The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Heron:
sino:
Could belong to a mormon offshoot sect that still practices polygamy.

You don't need polygamy (or even twins/triplets) to need three car seats, and you don't have to have the kids all from the same mother either.

FTFY.

Oh, and by the way, when was the last time you heard of anyone practicing monogamy?

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

frits:
Heron:
sino:
Could belong to a mormon offshoot sect that still practices polygamy.

You don't need polygamy (or even twins/triplets) to need three car seats, and you don't have to have the kids all that close together either.

You see, in the U.S., most states have laws requiring car seats until your children are both 4 years old and 40 pounds, and some go so far as to require car seats until 8 years old and 80 pounds.

So if you live in, say, New Jersey, it's entirely conceivable that you could have three kids spaced apart fairly far - say, three years - and still be required by law to have them all in car seats.

I'm from the Great Garden State, and I thought the OP was off his gourd. Turns out we're the crazy ones.

You are an idiot and should be banned from using your mommy and daddy's modem.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

SARUMANATEE:
I was surprised when my dad announce that he got wireless internet at his house. He's not terribly tech-savvy, so I asked him how he did so.
"This computer I just bought came with a wireless router!" -- he said. I congratulated him on it, and left it at that.

A couple years later I helped them move back to my town. My dad needed help with his network as "for some reason now, it is suddenly asking me for a password." So I came over to reset the bios on the thing, and found the router had never even been taken out of the box.

That's right, folks. He had been using the neighbor's network all along.

Dear SARUMANATEE,

In case you can’t tell, this is a grown-up place. The fact that you insist on using your ridiculous handle clearly shows that you’re too young and too stupid to be using FIDONet.

Go away and grow up.

Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Sam:
Dan:
when most people use a computer, their brains do turn to mush and they really do become so mush-brained that they can't tell the difference between their leg and the steak dinner
Yes, I know we've all had the user who insists they never clicked that dialog box, they've never even seen that dialog box, and when you ask them to walk you through it, the dialog box pops up and they hammer it away and when you stop them in their tracks they still swear there wasn't a box and they didn't click it.
They literally don't know what they're doing. They're not conscious. Aware. Awake. The brain is off and the muscles are moving automatically. I don't know how or why this happens but it certainly does. Most people operate a computer as if they were playing whack-a-mole.

Perhaps the only solution is to make sure the buttons change location every time, and the captions, and the defaults too, so that you have to stop read and think before you can get past it.

Nope, they'd still defeat that. I don't know how, but they would.

Captcha - tation: what taxation looks like after you take an ax to it.

yep... make something idiot proof and the world will make a better idiot.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

CodeNinja:
... That's right, a desktop of two large naked men pleasuring each other.
Finding out your son is gay by having that come up in front of total strangers at a busy computer shop? ...

What's gay about this??

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

I have re-imaged your machine...pray I don't re-image it again...

davedavenotdavemaybedave · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Frank:
davedavenotdavemaybedave:
Properly set-up roaming profiles are a good start
Proper roaming profiles don't exist. The very idea reeks of so many design mistakes layered on top of ignorant kludges that it makes me ill. Just like your documents belong on a server, your "profile" belongs on a server. Where it is backed up. Where there is only one copy so things don't get out of sync.
Oh and it helps if the software you're using doesn't insist on keeping a copy of a few megabytes of language files, document templates, clip art etc. in every user's workspace.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you simply haven't the faintest idea what a roaming profile is. Basically you've said 'roaming profiles are rubbish, because they don't [do what roaming profiles do]'.

GalacticCowboy · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

If someone else hadn't supplied an ending to that last story, I might have...

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

TRWTF is scanners that are unable to detect which side of the scanner is right-side up.

Heron · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

The Correcter:
Oh, and by the way, when was the last time you heard of anyone practicing monogamy?

Actually I know a lot of people who do, myself included.

Addendum (2010-09-23 17:30): And before anyone makes any stupid jokes, I'm talking about married people (myself included).

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Captain Obvious:
Because our boss is retarded, he got us to drag her USB port into her tower, and plug in the dongle inside, and out of sight. This set her back: $100 dollars labour $50 for parts (read - a cable tie) $100 because my boss thought $250 total seemed about right.
She still shops with us :-)

I wouldn't say your boss is retarded... he fixed the problem to her satisfaction and the company made an extra $100 stupid tax on it.

I actually had to fire a customer becuase he took the last straw when he refused to pay for me to come out on a saturday night to plug his ethernet cable into his router. He specifically mentioned doing that three times during the phone call. (He had been quite annoying during other calls as well.)

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

A long time ago, back in the 1970s, I worked at a local retail computer store. One day, the phone rang, and the person on the other end started asking about lathes. Apparently, he had seen our listing in the telephone book under "Wood Processing."

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Zaq:
My similar support story to the keyboard random keys is as follows:
While working at a government institution, I was called by a user saying that any menu she opened up was promptly closing. (Unlike the other keyboard guy, I didn't immediately re-image the machine)

I went to her office and had her show me what was happening. Sure enough, every menu she clicked on was closing just as fast as it had opened. Looking at the keyboard, it was on one of those under desk keyboard trays. I suspected a stuck key of some sort and swapped spots with her to see if that was the case.

I sat down and moved the tray to a comfortable position for me. I clicked on the first menu and it stayed open. All menus I clicked on stayed open. "Must be the Geek Aura" is jokingly suggested.

She sat down and re-adjusted the keyboard tray, tested some menus and they started closing immediately again.

A little headscratching and deductive reasoning, turns out when she sat down, she would push the keyboard tray back underneath the desk, just a little bit, causing the ESC key to be firmly pressed in the down position.

I re-imaged her PC anyways.

Glad to see I am not the only one who has encountered this. Except the first time it was due to a cluttered desk.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

davedavenotdavemaybedave:
Frank:
davedavenotdavemaybedave:
Properly set-up roaming profiles are a good start
Proper roaming profiles don't exist. The very idea reeks of so many design mistakes layered on top of ignorant kludges that it makes me ill. Just like your documents belong on a server, your "profile" belongs on a server. Where it is backed up. Where there is only one copy so things don't get out of sync.
Oh and it helps if the software you're using doesn't insist on keeping a copy of a few megabytes of language files, document templates, clip art etc. in every user's workspace.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds like you simply haven't the faintest idea what a roaming profile is. Basically you've said 'roaming profiles are rubbish, because they don't [do what roaming profiles do]'.

No, roaming profiles roam. They follow you around wherever you go. They are stored on a server, yes, but they get copied (wait... wait... wait...) to the computer you're using today (wait... wait... Oops! Disk full! Randomly destroy something!) and if you're actually smart enough to keep more than one computer busy at the same time (kinda like how a manager assigns different tasks to different workers) things get really nasty when you log out (wait... wait... wait...) and the second logout overwrites stuff from the first one (wait... wait... Randomly destroy lots of things!!!)

Truly, roaming profiles are the devil's spawn.

Heron · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

No, roaming profiles roam. They follow you around wherever you go. They are stored on a server, yes, but they get copied (wait... wait... wait...) to the computer you're using today (wait... wait... Oops! Disk full! Randomly destroy something!) and if you're actually smart enough to keep more than one computer busy at the same time (kinda like how a manager assigns different tasks to different workers) things get really nasty when you log out (wait... wait... wait...) and the second logout overwrites stuff from the first one (wait... wait... Randomly destroy lots of things!!!)
Truly, roaming profiles are the devil's spawn.

That's not a problem inherent to roaming profiles, it's a problem with Windows' implementation of roaming profiles.

A far better implementation (indeed, the one my university uses, at least for Linux machines), is to mount your home directory as a network share and use that.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

cynical cynic:
!NNNEEEKKKOOORRRBBB !NEKORB SI TNEMMOC YM

¿ʎɐʍ ɹǝɥʇo ǝɥʇ ʇı buıuɹnʇ pǝıɹʇ noʎ ǝʌɐɥ

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

frits:
Heron:
sino:
Could belong to a mormon offshoot sect that still practices polygamy.

You don't need polygamy (or even twins/triplets) to need three car seats, and you don't have to have the kids all that close together either.

You see, in the U.S., most states have laws requiring car seats until your children are both 4 years old and 40 pounds, and some go so far as to require car seats until 8 years old and 80 pounds.

So if you live in, say, New Jersey, it's entirely conceivable that you could have three kids spaced apart fairly far - say, three years - and still be required by law to have them all in car seats.

I'm from the Great Garden State, and I thought the OP was off his gourd. Turns out we're the crazy ones.

No, you're not. It just requires booster seats. Booster seats are kind of like pillows. Most 6 and 7 year olds (some 8-year olds as well) are so short that the seat belt crosses their bodies at the neck rather than the chest. Not a good idea in case of an accident. The booster seat just raises them a little, so that the seat belt holds them at the chest. Perfectly sensible, and required in many other countries (and states) as well.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Heron:
Frank:
No, roaming profiles roam. ...
That's not a problem inherent to roaming profiles, it's a problem with Windows' implementation of roaming profiles.
A far better implementation (indeed, the one my university uses, at least for Linux machines), is to mount your home directory as a network share and use that.

I may be inventing or confusing terminology here, but perhaps Frank is expecting the "mount your home directory as a network share" approach to be named something more like "centralized profiles".

Heron · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

RandomUser423695:
I may be inventing or confusing terminology here, but perhaps Frank is expecting the "mount your home directory as a network share" approach to be named something more like "centralized profiles".

It may be that I'm the one confused; I assumed the term "roaming profile" was generic enough to apply to any setup where your users can log in to any machine on the network and automagically have access to their files and settings. However, the Wikipedia article apparently indicates that the term is only applied to Windows' particular method of making that happen.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

RandomUser423695:
Heron:
Frank:
No, roaming profiles roam. ...
That's not a problem inherent to roaming profiles, it's a problem with Windows' implementation of roaming profiles.
A far better implementation (indeed, the one my university uses, at least for Linux machines), is to mount your home directory as a network share and use that.
I may be inventing or confusing terminology here, but perhaps Frank is expecting the "mount your home directory as a network share" approach to be named something more like "centralized profiles".

Yes, that's the right way to do it. When the "profile" stays put on the server, it isn't "roaming".

This is a computing paradigm that was well understood what, 25 or 30 years ago now, but Windows still hasn't caught up.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

1. Backup Data 2. Check Media 3. Restore Data 4. Wipe Media I told him that the first button would have done the job

Wrong-o. Each of the following procedures is pretty much equivalent: Doing all 4 steps. Doing step 1, not doing step 2, and not doing step 3 on a test machine. Doing none of the steps.

On some kinds of systems, if step 2 works then you don't have to do step 3. Windows systems are not among these kinds.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Sounds like your boss is a pretty smooth businessman to me...

Captain Obvious:
I think support contracts need to include an idiot fee, which is added for each query that invokes a /facepalm/ reaction.
I'd say $5000 a pop would be adequate...

The inspiration for this - I once had a customer at a PC retail/service store return a wireless desktop package as not-working. Upon investigating, it would seem she did not plug in the wireless dongle to the computer. She accused us of false advertising, as "I shouldn't have to plug anything in - its WIRELESS you dipshits".

Because our boss is retarded, he got us to drag her USB port into her tower, and plug in the dongle inside, and out of sight. This set her back: $100 dollars labour $50 for parts (read - a cable tie) $100 because my boss thought $250 total seemed about right.

She still shops with us :-)

Jaime · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Frank:
RandomUser423695:
Heron:
Frank:
No, roaming profiles roam. ...
That's not a problem inherent to roaming profiles, it's a problem with Windows' implementation of roaming profiles.
A far better implementation (indeed, the one my university uses, at least for Linux machines), is to mount your home directory as a network share and use that.
I may be inventing or confusing terminology here, but perhaps Frank is expecting the "mount your home directory as a network share" approach to be named something more like "centralized profiles".
Yes, that's the right way to do it. When the "profile" stays put on the server, it isn't "roaming".

This is a computing paradigm that was well understood what, 25 or 30 years ago now, but Windows still hasn't caught up.

I could certainly see the term being appropriate to describe profiles for roaming users.

Jaime · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Larry:
TRWTF is scanners that are unable to detect which side of the scanner is right-side up.

I wrote a TWAIN scanning front-end a while back that scanned in full-color, full-resolution and then processed the image down to 200dpi 1-bit mono. I found out that even cheap scanners were good enough to read the text through the page and create a proper scan of a page scanned wrong side up. The software was specifically designed to correct for as many stupid users as possible. In the end, the users were more stupid than the software was smart.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Linux is not ready for the desktop, it "will be real soon now", i.e. never.

Microsoft products work and using them helps protect American jobs!

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Dan:
Foo:
Fred:
Seriously, why is it that when a computer is involved suddenly people go mushbrain stupid? Is there any other place in our lives where people fail to learn that, even if they have no idea how it works, it hurts when I do this so don't do this again.

Because they don't actually know what they did, much less how they got to where they were in the first place. It would be like trying to learn that stabbing your leg hurts when you're only dimly aware of what a knife is, where your leg is, or how to tell your leg from the steak dinner in front of you.

Your analagy is apropos because when most people use a computer, their brains do turn to mush and they really do become so mush-brained that they can't tell the difference between their leg and the steak dinner, or that pushing "Wipe" will wipe the disc. Or that the disc drive was made for only one disc at a time.

But she's still without excuse because she kept pressing discotheque even though no discotheque ever appeared and she always lost her connection after that. So that's TWO reasons not to do that anymore.

This just about sums it up.

frits · 2010-09-23 Reply Admin

MS Fan:
Linux is not ready for the desktop, it "will be real soon now", i.e. never.
Microsoft products work and using them helps protect American jobs!

Everybody knows Communists love Linux. Therefore, every sale of a Microsoft product takes money away from the enemies of freedom and promotes the spread of Democracy.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

To be fair, since that scanner is insanely expensive and need special software to run, I'd expect that there's some option somewhere to tell the scanning application scan pages 180 degree rotated.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Hold the paper still and then turn the scanner around.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Paul:
evilspoons:
As for the first story: it astounds me the lack of reasoning a lot of people have.
"Every time I press this thing (and I do not know exactly what this thing does) something I don't want to happen occurs."

Mayyyyybe you should stop doing that thing or figure out what it's actually for!

It's computers that seem to make some people excessively thick.

I bet doctors don't get patients complaining "There's something wrong with my leg! Every time I stick this knife into it, it hurts!"

(or maybe they do...)

Hmmm I think I saw a patient like that once on an episode of "House".

CAPTCHA 'jugis': don't stick that knife into your neck, you might cut your jugis vein.

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

Spork:
1. Backup Data 2. Check Media 3. Restore Data 4. Wipe Media 5. More Cowbell 6. ????? 7. PROFIT!

FTFY

2010-09-23 Reply Admin

by:
1. Backup Data 2. Check Media 3. Restore Data 4. Wipe Media 5. FILE_NOT_FOUND

+1, this made me LOL

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

I've run into the wireless keyboard problem too. We loaned a laptop to a friend of ours so she could do some homework. I got a call saying that it wouldn't boot.

After about half an hour, we discovered that the problem was that she also had a wireless keyboard and, since she was only using the mouse, the keyboard was on another desk under a pile of textbooks. Removing the books solved the problem.

I laughed all the way home.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Well, it was translated from Norwegian....

"Snu arket"

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Yeah, there is. The problem is that it's in the Advanced tab when scanning, and as a Support Tech that's the LAST place you want to guide a customer into when they've figured out the tech-support hot-line number...

Unless, of course, you have three weeks of vacation coming. Screwing with colleges is what makes tech-support bearable.

I'm so glad I'm out of that and doing programming now. I don't have to deal with ANY idiots! Oh... wait... If you don't know who the canary is...

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Frank:
No, roaming profiles roam. They follow you around wherever you go. They are stored on a server, yes, but they get copied (wait... wait... wait...) to the computer you're using today (wait... wait... Oops! Disk full! Randomly destroy something!) and if you're actually smart enough to keep more than one computer busy at the same time (kinda like how a manager assigns different tasks to different workers) things get really nasty when you log out (wait... wait... wait...) and the second logout overwrites stuff from the first one (wait... wait... Randomly destroy lots of things!!!)

I don't see how that's a problem with roaming profiles, just one or more specific implementations thereof. Just because the crappy Ford Pinto could blow up doesn't mean cars are a horrible concept.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

jdw:
Troy:
Wow, remind me never to hire William Blosch. Without ever actually _witnessing_ the problem as it occurred, he wasted his own time and his customer's time by eradicating a non-existent trojan then completely reimaging the computer. Anything to avoid actually talking to another human.
Actually, re-imaging the computer is often more cost- and time-effective than troubleshooting these sorts of issues. Re-imaging takes very little time at all; tracking down esoteric and uncommon issues like this can be a big pain, and in most large companies, if you find that some sort of virus is causing the issue, protocol will demand a format anyway. As long as the user is not storing essential data locally, re-imaging is the CORRECT form of troubleshooting.
But, hey, if you want to waste YOUR time chasing ghosts, go for it. I'll be sitting at my desk playing solitaire while you try to figure out what's going on.

Dust off and re-image from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Backup Data
Check Media
Restore Data
Lose Everything
Blame the Tech

CYA

(4th try... Akismeth, do you hate me?)

piskvorr · 2010-09-24 Reply Admin

"Because our boss is retarded, he got us to drag her USB port into her tower" That's not retarded, that's brilliant (or maybe "fighting retarded with more retarded", I'm not quite sure). While it's technically a completely pointless mod, the customer gets what she thinks she wants, while getting what she actually wanted. The customer is happy, and the company gets money.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

I would recommend that angry Sir this video from youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_014G3Jw8s

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Captain Obvious:
I think support contracts need to include an idiot fee, which is added for each query that invokes a /facepalm/ reaction.
I'd say $5000 a pop would be adequate...

The inspiration for this - I once had a customer at a PC retail/service store return a wireless desktop package as not-working. Upon investigating, it would seem she did not plug in the wireless dongle to the computer. She accused us of false advertising, as "I shouldn't have to plug anything in - its WIRELESS you dipshits".

Because our boss is retarded, he got us to drag her USB port into her tower, and plug in the dongle inside, and out of sight. This set her back: $100 dollars labour $50 for parts (read - a cable tie) $100 because my boss thought $250 total seemed about right.

She still shops with us :-)

How does this make your boss retarded?

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Troy:
Wow, remind me never to hire William Blosch. Without ever actually _witnessing_ the problem as it occurred, he wasted his own time and his customer's time by eradicating a non-existent trojan then completely reimaging the computer. Anything to avoid actually talking to another human.

This^^

TRWTF there was Mr. Blosch, not the user.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Gamil:
Glad to see, in the comments, at least, that some people still believe in at least determining what the problem *is* before wiping a system. All the big-name manufacturers are good at doing things like re-imaging a notebook with a cracked screen.
TRWTF is wiping a machine before determining that there's actually a problem.

By the time your typical Windows user reports a problem, the machine is basically a toaster oven running malware, and it only occasionally runs Word or Freecell in the few CPU cycles left over. You can keep power consumption down quite a bit just by deleting all that crap.

method1 · 2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Darth Dumbass:
I have hidden a wireless keyboard in your drawer...pray you don't put your purse on it.

I literally LOL'd. Is there something wrong with me?

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

My opinion on re-imaging is that the procedure should be as follows:

Attempt to diagnose the problem. If it's a hardware failure, I doubt re-imaging is going to fix it, so don't bother. If you can't get a diagnosis after a reasonable amount of time, or you find that nothing short of a re-image will fix the problem, proceed.
Make a backup of all the existing data. Never, ever, EVER re-image without doing so.
Re-image and sent the user(s) on their merry way.
Keep the backup somewhere just in case (say, the user complains that some critical company files disappeared)
Use a copy of the backup to further attempt to diagnose the original problem (now that you won't keep a user waiting in the process), and if possible, make changes to prevent it from occurring again in the future. As the old cliche says, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Troy:
Wow, remind me never to hire William Blosch. Without ever actually _witnessing_ the problem as it occurred, he wasted his own time and his customer's time by eradicating a non-existent trojan then completely reimaging the computer. Anything to avoid actually talking to another human.

It's surprising how little information is usually to be had from the average luser. However, observing them in their natural habitat can lead to blinding insights, like "that's just plain dumb" and "I need to bring a gun to work more often".

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Heron:
The Correcter:
Oh, and by the way, when was the last time you heard of anyone practicing monogamy?

Actually I know a lot of people who do, myself included.

Addendum (2010-09-23 17:30): And before anyone makes any stupid jokes, I'm talking about married people (myself included).

The your a fool. No woman is worth being monogamous. At least not since the Feminist Revolution.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

me:
by:
1. Backup Data 2. Check Media 3. Restore Data 4. Wipe Media 5. FILE_NOT_FOUND
+1, this made me LOL

I demand that this be made a featured comment.

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

method1:
Darth Dumbass:
I have hidden a wireless keyboard in your drawer...pray you don't put your purse on it.

I literally LOL'd. Is there something wrong with me?

No, it means you have a sense of humor, unlike cowardly ghost moderators that have been running rampant lately, drunk on their own "power".

2010-09-24 Reply Admin

Ceiling Cat:
method1:
Darth Dumbass:
I have hidden a wireless keyboard in your drawer...pray you don't put your purse on it.

I literally LOL'd. Is there something wrong with me?
No, it means you have a sense of humor, unlike cowardly ghost moderators that have been running rampant lately, drunk.

FTFY

The Discothèque Option and More Support Stories

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