The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

levbor · 2014-02-13 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
The unique vacancy one is probably seeking mugs to be unwitting front-men for some sort of fraud. It will be related to the money-forwarding "opportunities" that leave the forwarder open to criminal money laundering charges and/or cheque-bouncing problems.

My guess is that you have to buy from them a unique "spammer starter kit", and then don't hear from them again.

2014-02-13 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
anonymous:
DWalker:
Yep. If someone takes a screenshot and pastes it into Word, that's fine with me. When I take a screenshot, I paste it into Irfanview and crop the part I want to keep, then save the file as (usually) a JPG.
I don't fault non-technical users for pasting a screenshot into Word.
The only right way to take a screenshot is to paste it into Paint and save as a PNG.

That's where I've been going wrong all this time. I've been saving it as a jpg, not a png.

It's easy to get elitist about what tools are being used. IN extreme cases it's "What, you mean you don't use Notepad++? What sort of neanderthal are you?"

Cue the "real programmers use" xkcd cartoon.

I was trolling a bit with the claim that Paint is the "real" tool to use, but (especially in Vista and on) it's actually quite appropriate for doing what I said. (Cropping images was a bitch in Paint on XP and previous, but the new version that shipped in Vista had a built-in "crop" function.)

It loads quickly and it saves as PNG - those are the two main qualities that I want when I'm trying to save a screenshot. Anything more complicated gets a more complicated tool, but if I just want a screenshot, it's hard to beat Paint.

2014-02-13 Reply Admin

&#3f = ?

Bobby Tables · 2014-02-13 Reply Admin

anonymous:
Matt Westwood:
anonymous:
DWalker:
Yep. If someone takes a screenshot and pastes it into Word, that's fine with me. When I take a screenshot, I paste it into Irfanview and crop the part I want to keep, then save the file as (usually) a JPG.
I don't fault non-technical users for pasting a screenshot into Word.
The only right way to take a screenshot is to paste it into Paint and save as a PNG.

That's where I've been going wrong all this time. I've been saving it as a jpg, not a png.

It's easy to get elitist about what tools are being used. IN extreme cases it's "What, you mean you don't use Notepad++? What sort of neanderthal are you?"

Cue the "real programmers use" xkcd cartoon.
I was trolling a bit with the claim that Paint is the "real" tool to use, but (especially in Vista and on) it's actually quite appropriate for doing what I said. (Cropping images was a bitch in Paint on XP and previous, but the new version that shipped in Vista had a built-in "crop" function.)

It loads quickly and it saves as PNG - those are the two main qualities that I want when I'm trying to save a screenshot. Anything more complicated gets a more complicated tool, but if I just want a screenshot, it's hard to beat Paint.

I use Gadwin PrintScreen - saves me the trouble of having to open Paint and the overhead of pasting. You just keep hitting the print screen button (which is also configurable in it) and it saves images in a directory of your choosing. It has a minimum number of options you probably need to set up once - where to save the images, what to call them (if you care - I just look at them or look at the creation time), what to save them as, do you want it to capture the full screen, the window or the content of the window (also - you can get a custom rectangular area capture but whatever - I fine window to be sufficient) and if you want preview before saving. That's pretty much it.

2014-02-13 Reply Admin

Bobby Tables:
anonymous:
Matt Westwood:
anonymous:
DWalker:
Yep. If someone takes a screenshot and pastes it into Word, that's fine with me. When I take a screenshot, I paste it into Irfanview and crop the part I want to keep, then save the file as (usually) a JPG.
I don't fault non-technical users for pasting a screenshot into Word.
The only right way to take a screenshot is to paste it into Paint and save as a PNG.

That's where I've been going wrong all this time. I've been saving it as a jpg, not a png.

It's easy to get elitist about what tools are being used. IN extreme cases it's "What, you mean you don't use Notepad++? What sort of neanderthal are you?"

Cue the "real programmers use" xkcd cartoon.
I was trolling a bit with the claim that Paint is the "real" tool to use, but (especially in Vista and on) it's actually quite appropriate for doing what I said. (Cropping images was a bitch in Paint on XP and previous, but the new version that shipped in Vista had a built-in "crop" function.)

It loads quickly and it saves as PNG - those are the two main qualities that I want when I'm trying to save a screenshot. Anything more complicated gets a more complicated tool, but if I just want a screenshot, it's hard to beat Paint.

I use Gadwin PrintScreen - saves me the trouble of having to open Paint and the overhead of pasting. You just keep hitting the print screen button (which is also configurable in it) and it saves images in a directory of your choosing. It has a minimum number of options you probably need to set up once - where to save the images, what to call them (if you care - I just look at them or look at the creation time), what to save them as, do you want it to capture the full screen, the window or the content of the window (also - you can get a custom rectangular area capture but whatever - I fine window to be sufficient) and if you want preview before saving. That's pretty much it.

That's fine for you, but I have a problem with installing a third-party tool that simply duplicates what Windows can already do, and doesn't really do it any better.

If I was going to take a bunch of screenshots, it might make sense to have a tool that saved them automatically, but in general I'm going to need to tweak it anyway and the tool won't make it any faster.

2014-02-13 Reply Admin

Bobby Tables:
anonymous:
Matt Westwood:
anonymous:
DWalker:
Yep. If someone takes a screenshot and pastes it into Word, that's fine with me. When I take a screenshot, I paste it into Irfanview and crop the part I want to keep, then save the file as (usually) a JPG.
I don't fault non-technical users for pasting a screenshot into Word.
The only right way to take a screenshot is to paste it into Paint and save as a PNG.

That's where I've been going wrong all this time. I've been saving it as a jpg, not a png.

It's easy to get elitist about what tools are being used. IN extreme cases it's "What, you mean you don't use Notepad++? What sort of neanderthal are you?"

Cue the "real programmers use" xkcd cartoon.
I was trolling a bit with the claim that Paint is the "real" tool to use, but (especially in Vista and on) it's actually quite appropriate for doing what I said. (Cropping images was a bitch in Paint on XP and previous, but the new version that shipped in Vista had a built-in "crop" function.)

It loads quickly and it saves as PNG - those are the two main qualities that I want when I'm trying to save a screenshot. Anything more complicated gets a more complicated tool, but if I just want a screenshot, it's hard to beat Paint.

I use Gadwin PrintScreen - saves me the trouble of having to open Paint and the overhead of pasting. You just keep hitting the print screen button (which is also configurable in it) and it saves images in a directory of your choosing. It has a minimum number of options you probably need to set up once - where to save the images, what to call them (if you care - I just look at them or look at the creation time), what to save them as, do you want it to capture the full screen, the window or the content of the window (also - you can get a custom rectangular area capture but whatever - I fine window to be sufficient) and if you want preview before saving. That's pretty much it.

It's extremely rare that one wants to capture the entire screen. In my own case I prefer that the recipient of my screenshots (be they customer, manager or underlings, whatever) see only the contents of the screen relating to the problem in hand. The taskbar at the bottom and its current contents, for example, are none of their business.

However, the technique "print-screen and paste-into-Paint" (simple and intellectually obvious that it is) suffers from the fact that you have to change menu to zoom out so as to be able to crop the screen, and then change menu again to select the "crop" tool. Saving the screen is then also more work than it needs to be. But as a technique it works.

2014-02-13 Reply Admin

QJo:
However, the technique "print-screen and paste-into-Paint" (simple and intellectually obvious that it is) suffers from the fact that you have to change menu to zoom out so as to be able to crop the screen, and then change menu again to select the "crop" tool. Saving the screen is then also more work than it needs to be. But as a technique it *works*.

Use Alt+Print Screen to capture the active window. In general, if I maximize Paint, I won't ever need to zoom out, so I can just paste, highlight, and crop. It's pretty painless, especially compared to the previous version of Paint, which didn't have an actual crop function.

2014-02-13 Reply Admin

To explain the Wells Fargo email a bit, it is common for customers to have multiple accounts, including some accounts jointly held with a spouse or a child. Each account has its own profile, which includes email account information - multiple emails for joint account. Each person also has a main customer record, with additional details, including a main email contact address.

So what likely happened was that this person's old email address on an account was returned, so Wells Fargo sent an email to that customer using the (other, working) email listed in the customer file.

Another scenario is that joint account had multiple emails, one of which was no longer working.

Having a lot of Wells Fargo products, I get this on occasion, mainly when my son or wife abandon one of their email accounts.

chubertdev · 2014-02-13 Reply Admin

I think that you guys are losing focus a bit. The conversation at hand was more about what's easiest to get someone else to take a screen shot in, not what you would take one in.

2014-02-13 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
I think that you guys are losing focus a bit. The conversation at hand was more about what's easiest to get someone else to take a screen shot in, not what you would take one in.

In that case, a good (readable) shot from an iPhone is about all you can really ask for.

chubertdev · 2014-02-13 Reply Admin

anonymous:
chubertdev:
I think that you guys are losing focus a bit. The conversation at hand was more about what's easiest to get someone else to take a screen shot in, not what you would take one in.
In that case, a good (readable) shot from an iPhone is about all you can really ask for.

From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: screen shot

Body: unable to take screen shot, i don't have an iphone. plz send me one.

2014-02-13 Reply Admin

swschrad:
I'm sorry, all comments must be in the form of a question...

Do they?

chubertdev · 2014-02-13 Reply Admin

I can't believe that no one has done this yet:

[Zoolander]What is this, a screenshot for ants?!?[/Zoolander]

2014-02-14 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
anonymous:
chubertdev:
I think that you guys are losing focus a bit. The conversation at hand was more about what's easiest to get someone else to take a screen shot in, not what you would take one in.
In that case, a good (readable) shot from an iPhone is about all you can really ask for.

From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: screen shot

Body: unable to take screen shot, i don't have an iphone. plz send me one.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: screen shot [24773488]

Body:
Your issue #24773488 has been assigned to a help desk technician.

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: screen shot [24773488]

Body:
Ticket closed: This is intended behavior. Please submit another helpdesk ticket if you continue to have problems with your iphone.

2014-02-14 Reply Admin

All this nonsense about screenshotting, and not a single mention of the snipping tool built into windows.

2014-02-16 Reply Admin

QJo:
Bobby Tables:
anonymous:
Matt Westwood:
anonymous:
DWalker:
Yep. If someone takes a screenshot and pastes it into Word, that's fine with me. When I take a screenshot, I paste it into Irfanview and crop the part I want to keep, then save the file as (usually) a JPG.
I don't fault non-technical users for pasting a screenshot into Word.
The only right way to take a screenshot is to paste it into Paint and save as a PNG.

That's where I've been going wrong all this time. I've been saving it as a jpg, not a png.

It's easy to get elitist about what tools are being used. IN extreme cases it's "What, you mean you don't use Notepad++? What sort of neanderthal are you?"

Cue the "real programmers use" xkcd cartoon.
I was trolling a bit with the claim that Paint is the "real" tool to use, but (especially in Vista and on) it's actually quite appropriate for doing what I said. (Cropping images was a bitch in Paint on XP and previous, but the new version that shipped in Vista had a built-in "crop" function.)

It loads quickly and it saves as PNG - those are the two main qualities that I want when I'm trying to save a screenshot. Anything more complicated gets a more complicated tool, but if I just want a screenshot, it's hard to beat Paint.

I use Gadwin PrintScreen - saves me the trouble of having to open Paint and the overhead of pasting. You just keep hitting the print screen button (which is also configurable in it) and it saves images in a directory of your choosing. It has a minimum number of options you probably need to set up once - where to save the images, what to call them (if you care - I just look at them or look at the creation time), what to save them as, do you want it to capture the full screen, the window or the content of the window (also - you can get a custom rectangular area capture but whatever - I fine window to be sufficient) and if you want preview before saving. That's pretty much it.

It's extremely rare that one wants to capture the entire screen. In my own case I prefer that the recipient of my screenshots (be they customer, manager or underlings, whatever) see only the contents of the screen relating to the problem in hand. The taskbar at the bottom and its current contents, for example, are none of their business.

However, the technique "print-screen and paste-into-Paint" (simple and intellectually obvious that it is) suffers from the fact that you have to change menu to zoom out so as to be able to crop the screen, and then change menu again to select the "crop" tool. Saving the screen is then also more work than it needs to be. But as a technique it works.

Bah, REAL users do their screen shots this way:

http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.php?m=199801 (see "Taking a Shot at It") http://www.techtales.com/tftechs.php?m=200411 (see "The 12gauge of Doom and FootBox", #1)

Steve The Cynic · 2014-02-17 Reply Admin

levbor:
Steve The Cynic:
The unique vacancy one is probably seeking mugs to be unwitting front-men for some sort of fraud. It will be related to the money-forwarding "opportunities" that leave the forwarder open to criminal money laundering charges and/or cheque-bouncing problems.
My guess is that you have to buy from them a unique "spammer starter kit", and then don't hear from them again.

The money-forwarding frauds operate something like this:

The mug receives a cheque to deposit in his account.
The mug executes a wire transfer to an account somewhere in a nice non-corrupt country - candidates I've heard of include various ex-Soviet states.
After the wire transfer completes, the mug discovers that the cheque was either stolen, forged, or bouncy. Either way, the powers-that-be come looking for him, not the owner of the target account.

redtetrahedron · 2014-02-17 Reply Admin

ted:
All this nonsense about screenshotting, and not a single mention of the snipping tool built into windows.

+1

2014-02-17 Reply Admin

200+ hundred million euros is an erogenous amount to me.

2014-02-18 Reply Admin

ted:
All this nonsense about screenshotting, and not a single mention of the snipping tool built into windows.

Excellent. How do I use the snipping tool in Windows XP Professional SP3?

2014-02-21 Reply Admin

mick:
The error is within Java (and other languages) because of the implementation of floating point.

Not to mention the erroneous hardware and crazy mathematicians behind all this nonsensical theory of binary floating point numbers!

2014-03-27 Reply Admin

klc:
I actively encourage my clients to paste their screenshots into Word. Why? Because when you do that, Word preserves the scaling information and I can blow it up and see the thing they are trying to point out.
The alternative is that I get a screenshot of a full size window on a 24" monitor embedded into an email message using Outlook. Outlook doesn't preserve the scaling info and it's impossible to see the tiny message.

So apologies for creating a user base that does screenshots with Word, but it really is a useful tool. It's speedy to do and it uses tools the client is mostly familiar with. I do sometimes manage to teach them how to take a screenshot of the "active" window, but I'm happy enough to get a peek at the error message if it's legible.

Are you actually a developer? The phrase "preserve the scaling info" makes no sense. And have you tried opening images attached to emails in an actual image viewer, instead of Outlook itself?

2014-04-14 Reply Admin

brian:
klc:
I actively encourage my clients to paste their screenshots into Word. Why? Because when you do that, Word preserves the scaling information and I can blow it up and see the thing they are trying to point out.
The alternative is that I get a screenshot of a full size window on a 24" monitor embedded into an email message using Outlook. Outlook doesn't preserve the scaling info and it's impossible to see the tiny message.

So apologies for creating a user base that does screenshots with Word, but it really is a useful tool. It's speedy to do and it uses tools the client is mostly familiar with. I do sometimes manage to teach them how to take a screenshot of the "active" window, but I'm happy enough to get a peek at the error message if it's legible.

Are you actually a developer? The phrase "preserve the scaling info" makes no sense. And have you tried opening images attached to emails in an actual image viewer, instead of Outlook itself?

Outlook resizes large embedded images to fit the width of the e-mail viewer window, and doesn't let you zoom in. You can't directly open the picture or even drag it to your desktop - you have to right-click and "save as picture" before you can open it in something that lets you zoom in to 100%.

And since the image is "embedded" (Insert Picture) rather than "attached" (Attach File), it's hidden from the list of attachments, which at least would work sanely (double-click to open, drag-and-drop works fine).

Best of Email: A Bad Opportunity, Bad English, Bad Math & More!

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