• Hugo (unregistered) in reply to Cbuttius
    Cbuttius:
    Let's do the Maths:

    They have sent out 100,000 more e-mails than they were meant to. 5,000 users unsubscribed as a result So it will take 20 runs to break even.

    I have never tried this by the way, but "Do-Not-Reply" e-mail addresses really annoy me, and I would like to see what happened if you e-mailed one with an e-mail apparently from itself.

    Better yet, from another noreply emailaddress, to make sure it isn't stopped by some sort of innerloop detection ;)

  • (cs)

    God damn all these comments suck.

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    God damn all these comments suck.
    True, but there is the occasional exception.
  • Calli Arcale (unregistered) in reply to Larry Erhardt
    Larry Erhardt:
    Ahh, so this is why Clayton always tells Frank to push the button instead of just pushing it himself...

    I wonder how many clients Gizmonics Institute could have for a mass-mailing campaign?

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Markp
    Markp:
    Anon:
    SilverEyes:
    Zack:
    You could send 1 letter or 100, it's still infinitely more than the correct amount of spam you should be sending to your customers. :)
    By 'infinitely more' do you mean 1 or 100 more?

    Are you trolling or did you really not get the point? 1 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0 just as 100 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0. The point was that the OP was implying that 0 is the correct amount of spam to send you customers, and even 1 spam e-mail is too many.

    Nah, I think you missed the point, or English class or something. An event that happened once has happened 1 more time than never happening. An event that happened 100 times has happened 100 more times than never happening. Neither has happened infinitely more times than any amount of times.

    If you get one spam message and you wanted zero, you got exactly one more spam message than you wanted.

    No, the point is the ratio of times you got spam to times you wanted spam. I.e. 1/0 vs 100/0, which regardless of your opinion of dividing by 0, I think most would agree that 1/0 == 100/0. Or, in other words, you got an infinite percent more spam that you wanted. It's like calculating the markup % of selling something you got for free.

  • (cs) in reply to schmitter
    schmitter:
    Of course they needed a bulk e-mailer. You have any idea how long it takes to print out 150000 messages, place them on a wood table, take a picture, scan the picture and send them off?

    Infinitely longer than 0 messages, that's for sure. (That is to say, 10 times as long, base infinity.)

  • BF (unregistered)

    Am I the only one that thinks that pressing the button the first time should've set the email status to sent and the subsequent presses should've returned an error?

    Also am I the only one that thinks should've is a valid contraction of should have?

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    It's like calculating the markup % of selling something you got for free.
    In other words, as a form of measurement, it's completely useless information.
  • M (unregistered)

    FROM not OFF OF. Arg, die die die.

  • H.P. Lovecraft (unregistered) in reply to wtf
    wtf:
    Markp:
    Anon:
    SilverEyes:
    Zack:
    You could send 1 letter or 100, it's still infinitely more than the correct amount of spam you should be sending to your customers. :)
    By 'infinitely more' do you mean 1 or 100 more?

    Are you trolling or did you really not get the point? 1 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0 just as 100 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0. The point was that the OP was implying that 0 is the correct amount of spam to send you customers, and even 1 spam e-mail is too many.

    Nah, I think you missed the point, or English class or something. An event that happened once has happened 1 more time than never happening. An event that happened 100 times has happened 100 more times than never happening. Neither has happened infinitely more times than any amount of times.

    If you get one spam message and you wanted zero, you got exactly one more spam message than you wanted.

    Oh, dog, here we go with today's mindless philosophizing.

    It is written: "The seeker of knowledge approached a wise man. 'Tell me, Wise One, how is x010F pronounced?' And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Tell me, wise one, may one begin a sentence with a conjunction, or is such a thing forbidden by the laws?'. And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Tell me, your sagacity, is one infinitely greater than zero, or is it one greater than zero?'. And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Oh, great sage, you beat me with the club of cleverness, but I am no more clever than before, how can this be?' cried the seeker. The wise man replied, 'It's actually just a stick, I keep hoping you'll go away if I hit you often enough, but here you are.'"

    +10. Nice.

  • Medinoc (unregistered)

    So the WTF is that the web application was not protected against multiple submits?

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Anon:
    Crappy GUI design without adequate feedback leads guy to click button multiple times.

    I think this should be your missing easy reader version. ^^

    Additionally, the company could make a legitimate case to the bulk emailer that a refund is in order for the second and third click. After all, they could have at least put a warning to only click once if they weren't going to bother designing their GUI properly.

    I think in this situation, I'd refuse to pay for anything. The company clearly hasn't provided the service they were supposed to provide - the message going out three times is worse than not sending it at all, so if it's due to their UI crapness and their fault, then the whole exercise failed and should not be paid for.

  • JavaScript Hater (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Oh I quite agree and it's very simple to overcome this issue from a design point of view - something as simple as disabling the submit button in the OnClick method is perfectly good enough most of the time.
    NoScript?
  • Buffled (unregistered) in reply to Markp
    Markp:
    One time, I typed
    cat myFile > /dev/sda
    instead of
    cat myFile > /dev/sdb
    and irrevocably toasted my Windows partition.

    Point being? Mistakes can happen without it being a WTF.

    (On a side note, I never reinstalled Windows; in hindsight I don't consider that act a bad thing).

    TRWTF is not using dd

  • F (unregistered) in reply to Skilldrick
    Skilldrick:
    Anonymous:

    But then this is a business analyst so I guess it's par for the course, I wonder if he knows where his ass is and if he would be able to distinguish it from his elbow.

    Surely his ass in in his stable... Where do you keep your asses in the US?

    In their sleeves. They can't tell them from elbows.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to boog
    boog:
    Anon:
    It's like calculating the markup % of selling something you got for free.
    In other words, as a form of measurement, it's completely useless information.

    YES! Exactly, and that was the point

  • (cs) in reply to JavaScript Hater
    JavaScript Hater:
    Anonymous:
    Oh I quite agree and it's very simple to overcome this issue from a design point of view - something as simple as disabling the submit button in the OnClick method is perfectly good enough most of the time.
    NoScript?
    I know, it's so annoying that Javascript can successfully enhance usability in web applications, amirite?

    Incidentally, NoScript has this "Temporarily allow..." feature that works very well when web apps start out saying "Javascript is required."

    Addendum (2010-10-14 12:56):

    ...can occasionally enhance usability...
    FTFM
  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    ... I think most would agree that 1/0 == 100/0.
    Maybe, but then most of the world sucks at math. That equivalence is ridiculous. Take the limit on both sides and you still have the LHS being 1/100 the RHS.
    Anon:
    It's like calculating the markup % of selling something you got for free.
    It would be like that, if that's what was said. How it was phrased was much more like saying "I got this for free and sold it for a dollar: I made an infinite amount of profit!".

    Anyway the original point didn't make sense anyway. The average person will get a lot more pissed at 1000000000 spam e-mails in their inbox every second than 1 every decade. To say it's the same because the ratio is the same (even though it's not) is still wrong. But that wasn't the reason for the ensuing pedantry :-).

  • Eldon (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    No, the point is the ratio of times you got spam to times you wanted spam. I.e. 1/0 vs 100/0, which regardless of your opinion of dividing by 0, I think most would agree that 1/0 == 100/0. Or, in other words, you got an infinite percent more spam that you wanted. It's like calculating the markup % of selling something you got for free.

    1/0 is not the same as 100/0

    Example:

    lim (1/x)*x = 1 x->0

    lim (100/x)*x = 100 x->0

  • whiskeyjack (unregistered)

    I get it! Because seven ate nine!

  • Wyatt Mestwood (unregistered)

    Does anyone actually use the "unsubscribe" links? I never trust them to actually work so I always just set up an e-mail filter to automatically block the shit.

  • A Mathmetician (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Markp:
    Anon:
    SilverEyes:
    Zack:
    You could send 1 letter or 100, it's still infinitely more than the correct amount of spam you should be sending to your customers. :)
    By 'infinitely more' do you mean 1 or 100 more?

    Are you trolling or did you really not get the point? 1 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0 just as 100 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0. The point was that the OP was implying that 0 is the correct amount of spam to send you customers, and even 1 spam e-mail is too many.

    Nah, I think you missed the point, or English class or something. An event that happened once has happened 1 more time than never happening. An event that happened 100 times has happened 100 more times than never happening. Neither has happened infinitely more times than any amount of times.

    If you get one spam message and you wanted zero, you got exactly one more spam message than you wanted.

    No, the point is the ratio of times you got spam to times you wanted spam. I.e. 1/0 vs 100/0, which regardless of your opinion of dividing by 0, I think most would agree that 1/0 == 100/0. Or, in other words, you got an infinite percent more spam that you wanted. It's like calculating the markup % of selling something you got for free.

    You're an idiot. Neither is defined. I'm sure a lot of people are going to use limits as an argument, but anyone with CalI experience know such arguments are bullshit. I'm not posting again.

  • Require This! (unregistered) in reply to boog
    boog:
    Incidentally, NoScript has this "Temporarily allow..." feature that works very well when web apps start out saying "Javascript is required."
    When I read "Javascript is required." I automatically translate it to "go somewhere else where they aren't so ignorant+arrogant as to demand control of your computer and make you vulnerable to identity theft."
  • English Man (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Was there supposed to be some sort of feedback indicating mail was being/had been sent?

    If not, then I can sort of see a business manager thinking nothing had happened and clicking again. I probably would have too.

    Of course, that's a mistake you only make once.

    Or twice, in this case.
  • (cs) in reply to Skilldrick
    Skilldrick:
    Surely his ass in in his stable... Where do you keep your asses in the US?
    Washington, D.C.
  • (cs) in reply to whiskeyjack
    whiskeyjack:
    I get it! Because seven ate nine!
    +1. Made me smile.
  • Bruce Banner (unregistered)
    swarms of graphic designers and copywriters actually built the promotional materials; they fought it out over the proper values for kerning in the banner and what color the footer should be
    Kill them all!!! Email is for text!

    Seriously, this is yet another example of failing to understand that other people don't have your computer. Just because it looks pretty on your screen, that is no guarantee it will look anything similar on another email viewing program.

    I got a promotional email a few weeks ago that was solid black -- literally impossible to see any of the content. I sure hope the a-holes who sent it paid a ton of money for airhead "graphics designers" and two tons to the spambotherds.

  • davee123 (unregistered)

    Ahh, this reminds me of our own crappy automatic email system.

    With an automatic email system, you've probably got groups of emails-- "clients of product X", "prospective clients", etc. And we do too. You'd think you'd set them up maybe as a database table with "group" and "email", or maybe tables of emails and groups with a cross-ref table. You could even do a flat file for each group, with emails entered in plain text.

    But no, not us. Ours was built so that each group can't have more than about 100 emails in it. Which means when you want a group of 8,000 emails, you need not 1, but 80 groups. And is there some sort of "super group" to tell you which 80 belong to the large list? Nope. And can you have the same email listed multiple times in different groups? Sure! And what happens when someone wants to unsubscribe? You have to find out which of those 80 groups they're in, and remove them manually. It's great!

    But that's not the bad part. The bad part is that rather than send out 1 email to 100 people, it sends out each email INDIVIDUALLY. And that works and all, except that each time it sends something out, it makes a copy on the mail server. So when you want to send out a mailing with, say, a large PDF attachment, it gets written to the mail server hundreds of times.

    Because of that fact, you can't send the email to groups in parallel-- doing so brings the mail server to its knees. This has happened several times, where the server whimpers pitifully as it tries to keep a whopping pace of something like 500 emails per minute or so, and suddenly gets swamped with an extra email blast, bringing everything to a grinding halt.

    So we're forced to trigger email notifications in series instead. And THAT means that after you "click the button", if you're waiting for that verification email to show up in your test inbox, you might be waiting as much as 30 minutes to see it. ... Making the WTF in today's article a much more likely occurrence.

    DaveE

  • The Typinator (unregistered) in reply to H.P. Lovecraft
    wtf:
    Oh, dog, here we go with today's mindless philosophizing.

    It is written: "The seeker of knowledge approached a wise man. 'Tell me, Wise One, how is x010F pronounced?' And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Tell me, wise one, may one begin a sentence with a conjunction, or is such a thing forbidden by the laws?'. And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Tell me, your sagacity, is one infinitely greater than zero, or is it one greater than zero?'. And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Oh, great sage, you beat me with the club of cleverness, but I am no more clever than before, how can this be?' cried the seeker. The wise man replied, 'It's actually just a stick, I keep hoping you'll go away if I hit you often enough, but here you are.' And the seeker was enlightened."

    It needs to end this way.

  • (cs) in reply to Markp
    Markp:
    Anon:
    SilverEyes:
    Zack:
    You could send 1 letter or 100, it's still infinitely more than the correct amount of spam you should be sending to your customers. :)
    By 'infinitely more' do you mean 1 or 100 more?

    Are you trolling or did you really not get the point? 1 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0 just as 100 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0. The point was that the OP was implying that 0 is the correct amount of spam to send you customers, and even 1 spam e-mail is too many.

    Nah, I think you missed the point, or English class or something. An event that happened once has happened 1 more time than never happening. An event that happened 100 times has happened 100 more times than never happening. Neither has happened infinitely more times than any amount of times.

    If you get one spam message and you wanted zero, you got exactly one more spam message than you wanted.

    You just arbitrarily added the [times] in wherever you fancied, but times more != more times.

    e.g. I have 3 times more cake than I wanted: wanted 1, got 3 I am going to have cake 3 more times today: I already had 1 time, I'm going to have it 4 times

  • (cs)

    I work as a web developer for a news/magazine website. We have opt-in daily newsletters of the day's top stories, which currently has over 100,000 subscribers.

    We use a third party to actually send out the emails. Our CMS contacts the third party via a web service, giving it body of the HTML email and the date and time to send it out.

    A few years ago, when our CMS was being rewritten, I tested the newsletter functionality with dates of about a year in the future, with random garbage in the email. Then I would go into the third-party's website and delete the scheduled emails.

    Around a year later, the list of subscribers got this weird garbage email. The next day they got another. And another. This went on for several days. I contacted the third party, and it turns out that deleting the email doesn't prevent it from going out. I was supposed to unschedule it. All deleting it did was prevent me from ever unscheduling it again.

  • wtf (unregistered) in reply to The Typinator
    The Typinator:
    And the seeker was enlightened."

    It needs to end this way.

    Don't I wish it did, but it seldom does.

  • wtf (unregistered) in reply to brunascle
    brunascle:
    Around a year later, the list of subscribers got this weird garbage email. The next day they got another. And another. This went on for several days. I contacted the third party, and it turns out that deleting the email doesn't prevent it from going out. I was supposed to unschedule it. All deleting it did was prevent me from ever unscheduling it again.

    Oy vey.

  • (cs) in reply to the real wtf fool
    the real wtf fool:
    Markp:
    Anon:
    SilverEyes:
    Zack:
    You could send 1 letter or 100, it's still infinitely more than the correct amount of spam you should be sending to your customers. :)
    By 'infinitely more' do you mean 1 or 100 more?

    Are you trolling or did you really not get the point? 1 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0 just as 100 is 'infinitely more' [times] than 0. The point was that the OP was implying that 0 is the correct amount of spam to send you customers, and even 1 spam e-mail is too many.

    Nah, I think you missed the point, or English class or something. An event that happened once has happened 1 more time than never happening. An event that happened 100 times has happened 100 more times than never happening. Neither has happened infinitely more times than any amount of times.

    If you get one spam message and you wanted zero, you got exactly one more spam message than you wanted.

    You just arbitrarily added the [times] in wherever you fancied, but times more != more times.

    e.g. I have 3 times more cake than I wanted: wanted 1, got 3 I am going to have cake 3 more times today: I already had 1 time, I'm going to have it 4 times

    I agree, but I didn't add the word "times" in, "Anon" did, and he did it in the second way indicating event occurrences: "more times". "Times" wasn't even in the original post. Anyway pedantry is fun and nitpicking isn't, even though they often seem the same.

  • (cs) in reply to wtf
    wtf:
    ...people are dumb enough to pay lots of money for stupid, even though it's about the most common commodity around.

    +2 to that.

    What I want to know is, how much more business were these guys planning to get from only 50,000 e-mails? Especially since people had been ignoring them for years already. It seemed to me that they weren't offering any new services or products, so what kind of reaction were they trying to get, exactly?

    "OMG U GUISE HOEM DEPOSES' LOGO IS RED AND PRUPLE NOW OMFG LETS GO BAI STUFF RITE NAO"

  • MP (real) (unregistered) in reply to JavaScript Hater
    JavaScript Hater:
    Anonymous:
    Oh I quite agree and it's very simple to overcome this issue from a design point of view - something as simple as disabling the submit button in the OnClick method is perfectly good enough most of the time.
    NoScript?

    Glad someone pointed this out. Proper design > javascript crap.

  • *Yawn* (unregistered)

    From the non-wtfness of the last two weeks, it would seem our posters have found a job in the Ivory Tower.

  • ÃÆâ€â„ (unregistered) in reply to MP (real)
    MP (real):
    JavaScript Hater:
    Anonymous:
    Oh I quite agree and it's very simple to overcome this issue from a design point of view - something as simple as disabling the submit button in the OnClick method is perfectly good enough most of the time.
    NoScript?

    Glad someone pointed this out. Proper design > javascript crap.

    You guys do know that javascript does more than form validation and annoying popups now, right?

  • (cs) in reply to Require This!
    Require This!:
    boog:
    Incidentally, NoScript has this "Temporarily allow..." feature that works very well when web apps start out saying "Javascript is required."
    When I read "Javascript is required." I automatically translate it to "go somewhere else where they aren't so ignorant+arrogant as to demand control of your computer and make you vulnerable to identity theft."
    That's so true. It's literally impossible to give up "control of your computer" without your identity being thieved. That's why I wrote my own OS, my own web browser, my own office suite, and all my own computer games, and haven't looked back.

    Although, if you're really that paranoid about Javascript robbing you blind when it validates input, pops up an alert dialog, or disables a button, why use NoScript? Most useful web browsers these days allow you to disable Javascript altogether.

  • Mathy (unregistered)

    With the level of mathematical rigor that is apparently acceptable here, you might as well demonstrate that 100/0 is 100 times more than 1/0. "How?", you say?

    Simple. Take the ratio of the two: (100/0) / (1/0) = (100 * 0) / (1 * 0) = 100 / 1 = 1 Just have to cancel the zeros to see that 100/0 is in fact larger than 1/0!

  • ÃÆâ€℠(unregistered) in reply to boog
    boog:
    That's so true. It's literally impossible to give up "control of your computer" without your identity being thieved. That's why I wrote my own OS, my own web browser, my own office suite, and all my own computer games, and haven't looked back.
    Richard Stallman, is that you?
  • (cs) in reply to Buffled
    Buffled:
    Markp:
    One time, I typed
    cat myFile > /dev/sda
    instead of
    cat myFile > /dev/sdb
    and irrevocably toasted my Windows partition.

    Point being? Mistakes can happen without it being a WTF.

    (On a side note, I never reinstalled Windows; in hindsight I don't consider that act a bad thing).

    TRWTF is not using dd

    Actually, I'm pretty sure I did. Those "if" and "of" parameters look pretty familiar. It was a while ago, I don't remember the exact command I wrote. Same vulnerability though.

  • (cs) in reply to ÃÆâ€â„Â
    ÃÆâ€â„Â:
    boog:
    That's so true. It's literally impossible to give up "control of your computer" without your identity being thieved. That's why I wrote my own OS, my own web browser, my own office suite, and all my own computer games, and haven't looked back.
    Richard Stallman, is that you?
    Indeed, and for the record, it's called BOOG/Linux.
  • (cs) in reply to Mathy
    Mathy:
    With the level of mathematical rigor that is apparently acceptable here, you might as well demonstrate that 100/0 is 100 times more than 1/0. "How?", you say?

    Simple. Take the ratio of the two: (100/0) / (1/0) = (100 * 0) / (1 * 0) = 100 / 1 = 1 Just have to cancel the zeros to see that 100/0 is in fact larger than 1/0!

    We already did prove that 100/0 is 100 times more than 1/0, but we did it with real math (without dividing by zero like you do). It may have been deleted though in the typical Remy fury or whatever causes the huge censorship.

  • (cs)

    Ok, here we go.

    First, the obvious interpretation of "an infinite amount more" would be in terms of percentages. Obviously it is impossible to send an infinite amount more of anything when speaking in absolute terms.

    Second, it is technically not infinite [percent] higher spam, it is undefined [percent] higher spam.

    Third, 1/0 == 100/0 isn't true, or even false, it's just meaningless. It's also meaningless to say 1/0 <> 100/0. They're not numbers that can be compared, they're undefined. There is no accepted rule for comparing two undefined quantities.

    Fourth, limits do not apply because we're looking at discrete numbers here. There is no doubt that lim x->0 (1/x)x does not equal lim x->0 (100/x)x however that is entirely meaningless here.

  • (cs) in reply to ÃÆâ€â„
    ÃÆâ€â„:
    MP (real):
    JavaScript Hater:
    Anonymous:
    Oh I quite agree and it's very simple to overcome this issue from a design point of view - something as simple as disabling the submit button in the OnClick method is perfectly good enough most of the time.
    NoScript?

    Glad someone pointed this out. Proper design > javascript crap.

    You guys do know that javascript does more than form validation and annoying popups now, right?

    Javascript's potential is somewhat irrelevant if you disable it in your browser.

  • Val (unregistered) in reply to Bono
    Bono:
    TRWTF is this article being on The Daily WTF. So some guy clicks a button more than once? Is that really the best submission you got?
    Yeah, so just file a complaint to get back the monthly fee you pay to read this site.
  • Buddy (unregistered) in reply to wtf
    wtf:

    Oh, dog, here we go with today's mindless philosophizing.

    It is written: "The seeker of knowledge approached a wise man. 'Tell me, Wise One, how is x010F pronounced?' And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Tell me, wise one, may one begin a sentence with a conjunction, or is such a thing forbidden by the laws?'. And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Tell me, your sagacity, is one infinitely greater than zero, or is it one greater than zero?'. And the wise man knocked him about the head with the stick of knowledge, but the seeker was not enlightened. 'Oh, great sage, you beat me with the club of cleverness, but I am no more clever than before, how can this be?' cried the seeker. The wise man replied, 'It's actually just a stick, I keep hoping you'll go away if I hit you often enough, but here you are.'"

    Some kids were sitting around the breakfast table, with their mother standing. She asks the older child, "What would you like to eat?". He replies, "Gimme some damn Cheerios", whereupon the mother proceeded to smack the child repeatedly about the head with a heavy wooden spatula. After she finished, she asked the younger child, "And what do you want?", to which he replied: "You can bet your sweet ass I'm not having any of them fucking Cheerios!"

  • Kang (unregistered)

    Out of curiosity...never having been involved in a spam campaign...

    How much does it cost to send 50,000 emails? Is it a "wtf" amount, or a "wtfc" amount? ("who the f**k cares")

  • The Corrector (unregistered) in reply to Val
    Val:
    Yeah, so just file a complaint to get back the monthly fee you pay to read these comments.
    FTFY

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