• schmitter (unregistered) in reply to Andrew
    Andrew:
    schmitter:
    If you need a credit card for a $1.25 soda, you need a better job my friend.

    So you carry cash (namely ones) on you at all times?

    Yes. Yes I do.

  • Effete Hipster (unregistered)
    someone remind what was wrong with the 'old' ones that worked for decades?

    You never tried to buy stuff and found out it was out of what you wanted or ate your change or your soda / candy got stuck? Or people were just robbing the damned thing?

    If you call that "working," then you must be a Windows user.

  • (cs) in reply to Mel
    Mel:
    Jaime:
    The water in the US is fine. People drink bottled water for two reasons: 1. It comes in a bottle. As Americans, we're to lazy to use our own container. 2. Many people think it tastes better. Plenty of double-blind studies have been done to show that bottled water tastes no better than tap water. Actually, in most cases, bottled water is tap water -- just sold in a bottle. The Penn & Teller segment on bottled water was hilarious, they got people in a fancy restaurant to sing the praises of Los Angeles hose water by giving it a fancy presentation.
    I personally drink bottled water for one reason: I'm thirsty and/or it's hot, I don't have my own drink and there's nowhere with tap water accessible. Generally I go for flavoured water so I feel like I'm getting at least something I can't from the tap.

    Oh, and our tap water tastes foul. The tap water a few kms away tastes fine, and I'm happy to drink it there, but at home it always goes through a filter.

    Same here. I live in an old building so I sometimes get funky metallic taste from my pipes if I don't filter my tap water.

    That said, some bottled water (usually the stuff that is tap water in a bottle) tastes downright foul.

    The people who claim it all tastes the same most likely haven't spent much time out west. Part of the reason bottled water is so common in southern California is because the tap water tastes horrendous, to the point of not even being able to make decent coffee with it.

  • Ken (unregistered) in reply to Mad Benjamin(s)

    But then I wouldn't have all those wonderful amazon.com reward points.

  • andthen (unregistered)
    Matt Parkin:
    This is from a well-known financial planning site
    I'm guessing Manu... life?
  • Jay (unregistered)

    Someday I'll have to get a job in the credit card industry so I can see how their formulas work. Because it makes no sense to me.

    Like, a company I have a card with just raised my interest rate from 9.9% to 18.9%. So I figured I'd look around and see if I could get a better rate. I saw an ad on the internet for 11.9%. From the same company I had my card with. So I called them up and asked if I could switch to this lower rate. They told me they couldn't change the rate on my current card, but they'd give me an additional card at the lower rate. So now I have two cards with them at two different rates. And twice the credit limit I used to have.

    And by the way, that brings me up to 4 credit cards with a total credit limit of over $40,000. Hey, I make decent money, but if I actually ran up $40,000 in credit card debt, I don't know how I would ever pay it off. I wouldn't give me that much credit. I wonder where they come up with these numbers.

  • Muggles the Wump (unregistered) in reply to NullPointerException

    To put it another way: 

    public CreditCard
    provides an abstraction layer for accessing 
    private Money
    stored in a 
    protected BankAccount

  • boog (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    Your dentist is ill-informed, I'm afraid.
    Not necessarily; I could have just as easily misunderstood/misquoted my dentist and/or exaggerated my claim. I've read up on it a little more now (I appreciate the references).
    First off: the *only* thing that causes tooth decay (aka 'dental caries', as distinct from any other form of mere physical damage) is exposure to acids generated by oral bacteria metabolising fermentable sugars.
    Fair enough. I was mistaken to downplay the effects that sugar can have on your teeth; sugar is certainly a major cause of tooth decay. Still, it seems that based on drinking habits, the acids in soda can cause erosion of tooth enamel.

    Here are a couple references that note a correlation between acidic beverages and erosion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15960479 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19434767

    If I'm still wrong, feel free to explain.

  • Casper (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Just because you can put a computer into something doesn't mean you should.
    Bingo! You have just identified TRWTF of the decade!

    Did you know hackers are working on your car's (absurdly unsecured) wireless LAN now? Send the right packet -- unlock the door of that sweet car in the parking lot. Cops chasing you? Send the packet that screws with their fuel injection...

  • Sigivald (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    All the "old ones" I'm familiar with had glass fronts so you could see immediately what was and wasn't in stock, without requiring an entire frigging computer to figure it out for you.

    Funny, around here I see lots of non-computerized (or, well, not full-touchscreen-backed-by-a-real-OS computerized; I'm sure they have microcontrollers of some sort) vending machines that do NOT let you see stock, and that either don't have "out of stock" lights or ones that NEVER WORK.

    Plus all these comments have missed another thing that the full-front-screen system gives the vendor (and remember, the vending machine is about making the vendor money) - advertising.

    Easily and remotely changeable context-specific advertising. That's animated, if you want.

    Easy to make horrible, ugly, worse-than-useless crap with such a system. But done right, it could easily make for a nice secondary income stream.

    And that is why you're going to see a lot more of them.

  • (cs)

    What am I missing about the status code error message? It makes sense to me:

    Either (1) the user passed a bad status code (e.g. passing 7 for an integer based Enum in C# that is defined as 0 XOR 1 XOR 2 - it will pass compiler muster just fine, but should be caught by parameter validation code as it is obviously incorrect)

    or

    (2) the existing status code in combination with the new state code doesn't make sense (e.g. status code "Pepsi" and state code "Sprite", to stay with the flavored sugar water theme).

  • Eat me (unregistered) in reply to the beholder
    It rots your teeth for a start.
    That's funny, I've been drinking sodas for 50 years and my teeth are fine. Maybe in another hundred years I'll start to see a little decay around the edges?
    It's overpriced for another thing.
    Awesome! Finding an overpriced product is a rare opportunity. Congratulations! You can now make a fortune by bringing a competing product to market at a lower price.
  • D. Adams (unregistered) in reply to by

    'Shade 8' is a super-intelligent shade of the number 8.

  • FuBar (unregistered) in reply to dolor
    dolor:
    Because it's an embedded system with no file system.
    Don't you hate it when memes turn real? It's sort of just like life imitating art.
  • FuBar (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Just because you can put a computer into something doesn't mean you should.
    OK, seriously, you are no. fun. at. all.
  • asdf (unregistered)
    [image] There's really no need to include this one at all. There is no way that this code could exist in production. Basically, what happened is that Matt was developing a website, did something stupid, and then thought it would be funny to submit it.
  • Your Grandmother (unregistered) in reply to asdf

    Or maybe it was using a different currency and rounding. 1350 pesos would round to 0 dollars.

  • English Man (unregistered)

    Has anyone else called Customer Service for Weld Screen?

    I know, I know. It's been a slow day.

  • Vic (unregistered)

    And to pile on on the reasons why the weld screen is not a WTF - the web page even has a mouseover which pops up the exact description of each color choice.

  • Blind guy (unregistered) in reply to Vic
    Vic:
    And to pile on on the reasons why the weld screen is not a WTF - the web page even has a mouseover which pops up the exact description of each color choice.
    What's a "mouse"?
  • the beholder (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Just because you can put a computer into something doesn't mean you should.
    I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter
  • pratchett fan (unregistered)

    Shade 8 would be octarine, of course!

  • old_dinosaur (unregistered)
    "I was buying some vinyl from this site"
    Damn I am so "old school".... when I first read that I expected him to be purchasing some LP music records, or 45's even, LOL!

    CAPTCHA 'nulla' - this contract is nulla and voida

  • Roger Garrett (unregistered) in reply to the beholder
    the beholder:
    1- It rots your teeth for a start. - Kinda true, but it could be a lot better if USA had any kind of dental plan. I'm from Latin-America, and when a friend of mine spent over a year in US she was impressed to see so many middle-class people who had missing teeth. Apparently there's almost no dental plan (unless you're rich), and there is no fluorine on the tap water either. But then again, in a country where there isn't widely accessible health care, dental care is a bit of a dream.

    Most middle-class people in the U.S. have perfectly fine teeth, since many employers provide health plans that include dental coverage, at least as an option, and most communities include fluoride (not fluorine) in their municipal water supplies. I can only assume that your friend was visiting some small backwater town in Arkansas, hardly representative of the nation as a whole.

  • iToad (unregistered)
    Scott:
    someone remind what was wrong with the 'old' ones that worked for decades?

    They are quaint relics of a bygone age. As electronics and networking get steadily better and cheaper, the next generation of vending machines will be able to perform an iris scan as you walk by them, identify you from a data base, and display advertising directed at you personally (just like something out of a science-fiction movie).

  • kastein (unregistered) in reply to Neville Flynn
    Neville Flynn:
    kastein:
    You missed the point, the merchant sees the same amount either way. The credit card company is the one refunding you a bit of your money... and who doesn't want to stick it to those guys? They're the ones who jack the rate up to 18-30% if you screw up just once.

    And no, I don't have a credit card, and likely never will. My only debts are student loans and possibly a mortgage in the future... I refuse to buy consumer crap on credit.

    Actually, the merchant pays for the credit card transaction fee.

    I was talking about the reward points, etc etc. The credit card transaction fee, yeah... that's why gas stations sometimes charge an extra 5 cents per gallon for credit/debit sales. Completely understandable and I curse myself for not carrying more cash every time I have to use plastic at a place like this.

    Jellineck:
    "And no, I don't have a credit card, and likely never will."

    I have one because I don't like the idea of using my debit card online or worse, my bank account # and routing info and fuck paypal. Also, everytime I try to stick cash in my optical drive, my payment never seems to go through. My CC balance is bill-payed at the end of each month so I pretty much get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks of plastic.

    True, I generally use my debit card online anyways. I've had my information stolen twice, once due to a brick and mortar store employee skimming cards (my brother and several other people I went to college with all had their cards jacked too. Sadly we had too many purchase locations in common to figure out what store it was) and another due to the bank getting hacked. In each case my money was refunded within a few days and it was only a minor hassle, so I'll keep doing it... yes I know this is shortsighted.

    Justice:
    Mel:
    Jaime:
    The water in the US is fine. People drink bottled water for two reasons: 1. It comes in a bottle. As Americans, we're to lazy to use our own container. 2. Many people think it tastes better. Plenty of double-blind studies have been done to show that bottled water tastes no better than tap water. Actually, in most cases, bottled water is tap water -- just sold in a bottle. The Penn & Teller segment on bottled water was hilarious, they got people in a fancy restaurant to sing the praises of Los Angeles hose water by giving it a fancy presentation.
    I personally drink bottled water for one reason: I'm thirsty and/or it's hot, I don't have my own drink and there's nowhere with tap water accessible. Generally I go for flavoured water so I feel like I'm getting at least something I can't from the tap.

    Oh, and our tap water tastes foul. The tap water a few kms away tastes fine, and I'm happy to drink it there, but at home it always goes through a filter.

    Same here. I live in an old building so I sometimes get funky metallic taste from my pipes if I don't filter my tap water.

    That said, some bottled water (usually the stuff that is tap water in a bottle) tastes downright foul.

    The people who claim it all tastes the same most likely haven't spent much time out west. Part of the reason bottled water is so common in southern California is because the tap water tastes horrendous, to the point of not even being able to make decent coffee with it.

    good lord do I ever agree. Was on a business trip to mountain view in fall 08 and the water had so much gas (of some unknown sort) dissolved in it that it was opaque when I poured it in a glass. It was practically carbonated right from the tap and tasted horrible, so I lived on 3-liter jugs of Poland Springs while I was out there. I hate wasting plastic on small single serving bottles (even recycling, still somewhat of a waste) thus the 3 liter bottles.

  • Carl (unregistered) in reply to Vic

    I found the same web site and then looked at the fun stuff link for some nice eye candy.

  • (cs) in reply to Roger Garrett
    Roger Garrett:
    the beholder:
    1- It rots your teeth for a start. - Kinda true, but it could be a lot better if USA had any kind of dental plan. I'm from Latin-America, and when a friend of mine spent over a year in US she was impressed to see so many middle-class people who had missing teeth. Apparently there's almost no dental plan (unless you're rich), and there is no fluorine on the tap water either. But then again, in a country where there isn't widely accessible health care, dental care is a bit of a dream.

    Most middle-class people in the U.S. have perfectly fine teeth, since many employers provide health plans that include dental coverage, at least as an option, and most communities include fluoride (not fluorine) in their municipal water supplies. I can only assume that your friend was visiting some small backwater town in Arkansas, hardly representative of the nation as a whole.

    I keep calling the township because they don't put flouride in my well. I mean, where does all that tax money go?

  • CHR. (unregistered) in reply to boog

    Actually, isn't it the phosphoric acid they put in colas (but not necessarily other sodas) that really does a number on your teeth? If I remember correctly, a chicken bone left soaking in Coke will dissolve in a couple weeks.

  • Miksu (unregistered) in reply to toth
    toth:
    I'll grant you that, for a $1.25 soda, it wouldn't make much difference, but as a general rule, if you only use a debit card, then good luck getting a loan or even renting. At my current apartment, the landlord was uneasy about renting to me and made me get a cosigner, because I had no credit rating (not a bad credit rating, no credit rating) because I'd only ever used my debit card before. Since then, I got a credit card and have been using it frequently, even though I never, ever spend more money than I have. It's kind of kooky, but a credit rating is practically a necessity.

    To me that kind of logic for getting a credit rating is totally backwards. Here in Finland it's totally the other way round: Your credit rating is based mainly on your income and employment and existing credit cards have a negative effect on it.

  • Eris (unregistered)

    PXE? A Coke machine that boots off a network? That's a little too connected, thanks.

  • Don't understand all of this at all (unregistered) in reply to Jens

    I will make a t-shirt 'I <<<heart>>> TDWTF'

  • (cs) in reply to Mad Benjamin(s)
    Mad Benjamin(s):
    NullPointerException:
    I frequently don't have bills smaller than $5 and I almost never have coins. I always have a credit and/or debit card.

    I never use credit cards to borrow money--purely for convenience.

    You do understand what a debit card is, right? The money is debited directly from your account, so you borrow nothing. Therefore if you never use a credit card to "borrow money" you shouldn't even bother having one - a debit card does the same job without the "borrowing money" bit.

    Actually, it doesn't. Some place WON'T take a debit card, that will take a credit card. Yeah I couldn't figure that one out either.

  • chl (unregistered) in reply to Roger Garrett
    the beholder:

    Most middle-class people in the U.S. have perfectly fine teeth, since many employers provide health plans that include dental coverage, at least as an option...

    When I worked at UW, my dental plan included painkillers, simple fillings, and tooth extraction. If you wanted to preserve a seriously sick tooth, you had to shell out >>$1000 for a root canal plus crown. If that is representative of dental plans, then I am not surprised about noticing middle class people with missing teeth.

  • Joe Doh! (unregistered)

    The old ones couldn't charge you more when it's hot, that's what's wrong with them.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to chrismcb

    In Germany, the acceptance is quite strictly cash > debit card > credit card, with large margins in between. Instead of a credit card, a giro account is virtually a necessity. While this costs a monthly fee, the card comes with it.

    Most places will make you enter your PIN, though, which makes it cumbersome to use and paying small charges in cash the overwhelming norm. Of course, Germans also think it's totally fine to buy something like a television or even car in cash (yes, we actually DO use these 500€ notes ;)

  • FTW (unregistered)

    Probably running linux

  • (cs) in reply to TheJasper
    TheJasper:
    anon:
    While I'll agree that the broken soda machine is amusing and WTF worthy, the snarky comment about "what was wrong with the old ones" is kind of unnecessary. First off, it implies that the old ones never broke which is obviously untrue, and second it implies that no advantages are gained by the new ones. On the old ones, someone had to manually change small paper labels every time a new product was added, and we've all seen the crappy, handwritten substitutes when the paper label was damaged or unavailable. Also, the old ones often didn't give a clear indication of what drinks were out of stock, and without an onboard computer were incapable of automatically reporting back to a central server what the current inventory was.

    You obviously never listened to your grandparents. Things were always better in the olden days. Sure, you had to walk 10 miles uphill in the snow both ways to get a can of soda, but things were definately better.

    "Can"? Your grandparents must've been a lot younger than mine. Soda came in bottles in those days, and none of this namby-pamby plastic stuff either; real forged-in-a-volcano glass! Cans were for beer (which being good Babtists my grandparents never had any use for), and you needed an opener to get into them. Didn't come up with pull-tops until much later, and the ones that stayed on the top of the can were later still.

    Needed an opener for the bottles too, but there was never an issue of knowing when the machine was out of the flavor you wanted. You could see the end of the bottle sticking out of the front of the machine. No cap, no bottle, what could be simpler?

    And when you were done, you could take the bottles back to the store and they'd give you cash money for them. Not a big garbage bag full of crushed cans for eight bucks, but a shiny nickel for each and every bottle.

  • Not Matt (unregistered) in reply to asdf

    I guarantee that this is a real world error in a production system.

    asdf:
    There's really no need to include this one at all. There is no way that this code could exist in production. Basically, what happened is that Matt was developing a website, did something stupid, and then thought it would be funny to submit it.
  • Iain COllins (unregistered) in reply to Mad Benjamin(s)
    Mad Benjamin(s):
    You do understand what a debit card is, right? The money is debited directly from your account, so you borrow nothing. Therefore if you never use a credit card to "borrow money" you shouldn't even bother having one - a debit card does the same job without the "borrowing money" bit.

    Fail.

    Not only are there many places which take credit cards but not debit cards (in particular online stores, but also including over the counter sales - though these exceptions have decreased in recent years) debit cards don't offer the same level of consumer protection rights as credit cards in many regions.

  • Iain COllins (unregistered) in reply to Miksu
    Miksu:
    To me that kind of logic for getting a credit rating is totally backwards. Here in Finland it's totally the other way round: Your credit rating is based mainly on your income and employment and existing credit cards have a negative effect on it.

    In the short term, being granted access to credit may prevent you from getting additional credit (e.g. getting multiple mortgage quotes or short term loans can trip triggers that may cause you to be declined for subsequent loans of mortgages you would normally be accepted for), that's a bit of an anomaly though, and quickly resets itself.

    Additionally, some firms may include information about your existing obligations in their decision making processes, as part of their 'risk assessment' of you (and decide if they think you are likely to be able to pay them back every month without running into major difficulties, because ultimately no-one wants that).

    Having a card, and using it, is a really good way to build up a credit history. Having a strong credit rating - from a history of paying back debts on time - is really useful when you want to buy items like a car or a loan, you can often qualify for reduced interest rates as a result of a good credit rating, because you are deemed a lower risk. This can be useful when buying a house (e.g. if you want to extend a loan beyond standard mortgage conditions, or raise funds for work to be done on a house).

    Except over the very short term, having a credit history is only a positive, as long as you pay back responsibly (minor transgressions like late payments are not a problem, as long as you don't make a habit of it).

    Without a good credit rating it's much harder - and in tough climates can be impossible - to get access to credit. It's very advantageous to have access to credit, particularly in emergencies - especially if you have a family and/or are a homeowner.

  • Nathan (unregistered)

    Wouldn't the 8th shade be Octarine?

  • Runswithscissors (unregistered)

    So we can make a touchscreen vending machine but we still can't make one that doesn't drop your coke from the top of the machine. They need to reassess their priorities.

  • (cs) in reply to Larry
    Larry:
    the beholder:
    4- Possibly the real WTF is that one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world supplies water from its faucets that is less than 100% appetising or healthful. - I agree to the letter.
    TRWTF is that Latin America has outlawed the use of the letter "zed".
    Your post needs scrutinising: since when was Latin America a nation? (In case I haven't publicised it, I'm Australian. And I'm tempted to italicise or emphasise the way I'm spelling certain words.)
  • Jonathan Wilson (unregistered) in reply to chrismcb

    Given how the credit card companies (at least in the US anyway) force rules on those who want to take cards (e.g. all those rules about how card payment must not be harder/more expensive than cash), why don't they just introduce another rule that says a merchant must accept any valid Visa/MasterCard card regardless of whether its a debit card, prepaid card, credit card or otherwise?

    I havent seen merchants around here that wont take debit cards but I know quite a few merchants that refuse to take prepaid cards (the ones you buy that are like gift cards), its wierd that merchants wont take them.

  • Jonathan Wilson (unregistered) in reply to cystm

    The vending machines here at work take notes all the way up to a $20 (and regularly spit out $2 coins as change).

    This is in Australia though so the US may be different.

  • Know it All (unregistered) in reply to Eternal Density

    Actually, the Americans are mostly right on this one, and it is Oxford that have given up, saying that "s" is best if you don't know. (USians by contrast say "z" is best if you don't know, which turns out to be right more often.)

    The truth: Words deriving from the greek letter zeta are more properly transliterated with a "z" (or "zed" in Australian vernacular,) it's just that the English and Colonials couldn't keep straight which words were which.

    Many sources for this, but my favourite* is Godfrey Howard's "Good English Guide".

    • Sorry, couldn't resist.
  • Simon (unregistered)

    I cant help myself, but the MS CRM Error makes perfect sence...

    State and Status Code -> Entity State and "Reason" for the actual state of the Entity.

    So its possible to give a Reason (->Status) thats missmatching to the state you wanted to set.

    This error is far better than just crashing, isnt it? :-)

  • (cs) in reply to Jonathan Wilson
    Jonathan Wilson:
    Given how the credit card companies (at least in the US anyway) force rules on those who want to take cards (e.g. all those rules about how card payment must not be harder/more expensive than cash), why don't they just introduce another rule that says a merchant must accept any valid Visa/MasterCard card regardless of whether its a debit card, prepaid card, credit card or otherwise?

    I havent seen merchants around here that wont take debit cards but I know quite a few merchants that refuse to take prepaid cards (the ones you buy that are like gift cards), its wierd that merchants wont take them.

    Because credit cards, debit cards, prepaid cards or anything else are not legal tender. Cash is what the government guarantees. If you force merchants to accept all the other stuff you are always screwing somebody over. Either the financial institutions by making them give up their processing fees, the merchants by forcing them to accept them or the taxpayer by making them pay for it. Merchants are not allowed to refuse cash however (except if you try to buy a car with pennies or somehting ridiculous like that). Though I'm not 100% sure how that last rule holds up nowadays. In the netherlands debit cards are the preferred mode of payment and I know of at least one store which doesnt take cash. Don't know if they were ever challenged on it.

  • bill (unregistered) in reply to meh

    The good old electromechanical ones were mostly reliable... When the price went up, and micro processors became available they started putting bill acceptors on them... The bill acceptors had motorized rubber rollers to feed the bills past the sensors - when those rollers got worn they slipped and the bill changers never worked right after that we used to have to use one of the other machines (coffe?) as bill changer to get coins to feed the coke machine - put a dollar in, then hit the coin return, it would return 4 quarters. the real wtf? why didn't they just fix the damn thing...

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