• Aris (unregistered)

    Your CSO could be the dumbest moronic monkey from the local zoo and planet of the apes reunited, it wouldn't be acceptable to write such an insulting email. TRWTF is that OP wasn't let go because of such unprofessional behaviour

  • (cs) in reply to Aris
    Aris:
    Your CSO could be the dumbest moronic monkey from the local zoo and planet of the apes reunited, it wouldn't be acceptable to write such an insulting email. TRWTF is that OP wasn't let go because of such unprofessional behaviour

    Can I have a either a) a copy of the voice recognition software you're using-- or b) a hit of the crack you're smoking?

    It's crack, right? I bet it's crack.

  • Gill Bates (unregistered)

    Such article, wow content, but nothing about INGeborg?

  • Valerion (unregistered)

    They should have added the 'ing' filter. At least it would have stopped their mailboxes from going bing.

  • Klimax (unregistered)

    I see some people went bananas...

  • You have been sacked from TDWTF readership. (unregistered) in reply to Aris
    Aris:
    Your CSO could be the dumbest moronic monkey from the local zoo and planet of the apes reunited, it wouldn't be acceptable to write such an insulting email. TRWTF is that OP wasn't let go because of such unprofessional behaviour

    Did you not understand that the bits in double quotes were said aloud for the benefit of the nearby collegues, and the bits in italics are what actually got sent?

  • Phritze (unregistered)

    I sense a pityful lack of entrepreneurship in Juan. Obviously the correct answer would have been:

    Dear Steve, we found the person with the problem in their homebanking ant it is _you_. Sadly, there was a typo in the URL. The correct address is http colon slash slash juan.phish please leave all your credit card details, homebanking pin and tans in the supplied form..

    Btw: great article, great comments!

  • Captain Oblivious (unregistered)

    Okay, so the WTF was the CSO. And also Barbara, who couldn't come up with a regex to at least push ING email scores up in their Bayesian filter.

  • (cs) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    Can I have a either a) a copy of the voice recognition software you're using-- or b) a hit of the crack you're smoking?

    It's crack, right? I bet it's crack.

    Well, good afternoon everyone. I’d like to take this opportunity to address a number of issues that have circulated in the Daily WTF over the last few hours. There has been a serious accusation from Lorne Kates that Aris uses crack cocaine. Aris does not use crack cocaine, nor is Aris an addict of crack cocaine. As for voice recognition software, I cannot comment on software that I have never seen or does not exist. It is most unfortunate, very unfortunate, that my colleagues and the great people of this forum have been exposed to the fact that Aris has been judged by the media without any evidence. This past hour has not been an easy one. It has taken a great toll on my family and my friends and the great people of the Daily WTF. For the past hour, on the advice of Askimet, I was advised not to say a word. I want to thank the people of this great forum for their outpouring of support.

  • (cs) in reply to Jim the Tool
    Jim the Tool:
    Well, for example some geniuses use mailing list software that actually changes all the links to a redirect so that the ̶n̶u̶m̶b̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶f̶ people who click on the phishing links can be fired...

    It's just a flag for potentiality, not for actuality.

  • LK (unregistered)

    TRWTF is mailboxes going bing. They shouldn't even go google.

  • Franky (unregistered)

    been there, done that, quarreled with some guys in another dept for three days because they are both too stupid to validate IBANs and read the Wikipedia article (which I linked) that has a very good description about the topic and use an existing library that I also pointed them to.

  • Anomaly (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    Anonymous Coward:
    Seriously Alex, come back - we need you to get rid of these monkeys you furnished with word processors and save us all.

    Alex is still busy with BuildMaster. Like all startup companies, the first couple years were rocky. They kinda had to take the clients they could get. And one of the early, larger clients managed to finagle the contract so that Inedo gets paid in bananas.

    So if you have a better suggestion on what Alex should do with a monthly shipment of several tons of bananas, I'm sure he'd love to hear it. In the meanwhile, I'm one well fed typewriter monkey, and you're still ugly.

    Actually I do Lorne, he should contact the local zoos, schools, and food kitchens, If he cant sell in bulk to the zoos or schools then he could donate to the food kitchen for a nice charitable tax write off. =D

  • (cs) in reply to Anomaly
    Anomaly:
    Actually I do Lorne, he should contact the local zoos, schools, and food kitchens, If he cant sell in bulk to the zoos or schools then he could donate to the food kitchen for a nice charitable tax write off. =D

    Which would put me out of work, land me in a food kitchen-- and I'd still end up with bananas.

    I see no possible downside.

  • Anomaly (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    Anomaly:
    Actually I do Lorne, he should contact the local zoos, schools, and food kitchens, If he cant sell in bulk to the zoos or schools then he could donate to the food kitchen for a nice charitable tax write off. =D

    Which would put me out of work, land me in a food kitchen-- and I'd still end up with bananas.

    I see no possible downside.

    No work and still yo uget the bananas? No down side in that. What. So. Ever.

  • merb (unregistered)

    The real wtf is not muting computer sound in an office....bing

  • (cs)

    Gotta admit it's hard to take a story about "rampant stupidity" seriously when the author doesn't seem to know the difference between "adjective meaning 'ragingly widespread'" and "bulwark."

  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered) in reply to Finn
    Finn:
    So, Ingeborg was shaking Juan's head? I don't follow.
    Your comment has been blocked.
  • foo AKA fooo (unregistered) in reply to Ryusui
    Ryusui:
    Gotta admit it's hard to take a story about "rampant stupidity" seriously when the author doesn't seem to know the difference between "adjective meaning 'ragingly widespread'" and "bulwark."
    Sorry, your late.
  • (cs) in reply to ThingGuyMcGuyThing
    ThingGuyMcGuyThing:
    Brilliant? What is this brilliant?

    The point has already been made. My fingers have auto-correct switched on by default, ok?

  • Muphry (unregistered) in reply to Gill Bates
    Gill Bates:
    Such article, wow content, but nothing about INGeborg?
    article:
    "That's brilliant!" Ingeborg cried out, "I'll never get a stupid email again!"
  • Muphry (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    For god's sake - a proof reader would not go amiss.
    I'd capitalize on that.
  • (cs) in reply to add jsjdkxjd
    add jsjdkxjd:
    It went bing and????????

    It was a message from the CSO saying he'd just been notified of his winnings in the Microsoft BMW lotteries. Since he was now the proud owner of 20 million pounds, he was just letting the IT team know he'd be leaving - right after he sends an email to Google to claim his winnings.

  • Sebastian Ramadan (unregistered)

    The stupidity of these comments is swimmingly rampart.

  • Terr (unregistered) in reply to Shoreline
    Shoreline:
    Rampart Stupidity in IT is a slang term for not understanding how basic security works.

    Calling bullshit on this one. Never heard the phrase anywhere before this, and "rampaNt stupidity" is a billion times more popular and plausible.

  • (cs) in reply to Taco
    Taco:
    What is it with all this 'first' BS? Is it compensation for never being first in real life?

    No, people who write frist or first are "compensating for something".

  • YellowOnline (unregistered)

    Ah, glad to see my story made it after 2 months to TDWTF, even though I'm renamed to Juan.

    The essence of the story really happened, but it has been of course rewritten totally by the TDWTF staff.

    A short summary of reality: the anti-virus guy got this phishing mail (which was indeed for a bank called ING) from the helpdesk. He forwarded it to me as a WTF. I replied to the helpdesk explaining what phishing is and how to recognize it - and I really wrote "We don't want to get e-mails in the future about who ordered Viagra" (as opposed to the story here where I only though that).

    Next the CSO, who was in CC, replied saying "thank you for your pedagogical approach, but perhaps we should be more proactive and block everything containing "ING". To this I replied, now leaving the helpdesk out of the mail of course because I didn't want to make him more ridiculous than he made himself already, "Erm, that would block pretty much every English verb in infinitive and would also be kind of unfortunate for those called Ingeborg or so".

    I went to the mail guy, who was also in CC all of the time, and we had a laugh about it when suddenly his phone rang. It was the CSO asking if we could block all bank domains. Slowly we explained him that this would only block all real banks. We were stunned to find out he later contacted the network team to ask them if they could do anything, but they obviously couldn't.

    For me, it was perhaps the biggest WTF in my career, and after my initial anger with the helpdesk ticket, I really had a good laugh about it.

    Oh, and we're - like so many IT departments - all guys. So the females in the article are definitely fictional :-)

  • Casey (unregistered)

    I wish I had a rampart to keep the stupid away.

  • (cs) in reply to YellowOnline
    YellowOnline:
    Next the CSO, who was in CC, replied saying "thank you for your pedagogical approach, but perhaps we should be more proactive and block everything containing "ING". To this I replied, now leaving the helpdesk out of the mail of course because I didn't want to make him more ridiculous than he made himself already, "Erm, that would block pretty much every English verb in infinitive and would also be kind of unfortunate for those called Ingeborg or so".
    Present continuous, not infinitive.
  • (cs) in reply to YellowOnline
    YellowOnline:
    even though I'm renamed to Juan.

    You did ask for a pseudonym. =) I picked Juan because it seemed enough like jaune.

    YellowOnline:
    The essence of the story really happened, but it has been of course rewritten totally by the TDWTF staff.

    I've been in your sport. C'mon, tell me what I wrote didn't go through your head, nearly word for word. =)

    YellowOnline:
    A short summary of reality: the anti-virus guy got this phishing mail...from the helpdesk. He forwarded it to me ...I replied to the helpdesk...the CSO, who was in CC, replied saying..."we should be more proactive and block everything containing "ING"...I replied...I went to the mail guy, who was also in CC...his phone rang...It was the CSO...We were stunned to find out he later contacted the network...

    Directory's Commentary time! The essence of the story, as you noted above, is the same. Clueless CSO bounces support call person to person, fishing for an answer to support his misguided solution. The main change I made is that the initial contact was made to "you" by CSO, instead of Helpdesk to you and THEN CSO to you.

    The reason for this is called "character compression". When there are multiple characters serving the same purpose, they often get combined into a single entity. Especially in shorter pieces like this one, where every word counts. In this case it was the CSO and the Helpdesk. They both did the same thing-- contact you with a WTF request, looking for a WTF solution.

    But dramatically, the Helpdesk serves no purpose. Once they've fulfilled their role-- getting the email to "you"-- they have no further bearing on how the story unfolds. They don't create any conflict or change how anyone makes decisions. It's just another "character" the reader has to keep track of.

    And thus, for the purposes of brevity-- they're folded into the CSO. In this case, they report to him, he initiates the rampa[rn]t stupidity.

    YellowOnline:
    Oh, and we're - like so many IT departments - all guys. So the females in the article are definitely fictional :-)

    So many, but not all. This was just matter of the fact that I needed names, because it's friggin annoying to use pronouns when there are too many same-gender people. He said, he said, he said-- WHO?

    That is, of course, ignoring the fact that the one person I decided to make male ended up getting a female name. =)

  • (cs) in reply to pjt33
    pjt33:
    YellowOnline:
    Next the CSO, who was in CC, replied saying "thank you for your pedagogical approach, but perhaps we should be more proactive and block everything containing "ING". To this I replied, now leaving the helpdesk out of the mail of course because I didn't want to make him more ridiculous than he made himself already, "Erm, that would block pretty much every English verb in infinitive and would also be kind of unfortunate for those called Ingeborg or so".
    Present continuous, not infinitive.

    He speaks English better than you speak-- umm-- Ingeborgian, or whatever. Don't be a dick. =)

  • ANON (unregistered)

    Hanzo would fix phishing by disabling the internet.

  • GeoffC (unregistered)

    The thing is, I'm a current customer of the Dutch ING bank. Should I be worried?

  • YellowOnline (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Taco:
    Very nice story. True or not

    True :+

    moz:
    While this may have been a silly request, at least they're not overworked.

    We are overworked. Or were - I left for another employer in the meantime.

    pjt33:
    YellowOnline:
    Next the CSO, who was in CC, replied saying "thank you for your pedagogical approach, but perhaps we should be more proactive and block everything containing "ING". To this I replied, now leaving the helpdesk out of the mail of course because I didn't want to make him more ridiculous than he made himself already, "Erm, that would block pretty much every English verb in infinitive and would also be kind of unfortunate for those called Ingeborg or so".
    Present continuous, not infinitive.

    I'm sorry, you're right. That's because in every Germanic or Roman language the -ing form (or the equivalent) is the infinitive. The French (-er, "marcher"), Italian (-are, "camminare"), Spanish (-ar, "caminar"), Dutch (-en, "wandelen"), German (-en, "gehen") and Swedish (-ar, "vandrar") are all translated as "walking" and are infinitives. I didn't check on the languages I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that Portugese, Danish and Norwegian are the same. Romanian probably too, but just like English is a mix-up of Germanic and Roman, Romanian is a mix-up of Roman and Slavic.

    Point being: having "to walk" as an infinitive form is an exception of the English language, hence why I made that error.

    Lorne Kates:
    pjt33:
    YellowOnline:
    Next the CSO, who was in CC, replied saying "thank you for your pedagogical approach, but perhaps we should be more proactive and block everything containing "ING". To this I replied, now leaving the helpdesk out of the mail of course because I didn't want to make him more ridiculous than he made himself already, "Erm, that would block pretty much every English verb in infinitive and would also be kind of unfortunate for those called Ingeborg or so".
    Present continuous, not infinitive.

    He speaks English better than you speak-- umm-- Ingeborgian, or whatever. Don't be a dick. =)

    The whole story is partly Dutch, partly French and partly German. Multilingual environments FTW! Makes you aware of internationalization when programming (and hate the Excel-API because you need to set your thread to en-US or en-UK if you don't want to get errors all-over).

    Lorne Kates:
    YellowOnline:
    even though I'm renamed to Juan.

    You did ask for a pseudonym. =) I picked Juan because it seemed enough like jaune.

    YellowOnline:
    The essence of the story really happened, but it has been of course rewritten totally by the TDWTF staff.

    I've been in your sport. C'mon, tell me what I wrote didn't go through your head, nearly word for word. =)

    YellowOnline:
    A short summary of reality: the anti-virus guy got this phishing mail...from the helpdesk. He forwarded it to me ...I replied to the helpdesk...the CSO, who was in CC, replied saying..."we should be more proactive and block everything containing "ING"...I replied...I went to the mail guy, who was also in CC...his phone rang...It was the CSO...We were stunned to find out he later contacted the network...

    Directory's Commentary time! The essence of the story, as you noted above, is the same. Clueless CSO bounces support call person to person, fishing for an answer to support his misguided solution. The main change I made is that the initial contact was made to "you" by CSO, instead of Helpdesk to you and THEN CSO to you.

    The reason for this is called "character compression". When there are multiple characters serving the same purpose, they often get combined into a single entity. Especially in shorter pieces like this one, where every word counts. In this case it was the CSO and the Helpdesk. They both did the same thing-- contact you with a WTF request, looking for a WTF solution.

    But dramatically, the Helpdesk serves no purpose. Once they've fulfilled their role-- getting the email to "you"-- they have no further bearing on how the story unfolds. They don't create any conflict or change how anyone makes decisions. It's just another "character" the reader has to keep track of.

    And thus, for the purposes of brevity-- they're folded into the CSO. In this case, they report to him, he initiates the rampa[rn]t stupidity.

    YellowOnline:
    Oh, and we're - like so many IT departments - all guys. So the females in the article are definitely fictional :-)

    So many, but not all. This was just matter of the fact that I needed names, because it's friggin annoying to use pronouns when there are too many same-gender people. He said, he said, he said-- WHO?

    That is, of course, ignoring the fact that the one person I decided to make male ended up getting a female name. =)

    Oh, I didn't want to criticise your piece. It's written far more prosaic than I wrote it to you. Just wanted to give the readers a short summary of the story behind it.

  • John Max (unregistered)

    quality of posts here has gone downhill...

    Juan probably bullshitting us about he supporting 25k+ employee corporation.

    doesnt he have other stories? since his company has "25k + " staffs?

  • YellowOnline (unregistered) in reply to John Max
    John Max:
    quality of posts here has gone downhill...

    Juan probably bullshitting us about he supporting 25k+ employee corporation.

    doesnt he have other stories? since his company has "25k + " staffs?

    There's 150 IT people for 25 000 users. But developers, for example, are part of the IT department but they are considered users from a sysadmin point of view. No one screws up their PC better than a developer that has admin rights for one or another reason (not my policy). And there are plenty of other stories, yes, but TDWTF doesn't publish all of them because they might be not interesting enough or too short. A network guy asking why the address pool is full "why do we stop at 255?", a helpdesk guy calling distressed that "he can't kill a process taking up all system resources called 'System Idle'" (note: they are no English speakers),... I could write book of short WTFs.

  • (cs) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    Directory's Commentary time!
    You actually think that's what it's called, don't you.
  • consequat (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    He speaks English better than you speak-- umm-- Ingeborgian, or whatever. Don't be a dick. =)
    This is an English-language forum, so posters' Ingeborgian skills or lack thereof are irrelevant.
  • Hasse de great (unregistered) in reply to consequat

    US English wel te verstaan!

  • Muzer (unregistered) in reply to pjt33

    Don't forget gerunds. Tasty, tasty gerunds.

  • Muzer (unregistered) in reply to Muzer
    Muzer:
    Don't forget gerunds. Tasty, tasty gerunds.

    God damn it, I always forget to press "quote" instead of "reply" the (relatively) rare times I post on here.

    Captcha: suscipit. I couldn't think of a hilarious pun involving this word, it just sounds funny.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to YellowOnline
    YellowOnline:
    Next the CSO, who was in CC, replied saying "thank you for your pedagogical approach, but perhaps we should be more proactive and block everything containing "ING". To this I replied,
    That was your mistake.

    You should have ignored his e-mail.

    If he asked why you ignored his e-mail, you should have said you didn't get it because it was blocked.

  • (cs)
    Barbara began to type her reply

    WRONG! When your boss, whom you hate for his stupidity, sends you a stupid written instruction, you don't pass the opportunity to get rid of that garbage. You should have just done as he says, which in this case would have created a major problem for everyone.

    When someone from the senior management wonders why his mails are getting blocked, all you have to do is forward that mail and tell him, "This is what I have been told to do by this garbage whom I call Boss."

    99% of problems in IT are caused by "positive energy" people like you who keep tolerating the stupidity of these garbage bosses. If only you could put in the 2 cents that it takes to throw them into the trash can!

  • Sannois (unregistered)

    Ahhh Ingeborg! You have a woman's name!

  • Aninnymouse (unregistered) in reply to Fritz, a.k.a. Fritzo
    Fritz:
    'The Barbara'; ah yes, every department has it's Barbara.

    I took it to mean a collective of Barbara.

    CAPTCHA: aptent - I have an app to put up my tent

  • Hannes (unregistered) in reply to Crispy
    Crispy:
    'First' in a forum is equivalent of spam in email. Block all comments containing 'first' and 'frist'.

    Better yet, block every comment that contains any punctuation mark.

  • Isikyus (unregistered) in reply to Alex Papadumbass

    In other words, 99% of IT problems are caused by IT professionals attempting to solve the problems users encounter, rather than mindlessly following stupid instructions?

    That sounds pretty plausible.

  • Isikyus (unregistered) in reply to Qazwsx

    [quote source='Qazwsx'] Friday, not an "Error'd" entry, and a good story? This is the kind of stuff this site needs more of. Great job! [/quote]

    Apparently, I'm the one person who actually reads this site for "Error'd".

  • none (unregistered)

    Sorry, but any article with a grammatical / spelling error in the first sentence is automatically disqualified from being "good."

  • Moss and Roy want their plot back (unregistered)

    It's like I'm really watching an episode of the IT crowd, complete with office in the basement!

    This has to be a lost script for another attempt at an American spin-off.

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