• (cs) in reply to Pyro

    Among the first foreign phrases learned by tourists, you'll usually find some like "I speak no/little Polish" (or whatever language).

    I only speak English, but can handle (with doubtful spelling) "(Parlay vous Frances?) Non! Parlay vous Engles?" "(Schpreken ze Deutche?) No." "Il piano per favore"

    ok, so that last one actually means "fill 'er up, please" and not "I speak no Italian" :-) It used to work for buying petrol though, which seemed useful.

  • (cs) in reply to Enrique
    Enrique:
    I think NO is a more universal word... it should trigger common sense in people (when in doubt, click no).

    For a better effect, I think some audio should be heard, Chris Tucker's voice like in Rush Hour:

    DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING UP ON MY SCREEN?

    That doesn't even work for native English speakers...

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to Kostas
    Kostas:
    Вы говорите русского? Да. Нет. Μιλάτε τα ελληνικά; Αριθ. ναι.

    You're assuming that they use the same alphabet as English. The above are Russian and Greek respectively (thanks babelfish!) The correct "No" answers are Нет and Αριθ.

    Don't be so fast to thank babelfish. No is "Όχι" in greek, babelfish probably understood "No" as "number".

    The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten.

  • v.dog (unregistered)

    The simple answer to the top one is to replace the 'NO' with a puzzled face.

  • (cs) in reply to Zemyla
    Zemyla:
    The first one is understandable. "NO" is very similar in most Indo-European languages (no, non, nyet) so most people will recognize the "no" button, and quite probably the word "English".

    This makes it relatively simple for the people who don't speak English to select the right answer.

    But why have a screen like this in the first place? If the UI supports multiple languages, are they going to cycle through each one until the user recognizes one? Why not just have one screen with a button in each language language (English, Espanol, Francais, Deutsche, etc.)?

    OTOH, if the UI only supports English, what happens if the user presses No? Does it just forward you to Google like most porn sites do when you click "I am under 18"? (I don't know if this is what actually happens, since I have never chosen that option)

  • (cs)

    I think you all have it wrong about the first pic. It is not to allow a person to select a language. It is a comprehension test. There are many english speaking individuals who can (somewhat) read english but cannot understand english either spoken or written.

    These are the people who see the ten items or less isles at the supermarket, and go through with 20 items.

    They are the people who use the excuse "I never stop at that stop sign because there is never anything coming" as an excuse after causing a traffic accident.

    These are the idiot users who ignore the directions on our GUIs and input whatever they want into our applications and then call tech support because they got an error message that they cannot understand. You know who I am talking about.

    I think it is ingenious. I am going to use that as a licensing agreement for my applications. If a user selects "no", the application will exit. If the user selects "yes", and then continues to ask stupid questions, then I have reason to ignore them because they broke there licensing agreement.

    I would like to shake that developers hand.

  • dadadodo (unregistered)

    Which is marked with nine inch hips and breaking the armed customs officers, and you find there's an excursion to HEAD To A party from Luton with local colour Roman Remains to LINKIN PARK WATCHING DRAGONBALL Z Drinking Nasty Spumante, buying identical holiday carted around in the bidet; Ealing Pretending to all over their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about on the Hotel menu of Spanish tummy in a tiny emaciated dago with local colour and you miss the Pope And complaining about how Mr. Which is great, as Spain is of the EASIEST SETTING DURING which killed half the plastic ash trays and Bellvueses and the last day in England and queuing for the toilets And decimated Europe and their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh because of Campbell's Cream of Watney's Red Barrel and then some adenoidal typists from Luton With her hair brylcreemed down And queuing for the food It's because of Campbell's Cream of Spanish Tourist Board promises you finally not like at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and there's no water in England and Coventry in their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about on holiday, carted around in the bog and spending four days on the last Tuesday's Daily Express and meanwhile the hotel has a tourist Board promises you up over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh because they don't make it on the permanent strike of Watney's Red Barrel and the raging cholera epidemic is marked with their transistor radios and queuing you swear you it'll only a tourist MODEM before it All British over at in Spanish tourist Board promises you it'll only a bleeding Watney's the streets where all British people go on A The Pope and has a tiny emaciated dago with local Roman so called the food it's because you're thirsty And you're not like at Luton Rhyl who keep it?

    And Dr. And you sit On holiday money to the accordionist plays Maybe It's because you're still in their the bidet. And Continentales with their modern International luxury roomettes and there's nowhere to All over their cloth caps and if you're not like the previous outbreak of places they don't make it properly here, do they don't make it up hairy bandy legged wop waiters called the EASIEST SETTING DURING Which killed half built Algerian ruin called the back streets where All British people go On and decimated Europe and the airport On AIM Pretending to HEAD to the at your holiday the bloody cabaret in again, and you find there's only a taxi tourist Board promises you sit on holiday carted around in the rooms are take you visit the tarmac at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and has a case of duty free cigarillos And last day; in your name on about on and holiday carted around in England and on EBAY in the EASIEST SETTING DURING Which is marked with an Instamatic camera and chips and nobody can go On EBAY in which killed half The bloody cabaret in again, and Kennedy and atmosphere and complaining about on and barging Into queues and barging into endless Hotel Miramars and vomiting and frightening the previous outbreak of fat bullfight posters with nine inch hips and how Mr.

  • (cs)

    Actually most airports use Internet Explorer for their departures/arrivals/check-in/boarding displays. For no good reason IHMO, it's not like the generated HTML is very complex. A couple of forms could have done the trick too. Or Powerpoint :P

    Also, The Real WTF™ is that flights are listed alphabetically and are NOT removed as they pass by (see the third to last flight, which supposedly departed two hours before the timestamp). Huh?

  • (cs) in reply to swordfishBob

    It's "il pieno per favore" :P

    Also, "I can't speak Italian" is "Non parlo italiano".

  • (cs) in reply to badpazzword
    badpazzword:
    Actually most airports use Internet Explorer for their departures/arrivals/check-in/boarding displays. For no good reason IHMO, it's not like the generated HTML is very complex. A couple of forms could have done the trick too. Or Powerpoint :P
    A couple of forms of what? And automatically generating HTML is easy; heck, "printf("<html><head><title>My Second Program</title><body>Hello world, again!</body></html>);" could be the second program you write.

    I don't know how to generate PowerPoint, though I'd imagine there is some library you could use. But it would no doubt be harder than HTML. It's exactly BECAUSE the generated HTML isn't terribly complex that it actually makes a pretty darn good solution. Why spend the time using a PowerPoint library or writing your own GUI when you can take advantage of a rendering engine already done for you?

    Also, The Real WTF™ is that flights are listed alphabetically and are NOT removed as they pass by (see the third to last flight, which supposedly departed two hours before the timestamp). Huh?
    Alphabetically is how most people would WANT them to be sorted (and the way it is the places I've seen, not that I fly much at all). Also, it's only been just over an hour since the departure of NW605 for Maui Kahului. Still long enough that I'd think it'd be removed too, but still much less than 2h.

    Addendum (2008-01-29 18:33): Oops, left out a </head> from my "HTML" program. And a closing quote.

  • (cs) in reply to dadadodo
    dadadodo:
    Which is marked with nine inch hips and breaking the armed customs officers, and you find there's an excursion to HEAD To A party from Luton with local colour Roman Remains to LINKIN PARK WATCHING DRAGONBALL Z Drinking Nasty Spumante, buying identical holiday carted around in the bidet; Ealing Pretending to all over their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about on the Hotel menu of Spanish tummy in a tiny emaciated dago with local colour and you miss the Pope And complaining about how Mr. Which is great, as Spain is of the EASIEST SETTING DURING which killed half the plastic ash trays and Bellvueses and the last day in England and queuing for the toilets And decimated Europe and their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh because of Campbell's Cream of Watney's Red Barrel and then some adenoidal typists from Luton With her hair brylcreemed down And queuing for the food It's because of Campbell's Cream of Spanish Tourist Board promises you finally not like at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and there's no water in England and Coventry in their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about on holiday, carted around in the bog and spending four days on the last Tuesday's Daily Express and meanwhile the hotel has a tourist Board promises you up over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh because they don't make it on the permanent strike of Watney's Red Barrel and the raging cholera epidemic is marked with their transistor radios and queuing you swear you it'll only a tourist MODEM before it All British over at in Spanish tourist Board promises you it'll only a bleeding Watney's the streets where all British people go on A The Pope and has a tiny emaciated dago with local Roman so called the food it's because you're thirsty And you're not like at Luton Rhyl who keep it?

    And Dr. And you sit On holiday money to the accordionist plays Maybe It's because you're still in their the bidet. And Continentales with their modern International luxury roomettes and there's nowhere to All over their cloth caps and if you're not like the previous outbreak of places they don't make it properly here, do they don't make it up hairy bandy legged wop waiters called the EASIEST SETTING DURING Which killed half built Algerian ruin called the back streets where All British people go On and decimated Europe and the airport On AIM Pretending to HEAD to the at your holiday the bloody cabaret in again, and you find there's only a taxi tourist Board promises you sit on holiday carted around in the rooms are take you visit the tarmac at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and has a case of duty free cigarillos And last day; in your name on about on and holiday carted around in England and on EBAY in the EASIEST SETTING DURING Which is marked with an Instamatic camera and chips and nobody can go On EBAY in which killed half The bloody cabaret in again, and Kennedy and atmosphere and complaining about on and barging Into queues and barging into endless Hotel Miramars and vomiting and frightening the previous outbreak of fat bullfight posters with nine inch hips and how Mr.

    Y'know, we can do dissociated press too!

  • AlexG (unregistered) in reply to SomeCoder
    SomeCoder:

    Great, now all my cubical mates are wondering what I'm laughing at. Thanks a lot!

    Are you mating cubicals? How disgusting!

  • TKffTK (unregistered)

    If some installer (or configuration software) asks a question, what user does not undrestand, user normally clicks "yes" (just in case).

    So workin version would be something like:

    "Please press the cat" <picture of a cat>

    [Button that says: "I do not undrestand english"]

  • Infidel66 (unregistered)

    Qué indeed.

    Sometimes these WTFs are so outrageous that I thought they were photoshop jobs.

  • Jim (unregistered)

    I was flying in a Gippsland GA-8 Airvan when the pilot said over the intercome "Getta look at that!". The MFD had given a blue screen of deather. After 10 seconds, the screen showed the system restarting, and the Windows NT boot screen was displayed sideways...

  • My Name (unregistered) in reply to Enrique
    Enrique:
    I think NO is a more universal word... it should trigger common sense in people (when in doubt, click no).
    That common sense is significantly nerfed by Vistas constant "click Yes" training.
  • asifyoucare (unregistered) in reply to Zemyla

    Maybe my sarcasm detector is broken, but I feel compelled to point out that being able to distinguish YES and NO is of little use if one cannot understand the question!

  • desu (unregistered)
    Bry:
    Has anyone else noticed the major UI WTF in the "Can you read and understand english?" dialog?

    The dialog has a close button in the toolbox area. I'm itching to see what happens if it is clicked.

    I'd be more tempted to grab the top left corner and drag the entire box off the bottom right corner of the screen, so there's just a few pixels of it left in the corner and people are left wondering WTF?

  • (cs)

    Someone really uses Moviemaker? Thats just another WTF itself.

    For the first Machine, i would put just pics of flags on the screen, so the customers can choose from one.

  • UI4dummies? (unregistered)

    How about some flags to indicate the language? I mean its not that hard...

    CAPTCHA - transverberoritims?

  • TriangleJuice (unregistered) in reply to Enrique
    Enrique:
    I think NO is a more universal word... it should trigger common sense in people (when in doubt, click no).
    Do you want to have an extra discount of 50%?
  • (cs) in reply to A. Nony Mouse
    A. Nony Mouse:
    If I'm lucky I'd get a menu of other languages.
    Flags are a quite common way to select languages, though it tends to offend (or at least annoy) British and probably Australian people if you use the American flag for English.
  • bah, humbug (unregistered) in reply to Enrique
    Enrique:
    I think NO is a more universal word... it should trigger common sense in people (when in doubt, click no).

    'no' in finnish is 'ei', so that's it for your universal word theory.

    Many far-eastern cultures consider answering negatively a very bad thing, so there goes your common sense theory.

  • Cloak (unregistered) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    Binks:
    Those who can't understand English will probably push No, as it's the only word there that's in Spanish.

    Which is great, as Spain is of course where all British people go on holiday, carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh because they "overdid it on the first day. And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentales with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners. And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhoea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman Remains to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local colour and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, torremolinos" and complaining about the food - "It's so greasy isn't it?" - and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr. Cameron should be running this country and how many languages Boris Johnson can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres. And sending tinted postcards of places they don't realise they haven't even visited to "All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X', food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets where they serve Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'." And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris - and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing "enterovioform" and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door - and you're plagues by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe - and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone's comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free "cigarillos" and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich" and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane...

    Torremolinos, Torremolinos ...

    (Monthy Python)

  • gg (unregistered) in reply to Enrique

    in casual Polish "no" means "yes".

  • Anonymous Luser (unregistered)
    The good news here is that the airplanes themselves don't run Internet Explorer. Well, I mean, probably they don't. Right?
    The cockpit display systems that are being designed at this-location-that-I-dare-not-name do not run on Windows. Or Linux...
  • Hognoxious (unregistered) in reply to Thief^
    Thief^:
    Flags are a quite common way to select languages, though it tends to offend (or at least annoy) British and probably Australian people if you use the American flag for English.
    Why would you use an American flag to indicate English? It would be like using the Austrian one to represent German.

    Seriously, I've heard quite a few Belgians grumble about the use of the French flag (I think the Eurostar or Thalys terminals do that). Tough titty for not being a proper country and having their own language, I say.

  • Hognoxious (unregistered) in reply to java.lang.Chris;
    java.lang.Chris;:
    nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches ...
    Probably taste better than their software. Probably better at running apps too.
  • Aran (unregistered) in reply to Enrique
    Enrique:
    I think NO is a more universal word... it should trigger common sense in people (when in doubt, click no).

    For a better effect, I think some audio should be heard, Chris Tucker's voice like in Rush Hour:

    DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING UP ON MY SCREEN?

    Actually, experience tells me that you've got it reversed. The universal maxim is "When in doubt, click Yes". Or in this case, click the one that isn't No.

    So it probably isn't working that well.

  • Happysin (unregistered)

    Considering the antique scheduling and bidding systems still used by airlines today, I'm impressed that computer was even running Windows.

    IIRC, they're still running most everything on DOS-based Sabre systems.

  • captcha modo (unregistered) in reply to Pyro

    Did you noticed cross in top right corner? I doubt you counted it into account

  • Paolo G (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    There's a typo in the text:
    In addition to attaining a whole new level of smudgyness, Rogier found himself much more popular after getting a new iPhone.
    Fixed.

    Are you sure it's fixed? Looks like you've introduced another. Maybe you meant "smudginess".

    CAPTCHA: valetudo - I say farewell?

  • Paolo G (unregistered) in reply to Zemyla
    Zemyla:
    The first one is understandable. "NO" is very similar in most Indo-European languages (no, non, nyet) so most people will recognize the "no" button, and quite probably the word "English".

    This makes it relatively simple for the people who don't speak English to select the right answer.

    Pity the Greek who knows no English at all... he is likely to assume that "No" means "Nai", which is "Yes" in his language.

  • Paolo G (unregistered) in reply to Hognoxious
    Hognoxious:
    Thief^:
    Flags are a quite common way to select languages, though it tends to offend (or at least annoy) British and probably Australian people if you use the American flag for English.
    Why would you use an American flag to indicate English? It would be like using the Austrian one to represent German.

    Hence the practice (UK spelling) often seen of diagonally cutting the image into two and using the UK flag in one half and the US flag in the other.

  • Felipe (unregistered) in reply to Enrique

    If you only knew the terabytes of spyware i got to remove each week, you would agree with me that "yes" is a way more universal choice.

  • SonicLover (unregistered)

    The article's title isn't even proper Spanish. While "¿Qué?" is Spanish for "What?", they don't use it as an interjection. The word they would use is "¿Cómo?" (In case you're wondering, that directly translates to "How?")

    ...That's one of the few lessons I remember from my Spanish classes.

    CAPTCHA: "Cogo". A mechanical pogo stick?

  • Stuart Longland (unregistered) in reply to Enrique

    "I think NO is a more universal word... it should trigger common sense in people (when in doubt, click no). "

    Ahh, the foolproof method, what could possibly go wrong?

    Prompt: Do you speak a foreign language? Tourist who doesn't speak English: No

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