it cannot read a file, usually because of a sharing violation. "Cannot copy FROBBLE". Great, which of thirty four files called FROBBLE.$something did it fail on? (i.e. it drops the extension *and* the path, so you have no chance in (bad word) to find it).

haero: thae haero killaed thae dragon with a waet taeaspoon.

lesle:

zeno:

<sarcasm>trwtf is having 23 as a favorite number.</sarcasm>

It is at a triangular site where Broadway and Fifth Avenue—the two most important streets of New York—meet at Madison Square, and because of the juxtaposition of the streets and the park across the street, there was a wind-tunnel effect here. In the early twentieth century, men would hang out on the corner here on Twenty-third Street and watch the wind blowing women's dresses up so that they could catch a little bit of ankle. This entered into popular culture and there are hundreds of postcards and illustrations of women with their dresses blowing up in front of the Flatiron Building. And it supposedly is where the slang expression "23 skidoo" comes from because the police would come and give the voyeurs the 23 skidoo to tell them to get out of the area.

TRWTF is that you copied that paragraph wholesale from Wikipedia and didn't bother to link it.

lesle:

zeno:

<sarcasm>trwtf is having 23 as a favorite number.</sarcasm>

It is at a triangular site where Broadway and Fifth Avenue—the two most important streets of New York—meet at Madison Square, and because of the juxtaposition of the streets and the park across the street, there was a wind-tunnel effect here. In the early twentieth century, men would hang out on the corner here on Twenty-third Street and watch the wind blowing women's dresses up so that they could catch a little bit of ankle. This entered into popular culture and there are hundreds of postcards and illustrations of women with their dresses blowing up in front of the Flatiron Building. And it supposedly is where the slang expression "23 skidoo" comes from because the police would come and give the voyeurs the 23 skidoo to tell them to get out of the area.

FNORD!

your_mom:

your_mom:

A program concerned about end users? I MUST be an urban legend.

s/program/programmer/

No, mom, you're a real legend to me.

My lucky number is 23, but my favorite number is 8 because that's my asshole neighbor's unlucky number. I hope I can remember which one I entered.

saving as pdf is not realy a WTF. Only a minor and very obvious bug. On the other hand ATM is a real WTF

capacha: Nobis - ? I do no longer understand capacha used here

Wizard Stan:

Regarding the maximum print number, there was a time when printers could only print one page at a time, or even just one line at a time. Your software needed to send the strings and wait for the printer to report that it is ready for more. If you wanted multiple copies, it would just loop. This sucked for single threading OSs, but multi-threaded OSs got around this by creating a new process which would monitor a print queue.
Eventually printers came along where you could dump the entire job to it and say "print this X times". It would not surprise me in the slightest if Microsoft changed their print queue assuming that all printers had this multi-print feature, and removed the old "loop until done" way of doing it completely.

Windows expects the program to loop if the printer can't print multiple copies of the same page. So this is more a case of a lazy application programmer.

Also, there's no "once upon a time," Some printers even today can't do multiple copies of a page. Even if it can, the print job might be to big to fit into the printer's memory (e.g. if the user wanted to collate the job).

SR:

zeno:

<sarcasm>trwtf is having 23 as a favorite number.</sarcasm>

Blimey. Do we have to use <sarcasm> tags now? Good job I've never used sarcasm on this site.

Oh dear, there I go again

<sarcasm>

I believe he is future proofing his post. Sarcasm tags are a hotly debated potential feature of html 6. The only problem is that they will never decide on an audio codec to stream a condescending computer generated voice reading the text.

This is bad news for open source browsers because if a patented codec becomes the defacto standard then the users of these browsers may miss out on sarcasm all together.

I ask, can you imagine browsing the internet unsure if people are insincere? It's really quite scary if you think about it.

</sarcasm>

your_son:

your_mom:

your_mom:

A program concerned about end users? I MUST be an urban legend.

s/program/programmer/

No, mom, you're a real legend to me.

See, I was going down the road of "I don't believe in the urban legend of the OP". But since the OP was apparently my mom, that would mean I don't believe in me, thus I must not believe anyone could read my post anyway. Now I'm stuck in an existential conundrum. Oh well, it's Friday, I believe.

egc52556:

I'm just a poor computer without much common sense.

Now if only we could SOME developers to admit this... except Paula of course.

(username *)me:

SR:

zeno:

<sarcasm>trwtf is having 23 as a favorite number.</sarcasm>

Blimey. Do we have to use <sarcasm> tags now? Good job I've never used sarcasm on this site.

Oh dear, there I go again

<sarcasm>

I believe he is future proofing his post. Sarcasm tags are a hotly debated potential feature of html 6. The only problem is that they will never decide on an audio codec to stream a condescending computer generated voice reading the text.

This is bad news for open source browsers because if a patented codec becomes the defacto standard then the users of these browsers may miss out on sarcasm all together.

I ask, can you imagine browsing the internet unsure if people are insincere? It's really quite scary if you think about it.

</sarcasm>

Bah. Open source browsers will support the more standard, patent unencumbered and gpl'd/cc'd RMS approved <smarm> tag. The <sarcasm> tag will be relegated to the dustbin of history. There's no way the we should have to pay 2 cents every time we offer our smart-assed 2 cents!

I don't get it about the printer. The printer simply doesn't support multiple copies but whatever software is involved expects it to.

Ivar:

I can't stop laughing at that ATM. It's probably fake though..

Note to photoshopper: If you are going to fake an ATM screenshot, please include the Spanish translation of all on-screen instructions, including "Fuck You."

TRWTF is "You cannot save with this extension", when a button is provided to allow you to do it anyway. Can I, or not? Make up your mind!

Re: ATM, that would be an awesome way for a programmer to deliver a message. "Hey Bob, got an important message for you. Next time you're at an ATM, press 1,5,2,7,9,OK,3."