• (cs) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    RE: E.J. Gonzalez's

    After I graduated from college my parents and I switched my cell phone service so that it was no longer under their family plan.  I had to pay a $200 deposit because I didn't have any credit.

    A month later I get my first bill.  The total was somewhere around $90, but for some reason they had subtracted that from my $200 deposit and said that I owed $0.00.  I thought about mailing in a check for $0.00 but decided against it.  A month later I get a call from my service provider asking me if I'm planning on paying my bill.

    In the end it turned out that they (obviously) should not have subtracted the amount I owed from my deposit, and were billing me for $90.  However they never sent me an adjusted bill, and had no idea that they ever sent me a bill for $0.00.  About a week after I paid the bill I got a new bill in the mail telling me I had a week to pay my balance or they'd cancel my service. 

    I still have that bill somewhere...maybe I should scan it and submit it... 

      I got a bill from the phone company once for eight cents.

     I think I still have a copy of *that* somewhere... I sent them back a check for the 8 cents along with a note that said "congrats, you just paid probably about 20 cents for bulk mail, plus some clerk maybe 3 or 4 cents to type the information into the computer, plus paper costs in order to recover 8 cents." 

  • Mogri (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    James imagined how some might react to this: The Internet? Haven't used that in a while ... I have been using the Firefox though ...

    [image]

     

     Maybe I'm assuming too much, but isn't the WTF on this one that it's Surveys.com asking if you've accessed the internet?

    captcha: hacker, uses his awesome skillz to respond to the survey without using internet
     

  • giggity (unregistered) in reply to Anton
    Anonymous:

    Hrm, wait a second. If the _package_ dimensoins are 0x0x0, then the actualt product must be _even smaller_! nice! an object with _negative_ dimensions (so, gives more space to the universe), weights 40 tons, and cost only $1.08! sweet! where can i get me one of these?

     

    Captcha: error -_-

    I believe each dimension is equal to -j. (Yes, "j" is the correct term for the imaginary unit .. those who use "i" have no imagination). 

  • Random() (unregistered) in reply to Saladin
    Saladin:

    Anonymous:
    You know that you can cut-n-paste the link, right?

    You can cut-and-paste links from inside of images now?

    Sorry - I've configured, gotten used to and grown dependent on auto-OCR. A simple click, drag, ctrl-c, ctrl-v and I've got text (assuming it's in the copied bits)

  • (cs) in reply to Saladin
    Saladin:

    Anonymous:
    You know that you can cut-n-paste the link, right?

    You can cut-and-paste links from inside of images now?

     Yes, that's the OCR part of the whole wooden table, picture, print, scan process...
     

  • berrs (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    For many, many more, check out the previous article from the series, Pop-up Potpourri: It's Getting a Little NaN Outside

    I suppose this is a bit late, but Richard was a little suspicious of some of the election results ...

    [image]

     

    WTF!!? The REPUBLICAN is winning!!?

     

  • Chris Travers (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT

    I don't have a screenshot at the moment, but last time I installed Oracle 10G I found a similar WTF.

     When the installation completes and you click finish, you get a popup:

     "Are you sure you want to exit the installation?"

    You have to click yes to complete it.

    Similarly when you uninstall it, it will run through the uninstall and then start to install the software again.

    I guess they really want you to stay an Oracle user.

     

  • Bill Turner (unregistered) in reply to ssprencel

    Oh, it's obviously a quantum black hole -- antimatter would take up some space for the weight (Or maybe negative space?  Or have negative weight?)

  • Hans (unregistered) in reply to Saladin
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Also, 16 TB free on a 1 TB drive?  Amazing!

    I hear Microsoft has been getting some excellent results with compression of available free space in Vista ;-)

     ...

    Well, what else could it be? 

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    James imagined how some might react to this: The Internet? Haven't used that in a while ... I have been using the Firefox though ...

    [image]

    Have you been asked a question in the past 3 months?  _Yes  _No

    Are you illiterate?  _Yes  _No

    Are you going to answer "no" to this question?  _Yes  _No

    In another life, I developed a great little personality test known as the Boston University Least Laborious Standardized Hierarchical Inventory of Traits. Actually, the test wasn't so great; just the acronym was.

    --Rank

  • (cs) in reply to Chris Travers
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Wow!  The price of anti-matter sure has dropped lately.

    Sorry to be pedantic, but you mean strange matter.

    Well, as long as we're being pedantic... I don't think that anyone has postulated quarks to be dimensionless.  In fact, I think that they're on the order of several attometers.

    (I'm only an "arm chair physicist", so if somebody who knows better tells me I'm wrong, I'll accept that.)

  • (cs)

    I want to know how Wayne Hart is predicting nuclear explosions.

  • Dazed (unregistered) in reply to some guy
    Anonymous:

    Alex might want to consider not putting ads in Pop-up potpourri... I spent a couple seconds trying to figure out what was wrong with the crackberries (the ad that popped up)... of course, maybe the ad peeps should pay extra.

    Heh ... glad I'm not the only one. I mean, when you see "AOL" in an image, you know there must be a WTF in there somewhere.

    Gave me an extra laugh when I realised, anyway.

  • eloj (unregistered)

    The "Real WTF" here is that even at a techie-site like this, contributors aren't clued in enough to NOT use a lossy image format such as JPEG for GUI screenshots, where PNG delivers better quality at fewer bits.

    I consider this to be one of the great mysteries of the world to be honest.

    I also fear that, by pointing it out, I'm creating a whole class of "Oh yeah? Now I'm NEVER going to do the right thing, so there!"-people.

  • You owe me $1e-15 (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over

    A friend of mine received an waring email from one of the leading New Zealand ISP a while ago.  They threatened to disconnect his account if he did not pay the bill promptly...  My friend was a bit surprised.  He sent his cheque to the ISP early that money and it had already been credited by the ISP....

    So he rang the accounting department of the ISP.  The other side in the phone bursted into a big laugh.  The system indicated that my friend owed them $0.0000000000000001.  Apparently, the programmer did not realise that comparison between floating point numbers is liable to rounding off....
     

  • (cs) in reply to eloj

    Anonymous:
    The "Real WTF" here is that even at a techie-site like this, contributors aren't clued in enough to NOT use a lossy image format such as JPEG for GUI screenshots, where PNG delivers better quality at fewer bits.

    Agreed.  MS Paint's (which I'm betting most of us are relegated to doing our image manipulation on) JPG compression is ridiculously low-quality, and not all that compact to boot.  Granted, there are plenty of times where I've seen PNG files get absolutely gigantic compared to JPG in things like Photoshop, but it seems that most of the time when I'm just screenshotting something with Paint that PNG is both better-looking and more compact.

  • Krakerjack (unregistered)

    Glad to see I wasn't the only one who had "date" issues with my Bank of America online account.

  • (cs) in reply to MyKey_

    Anonymous:
    The WTF behind the WTF is how the "-693945 Days of Christmas"-site is implemented!

    Firefox shows -693945 days remaining.
    IE shows 16 days remaining.

    So it looks like every browser has its own Christmas.

    The reason for this is JavaScripts function date.getYear() which returns 106 (which is 2006-1900) on almost every browser except IE.
    Nevertheless the code that calculates and outputs the remaining days is worth its own DailyWTF post.

     I wish I recalled the address of the web-development company that claims 50+ combined years of web site development experiance; while their page says the year is 1900106...

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:

    Just like, when you are in a building with only two floors and you enter the elevator (like a shopping mall); why are there two buttons in the elevator?

    Why doesn't the elevator car simply GO to the other floor?


    Why make a special case for the elevator software and hardware, when you have a general solution that works just fine?

    captcha: nobody cares what your captcha was.
     

  • (cs) in reply to eloj

    Anonymous:
    The "Real WTF" here is that even at a techie-site like this, contributors aren't clued in enough to NOT use a lossy image format such as JPEG for GUI screenshots, where PNG delivers better quality at fewer bits.

    I consider this to be one of the great mysteries of the world to be honest.

    I also fear that, by pointing it out, I'm creating a whole class of "Oh yeah? Now I'm NEVER going to do the right thing, so there!"-people.

     

    In my former job, doing GUI work, we would sometimes get bug reports with a JPG attached. The bug would read something along the lines of "please not how this pixel is incorrect..." Well geez thank you for compressing the pixel right out of the picture.

  • Kapow (unregistered)

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    I suppose this is a bit late, but Richard was a little suspicious of some of the election results ...

    [image]

    I don't get it.  Are you suggesting that more than 842 people voted for commissioner?

  • NightCreature (unregistered) in reply to pizza
    Anonymous:

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    As reported by Gideon Payne in the 11/17/2006 edition of Owensboro's Messenger-Inquirer, the sun is expected to stop by Earth some time on Monday night; temperatures may warm up a bit ...

    [image]


    I knew global warming would kill us one day.  Thankfully, life can resume as normal the following day.  BTW, how big of a heatsink is needed for that kind of temperature delta? :P

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Incase you were wondering why entropy suddenly reverses itself every now and then, it's just Sam C, playing around with Thunderbird ...

    [image]


    oh, so that's how we get back to normal temps!

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

    [image]


    Okay, who bought all these? You must have been the one who caused the sun to get close to Earth on Monday evening, causing the 3320 degree temps.
     

    Great Post 

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

    [image]

     

    It's probably a mini black hole! 

    Note that it's marked as "Hazardous: N."  Apparently, the key to stabilizing black holes is to build them solid-state...

    But I want my mini black hole to comply with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive.  I guess they're not sure because the measuring kit always gets swallowed up, but enquiring minds want to know™.

  • anonymoose (unregistered) in reply to giggity
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Hrm, wait a second. If the _package_ dimensoins are 0x0x0, then the actualt product must be _even smaller_! nice! an object with _negative_ dimensions (so, gives more space to the universe), weights 40 tons, and cost only $1.08! sweet! where can i get me one of these?

     

    Captcha: error -_-

    I believe each dimension is equal to -j. (Yes, "j" is the correct term for the imaginary unit .. those who use "i" have no imagination). 



    Actually, I believe a product of 0x0x0 dimensions would fit quite nicely in a package of the same size.
  • vDave (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    Note that it's marked as "Hazardous: N."  Apparently, the key to stabilizing black holes is to build them solid-state...

     

    What would be the acceleration due to gravity due to that mass at, say, one meter?  Assuming it's a point singularity, I mean.  I could run up the number, and am probably bored enough to do so, but don't feel like it at the moment.

    negligable.

    What level of gravitational attraction do you feel when you are standing a meter away from a steamroller?  Or another large construction vehicle?  Or a building?
     

      -dave-
     

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

    [image]

     

     If I buy it, and it doesn't weigh 40 tons and is larger than 0.0049~ in x 0.0049~ in x 0.0049~ in, can I sue them? ;-)

  • Olddog (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:

    Useless Dialog

    This is a totally useless dialog.

    Just like, when you are in a building with only two floors and you enter the elevator (like a shopping mall); why are there two buttons in the elevator?

    Why doesn't the elevator car simply GO to the other floor?

    the function that writes the elevator_log() requires two params... source and target.
    If the params are the same, the elevator doesn't move. Give it a try.

     It's a well known fact that the elevator industry has a monopoly on buttons. One button must be labeled 'L". God knows why.

     

  • natitfj (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    RE: E.J. Gonzalez's

    After I graduated from college my parents and I switched my cell phone service so that it was no longer under their family plan.  I had to pay a $200 deposit because I didn't have any credit.

    A month later I get my first bill.  The total was somewhere around $90, but for some reason they had subtracted that from my $200 deposit and said that I owed $0.00.  I thought about mailing in a check for $0.00 but decided against it.  A month later I get a call from my service provider asking me if I'm planning on paying my bill.

    In the end it turned out that they (obviously) should not have subtracted the amount I owed from my deposit, and were billing me for $90.  However they never sent me an adjusted bill, and had no idea that they ever sent me a bill for $0.00.  About a week after I paid the bill I got a new bill in the mail telling me I had a week to pay my balance or they'd cancel my service. 

    I still have that bill somewhere...maybe I should scan it and submit it... 

     
    Thats nothing...  I started a family service plan with four phones.  All activated at the same time. Complete success of everything except one thing.  When the account was sent to be verified, someone in Q&A, seemed to had forgotten to ensure a 1 was in the right area.   For three months I kept receiving bills of $0.00.   I called the my provider at LEAST 20 times, to get a clear answer.  Of which every 'customer service rep' would inform me that I had paid my bill, and that all is well.   4th month came rolling around, I get a bill for over $1900.  While I reviewed my paper bill to notice that I had over 6000 rollover minutes, but I was being billed for every actual minute I used within my alloted plan. (1400 daily, unlimited M2M, unlimited N&W, etc). 

     Dealing with customer service was a nightmare, because I would get a new story each phone call (each person).  On my sixth month, I received a bill for $1265.23.  Early termination & usage fees.  ^but wait theres more!!!   I was still using the service, and all my phones were working.   By this time, someone finally got the hint, that 74 phone calls to the company in a 6 month period required supervisor attention AND THEN management attention.

     Let me put it this way...  I'm on month 11 of my 24 month contract.  I have over 15000 (yes, 15k) rollover minutes, I get monthly bills of $1000+ (of which they manually adjust to reflect the correct billing amount every 23rd of each month)  I just finally (this week) received a phone call from a higher upper management person who is now a dedicated representative of my account.  No matter what, I am to call this person directly, or he calls me to resolve any account issues.  

    After doing some homework of my own, I realized what happened to my account (which leads me to want to advocate a law requiring readable bill statements ^plain English^, and straight forward listing of all fees, taxes, charges, etc.)    It appears that someone in Q&A, messed up when it came to my rate plan.  they mistakenly set my monthly daily minutes to ZERO. So every phone call my phones make, I get charged for each minute.  Since on the system it always looks like I never use my day time minutes, all my unused minutes gets rolled over.to the next month. (there isn't even a reset period for my rollover)

    Personally, I had enough of the crap, but the company keeps reducing my bill to be under my contracted rate plan. I am told this month EVERYTHING should be correct finally. No more awkward billing issues.  I'll just hold my breath and wait an see.

  • brendan (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Come on Rumo, you should know better; no fair downloading Microsoft Munchies 2.0 at work ...

    [image]

    This isn't really a wtf, you have to be smoking some Marijuana to use a microsoft product.

     CAPTCHA error - makes sense (to bad it wasn't "Sorry, this program preformed an illegal operation").
     

  • (cs) in reply to brendan
    Anonymous:

    This isn't really a wtf, you have to be smoking some Marijuana to use a microsoft product.

     CAPTCHA error - makes sense (to bad it wasn't "Sorry, this program preformed an illegal operation").
     

    Wow, so you mean 95% of computer users smoke marijuana? That means practically the entire "civilized" world is smoking joints. I'm surprised the world still has wars, I thought weed was supposed to make you all mellow and stuff. Also, why isn't the entire population in the slammer for possession?

    Let's apply some reasoning based on images. Microsoft has a corporate image. Mac is artistic and "cool". Linux is rebellious and anarchistic. Now what's the image of Marijuana? Rebellios, anarchistic, "cool". Also, "arteest"s tend to use hallucinogens. So, purely based on images, which of the 3 would you really say would have an abnormally high number of marijuana users?

    (I can take a joke as much as the next person, but I like to apply a bit of reasoning. Plus, you failed to indicate your post as anything more than flame bait.)

  • Alex B (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Incase you were wondering why entropy suddenly reverses itself every now and then, it's just Sam C, playing around with Thunderbird ...

     
    Oh  puh-lease, "Restore Natural Order" may seem funny, but it's entirely legitimate. It simply restores the sort order of a listbox to whatever it was before you clicked on any column headers to sort it.

  • (cs) in reply to Alex B

    Killjoy.

  • Loren Pechtel (unregistered) in reply to Saladin
    Saladin:

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    At first I read the file system as "NSFW."  Maybe Windows knew someone was keeping naughty stuff on there? 

    Also, 16 TB free on a 1 TB drive?  Amazing!

     
    Looks like somebody's made quite a breakthrough in drive compression!

     

    Captcha: Perfection 

  • Loren Pechtel (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    As reported by Gideon Payne in the 11/17/2006 edition of Owensboro's Messenger-Inquirer, the sun is expected to stop by Earth some time on Monday night; temperatures may warm up a bit ...

    [image]

    Evacuate at once!  Nuclear attack expected Monday!

    Captcha: error 

  • MadJo (unregistered) in reply to Chris Travers
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    I don't really need one of these transistors that Scott S. is buying, but I'm really tempted to get one. It'd be awesome: a forty-ton object that takes up no space and costs only $1.80! Anyone got a free shipping coupon code I can use?

    [image]

    I find the "unkown" also pretty WTF-ish. 

    captcha: clueless, of splelling? :)

  • Chris (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Drew received this error when trying to submit the contact us form of a very well known car company. Poor customer.

    [image]

    Ah, the perils of the human mind.

    n.b. In case anyone'd forgotten (it's easy to), "sex" can be an adjective too

  • Ashtead (unregistered)

    As for the BC548, I've got a bunch of them here, and they are nothing like thousands of pounds in weight. I'm sure I would have noticed.... Like other transistors these are mostly plastic and silicon, with a slight amount of gold and copper... not neutron-star material.

    The BC548 comes in a TO-92 package, whose size is on the order of 0.2 in by 0.2 in by 0.2 in.  Now it said "approximateley" 0.00 in, which would be accurate for very large values of 0.00 ... miles for example. 

    As for the RoHS compliance status being "unknown" that probably means that no-one has bothered looking yet. I've seen many other cases of this, it generally sucks. Considering the errors in the rest of this entry, I'd say that this one is the least of the worries.  A nice big fat WTF fer sure ...

    Ashtead

  • brendan (unregistered) in reply to Erzengel
    Erzengel:
    Wow, so you mean 95% of computer users smoke marijuana? That means practically the entire "civilized" world is smoking joints. I'm surprised the world still has wars, I thought weed was supposed to make you all mellow and stuff. Also, why isn't the entire population in the slammer for possession?

    How many of those users, know that there are alternatives?

    Erzengel:
    Let's apply some reasoning based on images. Microsoft has a corporate image. Mac is artistic and "cool". Linux is rebellious and anarchistic. Now what's the image of Marijuana? Rebellios, anarchistic, "cool". Also, "arteest"s tend to use hallucinogens. So, purely based on images, which of the 3 would you really say would have an abnormally high number of marijuana users?

    You still haven't said anything as to why the M$ website was filtered for Marijuana.

    Erzengel:
    (I can take a joke as much as the next person, but I like to apply a bit of reasoning. Plus, you failed to indicate your post as anything more than flame bait.)

    I was just expressing my opinion as to why the M$ site was filtered.

  • (cs) in reply to brendan

    Anonymous:
    Erzengel:
    Wow, so you mean 95% of computer users smoke marijuana? That means practically the entire "civilized" world is smoking joints. I'm surprised the world still has wars, I thought weed was supposed to make you all mellow and stuff. Also, why isn't the entire population in the slammer for possession?
    How many of those users, know that there are alternatives?
    So because they don't know there are alternatives, they must be smoking mary?
    Erzengel:
    Let's apply some reasoning based on images. Microsoft has a corporate image. Mac is artistic and "cool". Linux is rebellious and anarchistic. Now what's the image of Marijuana? Rebellios, anarchistic, "cool". Also, "arteest"s tend to use hallucinogens. So, purely based on images, which of the 3 would you really say would have an abnormally high number of marijuana users?
    You still haven't said anything as to why the M$ website was filtered for Marijuana.
    Umm, because of human error. Read the article linked in the comments. I was replying to you, not "why Microsoft was filtered". Why would I state why Microsoft was filtered? It's already been explained.
    Erzengel:
    (I can take a joke as much as the next person, but I like to apply a bit of reasoning. Plus, you failed to indicate your post as anything more than flame bait.)
    I was just expressing my opinion as to why the M$ site was filtered.
    Okay, and I was just expressing the logic that follows from your opinion, to show you how it could be considered ill formed.

    And just so you know, you aren't impressing anyone with your replacement of S with $. More than anything, you are driving people away from your position.

  • Eam (unregistered) in reply to Grimoire
    Grimoire:

    I call shenanigans!  Everyone knows there are no black Republicans...

    The real WTF is that you've obviously never heard of P.K. Winsome.

  • (cs) in reply to natitfj
    Anonymous:
     

    Thats nothing...  I started a family service plan with four phones.  All activated at the same time. Complete success of everything except one thing.  When the account was sent to be verified, someone in Q&A, seemed to had forgotten to ensure a 1 was in the right area.   For three months I kept receiving bills of $0.00.   I called the my provider at LEAST 20 times, to get a clear answer.  Of which every 'customer service rep' would inform me that I had paid my bill, and that all is well.   4th month came rolling around, I get a bill for over $1900.  While I reviewed my paper bill to notice that I had over 6000 rollover minutes, but I was being billed for every actual minute I used within my alloted plan. (1400 daily, unlimited M2M, unlimited N&W, etc). 

     Dealing with customer service was a nightmare, because I would get a new story each phone call (each person).  On my sixth month, I received a bill for $1265.23.  Early termination & usage fees.  ^but wait theres more!!!   I was still using the service, and all my phones were working.   By this time, someone finally got the hint, that 74 phone calls to the company in a 6 month period required supervisor attention AND THEN management attention.

     Let me put it this way...  I'm on month 11 of my 24 month contract.  I have over 15000 (yes, 15k) rollover minutes, I get monthly bills of $1000+ (of which they manually adjust to reflect the correct billing amount every 23rd of each month)  I just finally (this week) received a phone call from a higher upper management person who is now a dedicated representative of my account.  No matter what, I am to call this person directly, or he calls me to resolve any account issues.  

    After doing some homework of my own, I realized what happened to my account (which leads me to want to advocate a law requiring readable bill statements ^plain English^, and straight forward listing of all fees, taxes, charges, etc.)    It appears that someone in Q&A, messed up when it came to my rate plan.  they mistakenly set my monthly daily minutes to ZERO. So every phone call my phones make, I get charged for each minute.  Since on the system it always looks like I never use my day time minutes, all my unused minutes gets rolled over.to the next month. (there isn't even a reset period for my rollover)

    Personally, I had enough of the crap, but the company keeps reducing my bill to be under my contracted rate plan. I am told this month EVERYTHING should be correct finally. No more awkward billing issues.  I'll just hold my breath and wait an see.

    Have you considered submitting your experience to Ed Foster at the Gripeline?

    Also lol at the whole P.K. Winsome business. xD 

  • Sauron (unregistered) in reply to jesirose

    Somebody hasn't seen Firefly... le sigh.

  • Don't mind me (unregistered)

    Don't place ads directly under the Pop-up Potpourri articles...

  • PHP coder (unregistered)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Incase you were wondering why entropy suddenly reverses itself every now and then, it's just Sam C, playing around with Thunderbird ...

    [image]

     

    I dont get it? Whats the WTF in this picture? 

  • SuzieQ (unregistered) in reply to Roll Over
    Anonymous:

    RE: E.J. Gonzalez's

    After I graduated from college my parents and I switched my cell phone service so that it was no longer under their family plan.  I had to pay a $200 deposit because I didn't have any credit.

    A month later I get my first bill.  The total was somewhere around $90, but for some reason they had subtracted that from my $200 deposit and said that I owed $0.00.  I thought about mailing in a check for $0.00 but decided against it.  A month later I get a call from my service provider asking me if I'm planning on paying my bill.

    In the end it turned out that they (obviously) should not have subtracted the amount I owed from my deposit, and were billing me for $90.  However they never sent me an adjusted bill, and had no idea that they ever sent me a bill for $0.00.  About a week after I paid the bill I got a new bill in the mail telling me I had a week to pay my balance or they'd cancel my service. 

    I still have that bill somewhere...maybe I should scan it and submit it... 

     

    Reminds me of the colleague of mine who received a rebate cheque for $0.01 and decided to frame it. A year later the same (government department of course) sent him a letter saying that, because he had not presented the cheque, they had cancelled it and enclosed a new one – for $0.01.

    We parted company soon after that but I guess he is still receiving similar letters each year!

  • The Pig that Was. (unregistered)

    congratulations you just made me look stupid laughing my ass of in the office.

    no quack. 

  • Fred (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Drew received this error when trying to submit the contact us form of a very well known car company. Poor customer.

    [image]

    Ah, the perils of the human mind.

    n.b. In case anyone'd forgotten (it's easy to), "sex" can be an adjective too

     Yeah, yeah. The funny part isn't the word 'sex'. It's the "Customer Request Insert" bit that precedes the bit about expecting @sex.

  • (cs)

    The Bad MsgID example, despite being a serious bug, is a great example why proper and consistent GUI design is so important...  On a message box with multiple buttons, the safe or (safest) option should be executed by the defaulted button.  For example, if confirming a user deletion operation, <font face="terminal,monaco">[No]</font> should be the default button instead of <font face="terminal,monaco">[Yes]</font>.

    I would also suggest that you design messages so that they require a positive answer to continue with the action.  Using the delete operation example above, the copy should be something like:

    <font face="comic sans ms,sand">Are you sure you want to delete this user?</font>

    Instead of something like:

    <font face="comic sans ms,sand">Last chance to abort!  Do you want to abort the deletion of this user?</font>

    Being consistent also helps - if the user is used to the message they see when then try to delete a user from the system, if they accidentally try to delete a category from the system and they get the Bad MsgId message, they can assume that the defaulted action is the safe one.  Even if the incorrect button was defaulted, they would have an idea that the message that was supposed to be there requires a <font face="terminal,monaco">[Yes]</font> (positive answer) to continue with the delete operation.

    Peace!

  • NoName (unregistered) in reply to Alex B
    Anonymous:

    Oh  puh-lease, "Restore Natural Order" may seem funny, but it's entirely legitimate. It simply restores the sort order of a listbox to whatever it was before you clicked on any column headers to sort it.

     

    Let that be a lesson to all you people who laughed. Just because something seems funny doesn't mean it is. There should be a hotline you could call to check wether something simply seems funny or actually is funny. 

  • (cs) in reply to Alex B

    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:
    Incase you were wondering why entropy suddenly reverses itself every now and then, it's just Sam C, playing around with Thunderbird ...
    Oh  puh-lease, "Restore Natural Order" may seem funny, but it's entirely legitimate. It simply restores the sort order of a listbox to whatever it was before you clicked on any column headers to sort it.

    From a GUI design point of view, this is a WTF, albeit a minor one.  "Default" is the word to use here, not "Natural".  There is not much that is natural about some developer or designer choosing a particular order based on whatever guidelines they are familiar with (if any).  And nature likely has little to do with it, too. :)

    This is why you see:

    Restore Default Settings   instead of   Restore Natural Settings   -or-
    Use Application Defaults   instead of  Use Nature's Intent

    Of course, opinions vary...

    Peace!

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