• Dirk (unregistered) in reply to Brian Manahan
    Brian Manahan:
    Scientific Phirstation!
    Boooo!
  • Hot Shot (unregistered) in reply to Bobby M
    Bobby M:
    Tracking information for the China Post receipt (first image) :) http://www.ems-tracking.net/single-ems-tracking.php?number=EE160781704CN

    Your item was delivered(REPUBLIC OF FINLAND 33100600) at 2009-08-26 16:40:00 Signed for by A TAMMINEN

    Date/Time Location Activity 2009-08-19 18:20:00 SHANGHAI Posting
    2009-08-19 18:38:00 86 Despatch from Sorting Center
    2009-08-19 20:44:48 SHANGHAI Arrival at Sorting Center
    2009-08-20 01:38:40 SHANGHAI Despatch from Sorting Center
    2009-08-20 20:11:00 REPUBLIC OF FINLAND HELSINKI Arrival at Sorting Center
    2009-08-20 20:11:00 REPUBLIC OF FINLAND HELSINKI Handed over to Customs
    2009-08-21 09:26:00 REPUBLIC OF FINLAND HELSINKI Released from Customs
    2009-08-24 08:28:00 REPUBLIC OF FINLAND 33800451 Attempted delivery
    2009-08-24 12:57:00 REPUBLIC OF FINLAND 33800451 Attempted delivery
    2009-08-26 16:40:00 REPUBLIC OF FINLAND 33100600 Deliver

    So you've demonstrated that the item was shipped from China to Finland? I'm not sure that was a surprise to anyone.

  • csrster (unregistered)

    Temporary Comment Rollback

  • Bob (unregistered)

    The real WTF with the pears is that this may be the first time a contributor took a photograph after focussing and holding the camera steady. My 2010 is now complete and it's only January.

  • (cs) in reply to Tiggrrr42
    Tiggrrr42:
    [3] European Computer Driving Licence. Worse than it sounds.
    You need a licence to drive a European computer?
  • stu (unregistered)

    Clearly, the American store manager saw the joke while on holidays in England, but failed to see why it wasn't so amusing back home. It was £1/lb.

  • (cs) in reply to bjolling
    bjolling:
    Tiggrrr42:
    [3] European Computer Driving Licence. Worse than it sounds.
    You need a licence to drive a European computer?
    It's only so Prime Ministers and other computer illiterate public servants know how to hold a mouse correctly, so they don't seem completely retarded while "handling" a computer in front of TV or photo cameras.

    Addendum (2010-01-25 07:56): I could link to the youtube video, but it's in Dutch and not very good quality. Sufficient to say that our previous Prime Minister didn't have a clue what to do when instructed to "click a link" on national TV. Since then we seem to have this "ECDL" for public servants ;-)

  • Libman (unregistered)

    Dollarpound was the unit of currency in the Red Dwarf universe

    http://www.search.com/reference/Dollarpound

  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to gil
    gil:
    The phone number actually seems to be hand-written. Or is it just for obfuscation purposes?

    I'm pretty sure that was the point.

    If it had been on computer output, then we've all seen that WTF before - but handwritten means that someone actually wrote that number without thinking it was possibly wrong somehow...

    PS - store phone numbers, ZIP codes, SSNs etc etc etc as strings. Only store things as integers if you need to do maths or numeric ordering on them. If you don't need to do that, storing them as strings is much safer. Surely thats in 'Database Design for Dummys'

  • (cs) in reply to Libman
    Libman:
    Dollarpound was the unit of currency in the Red Dwarf universe

    http://www.search.com/reference/Dollarpound

    Ah yes, thank you. I knew it was something silly and British.

  • Bosshog (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    silly and British.
    Simultaneously a tautology and the greatest compliment the world has ever known.
  • Tim (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    Mithras:
    A little dimensional analysis reveals: 
     10 pears           1                       1 pear                     1
---------- * ----------------- =  --------------------------- = -------------------
10 dollars   1 pound of pears       10 dollar-pounds of pears    10 dollar-pounds

    So for every 10 dollar-pounds you give them, you get back one dimensionless unit. Sounds like a good deal to me.

    Wasn't the dollar-pound a currency unit in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Or some other old sci-fi story?

    yes the dollar-pound is a rectangular rubber coin measuring √10 dollars along one side and √10 pounds along the other, thus having a surface area of 10 dollar-pounds

  • PITA (unregistered) in reply to Spectre
    Spectre:
    Nice tits!
  • CJP (unregistered)

    The phone number is probably written down from the screen of a crappy piece of software, which was never tested against maximum-length phone numbers.

    The phone number clearly starts with the three-digit country prefix of Finland. Maybe the software worked fine with two-digit country prefixes.

    Floating point for phone numbers is evil anyway. I guess the app was written in some BASIC dialect by someone who doesn't know how to use different data types.

  • kkm (unregistered) in reply to frits

    Nitpickingly speaking, that's the seventh power of ten, not the 6th. But yeah, I did like your idea.

  • (cs) in reply to kkm

    There is a mistake, but that's not it.

  • SkyWulf (unregistered) in reply to frits

    <3

  • verisimilidude (unregistered)

    Python code to decode the coded grade report

    s='obnfHsbef' reduce(lambda str,d: str+d, (map(lambda c:chr(ord(c)-1),s))) Out: 'nameGrade'

  • fjf (unregistered) in reply to Ian
    Ian:
    Either way those pears sound very expensive (unless you live somewhere where everything has to be flown in).

    Or the RIAA just came down on pear to pear transactions.

  • fjf (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Jenny, I got your number, I need to make you mine. Jenny, don't change your number, 8.675 to the 6th power of ten

    That would be 8675^(10^6), a 3938270 digit number. Must be a really long distance call.

  • (cs) in reply to fjf
    fjf:
    frits:
    Jenny, I got your number, I need to make you mine. Jenny, don't change your number, 8.675 to the 6th power of ten

    That would be 8675^(10^6), a 3938270 digit number. Must be a really long distance call.

    Actually, it would be 8.675^(10^6). Now go recalculate the number of digits so you can redo your shitty joke.

  • fjf (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    fjf:
    frits:
    Jenny, I got your number, I need to make you mine. Jenny, don't change your number, 8.675 to the 6th power of ten

    That would be 8675^(10^6), a 3938270 digit number. Must be a really long distance call.

    Actually, it would be 8.675^(10^6). Now go recalculate the number of digits

    The number of digits would remain the same, there'd just be a point after the 938270th one.

    frits:
    so you can redo your shitty joke.

    Must be a really long distance call to be dialed on a phone with an extra "point" key.

    Content now? ;-)

  • (cs) in reply to fjf

    Yep. Still not funny...or accurate. You must come from a magical land where 8^x and 8000^x grow at the same rate.

  • fjf (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Yep. Still not funny...or accurate. You must come from a magical land where 8^x and 8000^x grow at the same rate.

    Not funny anymore, but as for accuracy: 8.675^(10^6) = (8675/1000)^(10^6) = 8675^(10^6)/10^3000000, so the result consists of the same 3938270 digits, with 938270 before and 3000000 after the decimal point. (Exercise to the reader: Show that there are no trailing zeros that would vanish after the point.)

    But don't worry, I know many people who think slightly non-trivial maths is magic ...

  • (cs) in reply to fjf

    I mistakingly thought you were talking about integral digits. Yes they both have the same number of significant digits. However the only ones that count are the first three.

  • nitpicker (unregistered)

    TRWTF is that the phone number starts with 35805, in which the +358 is the country code for finland, and the 05 starts the "area code", which would be incorrect since the 0 should drop off when using country code (it should be +3585...)

  • Andrew C (unregistered)

    The pears thing is pretty simple, they're a dollar a pound and they're part of a store wide mix and match 10 for 10 deal. So, if you buy pears, they're a dollar a pound and each pound you buy (rounded up or down, not clear) counts as one of the ten items

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