The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Frist with frist dressing.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Mike Smithwick likes NASA's video as much as the next guy, but, you know, has some stuff coming up over the next 18 years.

Hey, a space flight does take some time. And it's totally worth watching it in slow motion.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

I wonder if there's anything interesting lurking on that base64-encoded text? I decoded the first few characters (PEJPRFkgc3R5bGU9) and it came out as "<BODY style=" -- who knows what goodies might be hidden away inside?

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Steven Mocking:
Hold up GMail, you mean that Base64 encoding is actually Finnish?

Well, GMail is a Google product and Google is extremely clever - of course it does not think that Base64 is Finnish!

But I'm sure that deep in that Base64 encoded bit of HTML/XML (I didn't decode more than the first few bytes) there is some string literal that actually represents a finnish word. Like "on". Or "koko". Or "tavallisesti".

no laughing matter · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

So Nathan Hood wanted to read "What's happening on twitter".

The error message suggests to mail service@webmailer.de and shows a URL rtnews.eu which turns out to be a Luxemburg news site in french language.

My WTF-sense is tingling TRWTF is the belgian government!

And the news was about the Luxemburg president's daughter.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

OMG that "laptop" picture hits a whole bunch of my triggers (never mind the not-a-laptop part):

Why do online marketers insist in having only a 10 by 12 pixel photo of the product they want you to buy? What would be wrong with letting the customer actually SEE it?
Why is said picture always of the awesome "curb appeal" and nothing you really need to know, like a shot of the back where all the hookups are?
Accompanied by only two bogo-specs. I especially (don't) love the "compare features" pages where you can pay $800 (excuse me, $799.83 -- those lower prices really fool people) for the "blazing" model, $1000 for the "awesome" model, or go all the way to $1200 for the "professional" one. I mean I actually might have the extra $400 to spend but if you won't tell me what I'm going to get why should I pay for it?

I'm trying to give you money and I think you'd want to take it. So why can't you give me the tiniest bit of useful info if only in your own greedy interest to make the sale!!!?

I mean really the theme seeping from every marketer's brain seems to be "don't ask any questions just buy our crap already".

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Dell Hell:
OMG that "laptop" picture hits a whole bunch of my triggers (never mind the not-a-laptop part):

Why do online marketers insist in having only a 10 by 12 pixel photo of the product they want you to buy? What would be wrong with letting the customer actually SEE it?

Their competitors could STEAL the image!

* Why is said picture always of the awesome "curb appeal" and nothing you really need to know, like a shot of the back where all the hookups are?

That one's obvious, isn't it? You might as well ask why don't they give those technical specs that are actually meaningful. Oh wait, you did ...

* Accompanied by only two bogo-specs. I especially (don't) love the "compare features" pages where you can pay $800 (excuse me, $799.83 -- those lower prices really fool people) for the "blazing" model, $1000 for the "awesome" model, or go all the way to $1200 for the "professional" one. I mean I actually might have the extra $400 to spend but if you won't tell me what I'm going to get why should I pay for it?

If you're that kind of person that thinks about why they spend their money, they won't get much from you anyway. So make it short, buy the cheapo model and let them concentrate on their more valued customers.

I mean really the theme seeping from every marketer's brain seems to be "don't ask any questions just buy our crap already".

Works for the majority and that's what counts.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Mmmmm... Test dressing

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Bruce W:
Mmmmm... Test dressing

Yippee ki-yay, tester-tester!

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

TRWTF is that Dell dares to charge over $800 for a laptop with an i3-processor.

Captcha: esse, and then sessert with test dressing.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

By the way, is the sidebar broken? Or did the singularity happen and is all code now bug-free?

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Finnish Him

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Luxembourg doesn't have a president, it's a monarchy. And rtnews.eu is apparently some fake news site (Albertoxic was a comedian some years ago) that only copies RSS feeds in a horrible design.

The belgian government though really is a WTF.

Rootbeer · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Dell Hell:
I'm trying to give you money and I think you'd want to take it. So why can't you give me the tiniest bit of useful info if only in your own greedy interest to make the sale!!!?

In fairness, the call to action is "Shop Now", not "Buy Now" or "Click Here And We'll Charge Your Credit Card And Ship This Computer To You With No Additional Action On Your Part." The whole thing's designed to grab your attention just enough to get you to drill down into the pages with detailed product information, such as large images and full specifications.

TLDR: it's an ad!

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Rootbeer:
Dell Hell:
I'm trying to give you money and I think you'd want to take it. So why can't you give me the tiniest bit of useful info if only in your own greedy interest to make the sale!!!?

In fairness, the call to action is "Shop Now", not "Buy Now" or "Click Here And We'll Charge Your Credit Card And Ship This Computer To You With No Additional Action On Your Part." The whole thing's designed to grab your attention just enough to get you to drill down into the pages with detailed product information, such as large images and full specifications.

TLDR: it's an ad!

All right, since you're assuming I've never actually gone shopping online and was just bitching about that one ad on TDWTF, please go to the following page and let me know how long is the cable coming out of the back of the camera?

http://www.amazon.com/Vivotek-IP8332-Outdoor-Bullet-Network/dp/B003TWIOHC/ref=sr_1_2?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1360942972&sr=1-2

Go ahead, drill down all you want. Let me know where you find the answer.

It is an important spec. Too short and you can't get the cable through the walls of some older houses.

No hurry. I'll wait...

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

I agree that it is annoying not being able to find specs online - but in this case I would just google the product, find the spec pdf (http://download.vivotek.com/downloadfile/downloads/datasheets/ip8332-cdatasheets_en.pdf), verify that it runs on PoE and then get a PoE switch or injector. Then you have one cable less to worry about and ethernet cables are available in many lengths...

Nagesh · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Vivek, stop doing all translation now.

chubertdev · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

This is what happens when Google and Nokia collaborate...

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
This is what happens when Google and Nokia collaborate...

The question now is, will Bing also recognize it as finnish soon?

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

I didn't really, I was just going through e-mail when I spotted it :)

Zylon · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Finnish? Please. Base64 is Welsh.

chubertdev · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Zylon:
Finnish? Please. Base64 is Welsh.

I see too many vowels.

PiisAWheeL · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Dell Hell:
Rootbeer:
Dell Hell:
I'm trying to give you money and I think you'd want to take it. So why can't you give me the tiniest bit of useful info if only in your own greedy interest to make the sale!!!?

In fairness, the call to action is "Shop Now", not "Buy Now" or "Click Here And We'll Charge Your Credit Card And Ship This Computer To You With No Additional Action On Your Part." The whole thing's designed to grab your attention just enough to get you to drill down into the pages with detailed product information, such as large images and full specifications.

TLDR: it's an ad!
All right, since you're assuming I've never actually gone shopping online and was just bitching about that one ad on TDWTF, please go to the following page and let me know how long is the cable coming out of the back of the camera?

http://www.amazon.com/Vivotek-IP8332-Outdoor-Bullet-Network/dp/B003TWIOHC/ref=sr_1_2?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1360942972&sr=1-2

Go ahead, drill down all you want. Let me know where you find the answer.

It is an important spec. Too short and you can't get the cable through the walls of some older houses.

No hurry. I'll wait...

Less than 5 minutes. Did a search for the product on google. http://www.ravenshoesecurity.com/pdf/Vivotek_8332_Setup.pdf?PHPSESSID=354307eb4bdedff2e800ed5d99c80dea

Page 5 (and part of 6) of the product specs state

The camera requires an RJ45 Ethernet connection that provides access to the Internet in the physical area where the camera is being deployed. This cable should run from the camera site to your router. Using a PoE (Power Over Ethernet) injector the Ethernet cable can also provide power, making for a single wire installation. The camera comes with a short Ethernet cable and a double female adapter.
It is possible (see user manual) to remove this short cable and plug the Ethernet cable from the router directly into the motherboard.

As you can see, it comes with a short ethernet cable and a female to female coupler, and you can safely not give a fuck cause it uses generics and standards. If you are interested in a product you see in an ad, take just 2 minutes out of your day and google the product. You might learn things you never knew you didn't need to know about the product. THEN you can decide if you wanna buy it.

Also, you referenced a listing, not an ad.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

That 41263 days thing is referencing January 0, 1900. Apparently, the first login date was never init'ed so it subtracts it from today. Divide by 365 or 365.25 and you'll see. On a related note, smwcentral.net has this bug where users that have never logged in will be marked as inactive since 1970. This sentence is false.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Oops, wrong URL. http://smwcentral.net is the right one.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Joe:
Oops, wrong URL. http://smwcentral.net is the right one.

How does this get past akismet???

PiisAWheeL · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

foo:
foo:
http://smwcentral.net.
Interesting. Apparently you only need 1 char after the URL to make it no spam. Might be time to feature Akismet's algorithm on this site.

If you really have it out for this site, edited comments are not checked AFAIK.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

PiisAWheeL:
Dell Hell:
Rootbeer:
Dell Hell:
I'm trying to give you money and I think you'd want to take it. So why can't you give me the tiniest bit of useful info if only in your own greedy interest to make the sale!!!?
The whole thing's designed to grab your attention just enough to get you to drill down into the pages with detailed product information, such as large images and full specifications.
All right, since you're assuming I've never actually gone shopping online and was just bitching about that one ad on TDWTF, please go to the following page and let me know how long is the cable coming out of the back of the camera?
http://www.amazon.com/Vivotek-IP8332-Outdoor-Bullet-Network/dp/B003TWIOHC/ref=sr_1_2?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1360942972&sr=1-2

Go ahead, drill down all you want. Let me know where you find the answer.

Less than 5 minutes. Did a search for the product on google.
Page 5 (and part of 6) of the product specs state
... The camera comes with a short Ethernet cable and a double female adapter. It is possible (see user manual) to remove this short cable and plug the Ethernet cable from the router directly into the motherboard.
As you can see, it comes with a short ethernet cable and a female to female coupler, and you can safely not give a fuck cause it uses generics and standards.

Also, you referenced a listing, not an ad.

(1) You aren't Rootbeer, so we're still waiting for his response. (2) Rootbeer's claim was that one could drill down from the ad to find the specs, NOT that one could do a Google search for the specs. You didn't test that. (3) "Short" is not a length. You didn't actually find the specified length. (4) I'm not sure the line between "listing" and "ad" is as clear-cut as you think, but I do agree with you that an Amazon listing doesn't prove a point about sidebar ads or banner ads.

chubertdev · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

So I think that the moral of the story is that Dell doesn't care about people like Dell Hell, since they are by far in the minority, and if they did become customers, would probably be calling up Dell support ten times a day. Much better to not have those customers.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Dell Hell:
I especially (don't) love the "compare features" pages where you can pay $800 (excuse me, $799.83 -- those lower prices really fool people)

Not your main point, I know, but I often wonder about this. I'm sure we'll seen products priced at "9.99" or "89.95". Presumably the sellers think that if they charged $10.00, people would say, "Oh no, that's too expensive," but at $9.99 they'll say, "Yes, that's a reasonable price". Personally, when I see a price of $9.99, I read that, "ten dollars". But every retailer in the U.S. (I don't know about other countries) apparently "knows" that this works, because they all do it. Is there any evidence that it actually works? Has anyone ever done a study on it? Or is this just one of those ideas that floats around with zero evidence, repeated so often that it becomes common knowledge.

It would be easy enough to do an experiment. Get two different brands of the same basic product. Put them side by side on the shelf. For one charge $10, for the other charge $9.99. Compare sales of each. Then switch the prices. Do the relative sales change when the prices are switched?

Has anyone ever done that, or a similar experiment? I'm curious.

BTW, I once saw a big sign in a store that said, "On sale: $99.95. Regular price: $109.95". My immediate response was: This is obviously a bogus sale. No American retailer charges $109.95 for anything.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

foo:
foo:
http://smwcentral.net.
Interesting. Apparently you only need 1 char after the URL to make it no spam. Might be time to feature Akismet's algorithm on this site.

Yeah, this is all we need: make Akismet's tests tighter so it rejects more posts.

Next he goes to the IRS site and points out to them how he lied on his tax return and they didn't audit him.

dkf · 2013-02-15 Reply Admin

jay:
BTW, I once saw a big sign in a store that said, "On sale: $99.95. Regular price: $109.95". My immediate response was: This is obviously a bogus sale. No American retailer charges $109.95 for anything.

Yes, they do! At one tiny store in the middle of nowhere and with the only item on sale at that price hidden behind a locked door in a basement (with a sign marked "beware of the leopard" of course). Then, after doing that for the legal minimum, it's time to roll out the "Sale" signs.

What's more fascinating is when they put the price up and label it with "Sale". George Orwell was wrong only about one thing in "1984"; Big Brother isn't the government, Big Brother works in sales pushing cheap tat from China to idiots who can't read from one end of a sentence to the other.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

dkf:
read from one end of a sentence to the other.

What is your point about reading?

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

jay:
Dell Hell:
I especially (don't) love the "compare features" pages where you can pay $800 (excuse me, $799.83 -- those lower prices really fool people)

Not your main point, I know, but I often wonder about this. I'm sure we'll seen products priced at "9.99" or "89.95". Presumably the sellers think that if they charged $10.00, people would say, "Oh no, that's too expensive," but at $9.99 they'll say, "Yes, that's a reasonable price". Personally, when I see a price of $9.99, I read that, "ten dollars". But every retailer in the U.S. (I don't know about other countries) apparently "knows" that this works, because they all do it. Is there any evidence that it actually works? Has anyone ever done a study on it? Or is this just one of those ideas that floats around with zero evidence, repeated so often that it becomes common knowledge.

It would be easy enough to do an experiment. Get two different brands of the same basic product. Put them side by side on the shelf. For one charge $10, for the other charge $9.99. Compare sales of each. Then switch the prices. Do the relative sales change when the prices are switched?

Has anyone ever done that, or a similar experiment? I'm curious.

BTW, I once saw a big sign in a store that said, "On sale: $99.95. Regular price: $109.95". My immediate response was: This is obviously a bogus sale. No American retailer charges $109.95 for anything.

http://camden-sbc.rutgers.edu/facultystaff/research/schindler/Schindler%20%26%20Kibarian%20(1996).pdf

There was apparently a catalog study done by real scientists in 1996 where one printing had $x.99 prices, one had $x.88 prices, and one had had even dollar prices, and the .99 printing had an 8% gain in total demand compared to the other two.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Mr Minitel:
one printing had $x.99 prices, one had $x.88 prices, and one had had even dollar prices, and the .99 printing had an 8% gain in total demand compared to the other two.

There you have it folks. Scientific proof that humans are TRWTF.

Can I have my own planet now? Please??

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

Roger:
There you have it folks. Scientific proof that humans are TRWTF.
Can I have my own planet now? Please??

Sure thing. Take that one right there to the left. No, not that one. Just to the left of that second star. No, no, back... That one. It's all yours. Go.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

jay:
Not your main point, I know, but I often wonder about this. I'm sure we'll seen products priced at "9.99" or "89.95". Presumably the sellers think that if they charged $10.00, people would say, "Oh no, that's too expensive," but at $9.99 they'll say, "Yes, that's a reasonable price". Personally, when I see a price of $9.99, I read that, "ten dollars".

Me too, but I sometimes get trapped when adding such prices. E.g. 6.99 and 3.99 by themselves I read as 7 and 4. But when I consider the total, I sometimes mistakenly think of 9.99, i.e. 10 instead of 11. Perhaps it's just me, but it might indicate such prices are more effective when you have to add them a lot, like in supermarkets.

2013-02-15 Reply Admin

TRWTF is using Microsoft Office to generate HTML ...

2013-02-16 Reply Admin

12/31/1899, actually. TRWTF is that in the past 40 years, not a single person has apparently ever thought that maybe - fucking MAYBE - we should stop using stupid-ass dates for magic numbers.

Because really, anyone who thinks we're NOT going to still be using Access in 9000 years has never worked with an Enterprise.

2013-02-16 Reply Admin

TRWTF is test dressing. Who wants it? All it does is prevent wardrobe malfunctions.

2013-02-16 Reply Admin

My laptop was better than Dell's too.

2013-02-16 Reply Admin

I would have figured Base64 was closer to Welsh myself.

2013-02-16 Reply Admin

faoileag:
Well, GMail is a Google product and Google is extremely clever - of course it does not think that Base64 is Finnish!
But I'm sure that deep in that Base64 encoded bit of HTML/XML (I didn't decode more than the first few bytes) there is some string literal that actually represents a finnish word. Like "on". Or "koko". Or "tavallisesti".

And if you let it translate to English, it will give you a base64 encoding of an English version of the text.

no laughing matter · 2013-02-16 Reply Admin

Paul Neumann:
Roger:
There you have it folks. Scientific proof that humans are TRWTF.
Can I have my own planet now? Please??
Sure thing. Take that one right there to the left. No, not that one. Just to the left of that second star. No, no, back... That one. It's all yours. Go.

Of course it's only yours if you pay it first, and it might be a bit costly.

But we have a special offer this week:

Death Star on sale, only for $US15,602,022,489,829,821,422,840,226.99!

Matt Westwood · 2013-02-17 Reply Admin

jay:
Dell Hell:
I especially (don't) love the "compare features" pages where you can pay $800 (excuse me, $799.83 -- those lower prices really fool people)

Not your main point, I know, but I often wonder about this. I'm sure we'll seen products priced at "9.99" or "89.95". Presumably the sellers think that if they charged $10.00, people would say, "Oh no, that's too expensive," but at $9.99 they'll say, "Yes, that's a reasonable price". Personally, when I see a price of $9.99, I read that, "ten dollars". But every retailer in the U.S. (I don't know about other countries) apparently "knows" that this works, because they all do it. Is there any evidence that it actually works? Has anyone ever done a study on it? Or is this just one of those ideas that floats around with zero evidence, repeated so often that it becomes common knowledge.

It would be easy enough to do an experiment. Get two different brands of the same basic product. Put them side by side on the shelf. For one charge $10, for the other charge $9.99. Compare sales of each. Then switch the prices. Do the relative sales change when the prices are switched?

Has anyone ever done that, or a similar experiment? I'm curious.

BTW, I once saw a big sign in a store that said, "On sale: $99.95. Regular price: $109.95". My immediate response was: This is obviously a bogus sale. No American retailer charges $109.95 for anything.

The .99 technique is done so routinely in the UK that people no longer notice it. I's not only the big supermarkets, but also the small retailers.

A friend of mine owned a new-age bookstore some years ago - lovely place it was. She also operated the same pricing policy. I asked her: you're always complaining about having to fiddle around with tiny coins - so why do you price this pack of tarot cards at £12.99? I believe the answer she finally came up with was that her superstitious customers would balk at having to pay £13, which I had to admit was a completely rational answer - selling her stock was more important than saving the hassle of making sure she had a trayful of pennies in her till.

Matt Westwood · 2013-02-17 Reply Admin

jay:
foo:
foo:
http://smwcentral.net.
Interesting. Apparently you only need 1 char after the URL to make it no spam. Might be time to feature Akismet's algorithm on this site.

Yeah, this is all we need: make Akismet's tests tighter so it rejects more posts.

Next he goes to the IRS site and points out to them how he lied on his tax return and they didn't audit him.

Maybe he's the man whose neck is underneath the guillotine blade who says, "Hang on, there's a knot in the rope."

2013-02-17 Reply Admin

jay:
Next he goes to the IRS site and points out to them how he lied on his tax return and they didn't audit him.

I wish. I testified in court that I lied on US tax returns after the US government told me it was required. Where the jurat says to the best of my knowledge and belief all attachments are true and correct, and I knew some were not true, the law requires signing it anyway. I did that too late. I had already made the mistake of telling the truth on earlier returns, which is automatically considered frivolous, and I had already been accused of fraud because withholding had been stolen, but I had not known the reason. I'll take audits any day. In an audit at least they say what lies have to be signed and it gets taken care of in a timely manner. In an audit you have appeal rights before deadlines expire.

2013-02-17 Reply Admin

I don't see enough vowels for it to be Welsh!!

It certainly isn't Finnish, no -kokinhän ending!

2013-02-17 Reply Admin

good to know I was not the only one crazy enough to type the first characters from the image into b64decode -r.

Too bad we cannot paste. Might as well be finnish text inside, in which case google would have been right ;)

2013-02-17 Reply Admin

jay:
Dell Hell:
I especially (don't) love the "compare features" pages where you can pay $800 (excuse me, $799.83 -- those lower prices really fool people)

Not your main point, I know, but I often wonder about this. I'm sure we'll seen products priced at "9.99" or "89.95". Presumably the sellers think that if they charged $10.00, people would say, "Oh no, that's too expensive," but at $9.99 they'll say, "Yes, that's a reasonable price". Personally, when I see a price of $9.99, I read that, "ten dollars". But every retailer in the U.S. (I don't know about other countries) apparently "knows" that this works, because they all do it. Is there any evidence that it actually works? Has anyone ever done a study on it? Or is this just one of those ideas that floats around with zero evidence, repeated so often that it becomes common knowledge.

It would be easy enough to do an experiment. Get two different brands of the same basic product. Put them side by side on the shelf. For one charge $10, for the other charge $9.99. Compare sales of each. Then switch the prices. Do the relative sales change when the prices are switched?

Has anyone ever done that, or a similar experiment? I'm curious.

BTW, I once saw a big sign in a store that said, "On sale: $99.95. Regular price: $109.95". My immediate response was: This is obviously a bogus sale. No American retailer charges $109.95 for anything.

Pretty sure (can't find a reference to cite) it was well researched and really used to work - particularly with bigger figures say buying a car).

Recently, I've seen 2 differing approaches - one is a store that now doesn't bother with cent amounts other than 50 (so everything is either a round dollar amount or x.50) and another which seems to be keen on : 12,83 and 88 - especially 83 - eg $7.83 - I suspect this is a subtle way of doing the .99 that consumers notice less.....

I've also noticed supermarkets now vary the last digit of products, but I assumed (given that we no longer have 1c and 2c cash, so cash payments are rounded) that this was to stop people counting items to always guarantee a 2c round-down.

Sidenote: When the rounding was first implemented, there was at least 1 store that used to round-down regardless. They once advertised kiwi-fruit at 9c each, and my parents had a group of us going through 1 at a time (several times) to save a whopping 80c...... (I'm not sure how much of that was "times were tougher" and how much was just an "on principle")

Base64 encoding is actually Finnish?

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