• (cs) in reply to Berto
    Berto:
    The Virtual Return story sounds very familiar. Was it recycled from another WTF post?
    I posted it on the sidebar not long ago, about a month after submitting it :)
    vt_mruhlin:
    For virtual return, maybe she wanted you to send it to her so she knew exactly which numbers to cancel?
    It was quicker to send the file back to her than to explain how Outlook's "Sent" folder works.
    v.dog:
    @Dmitriy: What you should have done is sent back two copies. It would have blown her mind.
    ROFL! Oh man, I wish I'd have thought of that!
  • Captain Oblivious (unregistered) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    As Queen Elizabeth I once said about the boomerang, "Well, that's no good, is it? When I throw something away, I jolly well want it to stay thrown away."

    Blackadder is fiction, unfortunately.

  • Blah Foo (unregistered)

    I had trouble due to something similar to the ILOVEYOU virus many years ago.

    My then-girlfriend sent me an e-mail, and my ISP bounced it for some reason, using a custom delivery failure message, that said something along the lines of: "I'm very sorry, but there is a problem that can't be solved with your e-mail. As such, the message is rejected."

    The writing was done in such a human style, that she thought that I was arguing with her, or dumping her, rather than it simply being an MTA reporting an error.

  • Sean (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    ILOVEYOU: Not buying this one for a second. What kind of love letter starts with ILOVEYOU in all caps and no spaces?

    Pretty much everyone under the age of 25 or over the age of 40, and a good chunk of the people in between. You seem to have an oddly high opinion of Regular People.

  • Jonas (unregistered) in reply to Joe

    Wait, a "very nice young lady" says "I love you", and you say that it was fortunately a virus?

    ... ??

    ?!?!!

    TRWTF

  • csm (unregistered) in reply to Jonas

    Can you think of any reason why he feels it was fortunate to be a virus? Keep trying...

  • department of redundancy department (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    G Money:
    Dave Rolsky:
    I think several of these WTFs highlight failures in the software, not the people.

    For "Host is Busy", a company making restaurant management software should know what a restaurant means by host, and regardless, using "host" is way too techie.

    ...

    Yeah ... they probably should have called it something like a "server".

    But a "server" can also describe people who work in a restaurant (waiters and waitresses).

    Whoosh!

  • Sigh (unregistered)
    I asked him if he's checked the host. He says "Yep, I've already done that. She's really busy, seating people as fast as she can!"

    I put him on hold while I regained my composure.

    because it's hysterical when people don't immediately understand the meaning of the words that your particular solution uses to describe an issue that has arisen in its functionality

    hahahahahahaha he doesn't get it hahahaha he thinks its an actual host as in a person hahahaha i associate with people who have and define themselves by similar interests to me and throw my nose up at those who dont because im a weak human being hahahahaha

  • Charles Manson (unregistered) in reply to OldTechSupport
    OldTechSupport:
    campkev:
    The one about returning the csv reminds me of a time I was working on a problem and my boss made me call Microsoft support. During the process, there was some agreements to be signed. The MS guy couldn't email it as an attachment for some reason, he had to fax it. When he faxed it, he faxed two copies of it. When I asked him about it, figuring it had showed as not going through the first time or something, he said, "Yes, one is for you to keep and the other is for you to sign and fax back."

    Took me years after FAX machines caught on to stop printing two copies, one for me and one for them. I'd pick 'em up from the printer, head to the FAX machine, and find myself going "DOH"...

    I generally don't think I'm stupid, but that happened enough times that I'm no longer sure.

    How many times did you fax both copies?

  • John Muller (unregistered) in reply to Beavis

    There was an extension for the classic mac OS, that replaced the normal trash can with one they displayed Oscar the Grouch, and when an item was deleted he would sing "I Love Trash!"...

    That usually lasted until a 3-5 year old got near the computer, and deleted everything.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_the_Grouch for those unfamilier with Sesame Street.

  • HammerTime (unregistered) in reply to Maurits

    Right after "ILOVEYOU" blew over, I sent out an e-mail to a bunch of people with an empty batch file attachment named "Virus.exe" as a joke. I got tons of replies from people saying they were unable to open the attachment. I couldn't think of any response that didn't include calling them idiots or somesuch, so I didn't even reply.

  • (cs) in reply to noname
    noname:
    How does the recycle bin help in either of those cases?
    It makes me feel better. ;)
    noname:
    And if it's burned you that often, why don't you have a backup strategy?
    In the case of the bad FTP client, I did; though asides from the inconvenience of having to fuss with it in the first place, the second or third time this happened (I hadn't yet sussed out the cause) it turns out that the host's shadow copies had failed for some reason. (I didn't see any need to keep a copy on my end; everything can been recreated from the original material, it just takes time to rip/convert.)

    As for the other case, either it was on a machine where the backup strategy consisted of floppies (back in the days before CD burners, and at age 14 I couldn't exactly afford a tape drive), or it was under Linux (where I have yet to successfully convince it that yes, it does want to burn CDs/DVDs on my machine--though admittedly I also uninstalled Linux from my personal machine almost two years ago and haven't looked back).

  • (cs)

    I like crunchies more than violet crumbles!

  • (cs)

    One of my coworker, during his evaluation, went to help a user that had performances problems with a windows profile. Quick analysis showed a 2G thunderbird mailbox stored on a network drive. He just "cleaned up" trash and configured client for automatic trash emptying upon closing.

    2 hours later:

    "I have lost my archives of important emails" "sorry, did you do something particular, do you want us to restore a backup? Where did you store your archive" "In that special folder, it's called 'trash'"

    As to why hes stored important emails in the trash? It's esay to store them there "You only have to hit one key, you know"

  • Low (unregistered)

    some time ago I was working in an Eastern European Country (speak: my staff had started to use English only recently, after enjoying 5+ years of high school education). So at coffee break I asked them if someone fancied a home-made cookie. Blank faces and quite erratic eye motion in combination with some distant giggles told me that we just had hit the language barrier dead on. "Why have you the cookies? IT department telled us to delete them every day! You know, you goes to Explorer, Tools...".

  • (cs) in reply to OldTechSupport
    OldTechSupport:
    Took me years after FAX machines caught on to stop printing two copies, one for me and one for them. I'd pick 'em up from the printer, head to the FAX machine, and find myself going "DOH"...

    I generally don't think I'm stupid, but that happened enough times that I'm no longer sure.

    Which reminds me...

  • (cs) in reply to MrsPost
    MrsPost:
    pink_fairy:
    Hint to all of us: assume no offence is meant.

    No offence was meant.

    To (badly) paraphrase Terry Pratchett, why do people find it easier to say 'no offense meant' than not to say something offensive?
    I believe it was the Librarian of Unseen University who answered that one best, when he said
    Ook. Ook ook? Ook!
  • (cs) in reply to Bobblehead Troll
    Bobblehead Troll:
    Anonymous:
    ILOVEYOU: Not buying this one for a second. What kind of love letter starts with ILOVEYOU in all caps and no spaces? I'd expect that from a signing gorilla but not a human being.

    I don't know much about sendmail but I would guess the reject pattern ditched all mails which contained the strings 'i', 'love', and 'you' in that order, regardless of spaces or anything else.

    I am guessing it was more like a m/i\slove\syou/i instead of m/iloveyou/i

  • (cs) in reply to Myrmidon
    Myrmidon:
    vt_mruhlin:
    For virtual return, maybe she wanted you to send it to her so she knew exactly which numbers to cancel?

    Which would still beg the question why wouldn't she just use the copy of the file in her 'out box' so to speak if sheed needed the numbers, and simply have him destroy the copy he recieved instead?

    Just lack of understanding. If I send something by regular mail, then unless I've intentionally made a copy, I'll have to ask for it to be sent back if I need it again. When emailing, the copy is made automatically without me asking. A lot of people just think of email as 'like mail but faster', and will thus make requests that are sensible for regular mail but become silly for email.

  • Daniel Convissor (unregistered)

    The Real WTF is they were writing a point of sale program for the restaurant industry but none of the programmers saw anything wrong with an error message saying "Host busy, Manager check Host."

    Come on! I saw the punch line coming as soon as I read "Host busy, Manager check Host."

  • (cs) in reply to John Muller
    John Muller:
    There was an extension for the classic mac OS, that replaced the normal trash can with one they displayed Oscar the Grouch, and when an item was deleted he would sing "I Love Trash!"...

    That usually lasted until a 3-5 year old got near the computer, and deleted everything.

    Haha! That would be bad.

    I remember that extension; I've long wondered whether it would still work in Mac OS 9. Just never made the effort to track it down.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to tchize
    tchize:
    One of my coworker, during his evaluation, went to help a user that had performances problems with a windows profile. Quick analysis showed a 2G thunderbird mailbox stored on a network drive. He just "cleaned up" trash and configured client for automatic trash emptying upon closing.

    2 hours later:

    "I have lost my archives of important emails" "sorry, did you do something particular, do you want us to restore a backup? Where did you store your archive" "In that special folder, it's called 'trash'"

    As to why hes stored important emails in the trash? It's esay to store them there "You only have to hit one key, you know"

    Deleting stuff on trash is a wtf. I know plenty people who store things in trash. You really shouldn't assume stuff based on a folder's name.

    They called you for fixing his problem, not deleting his e-mails. You could at least check with him before deleting stuff. That's just like someone calls you to clean up his room and you throw away garbage sacks in his room in which he stores some important documents.

  • Mats Svensson (unregistered)

    Wow, out of the mouth noobs and small children...

    Never considered that "Recycle Bin" might be a bad name. But it really is a bad design choice when you think about it. Of course there will be some users that assume that a place called Recycle-something is the correct place for stuff that they might need later.

    They should have just called it "Trash", its short and safe. Id like to see the company that would complain that that name was taken. "Hey! we are the only one who can reefer to our stuff as 'trash'"

  • Phil (unregistered) in reply to Joe
    Joe:
    I remember ILoveYou... I was driving in to the office, and got an email on my pager from a very nice young lady in our accounting office who was near the end of her two-weeks notice that said "I love you." The rest of my drive in I spent thinking that either there was something exceedingly odd going on, or that this was going to be an exceedingly awkward day.

    Fortunately, it was just a computer virus.

    Fortunately? Mate you were in!

  • AntiQuercus (unregistered) in reply to BobNFreely

    I like to make '.attic' directories for stuff that I might want to look at again one day, but that I don't want cluttering folders. (This is in addition to version control.) Plus it keeps them close to the house (directory) they once were a part of. And I don't get filename collisions in the trash/recycle so much. Every so often an attic cleanup is needed.

    Didn't the SGI desktop have a dumpster icon? I would love to see a beeping truck empty it every so often.

  • AntiQuercus (unregistered) in reply to Zemm
    Zemm:
    I like crunchies more than violet crumbles!

    I am bi-honeycombual. Sometimes crunchies, sometimes violet crumbles.

    And occasionally, I like rough trade, those broken factory seconds honeycomb bites with greying chocolate that come in poly bags. Nasty!

  • st0815 (unregistered)

    Using computers is a skill which has to be learned. Somehow people seem to believe they can sit in front of a machine, without any preparation and unwilling to learn - and everything is just going to work. It's not all that difficult, but if you are clueless and not technically oriented: go to a class, read a book or get some training.

  • David (unregistered) in reply to Claxon
    Claxon:
    MrsPost:
    The Director of IT where I once worked had set down a rule that Outlook was not to automatically clear out the Deleted folder at any time.

    He was rather fond of being able to file his important stuff with one click. Yes, he clicked Delete to save his important messages.

    In a very odd way I can see his point but that's only after repeatedly hitting my head on my desk for about half a hour.

    I'm curious... What did he do with unimportant e-mails taht he didn't want anymore?

    He probably forwarded them to someone else. I'm sure a lot of the emails I get forwarded down to me should have been deleted.

  • John (unregistered)

    Somewhat confused, Dmitriy replied back.

    Sarah: I'm sorry, can you confirm... you sent us a CSV 
file. Do you want me to email that back?

    Seems too familiar:

    http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html

    Dear David, You emailed the drawing to me. Do you want me to email it back to you?

  • (cs)

    About the squirrel system: It really is the worst POS system I've ever worked with.

    About ILOVEYOU. I had some coworkers who were fired for emails similar to that. Alright, that was just the official reason they were fired: improper use of email. What really got them fired was that they would email each other "meet me in the parking lot in 5 minutes," go to the parking lot and have sex.

  • John C (unregistered) in reply to Bobblehead Troll

    When I worked for a big ISP in the city, they had an easy answer. They rewrote the response from their MMDF that would receive the email with ILOVEYOU and respond with an error message that simply printed IHATEYOU.

  • Worf (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    JdFalcon04:
    Erzengel:
    akatherder:
    Dave Rolsky:
    I think several of these WTFs highlight failures in the software, not the people.

    For "Host is Busy", a company making restaurant management software should know what a restaurant means by host, and regardless, using "host" is way too techie.

    Better to say something like "master computer" with some explanatory text like "many restaurants keep this computer in the back office".

    They should have just used "server".

    In case that wasn't a lame joke:

    ...that would be the person who "serves" the food. You may call them waiters, as waiters are often also servers.

    Congrats, you just replaced one person that the manager needs to check with a dozen.

    As someone mentioned, they should have used "host computer" to alleviate confusion.

    Unless of course the host happens to have a computer, like lots of restaurant host stands have, in which case he probably wouldn't find anything wrong with it. You can never underestimate the technical knowledge of an average non-technical person.

    It would say "host computer" not "host's computer". Anyhow, the message "Host busy, manager check Host" sucks bad.

    Something like "The main computer is busy or malfunctioning, please check it." would be a lot nicer.

    Why not just call it the "master computer"? It implies there's only one of them, thus excluding the terminal computers, and a position of authority, so it's probably somewhere locked up, like the manager's office. Plus, since the system goes down when the master's down, it even makes sense...

  • (cs)

    I was employed by a computer consulting company when the ILOVEYOU virus hit. The CEO and most of the sales staff fell for it. Most of us in the field found it quite entertaining.

    (I made a list of infected senders and sent it privately to the head of the internal I.T. support staff, asking them to go fix the infected machines. They took care of it. ;-)

  • blunder (unregistered) in reply to Myrmidon
    Myrmidon:
    Which would still beg the question
    It really wouldn't. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=begs+the+question
    Myrmidon:
    why wouldn't she just use the copy of the file in her 'out box' so to speak if sheed needed the numbers, and simply have him destroy the copy he recieved instead?

    My guess is that she wanted to get it right, considering they'd already confused who was getting which numbers.

  • noryb (unregistered) in reply to BobNFreely
    BobNFreely:
    I've always hated the idea of a "recycle" or "trash" bin for deleting files. It's very simple. If you think you might need the file again someday, don't delete it. If you want to delete a file, why the hell would you want the system to hang keep it, using up valuable disk space? "Oh, you want to delete a file? Okay, well, I'll hang on to it until you're really sure you want to delete it. Just let me know." That's why I never use the damn thing. When I want to delete something, I highlight it and press SHIFT-DELETE. It's a habit I got into back in the days when hard disks were small and expensive.
    The point is not to hold files while you ponder over whether you'd like to delete them or not.

    The point of the bin is that it takes two distinct, deliberate actions to delete anything. Not to mention the fact that it allows you to batch up your delete operations, when you have a lot of files to get rid of.

    Yes, there is the "Are you sure you want to" dialog, but we all know that nobody ever clicks "No" in those boxes. It becomes a reflex to just hit shift-del and then enter.

    CAPTCHA: eros :)

  • What? (unregistered) in reply to Bellinghman
    Bellinghman:
    50% Opacity:
    I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?
    In case you're not trolling, it recovers space on your filing system. Yeah, not obvious, but logic trumps obviousness in this industry.
    I really, really, really hope you were joking.
  • What? (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Crunchies: took the help-desk guy a lot longer than me to figure out what he meant. As soon as the word "internet" came up...

    ILOVEYOU: Not buying this one for a second. What kind of love letter starts with ILOVEYOU in all caps and no spaces? I'd expect that from a signing gorilla but not a human being.

    Hi there, Buzz Killington.

  • (cs)

    How on Earth did Cookies and Crunchies get confused? They're not that similar. [image]

  • Ed Barton (unregistered)

    Why couldn't the email filter only filter out the "i love you" emails with attachments? Or more specifically, only .vbs attachments, seeing as that's what the ILOVEYOU virus used.

  • Buffled (unregistered) in reply to Bellinghman
    Bellinghman:
    50% Opacity:
    I always thought "Recycle Bin" was a horrible and misleading name for the pre-stage of /dev/null. What's it s'posed to be recycling anyway? Make a fresh handful of bits out of your old files?
    In case you're not trolling, it recovers space on your filing system. Yeah, not obvious, but logic trumps obviousness in this industry.
    Um, no it doesn't. That space shows as in use until you "empty" the recycle bin.
  • Daniel (unregistered)

    Hmm, IMHO two of these, instead of pointing out the stupidity of "regular folks", point out bad use of terms and phrasing by us, the programmers. The "check host" bit was bad phrasing in the first place, but even more interesting, why is it exactly that MS chose to name the trash can the "recycle bin". Seriously, I understand exactly why someone understanding nothing of computers would not get that this is the place stuff gets eradicated. "Trash Can" is commonly used, commonly understood, and everyone who's thrown half a bag of peanuts in the trash can thinking, "nah, that's one too many," will know that stuff in the trash can be re-retrieved until the wife takes it out. No need for that "recycling bit", mr. Gates, unless you're actually talking about recycling bits?

  • XD (unregistered) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    Dave Rolsky:
    I think several of these WTFs highlight failures in the software, not the people.

    For "Host is Busy", a company making restaurant management software should know what a restaurant means by host, and regardless, using "host" is way too techie.

    Better to say something like "master computer" with some explanatory text like "many restaurants keep this computer in the back office".

    They should have just used "server".

    BEST. COMMENT. EVAR.

  • Christian (unregistered) in reply to Bobblehead Troll

    Right. He said that he "messed up" the pattern, so this could have been possible. Regexes aren't the easiest thing.

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