• (cs) in reply to !?
    !?:
    This is from the wikipedia link

    "...and most of its contents are suspended at or beneath the surface of the ocean..."

    So, ahh... some of its contents ar suspended above the surface of the ocean?

    {2nd try}

  • Ted (unregistered) in reply to Erzengel
    Erzengel:
    "TRWTF" is that the bag says "Bag best used by 1009". Either the supermarket is using the bag a full millenium after it's use-by date, or someone failed their Y2K upgrades almost a decade ago.
    yeah, that's the real WTF
  • Lego (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    The sad thing about biodegradable plastic is that they only degrade under certain conditions (warm and moist) and often contain non-degradable fibers. If they end up in the ocean, they are almost as dangerous as normal plastic bags.

    And the ocean does not qualify as warm and moist? I can think of at least two other locations that would qualify. :-)

    --Lego

  • NoOneKnows (unregistered) in reply to Carl
    Carl:
    Grrr... degradable plastic... enviro weenies whining about how plastic is for 10,000 years... if you meddlers ever got OUTDOORS into your beloved environment you would see that most anything made of plastic deteriorates in about 3 years! Even half the crap on my roof has to be replaced regularly because the sun eats it away. A tent which is made to be outdoors doesn't last.

    The point is that plastic bags in a landfill don't sit in the sun. They are buried. Critical thinking skills much?

  • Michael P. (unregistered)

    Looks like the "bit" already degraded off the bag.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to dpm
    dpm:
    Back in the old days --- before XML --- ...

    Oh come on now. Was there ever really a time before XML? This is supposed to be a site for technical folks, not wacko religious extremists with their crazy mythology.

  • !? (unregistered) in reply to Phill
    Phill:
    Shuryno:
    Well, in the grand scheme of the Universe, 1000 years is relatively short!

    I'm pretty sure I read literature from some prominent Americans that assured me that the universe has only existed for 6,000 years so 1,000 years is a pretty long time.

    ... and of course I meant relative to the 1,000 years it takes normal plastic to biodegrade.

    1000 years is enough time for dying more than 10 times.

    This is a long time for me regardless what people may believe.

  • Harold (unregistered) in reply to ContraCorners
    ContraCorners:
    !?:
    This is from the wikipedia link

    "...and most of its contents are suspended at or beneath the surface of the ocean..."

    So, ahh... some of its contents ar suspended above the surface of the ocean?

    {2nd try}

    Most peope would phrase it as some of the contents float on the surface. As opposed to most of the contents which are susended at or below. Yes, floating on the surface does mean that they extend above the surface, but it is not thought of as they are suspended above it.

  • jim (unregistered) in reply to Michael P.
    Michael P.:
    Looks like the "bit" already degraded off the bag.

    explain.

  • Zach Bora (unregistered)

    "I received this message when trying to change the admin password on the Nortel CallPilot," Chip L. wrote, "I can kinda understand not starting with a zero... but Q and Z?"

    This is normal in a way, most phones have their Q and Z on the 0. Maybe they are using the same program as another phone.

  • KMG (unregistered)

    I'm sure the disallowed 0, Q, and Z is a holdover from a time when phones didn't have Q and Z printed by the numbers and 0 had no letters. For some reason, the rule was that each number had 3 letters, so they dropped 2 letters from the 26-letter alphabet to make a product of 3 and 8. I imagine they want the password to be able to be entered from a touch-tone phone, and they want it to be obvious for people with old phones.

    The joke about the plastic bag isn't that it's biodegradable, but its expiration date.

  • (cs)

    The FAAR one is not necessarily a WTF -- perhaps that radar is still classified...

  • Fister (unregistered) in reply to Carl
    Carl:
    Grrr... degradable plastic... enviro weenies whining about how plastic is for 10,000 years... if you meddlers ever got OUTDOORS into your beloved environment you would see that most anything made of plastic deteriorates in about 3 years! Even half the crap on my roof has to be replaced regularly because the sun eats it away. A tent which is made to be outdoors doesn't last.

    Yes, it degrades -- to smaller plastic molecules. Those molecules will survive for a very long time, and are not a normal part of the ecosystem. Check out what's happening to the ecosystem around the floating trash continent in the Pacific sometime...

    Banning Q and Z means you can't use "qwerty" or "zxcvb" for your password. Killjoys!

  • Josh (unregistered) in reply to Bob

    Just because something made of plastic breaks apart doesn't mean that the plastic itself is gone. Much of it breaks up into microscopic particles and ends up in the water supply.

    There are sections of the ocean that have microscopic particles of plastic 2 to 7 times greater than the amount of plankton in those areas.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

    Biodegradeable plastic actually changes chemical composition into other compounds instead of just getting to smaller and smaller pieces of plastic.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    That's probably why they put an expiry date an the bag. But getting the date wrong by 1000 years is kind of funny.

  • Tad Whatever (unregistered) in reply to Harrow
    Harrow:
    Well the plastic bag might not be quite as biodegradable as TESCO hoped it would be, but at least they saved a buttload of environmentally harmful blue ink by omitting the word "bit" from "Every little helps".

    -Harrow.

    Harrow:
    Well the plastic bag might not be quite as biodegradable as TESCO hoped it would be, but at least they saved a buttload of environmentally harmful blue ink by omitting the word "bit" from "Every little helps".

    -Harrow.

    Tesco is a UK grocery chain, and I'm pretty sure "Every little helps" is acceptable in British grammar.

  • ttoni (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that they let Jason take a picture during his test.

  • (cs) in reply to Lego

    1000 years? I'm lucky if my plastic bags don't tear open on the way home!

    Lego:
    And the ocean does not qualify as warm and moist?
    It's pretty cold, so I guess not.

  • !? (unregistered) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    I don't see the benefits. Not biodegradable = carbon sequestration. Biodegradable = release carbon into atmosphere as CO2.

    As well as providing carbon sequestration, sticking non-biodegradable plastic bags, etc into a landfill is a possible solution to rising sea levels as per Japan, Finland, UAE, etc PLUS, by adding appropriate bacteria, you should have a small oil / gas field within a couple of thousand years.

    Landfills are just a lazy solution. When properly done they require an ever increasing amount of space, give little return and simply leave a lot of material stored for who know when it will become usable again. When not, they taint water and land, bring sickness and eat puppies... ok, so it doesn't eat puppies.

    The thing is that we don't know for how long we will have the amount of resources we have, and even if they are unlimited, with the increasing world population we need all space we can get and still let some for natural environment.

    Avoiding CO2 emissions is not a good reason. We are losing more with landfills. We don't even know what will be the state of the civilization in 1000 years.

  • (cs) in reply to Harold
    Harold:
    ContraCorners:
    !?:
    This is from the wikipedia link

    "...and most of its contents are suspended at or beneath the surface of the ocean..."

    So, ahh... some of its contents ar suspended above the surface of the ocean?

    {2nd try}

    Most peope would phrase it as some of the contents float on the surface. As opposed to most of the contents which are susended at or below. Yes, floating on the surface does mean that they extend above the surface, but it is not thought of as they are suspended above it.

    Yeah, that's another way to look at it. I was going with something more like:

    A) All must be either below, on or above the suface B) Most < All C) Most is below and on

    Therefore (All - Most) must be above

  • Hendrik vdH (unregistered)

    In Europe, "1009" is a typical abbreviation for 10/09 = October 2009

  • (cs) in reply to AnonJr
    AnonJr:
    kennytm:
    Vollhorst:
    Guy, serious? The Q/Z thing is simple.

    Depending on your keyboard layout the standard passwords are either: QWERTZ or if you are creative: ZTREWQ

    That is a bullshit requirement to avoid standard passwords.

    123456?

    1-2-3-4-5-6? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard of in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!

    In all seriousness (I know, I know - an oddity for here) Nortel CallPilot is used to handle the voice mail and call routing where we work and we're only allowed to use the phone interface.

    0 is a reserved command, and the phones lack Q and Z as mentioned.

    Its not a bad system, its just not the best system...

    CAPTCHA: praesent - a Greek present?

    They didn't give you a web application to access your voice mail? After reading the CallPilot documentation, I've never even bothered trying to use the phone interface; I just use the website.

    Note that Nortel recently went bankrupt.

  • (cs) in reply to Hendrik vdH
    Hendrik vdH:
    In Europe, "1009" is a typical abbreviation for 10/09 = October 2009
    That's one date convention that's shared by us Americans, as well.
  • Marc (unregistered)

    Nortel phones have the Q and Z assigned to different numbers than other phones (that's the real WTF) so if this is a phone system application and you might need to spell out your password on the phone keypad, you'd get locked out.

  • (cs) in reply to Mhmx
    Mhmx:
    The biodegradable bag is best to use before 10/09

    I don't know about that: The bag says "1009", not "10/09". Looks to me like it has a lifespan of -1000 years. (Now that is bio-degredation, when a bag degrades 1000 years before it is made!)

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Marc
    Marc:
    Nortel phones have the Q and Z assigned to different numbers than other phones (that's the real WTF) so if this is a phone system application and you might need to spell out your password on the phone keypad, you'd get locked out.

    But it doesn't matter! It tells you not to START with Q or Z, not don't use Q or Z. So all the talk about phone keypads are beside the point.

  • (cs)

    HEY GUYS! Did you know that old phones didn't have the letters "Q" and "Z" on them? Bet you never heard that 15 times on TDWTF! SUCKAZ!

  • (cs)

    Well, a lot of admins are kind of lazy and have qwer or zxcv (watch your keyboard) as password.

    The programmer who wanted to prevent that was kind of lazy too.

    And about the parking ticket: the machine clearly says: "0-1 hour: $10" and "1-10 hour: $10". So if you only buy the second ticket, you can get a fine in the first hour.

  • (cs) in reply to ContraCorners
    ContraCorners:
    This is from the wikipedia link

    "...and most of its contents are suspended at or beneath the surface of the ocean..."

    So, ahh... some of its contents ar suspended above the surface of the ocean?

    That's right; but less than half of it.

  • (cs) in reply to Fister
    Fister:
    Banning Q and Z means you can't use "qwerty" or "zxcvb" for your password. Killjoys!

    That's fine with me: I always use "love" anyway. ;)

  • csm (unregistered) in reply to Coyne
    Coyne:
    Mhmx:
    The biodegradable bag is best to use before 10/09

    I don't know about that: The bag says "1009", not "10/09". Looks to me like it has a lifespan of -1000 years. (Now that is bio-degredation, when a bag degrades 1000 years before it is made!)

    I'm sure it was a cost-savings decision to omit the "/". You see this on perishable food products as well.

  • some guy (unregistered) in reply to Maurits
    Maurits:

    The prompt may say "enter your password, or press 0 to [foo]".

    If the first digit is 0, foo; otherwise, attempt to digest the password.

    The password digesting code may very well have this internal lookup table:

    1 => 1 2 => 2, a, b, c, A, B, C 3 => 3, d, e, f, D, E, F 4 => 4, g, h, i, G, H, I 5 => 5, j, k, l, J, K, L 6 => 6, m, n, o, M, N, O 7 => 7, p, q, r, s, P, Q, R, S 8 => 8, t, u, v, T, U, V 9 => 9, w, x, y, z, W, X, Y, Z 0 => 0, q, z, Q, Z

    Hopefully there's an account lockout policy because a 4-character password of this form can be hacked in a mere 10^4 tries.

    Well, making the assumption of fairly evenly distributed PINs, then on average, you'll get it half as many tries...

  • (cs) in reply to ContraCorners

    Somebody did a bad paraphrase of "The size of the affected region is unknown, as large items readily visible from the deck of a boat are few and far between. Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface". The particles that are not "most" are the large ones.

  • (cs) in reply to !?
    !?:
    1000 years is enough time for dying more than 10 times.

    This is a long time for me regardless what people may believe.

    “I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.”

  • (cs) in reply to Carl
    Carl:
    Grrr... degradable plastic... enviro weenies whining about how plastic is for 10,000 years... if you meddlers ever got OUTDOORS into your beloved environment you would see that most anything made of plastic deteriorates in about 3 years! Even half the crap on my roof has to be replaced regularly because the sun eats it away. A tent which is made to be outdoors doesn't last.
    So, you've left something plastic outdoors, and a while later you've noticed that lots of the plastic has gone.

    Where the hell do you suppose it went to?

    It doesn't just disappear by magic, it hangs around in the environment for a long time. It's just this kind of out-of-sight-out-of-mind if-i-can't-see-it-it-must-not-exist short-termist idiocy that is responsible for THIS massive fuckup:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

    Ah, I see everyone else is making the same point. Consider yourself told.

  • (cs)

    Could a competent network engineer explain switch capacity mathematics to me? If I can have 12 systems running at 48 Gbps I would expect 578 Gbps peak capacity; but because the switch backbone (or crossbar?) might be limited in capacity, I understand that the switch can really only do 136 Gbps overall. Now if I stack 12 switches there seems to be a maximum of 12136 = 1632 Gbps = 1.6 Terabit/s, which in reality ought to be lower as switches lose port capacity because they need to be connected to each other. Still that's nowhere near 2.7 Terabit/s, and 2.7 Terabyte/s makes no sense at all, unless I use the naive measure of 4812*12=6912Gbps and divide that by 8 to get 864 Gigabytes/s ... still no go. Where'd they get 2.7 Terabytes?

    "I want people to be able to do the math". Indeed.

  • ingenium (unregistered) in reply to Hendrik vdH
    Hendrik vdH:
    In Europe, "1009" is a typical abbreviation for 10/09 = October 2009
    Not in my neighbourhood.
  • moz (unregistered) in reply to lolwtf
    lolwtf:
    1000 years? I'm lucky if my plastic bags don't tear open on the way home!
    James Rourke obviously had the same problem, judging by the tear in the "before".

    Putting a best before date on something which doesn't need one by law and doesn't fail imperceptibly over time anyway is a bit silly. Maybe that's why they put the date in an unclear format.

  • (cs) in reply to Zach Bora
    Zach Bora:
    most phones have their Q and Z on the 0

    An appreciable percentage have a Q on the 7 (with P, R, S) and a Z on the 9 (with W, X, Y) and nothing on the 0.

    Hence my earlier lookup table where you can type Q with either 7 or 0, and Z with either 9 or 0.

  • To Lazy to sign up (unregistered)

    Perhaps the reason for not allowing Q or Z as the first letter of a password is simply an attempt avoid a really easy dictionary attack. How many words that start with Q or Z are 4 to 8 characters long?

    Of course that is assuming that the believe there users will use real words or common acronyms. Even still, 4 to 8 characters does make a dictionary attack easier to attempt regardless.....

  • James OBoston (unregistered)

    The real WTF is now i've got his IP address muaahahahahahahaahaa

  • WW (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    We had some bags like that when I managed a Tandy Leather store, ages ago. When we first got them in, I put a customer's purchase in one and moments later, the customer and I stood there staring at his (thankfully non-breakable) items scattered on the floor, and the gaping hole in the bottom of the bag. The whole batch was like that ... barely strong enough to hold a marshmallow (for a company that sold heavy steel leather-stamping tools, and lots of them).

  • Vermis (unregistered) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    The sad thing is most people don't even know this technology exists and how much it can do for the environment, but everyone knows who Paris Hilton is.

    It's a rather pricey hotel in France, EVERYBODY knows that!

  • Vermis (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    “I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.”

    Um, look around at most of the people you have to put up with day to day... You really want even 500 years of THAT?

  • Rob (unregistered)

    Nice Y2K bug on that bag. I suppose that's better than planes falling out of the sky.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Actually the supermarket wants to to reuse bags, not necessarily those bags. They also supply non-biodegradable "bags for life" that they would like you to reuse.

  • (cs) in reply to ttoni
    ttoni:
    TRWTF is that they let Jason take a picture during his test.

    No, TRWTF is that Jason signed an agreement not to divulge or discuss the exam questions, then did it anyway, and not just to a friend or coworker, but to the entire Intartubes, and that he now risks having his certification (assuming that he got it) withdrawn, all for the sake of a cheap laugh at some Sun boffin who didn't realize that the exam system randomizes the choices.

  • Juergen (unregistered)

    The Z aversion is easy to explain - same reason as with the Q.

    You don't want people to use QWERTY as password, and you don't want the smartasses to use YXCVBN either.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    "Every little helps" looks pretty wtf too, although perhaps it's common usage with Tesco.

  • AnonJr (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    They didn't give you a web application to access your voice mail? After reading the CallPilot documentation, I've never even bothered trying to use the phone interface; I just use the website.

    Note that Nortel recently went bankrupt.

    Sadly, no they did not give us the web app... we're stuck with photocopied manuals and the semi-intuitive phone interface. :(

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