The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2014-05-22 Reply Admin

mara:
Tilda:
One day, a physicist two doors next to me
That's a strange way of saying "two doors away from me". Do high energy physicists have a warped sense of proximity?
Oblig.
All physicists think space is warped.

"...the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent."

Douglas Adams (RIP)

2014-05-22 Reply Admin

abarker:
Matt Damon:

ExceptionHandler:
Jason Bourne shell runs faster than normal bourne shell.
And it punches other shells in the face.
But only if they won't leave it alone.

It has memory problems, and the process is unkillable.

Matt Westwood · 2014-05-22 Reply Admin

a nonny mouse:
oversaw != overlooked

So English is not the author's first language. I expect it'#s better than your fucking German, shithead.

2014-05-22 Reply Admin

I think I finally fixed it you guys!

#!/bin/bash
#performance.bash
bash -c date
bash -c 'echo "Starting now..."'
i=0
while { [ $i -le 1000 ] ; }
do
	bash -c "mkdir $i"
	bash -c "touch $i/stdout"
	bash -c "echo $i >> $i/stdout"
	i=$[$i+1]
done
i=0
while { [ $i -le 1000 ] ; }
do
        bash -c "rm -rf $i"
        i=$[$i+1]
done
bash -c 'echo "Finished!"'
bash -c date
exit 0

2014-05-22 Reply Admin

"located on the Fra[n]coswiss border. You know, the one some people thought would create black holes and destroy the planet?"

Is it really that bad? I thought it was just another unguarded border.

Captcha: uxor. Oh, come on, captcha, you're not even trying.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

Wow, 1000 touches before finishing. Someone's python has great performance. Who would want to bash that?

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

Zainab58:
"located on the Fra[n]coswiss border. You know, the one some people thought would create black holes and destroy the planet?"
Is it really that bad? I thought it was just another unguarded border.

It's as important (and as well guarded) as the border between, say, California and New Mexico. We Europeans are collectively starting to adopt the mindset that national borders are becoming more and more irrelevant.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

After months or over years of being exposed to the Daily WTF, your computer needs 3 minutes of spa treatment.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

Python

while i <= 1000: 
	os.system('touch '+`i`+"/stdout")

In the coding world that is what we call a bad touch.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
So English is not the author's first language. I expect it'#s better than your fucking German, shithead.

If you're posting articles in English on an English-language website, then you ought to have decent English skills. Similarly, you can criticise a nonny mouse's German skills when (s)he starts publicly posting articles in German, not before.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

If initech forces everyone to use secure email then the method in #3 may well be more secure than paper mail, especially if the username/password emails are only sent internally.

I'm not sure what benefit the delay would give, though. Maybe give the user enough warning to avoid previewing the password email if someone happened to be standing next to hir (able to see the screen) at the time?

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

Oh never mind, I just re-read the subject. I suppose, being nice, the author might have been momentarily confused between external and internal email...

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

Hmmm. Okay.

Dear author,

you are incredibly great. I admire and respect your technical and linguistic abilities to a fault. I prostrate myself before your clear superiority to me as a human being in every possible way.

I am deeply embarrassed to have to point out that, for whatever reason, you have made a slight error in your article that made it difficult for me to understand. Those of us that are weak minded and lacking in imagination are limited to the usual definitions of words. It is only in the interest of my fellow readers and your own reputation that I am forced to point out that you seem to have used the word "oversaw" where you meant "overlooked".

I beg your forgiveness for my ignorance and my earlier terseness in pointing out this issue. Thank you for reading my weak and feeble footnote to your vastly superior document. I promise to never question your greatness again.

Better?

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

a nonny mouse:
Hmmm. Okay.
Dear author,

you are incredibly great. I admire and respect your technical and linguistic abilities to a fault. I prostrate myself before your clear superiority to me as a human being in every possible way.

I am deeply embarrassed to have to point out that, for whatever reason, you have made a slight error in your article that made it difficult for me to understand. Those of us that are weak minded and lacking in imagination are limited to the usual definitions of words. It is only in the interest of my fellow readers and your own reputation that I am forced to point out that you seem to have used the word "oversaw" where you meant "overlooked".

I beg your forgiveness for my ignorance and my earlier terseness in pointing out this issue. Thank you for reading my weak and feeble footnote to your vastly superior document. I promise to never question your greatness again.

Better?

So you weren't up to the challenge of passing it through Google Translate to demonstrate your superior skills in German?

I understand that in usual polite societies it can be considered rude to correct a person attempting to communicate in a foreign language. However, this appears not always to be the case, and I gather that in the US this nicety of manners does not hold.

In fact, it appears from my own experiences in the US that it is considered rude to use English incorrectly. By "incorrectly" I mean: contrary to the view of the person with whom you are attempting communication. More than one business deal has failed to be finalised because of the insistence of my potential supplier on "correcting" my pronunciation, in a brusque and authoritarian manner. This generally does not affect my business at all, as there are plenty of suppliers whose manners are more conducive towards establishing a profitable working relationship.

In extreme cases I have witnessed perfect strangers accosting visitors from outside the US talking amongst themselves in their own language, and insisting that they only speak "English" when within the borders of the US.

In really extreme cases, I have witnessed people from the US in other countries (in particular: France and Spain) for not speaking English amongst themselves when there are Americans in the vicinity.

It's an amusing old world, sometimes.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

QJo:
a nonny mouse:
Hmmm. Okay.
Dear author,

you are incredibly great. I admire and respect your technical and linguistic abilities to a fault. I prostrate myself before your clear superiority to me as a human being in every possible way.

I am deeply embarrassed to have to point out that, for whatever reason, you have made a slight error in your article that made it difficult for me to understand. Those of us that are weak minded and lacking in imagination are limited to the usual definitions of words. It is only in the interest of my fellow readers and your own reputation that I am forced to point out that you seem to have used the word "oversaw" where you meant "overlooked".

I beg your forgiveness for my ignorance and my earlier terseness in pointing out this issue. Thank you for reading my weak and feeble footnote to your vastly superior document. I promise to never question your greatness again.

Better?

So you weren't up to the challenge of passing it through Google Translate to demonstrate your superior skills in German?

I understand that in usual polite societies it can be considered rude to correct a person attempting to communicate in a foreign language. However, this appears not always to be the case, and I gather that in the US this nicety of manners does not hold.

In fact, it appears from my own experiences in the US that it is considered rude to use English incorrectly. By "incorrectly" I mean: contrary to the view of the person with whom you are attempting communication. More than one business deal has failed to be finalised because of the insistence of my potential supplier on "correcting" my pronunciation, in a brusque and authoritarian manner. This generally does not affect my business at all, as there are plenty of suppliers whose manners are more conducive towards establishing a profitable working relationship.

In extreme cases I have witnessed perfect strangers accosting visitors from outside the US talking amongst themselves in their own language, and insisting that they only speak "English" when within the borders of the US.

In really extreme cases, I have witnessed people from the US in other countries (in particular: France and Spain) for not speaking English amongst themselves when there are Americans in the vicinity.

It's an amusing old world, sometimes.

That last paragraph should read:

In really extreme cases, I have witnessed people from the US in other countries (in particular: France and Spain) challenging the natives of those nations for not speaking English amongst themselves when there are Americans in the vicinity.

Apologies, I got distracted.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

QJo:
I understand that in usual polite societies it can be considered rude to correct a person attempting to communicate in a foreign language. However, this appears not always to be the case, and I gather that in the US this nicety of manners does not hold.

In my experience, people attempting to communicate in foreign languages greatly appreciate correction. Particularly when they are using words / idioms with an entirely different meaning / connotation than what they intended to express (e.g. oversee / overlook).

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

I can't speak for the polite societies you refer to, but I'm french, working in a university, and I've yet to see anyone here, be they foreigner or local, get offended when a correction in french or english is offered. Of course you don't interrupt someone speaking every two word to correct him, but after your response, adding a correction or two is always appreciated as it's just value: a means to improve one's language skill. And this is even more true with written correspondence, where corrections can be placed where they don't hinder the information exchange. Where I work, it's not helping others improve and letting them stew in their mistakes that's considered callous.

And insulting someone can't be less rude than even deliberately pointing someone's flaws, which I don't believe was the case, he was just trying to be helpful.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

Paul:
Reminds me of a guy who had an axe to grind and wanted to "benchmark" an expensive mini-mainframe ($500,000) sold by my employer. ... He had deliberately created a database with only one sector allocated for storage. Then, as he wrote a million records, the database automatically allocated extensions as needed. Yeah, this took awhile. Especially when he kept deliberately fragmenting the data.

Did it occur to you maybe that's precisely what he was trying to benchmark?

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

Take a look at the subprocess module. If you're actually wrapping shell commands, I suppose os.system is okay. (But why are you writing shell commands when your program is already written in a great scripting language?) There's no need to call out to a bash shell if what you're actually trying to do is launch and possibly communicate with other processes. That's just asking for problems with incorrectly escaped arguments.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

the way this website is pretty boring.:
The real wtf is that this website is still around spewing unfunny boring articles. Pls go, stay go.

no u

chubertdev · 2014-05-23 Reply Admin

QJo:
Zainab58:
"located on the Fra[n]coswiss border. You know, the one some people thought would create black holes and destroy the planet?"
Is it really that bad? I thought it was just another unguarded border.

It's as important (and as well guarded) as the border between, say, California and New Mexico. We Europeans are collectively starting to adopt the mindset that national borders are becoming more and more irrelevant.

So the state of Arizona is between those two countries?

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
QJo:
Zainab58:
"located on the Fra[n]coswiss border. You know, the one some people thought would create black holes and destroy the planet?"
Is it really that bad? I thought it was just another unguarded border.

It's as important (and as well guarded) as the border between, say, California and New Mexico. We Europeans are collectively starting to adopt the mindset that national borders are becoming more and more irrelevant.

So the state of Arizona is between those two countries?

I thought it was his diplomatic way of telling me that the Franco-Swiss border does not, in fact, exist.

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

mrs.brisby:
``i am not secure, but i want to be.'' ``ignorance will not make me more secure'' ``no product available will make me completely secure'' ``if i cannot understand the entirety of my system, i can make no claims to it's security'' ``just because knowledge is denied, does not mean that knowledge is protected.'' ``i am not secure, but i want to be.''

"We believe in security-through-obscurity. You don't. Goodbye."

(Happened to me, took some questioning to get the details.)

2014-05-23 Reply Admin

QJo:
It's as important (and as well guarded) as the border between, say, California and New Mexico. We Europeans are collectively starting to adopt the mindset that national borders are becoming more and more irrelevant.

That's not what I read about Spain building walls and Greeks complaining about refugees. I was about to mention walls in Cyprus and Northern Ireland but then remembered that those aren't national borders.

2014-05-25 Reply Admin

yes, they have contact information. try and find it.

2014-05-25 Reply Admin

QJo:
a nonny mouse:
Hmmm. Okay.
Dear author,

you are incredibly great. I admire and respect your technical and linguistic abilities to a fault. I prostrate myself before your clear superiority to me as a human being in every possible way.

I am deeply embarrassed to have to point out that, for whatever reason, you have made a slight error in your article that made it difficult for me to understand. Those of us that are weak minded and lacking in imagination are limited to the usual definitions of words. It is only in the interest of my fellow readers and your own reputation that I am forced to point out that you seem to have used the word "oversaw" where you meant "overlooked".

I beg your forgiveness for my ignorance and my earlier terseness in pointing out this issue. Thank you for reading my weak and feeble footnote to your vastly superior document. I promise to never question your greatness again.

Better?

So you weren't up to the challenge of passing it through Google Translate to demonstrate your superior skills in German?

I understand that in usual polite societies it can be considered rude to correct a person attempting to communicate in a foreign language. However, this appears not always to be the case, and I gather that in the US this nicety of manners does not hold.

In fact, it appears from my own experiences in the US that it is considered rude to use English incorrectly. By "incorrectly" I mean: contrary to the view of the person with whom you are attempting communication. More than one business deal has failed to be finalised because of the insistence of my potential supplier on "correcting" my pronunciation, in a brusque and authoritarian manner. This generally does not affect my business at all, as there are plenty of suppliers whose manners are more conducive towards establishing a profitable working relationship.

In extreme cases I have witnessed perfect strangers accosting visitors from outside the US talking amongst themselves in their own language, and insisting that they only speak "English" when within the borders of the US.

In really extreme cases, I have witnessed people from the US in other countries (in particular: France and Spain) for not speaking English amongst themselves when there are Americans in the vicinity.

It's an amusing old world, sometimes.

Hmmm. I'm sure they don't just not like you. You seem to be a great guy. I'm SURE it's not just you.

aihtdikh · 2014-05-27 Reply Admin

Just for fun, I tested the bash/python scripts with a properly-written python variant (i.e. os.mkdir() and friends instead of os.system()).

It's about 30 times faster than the bash script - 0.1 second versus 3 seconds.

Just in case the incompetence here wasn't clear enough already.

chubertdev · 2014-05-27 Reply Admin

Zainab58:
chubertdev:
QJo:
Zainab58:
"located on the Fra[n]coswiss border. You know, the one some people thought would create black holes and destroy the planet?"
Is it really that bad? I thought it was just another unguarded border.

It's as important (and as well guarded) as the border between, say, California and New Mexico. We Europeans are collectively starting to adopt the mindset that national borders are becoming more and more irrelevant.

So the state of Arizona is between those two countries?
I thought it was his diplomatic way of telling me that the Franco-Swiss border does not, in fact, exist.

s/diplomatic/muddled

2014-06-02 Reply Admin

Norman Diamond:
That's not what I read about Spain building walls and Greeks complaining about refugees. I was about to mention walls in Cyprus and Northern Ireland but then remembered that those aren't national borders.

The border between Europe and not-Europe still matters, but internal European borders not so much.

/wishes the UK would stop wasting everyone's time and join the Schengen zone.

2014-06-16 Reply Admin

Will return to reading the article after this brief message:

Frac o'Swiss

No? You don't get what that is about? Checkout the description of that border again.

Best of Email: Brains, Security, Robots, and a Risky Click

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