• Anon (unregistered) in reply to dgvid
    dgvid:
    I was going to speculate that the calories were displayed in the calorie unit used in science rather than the kilocalorie

    Science uses Joules not calories.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Bizarre coincidence time: did you know that French uses the same word, 'avocat' for both 'avocado' and 'lawyer'? No, I didn't either.

    Did you know that the English use the same word, "Dear" for both a term of endearment (as in frankly my dear, I don't give a damn) and a woodland creature that rednecks like to shoot?

    Hilarious!

  • Spewin Coffee (unregistered)

    '"As you might expect, this came from a government website," Steve wrote, "which may explain why it was vague and unhelpful."'

    The government is generally vague and unhelpful. SOPA is a case in point. Too soon?

  • Jay (unregistered)

    At first I thought the reference to coming from a government web site was talking about the calories vs kilocalories. Which sounded exactly like what I'd expect from the government: Did we spend a billion dollars or a trillion dollars? Whatever, doesn't matter.

    Back when I used to work for the government, co-workers would occasionally point out that something was a big waste of time and money. And I developed a stock response: I'd always say, "Don't worry, it's not like it's real money. It's only tax dollars."

  • Steve (NOT the Cynic) (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    The woodland creature that rednecks like to shoot is spelled Deer, not Dear. Not so hilarious now, is it?

    CAPTCHA: valetudo, as in, "Valet, you do this for me".

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    dgvid:
    I was going to speculate that the calories were displayed in the calorie unit used in science rather than the kilocalorie

    Science uses Joules not calories.

    sigh Yes, yes, yes.

    The calorie is a pre-SI metric unit of energy. It was first defined by Nicolas Clément in 1824 as a unit of heat, entering French and English dictionaries between 1841 and 1867. In most fields its use is archaic, having been replaced by the SI unit of energy, the joule. However, in many countries it remains in common use as a unit of food energy.
    From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie. (Scroll down to see the formula for converting between joules and avocados.)
  • (cs) in reply to Daniel Smedegaard Buus
    Daniel Smedegaard Buus:
    The picture posted only show the "congrats" page, another interesting snapshot would be the google maps page it displays that shows me travelling from Copenhagen to somewhere in Africa at several thousand kilometers per hour.

    I'm not sure if it's just my particular phone being broken (my girlfriend's HTC doesn't do this with Noom) or the entire Galaxy S2 line, but it definitely calculates calories as being whatever equals about 45 cals per 100ml of orange juice, so do your calculus based on that ;)

    I have the exact same problem with CardioTrainer on my Galaxy. It often showed me running to Africa and home in a few minutes (I too live close to Copenhagen). The company behind the app claims this is due to a 'pretty unreliable signal': https://sites.google.com/a/worksmartlabs.com/help-center/cardiotrainer/gps

    I stopped using the app, and Googles own My Tracks is much more precise on the exact same hardware. Go figure!

  • wonk (unregistered) in reply to da Doctah
    da Doctah:
    dgvid:
    The error message in Times Square is at least an improvement over the grungy, low-class signs I remember seeing there in the early 80s. Things like: XXX and Burlesque (or often Boylesque) and Your hooker has encountered a problem and must be restarted.

    ITYM "Your hooker has performed an illegal operation."

    Are you kidding? That's what I paid her for in the first place. ;-)

  • (cs) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Anketam:
    In my class we burned cheeto puffs. That "experiment" ranked up there as one of my favorite "science" experiments.
    My favorites were actually "magic show" style demonstrations rather than stuff we did.
    1. In a British secondary school (the same one as the peanut incident, the following year) in the late 70s, a Tate & Lyle[1] Golden Syrup tin full of natural gas, with a hole in the bottom and another in the lid. Open both holes, and light the top hole, making sure that air can get in through the bottom hole.

    You watch this, and you see the flame start out tall, flickery and yellow. It gets gradually lower and bluer as air mixes in with the gas from below. After a couple of minutes, during which time the teacher continues to babble on about something so the class doesn't notice the tin, enough air has mixed in with the gas inside the tin that the flame-front rushes through the tin all of a sudden, and the lid bounces off the ceiling.

    1. The annual "physics magic show" to entertain prospective students foolish enough to express an interest in spending their student years at RPI, an electromagnet, and some aluminium rings.

    The ring with a gap buzzes a bit when electricity is passed through the coils round the electromagnet.

    The complete ring leaps a couple of feet into the air when it's at room temperature.

    The assistant brings out some liquid nitrogen and dunks the complete ring, and now the resistance of the ring is low enough that it hits the ceiling hard, thirty feet up.

    [1] Tate & Lyle, supplier of sugar, syrups and the like to British supermarkets for a long time. The only company I know of whose logo features a dead lion. I live and work in France, and one of their research centres is in the building next door to my office.

    Not only is the lion dead, but it has insects buzzing around a great big hole in its belly.

    "Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet."

  • Nageshhasntbeenfunnyforyears (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Not only is the lion dead, but it has insects buzzing around a great big hole in its belly.

    "Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet."

    I'd really like to see this if you can find an image, it looks like their current logo is just their name in a big block font.

  • (cs) in reply to Lorens
    Lorens:
    Steve The Cynic:
    did you know that French uses the same word, 'avocat' for both 'avocado' and 'lawyer'? No, I didn't either.
    I take it you have no experience being the devil's advocate?
    Huh, interesting observation. But you don't even need to go that far... what does any lawyer do? Advocate.

    The online etymology dictionary says, for avocado, "1763, from Sp. avocado, altered (by folk etymology influence of earlier Sp. avocado "lawyer," from same Latin source as advocate) from earlier aguacate".

  • Language Nerd (unregistered) in reply to hans

    According to the interwebs, (and yes, I knew this before I looked up a reference) Avocado comes from a mesoamerican word for testicle[1] which happened to sound a lot like the spanish word for lawyer to the conquistadors.

    [1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=avocado

  • (cs) in reply to Nageshhasntbeenfunnyforyears
    Nageshhasntbeenfunnyforyears:
    Matt Westwood:
    Not only is the lion dead, but it has insects buzzing around a great big hole in its belly.

    "Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet."

    I'd really like to see this if you can find an image, it looks like their current logo is just their name in a big block font.

    Next time you try to find something on the internet, use a search engine.

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Lyle'sGoldenSyrup.jpg

    Addendum (2012-01-06 16:41): Ooh, this one is much better. It even has an audio track saying "WTF"! http://feelingmyage.co.uk/tag/lyles-golden-syrup/

    Addendum (2012-01-06 16:42): Ooh, this one is much better. It even has an audio track saying "WTF"! http://feelingmyage.co.uk/tag/lyles-golden-syrup/

    Addendum (2012-01-06 16:44): Crud, I can only add, not edit. Oh well.

  • (cs)
    We detected an Error which may have occurred for one or more of the following reasons:

    Error invoking service '<?>', method '<?>' at step '<?>' (SBL-BPR-00162)

    That is just so darned verbose. I would have used a much shorter message that tells exactly the same thing:

    Error? (SBL-BPR-00162)
  • Tud (unregistered)

    I hate absurd password requirements. If I ever had to create a password for something important, and that message popped out, I'd find out where the programmer of that thing lived, and send him a complaint letter. Yes, an actual letter, printed in paper and sent by mail. I'm 100% serious.

  • (cs) in reply to Nageshhasntbeenfunnyforyears
    Nageshhasntbeenfunnyforyears:
    Matt Westwood:
    Not only is the lion dead, but it has insects buzzing around a great big hole in its belly.

    "Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet."

    I'd really like to see this if you can find an image, it looks like their current logo is just their name in a big block font.

    Someone else has found some better images than the one I found.

    We bought a container of it the other week, as an ingredient for confectionery for some pagan festival my handfasting partner wanted to celebrate. And it's still got that dead lion on it.

  • Robert Claypool (unregistered)

    Oddly enough, the first 5 words of the .hack//SIGN opening song contains exactly 14 letters.

  • Robert Claypool (unregistered) in reply to Robert Claypool

    Oops, the first 4 words. The 5 word phrase "how come I must go" further along in the song contains 14 letters too.

  • Robert Claypool (unregistered)

    Let's try this one more time... If you play the video at http://www.animelyrics.com/anime/hacksign/obsession.htm it starts off with "how come I must go", but if you read it, it starts off with "deep in the night"

  • (cs) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Bizarre coincidence time: did you know that French uses the same word, 'avocat' for both 'avocado' and 'lawyer'? No, I didn't either.
    Yes, and they are BOTH slimy things that I avoid!
  • (cs) in reply to Jeff
    Jeff:
    The Deal of the Day is not a WTF. The glasses cost $50, but the coupon's value is $25, so you only pay the other $25, saving 50%.

    Where do you get the impression the glasses cost $50? The text says "$25 for a $50 Deal Certificate Towards the Purchases of a Complete Pair of Eyeglasses..." This implies the Eyeglasses cost MORE than $50. And that you are purchasing a $50 gift certificate for $25. The WTF is the Value and Cost prices are reversed. TRWTF is the inability to read.

  • Someone (unregistered)

    #2 is not a WTF. We don't know if you did indeed enter an alphabet. TRWTF is that you did not submit the password, and expected us to just trust your statement that you did indeed enter a letter.

    FFT: Why would you hide your password anyway?

    1. We don't see your username.
    2. We don't know the website.
    3. We don't care about your account.
  • mroshaw (unregistered)

    My guess is that SBL-BPR-00162 is an Oracle Siebel CRM BI Publisher integration error. Seems pretty obvious to me.

  • Marcin (unregistered) in reply to Pretendo

    TRWTF is any geek who would publicly display an ignorance of units.

  • jc (unregistered)

    The slide show one reminds me of a definition of conservatism that I've seen several variants on: Conservatives believe that we should never do anything for the first time; we should only do things the same way we have done them before.

    (I once saw a list of such definitions for various political "belief systems", each one making its followers look equally silly and irrational. Now what were some of the others? ...)

  • Luiz Felipe (unregistered) in reply to Spewin Coffee
    Spewin Coffee:
    '"As you might expect, this came from a government website," Steve wrote, "which may explain why it was vague and unhelpful."'

    The government is generally vague and unhelpful. SOPA is a case in point. Too soon?

    Here in brazil we have zero alchool law. You see what happen, everyone continue to drive alcoolized like nothing was wrong, just same as before, nothing changes because of some shity law.

  • Luiz Felipe (unregistered) in reply to mroshaw
    mroshaw:
    My guess is that SBL-BPR-00162 is an Oracle Siebel CRM BI Publisher integration error. Seems pretty obvious to me.
    Fucking Oracle with fucking nebulous error codes, pretty obvios, noone will will think otherway.
  • Tomalak Geret'kal (unregistered)

    You'd think someone who actually lives and works in NYC and hates tourists would know what Times Square is called.

  • Loren Pechtel (unregistered)

    I think I know what really happened with the calorie bit: The phone probably didn't have working GPS for some reason at some point and got fooled by a WiFi router that got moved. This produced an insane distance and an insane number of calories.

    The program also contained a list of food equivalents to calories and 5 avocados is the biggest item in the list.

    As for can only view slides you have already viewed--the person is looking at a presentation controlled by someone else and they aren't allowed to peek ahead.

  • AndyC (unregistered) in reply to Daniel Smedegaard Buus
    Daniel Smedegaard Buus:
    Well, now that everyone is attentant anyway - and that's not a nick, by the way - check out this WTF from yesterday:

    https://plus.google.com/u/0/112343154750245199729/posts//p/pub

    It's not so much that it's a Windows PC complaining about having crashed before being booted, it's more that apparently, there's one Windows PC per monitor on this subway station. WTF?!?!?

    Not that surprising, they're usually all-in-one units and it's usually a lot easier that way than trying to configure multi-head arrangements with video cabling all over the place.

    Putting pictures on google+ is TRWTF here.

  • fs (unregistered) in reply to da Doctah

    "and must be retarted."

  • yername (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    The edible parts of an avocado are rated about 160kcal per 100g, so, yes, 280kcal per five avocados is a bit light.
    So, the poster didn't know about the calorie/kilocalorie thing and the app author forgot to do the joule => calorie conversion?
  • moz (unregistered) in reply to whiskeylover
    whiskeylover:
    Will:
    You may only post comments that have already been posted.
    You may only post comments that have already been posted.
    If Alex did decide to implement a rule like that one day, and sent everyone trying to post incompatible messages Akismet responses, how long d'you think it'd take before anyone noticed?
  • Synchronos (unregistered)

    All these comments about calories and Calories (<sarcasm>why don't we invent a new unit, like scalories, for scientific calories, when we already have kibibytes</sarcasm>), and not a single one for Cary not knowing the difference between alphabet and Latin alphabet? Guess what, the Cyrillic alphabet are also alphabet. They even start with their respective versions of alpha and beta. Same goes for the runic script.

  • Me (unregistered) in reply to Pretendo

    Aye. Submitter is not especially familiar with SI units and now s/he and Alex are displaying their "intelligence".

  • (cs) in reply to yername
    yername:
    So, the poster didn't know about the calorie/kilocalorie thing and the app author forgot to do the joule => calorie conversion?
    Ooh, you're almost right!

    The poster was posting about how funny it was to express calories in avocados. "Oh yeah, I burned 5 avocados today", that's funny, see? So the WTF was not that the poster didn't know shit about food.

    The real WTF is, as was repeated many times in the comments, that the app doesn't know the difference between "279883 calories" and "279883 Cal", as it has both in the same output and it doesn't realize that this is meaningless. Aanother WTF, as we found out later, is that 279 Cal doesn't come close to being 5 avocados.

    Also, everybody in the world expresses energy in food as Calories, so it's not a WTF if they don't express the energy in joules. Quite the contrary in fact: if it would only be expressed in joules without mentioning Cals, people wouldn't know what it meant. So it's a WTF that you want to see the energy in food expressed in joules. And another WTF that you meant "calorie => joule" but you said "joule => calorie". And that you didn't read all the comments before posting. And that you concluded, without any evidence, that the poster didn't know about kilocalories being Calories. And that you don't know how to spell "your".

  • asrtgg3 (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    There are calories, about 4.2 Joules each, representing the energy to heat one gram of water by one degree C.

    There are Calories, also called kilocalories or kcal, exactly 1000 calories. (Yes, boys and girl, a Calorie is 1000 calories.)

    There are not kCal, and if there were, they would be called Mcal, because they would be kilokilocalories, better known as megacalories.

    The edible parts of an avocado are rated about 160kcal per 100g, so, yes, 280kcal per five avocados is a bit light.

    Bizarre coincidence time: did you know that French uses the same word, 'avocat' for both 'avocado' and 'lawyer'? No, I didn't either.

    Who would've guessed that an advocate and an avocado would be similar in some language. Unbelieve!!!

  • Comic Book Guy (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Bort:
    I like that all the spergs are tripping over themselves to smugly post "1 Calorie = 1000 calories" even though nobody in the entire universe has ever used the small "calories" when talking about food.
    IT is a industry that attracts pedants. So you get comments by pedants on a site like TDWTF, there's a surprise. In your language, I guess, the word for "pedant" is "sperg". Which language is that?
    I'm more surprised that Computer Nerds would actually know something about calories (or Calories, or whatever).
  • Comic Book Guy (unregistered) in reply to GEDCOM?
    GEDCOM?:
    PeterH:
    If your password must be exactly 14 characters long and still contain one alphabet, I would recommend the Hawaiian language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_language

    ... although it might be a bit tricky finding a keyboard with the appropriate 'glottal stop' key.

    If you're going to reference Hawaiian, at least use the proper name. Olelo is the name of the alphabet, and okina is the correct name for what you called "glottal stop". You also failed to mention the kahako - a combining macron which affects both pronunciation and meaning of words. Unfortunately these two letters are absent from most fonts. Theokina is often approximated through either an apostrophe or back-tick, while some people use a tilde instead of the kahako.

    Now try the name of our former state fish: humuhumunukunukuapua`a.

    Only 13 chars there....

    Totally aside, someone once told me (not sure if this is true or not) there's no 'P' in Pidgin....Given they were talking about Papua New Guinea (so I assume they mean Tok Pisin - which definitely has a 'p' in almost all the examples on wikipedia {that which never lies}) they must have been talking shit.

    Mi pinisim stori nau

  • Lynette (unregistered) in reply to Steve (NOT the Cynic)
    Steve (NOT the Cynic):
    The woodland creature that rednecks like to shoot is spelled Deer, not Dear. Not so hilarious now, is it?

    CAPTCHA: valetudo, as in, "Valet, you do this for me".

    Let's try again.... "Bear" = carry a burden or load "Bear" = creature what be shitting in the woods.

  • Gerome (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Steve The Cynic:
    Anketam:
    In my class we burned cheeto puffs. That "experiment" ranked up there as one of my favorite "science" experiments.
    My favorites were actually "magic show" style demonstrations rather than stuff we did.
    1. In a British secondary school (the same one as the peanut incident, the following year) in the late 70s, a Tate & Lyle[1] Golden Syrup tin full of natural gas, with a hole in the bottom and another in the lid. Open both holes, and light the top hole, making sure that air can get in through the bottom hole.

    You watch this, and you see the flame start out tall, flickery and yellow. It gets gradually lower and bluer as air mixes in with the gas from below. After a couple of minutes, during which time the teacher continues to babble on about something so the class doesn't notice the tin, enough air has mixed in with the gas inside the tin that the flame-front rushes through the tin all of a sudden, and the lid bounces off the ceiling.

    1. The annual "physics magic show" to entertain prospective students foolish enough to express an interest in spending their student years at RPI, an electromagnet, and some aluminium rings.

    The ring with a gap buzzes a bit when electricity is passed through the coils round the electromagnet.

    The complete ring leaps a couple of feet into the air when it's at room temperature.

    The assistant brings out some liquid nitrogen and dunks the complete ring, and now the resistance of the ring is low enough that it hits the ceiling hard, thirty feet up.

    [1] Tate & Lyle, supplier of sugar, syrups and the like to British supermarkets for a long time. The only company I know of whose logo features a dead lion. I live and work in France, and one of their research centres is in the building next door to my office.

    Hooray for Steve Spangle!!

  • memememe (unregistered) in reply to Language Nerd
    Language Nerd:
    According to the interwebs, (and yes, I knew this before I looked up a reference) Avocado comes from a mesoamerican word for testicle[1] which happened to sound a lot like the spanish word for lawyer to the conquistadors.

    [1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=avocado

    Very appropriate - all Lawyers are Balls!! Oh wait, balls are useful....

  • Jim Carey (unregistered) in reply to Someone
    Someone:
    #2 is not a WTF. We don't know if you did indeed enter an alphabet. TRWTF is that you did not submit the password, and expected us to just trust your statement that you did indeed enter a letter.

    FFT: Why would you hide your password anyway?

    1. We don't see your username.
    2. We don't know the website.
    3. We don't care about your account.
    1. Carey69
    2. www.hookersonline.com
    3. Can't help with that one....

    Now have I justified obscuring my password (which FTR was actually done by the site I was using)

  • zom (unregistered) in reply to moz
    moz:
    whiskeylover:
    Will:
    You may only post comments that have already been posted.
    You may only post comments that have already been posted.
    If Alex did decide to implement a rule like that one day, and sent everyone trying to post incompatible messages Akismet responses, how long d'you think it'd take before anyone noticed?
    HE sent that memo out last week dude....get up wuith the times!!!
  • Scoldog (unregistered) in reply to Pim

    Maybe its below the cockles, maybe in the sub-cockle area, maybe in the liver, maybe in the kidneys, maybe even in the colon. We don't know…

  • imMute (unregistered)

    TRWTF with that digital billboard isn't necessarily the QT popup; IMO, TRWTF with that is the uncalibrated blocky-ness of the individual modules of the display!

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    Anketam:
    In my class we burned cheeto puffs. That "experiment" ranked up there as one of my favorite "science" experiments.
    My favorites were actually "magic show" style demonstrations rather than stuff we did.
    In year 10 physics one day, we are talking about metal reactions and the teacher goes "you all know what happens when you heat magnesium aluminium alloy, right?" The whole class as one, goes "Noo?". Next day we come in and he's got conical flask boiling away on top of a Bunsen burner and another Bunsen burner running next to it. He pulls out a metal pencil sharpener and starts heating it over the burner with tongs, once it's nice and hot he drops it in the boiling water. FOOOOM! a white flash shoots out the top of the flask, burns through the diffuser on the light on the ceiling and shatters the globe.

    He also blew up hydrogen balloons. Best science teacher I ever had.

  • razvangry (unregistered)

    279883 cal = 279.883 kcal so 280 kcal which is very correct

  • TrXtR (unregistered)

    Rather take the walk, eating that many avocado's might not be the best idea.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Steve The Cynic:
    Bizarre coincidence time: did you know that French uses the same word, 'avocat' for both 'avocado' and 'lawyer'? No, I didn't either.

    Did you know that the English use the same word, "Dear" for both a term of endearment (as in frankly my dear, I don't give a damn) and a woodland creature that rednecks like to shoot?

    Hilarious!

    Last time I checked, Bambi (known as 'bang bang' in the more rural parts of the USA) was a deer, not a dear (except maybe to its mother).

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