• Matt (unregistered) in reply to American Maid
    American Maid:
    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?

    Agreed (I'm commenting on this from my laptop in my CS "Intro to Data Structures" class. We're about two thirds of the way through the course and I'm finally starting to pick up material I didn't know already. I guess programming for five years prior will do that.

  • EngleBart (unregistered) in reply to Dan
    Dan:
    Why didn't he talk to his professor and him talk to the dean? Or at least tell the professor what happened and turn in the assignments another way?
    It was his last semester... He was graduating... unless it would have bumped his GPA a huge amount, it was not worth the hassle for him or for his departing professor.

    If he had received a grade which would have prevented him from graduating (like an F) He would have been calling student ombudsmen, attorneys and Guido.

  • Jack (unregistered) in reply to mainframe gamer
    mainframe gamer:
    > punched-card deck

    xyzzy

    No, that wasn't it. Adventure was another favorite, but it didn't devour CPU the way our "card" game did.

  • Anon (unregistered)

    TRWTF is receiving a C- in a C++ class.

  • grote (unregistered) 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. 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.
    I agree with grizz.

    Except, he probably should have anonymized his name a little better.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Steenbergh
    Steenbergh:
    If you suck up to the network admin, he actually lets you play Doom on his LAN. Worked in my high school anyway.

    If you are the network admin, you get to play whatever you want on your LAN. Worked in my last two jobs, anyway.

  • (cs) in reply to Ken
    Ken:
    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?

    A college with a law school.

  • (cs) in reply to MuTaTeD
    MuTaTeD:
    A true story that happened to yours truly

    PROTIP: If you tell a story in the first person, you're implying that the story is true and happened to you. Going out of your way to actually state both those things beforehand makes it sound like one or both of those claims are actually lies.

  • (cs) in reply to shotcircut
    shotcircut:
    Or... here's a crazy idea. Create a password protected zip called, "C++ assignments" and give the password to the professor.

    I'm sorry, but this is a little bogus.

    It doesn't pass a smell test, that's for sure.

  • sino (unregistered) in reply to grote
    grote:
    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. 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.
    I agree with grizz.

    Except, he probably should have anonymized his name a little better.

    Pssst... That was actually Dot Com who posted as Grizz. Pretty clever, yeah?

  • ÃÆâ€â„ (unregistered)

    Damnit Remy Martin, enough with your gay unicorns and rainbows. It's bad enough that you have to give us a bad story, but the gayness is too much.

  • Nome de Plume (unregistered) in reply to MacHaggis
    MacHaggis:
    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 real problem here is that people don't make an effort anymore in making up credible sounding stories

    It's very common for CS professors to automate assignments. The professor's program didn't find any C++ files named X, and gave him no grades.

  • ideo (unregistered) in reply to Aaron
    Aaron:
    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.

    I never got beat up in school, and I'm enjoying this. Especially the aggro reaction to it.

    Hurr-Durr.

    Oooh, Igottanidea! Now yell at them for the bunnies, too!

    Ooh, or post the xkcd making fun of people quoting verbatim the work of a comedy troupe known for their random and spontaneous improvisational ass-hattery.

    That'll show 'em!

  • u mad? (unregistered) in reply to Aaron
    Aaron:
    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.

    Wi sø serious?

    Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yer?

    See the løveli lakes

    The wonderful telephøne system

    And mani interesting furry animals

  • cpp (unregistered) in reply to boog
    boog:
    Unfortunately, when they don't give the story a snappier ending, people complain about it having a weak ending.

    The story here breaks down to the following:

    1. Student is good at programming, does his assignments
    2. Staff mistake his assignments for being games and ask him to remove them
    3. Student is punished for removing his assignments as he was instructed to do

    Had it been true, that would be quite a good story. But without the made up part (3) I think you will agree that it is pretty lame.

    If you have to fabricate a punchline to make it interesting, then it probably wasn't a good story to have selected in the first place.

    If we can't believe that a story is true (and from the comments here it is quite clear that we can't), then just what are we supposed to be thinking? "OMG, EVEN THOUGH I KNOW VERY LITTLE OF THIS STORY IS TRUE, JUST HOW ON EARTH COULD SOMEONE HAVE FICTICIOUSLY BEEN SO SILLY!?!? THIS IS SO FUNNY THAT I'LL HAVE TO GO AND TELL MY FRIENDS ABOUT THIS CRAZY EVENT WHICH I KNOW DIDN'T REALLY HAPPEN."

  • Sam (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    Steenbergh:
    If you suck up to the network admin, he actually lets you play Doom on his LAN. Worked in my high school anyway.
    If you are the network admin, you get to play whatever you want on your LAN. Worked in my last two jobs, anyway.
    Let me guess... two months on each job?
  • (cs) in reply to cpp
    cpp:
    "...THIS IS SO FUNNY THAT I'LL HAVE TO GO AND TELL MY FRIENDS ABOUT THIS CRAZY EVENT WHICH I KNOW DIDN'T REALLY HAPPEN."

    You have friends?

  • ÃÆâ€â„ (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    cpp:
    "...THIS IS SO FUNNY THAT I'LL HAVE TO GO AND TELL MY FRIENDS ABOUT THIS CRAZY EVENT WHICH I KNOW DIDN'T REALLY HAPPEN."

    You have friends?

    Hey, if gay Remy Martin with his gay unicorns somehow has a wife, anyone can make at least one friend. You can't get worse than Remy Martin when it comes to being social.
  • anon (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    isn't this the business model of the RIAA?

  • (cs) in reply to cpp
    cpp:
    The story here breaks down to the following:
    1. Student is good at programming, does his assignments
    2. Staff mistake his assignments for being games and ask him to remove them
    3. Student is punished for removing his assignments as he was instructed to do

    Had it been true, that would be quite a good story. But without the made up part (3) I think you will agree that it is pretty lame.

    If you have to fabricate a punchline to make it interesting, then blah blah let's-beat-a-dead-horse blah...

    Nowhere in my comment did I outright disagree with grizz. All I did was point out the fact that "letting things stand" doesn't satisfy everyone either, and included a link to support my claim.
  • Erik (unregistered)

    Where's this student going to get in life if he's so easily pushed aside? He should have asserted himself and not left the office until the Dean understood the programs were written by the student as a class assignment.

    Is the reader supposed to appreciate the student's cleverness? Because all I see is timidity.

  • neminem (unregistered)

    Ah. As it turns out, it makes perfect sense that this was senior year of high school, too - from what I can recall, the courses I took and grades I got second semester senior year of high school meant absolutely nothing to anyone, ever (as long as they weren't failing). Having already been accepted to college by that point... so a teacher does something stupid, who cares? You're leaving and never coming back anyway. I probably would've argued anyway on sheer principle, but only because I'm stubborn. But you'd be way more likely to cause future problems for yourself by being suspended for fighting back, than you are for accepting a mediocre grade for something not your fault. Yay high school.

    Also makes perfect sense that the head of IT would be completely incompetent. She sure was at the high school I went to, anyway - I have to assume she got the job solely by virtue of being the only person interested, because she certainly wasn't qualified. I doubt IT jobs at high schools pay very well, nor are they likely particularly rewarding.

  • ÃÆâ€â„ (unregistered) in reply to neminem
    neminem:
    Ah. As it turns out, it makes perfect sense that this was senior year of high school, too - from what I can recall, the courses I took and grades I got second semester senior year of high school meant absolutely nothing to anyone, ever (as long as they weren't failing). Having already been accepted to college by that point... so a teacher does something stupid, who cares? You're leaving and never coming back anyway. I probably would've argued anyway on sheer principle, but only because I'm stubborn. But you'd be way more likely to cause future problems for yourself by being suspended for fighting back, than you are for accepting a mediocre grade for something not your fault. Yay high school.

    Also makes perfect sense that the head of IT would be completely incompetent. She sure was at the high school I went to, anyway - I have to assume she got the job solely by virtue of being the only person interested, because she certainly wasn't qualified. I doubt IT jobs at high schools pay very well, nor are they likely particularly rewarding.

    It still gets exciting for school IT administrators. You could install software on school-issued laptops that let you spy on students in their house.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_laptops_spying_on_students

  • Bert Glanstron (unregistered)

    Dear Andy,

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

    Go away and grow up.

    Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

  • (cs) in reply to ÃÆâ€â„
    ÃÆâ€â„:
    It still gets exciting for school IT administrators. You could install software on school-issued laptops that let you spy on students in their house.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_laptops_spying_on_students

    You could. And according to your link, you could also get sued for $610k.

  • frist (unregistered)

    Frist I said

  • frist (unregistered)

    Bert, you always have to resort to name calling to make your points. I would suggest you redirect your passions in a more constructive fashion.

  • neminem (unregistered) in reply to boog
    boog:
    ÃÆâ€â„:
    It still gets exciting for school IT administrators. You could install software on school-issued laptops that let you spy on students in their house.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_laptops_spying_on_students

    You could. And according to your link, you could also get sued for $610k.
    Well, I'd argue that being sued for $610k is certainly "exciting"... "rewarding", though, not so much. (In fact, much the opposite.)

  • Rob (unregistered)

    I was threatened with expulsion because I wrote a VB6 app that would change my monitor's resolution in a VB6 programming class they offered in my high school.

    I knew I was screwed when the principal listened to my explanation of what 'screen resolution' was and said, 'SO! You were seeing parts of the screen that you WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE!'

    The world is filled with ignorant people, and lots of them are very successful/in positions of authority.

  • (cs) in reply to EngleBart
    EngleBart:
    Dan:
    Why didn't he talk to his professor and him talk to the dean? Or at least tell the professor what happened and turn in the assignments another way?
    It was his last semester... He was graduating... unless it would have bumped his GPA a huge amount, it was not worth the hassle for him or for his departing professor.

    If he had received a grade which would have prevented him from graduating (like an F) He would have been calling student ombudsmen, attorneys and Guido.

    It's not about food. It's about keeping those ants in line. -- Hopper

  • Cheong (unregistered)

    This is unbelievable.

    Given the length of elementry C++ courses at the days, the compiled size tops at 500k even with debug information.

    Is there any network game that students have desire to play, have folder size less than 1 MB? If the network admin cannot get a hint, he deserved to be fired.

  • (cs)

    Reminds me of a lot of things:

    My "High School" was actually mixed in with the university, so we shared all the infrastructure. So we had a campus-wide LAN, and a couple of computer labs with lax security. But that was only the beginning.

    By my senior year, there was a mandate that every student would need a laptop; the school offered some of them on credit. For all of these users, a lot of Ethernet nodes were placed everywhere (this being the pre-WiFi era, most laptops didn't even have integrated WiFi). Some of them were in uncomfortable places, but others were pretty well placed ... in the library "group work" tables.

    What happened? Quake 2 and Starcraft LAN parties ... in the library. You would get off the 4th floor and the first thing you'd hear were marines shooting and "YOUR FORCES ARE UNDER ATTACK!!!". It took the school administration one year to finally clamp down on the gaming mob, and even then the only thing they managed was to kick 'em all out of the library.

    Now ... at college:

    • We had one class that was 3 hours long, and it mainly consisted in (not) learning how to use Macromedia Director, which isn't quite Flash, but more like that VideoWorks app I used on the Mac back in the 80's. Most of the first month was actually spent by most of us playing Quake2 matches... until one day, one of the dudes fragged the guy who was leading the match, and jumped from his seat shouting "GOT YA, MOTHERFUCKER!!!"

    ... needless to say, he lost 10 points from his grade. The teacher then got much more suspicious, and the Q2 matches were no more.

  • Spike (unregistered) in reply to blindman
    blindman:
    Sorry. Don't believe this one. Try again.

    I second that! I call shenanigans on this article.

  • Aanal (unregistered) in reply to Aaron
    Aaron:
    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.

    frits?

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

    xyzzy

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

    Fool.
  • (cs) in reply to D-Coder
    D-Coder:
    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!

    Gosh, that's plausible, at least if we assume some liberties were taken with the dialogue. Sucks to be him.
  • K (unregistered) in reply to Spike
    Spike:
    blindman:
    Sorry. Don't believe this one. Try again.

    I second that! I call shenanigans on this article.

    I Third that! Seems like Andy is just a loser who was too scared to stand up for himself and then he realized what a sissy he'd been and since he couldn't do anything about it, he decided to vent his anger by......... getting it on thedailywtf! Andy you suck!

  • csrster (unregistered)

    I like the idea of a bird class. We had "Project Management" - 10 ECTS points to be had by reading a very short textbook the night before the exam and waffling plausibly for ten minutes about "Goals and Objectives" the following day. No homework, no assignments, not even a check on class attendance for the whole semester.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to Ken
    Ken:
    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?

    Any CS major in his final year deserves to be immediately flunked for the whole degree for writing a bubblesort. And thence also indelibly tattooed on the forehead with "Unfit to work in IT" or whatever. Anyone who still thinks a bubblesort is a cool idea in final year has tantamountly never learned anything since the first semester.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered) in reply to u mad?
    u mad?:
    Aaron:
    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.

    Wi sø serious?

    Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yer?

    See the løveli lakes

    The wonderful telephøne system

    And mani interesting furry animals

    As it's coming up to what the mealy-mouthed call "holiday season", I just want to point out that reindeer steak tastes great. Staple diet in Sweden.

  • frits' mother's jockstrap (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Ken:
    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?

    Any CS major in his final year deserves to be immediately flunked for the whole degree for writing a bubblesort. And thence also indelibly tattooed on the forehead with "Unfit to work in IT" or whatever. Anyone who still thinks a bubblesort is a cool idea in final year has tantamountly never learned anything since the first semester.

    He was re-taking an intro to programming course wasn't he? In any intro to programming course, the canonical beginner's assignment isn't "Sort these values as fast as possible", it's "Write a bubblesort to sort these values".

    Even if you didn't know that it was an intro course, you can deduce it given this piece of evidence: the program was called BubbleSort.exe. If the writer had arrived at a program that implemented Bubble Sort, but had no prior knowledge of sort algorithms, it would be called Sort.exe (or somesuch). If the writer had prior knowledge of different sorts of algorithms and was tasked with writing the best, he wouldn't pick Bubble Sort. Ergo, the assignment was specifically to implement BubbleSort. Q.E.D.

    captcha: usitas (Use it as prescribed by your lecturer, even though you know it sucks)

  • DarkYuris (unregistered)

    Reminds me good old days. When we didn't experiment with various viruses and random named empty file generation - we played games too.

    Every time we sat at pc`s, all games were wiped from network drives. Every time they were wiped, we just logged in as a teacher with key logger stolen pwd (back in 2000 that was really cool) and copied them back.

  • Jim Reaper (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.

    A crime he did indeed commit. Sure, the letter of the rule said "no games on your hard drive" but that's not what it meant. He was misusing the school's computers.

  • Olius (unregistered) in reply to Hogger
    Hogger:
    This is like Al Capone being brought in for tax evasion. Yeah, the things that he was busted for were not games, and yeah, the Dean didn't listen. But there was an eyewitness to the actual rule violation, for which there were no real consequences, and he got a C-- rather than an E for doing nothing at all in the class...insert your own <the real wtf> here.

    This is the only comment worth reading today - the rest of you borderline aspergers who don't recognise Andy being punished for being a glib and arrogant as well as wasting everyone's time, please read the story again and delete your comments. Thanks.

    I'm sure Alex only puts these kind of stories up to amuse himself with the comments worthy of submission to the site itself.

  • (cs)

    I would probably have not believed it either but I had similar problems in college. I was threatened with being kicked out for 'downloading and compiling code that is potentially dangerous'.

    The rule was simple - you could only compile your own pascal code and only to application1.exe because anything else was deemed dangerous. My problem was someone pointed out to me how to kick the machine into mode 13 (320x200) and force a 64k array over the video memory at A000:0000 to draw directly to the screen. So when everyone else is writing DOS-based programs to add numbers together in functions but the person next to you has a simple side-scrolling shooter running and you have a (pretty slow) spinning textured cube on screen people tend to get a bit suspicious that it might not be your work.

    I eventually managed to convince the network admin it was my own work by showing him the source and explaining it, but he was watching me for the next year...

  • Ron (unregistered) in reply to Eric

    I agree. While there are some truly stupid professors out there, this whole story sounds made up or embellished beyond all recognition

  • Ron (unregistered) in reply to Ron

    Oops, didnt read the rest of the comments.

    So it WAS embellished

    I knew it didnt sound right

  • Medinoc (unregistered)

    Skipped the comments: The real WTF is that he didn't warn his Computer Science professor of the forced removal.

  • some (unregistered)

    CAPTCHA: A fitting 'populus'

    Either fake or Andy is a complete idiot and would have deserved to be kicked out.

    Why not simply rename? Store uncompiled? Talk to the prof about it?

    Obedience and stupidity... great combination...

  • IainC (unregistered) in reply to x-sol

    Or are very poor at explaining yourself. Honestly, if he couldn't make himself clear he didn't deserve to graduate.

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