The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

method1 · 2011-10-18 Reply Admin

BobB:
I'm in Oklahoma, US. I got a whole raiding party full of Apache braves. Bring it!

Paleface speak with forked tongue. Which version of Apache are they? And are you sure they're on your side? They sided with the British in the war of Independence because they said they'd let them keep their ancestral lands apparently

2011-10-18 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
trtrwtf:
BobB:
For my current job, I didn't need a psych test, yay? However, I remember in between jobs I interviewed at a local gas station chain to be a clerk (sales associate/pump overlord/whatever). Everyone was required to take a 60 min fill in the circles test where they basically asked the same 10 questions about, "You wouldn't steal from us, right?" worded many different ways in many different scenarios. The last few were 'fill in here what you would do in X scenario above', stuff like, "A worker has stolen paperclips from the office area! They don't like they are returning them, when you confront them about it, how will you go about convincing them to return the company's paperclips!?"
Just once I want to take one of these stupid things and respond with something like, "First I would try to convince my fellow employee that stealing is wrong, even if it is 2 pennies worth of paperclips that have been mangled beyond any functional use, and that he should return them to their proper places immediately. If my fellow coworker does not agree with me and argues that the equipment is indeed his as no one else will get functional use of them, I would call upon the powers of the Norse and materialize my trusty claymore into my hands so that I can slay the enemy of my company, who was thoughtful enough to provide me with this minimum wage job! Afterwards, I will move decap'd employee to cold storage so that I can take him out with the trash later. Wouldn't want to miss tending to any customers because I had to return company paperclips, right?"

Not to get sidetracked, but what do claymores (" a large sword used in the late Medieval and early modern periods... used in the constant clan warfare and border fights with the English from circa 1400 to 1700") have to do with the Norse ("the Scandinavian population of the period from the late 8th century to the 11th century")?

Because many of the inhabitants of the North of Scotland are descendants of the Norse. You can tell them by the fact that they are over 6 foot and have seriously red hair. You don't want to say "Fanta pants" in their vicinity.

Check out the name of the most northerly part of Scotland - it's called "Sutherland". South of what? Go see if you can find an atlas which has north west Europe on it and see what I mean.

Oh, don't even try. It was a foolish gamer-boy slip, let it go. The Norse raids on Scotland preceded the use of the Claymore by hundreds of years, and the directionality is all wrong. This is like drawing on your Spanish heritage and reaching for your atlatl.

2011-10-18 Reply Admin

That is why it is standard practise to omit the closing tag in files like this.

havokk · 2011-10-18 Reply Admin

BobB:
I'm in Oklahoma, US. I got a whole raiding party full of Apache braves. Bring it!

I'm not sure what a raiding party of web servers looks like, so I'm going with €50 on the Vikings.

Especially since they are armed with claymore mines…

Scarlet Manuka · 2011-10-18 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
Can I come? My Tomcat will take them all on.

Gytha Ogg, I presume?

nonpartisan · 2011-10-18 Reply Admin

Иagɘsн:
Nagesh:
infantree is lieing out of his teeth.
Why do you purposely mispell English wordings? Everybody knows Indians receive a perfectly serviceable, if a little archaic, English education. Your behaviour makes me want to do the needful and put Bhut Jolokia on Q-Tip and insert it in an uncomfortable place.

'course, no one noticed the OTHER misspelling in that paragraph . . . it was also seen in page 1 of the comments . . .

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

" As it turned out, the papers were a psych-analysis composed of multiple choice answers and silly questions."

Myers-Briggs? INTP

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

I heard you like memes in your memes, so I put memes in your memes so you can meme while you meme. Pray I don't meme your memes any further.

Meme Vader

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
boog:
frits:
boog:
frits:
What happened to clever Nagesh?
In Hyderabad, all Nageshen are clever.
Cool. I'm pretty happy that "In Hyderabad..." is becoming a meme. ;)
Yeah, I just hope it doesn't get overused or repetitive. That would never happen on this site, would it?

That's not funny: My son was overused and repetitive, and let me assure you, it was no laughing matter. I saw your one line reply referring to Paula Bean and it's not big or clever so fuck off. You're too young and stupid to be using the internet, so get off my lawn!

Bent Glugstork.

I heard you like memes in your memes, so I put memes in your memes so you can meme while you meme. Pray I don't meme your memes any further.

Meme Vader

Matt Westwood · 2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Scarlet Manuka:
Matt Westwood:
Can I come? My Tomcat will take them all on.
Gytha Ogg, I presume?

Aaaaaaa --- wizards's staff has a knob on the eeeeend ...

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

I am Norse and you have indeed offended me and my people. I immediately rose up in a blood rage and called upon the gods to help me avenge this slight. Loki gave me a Claymore. :(

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

BobB:
I got a whole raiding party full of Apache braves. Bring it!

You don't have to be brave to run Apache. MS servers ... that takes cojones!

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Even better: just make sure there isn't a ?> at the end of the code in a header file ... that's actually considered as best practice in PHP land these days ...

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
Because many of the inhabitants of the North of Scotland are descendants of the Norse. You can tell them by the fact that they are over 6 foot and have seriously red hair. You don't want to say "Fanta pants" in their vicinity.
Check out the name of the most northerly part of Scotland - it's called "Sutherland". South of what? Go see if you can find an atlas which has north west Europe on it and see what I mean.

They're more Irish than Scandinavian, and that's where the red hair comes from. Scotland, named after the Scotii, the Roman name for a bunch of Irish pirates and raiders.

And red hair? Odd stereotype, that one... bit like the horned helmets. What hair colour is usually associated with Scandinavian nations? Hint: its the colour Vikings generally had, and it wasn't red.

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Ru:
Matt Westwood:
Because many of the inhabitants of the North of Scotland are descendants of the Norse. You can tell them by the fact that they are over 6 foot and have seriously red hair. You don't want to say "Fanta pants" in their vicinity.
Check out the name of the most northerly part of Scotland - it's called "Sutherland". South of what? Go see if you can find an atlas which has north west Europe on it and see what I mean.

They're more Irish than Scandinavian, and that's where the red hair comes from. Scotland, named after the Scotii, the Roman name for a bunch of Irish pirates and raiders.

And red hair? Odd stereotype, that one... bit like the horned helmets. What hair colour is usually associated with Scandinavian nations? Hint: its the colour Vikings generally had, and it wasn't red.

Please show a little sensitivity. I had a son who had red hair, and I can assure you, it's no laughing matter. It was incurable, and we had to euthanase him before he turned into one of the Weasley brothers.

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
BobB:
For my current job, I didn't need a psych test, yay? However, I remember in between jobs I interviewed at a local gas station chain to be a clerk (sales associate/pump overlord/whatever). Everyone was required to take a 60 min fill in the circles test where they basically asked the same 10 questions about, "You wouldn't steal from us, right?" worded many different ways in many different scenarios. The last few were 'fill in here what you would do in X scenario above', stuff like, "A worker has stolen paperclips from the office area! They don't like they are returning them, when you confront them about it, how will you go about convincing them to return the company's paperclips!?"
Just once I want to take one of these stupid things and respond with something like, "First I would try to convince my fellow employee that stealing is wrong, even if it is 2 pennies worth of paperclips that have been mangled beyond any functional use, and that he should return them to their proper places immediately. If my fellow coworker does not agree with me and argues that the equipment is indeed his as no one else will get functional use of them, I would call upon the powers of the Norse and materialize my trusty claymore into my hands so that I can slay the enemy of my company, who was thoughtful enough to provide me with this minimum wage job! Afterwards, I will move decap'd employee to cold storage so that I can take him out with the trash later. Wouldn't want to miss tending to any customers because I had to return company paperclips, right?"

This has to be one of the stupidest questions in the world. What the fucking fucky shitty fuck-fuck would anybody WANT to steal any fucking fucking paper clips in the fucking FIRST PLACE?

If (a) an employee feels the need to steal paper clips, there's something seriously wrong with him, and (b) if the employer is actually upset about the fact that an employee has pocketed a few paper clips from off the desk, then I'd ring up the local loony bin and call for the men in white coats to haul them off in fucking straitjackets. I mean, jesus fucking horticultural cobolwriting christ.

Jumping on the denigrate COBOL bandwagon I see. What is it with programmers these days that they feel they have to insult all the founding languages in order to show off?

dkf · 2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
I mean, jesus fucking horticultural cobolwriting christ.

I like that expletive; it's inventive and offensive (to some) in a good combination.

no laughing matter · 2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Zuy Incognito:
Read the news, it says: "Queer Moore"

So Gordon Moore is gay? Well that explains a lot.

Especially his ridiculous theory that they size of our assholes doubles every two years.

If that were true, why did we felt a need to go multigore about seven years ago?

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

I went for an interview at a multi-national, for twice the money that I was on. The first part was an IBM IQ test. When the secretary, who had escorted me from the foyer, came in after 20 minutes to see if I was OK she was surprised that I had finished, as most candidates had got nowhere near at the end of the allotted hour. I had to sit for the remaining 40 minutes and a further 20 minutes whilst she checked the results, and a further 20 minutes whilst the IT Manager checked the results. I was eventually shown into the IT Manager’s office, and before I had a chance to sit down he announced that I had “scored higher than anyone else on site on the test and would be bored. Goodbye.” I was then escorted off-site by the secretary and a security guard. I think that he may have felt a little threatened. But I could have been quite happily bored for a while on twice the pay!

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Zolcos:
PHPeed all over my server:
Jean:
The answers to the PHP question must have been ripped off the Wordpress documentation.
Now that I understand the cause, I can honestly say the real WTF here is PHP! Even MAKE has simpler white-space rules than this! Why can't PHP interpreter handle that? Is it every PHP version?
You have to send headers before content. This restriction is integral to HTTP

Meh .. let the ignorants flame at will, it's all they got ;)

Funny to see how so many people bash PHP .. what other languages do you advise that you think are flawless.?

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

L.:
Zolcos:
PHPeed all over my server:
Jean:
The answers to the PHP question must have been ripped off the Wordpress documentation.
Now that I understand the cause, I can honestly say the real WTF here is PHP! Even MAKE has simpler white-space rules than this! Why can't PHP interpreter handle that? Is it every PHP version?
You have to send headers before content. This restriction is integral to HTTP

Meh .. let the ignorants flame at will, it's all they got ;)

Funny to see how so many people bash PHP .. what other languages do you advise that you think are flawless.?

There's a large range between "flawless" and "made of flaw", and there are many languages occupying that space. PHP is not one of them.

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

L.:
Zolcos:
PHPeed all over my server:
Jean:
The answers to the PHP question must have been ripped off the Wordpress documentation.
Now that I understand the cause, I can honestly say the real WTF here is PHP! Even MAKE has simpler white-space rules than this! Why can't PHP interpreter handle that? Is it every PHP version?
You have to send headers before content. This restriction is integral to HTTP

Meh .. let the ignorants flame at will, it's all they got ;)

Funny to see how so many people bash PHP .. what other languages do you advise that you think are flawless.?

Java is being best language to be defined so far. Working on Java 1.4 certification at present, and it is looking to be evan betar.

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

I call shinenigans on the third one. The guy is butthurt because they made him do a personality test, and he has personality disorder. "Gimme the technical PLZ GIMME TEH TECHNICAL!"

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
L.:
Zolcos:
PHPeed all over my server:
Jean:
The answers to the PHP question must have been ripped off the Wordpress documentation.
Now that I understand the cause, I can honestly say the real WTF here is PHP! Even MAKE has simpler white-space rules than this! Why can't PHP interpreter handle that? Is it every PHP version?
You have to send headers before content. This restriction is integral to HTTP

Meh .. let the ignorants flame at will, it's all they got ;)

Funny to see how so many people bash PHP .. what other languages do you advise that you think are flawless.?

There's a large range between "flawless" and "made of flaw", and there are many languages occupying that space. PHP is not one of them.

Well .. I sure hope this is the feeling I'll have when I take the time to focus on something else... at this point I can just confirm that PHP has quite a few flaws one should know about.

On the other hand, PHP is still much better than anything VB and below (and that does include an awful lot of horrible stuff).

Simply stating that PHP is made of flaw because it's not as good as C/Java/Python does look like a bit of a stretch though. (and don't tell me about microsoft stuff, that stuff simply does not compute - since it requires a failOS to run).

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
BobB:
For my current job, I didn't need a psych test, yay? However, I remember in between jobs I interviewed at a local gas station chain to be a clerk (sales associate/pump overlord/whatever). Everyone was required to take a 60 min fill in the circles test where they basically asked the same 10 questions about, "You wouldn't steal from us, right?" worded many different ways in many different scenarios. The last few were 'fill in here what you would do in X scenario above', stuff like, "A worker has stolen paperclips from the office area! They don't like they are returning them, when you confront them about it, how will you go about convincing them to return the company's paperclips!?"
Just once I want to take one of these stupid things and respond with something like, "First I would try to convince my fellow employee that stealing is wrong, even if it is 2 pennies worth of paperclips that have been mangled beyond any functional use, and that he should return them to their proper places immediately. If my fellow coworker does not agree with me and argues that the equipment is indeed his as no one else will get functional use of them, I would call upon the powers of the Norse and materialize my trusty claymore into my hands so that I can slay the enemy of my company, who was thoughtful enough to provide me with this minimum wage job! Afterwards, I will move decap'd employee to cold storage so that I can take him out with the trash later. Wouldn't want to miss tending to any customers because I had to return company paperclips, right?"

Not to get sidetracked, but what do claymores (" a large sword used in the late Medieval and early modern periods... used in the constant clan warfare and border fights with the English from circa 1400 to 1700") have to do with the Norse ("the Scandinavian population of the period from the late 8th century to the 11th century")?

I'm pretty sure that he meant Mjolnir, Thor's hammer.

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Homer J:
...doing a 153 on the down...

I've no idea what that means. Is it the sort of thing that Zunesis keeps going on about?

Nagesh · 2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Nagesh (fake):
Java is being best language to be defined so far. Working on Java 1.4 certification at present, and it is looking to be evan betar.

Welcome to 2011

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

BobB:
trtrwtf:
Not to get sidetracked, but what do claymores (" a large sword used in the late Medieval and early modern periods... used in the constant clan warfare and border fights with the English from circa 1400 to 1700") have to do with the Norse ("the Scandinavian population of the period from the late 8th century to the 11th century")?

Not to get sidetracked either, but seeing as how this was a fictional response to a fictional situation, I didn't feel it warranted research into the armaments of that particular group of people. I apologize if you are indeed Norse and I have offended you and/or your people. But please, by all means, continue being anal, it appears you're having fun. :)

This type of humor is totally inappropriate. My ancestors were Norse, and I assure you that it wasn't funny at all.

no laughing matter · 2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
Nagesh (fake):
Java is being best language to be defined so far. Working on Java 1.4 certification at present, and it is looking to be evan betar.

Welcome to 2011

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Peter:
Homer J:
...doing a 153 on a down syndrome...
I've no idea what that means. Is it the sort of thing that Zunesis keeps going on about?

I've never referred to it that way, but I like the use of code numbers. Now I don't have to list off [actor body part]-[action]-[recipient body part], I can just say [153]! Awesome! I took my [1] and [2]'ed it in his [3] so hard he came blood!

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Bobby Tables:
Wow, that's pretty bad. Not only did he rip from documentation, he ripped from crappy documentation.

One of my college professors once commented that if you are going to cheat, you should copy from the smart kid, and not from your friends who are as dumb as you are.

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

boog:
frits:
boog:
frits:
What happened to clever Nagesh?
In Hyderabad, all Nageshen are clever.
Cool. I'm pretty happy that "In Hyderabad..." is becoming a meme. ;)
Yeah, I just hope it doesn't get overused or repetitive. That would never happen on this site, would it?

I have overused your meme. Pray I do not overuse it any further.

Oh, wait, tautology ...

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

havokk:
BobB:
I'm in Oklahoma, US. I got a whole raiding party full of Apache braves. Bring it!

I'm not sure what a raiding party of web servers looks like, so I'm going with €50 on the Vikings.

Especially since they are armed with claymore mines…

I think he means that his web server uses a Redundant Array of Independent Disks. I'm not sure what the "braves" part means, maybe a mis-spelling of his brand of CD duplicator.

Matt Westwood · 2011-10-19 Reply Admin

geoffrey:
Matt Westwood:
BobB:
For my current job, I didn't need a psych test, yay? However, I remember in between jobs I interviewed at a local gas station chain to be a clerk (sales associate/pump overlord/whatever). Everyone was required to take a 60 min fill in the circles test where they basically asked the same 10 questions about, "You wouldn't steal from us, right?" worded many different ways in many different scenarios. The last few were 'fill in here what you would do in X scenario above', stuff like, "A worker has stolen paperclips from the office area! They don't like they are returning them, when you confront them about it, how will you go about convincing them to return the company's paperclips!?"
Just once I want to take one of these stupid things and respond with something like, "First I would try to convince my fellow employee that stealing is wrong, even if it is 2 pennies worth of paperclips that have been mangled beyond any functional use, and that he should return them to their proper places immediately. If my fellow coworker does not agree with me and argues that the equipment is indeed his as no one else will get functional use of them, I would call upon the powers of the Norse and materialize my trusty claymore into my hands so that I can slay the enemy of my company, who was thoughtful enough to provide me with this minimum wage job! Afterwards, I will move decap'd employee to cold storage so that I can take him out with the trash later. Wouldn't want to miss tending to any customers because I had to return company paperclips, right?"

This has to be one of the stupidest questions in the world. What the fucking fucky shitty fuck-fuck would anybody WANT to steal any fucking fucking paper clips in the fucking FIRST PLACE?

If (a) an employee feels the need to steal paper clips, there's something seriously wrong with him, and (b) if the employer is actually upset about the fact that an employee has pocketed a few paper clips from off the desk, then I'd ring up the local loony bin and call for the men in white coats to haul them off in fucking straitjackets. I mean, jesus fucking horticultural cobolwriting christ.

Jumping on the denigrate COBOL bandwagon I see. What is it with programmers these days that they feel they have to insult all the founding languages in order to show off?

I'm allowed to, heckface, I used to have to write in it.

2011-10-19 Reply Admin

Overqualified:
I went for an interview at a multi-national, for twice the money that I was on. The first part was an IBM IQ test. When the secretary, who had escorted me from the foyer, came in after 20 minutes to see if I was OK she was surprised that I had finished, as most candidates had got nowhere near at the end of the allotted hour. I had to sit for the remaining 40 minutes and a further 20 minutes whilst she checked the results, and a further 20 minutes whilst the IT Manager checked the results. I was eventually shown into the IT Manager’s office, and before I had a chance to sit down he announced that I had “scored higher than anyone else on site on the test and would be bored. Goodbye.” I was then escorted off-site by the secretary and a security guard. I think that he may have felt a little threatened. But I could have been quite happily bored for a while on twice the pay!

They were actually accusing you of cheating on the test without speaking it out so you couldn't sue them.

Matt Westwood · 2011-10-20 Reply Admin

foo:
Overqualified:
I went for an interview at a multi-national, for twice the money that I was on. The first part was an IBM IQ test. When the secretary, who had escorted me from the foyer, came in after 20 minutes to see if I was OK she was surprised that I had finished, as most candidates had got nowhere near at the end of the allotted hour. I had to sit for the remaining 40 minutes and a further 20 minutes whilst she checked the results, and a further 20 minutes whilst the IT Manager checked the results. I was eventually shown into the IT Manager’s office, and before I had a chance to sit down he announced that I had “scored higher than anyone else on site on the test and would be bored. Goodbye.” I was then escorted off-site by the secretary and a security guard. I think that he may have felt a little threatened. But I could have been quite happily bored for a while on twice the pay!
They were actually accusing you of cheating on the test without speaking it out so you couldn't sue them.

The real WTF there: How is it possible to cheat on an IQ test?

2011-10-20 Reply Admin

#1 is exactly why I rarely bother to visit thedailywtf anymore, and when I do it usually disappoints..

TRWTF - You didn't hire him. Clearly he had a better understanding of PHP, and/or superior debugging skills to yourself. His answer was an entirely valid first step - the solution to a common occurrence of that error message.

Posts that make it onto the site, where the only WTF is that the person posting the article is clueless, make the entire site look quite dumb.

no laughing matter · 2011-10-20 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
The real WTF there: How is it possible to cheat on an IQ test?

The son of my friend Bob cheated on an IQ test once and i can assure you ...

Honestly, if you can't find at least three different options to cheat on an IQ test within a minute then your IQ value is dangerously close to room temperature.

In degrees Celsius.

I'll give you a starter: Reducing a lower test result than your actual IQ value can also be considered cheating.

The other options may involve "gadgets". An iQ-value, so to say.

ochrist · 2011-10-20 Reply Admin

Jay:

This type of humor is totally inappropriate. My ancestors were Norse, and I assure you that it wasn't funny at all.

I'm surprised nobody remembered that the inventor of PHP is actually Danish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf), although he might be more of Greelandic origin than viking ditto.

2011-10-20 Reply Admin

TRWTF is that no one noticed that #1 won't work. At least not if you follow the instructions exactly.

What they have described removes the whitespace at the end of the file 'mentioned in the error'. The problem is, there are two files mentioned in those sort of the error message. They look like:

Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at header.php:153) in file.php on line 68

Now, you can say 'Well, it should be obvious that you should open header.php', you are correct...but I suspect that you are operating with a bit more knowledge than the sort of people who need to be told to 'open the file notepad and hold delete'. The file most obviously mentioned is file.php, and deleting whitespace in that won't solve anything.

I suspect what happened here is that these were very basic instructions for a specific program (Wordpress was suggested.), and someone munged them to refer to 'the file mentioned in the error message' instead of a specific file. Without any realization that there would, in fact be two files mentioned.

So we have someone with at least some googling skilled at solving problems and applying information, but sadly they appear to have no PHP knowledge at all.

For one thing, actual PHP programmers don't spend any time making sure they don't have whitespace at the end of a header file...they just don't put the ?> marker at the end of the file, so it never goes back into 'HTML output mode'. For another thing, it could just as easily be whitespace at the start of the file, or an actual coding mistake that tried to send headers after some html had been sent out on purpose.

Matt Westwood · 2011-10-20 Reply Admin

no laughing matter:
Matt Westwood:
The real WTF there: How is it possible to cheat on an IQ test?
The son of my friend Bob cheated on an IQ test once and i can assure you ...
Honestly, if you can't find at least three different options to cheat on an IQ test within a minute then your IQ value is dangerously close to room temperature.

In degrees Celsius.

I'll give you a starter: Reducing a lower test result than your actual IQ value can also be considered cheating.

The other options may involve "gadgets". An iQ-value, so to say.

Nope, sorry, can't understand this post, in particular the sentence: "Reducing a lower test result than your actual IQ value can also be considered cheating." To "reduce" is to "make smaller". "Making a lower test result smaller than your actual IQ .." No, sorry, I'm bewildered.

Inability to make yourself understood by (presumably) using words you don't actually know what they mean is a sign of seriously subhuman intelligence. In fact your dad may be right by calling you a retard. Now fuck off like a good boy.

2011-10-20 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
no laughing matter:
Matt Westwood:
The real WTF there: How is it possible to cheat on an IQ test?
The son of my friend Bob cheated on an IQ test once and i can assure you ...
Honestly, if you can't find at least three different options to cheat on an IQ test within a minute then your IQ value is dangerously close to room temperature.

In degrees Celsius.

I'll give you a starter: Reducing a lower test result than your actual IQ value can also be considered cheating.

The other options may involve "gadgets". An iQ-value, so to say.

Nope, sorry, can't understand this post, in particular the sentence: "Reducing a lower test result than your actual IQ value can also be considered cheating." To "reduce" is to "make smaller". "Making a lower test result smaller than your actual IQ .." No, sorry, I'm bewildered.

Inability to make yourself understood by (presumably) using words you don't actually know what they mean is a sign of seriously subhuman intelligence. In fact your dad may be right by calling you a retard. Now fuck off like a good boy.

OTOH, being able to parse a slighly erroneous sentence is also a sign of intelligence. Failing that, humans will soon be overtaken by computers WRT fault-tolerant input.

2011-10-20 Reply Admin

Viper-7:
#1 is exactly why I rarely bother to visit thedailywtf anymore, and when I do it usually disappoints..
TRWTF - You didn't hire him. Clearly he had a better understanding of PHP, and/or superior debugging skills to yourself. His answer was an entirely valid first step - the solution to a common occurrence of that error message.

I for one prefer programmers who can use their editor and don't need a braindead six-step procedure for a trivial task.

2011-10-20 Reply Admin

+1 for /s, it made me feel so 1996!

Captcha: "Commoveo" - Requesting help from Italian movers? "Hey Luigi! Commmoveo this couch to my nuova casa!"

2011-10-20 Reply Admin

PHPeed all over my server:
Jean:
The answers to the PHP question must have been ripped off the Wordpress documentation.

Now that I understand the cause, I can honestly say the real WTF here is PHP! Even MAKE has simpler white-space rules than this! Why can't PHP interpreter handle that? Is it every PHP version?

Then you don't actually understand the cause.

2011-10-20 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
foo:
They were actually accusing you of cheating on the test without speaking it out so you couldn't sue them.

The real WTF there: How is it possible to cheat on an IQ test?

The same way you cheat on any test.

no laughing matter · 2011-10-21 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
Nope, sorry, can't understand this post, in particular the sentence: "Reducing a lower test result than your actual IQ value can also be considered cheating." To "reduce" is to "make smaller". "Making a lower test result smaller than your actual IQ .." No, sorry, I'm bewildered.

You are just drawing assumptions out of thin air. Especially the assumption that a high IQ as test result has positive/desired consequences for you. What if a high IQ results in an obligation to take over a task you don't want?

Producing a low test result can give you an option to escape that obligation without having to openly admit you don't like the task.

Matt Westwood:
Inability to make yourself understood by (presumably) using words you don't actually know what they mean is a sign of seriously subhuman intelligence. In fact your dad may be right by calling you a retard.

Subtle, but also a little forced.

Matt Westwood:
Now fuck off like a good boy.

No wonder this site attracts zuneses!

2011-10-22 Reply Admin

The MAZZTer:
In any case it's clear the interviewee doesn't quite understand what's going on. He figured out how to fix it in a specific case, possibly by accident, but he clearly doesn't know what it means or why it happens.

I think he knew exactly the answer they were looking for, he just (in typical geek style) doesn't know how to explain it.

2011-10-27 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
The funny thing was that, other than math/algo questions, he didn't even TOUCH .Net, which was funny considering it was for a senior .net role.

That's often a good clue that they have no idea about the topic, which is why they are looking to hire someone who does. The ~4 talk about things he does know show that he's an egoist.

codepunk · 2011-12-13 Reply Admin

"Open that file in a notepad."

Instant interview fail, coder does not use VI.

The High-Security Interview, The PHP Candidate, and Overqualified

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