• Dan (unregistered)

    "Sorry" in this context is a synonym for "failover".

  • (cs)

    Wait, so if the sorry server requires 'university' to be misspelled in the title tag of the regular site, then why is it spelled correctly? Shouldn't everything be totally breaking?

  • justsomedude (unregistered) in reply to codeman38
    codeman38:
    Wait, so if the sorry server requires 'university' to be misspelled in the title tag of the regular site, then why is it spelled correctly? Shouldn't everything be totally breaking?

    Sorry server can't even get that right...

    CAPTCHA: Nibh - Nickname that reminds me new episodes of Futurama are on the way.

  • usitas (unregistered)

    I didn't have time to read all the previous comments, but did you know you can still see the email address if you highlight it?

  • SR (unregistered) in reply to usitas
    usitas:
    I didn't have time to read all the previous comments, but did you know you can still see the email address if you highlight it?

    Good comment. I've not read the comments either but imagine nobody else has pointed that out.

  • your name here (unregistered)

    Hey, at least they don't use tables!

  • (cs) in reply to blah
    blah:
    <!--<BLOCKQUOTE class="Quote"><div><i class="icon-quote"></i> <strong>Max:</strong></div><div>Yeah, that's pretty sad. <p>In other news, you can see the full email address by highlighting the blacked-out part in your browser-- not exactly the best way to preserve confidentiality. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>--&gt;</p> <p>There. Fixed it for you.</div></BLOCKQUOTE></p> <p>Wow. Meta-comment on a meta-troll.</p> <p>That is truley awesome.</p>
  • Pierre Tramo (unregistered) in reply to Mike D.
    Mike D.:
    Marco:
    I found this in the thedailywtf.com's source: 
    jroberts
    Looks like a real WTF to me ;)
    Yeah, there should be a semicolon after "black".
    Actually, the semicolon in CSS behaves as it should with any well behaved language: a statement separator, rather than a statement terminator.

    Some people just love using semicolons and curly braces.

  • (cs) in reply to DOA
    DOA:
    Ok, I have to ask... who looks at page source code for no reason? Is there someone out there who enjoys this?

    Seriously, who are you people?

    YO! raises hand

  • Steve H (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    That is truley awesome.

    Not as awesome as your spelling. Still, I'm sure you'll now claim that was ironic and intentional too.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Steve H
    Steve H:
    frits:
    That is truley awesome.

    Not as awesome as your spelling. Still, I'm sure you'll now claim that was ironic and intentional too.

    Ah, that classic maneuver - the "Frits Backpedal".

  • Facilisi (unregistered)

    Can anyone explain this? From the same page:

    function fixDate(date) {
  var base = new Date(0);
  var skew = base.getTime();
  if (skew > 0)
    date.setTime(date.getTime() - skew);
}
var current = new Date();
fixDate(current);
document.write(current.getFullYear());
  • RandomUser423669 (unregistered)

    With regard to the "stretchy column layout" stuff someone dug out the TDWTF site: I have seen claims of how to do stuff like that without Javascript or CSS "hacks", though I haven't tested them out myself.

    I believe it was somewhere here: http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/-css

  • (cs) in reply to Steve H
    Steve H:
    frits:
    That is truley awesome.

    Not as awesome as your spelling. Still, I'm sure you'll now claim that was ironic and intentional too.

    I am truley sorry for your lots :)

    Addendum (2010-03-24 13:51):

    Steve H:
    frits:
    That is truley awesome.

    Not as awesome as your spelling. Still, I'm sure you'll now claim that was ironic and intentional too.

    Meme reference: "I am truley sorry for your lots"

    Intentional? Yes.

    Ironic? No. Although this special case of Muphry's Law is.

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is that Alex just "redacted" the e-mail address by making the background black. You can still see it if you highlight it.

    captcha: imanidiot

  • Juan (unregistered)

    I think I am able to see the email...

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    blah:
    <!--<BLOCKQUOTE class="Quote"><div><i class="icon-quote"></i> <strong>Max:</strong></div><div>Yeah, that's pretty sad. <p>In other news, you can see the full email address by highlighting the blacked-out part in your browser-- not exactly the best way to preserve confidentiality. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>--&gt;</p> <p>There. Fixed it for you.</div></BLOCKQUOTE></p> <p>Wow. Meta-comment on a meta-troll.</p> <p>That is truley awesome.</div></BLOCKQUOTE></p> <p>It occurs to me that this is a thread of stupid comments about stupid comments. I'm now making a stupid comment about them. At what point does the universe implode? (That's not a question about the LHC, btw.)</p>
  • (cs)

    Here's my take on it. They are using a proprietary web server from a company that went out of business 10 years ago. Originally, only the company was allowed to make changes to the code, with each change costing a hefty sum. To keep the customer from changing the code they used a checksum against the code to make sure it has not been changed. As they were circling the drain they swore they would make a patch that removed this requirement, but they went out of business before they could make up more excuses for not releasing it.

    As it turns out, the checksum is just based off of the code in indexWebServer5.0ReleaseV5.htm which is compared to the URL of the site, if they don't match the site will not load. The same goes for the 2nd part. Of course, the dusty old webmaster that laughs when somebody mentions anything except Warp OS, refused to believe anybody that told him this.

    On your first day, you see this and tell your boss, and he says "why do you have to rock the boat? You need to be a team player! We can't change web servers, we'll be down for months!" The next day you have Apache running and nobody notices.

  • Ian (unregistered)

    Changing the background color around the email address doesn't mean that you didn't just post that guys email online

  • justsomedude (unregistered) in reply to Facilisi

    I'm no JS coder but it looks like it's designed to fix an offset, i.e. this computer keeps saying 1 AM when I tell it to say 12 AM, so I'm gonna subtract off 1 hour to zero it properly.

    TLDR: Looks like a hack fix for a problem that doesn't exist.

    CAPTCHA: asci - ascii minus elevendyone!!1!

  • FuBar (unregistered) in reply to Ian
    Ian:
    Changing the background color around the email address doesn't mean that you didn't just post that guys email online
    The joke's on you. That's your momma's email address.
  • S_Server (unregistered)

    Brenda Lee got it right!

    I'm Sorry, so sorry.

  • DropDeadThread (unregistered)

    Irish I were drunk.

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates
    Lorne Kates:
    The Sorry Server is a Canadian fork of Apache. It replaces all client-side errors with 500 codes, and modifies outgoing content by injecting the letter "u", and rearranging "er" into "re".

    We're still working on the ModEh patch. Sorry.

    Win.

    Colour has a u damnit!

  • Bender (unregistered) in reply to justsomedude
    justsomedude:
    CAPTCHA: asci - ascii minus elevendyone!!1!
    Actually, it's "acsi". See, us robots know your CAPTCHA better than you do.
  • (cs)

    I believe the Sorry Server's name is Wesley Gibson.

  • fjf (unregistered) in reply to Steve
    Steve:
    Lorne Kates:
    The Sorry Server is a Canadian fork of Apache. It replaces all client-side errors with 500 codes, and modifies outgoing content by injecting the letter "u", and rearranging "er" into "re".

    We're still working on the ModEh patch. Sorry.

    Win.

    Colour has a u damnit!

    I coldn't agere moer.

  • PITA (unregistered)

    So, how many of you emailed [email protected] by now? :)

  • BearGriz72 (unregistered) in reply to Anonymously Yours
    Anonymously Yours:
    I found a blank page on their site. The only thing in the source was the following comment: 
    <!-- Croatoan -->
    ROFLMAO

    -–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-–-– CAPTCHA: erat - Environmental Requirements Advanced Technology or Just Latin?

  • ParkinT (unregistered)

    THE SORRY SERVER?! Why are they playing a server-based version of an old Parker Brothers game?

  • (cs)

    The BEST part is that the page is coded so the titlebar (in IE) says "Excellence in education and research". Maybe someone should apply their excellent education, and research how to fix the sorry server.

    The rotating banner-like blurb near the top of the page also mentions research to solve problems, and says something about "professional education". Hmmm....

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Anonymously Yours

    <3

    Made my afternoon!

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Anonymously Yours
    Anonymously Yours:
    DOA:
    Ok, I have to ask... who looks at page source code for no reason? Is there someone out there who enjoys this?

    Seriously, who are you people?

    I found a blank page on their site. The only thing in the source was the following comment:

    <!-- Croatoan -->

    Previous comment in response to this.

  • Simon (unregistered) in reply to Mike D.

    Pretty ineffective masking, too. Visible in the source, visible in Google Reader, visible if you select the text... what's the point in that?

  • (cs) in reply to blah
    blah:
    HTTP 506 I'm Sorry
    I believe you meant HTTP 418? For those with epic fails at HTTP Codes

    wtf akismet spam? huh who what?

  • Mick (unregistered) in reply to SR
    SR:
    usitas:
    I didn't have time to read all the previous comments, but did you know you can still see the email address if you highlight it?

    Good comment. I've not read the comments either but imagine nobody else has pointed that out.

    WOW, you're right. Whod'av thort? That is so cool!

  • Cliff notes anyone (unregistered) in reply to Mike D.

    Dang it, you beat me to it in a more witty manner: [email protected]

  • dev (unregistered) in reply to Mike D.
    Mike D.:
    Marco:
    I found this in the thedailywtf.com's source: 
    jroberts
    Looks like a real WTF to me ;)
    Yeah, there should be a semicolon after "black".

    Actually not, since "black" is the end of the css-code the ";" isn't required.

  • (cs)

    Did anyone notice, that you can read the blackened email address, by selecting it with the mouse?

  • dignissim (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Graham:
    The Daily WTF has it's own WTF! Just setting the background to black to blank out sensitive details just doesn't work. If you select the text the full email address is revealed.
    It's a running joke that you fell for hard. There is no need to redact what is publicly visible (eg. HTML for a public website) so Alex does the foreground trick just to troll people like you. Thanks for playing.
    It has to be done that way because some embedded platforms don't have file systems.
  • sino (unregistered)

    Sorry Server seems to be something done on *nix systems http://kb.linuxvirtualserver.org/wiki/SorryServer

    TRWTF is *nix OS

  • Agile Waterfall Extreme (unregistered) in reply to Anonymously Yours
    Anonymously Yours:
    I found a blank page on their site. The only thing in the source was the following comment: 
    <!-- Croatoan -->

    Thread over. Anon, stop by our offices and pick up your internet trophy anytime next week.

  • eric76 (unregistered)

    Late one night in 1981 or 1982, I was looking through some of the code for various RSTS/E utilities. (RSTS/E was an operating system on the DEC PDP-11 line of computers.) Inside one utility, there was a fairly large comment that started out with something like "For those of you who stay up late at night reading code ...".

    After this many years, I no longer remember the text of the comment itself.

  • Justin (unregistered) in reply to Mike D.

    um, that's a nice security feature.

  • Kevin (unregistered)

    There are too many WTF here. The pl file is an Oracle PL/SQL script used with Banner Student Systems, and here is a list of some of the WTF:

    • passing unknown url parameters will result in a page not found error. Not passing a URL parameter will result in a page not found error. Any error in running the PL/SQL will result in a page not found error. This makes it torturous to debug.
    • Everything has to be stored on a database because there is no concept of session variables.
    • The system doesn't use valid HTML, has its own convoluted library that makes no sense to generate the HTML, and mixes business logic with presentation markup to create 5000 line functions which is mostly the same 5 - 600 lines of code copied and pasted about 10 times with a couple of changes to a label and a parameter in a query.

    When it comes to PL/SQL nothing in the WTF realm surprises me.

  • JJ (unregistered) in reply to Graham

    It's not even blacked at all in the RSS feed...

  • (cs) in reply to codeman38
    codeman38:
    Wait, so if the sorry server requires 'university' to be misspelled in the title tag of the regular site, then why is it spelled correctly? Shouldn't everything be totally breaking?
    My guess? Originally it was spelled correctly in the comment, but then the sorry server found the exact string in the comment and broke everything. 
    //
    Hosted on another domain. I'll bet that's significant.
  • ref (unregistered) in reply to Mike D.

    lol you beat me to it

  • Garnercx (unregistered) in reply to Mike D.

    Also, the full e-mail address is visible in the RSS feed.

  • (cs) in reply to Mike D.
    Mike D.:
    Marco:
    I found this in the thedailywtf.com's source: 
    jroberts
    Looks like a real WTF to me ;)
    Yeah, there should be a semicolon after "black".
    Yeah, umm, really? http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/CR-CSS2-20090908/syndata.html#tokenization 
    ruleset     : selector? '{' S* declaration? [ ';' S* declaration? ]* '}' S*;

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