The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

mav:
Whats a "disk"?

The correct spelling of "disc".

un.sined · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

TeaBag:
Many moons ago, a customer with a Mac (old style) came in to the shop complaining that a floppy was jammed in the drive. After extracting the floppy drive from the chassis, we discovered that there had already been a disk in the drive when he inserted a second. Like many Mac users of that era, when the disk stopped, he slapped it into the drive. Since there was already a disk in the drive, the new floppy slammed into the top drive head, splitting the it into several pieces and jamming both disks in the drive. Mac floppy drives weren't cheap...

All these stories of people inserting multiple floppies into a drive remind me of my kids and the Wii... I routinely have to extract multiple CD's from it...

real_aardvark · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

wallywam1:
mav:
Whats a "disk"?
The correct spelling of "disc".

Hmmm. Diskuss...

MrTufty · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

wallywam1:
mav:
Whats a "disk"?

The correct spelling of "disc".

You mean, the spelling when it's referring to a square object rather than a circular one, which a "disc" would be.

punissuer · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

ben curthoys:
i used to have a single sided 5 1/4 inch drive, and a stack of double sided disks.
so i would open the casing, carefully put the floppy to one side, cut a new "write protect" notch with scissors, drill a new index hole, put the floppy part back in, sellotape the sides down, and then use both sides of the disk by putting it in "upsidedown" when i wanted the other side. double the storage space for free.

and it worked.

Not sure I would call that free. If the disks were marked DS or "Double Sided", then you probably paid extra for them.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

lizardfoot:
The developer was simply following one of the Golden Rules of programming:
"Never underestimate the stupidity of the end user."

I've written on the top of the whiteboard in our office: "REMEMBER: THE USER IS STUPID." It's the motto of our IT team and it is referred to ever so often. I wonder why.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

I always thought disk was just another spelling of disc, not having anything to do with squareness. But what do I know...

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Disk is short for diskette. A little disc :)

The disc inside the (rectangular) disk is still a circle.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

wallywam1:
mav:
Whats a "disk"?

The correct spelling of "disc".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_or_disk_(spelling)

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

wallywam1:
mav:
Whats a "disk"?

The correct spelling of "disc".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_or_disk_(spelling)

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Having seen my father trying to insert a CD-ROM into a 3,5" floppy drive nothing can surprise me any more. In fact, when you are used to laser discs and vinyl records tearing off the floppy "casing" seems to be pretty understandable.

CAPTCHA: riaa - you bastards

m0ffx · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Abscissa:
It's hard to tell for certain due to the image's resolution and compression artifacts, but I could swear that screen says to insert the CD "into drive A:". Which, of course, is equally funny.

Looks like that to me too. Which would be the whole point - the user just did what Windows told them to!

Mcoder · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Alan:
A customer at an internet cafe I worked in called me over saying that his disk wasnt working. I looked at the drive and I could see the end of the 3.5 inch disk in the drive, but the door hadnt closed and the eject button wouldnt move when pressed.
One drive dissambly later, turns out they got the floppy all the way in, but upside down. I have no idea how.

Probably with the help of a hammer.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

That reminds me of 20-odd years ago at my first place of work. The MDs secretary was asked to store the 5 1/4" master disk of an expensive piece of software. She used a hole-punch on it and placed it into an A4 binder :-)

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Abscissa:
Maclee:
This really reminds me of this image:
[image]

It's hard to tell for certain due to the image's resolution and compression artifacts, but I could swear that screen says to insert the CD "into drive A:". Which, of course, is equally funny.

Y'know, it looks like the real windows CD is on top of the machine and the smashed disk is some anonymous unlabeled CD-R coaster with those stripes and all.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

ben curthoys:
i used to have a single sided 5 1/4 inch drive, and a stack of double sided disks.
so i would open the casing, carefully put the floppy to one side, cut a new "write protect" notch with scissors, drill a new index hole, put the floppy part back in, sellotape the sides down, and then use both sides of the disk by putting it in "upsidedown" when i wanted the other side. double the storage space for free.

and it worked.

All I did was use a hole punch to make the new write protect notch. Worked fine and since the disk inside is circular you didn't need to worry about catching it with the punch.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Abscissa:
Maclee:
This really reminds me of this image:
[image]

It's hard to tell for certain due to the image's resolution and compression artifacts, but I could swear that screen says to insert the CD "into drive A:". Which, of course, is equally funny.

Congratulations, you /almost/ got the joke. I guess you can leave the internet forever now, mission accomplished.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

This reminds me of my Gr. 12 English teacher who managed to put a 3.5" floppy in a old Mac SE, forget about that disk, then jam another 3.5" disk into the drive and up over the drive carriage somehow.

Seriously "unique" individuals.

And keeping with the theme my captch is "Darwin".....yes I know some of you don't care but I still find it mildly amusing.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

It's how I roll...

[image]

Captcha: People who say "Captcha" should die in a fire.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

KM:
wallywam1:
mav:
Whats a "disk"?

The correct spelling of "disc".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_or_disk_(spelling)

Seriously, you cant quote wikipedia in a discussion. My mate down the pub reckons that they should really be called Djisk, because the guy who invented them was Walter WikiMcBollox-Djisk.

WHOS TO ARGUE DIFFERENT :o

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

I've seen someone try sticking a floppy disk in a zip drive. Unfortunately it fits.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

that actually can work, if you align the holes not to hit the magnetic part

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Michael:
Same level as the people who filed disks in a folder by using the hole puncher.
captcha: tesla - coil it! coil it hard

Wait - we have a file room full of binders with floppies in them... Are you telling me that they are worthless as backups !??!!! Gaaaaaaaah!

Markp · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Meh, not that surprising. I mean, you buy a new CD and it's harder to get the stupid shrink wrap off and open the case than it would be to bust open an old floppy.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

s|k:
Can you idiots stop with the captcha yet? WE ALL KNOW ALL OF THE WORDS ALREADY. But thank you, thank you for sharing, truly our days are better off. Nobody cares what your damn captcha is.

The forum software cares. Are you less caring than a computer?

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

I am now outing myself:

I have programmed in C++/Java, have mastered physics and mathematics during my time as engineering student. Now my girlfriend needs a laptop so I ordered a good one. It came per mail and it was a beautiful thing. My girlfriend was still at work, so I decided to play a bit with it. I have seen laptops before, but I have never worked with them until then. Let's see....screen, mouse, headphone, network, COM, parallel port etc. etc.

Hmm.... Where's the on/off button ?

I searched half an hour with increasing frustation for a button to switch this goddamn thing on. Finally I called the store. Embarassing silence. Then "You must open the slider on the left side". Slider ? Oops, I thought it was a slot for the flash card....

Iahh, iahh, iahh...

I can understand now that these things can happen. Don't ask for an explanation.

P.S.: The laptop is fine and working.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Personally, I like the captcha comments, if they're on-topic, witty and appropos. Besides, it's better than little kids that just like to rant... to wit:

WWW                     WWW HHH     HHH          A         TTTTTTTTTTT
 WWW                   WWW  HHH     HHH         AAA        TTTTTTTTTTT
  WWW                 WWW   HHH     HHH        AAAAA           TTT
   WWW               WWW    HHH     HHH       AAA AAA          TTT
    WWW     WWW     WWW     HHHHHHHHHHH      AAA   AAA         TTT
     WWW   WWWWW   WWW      HHHHHHHHHHH     AAAAAAAAAAA        TTT
      WWW WWW WWW WWW       HHH     HHH    AAA       AAA       TTT
       WWWWW   WWWWW        HHH     HHH   AAA         AAA      TTT
        WWW     WWW         HHH     HHH  AAA           AAA     TTT


TTTTTTTTT   HHH    HHH   EEEEEEEEEE
TTTTTTTTT   HHH    HHH   EEEEEEEEEE
   TTT      HHH    HHH   EEE
   TTT      HHH    HHH   EEE
   TTT      HHHHHHHHHH   EEEEEE
   TTT      HHHHHHHHHH   EEEEEE
   TTT      HHH    HHH   EEE
   TTT      HHH    HHH   EEE
   TTT      HHH    HHH   EEEEEEEEEE
   TTT      HHH    HHH   EEEEEEEEEE


FFFFFFFFF   UUU    UUU     CCCCCC    KKK     KKK    ????
FFFFFFFFF   UUU    UUU    CCCCCCCC   KKK    KKK    ??????
FFF         UUU    UUU   CCC     CC  KKK   KKK    ??   ???
FFF         UUU    UUU   CCC         KKK  KKK         ???
FFFFFFF     UUU    UUU   CCC         KKKKKK          ???
FFFFFF      UUU    UUU   CCC         KKKKKK         ???
FFF         UUU    UUU   CCC         KKK  KKK       ???
FFF         UUU    UUU   CCC     CC  KKK   KKK      ???
FFF          UUU  UUU     CCCCCCCC   KKK    KKK
FFF           UUUUUU       CCCCCC    KKK     KKK    ???

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

this really smacks of urban legend... however the paperclipped label on a disk used to happen all the time. Ok Ok, TRUE STORY: I had a boss once that would do PowerPoint training. The students were generally secretaries, not exactly computer literate, but this took the cake. He was instructing the students to mouse over and click on this item, then mouse over and click on that item... when one woman pipes up "What happens when you run out of room on your desk to mouse to?!?" He stifled his laughter and the strong urge to say "Well, you pick up your mouse and just slide your desk over."

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

I can confirm that, while working for a tape backup company, I had more than one call along the lines of "my keyboard doesn't have an 'any' key". This was at the time we were going from 86 keys to 102 keys, so a lot of people felt they had been cheated when it came to keys :-}

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

mav:
Whats a "disk"?

There's no such thing really. "Disk" is an abbreviation of "diskette", which was a cute way of saying "little disc". The original floppy discs were 8" across, and somewhat more difficult to post.

someone else:
is this an urban myth?

No, people found all sorts of ways to wrongly insert these things. It was much more common than the more recent "coffee cup holder" incidents.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

punissuer:
ben curthoys:
i used to have a single sided 5 1/4 inch drive, and a stack of double sided disks. .. and it worked.
Not sure I would call that free. If the disks were marked DS or "Double Sided", then you probably paid extra for them.

Yup, but they weren't any different. IIRC, Apple computers used the top side of the disc, but IBMs used the bottom side (or was it the other way around?). Both sides must have been good, or they would have been selling "top side" discs separately to "bottom side" ones.

bstorer · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Anonymous Tart:
KM:
wallywam1:
mav:
Whats a "disk"?

The correct spelling of "disc".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_or_disk_(spelling)

Seriously, you cant quote wikipedia in a discussion. My mate down the pub reckons that they should really be called Djisk, because the guy who invented them was Walter WikiMcBollox-Djisk.

WHOS TO ARGUE DIFFERENT :o

Referencing Wikipedia should be just like Godwin's Law. If you do it, you automatically lose.

I am aware that I lose.

XIU · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Corporate Cog:
wtfs from the 19th century; sweet!

The 20th century ;)

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

I just cut the side-select line on the connector and wired a toggle switch to it. Then I could just flick a switch to use the other side. Better for the disk, too - it keeps turning the same way, so all the dirt doesn't slide out of the cloth lining and back onto the disk like it does when you just flip the whole disk.

Heard them called "flippies"...

--KW 8-)

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

ben curthoys:
used to have a single sided 5 1/4 inch drive, and a stack of double sided disks.
so i would open the casing, carefully put the floppy to one side, cut a new "write protect" notch with scissors, drill a new index hole, put the floppy part back in, sellotape the sides down, and then use both sides of the disk by putting it in "upsidedown" when i wanted the other side. double the storage space for free.

You wouldn't have needed the new index hole for C64/1541 and later (includes PC) hardware, they all used soft-sectored formatting for their disks. So the Computer you talk about must been WAY before C64 time when it needed the extra index hole. Or you did the hole for nothing g.

Joachim

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Disks are magnetic or groovy (LPs) media. Discs are optical media.

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

... or you could buy the $3 disk punch that did it perfectly every time!

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

Corporate Cog:
wtfs from the 19th century; sweet!

Heh, the Real WTF with this comment is that the story is from the 20th century.

:)

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

ben curthoys:
i used to have a single sided 5 1/4 inch drive, and a stack of double sided disks.
so i would open the casing, carefully put the floppy to one side, cut a new "write protect" notch with scissors, drill a new index hole, put the floppy part back in, sellotape the sides down, and then use both sides of the disk by putting it in "upsidedown" when i wanted the other side. double the storage space for free.

and it worked.

Way too much work. All you had to do with those is take a one hole punch and make a half-moon punch on the disk. Took all of three seconds to do.

H3SO5 · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

lizardfoot:
H3SO5:
I know a software developer which found the solution for this, his software came on 5 1/4" floppies (this was in the early 90's, I think):

Instead of telling the user to "Please insert Disk 2" his program told to "Eject disk 1 and insert disk 2".

Added stickers showing the correct way of inserting the floppy.

This solved a lot of problems with the installation.

The developer was simply following one of the Golden Rules of programming:

"Never underestimate the stupidity of the end user."

A classic one:

Create an idiot-proof program and Nature will create a better idiot. -- Murphy

danixdefcon5 · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

MX5Ringer:
Truly wonderous,
another urban myth perhaps?

but still very nice all the same,

My personal favourite is the user who forced two 3 1/2" disks in the drive at the same time as he was only prompted to "insert disk 2" instead of "remove disk 1 then insert disk 2"

Catcha:- paint (like an expert!)

Ah ... that might just not be an urban legend ...

Back in college ... some dumb MBA inserted a floppy disk (3.5in) into the drive, and then complained that she couldn't eject it.

Oopsie ... she forgot to eject the one that was STILL inside.

We put that floppy in display as a mockery of lusers untill the lab manager ordered us to put it away. Ah ... but how much fun we had...

chimaera · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

I promise you this is true: During a support call, I said to the user, 'Just look on the CD'

And the user said

I've taken it over near the window where the light's better

Steeldragon · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

skztr:
Abscissa:
Maclee:
This really reminds me of this image:
[image]

It's hard to tell for certain due to the image's resolution and compression artifacts, but I could swear that screen says to insert the CD "into drive A:". Which, of course, is equally funny.

Congratulations, you /almost/ got the joke. I guess you can leave the internet forever now, mission accomplished.

the loke is that he attempted to insert the CD into A: through force & broke the CD in 2

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

You know, I think this is actually a really great idea. It's no secret a lot of engineers are a little "user hostile". It's not really the user's fault they DON'T KNOW... at least an engineer or interface designer has a chance to assume they know nothing and explain explicitly. Personally I think that writing copy habitually purely for historical reasons is laziness. Why not make your copy say exactly what it means?

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

You probably are going to think its just another urban myth, but I have actually seen a monitor with a White-Out line painted on it back about 20 years ago. (White-Out being a small pot of white paint to cover over pen mistakes on paper.)

2007-03-27 Reply Admin

floki:

CAPTCHA: riaa - you bastards

Ha, ha, ha!! Hilarious!

operagost · 2007-03-27 Reply Admin

In the 1990s, they also had a punch that would add the extra high-density hole to a double-density 3.5" diskette. The data would be reliable just long enough for the foolhardy to be confident in its integrity. Meanwhile, the inferior media slowly degraded in his diskette box.

2007-03-28 Reply Admin

Honestly, I can believe it. Especially if they'd never seen a disk before.

Michael:
Same level as the people who filed disks in a folder by using the hole puncher.

Or the person who 'stored' a floppy disk by sticking it to the side of the filing cabinet with a magnet.

cklam · 2007-03-28 Reply Admin

Yeah, sending anything (be it software updates) on removable media (floppies, tapes, CDs) to (sometimes very clueless) users was a PITA allright.

At one place where I worked we kept a meticolous and continously updated database of which devices would be available for each customers and what would actually would work (not in term of hardware status but of cluelessness status). That worked pretty well (except for cases where some of my former colleagues would be too lazy to check the database since they thought they "knew the customer's setup by heart").

Embarassing the company by going with the wrong type of removable media to a customer's site (sending it by mail) or with a single non-working media was a big no-no. When you went out to a customer's site (or sent media by mail/courier) you were supposed to use two copies of the data (whatever it was) of the verified correct media type.

These policies did not eliminate these kind of mess-ups completely but almost: considering the number of customers we had (lower 4-digit range) it happened about once every 18 months.

Whew - long post so far; I got carried away ..... whatever.

Another story:

Back in the old days on the Apple ][e floppies were really expensive and so I would use double-sided floppies by turning them over. In order to get more capacity I was using a specialized floppy formatter so that I would be able to more than the 35 tracks that were normally usable on a Apple ][e 5.25" floppy. I had one drive (a Teac) that would let me use up to 42 tracks - at that time Apple ][e clones would have things like this marketed as features ....

cklam · 2007-03-28 Reply Admin

Marcin:
Unomi:
sir_flexalot:
So why is someone with this little knowledge about computers operating the "company computer", presumably while being paid for it?

I think because time is money and knowledge is not omnipotent.

Think about little offices in little towns. They don't want their expertise divided equally over all their offices, because that means IT-skilled people doing nothing most off the time.

But when something needs to be done on a computer system, it needs to be done as quick as possible. Many times with nobody around knowing what to do by experience.

So, the office manager is put in place to do the things a sysadmin would normaly do. These people wouldn't care less about such systems, because most of the times it only makes noise in a closet far far away.

So, knowledge is at the headquarter, but time is money so the office manager has to do the things to do. It would cost more if some IT-guy has to go to the office and do the five-minute task by himself.

Unomi -

This is not a good explanation - HQ could put the tech on the phone, thus saving on travel time. This happens because management don't actually think about IT, and assume that it basically runs itself for free.

Marcin - welcome to the real world.

Actually, this happens a lot with small firms who do not have any dedicated IT staff at all. In these cases it often somebody in accounting or the manufacturing manager or even the general manager/proprietor himself who does these things. They usually fight about this a bit until they realize that smartening up about a few basic things they will save time and money.

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