The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Rank Amateur · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

If Peter were the real Devil, he'd tell the Vancouver site that their chance to work on a new exciting project depending on completing a successful handover to the Toronto in two weeks. Then he'd fire the lot. When the rock stars told him the product couldn't possibly be finished in time, he's say, "Screw it. Just make a pretty-looking UI to show the client in 6 months." When the client says the app doesn't work, claim their hardware is too slow, but for half the price of upgrading, he'll "optimize" the code. Promise the rock stars big bonuses to make the UI actually do something in a year, while secretly building a dossier on each regarding misusing company resources (e.g., looking at ESPN online during lunchbreaks). With delivery of a working product, deny the bonuses on the basis of the dossiers and pocket the cash. There should be some blackmailing and sexual harassment involved too.

--RA

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over.:
If the the misspelling of "grammar" in both of these posts was intended as a joke:
Ha, ha! That's damn funny!
If not:
WTF???!?

Grammar != spelling. One can be a grammarian and have no idea how to spell "soup". True story.

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

nothing on the internet should ever be taken seriously

Yup, that pretty much sums it up right there.

gwenhwyfaer · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

wk633:
The competitor obliged and, in a symbolic gesture, bought the software, it's source code, for a single Canadian dollar.

O.K. I know I'm a worthless grammar Nazi, but it's its, not it's!

Technically if the mess supplied won't compile, then "it's source code" is a valid obiter assertion, although it should probably have been placed in brackets rather than commas.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over. · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over.:

If the the misspelling of "grammar" in both of these posts was intended as a joke:
Ha, ha! That's damn funny!
If not:
WTF???!?

Grammar != spelling. One can be a grammarian and have no idea how to spell "soup". True story.

Grammar is intimately linked to spelling; you cannot have even passable grammar without good spelling. You need to spell the word to determine the class of the word and continue your parse of the sentence. How do you know if "your" is an adjective while "you're" is a contraction of "you are" and thus a verb phrase unless you had recognized them by how they were spelled?

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
KattMan:
<grammernazialert>
It does annoy me how educated people here can't get the basics of language down, and yes it is only English speakers that butcher English in this fashion.
They should have demanded that they made it open source so they could have gotten a copy of it for free.
</grammernazialert>

<grammernazialert>
"gotten" That's a big sad face. Use of that word makes me shudder.
"They should have demanded that they made it open source so they could get a copy of it for free."
</grammernazialert>

"have gotten" and "get" are not the same tense. "have gotten", if I recall correctly, is past perfect or some other abomination of 9th grade English class education. As is "have demanded". So, they match. "get" is present/future tense, and should generally never be matched with past perfect or past conditional.

Your sentence makes me shudder slightly, as the tense mixing is iffy at best. "Gotten" is an awkward word, but the advantage of KattMan's sentence is that the tenses are matched.

Of course the third verb construct ("they made it open source") is iffy at best in both cases. I think the proper case would be present/future ("they make it open source") as it is an action in the future of the timeframe of its actor.

In any case, here's my vote for the mostest properlified grammer sentance:

They should have demanded that they make it open source so they could have gotten a copy of it for free.

Of course, this is way off-topic, but as it's been shown that this WTF was butchered and half made-up (especially the part about another Canadian company purchasing it for a dollar) that's about all that the remainder of this comment area is good for. So, let's get us a good old fashioned grammar war going! We've got to fill this whitespace up somehow!

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

$10M CAD (or, $138.22 USD)
Learn2math. kthx

I concur. I believe it is traditional to maintain the same number of digits of precision. This should be $138 USD.

There's only 1 digit of preceision in "10M". 10M = 1 x 10^7. That means that instead of $138, it should be $100.

lofwyr · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

If he would have written $10M CAD (or, $138.22 USD or €100.000 EURO) he could have made fun of both CAD and USD.

l.

gwenhwyfaer · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

lofwyr:
If he would have written $10M CAD (or, $138.22 USD or €100.000 EURO) he could have made fun of both CAD and USD.

...Or sixteen quid. (Just to complete the set.)

BrownHornet · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

Anonymous:
No, no... I've seen Canadian money -- completely worthless. Real Canadians use cases of Labatt's as the official currency.
Actually, we use these.

Hehe... My uncle used to bribe people in foriegn countries using Canadian Tire Money back in the day. Sadly, people are more sophisticated these days, and they will only take US dollars.

Bob Janova · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
['Gotten'] has been an accepted part of ~~English~~American for a few hundred years. Next thou'lt be complaining about singular 'you'.

Fixed that for you.

I'm not even going to read the 'true' version of this story, I prefer to believe that this WTF is entirely true, because it's a downright awesome one.

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
JamesKilton:
Anonymous:

Anonymous:
Seriously? Why can't people recognize sarcasm these days?
Say way people can't recognize trolls trying to get people to bite the whole "It's sarcasm!?!?!" thing.
So using your logic, nothing on the internet should ever be taken seriously...

By George, I think she's got it!
[ captcha: giggity]

The internets is serious business.

Grimoire · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

BrownHornet:
Anonymous:

Anonymous:
No, no... I've seen Canadian money -- completely worthless. Real Canadians use cases of Labatt's as the official currency.
Actually, we use these.
Hehe... My uncle used to bribe people in foriegn countries using Canadian Tire Money back in the day. Sadly, people are more sophisticated these days, and they will only take US dollars.

Here in Vancouver, eighths are also acceptable, but only if it is locally grown. None of that crappy Mexican bunk...

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

My god! It's the most Dilbert-esque solution I've heard thus far! I like it. Thus, PD could simply chill and take his time reviewing his list of chocolate-covered multi-amputee midget pr0n sites.

Rank Amateur:
If Peter were the real Devil, he'd tell the Vancouver site that their chance to work on a new exciting project depending on completing a successful handover to the Toronto in two weeks. Then he'd fire the lot. When the rock stars told him the product couldn't possibly be finished in time, he's say, "Screw it. Just make a pretty-looking UI to show the client in 6 months." When the client says the app doesn't work, claim their hardware is too slow, but for half the price of upgrading, he'll "optimize" the code. Promise the rock stars big bonuses to make the UI actually do something in a year, while secretly building a dossier on each regarding misusing company resources (e.g., looking at ESPN online during lunchbreaks). With delivery of a working product, deny the bonuses on the basis of the dossiers and pocket the cash. There should be some blackmailing and sexual harassment involved too.
--RA

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Rank Amateur:
If Peter were the real Devil, he'd tell the Vancouver site that their chance to work on a new exciting project depending on completing a successful handover to the Toronto in two weeks. Then he'd fire the lot. When the rock stars told him the product couldn't possibly be finished in time, he's say, "Screw it. Just make a pretty-looking UI to show the client in 6 months." When the client says the app doesn't work, claim their hardware is too slow, but for half the price of upgrading, he'll "optimize" the code. Promise the rock stars big bonuses to make the UI actually do something in a year, while secretly building a dossier on each regarding misusing company resources (e.g., looking at ESPN online during lunchbreaks). With delivery of a working product, deny the bonuses on the basis of the dossiers and pocket the cash. There should be some blackmailing and sexual harassment involved too.
--RA

Any relation to the BOFH by any chance??

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

How do you know the 0 in $10M isn't significant?

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Umm... $10M CAD would be 1 sig. fig therefore if we were gonna maintain sig figs, it would be only $100 USD
I'd argue that $10M can be seen as 2 sig. figs. 1 sig. fig would be written as $1*10^7.

Yes...

Anonymous:

So properly, $140.

No! That's three sig. figs.... it would be 14e1. Goodness.

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
KattMan:
<grammernazialert>
It does annoy me how educated people here can't get the basics of language down, and yes it is only English speakers that butcher English in this fashion.
They should have demanded that they made it open source so they could have gotten a copy of it for free.
</grammernazialert>

<grammernazialert>
"gotten" That's a big sad face. Use of that word makes me shudder.
"They should have demanded that they made it open source so they could get a copy of it for free."
</grammernazialert>

"have gotten" and "get" are not the same tense. "have gotten", if I recall correctly, is past perfect or some other abomination of 9th grade English class education. As is "have demanded". So, they match. "get" is present/future tense, and should generally never be matched with past perfect or past conditional.

Your sentence makes me shudder slightly, as the tense mixing is iffy at best. "Gotten" is an awkward word, but the advantage of KattMan's sentence is that the tenses are matched.

Of course the third verb construct ("they made it open source") is iffy at best in both cases. I think the proper case would be present/future ("they make it open source") as it is an action in the future of the timeframe of its actor.

Hm, I'm not a native speaker, but I suspect that "made" was not intended as perfect tense but as a subjunctive. If so, it was still not correct however ;o) Your proposition "...that they make it..." would in fact be the correct subjunctive form (albeit looking quite the same as the infinitive/present tense form), although most people would perhaps prefer "...that they should make it..."

I'm not sure if the form "...that they had made it..." would also be correct somehow (perhaps that was intended in the first place) but as far as I can recall my school wisdom, the subjunctive always takes the infinitive form, for all persons and regardless of tense.

Native speaker, anyone? ;o)

In any case, here's my vote for the mostest properlified grammer sentance:

They should have demanded that they make it open source so they could have gotten a copy of it for free.

Of course, this is way off-topic, but as it's been shown that this WTF was butchered and half made-up (especially the part about another Canadian company purchasing it for a dollar) that's about all that the remainder of this comment area is good for. So, let's get us a good old fashioned grammar war going! We've got to fill this whitespace up somehow!

most boring captcha so far: tps

WIldpeaks · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Why is captcha the captcha text?

You were caught in an endless loop, causing you to use all ressources available and making the Universe implode.

You may log off now.

MisterBee · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

#ifndef RANT

#define RANT

What has happened to The Daily WTF today? It seems that the community has started to regress into flame wars (I think that's what the kids are calling it these days)!

Probably an indication of the quality of the story today :-(

Please bring back more SODs!

#endif

/* If you can still read this then it's not too late for you */

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Alex Papadimoulis:
$10M CAD (or, $138.22 USD)

People in glass houses....

1CAD = 0.87USD

1GBP = 1.96USD

Hint: see what these figures were say five years ago (or even a year ago)...

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Sabotage doesnt mean they have to destroy the code. By sitting around and not doing anything, thats sabotaging the project. Your boss tells you to code a certain thing - you dont do it.

You're Scheming On A Thing; That's Sabotage

ithika · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

I prefer to believe they hit their computers with clogs. It has a far more satisfying mental image than "sitting around and not doing anything". Also, I never played Diablo II so I can't imagine that either.

But the clogs: that I can picture.

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Indeed. I used to make exactly that sort of joke... until the dollar started to tank and made it pretty embarrassing if anyone from Europe was around when I said it...

triso · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

I bet it was a WTF type of meeting between the two CEOs:

CEO1: Well, we're bailing out. Are you interested in our assets?

CEO2: Yes we are. What's the price?

CEO1: 10 million dollars.

CEO2: How about one dollar...Canadian.

CEO1: I'll take it. Pass the pepper, eh?

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

KattMan:
Anonymous:

The real WTF is that the company paid one Canadian dollar for the junked up software. They should of demanded that they made it open source so they could of gotten a copy of it for free.
Captcha: creative

<grammernazialert>
It does annoy me how educated people here can't get the basics of language down, and yes it is only English speakers that butcher English in this fashion.
They should have demanded that they made it open source so they could have gotten a copy of it for free.
</grammernazialert>

to say nothing about conflating the distinct (albeit often coincidental) concepts of open source and "getting it for free" ...

captcha: tps (yes, i got the memo)

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
The real WTF is that the company paid one Canadian dollar for the junked up software. They should of demanded that they made it open source so they could of gotten a copy of it for free.
Captcha: creative

No. Given that he know the origional developers have done some sabotage to the source code, release it open source would ruin the company's reputation further. (btw, do they have reputation in the beginning of the incident?)

2006-12-07 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:

Google gave me this:
10 000 000 Canadian dollars = 8.74125874 million U.S. dollars

No, no... I've seen Canadian money -- completely worthless. Real Canadians use cases of Labatt's as the official currency.

I'm reminded of the old joke, "What's the similarity between the Zloty and the US dollar? Both are equally useless in Poland" ; )

tin · 2006-12-07 Reply Admin

triso:
I'll take it. Pass the pepper, eh?

I'm from Canada and they say I'm slow, eh.

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Man, I'm amazed by the number of people who seem to have been offended by the CAD joke. Do people just not recognize blatant hyperbole anymore?

mojo · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

I think the first commens become sillier each day, yesterday the thing with the brackets and today the CAD stuff ... let's be careful not make the comments the bigger WTF than the actual one ;-)

greetings from euro-land (http://www.google.com/search?q=1+EUR+to+CAD)

mojo

mercurysquad · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Oh goodness! 10 million CAD$ are equal to only 138.22 US $ ?

I didn't know the Canadian economy was so bad...... ;)

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
KattMan:
<grammernazialert>
It does annoy me how educated people here can't get the basics of language down, and yes it is only English speakers that butcher English in this fashion.
They should have demanded that they made it open source so they could have gotten a copy of it for free.
</grammernazialert>
shoulda, coulda, woulda. Personally I prefer should've

And that's not to mention that "grammer" should be spelled "grammar," as that happens to be what the orthography of the english language dictates!

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
KattMan:
<grammernazialert>
It does annoy me how educated people here can't get the basics of language down, and yes it is only English speakers that butcher English in this fashion.
They should have demanded that they made it open source so they could have gotten a copy of it for free.
</grammernazialert>
<grammernazialert>
"gotten" That's a big sad face. Use of that word makes me shudder.
"They should have demanded that they made it open source so they could get a copy of it for free."
</grammernazialert>

"have gotten" and "get" are not the same tense. "have gotten", if I recall correctly, is past perfect or some other abomination of 9th grade English class education. As is "have demanded". So, they match. "get" is present/future tense, and should generally never be matched with past perfect or past conditional.

Your sentence makes me shudder slightly, as the tense mixing is iffy at best. "Gotten" is an awkward word, but the advantage of KattMan's sentence is that the tenses are matched.

Of course the third verb construct ("they made it open source") is iffy at best in both cases. I think the proper case would be present/future ("they make it open source") as it is an action in the future of the timeframe of its actor.

They should have demanded that they make it open source so they could have received a copy of it for free.

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

They should have demanded that they make it open source so they could have received a copy of it for free.

This is not funny when the bold doesn't show up.

icelava · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Alex, i'd like to see management/work process WTFs placed into their own forums. I dunno about the rest, but i feel thedailywtf core forum has been "contaminated" with the rise of such topics amongst the pure technical ones.

Management blunders are nice to read about once in awhile, but the gem to me about this site has always been the raw technical travesties committed by supposed computing professionals.

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

10 000 000 Canadian dollars = 4.43898981 million British pounds

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

It certainly works UK£

I guess using the current rates the $138.22 would be covered by the change in my pocket!

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

icelava:
Alex, i'd like to see management/work process WTFs placed into their own forums. I dunno about the rest, but i feel thedailywtf core forum has been "contaminated" with the rise of such topics amongst the pure technical ones.
Management blunders are nice to read about once in awhile, but the gem to me about this site has always been the raw technical travesties committed by supposed computing professionals.

not to mention that all the stories are at least half bullshit and made up. Sure finctional stories can be fun but I rather laugh at real life code WTFs that actually have existed/exist in some system.

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
The real WTF is that the company paid one Canadian dollar for the junked up software. They should of demanded that they made it open source so they could of gotten a copy of it for free.
The real WTF is that so many people here spew this stupid "the real WTF" crap every time anything is posted.

No the real wtf is people complaining about other people spewing "the real WTF" crap by saying "the real WTF" is.

oooh, captcha: wtf

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

MisterBee:
What has happened to The Daily WTF today? It seems that the community has started to regress into flame wars (I think that's what the kids are calling it these days)!

*GASP* Flamewars. A totally unheard of concept on the internet. What a catchy new slangword. I think I'll use it all my posts from now on. ;}

As I'm warming myself by the light burning gall, vitriol and undiluted bitterness I just would like to add that VI sux and Emacs rules, AOL is for lusers, my *nix is better than your *nix is better than Windows, Vb programmers should be taken out back and shot....

Please forgive me if I missed any inflammatory comments. I will get to insulting you as soon as possible.

on a serioous note (because I just can't seem to stop myself) people like to start flamewars. Its entertainment. It need not be based on knowledge, facts or anything related to the real world. It's what the internet was invented for. All other uses of internet are secondary and exist only for adding fuel to the fire. If you don't like it, stop reading now. Of course, people posting against flamewars is another perfectly valid use. As is people posting against people posting against flamewars.

MrBester · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Multiple subject "they"? It's alright to use that in colloqialistic verbiage, but written English requires that the ambiguity between subjects be removed.

My take: They should have demanded that it be made open source so that they could receive a copy of it for free.

donazea · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
nothing on the internet should ever be taken seriously
Yup, that pretty much sums it up right there.

Am I the only one left that still cares that WWW != Internet?

That has to be one of my biggest pet peeves, having been around since well before the Web. Sigh, I guess I'm just an old fogie.

donazea · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Edit time expired... Please ignore the previous post, I foolishly posted this prior getting to the part of the thread where things went OT.

On the topic of syntax and semantics, what would PLs be like if they were used and abused in a manner akin to English in this thread?

Apologies in advance for any spelling errors, grammatical errors, and of course, further WTFs.

Alchymist · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

cconroy:

I'm wondering about "Peter Devil"... was his real name Paul Satan or something?

I suspect the devil's in the Peter Principle detail.

Alchymist · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
"gotten" That's a big sad face. Use of that word makes me shudder.
It's been an accepted part of English for a few hundred years. Next thou'lt be complaining about singular 'you'.

I find gotten ugly, but I haven't forgotten that there's at least one word in common usage which uses the same style of past participle. I agree it's not a grammar error.

Alchymist · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Bob Janova:
Anonymous:
['Gotten'] has been an accepted part of ~~English~~American for a few hundred years. Next thou'lt be complaining about singular 'you'.
Fixed that for you. I'm not even going to read the 'true' version of this story, I prefer to believe that this WTF is entirely true, because it's a downright awesome one.

Go on, read the true story. In some ways it's even better, although Mr Devil comes off slightly less incompetent & the developers slightly more so.

Alchymist · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

How about

They should have demanded that they make it open source so they could have ~~gotten~~ a copy of it for free.

or

The party of the first part should have demanded that the party of the second part make it open source so that the party of the first part could have a copy of it for free.

Avoids all that ambiguity about 'they'

bhandy · 2006-12-08 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
It's just a shame that the original story got distorted by whoever edit this site... For the one that are really interested in the REAL story (Which is less spectacular but closer to reality), you can go to my blog: http://dailyitstories.blogspot.com/

I found your blog post to be much more interesting.

2006-12-08 Reply Admin

bhandy:
Anonymous:
It's just a shame that the original story got distorted by whoever edit this site... For the one that are really interested in the REAL story (Which is less spectacular but closer to reality), you can go to my blog: http://dailyitstories.blogspot.com/

I found your blog post to be much more interesting.

]

yah

no quack

The Dreaded Peter Devil

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