The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Garrison Fiord:
Duh, have you ever worked in a professional environment? TO is when you want someone to respond, CC is when you want to FYI someone, whereas the TO contains the real person who should answer the question. BCC is when you want to include someone (that you trust, for laughs) on the idiocy of the original writer's email.

In my experience BCC: is for when you want to send the email to someone without the TO: recipient knowing anything about it. As in, you respond to (and quote) your boss's totally inappropriate suggestive email, politely-but-firmly declining by saying, "I won't be able to join you at the nudist camp this weekend due to a planned outing with my spouse and kids - but I hope you have a nice time!" and BCC: the VP in charge of HR. Now your butt's covered even if your boss's isn't.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Luddite:
sibtrag:
we need 3 company car for bug hunt on Monday
Perhaps they develop automotive software.
That's it! I'm heading deep into the mountains where there are no roads. So long and thanks for all the fish.

Heading to the mountains - good trick there, for a dolphin.

Share and enjoy.

:-)

(CAPTCHA: laoreet - a Laotian parakeet)

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

NaN (Not a Name):
AGray:
Pero Perić:
Mark Bowytz:
PAGE SOURCE COMMENT
At my job, we use crossbows to hunt bugs. And sometimes blamebat.

In Texas, we hunt bugs with guns.

Like in the video game Redneck Rampage

Aah, but you forget: I too am in IT, and I satisfy the "IT Nerd" stereotype.

Thus, that's the game they play with me. :(

chubertdev · 2012-10-04 Reply Admin

TRWTF is using BCC instead of a distribution list

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

AGray:
Pero Perić:
Mark Bowytz:
PAGE SOURCE COMMENT
At my job, we use crossbows to hunt bugs. And sometimes blamebat.

In Texas, we hunt bugs with guns.

HAIL! ANYONE can use a gun to hunt bugs! In Texas we hunt bugs with out bare hands...and teeth...and then we EAT 'EM!! Even though they're BIGGER'N US!!! RAW!!!! 'Cuz we's from TEXAS!!!!!

Soooo-eeeeee! PIG!!

(What? That's not the Texas football chant? Oh, dear...)

(CAPTCHA: quis - I wasn't paying attention, so got a zero on the quis)

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

JJ:
In Soviet Union, bug hunts you.

Bug? Is funny name for KGB. ???

CAPTCHA: oppeto - Oppeto the door, I wantogo out)

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Ol' Bob:
AGray:
Pero Perić:
Mark Bowytz:
PAGE SOURCE COMMENT
At my job, we use crossbows to hunt bugs. And sometimes blamebat.

In Texas, we hunt bugs with guns.

HAIL! ANYONE can use a gun to hunt bugs! In Texas we hunt bugs with out bare hands...and teeth...and then we EAT 'EM!! Even though they're BIGGER'N US!!! RAW!!!! 'Cuz we's from TEXAS!!!!!

Soooo-eeeeee! PIG!!

(What? That's not the Texas football chant? Oh, dear...)

(CAPTCHA: quis - I wasn't paying attention, so got a zero on the quis)

Join the band, see the world. It's not just an extracurricular activity; it's an -adventure!-

CAPTCHA: ludus - I think I managed to make this discussion become quite ludus!

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Katniss? Is that you?

No, I use a bow instead. And thanks for getting my sister killed, jerk!

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Ken B:
Shachar:
I'm the original poster. ... I'll just point out that the grammar errors are, probably, because the company policy is to issue all emails in English, despite the fact that our R&D is located in Israel, where almost everyone know English to some degree, but very few know it well. Some would say this is TRWTF, and I can't even say particularly disagree.
Everyone knows that the Internet works in left-to-right only. If you were to try sending an e-mail in Hebrew, you'd have to reverse the polarity on every router on the net. Anyone who's seen "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun" knows that this often doesn't end well.

OMG, what a blast from the past. Thanks for that!

Apologies for a serious response: http://emailcharter.org/

סבא שלי כבוד כבושים על חשבון גדול

CAPTCHA: inhibeo

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

I'm enjoying the comment thread way too much to spoil it by saying what the bug hunt really meant. I think I'll come back in 24 hours and fill you all in, if anyone is really interested.
I'll just point out that the grammar errors are, probably, because the company policy is to issue all emails in English, despite the fact that our R&D is located in Israel,

So.. you're hunting Palestinians eh?

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Remy Porter:
The only time I format/write at the same time is when I'm using Word's outline mode, and that's only for specific work documents that actually map to that structure. Rest of the time, it's text first, formatting second.

\

You seem to be laboring under the curious delusion that substance is more important than style. We'll never make a politician out of you.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Remy Porter:
The only time I format/write at the same time is when I'm using Word's outline mode, and that's only for specific work documents that actually map to that structure. Rest of the time, it's text first, formatting second.

A bad plan with a good Powerpoint presentation beats a good plan with a bad Powerpoint presentation every time.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Katniss Everdeen:
Katniss? Is that you?

No, I use a bow instead. And thanks for getting my sister killed, jerk!

Since we're on the Katniss jokes: http://youtu.be/QjGk_jU6t5A

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

immitto:
Why does CC even exist? Doesn't it make more sense to have just TO and BCC?

CC exists so that a recipient can know who is "in the loop" -- and thus needn't forward the message on to a common person.

For example, if a construction-worker found out that his load of steel-girders for the big building was right on the low-end of the durability specifications he might send a message to: the architect/engineer, the lawyer, and his supervisor notifying them all of the situation and asking for their input on using the possibly questionable materials.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

BCC is also used for the private notification of security personnel.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

My favorite BCC WTF was the version of cc:Mail (by Lotus) for Mac in the early 1990's that included the Bcc header and all of its recipients.

Glad I learned that in a received email, and not a sent mail...

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Ol' Bob:
I won't be able to join you at the nudist camp this weekend due to a planned outing with my spouse and kids

Duh. Take the spouse and kids to the nudist "camp". (I don't think they really camp there.) Show some creativity! Synergize! Think outside the box! Demonstrate your resourcefulness in meeting company priorities etc. etc.

This is why those who aren't "team players" don't make as much salary.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

The BCC is for your CYA offsite e-mail account where you keep a copy of everything you send.

da Doctah · 2012-10-04 Reply Admin

AGray:
Pero Perić:
At my job, we use crossbows to hunt bugs. And sometimes blamebat.

In Texas, we hunt bugs with guns.

We hunt big bugs in the big bug bog where they beg, with big bog bug bags.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Joe:
Shachar:
our R&D is located in Israel

So the point of asking everyone in the global company for a car to be provided for an event in Israel is... Ah, right. Well, I'm up for a road trip, I'll get on the next US-Israel ferry.

--Joe

That's not as silly as "It's my birthday - cake at kitchen", or "Today's my last day, chocolates at kitchen" emails sent to that very same mailing list.

In fact, we have an "official presence" in a country that is actually an employee that runs things from his own home. He actually sent a "I'm leaving, I'm sure there are some chocolates in my kitchen somewhere, if you happen to be around" email about a month ago...

Shachar

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

barfo rama:
סבא שלי כבוד כבושים על חשבון גדול

Wha?

Or, as we say here in Israel: הא?

Shachar

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Mark Bowytz:
TFA:
Don't forget, The Daily WTF loves terrible emails articles. Got one your self?

Here's one.

No kidding.

Maybe my new username will mean I won't get my post deleted.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Pretty close. Obviously, YOU have worked in an office environment.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Garrison Fiord:
Duh, have you ever worked in a professional environment? TO is when you want someone to respond, CC is when you want to FYI someone, whereas the TO contains the real person who should answer the question. BCC is when you want to include someone (that you trust, for laughs) on the idiocy of the original writer's email.

BCC is stupid. If you ever want to copy someone blindly, forward them the email after you send it, so that it's clear that they're blind - and so their Reply-All doesn't go to the world....

There is nothing more embarassing than having someone reply all to an email you BCC'd them on!!!

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

I fix for you:
Garrison Fiord:
Duh, have you ever worked in a professional environment? TO is when you want someone to respond, CC is when you want to FYI someone, whereas the TO contains the real person who should answer the question. BCC is when you want to include someone (that you trust, for laughs) on the idiocy of the original writer's email.
BCC is stupid. If you ever want to copy someone blindly, forward them the email after you send it, so that it's clear that they're blind - and so their Reply-All doesn't go to the world....
There is [b[little[/b] more embarassing than having someone reply all to an email you BCC'd them on!!!

FTFM

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Ralph:
Cbuttius:
Remember that Microsoft was developing their products for exactly that purpose, i.e. the casual writer.
Then why do they keep adding umpty-gazillion features that nobody uses?
Oh yeah I remember now. So they can force everyone to keep buying the same thing over and over when they change document formats.

Only two types of people use MS office products: blissfully ignorant and masochistically idiotic.

"But we just can't switch to something free because the underline button isn't in exactly the same place!" /whine

Right, but we can totally throw away the familiar look and feel of all the menus and toolbars and make a convoluted completely new set of keystrokes to learn and people will swallow deeply and keep sucking hard.

I think that's a bit OTT.

I [strikeout]happily[strikeout] ambivalently use Word for documentation. Most of its annoyingness can be switched off if needed (some of the auto-format is inconsistent, and you need to be prepared for headaches if you try to use tables). I tried StarOffice (a predecessor of LibreOffice) years ago, and although it was no worse than Word, it was no better either, and the auto-correction was wrong in a different way - so I stayed with what I knew. As Word is broadly available in my office, and I'm not producing massive publications (just Memos/Briefs and basic SDLC documentation) Word is perfectly adequate and can even forced to be reasonably presentable most of the time.

Of course, as with everyone else in the world, I find the post 2010 MS interface (with icons and toolbars rather than menus) somewhat cumbersome, but I guess it's just a matter of getting used to it....

I'm not a massive fan of MS, but I have to say (with perhaps the exception of Access** and Publisher) the Office software that they produce is (in most cases) perfectly adequate for most office tasks....

**Before using Access, always ask yourself "Can the same thing be done in Excel?". If the answer is "Yes", then use Excel. If the answer is "No", then consider what type of software you really need - If you really need a DBMS, then get a DBMS.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Ol' Bob:
Garrison Fiord:
Duh, have you ever worked in a professional environment? TO is when you want someone to respond, CC is when you want to FYI someone, whereas the TO contains the real person who should answer the question. BCC is when you want to include someone (that you trust, for laughs) on the idiocy of the original writer's email.

In my experience BCC: is for when you want to send the email to someone without the TO: recipient knowing anything about it. As in, you respond to (and quote) your boss's totally inappropriate suggestive email, politely-but-firmly declining by saying, "I won't be able to join you at the nudist camp this weekend due to a planned outing with my spouse and kids - but I hope you have a nice time!" and BCC: the VP in charge of HR. Now your butt's covered even if your boss's isn't.

Nope. Even in this case you are better off forwarding the original email to the VP. BCC is FUCKING DANGEROUS because the BCC'd don't always realise that they're BCC's and might reply....

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

I fix for you:
Ol' Bob:
Garrison Fiord:
Duh, have you ever worked in a professional environment? TO is when you want someone to respond, CC is when you want to FYI someone, whereas the TO contains the real person who should answer the question. BCC is when you want to include someone (that you trust, for laughs) on the idiocy of the original writer's email.

In my experience BCC: is for when you want to send the email to someone without the TO: recipient knowing anything about it. As in, you respond to (and quote) your boss's totally inappropriate suggestive email, politely-but-firmly declining by saying, "I won't be able to join you at the nudist camp this weekend due to a planned outing with my spouse and kids - but I hope you have a nice time!" and BCC: the VP in charge of HR. Now your butt's covered even if your boss's isn't.
Nope. Even in this case you are better off forwarding the original email to the VP. BCC is FUCKING DANGEROUS because the BCC'd don't always realise that they're BCC's and might reply....

although a good trick is to add a directive to someone not on the CC list so people assume there's BCC's - especially with a cryptic comment that makes people think you playing games behind their back, eg:

From: I fix for you
Sent: 12th Oct 2011 9:20 PM
To: SMITH John; JONES Michael
Cc: JOHNSON Steve
Subject: Ongoing issues in SIT

Hi John/Michael,

Regarding the incidents reported this last week in the testing environments, it seems someone's been messing around with some of the configuration files under /export/home/appuser.

Colin:  Make sure keystroke monitoring is switched on for all dev accounts for this week on the SIT servers.

Warmest Regards,

I fix for you

Silverhill · 2012-10-04 Reply Admin

vereor:
CRAP, CRAP, FUCKING CRAP

FYI: The comments are supposed to be about the article, instead of just yourself. But even then, you should post something new; we already understood your self-image.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Stan:
The BCC is for your CYA offsite e-mail account where you keep a copy of everything you send.

Yeah,

Can't trust that "Sent Mail" folder as much as I can trust that offshore ISP....

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

I have fond memories of a career-limiting feature in Lotus Notes where the "Reply" button sometimes, but not always, but quite often, does a "Reply to all".

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

I fix for you:
although a good trick is to add a directive to someone not on the CC list so people assume there's BCC's - especially with a cryptic comment that makes people think you playing games behind their back...

I disagree. If I see you mention someone by name without including them in the TO or CC field, I think you are an idiot who forgot to include the person you mentioned.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or just another bug hunt? ;)

Silverhill · 2012-10-04 Reply Admin

MBA:
The ideal candidate must have the following skills: SHORT JOB DESCRIPTION.

I have that skill!

Job == coder/developer. Pay == not enough. Prospects == abysmal.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

Cbuttius:
I also once worked on converting between Quark Express and RTF, which was supposed to be a "portable standard" and realised even back in 1996 that RTF should really have been called WTF as it essentially was Word, with all its features and no features outside of it.

Having built software to produce RTF files, I completely agree, RTF == WTF.

The only thing more WTF than the format is the specification.

Cbuttius:
I also noted that stylesheets were never implemented properly and that Word produced very bloated RTF when you saved in that format and I was able to produce the same output with far less fuss.

No, it's not broken, the specification specifically states that both stylesheets and inline formatting should be used to preserve backwards compatibility. Kinda like using <FONT> tags with CSS so IE 2.0 can render your website.

(am I doing this right?) CAPTCHA: genitus - how intelligent I feel after working with RTF

scooby509 · 2012-10-04 Reply Admin

sunnyboy:
I don't completely agree.
TO is the person who you are supposed to send it to, and who is supposed to reply.

CC is often for the person with the authority to see that the "TO" person actually gets off their bottom and replies.

As for TO & BCC, I agree:

BCC is wonderful when you have to send to multiple persons but there may be FOIP (freedom of information) issues with revealing all the persons to one another (i.e. sending emails to a class of students).

You send it TO yourself and BCC all the students.

Somebody right now, right this INSTANT, give this man a fucking Nobel prize. He has unraveled the dark mysteries of how to address an email to multiple recipients.

...

Holy fuck, there are five more posts explaining proper email etiquette, as usual, the comments are TRWTF.

2012-10-04 Reply Admin

scooby509:
sunnyboy:
I don't completely agree.
TO is the person who you are supposed to send it to, and who is supposed to reply.

CC is often for the person with the authority to see that the "TO" person actually gets off their bottom and replies.

As for TO & BCC, I agree:

BCC is wonderful when you have to send to multiple persons but there may be FOIP (freedom of information) issues with revealing all the persons to one another (i.e. sending emails to a class of students).

You send it TO yourself and BCC all the students.

Somebody right now, right this INSTANT, give this man a fucking Nobel prize. He has unraveled the dark mysteries of how to address an email to multiple recipients.

...

Holy fuck, there are five more posts explaining proper email etiquette, as usual, the comments are TRWTF.

Why do you suppose there are so many so eager to educate on email etiquette? Perhaps because so many people know so little about it, and about how email works and how to work it? What if people who drive cars knew as little about how to operate the car as people who use email know about how to operate their email? Oh, wait... never mind.

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

bananas:
scooby509:
sunnyboy:
I don't completely agree.
TO is the person who you are supposed to send it to, and who is supposed to reply.

CC is often for the person with the authority to see that the "TO" person actually gets off their bottom and replies.

As for TO & BCC, I agree:

BCC is wonderful when you have to send to multiple persons but there may be FOIP (freedom of information) issues with revealing all the persons to one another (i.e. sending emails to a class of students).

You send it TO yourself and BCC all the students.

Somebody right now, right this INSTANT, give this man a fucking Nobel prize. He has unraveled the dark mysteries of how to address an email to multiple recipients.

...

Holy fuck, there are five more posts explaining proper email etiquette, as usual, the comments are TRWTF.
Why do you suppose there are so many so eager to educate on email etiquette? Perhaps because so many people know so little about it, and about how email works and how to work it? What if people who drive cars knew as little about how to operate the car as people who use email know about how to operate their email? Oh, wait... never mind.

Oh shite...don't open that can of worms....

There be plenty of people out there who be knowing (roughly) how to operate ye motor car. There be very few that understand the first thing about tha driving.

Oh wait, maybe that was your point.

I will go out on a limb and say that there are excackery 0 people out there who know how to use email properly. Even those of youse who is usin it rite for the most times will sometimes been fucking it up, ergo youse know shit....

Fark - now I soun d like that dumb Indian cunt

Steve The Cynic · 2012-10-05 Reply Admin

asd:
As Word is broadly available in my office, and I'm not producing massive publications (just Memos/Briefs and basic SDLC documentation) Word is perfectly adequate and can even forced to be reasonably presentable most of the time.

I don't think SDLC means what you think it does...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_Data_Link_Control

Sorry, showing my age again.

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

da Doctah:
AGray:
Pero Perić:
At my job, we use crossbows to hunt bugs. And sometimes blamebat.

In Texas, we hunt bugs with guns.

We hunt big bugs in the big bug bog where they beg, with big bog bug bags.

Bugger.

Cbuttius · 2012-10-05 Reply Admin

Ralph:
Then why do they keep adding umpty-gazillion features that nobody uses?
Oh yeah I remember now. So they can force everyone to keep buying the same thing over and over when they change document formats.

Only two types of people use MS office products: blissfully ignorant and masochistically idiotic.

"But we just can't switch to something free because the underline button isn't in exactly the same place!" /whine

Right, but we can totally throw away the familiar look and feel of all the menus and toolbars and make a convoluted completely new set of keystrokes to learn and people will swallow deeply and keep sucking hard.

WORD is the only simple document editor I have ever used that allows me to find/replace with tabs and newlines because I can enter ^p for paragraph, ^t for tab and ^l for newline.

I know there are regular expressions / sed replace etc. on some UNIX editors which enable you to do that too. Perhaps one day they'll actually put real regex/sed replacing in most regular editors.

Excel I find useful for casual data processing.

I don't know, however, why they are so driven to pushing stylesheets into the background so you can't find them. It does explain however why they haven't introduced "keep with previous" because it works well with stylesheets, when you wish to create a list with a heading and have the heading and all the list items on the same page (but don't care if there is a page break after the last list item).

Someone said they found tables messy but it would work well with a "shrink to fit" option, if they actually provided a decent implementation for text (much better than a text box) and tables are a far better way to format your document across columns (using hidden borders) than actual columns or typing in endless tab characters.

Cbuttius · 2012-10-05 Reply Admin

barfo rama:
סבא שלי כבוד כבושים על חשבון גדול

My grandfather honours (??) on a big budget.

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

Cbuttius:
barfo rama:
סבא שלי כבוד כבושים על חשבון גדול

My grandfather honours (??) on a big budget.

כבוד does indeed mean "honor", but is very explicitly a noun. Since "honors" is a verb, I don't think that is a good translation.

כבושים means either "occupied" or "pickled", depending on context. Since this is not a sentence (Hebrew allows using a noun as the verb of the sentence. Despite that, there is no verb in sight in the entire thing), we have no context, so we'll go with "pickled", which is funnier.

חשבון means either "arithmetic" or "account", again, depending on context. In this case, "חשבון גדול" does translate better as "big account", so we'll go with "arithmetic" for the same reason as before.

Randomly transpose one of the nouns into a verb, and we get: My grandfather's honor got pickled by big algebra.

Which makes marginally more sense than what Google translate makes of it: My grandfather honor occupied at great expense.

Shachar

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

As promised, what the bug hunt really meant. The company produces hardware for video streaming over cellular networks. Someone decided that it might be a good idea to just dump a few of those in some cars, and randomly drive around until bugs pop up.

Yes, it is a terrible idea. Thankfully, we no longer do those things (we do put two units running different versions of the software and compare them, but those are now called "drive tests", and only require one car).

Shachar

scooby509 · 2012-10-05 Reply Admin

bananas:
scooby509:
sunnyboy:
I don't completely agree.
TO is the person who you are supposed to send it to, and who is supposed to reply.

CC is often for the person with the authority to see that the "TO" person actually gets off their bottom and replies.

As for TO & BCC, I agree:

BCC is wonderful when you have to send to multiple persons but there may be FOIP (freedom of information) issues with revealing all the persons to one another (i.e. sending emails to a class of students).

You send it TO yourself and BCC all the students.

Somebody right now, right this INSTANT, give this man a fucking Nobel prize. He has unraveled the dark mysteries of how to address an email to multiple recipients.

...

Holy fuck, there are five more posts explaining proper email etiquette, as usual, the comments are TRWTF.
Why do you suppose there are so many so eager to educate on email etiquette? Perhaps because so many people know so little about it, and about how email works and how to work it? What if people who drive cars knew as little about how to operate the car as people who use email know about how to operate their email? Oh, wait... never mind.

And that is a perfectly fair discussion to have. On a general audience site like Facebook.

But, to take your (inevitable) analogy, please go to a car enthusiast forum and start lecturing people on the best techniques for refilling your gas tank, or the correct procedure for indicating before a turn. Let me know how that goes.

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

Shachar:
Since this is not a sentence (Hebrew allows using a noun as the verb of the sentence. Despite that, there is no verb in sight in the entire thing)...

I'm a terrible Jew who doesn't really know any Hebrew, but as an amateur linguist, I would point out that this isn't really particularly weird, as so does English. One of my favorite things about English, really, the fact that any noun, as they say, can be verbed.

If you just take a random noun and verb it, though, wouldn't it generally be an active verb? Granted, I say this not knowing any Hebrew, so maybe not in Hebrew, but I would just assume if you made "pickle" a verb, you'd get a sentence that was more like "My grandfather's honor pickled big algebra". (Hebrew doesn't inflect its nouns to denote what kind of object a noun is, does it?)

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

I use "To" for people or DLs who have an action associated with the e-mail and "CC" for people who need to know something but don't need to actively participate. I think this is a pretty common thing.

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

neminem:
Shachar:
Since this is not a sentence (Hebrew allows using a noun as the verb of the sentence. Despite that, there is no verb in sight in the entire thing)...
I'm a terrible Jew who doesn't really know any Hebrew, but as an amateur linguist, I would point out that this isn't really particularly weird, as so does English. One of my favorite things about English, really, the fact that any noun, as they say, can be verbed.
If you just take a random noun and verb it, though, wouldn't it generally be an active verb?(Hebrew doesn't inflect its nouns to denote what kind of object a noun is, does it?)

All verbs in Hebrew, whether they originate in biblical Hebrew, modern Hebrew, or have their roots elsewhere, conform to one of seven basic inflection structures (each with one of four tenses, either male or female, singular or plural). Yes, even verbs such as "to Google", when migrated to Hebrew, adopt one of those forms. This means that any Hebrew speaker instinctively knows how to distinguish "I googled(male)" from "She will google".

When I said that "כבוד" isn't a verb, I meant it is not in one of the forms that derives from one of those seven structures. It is not spelled in its verb form.

When a noun acts as a verb (loosely translated as a "nounical sentence"), it is mostly because of the lack of the verb to be in Hebrew. The sentence "I am awake" is phrased as "I awake", with "awake" taking the role of the operation of the sentence, despite not being a verb.

Yes, on reading what I wrote, I do realize that "awake" is an adjective, not a noun. The origin of my mistake is the name, and origin of the name, according to Wikipedia, is Arabic, where "nounical sentence" means something quite different. Like I said in my original comment, the original sentence did not parse that way either.

Shachar

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

Why does CC even exist? Doesn't it make more sense to have just TO and BCC?

Because sometimes you want the recipient of an email to know that your email has been sent as a copy to some third party (e.g. a supervisor) and want the third party to know that they are just a third party and not directly addressed.

2012-10-05 Reply Admin

About 15 years ago I was working for a multinational. One ignorant young pup in one sales office had no idea how big the company was, and thought that the "everyone" distribution list meant the 15 or so people in his office, not 6000 people in 20 countries.
So he sent out an e-mail to the effect that "Tonight we're all going over to the pub at 6:00. <coworker> will be bringing lots of <illegal drug> for sale, but if you need more than a gram or two please let him know in advance. He's got some with him now in case you need a lift before end of day."

Best of Email: Career Limiting Email, That's What the BCC Field is for, and More

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