• Lone Marauder (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    It goes nicely with your C-grade spine.

    Certainly you mean "C-Level-Executive" spine, right?

  • two (unregistered)

    TRWTF is using a PhD as a network admin ...

  • JSelf (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    JSelf:
    Am I the only one that thought this was related to diablo 2?

    Right publisher, wrong game. You get half credit for your "Obscure Video Game Reference" thread.

    Oh, I should have paid attention to the SC reference. Ok, I approve the title for this WTF. Nice one.

  • Me (unregistered) in reply to Steenbergh

    Or you can be friends with the network admin for the comsci department and get the admin password!

    Captcha: damnum Usage: damnum rules, they only get in the way

  • Andy (unregistered)

    Yes, that Andy.

    The writers on this site alter stories from the original submission (more so than I expected), mostly for anonymity and creative purposes. Remy's version perfectly captures the essence of the story (and reads much better than my version), but some commentators seem to be getting caught up on unimportant details, so let me clear up a couple things:

    1. First of all, though some of the real details are different, this did happen; I was berated for storing "course assignments" on the network drive because some idiot with authority thought they were games.

    2. The real events did not take place in college specifically, although it translated to the setting quite well. Either way, if you're getting hung up on the idea of this being a WTFU story, you can relax.

    3. TRWTF was the network admin who reported me, who was not mentioned in Remy's version. Obviously "The Dean" was meant to take his place as the moron-who-can't-tell-computer-games-from-other-files, and he did so magnificently.

    4. I did not "receive a C-" although the potential certainly existed for things to play out that way. After I explained myself, I was eventually cleared of all charges, though was still ordered to delete the "computer games" from the network drive. That's a much more boring ending though, don't you agree?

    5. Yes, a small few of us ran games off ZIP disks. It was the 90s, and it worked brilliantly.

    6. We did play some Diablo, but no Diablo 2. Sadly it wasn't out yet. So the title is accurate; there was no cow level.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    I remember in highschool, we had a technology class. In this class there was a flight simulator game, Sim City game, and the Incredible Machine game.

    I put them all on my Network drive. The next day I was called in to the office and basically told. "You won't get in trouble, but you're not allowed to have those there, go delete them now"

    And that was the end of my WTF story.

    Long-many years ago when the PC was new-and-all, we had a version of Pascal to evaluate at work which had a chess program as an example in its s/w bundle. Some time later, it came to the attention of management that some of the naughty programmers had games on their PCs. Anyway ... but you can see where this is going.

  • Fred (unregistered) in reply to Andy
    Andy:
    Yes, that Andy.
    So:

    1. They weren't course assignments, they were your work product.

    2. It wasn't at college, it was at your job.

    3. The villain wasn't clueless management, but should-have-a-clue tech.

    4. You didn't get a mediocre grade and graduate; you got to keep your job.

    And all that fluff about being your last semester and an easy class... fabricated.

    See why these DWTF stories aren't passing our bullshit detectors? They're 90% made up.

    Indeed, the only truth in the story boils down to "fool misinterprets file names, goes bananas".

    Now that could have been a story, if it had been told right.

  • Bosshog (unregistered)

    I got into computer programming because I wanted to make games, and I'm sure a lot of these kids were the same. So in a way, this is a bit like English students being told off for reading books.

  • anonymous coward (unregistered) in reply to Andy
    Andy:
    2) The real events did not take place in college specifically, although it translated to the setting quite well.
    Thanks! That does make a lot more sense now. In college, even the largest and most uncaring college, there's always someone higher up you can complain to - after all, you're paying the school decent money to be there. So it did indeed sound like the mythical person in the story just had no spine, to blindly accept the punishment for the non-crime.

    But I'm given to understand that out in the real world, there's no such guarantee.

    Anyway, I don't think that necessarily is "only following the letter of the law, while breaking its spirit". At least where I went to college, that was the law, and it was meant exactly that: you could play whatever games you wanted on the computer lab PCs, as long as you could run them without needing to bother IT to install them for you (and student users didn't have admin rights). Wasn't to keep us from playing games, just to keep us from bothering IT all the time.

  • Jack (unregistered)

    At my school, we kept the favorite forbidden game backed up (multiple copies) to punched-card decks, because the admins would delete it whenever they found it on the hard disk.

    Of course, they could tell whenever we ran it because it basically DOS'd their mainframe. I can just imagine some poor tech frantically doing directory listings on an unresponsive system, searching hopelessly for a file that didn't exist. (This system would let you load source code, compile it, and run it all from your "workspace" which was temporary memory unless you said "Save".)

    It never occurred to them to treat the symptom -- not let one program have 100% of the CPU -- instead of stomping around with their awesome file-kill powers.

  • Ken (unregistered)

    The Dean never heard of bubble sort? What kind of wtf school is this where the comp sci dean doesn't know what bubble sort might mean?

  • Bushea (unregistered) in reply to Ken B.
    Ken B.:
    J.:
    That, and a written apology, emailed to my office, and I think we can put this whole ugly incident behind us.
    I would have considered sending a letter of apology saying "I am sorry that I did the course assignments".

    Totally would have considered it.

    From: $student To: $dean Cc: $professor

    Dear $dean,

    I am sorry for using the school's computers and resources for my required class assignments. As per your orders, I have deleted all of my required assignments from the network. Rest assured that I will do my best in the future to not use school resources for my assignments, and inform my professors that this is under your orders.

    Sincerely, $student

    One step further.. require that the Dean provide in writing the demand to remove and apologize. Then publish both written letters in College yearbook, local newspaper and - to top it off - drop a copy on his desk.

  • (cs) in reply to Fred
    Fred:
    Andy:
    Yes, that Andy.
    So:

    1. They weren't course assignments, they were your work product.

    2. It wasn't at college, it was at your job.

    3. The villain wasn't clueless management, but should-have-a-clue tech.

    4. You didn't get a mediocre grade and graduate; you got to keep your job. .

    Actually, it was high school, not work. I moved it to college because, well, I failed reading comprehension, and by the time I was done and noticed my mistake, I decided to leave it because it worked well.

    And yes, I did make up the bad grade bit. That's actually based on something that happened to me in college which bore some similarities. Except I was way more of a moron.

    //Also, if you read the HTML comments, there's a specific reason I made the grade what it was.

  • Design Pattern (unregistered) in reply to Samuel Henderson
    Samuel Henderson:
    But really, what kind of a student would just give up that easy (especially when it means going from an A to a C).
    TRTWF is that Remy Porter bowytzed the article!

    From the HTML source

    Remy Porter:
    <!-- HAHA- C-DASH in C++. I'm a comedy genius. -->
    I don't think so, Tim!

    (no cow level, but actually unicorns!)

  • Pekka (unregistered) in reply to Bosshog
    Bosshog:
    I got into computer programming because I wanted to make games, and I'm sure a lot of these kids were the same. So in a way, this is a bit like English students being told off for reading books.

    This actually happened to me in high school. I was sent to be disciplined for reading Vonnegut in my English class. For some reason this was considered a problem.

  • Larry (unregistered) in reply to Bosshog
    Bosshog:
    I got into computer programming because I wanted to make games, and I'm sure a lot of these kids were the same. So in a way, this is a bit like English students being told off for reading books.
    I learned more about how computers "think" (pedantic, stubborn, but obedient) from playing games than from my professors' assignments. But hey, we're not there to learn, are we? Just march through the mill and get your rubber stamp, so that future employers will know you are willing to march through their mill.
  • Jay (unregistered)

    Oh, here we go again. "This story can't possibly be true, because for something like that to have happened, a person in authority would have had to do something stupid and then refuse to admit his mistake. Or that a person wrongfully accused of breaking the rules would meekly accept an unjust punishment. And the idea of anything like THAT happenning is just unbelievable."

    My next rebuttal will be on those crazy stories about this supposed Hitler person. Like, you really expect me to believe that there are people in the world who are not nice and sweet and loving? How absurd!

  • Fred (unregistered) in reply to Remy Porter
    Remy Porter:
    I did make up the bad grade bit...

    //Also, if you read the HTML comments, there's a specific reason...

    Remy, I was a fan of yours when you started writing here, and I thought your early attackers were being a bit harsh. But you keep repeating certain, um, behaviors and I'm starting to think they may have been right all along.

  • English Man (unregistered) in reply to Larry
    Larry:
    Bosshog:
    I got into computer programming because I wanted to make games, and I'm sure a lot of these kids were the same. So in a way, this is a bit like English students being told off for reading books.
    I learned more about how computers "think" (pedantic, stubborn, but obedient) from playing games than from my professors' assignments. But hey, we're not there to learn, are we? Just march through the mill and get your rubber stamp, so that future employers will know you are willing to march through their mill.
    You're supposed to self-study at college. Reading books or playing games might be valuable but do it on your own time... college-scheduled time you pay for is for structured work alongside your self-study.
  • (cs)

    TRWTF is the quote, "Andy deserved to graduate."

    So after learning Computer Science for three years, you take a first-year class (the course material for which you've already been taught), and that's why you deserve to graduate?

    WHAT. THE FUCK.

    (The Other RWTF is not proofreading TDWTF articles before publishing them. Sure, it makes an ironic statement about how spellcheck won't tell you that you're using the wrong word on a website that's all about technology not working right, but it's getting old. Case in point: "doing any effort".)

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    Oh, here we go again. "This story can't possibly be true, because for something like that to have happened, a person in authority would have had to do something stupid and then refuse to admit his mistake. Or that a person wrongfully accused of breaking the rules would meekly accept an unjust punishment. And the idea of anything like THAT happenning is just unbelievable."

    My next rebuttal will be on those crazy stories about this supposed Hitler person. Like, you really expect me to believe that there are people in the world who are not nice and sweet and loving? How absurd!

    I love his multiple performances as "The Tramp". It's a shame that Bill Cosby bought the rights to all those films and refuses to let anyone purchase or play them.

  • (cs)
    Remy Porter:
    I moved it to college because, well, I failed reading comprehension...
    Hey Remy critics, guess what I just found... a confession, of sorts.
  • Andy (unregistered) in reply to Fred
    Fred:
    1. They weren't course assignments, they were your work product.
    Not quite. "Course assignments" is appropriate. Optional exercises from the textbook if you want to be accurate.
    2. It wasn't at college, it was at your job.
    As Remy pointed out, it was actually high school. Which should explain why we played computer games every day.
    3. The villain wasn't clueless management, but should-have-a-clue tech.
    Correct, although the "tech" had a surprising amount of authority (due to his computer "expertise").
    4. You didn't get a mediocre grade and graduate; you got to keep your job.
    Again, it wasn't a job. But you're correct, in the end I endured no punishment; I did however have to delete the files anyway (because I was unable to convince the network admin that they weren't games).
    And all that fluff about being your last semester and an easy class... fabricated.
    Nope, not fabricated. It was my senior year, close to graduation, and yes, the class was very easy.
    See why these DWTF stories aren't passing our bullshit detectors? They're 90% made up.
    I'd estimate about 10% made up. The problem is that bullshit detectors only zero in on that 10% and ignore the rest.
  • (cs) in reply to Shoruke
    Shoruke:
    Remy Porter:
    I moved it to college because, well, I failed reading comprehension...
    Hey Remy critics, guess what I just found... a confession, of sorts.

    Seriously, who hasn't failed reading comprehension?

  • Pekka (unregistered) in reply to Andy
    Andy:
    I'd estimate about 10% made up. The problem is that bullshit detectors only zero in on that 10% and ignore the rest.

    You mean to say, they detect the bullshit?

    "I'd estimate this truck is only ten percent filled with cocaine. The trouble is, your drug-sniffing dogs zero in on the ten percent and ignore the rest"

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Shoruke:
    Remy Porter:
    I moved it to college because, well, I failed reading comprehension...
    Hey Remy critics, guess what I just found... a confession, of sorts.

    Seriously, who hasn't failed reading comprehension?

    Hey! That's the combination on my luggage!

  • American Maid (unregistered) in reply to English Man
    English Man:
    Larry:
    Bosshog:
    I got into computer programming because I wanted to make games, and I'm sure a lot of these kids were the same. So in a way, this is a bit like English students being told off for reading books.
    I learned more about how computers "think" (pedantic, stubborn, but obedient) from playing games than from my professors' assignments. But hey, we're not there to learn, are we? Just march through the mill and get your rubber stamp, so that future employers will know you are willing to march through their mill.
    You're supposed to self-study at college. Reading books or playing games might be valuable but do it on your own time... college-scheduled time you pay for is for structured work alongside your self-study.

    That may be how you blokes do it at your fancy English Universities like Oxford or Yale, but we Americans like to multitask our way through courses. Why else would they encorage us to bring out laptops to every class?

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    My next rebuttal will be on those crazy stories about this supposed Hitler person. Like, you really expect me to believe that there are people in the world who are not nice and sweet and loving? How absurd!
    Godwin'd already? But the day is still young!
  • Joseph Archibald Reginald Cornwall Nesbit (deceased) (unregistered) in reply to Bince
    Bince:
    Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...

    We apologise again for the fault in the remarks. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

  • (cs)

    /delete button broken.

  • Andy (unregistered)
    The Dean (ala Remy Porter):
    Doctor Fingal, the network admin saw you playing games, and scanned your network folder.

    I don't have games in my network folder. And stop calling me "Doctor Fingal."

  • (cs) in reply to Pekka
    Pekka:
    You mean to say, they detect the bullshit?

    "I'd estimate this truck is only ten percent filled with cocaine. The trouble is, your drug-sniffing dogs zero in on the ten percent and ignore the rest"

    By your analogy, it seems you think a few minor details of a story being made up or embellished means the story in its entirety is a lie.

    Or would you prefer to revise your comment for clarity?

  • ted (unregistered) in reply to Pete

    Do you know why your buddy did this? Makes no sense and is relatively destructive. I can understand the school's reaction.

  • Royal FT (unregistered)

    I hate this made-up shit. If you have to invent a WTF (the C minus) just to have a story, then you don't have a publishable story.

  • Pekka (unregistered) in reply to boog
    boog:
    Pekka:
    You mean to say, they detect the bullshit?

    "I'd estimate this truck is only ten percent filled with cocaine. The trouble is, your drug-sniffing dogs zero in on the ten percent and ignore the rest"

    By your analogy, it seems you think a few minor details of a story being made up or embellished means the story in its entirety is a lie.

    Or would you prefer to revise your comment for clarity?

    By my analogy, people looking for bullshit are going to zero in on, for lack of a better word, the bullshit. The same way that DEA agents looking for cocaine are going to zero in on the cocaine. Could it be more clear?

    (A cargo which is ten percent cocaine is not cocaine in its entirety. A story which is ten percent bullshit is not bullshit in its entirety. And for a bonus, there's a nice distinction to be made between "bullshit" and "lie", but you'll have to read Harry Frankfurt to get it.)

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Joseph Archibald Reginald Cornwall Nesbit (deceased)
    Joseph Archibald Reginald Cornwall Nesbit (deceased):
    Bince:
    Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...

    We apologise again for the fault in the remarks. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

    This comment directed By 40 SPECIALLY TRAINED ECUADORIAN MOUNTAIN LLAMAS 6 VENEZUELAN RED LLAMAS 142 MEXICAN WHOOPING LLAMAS 14 NORTH CHILEAN GUANACOS (CLOSELY RELATED TO THE LLAMA) REG LLAMA OF BRIXTON 76000 BATTERY LLAMAS FROM "LLAMA-FRESH" FARMS NEARE PARAGUAY

  • mainframe gamer (unregistered)

    punched-card deck

    xyzzy

  • wheaties (unregistered) in reply to Alex
    Alex:
    I don't know who is more foolish -- the Principal for being so ignorant of the curriculum of his classes; the teacher for giving Andy a C- and not asking where all his programs were; or Andy for just rolling over and accepting the punishment for an offense he didn't commit.

    The story started off just like my senior year and ended so absurdly as to remove all likelihood of being true.

    Sadly, no. Truth is so absurd that it makes fiction seem eloquent.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon

    I'm sure there's teachers that stupid out there, but the story doesn't even say anything about even trying to explain to the professor. There's a big difference between "I had to delete the files and didn't say anything and then I failed" and "I informed the professor of the situation and gave him the zip disk, but he gave me a C- anyways".

    One is a belivable response. The other is missing the entire end of the story.

  • (cs)

    TRWTF is "bird classes". I've never heard this particular expression in my life. Anybody else?

  • (cs)

    TUWTF is that this teacher, and by extension, school, openly support gambling.

  • grizz (unregistered)

    It seems to me that a lot of the complaints about stories that trip the BS meter end up being due to anonymizing and/or "punching up" the original story. Here's an idea: don't do that. I don't think many TDWTF readers come here mistaking it for a speculative fiction web site, so the stories shouldn't need to be changed to give them snappier endings. Also, if a submitter feels their story needs to be changed to protect the guilty/innocent, shouldn't it be up to them to ensure it is done properly? It would probably be a good idea to change specific person and company/institution names, but beyond that let things stand.

  • Toby (unregistered)

    Am I the only one that was expecting a copy-on-write joke?

  • You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike... (unregistered) in reply to mainframe gamer
    mainframe gamer:
    > punched-card deck

    xyzzy

    Am I the only person that read this and thought "plugh"?

  • (cs) in reply to Pekka
    Pekka:
    By my analogy, people looking for bullshit are going to zero in on, for lack of a better word, the bullshit. The same way that DEA agents looking for cocaine are going to zero in on the cocaine. Could it be more clear?
    Fair enough.

    I suppose I misunderstood because he implied that the 10% of bullshit in the story was insignificant/irrelevant as the overall story was fairly accurate, whereas in your analogy, 10% (or any detectable percent) of cargo being cocaine is always significant, regardless of whatever else the truck is transporting.

    Also, I was confused because his comment was a rebuttal to someone claiming that 90% of the story was made up; he was pointing out that it was actually 10%, implying that it seems like more because of the bullshit detector zeroing in on the 10%. Of course, drug-sniffing-dogs are looking for drugs because any amount is a big deal, but I suppose it wouldn't matter if the authorities were arresting you for having 9 times the cocaine you actually did have in your cargo.

    Thanks for clarifying.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    This comment directed By 40 SPECIALLY TRAINED ECUADORIAN MOUNTAIN LLAMAS 6 VENEZUELAN RED LLAMAS 142 MEXICAN WHOOPING LLAMAS 14 NORTH CHILEAN GUANACOS (CLOSELY RELATED TO THE LLAMA) REG LLAMA OF BRIXTON 76000 BATTERY LLAMAS FROM "LLAMA-FRESH" FARMS NEARE PARAGUAY
    Are you morons going to write out the entire script? We get it, it's the subtitles from the opening credits.

    God, it's worse than puns. It's all I can do to stop my head from exploding when I'm forced to think about the number of unfunny dweebs being given a voice on the internet.

    Don't you ever wonder why you kept getting beaten up in school? This is why.

  • JSug (unregistered)

    Aside from the part about a dean asking him to delete "the games" off his network share, this sounds an awful lot like what was going on in my college CS department in the late '90s:

    • Main programming language changed from Pascal to C++, check
    • Networked computer lab with little supervision, check
    • Bored seniors playing LAN games, check

    Though I'm pretty sure neither Starcraft or Quake 2 were out at the time. I think there was quite a lot of Doom, Doom 2, Descent, and probably even some NetTrek. I suppose this sort of thing was going on all over, and probably continues today.

  • MuTaTeD (unregistered)

    A true story that happened to yours truly In my final year of the CS program at the University where we had Windows based network and exchange emails tied to our accounts, I once forgot to sign out after working in the lab (or may be some stupid program stuck) when going home (I know my mistake not checking if it logged out completely). Anyway a friend of mine sitting next to me at the time noticed and opened my email account and sent an email in which I apparently abused myself to six fellow friends. Any way next morning I come in as we had a lab scheduled and was surprised to find that my account was locked out, I went to the administrator and asked why was it locked, he said mass abusive mailing (one touchly feely guy reported it), By the way I had noticed that the machine i tried to long into, gave me an error that the keyylogger service failed to start.

    Now the administrator said that you mass emailed from your account and I said no, and he said that you gave the password to some one else and I said no and then I said that there are keyloggers installed on machines and maybe thats how someone knew my password and he is like there is no way that a keylogger is installed on any of the computers in his labs and I said I can take you to the machine rite now. So I am with the admin and he asks me to login, I tell him that login your self as my account is locked, remember but he is too afraid so he asks a passing student to login.

    Anyway the same message comes up and now he is like that you are part of the gang that install keyloggers on the network machines and now there is a falling out in your gang and some one has hacked ur account, how else would you know that there is keylogger installed on this system. And tell me the names of all your gang members or else your account is locked for atleast a month and I am also fwding a case for academic waring etc etc.

    So next day I had a meeting with my professor (who happened to overlook all the lab stuff etc) and he asked what happened to the task that I assigned you and I was like my account was locked and told him the whole story, so he calls in the admin and bullshits him rite there with me sitting in the office. Needless to say my account was unblocked instantly...

    Next time around I was searching for some music by I dont even remember who and I felt a tap on my shoulder and lo and behold the admin is standing there and asks me what are you doing and I kept my cool and said just researching for my French class ;) Never had my account blocked again for the rest of my time in the University and the admin left soon after that

  • (cs) in reply to grizz
    grizz:
    It seems to me that a lot of the complaints about stories that trip the BS meter end up being due to anonymizing and/or "punching up" the original story. Here's an idea: don't do that. I don't think many TDWTF readers come here mistaking it for a speculative fiction web site, so the stories shouldn't need to be changed to give them snappier endings.
    Unfortunately, when they don't give the story a snappier ending, people complain about it having a weak ending.

    Personally, I mostly agree with you. Mostly. But at the same time I come here well aware that there will probably be minor inaccuracies in the retelling, even though the overall story will be roughly the same as what was submitted. So I don't get all bent out of shape when one little thing doesn't sound right; I just make a mental note that it's probably not important.

  • JSelf (unregistered) in reply to Fred
    Fred:
    Remy Porter:
    I did make up the bad grade bit...

    //Also, if you read the HTML comments, there's a specific reason...

    Remy, I was a fan of yours when you started writing here, and I thought your early attackers were being a bit harsh. But you keep repeating certain, um, behaviors and I'm starting to think they may have been right all along.

    I liked the story. And don't stop the artistic flare.

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