• Shambo (unregistered)

    I hope you have been sitting on that mayo picture for a while. It is kind of late to just throw that out of the fridge.

  • Warren (unregistered)

    I typed "world peace" into Google and eBay sponsored "World peace. Great selection at low prices!"

  • h (unregistered)

    Or, maybe, February 19th? One can never be sure...

  • tgies (unregistered)

    That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.

  • notawtf (unregistered) in reply to tgies
    tgies:
    That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.

    This. Not a WTF.

  • Drved (unregistered)

    How does the mayo know to expire at exactly 05:31? Is that local time, GMT, or the time zone of the manufacturing plant?

  • (cs) in reply to Drved
    Drved:
    How does the mayo know to expire at exactly 05:31? Is that local time, GMT, or the time zone of the manufacturing plant?
    Local time. The mayo jar has an atomic clock and GPS built into it.
  • me (unregistered)

    So... let me get this straight: "Ferdy" decided it's real funny to name a VPN "Europe and Middle East" and submit resulting screenshot here. And the real WTF is that Alex accepted and published this infantile submission, right?

  • (cs)

    One time I saw the year given as "19108".

  • Tom_fan_63 (unregistered) in reply to tgies
    tgies:
    That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.
    You're amazing! Nobody could understand this without your help... Thank you!!! And pleaze, send me teh code ;-)
  • (cs) in reply to Drved
    Drved:
    How does the mayo know to expire at exactly 05:31?

    Expiry dates really annoy me. We have people here that try and throw milk out just because 'the label says it's off'... suggest to them that they smell or taste it first and they look at you aghast.

    I don't know why the pot of honey I bought yesterday has a date at all, it's never going to bloody well go off.

  • (cs)

    Nick, it doesn't matter if that Mayo expired Feb 1908 or Feb 19, 2008 because it expired a while ago. That is unless FEB1908C is month followed by year in hex... then it would be good for another 100532 years. Then again, the whole date could be in hex.

  • Maarten Sneep (unregistered)
    "50% off!?," Dan noted, "with those kind of savings, I could start two wars in Iraq!"
    No, you can't. You can't even afford a single war in Iraq.

    Maarten

  • Anon (unregistered)

    Imagine if that mayo had an expiry date a few days later. Hmm... FEB2308, still good for 300 more years...

    BTW, those two digit dates on food really annoy me. What's 0908? Can't you print two more digits or just drop the useless time and print a proper date instead?

  • (cs)

    The real WTF is that the Iraq War one didn't include an eBay ad offering great "new and used Iraq Wars".

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Imagine if that mayo had an expiry date a few days later. Hmm... FEB2308, still good for 300 more years...

    BTW, those two digit dates on food really annoy me. What's 0908? Can't you print two more digits or just drop the useless time and print a proper date instead?

    I always wondered why the 'Expire' included a time. Can I really use that Mayonnaise right up until 5:04PM?

  • (cs)

    The one on Operating Systems probably made a poor assumption that it would only be used on Windows.

    So when he tried to get the Operating System version and instead of it saying Windows XP Operating System, it used a null string. Still a WTF nonetheless.

  • Alan (unregistered) in reply to Cursorkeys
    Cursorkeys:
    I don't know why the pot of honey I bought yesterday has a date at all, it's never going to bloody well go off.

    To make you throw out some perfectly servicable honey and buy more.

  • (cs)

    If you look closer at the error dialog, you can spot a two-spaces gap between "with" and "Operating Systems". This means that the string was "This setup is for users with $OS_NAME Operating Systems only" and somehow the programmer forgot to assign the $OS_NAME variable properly. Still a WTF, but a smaller one.

  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT

    The time is there to pinpoint what time it was bottled. This is helpful if there are some Quality problems. The best buy date is always X number of days from the time of bottling. I agree its a WTF that they can't add 2 more digits. On the flip side of the coin, they may be trying to make the string as short as possible to not draw attention to it.

  • (cs)

    The last one is hardly a WTF. The two dates are probably generated by two different algorithms; sometimes the first one comes earlier, sometimes the second one does. Of course, the software could've determine the earliest date by itself, but heck, maybe both are important.

  • (cs)

    I was writing my comment at the same time as Pitchingchris -- he was in advance of five mins, though ;-)

  • laoreet (unregistered)

    The last one isn't a WTF either. Business file 4 times a year, and it just saying that records are dumped from their system two times a year.

    This keeps people form saying "I submitted them 9 months ago!"

  • (cs) in reply to pitchingchris
    pitchingchris:
    On the flip side of the coin, they may be trying to make the string as short as possible to not draw attention to it.

    Most likely the length of the message is constrained by the printer that sprays the date code onto the bottle as well as the speed of the processing line.

    The print head would typically have all the nozzles for a single line of text (fixes the message width) and the dwell time of the jar under the print system sets the number of rows that you can print.

  • Anonymous Cow-herd (unregistered)

    My money's on the "Operating Systems" one being from an MSDN disc, and should read "MSDN Operating Systems" (as in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718657.aspx)

  • Me (unregistered) in reply to laoreet
    laoreet:
    The last one isn't a WTF either. Business file 4 times a year, and it just saying that records are dumped from their system two times a year.

    This keeps people form saying "I submitted them 9 months ago!"

    Since the code displays both dates, how hard would it be for it to compare the two and just display the one that comes first? Sounds like a WTF to me...a lazy programmer WTF

  • (cs) in reply to OzPeter
    OzPeter:
    Most likely the length of the message is constrained by the printer that sprays the date code onto the bottle as well as the speed of the processing line.

    The print head would typically have all the nozzles for a single line of text (fixes the message width) and the dwell time of the jar under the print system sets the number of rows that you can print.

    Absolutely correct (I used to work on these). The print head is fixed in relation to the conveyor, and the product moves past - not even stopping. On the fastest types, the ink is continuously pumped through the nozzles, and steered electrostatically (to the target or the recirculating collector). The print head is a big chunk of precision-machined stainless steel, cost proportional to width. A 'cheap' system might only have a head width of about one inch, 48 nozzles, which would match the photo.

  • Edss (unregistered)

    TRWTF is mm/dd/yy

  • AMerrickanGirl (unregistered) in reply to Maarten Sneep
    Maarten Sneep:
    "50% off!?," Dan noted, "with those kind of savings, I could start two wars in Iraq!"
    No, you can't. You can't even afford a single war in Iraq.

    Maarten

    One of the best comments I've ever seen on this site.

  • M L (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    Anon:
    Imagine if that mayo had an expiry date a few days later. Hmm... FEB2308, still good for 300 more years...

    BTW, those two digit dates on food really annoy me. What's 0908? Can't you print two more digits or just drop the useless time and print a proper date instead?

    I always wondered why the 'Expire' included a time. Can I really use that Mayonnaise right up until 5:04PM?

    The time is not there for you. By using the expiration date + time, the manufacturer and retrailers can determine EXACTLY when a product was produced. Therefore, if a manufacturer knows that there was a bad lot produced around 5PM, it knows it should discard/cancel the product lot with times around there.

  • (cs) in reply to Tom_fan_63
    Tom_fan_63:
    tgies:
    That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.
    You're amazing! Nobody could understand this without your help... Thank you!!! And pleaze, send me teh code ;-)
    Shut up. Tom_fan_63 is making a valid point. Edit: on second thought, if the date had been before the 13th, it might not have been so obvious; so the format is a bit wtf-ish.
  • (cs) in reply to Maarten Sneep
    Maarten Sneep:
    "50% off!?," Dan noted, "with those kind of savings, I could start two wars in Iraq!"
    No, you can't. You can't even afford a single war in Iraq.

    Maarten

    Well, only if I gave up coffee and beer.

  • vambala (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    Drved:
    How does the mayo know to expire at exactly 05:31? Is that local time, GMT, or the time zone of the manufacturing plant?
    Local time. The mayo jar has an atomic clock and GPS built into it.

    Exactly. So if you realize that your mayo just expired a few minutes ago you should very quickly send it to someone who lives in a different time zone. (in western direction). Then it will be usable again for a short time...

  • (cs)

    Ahhh... Now I see. George Bush has been shopping from the "Cripple Our Economy" online store. Clbuttic mistake.

  • (cs) in reply to Cursorkeys
    Cursorkeys:
    I don't know why the pot of honey I bought yesterday has a date at all, it's never going to bloody well go off.

    No, but it will turn into that delicious blend of honey with coagulated, granulated goodness. That texture mixed with a peanut butter sandwich is heaven, I tell ya. Heaven.

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to me
    me:
    So... let me get this straight: "Ferdy" decided it's real funny to name a VPN "Europe and Middle East" and submit resulting screenshot here. And the real WTF is that Alex accepted and published this infantile submission, right?
    The Dutch electronics giant Philips uses this as the name for its VPN software to be used by 120,000+ employees. I don't know if they chose the name or if this is a default in the VPN software though.
  • (cs) in reply to me
    me:
    So... let me get this straight: "Ferdy" decided it's real funny to name a VPN "Europe and Middle East" and submit resulting screenshot here.

    Actually Contivity VPN Client is usually set up by big corporates with preconfigured VPNs to the company's own networks. The name would usually be set by system admins...

    That said, I'm not above a bit of infantile naming. My careful choice of name when signing up for a particular real estate newsletter still makes me smile long after the joke should have worn off: [image]

  • mauhiz (unregistered)

    An error has occured while trying to post this comment!

  • (cs) in reply to Edss
    Edss:
    TRWTF is mm/dd/yy
    Seconded. dd/mm/yyyy is the reason I don't get bungled even when products have two-digit years. 29MAY08 ... oh no, DON'T EAT THAT CHEESE!!
  • leppie (unregistered)

    Once again, idiots cant read. FEB1908 is 19 February 2008. If you want to be stupid, please return to the 20th century...

  • (cs) in reply to tgies
    tgies:
    That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.

    You missed the "C". It's obviously an unix timestamp: Fri, 29 May 2105 14:15:40.

  • Boner (unregistered) in reply to Shambo
    Shambo:
    I hope you have been sitting on that mayo picture for a while. It is kind of late to just throw that out of the fridge.

    Are you kidding? I just threw one out from May 2007...

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to danixdefcon5
    danixdefcon5:
    Edss:
    TRWTF is mm/dd/yy
    Seconded. dd/mm/yyyy is the reason I don't get bungled even when products have two-digit years. 29MAY08 ... oh no, DON'T EAT THAT CHEESE!!

    Thirded. Damned american date formats. yyyy-mm-dd <3

  • Ozz (unregistered) in reply to pitchingchris
    pitchingchris:
    The best buy date is always X number of days from the time of bottling.
    Reminds me of some items I saw in a store recently (bags of walnuts). The 'Best Before' date was Feb 29, 2009. I'm guessing they were packaged on Feb 29, 2008 and the system blindly just upped the year (like MS SQL Server did for their certificates...) I KNEW I should have taken a pic...
  • (cs) in reply to leppie
    leppie:
    Once again, idiots cant read. FEB1908 is 19 February 2008. If you want to be stupid, please return to the 20th century...

    Fine, I admit it. I can't read.

    Which character am I getting wrong?

  • Iris (unregistered)

    The mayo's not a Y2K bug.

    That's a 'We're too cheap to put in a printer that will print the extra 2 digits' bug.

  • Meow... (unregistered) in reply to Joseph

    The Mayo expired Circa Feb 19, 08 5:31.

    <.<

    You guys know that food expiration dates are just hours from manufacturing date right, and that they normally just round to the nearest day?

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    danixdefcon5:
    Edss:
    TRWTF is mm/dd/yy
    Seconded. dd/mm/yyyy is the reason I don't get bungled even when products have two-digit years. 29MAY08 ... oh no, DON'T EAT THAT CHEESE!!

    Thirded. Damned american date formats. yyyy-mm-dd <3

    Since it was bottled in America, than TRWTF is yall complaining about it.

  • Joe (unregistered)

    I can save you 90% on the War In Iraq, if you sign up for a 2 months subscription

  • Stewie (unregistered) in reply to Andy Goth

    One time I saw the year given as "19108".

    Actually, that is probably day 191 of 2008.

    Ian

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