The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

story from back in the early '70's... They had just started coming out with automated bill changers... They had a smaller wall mount model about the size of a microwave oven, might hold a couple of hundred bucks or so... just the thing for laundromats and the like. Any way, the owners started coming in to find the machine empty, or mostly empty. No fake bills, the lock was intact and hadn't been tampered with, the money was all gone and the machine was just empty. And no, it wasn't an inside job. It turned out that the machine designers had used a good old fashioned electro mechanical relay to actuate the coin dispenser to dispense the money. Unfortunately, it was not immune to mechanical shock. And somebody had discovered that if you hit that kind of machine hard enough in a certain way, it would cause the contact to close, which would actuate the dispenser with out the need for money input, dispensing free money, at a dollar per hit. The manufacturer fixed it... but i don't know what the fix was - they don't tend to talk about that stuff for obvious reasons...

captcha oppeto - a short musical piece

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

You don't remember beer coming in the old steel, cone top "brake fluid" cans? They had a screw on lid, didn't need an opener. Probably, I don't know, very late '40's or early '50's... wasn't very popular, the returnable glass bottle was still king till the disposible glass and aluminum cans hit.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

DaveK:
Jens:
I like Denmark where you can pay virtually everywhere and everything with Dankort, a debit card. But if it needs to be a credit card for the comfort, why not?
Sweden plans to get rid of cash completely.

It's not "convenient" - IT'S A TRAP!
If you give up your ability to perform anonymous transactions with cash, how the hell are you supposed to buy weed anymore?

barter it for sex?

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

da Doctah:
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.

You don't remember beer coming in the old steel, cone top "brake fluid" cans? They had a screw on lid, didn't need an opener. Probably, I don't know, very late '40's or early '50's... wasn't very popular, the returnable glass bottle was still king till the disposible glass and aluminum cans hit.

captcha persto: if you don't behave, I'll hit you with my persto (said with lisp)

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

I would just like to point out that the CRM error actually makes perfect sense if you know how the system works (using it without knowing how it works is the real WTF).

So basically every entity can have a "state". For entities like Leads for example, the state can be "Open" or "Closed".

Then every entity has a "Status Code", which explains why the entity is in the given state. For the Lead entity, these status codes are "New", "Contacted", "Qualified", "Lost", "Cannot Contact", "No Longer Interested", and "Canceled". So each of these statuses are attached to a given state:

New -> Open
Contacted -> Open
Qualified -> Open
Lost -> Closed
Cannot Contact -> Closed
No Longer Interested -> Closed
Canceled -> Closed

So this error will occur if someone tries to set a status code that doesn't make sense for the given state; such as trying to set status code to "Canceled" on an "Open" lead.

The CRM GUI actually prevents this from happening, so my guess is that a 3rd party plugin was executing some WTF code that tried setting a status on an entity without also updating the state.

operagost · 2010-09-20 Reply Admin

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.

Try renting a car without a credit card. Most won't do it because of the risk. Those that do usually only rent out the cheapest cars and expect a very large deposit.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

operagost:
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.
Try buying an house without a credit card. Most won't do it because of the risk. Those that do usually only rent or charge a huge interest rate and expect a very large down payment (and mortgage insurance).

FTFY

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
I'm a software developer but it doesn't change the fact I consider paper to be a far easier alternative to an entire frigging computer. So what if someone has to write "$1.25" by hand? After all, you can hire any idiot to write "$1.25" on a bit of paper but you need to hire experts to maintain a computer system.

This site would beg to differ...

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

operagost:
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.
Try renting a car without a credit card. Most won't do it because of the risk. Those that do usually only rent out the cheapest cars and expect a very large deposit.

I've rented cars with my debit card before but I'm starting to get the impression that things are a bit different in the US. Here in the UK there is no such thing as a merchant who accepts credit but not debit. It simply doesn't happen. Very occasionally you get merchants who accept debit but won't take credit - but it's never the other way round. I guess debit cards are far more integrated into our banking infrastructure here in the UK than they are in the US.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Mad Benjamin(s):
operagost:
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.
Try renting a car without a credit card. Most won't do it because of the risk. Those that do usually only rent out the cheapest cars and expect a very large deposit.
I've had good teeth before but I'm starting to get the impression that things are a bit different in the US. Here in the UK there is no such thing as a merchant with good teeth. It simply doesn't happen. Very occasionally you get merchants who have all bad teeth and no good teeth - but it's never the other way round. I guess dentists are far less integrated into our medical infrastructure here in the UK than they are in the US.

FTFY

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

MMORPG:
...

Well hi there Mr. Originality, I'm really looking forward to the rest of your act - I can't wait to find out what the deal is with airline food and why that chicken crossed the road.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

meh:
Try paying with a credit card on one of your 'old' ones.

Do you really want to pay 18% interest on a coke?

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

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".

Did we? I think that "typo" must have come from the OP.

So I guess that TRWTF is that people in english-speaking countries can't write "proper english", or agree in a definition of what "proper english" means.

But we all knew that already.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Roger Garrett:
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 really hope you're right, except for the fact it was a small backwater town (some 50k people) in Washington. BTW, do they have any other kind of town there?

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Mad Benjamin(s):
MMORPG:
Mad Benjamin(s):
operagost:
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.
Try renting a car without a credit card. Most won't do it because of the risk. Those that do usually only rent out the cheapest cars and expect a very large deposit.
I've had good teeth before but I'm starting to get the impression that things are a bit different in the US. Here in the UK there is no such thing as a merchant with good teeth. It simply doesn't happen. Very occasionally you get merchants who have all bad teeth and no good teeth - but it's never the other way round. I guess dentists are far less integrated into our medical infrastructure here in the UK than they are in the US.
FTFY
Well hi there Mr. Originality, I'm really looking forward to the rest of your act - I can't wait to find out what the deal is with airline food and why that chicken crossed the road.

FTFY

MarkJ · 2010-09-20 Reply Admin

operagost:
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.
Try renting a car without a credit card. Most won't do it because of the risk. Those that do usually only rent out the cheapest cars and expect a very large deposit.

In my youth, my employer would give me "One-Trip Travel Orders" (OTTOs) from Hertz to rent cars. Getting the clerks to accept them instead of a credit card was always a struggle, even though my employer was paying for it!

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

kastein:
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.

And my credit card gives me 5% back on gas purchases, so that puts me ahead!

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

the beholder:
I really hope you're right, except for the fact it was a small backwater town (some 50k people) in Washington. BTW, do they have any other kind of town there?

Aside from Seattle, the Tri-Cities (still somewhat hick-y) and Spokane (..kinda sorta still hick-y)..um..no. This as a WA native. North Central WA native, so I'm not speaking out of inappropriate places.

jonnyq · 2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Ian:
meh:
Try paying with a credit card on one of your 'old' ones.

Do you really want to pay 18% interest on a coke?

Wow, I know this thread is dead, but geez there's a lot of stupid quotes about credit cards and soda machines in here, especially for a website covered in pedants and people who make fun of wtfs.

The 'old' style machines are being fitted with card readers. There's no need to go touch screen just to take a card. Unless it's only of those fancy machines that mixes flavors inside the machine with hundreds of possible combinations, there's no reason to have a touch screen.
You don't pay interest on a credit card unless you let the money sit on the card for more than a month. Pay it when the bill comes in? Great! No interest. That along with the fraud protection is enough of a reason to skip the debit card once in a while. I'd recommend almost NEVER using a debit card online.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

meh:
Scott:
someone remind what was wrong with the 'old' ones that worked for decades?

Try paying with a credit card on one of your 'old' ones.

Er, these exist. You don't need a 40-inch display to charge a credit card, the tiny little LCD on the reader (including the one in this picture!) takes care of that.

CAPTCHA: dolor (conveniently, what Scott does not have in his pocket right now)

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Mr. Bob:
I've yet to see a vending machine like the type shown, but I can imagine half of the incentive for having the embedded display is for advertising purposes.

If you're cynical, then I am too, because this is the first thing I thought. It can broadcast the latest flashing commercials at you. Try to ignore that, sucker!

captcha: transverbero I don't know what it means, but I like it! Say it out loud, it's fun!

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

meh:
Scott:
someone remind what was wrong with the 'old' ones that worked for decades?

Try paying with a credit card on one of your 'old' ones.

I've seen plenty of old-style ones that have been converted to work with credit cards.

Kensey · 2010-09-20 Reply Admin

MMORPG:
operagost:
Try buying an house without a credit card. Most won't do it because of the risk. Those that do usually only rent or charge a huge interest rate and expect a very large down payment (and mortgage insurance).
FTFY

What are you babbling on about? Whether you get hit for PMI has nothing to do with whether you have a credit card or not, it's how much down-payment you bring to the table. And the card has no effect on your interest rate except insofar as its effect on your creditworthiness numbers leads the bank to consider this or that rate appropriate.

My wife and I bought a house three years ago with 5% down when neither of us had any credit cards except my corporate Amex (which didn't show up on my credit report, so might as well not have existed, and in any case I had only had it a few months then).

Kensey · 2010-09-20 Reply Admin

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 believe this actually already is a standard part of all merchant agreements, but like the prohibition on minimum transaction amounts or surcharges to use a card, is widely violated.

Kensey · 2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Mason Wheeler:
Part of the problem is the wording. They call it "credit," like it's something positive. That's what credit is, right? A positive balance. Like what happens when you complete a course at college. You get a certain number of credits for it. You notice how the term "charge card" has fallen out of favor over the last couple decades? They don't want you thinking about charging something, that you're taking out a loan and going into debt each time you use it; they want you to think you're using "credit!" *insert rainbows and sparkle effects here*

I have always heard that there is a real, functional difference: a "credit card" allows you to carry a balance from month to month, while paying interest (i.e. by using it you are entering into a loan contract with the issuer), while a "charge card" MUST be paid off in full every statement cycle or you get hit with massive late fees. I believe my corporate Amex was a "charge card" under this definition (I always paid it off monthly, but we were warned that any "late fees" were our responsibility); my current personal Amex is a "credit card" as I have an interest rate associated with any balance I carry month to month.

This may of course be retro-coinage on the part of the credit card companies to create meaning artificially out of changing practice.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

i can haz new wtf?

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Dear Greg,

In case you can’t tell, this is a grown-up place. The fact that you don't know how to fill out a survey clearly shows that you’re too young and too stupid to be using the internet.

Go away and grow up.

Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

I have downloaded your Java...pray I don't download anymore.

smbarbour · 2010-09-20 Reply Admin

These new soda machines would be interesting to "investigate"

They are apparently PXE booting, so you could have a netbook running a DHCP/TFTP server that will start up Linux on the vending machine with a nice little GUI interface with buttons to activate the dispensing mechanisms (I'm sure the vending hardware is connected to the computer in some way).

smbarbour · 2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Kensey:
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 believe this actually already is a standard part of all merchant agreements, but like the prohibition on minimum transaction amounts or surcharges to use a card, is widely violated.

Yes, it is part of the bylaws of both Visa and MasterCard. There is a loophole around charging more for using a credit card, however. You cannot charge a surcharge for using a credit card, but you are allowed to give a rebate for paying with cash.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

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.

And the new ones are Object Oriented, and deliver soda in XML, so THEY'RE BETTER!!!!!!!!!!11

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

cappeca:
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.

And the new ones are Object Oriented, and deliver soda in XML, so THEY'RE BETTER!!!!!!!!!!11

But can the new ones give you two drinks when you only paid for one? That's the deal breaker...

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

ÃƒÆ’Ã†â€™Ãƒâ€ Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Â ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ:
i can haz new wtf?

NO. LOL.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Kensey:
I have always heard that there is a real, functional difference: a "credit card" allows you to carry a balance from month to month, while paying interest (i.e. by using it you are entering into a loan contract with the issuer), while a "charge card" MUST be paid off in full every statement cycle or you get hit with massive late fees. I believe my corporate Amex was a "charge card" under this definition (I always paid it off monthly, but we were warned that any "late fees" were our responsibility); my current personal Amex is a "credit card" as I have an interest rate associated with any balance I carry month to month.

The first card I ever got was an AmEx charge card, and they made a point of pointing out that it was not a credit card, since it had to be paid off every month. Since they weren't extending me a continuing credit line, it didn't require the credit rating that a credit card did (at least at the time). It was a useful way to initially build up enough of a credit rating so that I could get regular credit cards. Once I could, I ditched the AmEx account which charged an annual fee in favor of the credit cards that didn't, but I maintained the pattern of paying the bill in full each month, so that charge card left me with good habits for later.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

da Doctah:
"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.

I miss real Pepsi bottles. When I first moved to the east coast, Pepsi wasn't sold in glass bottles here, but it still was back in the midwest where my parents lived. Whenever I went back for a visit I'd always bring back several cases of Pepsi so that I could drink some that wasn't tainted by the metallic taste of an aluminum can.

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

TheJasper:

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.

Merchants are not required to accept cash. The transaction hasn't completed, so there's no debt.

http://www.treas.gov/education/faq/currency/legal-tender.shtml

2010-09-20 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
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 ;)

I've bought four vehicles with cash so far... two jeep cherokees for 2400 dollars and 1000 dollars, a jeep comanche for 800 dollars, and a 5 ton military surplus cargo truck for 2500 dollars. I tend to follow the "if I don't have the money to pay for it up front, I probably don't really need it to live" philosophy.

Runswithscissors:
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.

They actually do make machines that don't drop the soda, there is a conveyor belt on a vertical gantry crane that goes to the level of the soda being dispensed, catches it only a few inches from where it was dropped, then drops to the bottom of the machine and shuttles the soda out the opening. Real neat, and really funny to watch when they get screwed up.

bill:
story from back in the early '70's... They had just started coming out with automated bill changers... They had a smaller wall mount model about the size of a microwave oven, might hold a couple of hundred bucks or so... just the thing for laundromats and the like. Any way, the owners started coming in to find the machine empty, or mostly empty. No fake bills, the lock was intact and hadn't been tampered with, the money was all gone and the machine was just empty. And no, it wasn't an inside job. It turned out that the machine designers had used a good old fashioned electro mechanical relay to actuate the coin dispenser to dispense the money. Unfortunately, it was not immune to mechanical shock. And somebody had discovered that if you hit that kind of machine hard enough in a certain way, it would cause the contact to close, which would actuate the dispenser with out the need for money input, dispensing free money, at a dollar per hit. The manufacturer fixed it... but i don't know what the fix was - they don't tend to talk about that stuff for obvious reasons...
captcha oppeto - a short musical piece

My boss at the garage I used to work at told me that back in the day you could use a long strip of masking tape, attach it to one end of the bill (very close to the edge so it didn't obscure much of the printing) then buy what you wanted and yank the bill out again using the tape. Pretty clever if you ask me.

the beholder:
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".
Did we? I think that "typo" must have come from the OP.
So I guess that TRWTF is that people in english-speaking countries can't write "proper english", or agree in a definition of what "proper english" means.

But we all knew that already.

You mean like the countries that speak Portuguese can't agree on anything, nor the countries that speak French, nor the countries that have many local dialects internally, like China?

2010-09-21 Reply Admin

chrismcb:
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.

Had to go on a business trip to the USA a while back. Was told I had to have a credit card because otherwise I would not be able to hire a motor vehicle to get myself from the airport to the office, despite the fact that I had ample credit in my checkng account to have been able to use a debit card with no hassle. So I had to go and apply for a credit card before I could take my trip.

The real WTF was the fact that because of currency-rate fluctuation between when I paid for the vehicle hire and when the bill came through for me to claim it back on expenses, I ended up out of pocket. The real WTF is that I still work at that same company.

2010-09-21 Reply Admin

The real WTF is that you still refer to hiring vehicles (objects) when everyone here rents them... I guess it is a throwback to hiring a carriage driver, with his carriage and horse :D

Ignore me, I have nothing meaningful to say in this post.

2010-09-21 Reply Admin

It would be f-ing nice if they are going to violate the "daily" in "thedailywft", that they at least post some kind of explanation so it doesn't just look like that drunk Remy didn't just drop the ball on posting a story.

Or maybe BuildMaster just isn't capable of doing that.

2010-09-21 Reply Admin

chrismcb:
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.

Some banks have gotten around that by issuing debit cards that can act like credit cards. They'll be MasterCard or Visa and require a signature or security code rather than a pin, so they appear to be a credit card as far as the merchant you're buying from is concerned, but they actually withdraw from an already-funded account, so they're in fact debit cards.

2010-09-21 Reply Admin

LB:
chrismcb:
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.
Some banks have gotten around that by issuing debit cards that can act like credit cards. They'll be MasterCard or Visa and require a signature or security code rather than a pin, so they appear to be a credit card as far as the merchant you're buying from is concerned, but they actually withdraw from an already-funded account, so they're in fact debit cards.

I thought those kinds of debit card were the default? In my area (Washington), we have the distinction between ATM cards (only for use at ATMs for withdrawls) and debit cards (Visa/MasterCard, for use as a 'credit' card (with PIN instead of signature when supported by the machine (though you can usually choose to use a signature instead), otherwise falls back to signature).

smbarbour · 2010-09-21 Reply Admin

washii:
I thought those kinds of debit card were the default? In my area (Washington), we have the distinction between ATM cards (only for use at ATMs for withdrawls) and debit cards (Visa/MasterCard, for use as a 'credit' card (with PIN instead of signature when supported by the machine (though you can usually choose to use a signature instead), otherwise falls back to signature).

On check cards, which are debit cards with a Visa, MasterCard, or Discover logo (though I have never actually heard of a bank that issues Discover branded cards, they apparently do exist), if it is processed the same as a similarly branded credit card (signature), it is considered to be "offline debit" and is subject to a lower interchange rate (what the card associations take as their cut) than a regular credit card. If the card is processed using the PIN, then it is processed using one of the debit networks that appear on the back of the card (Maestro, Star, Interlink, Pulse, etc.) and typically have a flat fee associated with it.

Amusing industry factoids: Diners Club cards will process under MasterCard (but is owned by Discover), JCB cards (Japan's credit card) will process under Discover, and China UnionPay cards will process under Pulse (meaning the merchant would need to accept PIN entered debit to process them). Discover also owns Pulse (so any Discover branded check cards would most likely have the Pulse logo on the back of them as well).

2010-09-22 Reply Admin

RE: Shade 8 it is a specific level of protection from the light emitted by welding. That one was not in fact an error on the site, but rather an example of user ignorance of the specific field.

2010-09-26 Reply Admin

The 'old' ones would take your money and give you no product. At least it's pretty clear where you stand now.

2010-12-08 Reply Admin

The "Shade 8" isn't a WTF: it's a Google-fail on the part of the submitter.

http://tinyurl.com/384aned

2011-01-02 Reply Admin

<screams_of_frusration>Color 8 is Octarine, the eighth color in the rainbow and the color of magic! Best described as purple-yellow-green, it can only be seen by wizards!</screams_of_frustration>

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