• (cs) in reply to Huh?
    Huh?:
    Huh? BSD ripped what off from Linux?!

    Hah, yeah. That too. BSD totally ripped off of Linux before Linux was even invented.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    Uh, anyone wonder why he's looking for scenic views on a gps while standing right there? It's tantamount to querying the weather while standing outside.

    If you think that you can tell whether or not what you are looking at is a scenic view without consulting a technological gadget, you are obviously not geek enough to be on this forum.

  • Cynical Printing Device (unregistered)

    The cake is a lie!!

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Bus Logic
    Bus Logic:
    Dumbing down computers is only a good thing for the dumb. For the rest of us it's a pain in the ass.

    What bugs me is that Microsoft's solution to "This program is too hard to use" is consistently "Oh, well then instead of requiring you to tell us what you want it to do, we'll have it make wild guesses. And as long as it's going to do that, we can hide all the complicated stuff deep down in obscure screens with cryptic labels. Then as long as long as it guesses right, you don't have to worry about all the complicated stuff." The catch to this being, of course, that if it guesses wrong, it's very difficult to figure out how to get it to do what you want.

    Like, I saw a cute infographic somewhere -- if I was more ambitious I'd find it and post it but instead I'll just describe it -- that had a pie chart labeled "Time spent using Microsoft Word", and then showed "Entering text - 24%", "Formatting - 18%", and "Undoing things Word did for you automatically that you didn't want - 58%".

  • Jay (unregistered)

    RE "I HATE PRINTING", my first guess was that he created a print job named "I HATE" and sent it to the printer.

    If so, this seems at least a bit more fun that just creating a custom message. After all, anybody can find a device or program that echoes whatever you type in, and then type in a string of obscenities and giggle at the absolute hilarity of the computer ACTUALLY PRINTING OUT OBSCENITIES, hey wow, isn't that way cool! But to take a message that is constructed according to some algorithm, or even that simply has fill in the blank sections, and come up with data or text that changes the meaning of the message as a whole, that requires at least some cleverness and creativity.

  • (cs) in reply to Raptor
    Raptor:
    Ditto on the HP Printer status message not being a WTF. It's easy to change the ready message on just about any commercial HP printer if you know what you're doing and mess with coworkers... not that I'd know.

    ...you'd be amazed at the number of coworkers who claim a laser jet is running slow because it has a "Incoming Fax". Then again, it helped me form a good picture of where people fit in in the company.

    ...likewise, thankfully no one called the police when one of the printers reported a radiation leak.

    Yep. I 'Fixed' a few of our printers to display that exact same message last summer and last Christmas all printers in our lab displayed 'Merry Christmas'.....

    I have not tried that radiation leak one, and I'm not so sure it would be such a good idea as our lab used to be a 'Hot cell' facility looking at spent nuclear fuel some 20 years ago.... :-)

    Yazeran.

    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

  • Max (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Bus Logic:
    Dumbing down computers is only a good thing for the dumb. For the rest of us it's a pain in the ass.

    What bugs me is that Microsoft's solution to "This program is too hard to use" is consistently "Oh, well then instead of requiring you to tell us what you want it to do, we'll have it make wild guesses. And as long as it's going to do that, we can hide all the complicated stuff deep down in obscure screens with cryptic labels. Then as long as long as it guesses right, you don't have to worry about all the complicated stuff." The catch to this being, of course, that if it guesses wrong, it's very difficult to figure out how to get it to do what you want.

    Like, I saw a cute infographic somewhere -- if I was more ambitious I'd find it and post it but instead I'll just describe it -- that had a pie chart labeled "Time spent using Microsoft Word", and then showed "Entering text - 24%", "Formatting - 18%", and "Undoing things Word did for you automatically that you didn't want - 58%".

    http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/ms.gif

    That the one?

  • (cs) in reply to Yazeran
    Yazeran:
    Raptor:
    Ditto on the HP Printer status message not being a WTF. It's easy to change the ready message on just about any commercial HP printer if you know what you're doing and mess with coworkers... not that I'd know.

    ...you'd be amazed at the number of coworkers who claim a laser jet is running slow because it has a "Incoming Fax". Then again, it helped me form a good picture of where people fit in in the company.

    ...likewise, thankfully no one called the police when one of the printers reported a radiation leak.

    Yep. I 'Fixed' a few of our printers to display that exact same message last summer and last Christmas all printers in our lab displayed 'Merry Christmas'.....

    I have not tried that radiation leak one, and I'm not so sure it would be such a good idea as our lab used to be a 'Hot cell' facility looking at spent nuclear fuel some 20 years ago.... :-)

    Yazeran.

    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

    My favourite is still:

    Please insert 10¢
  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    But to take a message that is constructed according to some algorithm, or even that simply has fill in the blank sections, and come up with data or text that changes the meaning of the message as a whole, that requires at least some cleverness and creativity.

    Yeah like the UNIX error messages. www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/unix.errors.html

  • whiskeyjack (unregistered) in reply to Max
    Max:

    Oh, the irony...

  • Xenon Xavior (unregistered) in reply to Yazeran
    Yazeran:
    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

    I've always been curious -- what do you plan to do with your hammer when you go to Mars?

  • Sigivald (unregistered) in reply to The Nerve

    Unfortunately, Apple ripped off BSD, which ripped off these tools from Linux

    I think you need to check your timeline again there, bub.

  • CoderDan (unregistered) in reply to Slicerwizard
    Slicerwizard:
    It doesn't look like a GPS. Hell, it doesn't even look like a GPSr.

    I'm calling Bullshit on the GPS one, it looks like a text entry screen on an iPhone.

    Captcha: genitus - warts

  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Huh?:
    Huh? BSD ripped what off from Linux?!

    Hah, yeah. That too. BSD totally ripped off of Linux before Linux was even invented.

    Sigivald:
    Unfortunately, Apple ripped off BSD, which ripped off these tools from Linux

    I think you need to check your timeline again there, bub.

    To be fair, notice the words "these tools".

    To be correct, they were not stolen from Linux, they were Solaris tools. And they were not stolen at all, Sun released them into the free world.

  • ƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ÃƒÆ’Æ’ (unregistered) in reply to Dan
    Dan:

    To be fair, notice the words "these tools".

    If being fair mattered at all, there'd be no need to jailbreak iPhones. Too bad Steve Jobs doesn't care about fair...
  • Cowardly Lion (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Let me get my asbestos suit on here... there we are.

    I actually switched to Mac because Windows was too dumbed down. Yes, I could have installed Cygwin and Perl and Ruby and all of the other tools I wanted on Windows. But on OSX they were built in. Also, DTrace. DTrace is full of win and debugging. Plus, for OSX, I can actually play with the kernel code. Not that I would, because I'm not a masochist, but knowing that I can makes me happy.

    //Hey, Apple, while you're stealing ZFS and DTrace from Solaris, would you mind adapting Zones? That'd be great. //I am not the sort of person that thinks OSX is the best OS ever. //That honor goes to VMS.

    I switched because I needed a computer I could DO work on rather than simply work on.

  • PG4 (unregistered)

    +5 for VMS

    Still the only OS that got clustering right 20 years ago.

    You listening all you Open Source/Redhat fans? Your clustering sucks big time.

  • nobody (unregistered) in reply to Bus Logic
    Bus Logic:
    Is that an OS/X copy dialog (guessing here but it has the traditional OS/X look)? Do they really refer to data as "stuff"? This is exactly why I hate Macs, the damn things are made for children and retards. "So like, you want me to copy this stuff over to that thingy where your gear gets stored"? No you stupid fucking mac, I want copy a damn file. You're a computer FFS, you should at least have the technical competence to refer to data in slightly more descriptive terms than "stuff".

    This is exactly why I hate people who spout off about things they know nothing about. No. It's not an "OS/X copy dialog". It's a dialog from a file transfer client called Transmission.

    And you, good friend, just failed the jumping to conclusions test.

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Bus Logic:
    Dumbing down computers is only a good thing for the dumb. For the rest of us it's a pain in the ass.

    What bugs me is that Microsoft's solution to "This program is too hard to use" is consistently "Oh, well then instead of requiring you to tell us what you want it to do, we'll have it make wild guesses. And as long as it's going to do that, we can hide all the complicated stuff deep down in obscure screens with cryptic labels. Then as long as long as it guesses right, you don't have to worry about all the complicated stuff." The catch to this being, of course, that if it guesses wrong, it's very difficult to figure out how to get it to do what you want.

    Like, I saw a cute infographic somewhere -- if I was more ambitious I'd find it and post it but instead I'll just describe it -- that had a pie chart labeled "Time spent using Microsoft Word", and then showed "Entering text - 24%", "Formatting - 18%", and "Undoing things Word did for you automatically that you didn't want - 58%".

    I love people who whine about it taking hours to delete auto-correct/auto-format/auto-whatever stuff in Word, yet never taking the 10 seconds to go into the Options dialog and disable it for good.

    I call those people "idiots."

  • rfoxmich (unregistered)

    I agree with the GPS.. with all that fog and haze this is not the scenic panorama you are looking for.. you can go now.. move along... move along.

  • Silverhill (unregistered)

    Item #3: Another "Unhandled state expection" is the spelling of "exception". Erikis right: the UI clearly does know how to display FAILURE, at least self-referentially....

    I'm glad that it was not the case that an error occurred during operation occurred during operation: CommentAtTDWTF, though.

    captcha: nulla -- used for a nulla pointera "expectiona"?

  • Sutherlands (unregistered) in reply to Steve
    Steve:
    The captcha text is passed in on the querystring when it's retrieved, so any competent spambot can decode it directly from the URL with no further information required. For example, this is the querystring for "usitas":

    CaptchaImage.aspx?w=250&h=50&t=WSxfLEUsWCxNLF8s

    Obviously 't' is the text parameter. Now, bonus marks will be awarded if you can figure out the encoding (yes, it is possible). Any ideas?

    Well, base-64 decoding it gives "Y,,E,X,M,,", so considering usitas has the same character in the 2nd and last positions, and decoding the part for "quibus" gives "],Y,E,N,Y,_," (s in the last position, 2nd and 5th characters the same) - it looks like a simple text transformation after that.

  • sutech (unregistered)

    The HP printer picture is not really WTF. You could change text on some printers with a simple script. When I worked in HP, I've frequently changed the text on our printers to something like "Insert coin" "The cake is a lie". Heck, when I was bored I made the printer wink at the people with simple 2 frame animation consisting with ^^ and ^~ ascii art pictures.

  • (cs) in reply to blakeyrat
    blakeyrat:
    I love people who whine about it taking hours to delete auto-correct/auto-format/auto-whatever stuff in Word, yet never taking the 10 seconds to go into the Options dialog and disable it for good.

    I call those people "idiots."

    Why doesn't Office have the ability to autocorrect that setting?

  • an idiot (unregistered) in reply to blakeyrat
    blakeyrat:
    Jay:
    Bus Logic:
    Dumbing down computers is only a good thing for the dumb. For the rest of us it's a pain in the ass.
    ... Like, I saw a cute infographic somewhere -- if I was more ambitious I'd find it and post it but instead I'll just describe it -- that had a pie chart labeled "Time spent using Microsoft Word", and then showed "Entering text - 24%", "Formatting - 18%", and "Undoing things Word did for you automatically that you didn't want - 58%".

    I love people who whine about it taking hours to delete auto-correct/auto-format/auto-whatever stuff in Word, yet never taking the 10 seconds to go into the Options dialog and disable it for good.

    I call those people "idiots."

    Options dialog? Have you seen the ribbon interface? It's faster for me to hit Ctrl+Z each time than it is for me to spend the time hunting for a friggin' dialog. Thankfully I hardly have to use Word or I might invest the hour or so needed to find that dialog. It'd be about a year to break even on time spent finding the Options dialog vs. swearing and hitting Undo.

    CAPTCHA: conventio -- It is standard conventio to use separate text editing and page layout softwares.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    If I didn't need an Alpha to get OpenVMS running, I'd switch in a second.

    http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.os.vms/2009-04/msg00012.html

  • (cs) in reply to Xenon Xavior
    Xenon Xavior:
    Yazeran:
    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

    I've always been curious -- what do you plan to do with your hammer when you go to Mars?

    What can I say, I'm a geologist, we always go banging on rocks...
    So what better place than Mars? ;-)

    Yazeran

    Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer

  • (cs)

    If the UI doesn't know how to dislay failure, is that Worse Than Failure?

  • Nuelo (unregistered)

    lol TRWTF is your discussion about OS's

    CAPTCHA augue ... almost auge, german for eye

  • Mr Glass (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    Uh, anyone wonder why he's looking for scenic views on a gps while standing right there? It's tantamount to querying the weather while standing outside.

    I happen to be one of the latter.. I wanna know if they can at least get the current weather right.

    Anyway, can't see why it is a wtf that his gps software doesn't have any panorama pictures for his location. Ok ..so what?

  • Ben (unregistered) in reply to The MAZZTer
    The MAZZTer:
    "A document with the name 'whatever.xls' is already open. You cannot open two documents with the same name, even if the documents are in different folders. To open the second document, either close the document that's currently open, or rename one of the documents."

    I think the reason for that is Excel's data model, such as it is. Basically, you can refer to cells in another open file with filename@sheet!a5, or something like that. So if they fixed that, they'd break a lot of spreadsheets that depend on that feature. And there is an insane amount of stuff that depends on Excel; it's pretty scary, really.

  • TheCoderMan (unregistered)

    "UI Doesn't know how to display failure"

    I disagree.

  • TheCoderMan (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    TRWTF is ESXi right?

    Also, I hate people who post their CAPTCHAs, but I just got facilisi for about the 100th time, which seems somewhat ineffective for a CAPTCHA system.

    New WTF challenge. 100 points to the first person to break the WTF captcha by scanning the captcha's posted in the comments.

    |CAPTCHA,veniam|

  • TheCoderMan (unregistered) in reply to Bus Logic
    Bus Logic:
    OMG:
    It does appear to be running on OSX but no, it's an application dialog; I don't recognize the little truck, but that's probably the clue as to what app it is. OSX dialogs most definitely don't refer to "Your Stuff".
    Ah, thanks, I'm glad to hear that. For a minute I was worried they might refer to the mouse as the "pointy thing" and the hard drive as the "whirry stuff holder". Dumbing down computers is only a good thing for the dumb. For the rest of us it's a pain in the ass.

    Reminds me of one of my calculus teachers that described a mathematical process as "the bing, the bang, and the bong" so of course when I look in my text book, there is no reference to "the bing, the bang, and the bong"

    While taking that course a second time, I learned that the rest of the world calls it the "chain rule".

    |CAPTCHA,ullamcorper|

  • hoodaticus (unregistered)

    Note to self: If my hand ever gets THAT hairy, I will shave it before photographing it and broadcasting said photo on the Internet.

  • hoodaticus (unregistered) in reply to Steve

    [quote user="Steve"][quote user="The Nerve"]Now, bonus marks will be awarded if you can figure out the encoding (yes, it is possible). Any ideas?[/quote]

    I'm assuming it's base64, but I don't care enough to open up Visual Studio and test it.

  • Legal Weasel (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    Huh?:
    Huh? BSD ripped what off from Linux?!

    Hah, yeah. That too. BSD totally ripped off of Linux before Linux was even invented.

    You just fell for the viral clause in the GNU troll.

  • hoodaticus (unregistered) in reply to The MAZZTer
    The MAZZTer:
    "A document with the name 'whatever.xls' is already open. You cannot open two documents with the same name, even if the documents are in different folders. To open the second document, either close the document that's currently open, or rename one of the documents."

    Umm no thanks, I'll just use OpenOffice instead.

    Allowing that would break Excel's API, which uses Workbook.Name as the key for the Workbooks interface (which wraps some sort of collection). You can't have the same key for two members of a typical collection, though you could roll your own, and yes, it would be a WTF.

  • jack (unregistered) in reply to Rodger C.
    Rodger C.:
    That's not OSX, that's Transmit (a third party app). Don't accuse an OS of being stupid when it's a 3rd-party app that you're looking at.
    Why not? Totally works for Windows, after all!
  • Garnercx (unregistered) in reply to Slicerwizard

    It's an iPhone running Mobile Maps. I think that qualifies as "a GPS".

  • Garnercx (unregistered) in reply to CoderDan

    It's Mobile Maps Europe on an iPhone 3G, it's real, and it's a magnificent WTF!

    :)

  • Garnercx (unregistered) in reply to rfoxmich

    This is a better shot from the lookout, but yes - the smog was a little disconcerting for an Aussie. Lots of wood fires.

    http://www.garner.cx/cabris.jpg

  • Garnercx (unregistered) in reply to anon

    That would make sense a first glance, but we parked in the centre of Cabris - which technically has more than 180 degree views all around, yet we weren't sure where to go without trampling all over people's gardens. I figured that the GPS would know where the nearest proper lookout was, and it turns out it didn't. By the time the GPS had declared it was time to move on, we had already found it. Also - you want to avoid any extra walking as the streets are more like staircases - they are so steep.

  • Garnercx (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    Exactly. Now can you please explain that to my wife!

  • Garnercx (unregistered) in reply to Mr Glass

    It's not pictures, it's actual lookouts. The landscape is very hilly and hard to move around, so to find the proper lookout (also called viewpoint) locations you pull out the GPS. I thought the message was amusing, considering that by the time it got back to me with the lack of lookouts, we had already found one - and the view was spectacular.

  • Garnercx (unregistered)

    AAhhh shit. WTF. none of my posts include quotes. I hit the wrong button too many times in a row to be anything less than stupid.

    hangs head

  • Lod (unregistered)

    TRWTF is using a "task killer" on an Android phone (as seen in the background of the 90% pic).

  • (cs) in reply to Sutherlands
    Sutherlands:
    Steve:
    The captcha text is passed in on the querystring when it's retrieved, so any competent spambot can decode it directly from the URL with no further information required. For example, this is the querystring for "usitas":

    CaptchaImage.aspx?w=250&h=50&t=WSxfLEUsWCxNLF8s

    Obviously 't' is the text parameter. Now, bonus marks will be awarded if you can figure out the encoding (yes, it is possible). Any ideas?

    Well, base-64 decoding it gives "Y,,E,X,M,,", so considering usitas has the same character in the 2nd and last positions, and decoding the part for "quibus" gives "],Y,E,N,Y,_," (s in the last position, 2nd and 5th characters the same) - it looks like a simple text transformation after that.

    Yeh, I spotted the base 64 thing too, was briefly thrown when some of the URLs ended in "%5e" or "!", but realised they were substitutes for trailing equals signs.

    So: first replace trailing %5e (^) by =, trailing ! by == Then: b64 decode, discard every second char (the commas) Finally: substitute:

    I started collecting captchas, decoding their URLs, and noting down the mapping....

    PLAINTEXT:  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
    CIPHERTEXT: MNOHIJK E  @ABC\]^_XYZ[

    ... and got that far before realising that a) probably none of the captcha words use 'x', 'y' or 'z', and b) there's an easier way to do it. We has an oracle!

    So see here, for a full decode of the substitution:

    (Note that if you click the link it comes with no mime-type header, you'll have to save-as a .jpg filename and open it separately.)

  • (cs) in reply to DaveK
  • A. Spammer (unregistered) in reply to DaveK

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