• Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to Cidolfas
    Cidolfas:
    jiteo:
    People need to click on "THE SLUG" in the second attempt addresses...
    Yeah... um, what is with all the unicorns? Is there an inside joke I missed?
    Yes.
  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to The Nerve
    The Nerve:
    Now that I think about it, I actually learned this lesson before in high school working at Dairy Queen. The manager insisted on a specific spelling of a promotion on the sign. The spelling was wrong, and when I put the letters up, I corrected it. No amount of arguing could convince her that spelling it correctly was better than "her way," though, and I had to go out and redo the job, spelling it incorrectly.
    You should have made a little sign to put up next to the register: "Yes, I know it's misspelled, but that's the way the manager wants it". :-)
  • John Galt (unregistered) in reply to pallen
    pallen:
    To THE SLUG

    Hi, Frisco.

    Hi Guys, and welcome to The Gulch!

  • The Nerve (unregistered) in reply to CaptainOblivious
    CaptainOblivious:
    The USPS has been self-sufficient since the 1980s. They receive subsidies only for costs due to disabled and overseas voters.

    Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.

  • Ducky (unregistered) in reply to boog

    This one's easy.

    Since, in the general case, where developers of a subdivision is sane with house numbers, no house in the entire subdivision has the same house number. So, postal workers are trained to optimize their scanning of addresses to looking at just the house numbers and not necessarily bother with the street name, unless they know for a fact that there were overlaps.

    Unfortunately, that means in the case where workers are new to a subdivision or haven't looked at the house numbers close enough to know there were overlaps, situation like yours would occur.

  • (cs) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    The Nerve:
    Now that I think about it, I actually learned this lesson before in high school working at Dairy Queen. The manager insisted on a specific spelling of a promotion on the sign. The spelling was wrong, and when I put the letters up, I corrected it. No amount of arguing could convince her that spelling it correctly was better than "her way," though, and I had to go out and redo the job, spelling it incorrectly.

    I had that experience at age 10 when a teacher marked me down in a spelling test for "Belgium" not "Belguim". No amound of arguing with her could convince her it was actually spelt "Belgium", and she refused to look at the atlas I waved at her. I ended the day standing in disgrace outside the headmaster's office. Everybody else in the class kept very quiet about their own marked-down spellings.

    Matt Westwood: +5 points for sticking to your guns - what did the headmaster have to say?

    The Nerve: -5 points for backing down - what was your spelling, and what was hers?

  • Quijibo (unregistered)

    I have to say, this discussion by US citizens regarding their postal service makes for riveting reading for the rest of us.

    Thanks for sharing.

  • nonzenze (unregistered) in reply to The Nerve

    Actually, the presorted mail subsidizes regular snail-mail. It's a huge profit center for USPS.

    Do you really think it would make business sense to send a guy out to County Road #113 300 days a year just to deliver bills and postcards?

    Captcha: decet

  • AdT (unregistered)

    Are you calling spammers the "direct mail industry"? Well then I have some other suggestions:

    drug cartels = recreational substances industry weapons manufacturers = peacekeeping utilities industry hired killers = thorough resolutions industry

  • (cs) in reply to The Nerve
    The Nerve:
    Steve:
    Actually, this is not the case. (I work for a company that writes software that mailers use to get stuff through the postal system.) The USPS is required to be self funding. That's why we have stamps, and why the price of stamps keeps going up. If it was paid for by taxes, why would you have to have a stamp? For better or worse, the junk mail (sorry for using that term, boss, if you read this) is what's keeping the postal system funded and alive. They're talking about moving to a 5 day a week delivery because they're not making their numbers. Now, I don't like getting 10 credit card solicitations a week, but at least I get mail on Saturdays. So I guess you have to decide what trade-offs you're willing to live with.

    Sorry. I was referring to the fact that the USPS borrows money from the government in order to meet its basic expenses, and if you think they're going to pay that money back, I'll laugh you off this forum.

    If I got to choose how many days of the week I get mail, I would choose 0. I get about 4 valid pieces of mail per year. My relatives email me, any bills or statements I get are online, and anytime I have something delivered, it comes FedEx or UPS. For the 4 times a year I get mail, I wouldn't mind dropping by a local post office and picking it up.

    Every large company in the US borrows money to pay their expenses. It's called "commercial paper", commonly a very short term loan to make payroll, etc. And, yes, one of the steps the government took recently was to guarantee the supply of commercial paper.

    But in the case of the USPS, it actually works out to the opposite of what you suggested. The USPS is forbidden to bank funds in between fiscal years, which means they have no cash when the fiscal year ticks over. So the government has to loan them money. In the late 90's, the USPS was actually a revenue center for the US government... of course, that money was supposed to be in a trust to give them a slug of capital to modernize their equipment and procedures... but then again, that money was there, so lets give it as tax cuts.

    The USPS rarely takes a week for transcoast shipping, at least from my recollection. Also, keep in mind that the USPS, as an agency of the government, can lead to the date of the postmark, and not receipt, being used for legal purposes. So, mail your taxes by, not have the IRS receive it by, April 15th.

  • (cs) in reply to The Nerve
    The Nerve:
    Steve:
    Actually, this is not the case. (I work for a company that writes software that mailers use to get stuff through the postal system.) The USPS is required to be self funding. That's why we have stamps, and why the price of stamps keeps going up. If it was paid for by taxes, why would you have to have a stamp? For better or worse, the junk mail (sorry for using that term, boss, if you read this) is what's keeping the postal system funded and alive. They're talking about moving to a 5 day a week delivery because they're not making their numbers. Now, I don't like getting 10 credit card solicitations a week, but at least I get mail on Saturdays. So I guess you have to decide what trade-offs you're willing to live with.

    Sorry. I was referring to the fact that the USPS borrows money from the government in order to meet its basic expenses, and if you think they're going to pay that money back, I'll laugh you off this forum.

    If I got to choose how many days of the week I get mail, I would choose 0. I get about 4 valid pieces of mail per year. My relatives email me, any bills or statements I get are online, and anytime I have something delivered, it comes FedEx or UPS. For the 4 times a year I get mail, I wouldn't mind dropping by a local post office and picking it up.

    Every large company in the US borrows money to pay their expenses. It's called "commercial paper", commonly a very short term loan to make payroll, etc. And, yes, one of the steps the government took recently was to guarantee the supply of commercial paper.

    But in the case of the USPS, it actually works out to the opposite of what you suggested. The USPS is forbidden to bank funds in between fiscal years, which means they have no cash when the fiscal year ticks over. So the government has to loan them money. In the late 90's, the USPS was actually a revenue center for the US government... of course, that money was supposed to be in a trust to give them a slug of capital to modernize their equipment and procedures... but then again, that money was there, so lets give it as tax cuts.

    The USPS rarely takes a week for transcoast shipping, at least from my recollection. Also, keep in mind that the USPS, as an agency of the government, can lead to the date of the postmark, and not receipt, being used for legal purposes. So, mail your taxes by, not have the IRS receive it by, April 15th.

  • Machtyn (unregistered) in reply to The Nerve
    The Nerve:
    Now that I think about it, I actually learned this lesson before in high school working at Dairy Queen. The manager insisted on a specific spelling of a promotion on the sign. The spelling was wrong, and when I put the letters up, I corrected it. No amount of arguing could convince her that spelling it correctly was better than "her way," though, and I had to go out and redo the job, spelling it incorrectly.
    That's actually a potential sales point. How many people are you going to have walk in and tell you your sign is incorrect and then likely buy something? A few. How many are going to come in and congratulate you on correct signage? Probably 0 (unless misspellings are the norm).
  • (cs) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    The Nerve:
    My favorite part is how the USPS, once responsible for efficient interpersonal communication, has turned into a government-subsidized advertisement delivery service.
    The second part is common - this has happened to all postal services (well, all the three - US, UK, France - I've used, but...).

    However, I'm going to contest your assertion that the USPS was responsible for efficient communication. No. Definitely not. Any service which routinely takes nearly a week to deliver a letter less than fifty miles away is not efficient. (And the introduction in the late 80s of a "priority" service costing nearly ten times as much didn't help - this one only took 2-3 days.) Compare to the Royal Mail (now somewhat emasculated due to political ideology), which routinely delivers ordinary 1st class post the next day almost anywhere in Great Britain.

    I enjoy reading old (usually British) detective stories where a letter will arrive by "the morning post", and you can send a reply by the afternoon post, which will arrive at the receipient's house the next morning.

  • (cs) in reply to Machtyn
    Machtyn:
    The Nerve:
    Now that I think about it, I actually learned this lesson before in high school working at Dairy Queen. The manager insisted on a specific spelling of a promotion on the sign. The spelling was wrong, and when I put the letters up, I corrected it. No amount of arguing could convince her that spelling it correctly was better than "her way," though, and I had to go out and redo the job, spelling it incorrectly.
    That's actually a potential sales point. How many people are you going to have walk in and tell you your sign is incorrect and then likely buy something? A few. How many are going to come in and congratulate you on correct signage? Probably 0 (unless misspellings are the norm).

    Bah. Outdoor signs/marquees. How many of us notice how often the sign assembler didn't use the M or the W, but instead used the other letter and just placed it upside down? (Hint: On many of these signs, an M usually has straight sides, while a W has slanted sides. It seems that 90% of the time the wrong letter is used, but is placed upside down for a crude approximation of the right letter.)

  • (cs) in reply to The Nerve
    CaptainOblivious:
    The USPS has been self-sufficient since the 1980s. They receive subsidies only for costs due to disabled and overseas voters.

    WHY would the USPS receive subsidies for costs related to disabled voters? Or disabled mail-recipients?

  • RBoy (unregistered)

    ISO9001

    Who cares if it works right, just as long as you documented how it works.

  • THG (unregistered) in reply to Jim
    Jim:
    boog:
    So, Reggie, you're in "the industry," maybe you can help me:

    There's a house in my neighborhood that has the same house number as mine, and we're always getting their mail. The other day we even got the poor guy's citizenship papers. I'm lazy, so I don't like running the mail over to them, but the mailman insists on getting the mail mixed up anyway.

    So tell me Reggie, Mr. Postal Expert... what's up with that?

    Easy! Remove the number from your house, and affix a notice with a house name. Have him do the same. Use the house name instead of house number from now on.

    Easier! Find-out the name of your street, and the name of the other street. Then put up signs with the names of the streets, so that the Postal Carrier can tell what street they are on, thereby guaranteeing (by using the "compound key" of house-number and street-name!) that this phenomenon of misdelivered mail never happens to you again

  • THG (unregistered) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    Bah. Outdoor signs/marquees. How many of us notice how often the sign assembler didn't use the M or the W, but instead used the other letter and just placed it upside down? (Hint: On many of these signs, an M usually has straight sides, while a W has slanted sides. It seems that 90% of the time the wrong letter is used, but is placed upside down for a crude approximation of the right letter.)

    |-|0// 57R4||93 ...

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    I enjoy reading old (usually British) detective stories where a letter will arrive by "the morning post", and you can send a reply by the afternoon post, which will arrive at the receipient's house the next morning.
    You can still do this in the UK. Morning post usually arrives by 9:00am, afternoon post usually gets collected from the post boxes at about 5:00pm. So you can receive a letter at 9:00am and have 8 hours in which to post your response. If you use a first class stamp there is a 90% chance your reply will reach its recipient the very next day.

    It would actually be quite reliable if it weren't for the brain-dead posties who never bother to leave a card if something is too big for your letterbox.

  • Generic name (unregistered)

    The real WTF here is code going to production without the release or change control manager knowing

  • Cowtown (unregistered)

    Fort Worth senior deals with a mountain of junk mail.

    http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07/14/2336355/fort-worth-senior-deals-with-a.html

    Drowning in trash is your constitutional right!

  • The Nerve (unregistered) in reply to Steve
    Steve:
    DWalker59:
    I enjoy reading old (usually British) detective stories where a letter will arrive by "the morning post", and you can send a reply by the afternoon post, which will arrive at the receipient's house the next morning.
    You can still do this in the UK. Morning post usually arrives by 9:00am, afternoon post usually gets collected from the post boxes at about 5:00pm. So you can receive a letter at 9:00am and have 8 hours in which to post your response. If you use a first class stamp there is a 90% chance your reply will reach its recipient the very next day.

    It would actually be quite reliable if it weren't for the brain-dead posties who never bother to leave a card if something is too big for your letterbox.

    That sounds twice as expensive as the US way. Is YOUR postal system going bankrupt?

  • bl@h (unregistered) in reply to Craig
    Craig:
    Anonymous:
    The practice of handing over a requirement spec for some code monkey to blindly implemement is utterly flawed. It's cargo-cult at best - implement what you see without ever trying to understand what you are implementing or why.
    Not that surprising. We have a generation of developers who are learning their craft by cutting-and-pasting code they find on the internet into their application without understanding what it does. The chuckle-head who implemented that probably posted to Experts Exchange for code on how to do it and then pasted the answer they got directly into the application.

    +1

    After spending the last week interviewing candidates (for a Sr developer position pay scales above me) I agree completely. I have heard 'I Google it' at least 100 times this week.

  • (cs) in reply to The Nerve
    The Nerve:
    Anonymous:
    Whatever happened to actually understanding your requirements? Personally speaking, I would be in big trouble if I had blindly implemented this requirement without questioning "so why do we have a requirement that explicitly insults users?".

    The practice of handing over a requirement spec for some code monkey to blindly implemement is utterly flawed. It's cargo-cult at best - implement what you see without ever trying to understand what you are implementing or why.

    Yeah, but that's what management likes. For a while I tried to interpret the needs of my users, but then I realized that if I was really as interested as they are in selling toilet paper, then I would be a toilet paper salesman. In my experience, all individual thought is punished, so I implement exactly what is asked for and I can never be blamed for flawed logic.

    Maybe I just got lucky--hanging around here enough could easily convince me of that--but I work at a place that's actually sane and reasonable. One time I got requirements for something and I looked at it and said, "I could improve on this." So I did. I made it more user-friendly and intuitive than what the spec asked for.

    The boss was a bit surprised, since that wasn't what the spec asked for, but I talked it over with him and convinced him that it would work better. He asked for a few modifications, which I implemented, but my basic idea ended up in production. A few months later I heard back from Sales how much all the clients who had updated to the latest version loved the feature I'd set up.

    I guess it just depends on the culture of the place you're working at.

  • Chris Douglas (unregistered) in reply to pallen
    pallen:
    To THE SLUG

    Hi, Frisco.

    win. Thanks for the obscure quote, it made my day.

    CAPTCHA: WhoIsJohnGalt?

  • (cs) in reply to AdT
    AdT:
    Are you calling spammers the "direct mail industry"? Well then I have some other suggestions:

    drug cartels = recreational substances industry weapons manufacturers = peacekeeping utilities industry hired killers = thorough resolutions industry

    Junk mail is not spam. Spammers, especially in the last few years, are parasitic criminals who use malware to make other people's computers do their work for them. Direct mailers, on the other hand, actually pay for what they send themselves. In fact, as a few people have already pointed out, they even pay a bit more than their share, which enables the postal service to deliver mail we actually care about at affordable rates.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Mason Wheeler
    Mason Wheeler:
    Maybe I just got lucky--hanging around here enough could easily convince me of that--but I work at a place that's actually sane and reasonable. One time I got requirements for something and I looked at it and said, "I could improve on this." So I did. I made it more user-friendly and intuitive than what the spec asked for.

    The boss was a bit surprised, since that wasn't what the spec asked for, but I talked it over with him and convinced him that it would work better. He asked for a few modifications, which I implemented, but my basic idea ended up in production. A few months later I heard back from Sales how much all the clients who had updated to the latest version loved the feature I'd set up.

    I guess it just depends on the culture of the place you're working at.

    That's great, but let me add the -- perhaps obvious -- caveat that you don't want the developer to decide to improve on the specs without talking to the user. No matter how obvious it is to me that something in the specs is a mistake, I talk to the user (or talk to my boss who talks to the user or whatever). There have been plenty of times that something that seemed obvious to me was, in fact, not at all what the user wanted. Sometimes things that seem like obviously dumb mistakes in the specs turn out to be part of a bigger plan that I didn't know about, or required by law, or whatever.

  • (cs) in reply to Lord0

    And this is why it's nonsense to have these "major clients" that want to use things before everybody else. You run into problems when they gleefully start using something that hasn't fully been tested yet.

  • Jay (unregistered)

    Personally, I don't understand all the complaints about junk mail. I get maybe 3 or 4 pieces of junk mail a day. I can usually immediately tell by looking at the envelope that it's something I don't care about, so I throw it away, and it wastes about 3 seconds of my life. In return these junk mailers keep the post office in business so they can deliver the letters that I actually want to receive. (Mostly "letters I want to receive" means "letters with checks in them", though sadly these come less often than one might wish.) Most junk mailers put pretty clear return addresses or other identifying information on the envelope, so you can quickly see whether this is something you actually want to read or not. Sure, a few of them try to trick me by trying to make the letter look like it's from someone else, but these are rarely convincing. One rule of thumb: Any letter that says "Important: open immediately" on the envelope is not important and can be immediately discarded.

    I put this in a different category from junk email. I get dozens of junk emails a day. Many of them try to trick me into opening the email with deceptive subject lines, and fairly often I cannot tell just from the return address and the subject line whether this is an email I want to bother to read, and so I waste time opening it and reading enough to figure out that I'm not interested. I suppose the total wasted time is only a few minutes a day, but these are distinctly annoying.

    On a side note: I really don't understand the people who think they're accomplishing something by using a deceptive subject line to get me to open their email. Once I open it I'm going to see what they're really trying to sell me, and if I'm not interested I'm going to delete it. Even if I was potentially interested, I'm not going to buy from someone who uses a fake subject line to trick me into reading the email. Why would I want to do business with someone when I KNOW that the very first thing the salesman said to me was a lie? If he lied to me just to get me to open the email, why should I believe any of the claims about his product that he makes inside?

  • SR (unregistered) in reply to RBoy
    RBoy:
    ISO9001

    Who cares if it works right, just as long as you documented how it works.

    Yup. Crap is fine as long as it's consistent crap

  • Murrican (unregistered) in reply to Quijibo
    Quijibo:
    I have to say, this discussion by US citizens regarding their postal service makes for riveting reading for the rest of us.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Who said the rest of you were allowed to read our Internet anyway?

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Mason Wheeler:
    Maybe I just got lucky--hanging around here enough could easily convince me of that--but I work at a place that's actually sane and reasonable. One time I got requirements for something and I looked at it and said, "I could improve on this." So I did. I made it more user-friendly and intuitive than what the spec asked for.

    The boss was a bit surprised, since that wasn't what the spec asked for, but I talked it over with him and convinced him that it would work better. He asked for a few modifications, which I implemented, but my basic idea ended up in production. A few months later I heard back from Sales how much all the clients who had updated to the latest version loved the feature I'd set up.

    I guess it just depends on the culture of the place you're working at.

    That's great, but let me add the -- perhaps obvious -- caveat that you don't want the developer to decide to improve on the specs without talking to the user. No matter how obvious it is to me that something in the specs is a mistake, I talk to the user (or talk to my boss who talks to the user or whatever). There have been plenty of times that something that seemed obvious to me was, in fact, not at all what the user wanted. Sometimes things that seem like obviously dumb mistakes in the specs turn out to be part of a bigger plan that I didn't know about, or required by law, or whatever.

    I presume that's why I get a lot more junk email than junk snail mail. A junk email costs the sender almost nothing, while a junk snail mail costs, what, 34 cents or so these days? Snail mailers are only going to send to people who they have some reason to believe might actually be interested. Most won't be, of course, but at least they make some attempt to target.

    That's why I'd love to see some way that we could charge people, say, a penny for every email they send. For the average person, the cost would be trivial, maybe, what, a few dollars a year? I'd gladly pay it. But it would put the spammers out of business.

  • Pauller (unregistered) in reply to MmmBop
    MmmBop:
    100% the developer’s fault.

    When he was coding that feature and realized there was no “default text” text supplied to replace “THE SLUG” he should have asked for more detail.

    Saying there was no requirement so I assumed addressing all their customers as “THE SLUG” was an appropriate solution would put any Business-to-Business operation out of business.

    Yeah, really. When I was reading the story, I was wondering if there was offshore development involved. That's the way the offshore devs we're using now act (blind code monkey coding), and I've seen some of the most godawful code come through that I've had to make them fix.

    Typos in specs happen, and if you're a dev, you (as a basic skill) should be able to see a massive logical contradiction and at least ask about it. (mutter mutter mutter ...)

  • boing boing (unregistered) in reply to Tom Woolf
    Tom Woolf:
    So, the USPS does not get items to their recipients within 2-3 days. That makes them inefficient?

    Name any other entity that can take a small physical item and deliver it to any one*** of 300 million people, many of them thousands of miles away, for less than half a dollar.

    Sure - across town may take longer than you want, but think about it - East Coast to West Coast for under a dollar. You can't beat that.

    *** In a perfect world, that "any one" would be the one person you specify. In boog's situation, I suppose it becomes "anyone"...

    Actually, it's only 2 cents for delivery. The remainder is for storage.

  • Calli Arcale (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    The Nerve:
    My favorite part is how the USPS, once responsible for efficient interpersonal communication, has turned into a government-subsidized advertisement delivery service.
    The second part is common - this has happened to all postal services (well, all the three - US, UK, France - I've used, but...).

    However, I'm going to contest your assertion that the USPS was responsible for efficient communication. No. Definitely not. Any service which routinely takes nearly a week to deliver a letter less than fifty miles away is not efficient. (And the introduction in the late 80s of a "priority" service costing nearly ten times as much didn't help - this one only took 2-3 days.) Compare to the Royal Mail (now somewhat emasculated due to political ideology), which routinely delivers ordinary 1st class post the next day almost anywhere in Great Britain.

    I find the USPS rarely takes more than three days to deliver a letter, even across country. (And in this instance "across country" is like sending a letter from London to Gdansk.) If it's within the same town and I get the letter to a dropbox before the last collection of the day, it's often at its destination by the next day.

    Packages are a different story, but even those I find get delivered in a reasonable timeframe. The USPS doesn't guarantee deliver in under 5 business days, but it usually will get there well before then anyway. Especially if you have decent handwriting, so they don't have to get their cryptography experts to figure out where you want the package sent.

  • amet (unregistered)

    You didn't specify a time server so I made one up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP_server_misuse_and_abuse#Notable_cases

  • Slugger McGee (unregistered) in reply to Quijibo
    If it is checked, 'THE SLUG' will be used.
    Yeah... pretty much knew what the WTF was going to be once I read that. Random 'quoting' FTW!

    Oh well what do you expect when you get rid of all the developers who can think, because they cost too much, and send the work to a country where the drones get their knuckles rapped if they do anything other than rote conversion of specs to code.

    P.S'. For apo'strophie's the rule i's put one before every "'s" ju'st in ca'se, and you can 'sprinkle 'some e'xtra here and there if you're not 'sure. Alway's u'se apo'strophe's with "it's", becau'se contraction's and po's'se's'sion are 'sertainly beyond comprehen'sion.

  • (cs) in reply to Quijibo
    Quijibo:
    I have to say, this discussion by US citizens regarding their postal service makes for riveting reading for the rest of us.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Why don't you go read some website based in whatever commie-pinko leftist country you live in and leave US alone.

  • Mama Mia (unregistered)

    So why do relatives assume that because you work "in computers" you must therefore know why their pirated copy of Mario Goes Grocery Shopping always kills them off when they try to grab a banana?

    Is it the same in the medical field? Do third cousins call a heart surgeon to discuss why their little toe has a blister?

    Do helicopter pilots get asked what will be served for lunch on the next commuter flight to San Francisco?

    If you build highway bridges do family members ask you why their car is dripping red stuff? Since, after all, you work "in transportation"?

  • (cs) in reply to Machtyn
    Machtyn:
    The Nerve:
    Now that I think about it, I actually learned this lesson before in high school working at Dairy Queen. The manager insisted on a specific spelling of a promotion on the sign. The spelling was wrong, and when I put the letters up, I corrected it. No amount of arguing could convince her that spelling it correctly was better than "her way," though, and I had to go out and redo the job, spelling it incorrectly.
    That's actually a potential sales point. How many people are you going to have walk in and tell you your sign is incorrect and then likely buy something? A few. How many are going to come in and congratulate you on correct signage? Probably 0 (unless misspellings are the norm).

    I'd say probably 0 to the first question, too. Spelling correctors usually frequent the internet, not reality.

  • (cs)

    Direct mail companies gets bitten by their own bullet!!

    Priceless!!

  • Axl (unregistered)

    Me too working on this project to send mail to client every 7 days. Plz email me teh slugz!

  • Granitestorm (unregistered) in reply to pallen
    pallen:
    To THE SLUG

    Hi, Frisco.

    Love that someone caught that.

  • (cs) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    jiteo:
    People need to click on "THE SLUG" in the second attempt addresses...

    More unicorns!!!

    Keep clicking. You'll get more.

  • Nome de Plume (unregistered) in reply to jspenguin
    jspenguin:
    I heard a story, perhaps just a legend, that a guy working at a bank was testing a mail merge and created an account with the name "Rich Bastard" to test it, and ended up sending exclusive private offers addressed to "Mr. Rich Bastard".

    something like this happened on a New Zealnd phone bill with arrogant bastard.

  • (cs) in reply to Cliff Clavin

    Ummm, actually it does. Besides its government-granted monopoly on several types of mail and its initial grant of capital, it also can borrow up to $15 billion from the treasury, and its doing so.

  • The Nerve (unregistered) in reply to Mason Wheeler
    Mason Wheeler:
    AdT:
    Are you calling spammers the "direct mail industry"? Well then I have some other suggestions:

    drug cartels = recreational substances industry weapons manufacturers = peacekeeping utilities industry hired killers = thorough resolutions industry

    Junk mail is not spam. Spammers, especially in the last few years, are parasitic criminals who use malware to make other people's computers do their work for them. Direct mailers, on the other hand, actually pay for what they send themselves. In fact, as a few people have already pointed out, they even pay a bit more than their share, which enables the postal service to deliver mail we actually care about at affordable rates.

    There were attempts to create a national "Do Not Mail" list similar to the "Do Not Call" list, keeping you from telephone solicitation. It failed. Why? Because the Postal Service could not afford it! So I'm stuck with trash getting sent to my house so that the people who send trash can keep sending trash. Luckily, I also pay taxes to the city AND pay them for trash pickup, so I get it on both ends.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to Mama Mia
    Mama Mia:
    So why do relatives assume that because you work "in computers" you must therefore know why their pirated copy of Mario Goes Grocery Shopping always kills them off when they try to grab a banana?

    Is it the same in the medical field? Do third cousins call a heart surgeon to discuss why their little toe has a blister?

    Do helicopter pilots get asked what will be served for lunch on the next commuter flight to San Francisco?

    If you build highway bridges do family members ask you why their car is dripping red stuff? Since, after all, you work "in transportation"?

    1. Ask any doctor, they're one profession that gets it significantly worse than IT.

    2. People aren't retarded, and know the difference between a commercial airline and a helicopter. If you do work for a commercial airline, regardless of what you do for them, you will get a thousand stupid questions and bad jokes about airline food.

    3. Again a bit of a failed analogy, people know the difference between a car and a bridge. They don't ask IT people to fix their toaster just because it plugs into a wall like a computer. If you do work in any field vaguely related to cars, you will get asked every time someone hears their car make a weird noise.

    In short, this occurs to one degree or another in all fields, although doctors, mechanics and IT workers get it the worst. This is because these are fields that everyone interacts with often, but very few understand.

  • Buddy (unregistered)

    Way back in my hand-to-mouth student days, Oral-B ran a promotion where they would give a free toothbrush in return for sending in two original UPCs.

    For whatever reason, they didn't require sales receipts for proofs-of-purchase and stupidly, the toothbrushes they sent back were exactly the same with UPC as the one sent to them. The only restriction I could see in the rules was that it was limited to one toothbrush per person at any address. You can see where this is going.

    I found a dollar store selling them really cheap, then sent in the UPCs, altering the name and address very slightly, like apt 123 vs #123 vs unit 123, Street vs ST, etc., each time so that they wouldn't match exactly in their database, but would be delivered okay.

    When I got the toothbrushes, I resubmitted the UPCs from those toothbrushes and got half as many back, and kept repeating, until eventually until the lone brush arrived. Postage wasn't too bad in those days, so I ended up with 2n-1 toothbrushes for like n/2 investment.

    Having a high quality unused clean toothbrush around could make or break whether a certain someone would stay the night ;) As long as she didn't see how many other toothbrushes there were, then that might look creepy...

  • Huffington (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Quijibo:
    I have to say, this discussion by US citizens regarding their postal service makes for riveting reading for the rest of us.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Why don't you go read some website based in whatever commie-pinko leftist country you live in and leave US alone.

    I'm actually very interested in the logistics of mail service in the USSR.

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