The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Watson · 2009-05-01 Reply Admin

Carl:
No, I don't, because I understand what the word "spiny" means, and nothing in the accompanying image fits that description.

Well, there's the "kWh" (as in "the spiny thing (single kWh?)" - whatever the parenthetical is supposed to mean). That's sort of spiny.

Still, as far as the errors go, they could probably be fixed if only someone could remember when it was last updated (so much for "in the last week").

2009-05-01 Reply Admin

Anon:
Does anybody else find it ironic that they compare the electricity generated from solar to a number of hours of television and then decide to relay that information using....a television.

As opposed to what? The sun?

2009-05-01 Reply Admin

PeriSoft:
vt_mruhlin:
How can these people not come up with a decent UI? "Enter PIN or press CANCEL for credit"

I'd settle for consistent across multiple brands even if decent is asking too much. All the keypads (at supermarkets, gas stations, etc) seem to have credit / debit / cancel / OK buttons physically on them. But when you actually use the things, you get

Swipe, and then:

Press 'credit' for credit; 'cancel' cancels the whole thing

Press 'cancel' for credit; 'credit' does nothing

Press 'OK' for credit; who knows what anything else does

Press 'cancel', then press 'credit' for credit

So I have to remember, "OK, at Pete's I press cancel, at Wegmans I press credit, at the Mobil it's..."

Aaagh!

I'll settle for it how it's done in the UK. You don't choose. Modern cards have a microchip, and you almost always enter a PIN, whether it's a debit or a credit card. This is because it's believed to be more secure (possibly wrongly IMHO). To encourage retailers to adopt 'chip-and-pin', the retailer is liable for losses if they accept a fraudulent signature-based transaction (the old style).

To be honest I think the next logical step for security is for credit cards to have a photo. Uncomplicated and makes it harder for a thief to use your card - though not if they withdraw cash from an ATM.

Milton:
Not always. Perhaps they are really trying ot discourage monthlys because they feel it's not worth the effort.
There are country towns in Australia where a six-pack of beer costs more than a carton (24). The reason is that the pubs struggle to sell the rest of the carton if they split it up. Basically, they would rather sell a carton than bother with smaller quantities, but hey, if you're prepared to pay $60 for a sixpack....

My initial thought was that is retarded. Then I realised - you're wrong to say they struggle to sell the six-packs (they wouldn't if a six-pack was a sensible price). It's the shops that DON'T want to sell six-packs at all. Provided that sufficiently few people will either divert to another shop or go away with no beer, and if people who buy more beer will drink more beer (all reasonable in at least some situations), selling only 24-packs results in more sales. It relies on insufficient competition though, or a rival store could sell six-packs at a sensible price and thus take business.

That said, surely no-one would ever pay more for the six-pack unless they didn't know the price, since one could just buy the 24 and dump 18 cans.

2009-05-01 Reply Admin

Watson:
Carl:
No, I don't, because I understand what the word "spiny" means, and nothing in the accompanying image fits that description.
Well, there's the "kWh" (as in "the spiny thing (single kWh?)" - whatever the parenthetical is supposed to mean). That's sort of spiny.
Still, as far as the errors go, they could probably be fixed if only someone could remember when it was last updated (so much for "in the last week").

In HMI applications, you usually display garbage, octothorpes, or whatever IF COMMUNICATION IS LOST. I.E. somebody unplugged the cable.

Just think of how disastrous it could be in an industrial situation if instead the gauge read zero or stayed at what it was before. In general, it's not the norm to switch to a blue screen of death type display.

Is it overkill for this application? Yes. But it shows that something is wrong, instead of "all fine here, nothing to see". And again, putting up a message box is stupid, because of whiners "wanting the message box to go away so they can see what's behind it" completely ignoring the actual message.

2009-05-01 Reply Admin

Around #9 I'm usually screaming "No, I want gas!"

2009-05-01 Reply Admin

Watson:
Carl:
No, I don't, because I understand what the word "spiny" means, and nothing in the accompanying image fits that description.
Well, there's the "kWh" (as in "the spiny thing (single kWh?)" - whatever the parenthetical is supposed to mean). That's sort of spiny.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

The digit after the decimal point is still there, yes, but it does not have a single spine or thorn.

2009-05-02 Reply Admin

Anon:
Steve:
Arantor:
electrichead:
I don't see the WTF in the subscription one. The account is cancelled, and they are asking you if you want to cancel your cancellation ... non?

The WTF is that the monthly cost is $99.99 a month, but is only $9.99 per year. I'll have the yearly one please.

How is that a WTF? It's extremely common for consumers to be charged less for longer terms of locked-in service.

It's not common for a year to cost less than one month. If it was $9.99 / month or $99.99 a year, it would make sense.

I think you should read it like, you get the same information, but either montly or yearly. And then: a year-old analysis proves to be worth ten times less than a month-old analysis.

Watson · 2009-05-02 Reply Admin

Jaded:
In HMI applications, you usually display garbage, octothorpes, or whatever IF COMMUNICATION IS LOST. I.E. somebody unplugged the cable.

Or in this case (as is my suspicion) the universe (as far as the application is concerned) simply hasn't been around for a full week yet so it borks when it wanders off into undefined territory before the beginning of time. It's an edge case, and it's only going to happen once (per reset), so why worry?

Watson · 2009-05-02 Reply Admin

Andy:
Watson:
Carl:
No, I don't, because I understand what the word "spiny" means, and nothing in the accompanying image fits that description.
Well, there's the "kWh" (as in "the spiny thing (single kWh?)" - whatever the parenthetical is supposed to mean). That's sort of spiny.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

The digit after the decimal point is still there, yes, but it does not have a single spine or thorn.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

2009-05-02 Reply Admin

JRH:
hey persto!:
The completely, 100% Real WTF is that people think something delivered once a year should cost more than something delivered once a month.
That is not a wtf. You are.

Yes! I was looking at this for the longest time, wondering what the WTF was... then it hit me. "Oh, they think "Annually" means "once a month for a year" rather than "once a year"... wow."

I guess programmers can't also be English majors, eh?

Correct me if i'm wrong but it states: "access to the site". Now this does not imply shipping so the fact that access to a site is more expensive for a month then for a year is strange and therefor a WTF. (my native language is not english and i don't have spellingcheck at my work so i apolegize for any spelling mistakes)

2009-05-02 Reply Admin

I submitted the financial picture - to wit: the subscription for either simply let you into the membership side of their site.

So for $9.99 you had access to the same information for one year, versus $99.99 you'd have access to the site for 1 month. The data was the same either way, and the subscription was simply membership site access.

Actually I cancelled the subscription based on this, then paged back to get a screenshot, so it showed I was cancelled.

Suffice it to say (as noted above) any financial site that does not know it is charging the wrong amount for their web site acccess is probably not a good site to get detailed and complex investment advice from. Further, I found an error that was just as bad in the internal information about stocks. Finance.google/yahoo.com was more accurate.

Shea

ParkinT · 2009-05-04 Reply Admin

That last one is the WTF-est of them all!

2009-05-20 Reply Admin

JRH:
Yes! I was looking at this for the longest time, wondering what the WTF was... then it hit me. "Oh, they think "Annually" means "once a month for a year" rather than "once a year"... wow."
I guess programmers can't also be English majors, eh?

You mean the website is delivered to the subscriber once a month or once a year, depending on the subscription type? And, if it's all so obvious, would you care to explain the payment intervals rsp. length of the subscription? Without this little piece of information, it is impossible to work out the price per unit of time (or per "delivery"), so what you're claiming is based on assumptions that do not follow from the screenshot anyway.

I guess English majors can't also be logicians. Programmers are trained to avoid making spurious assumptions... the same probably cannot be said about English majors.

2009-12-14 Reply Admin

As the author of the code that generated the horrible workflow diagram, I'm in position to explain the story behind it. The defect tracking tool that this comes from has a pretty complicated inheritance model for concepts it calls workflows & projects. A project can inherit settings from its parent project -OR- it can inherit from a completely unrelated workflow -AND- it can override some or all of the project-specific settings.

My original code had a bug when a project changed parents. As a result, I retrieved the wrong project settings from the database and caused the horrid layout you saw in the screenshot. This was fixed in a later version.

Man... talk about a rude shock to be browsing thedailywtf and see your own bug in living color!

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