• (cs)

    The real WTF is putting Michael Moore in the same class as Ken Burns. The main problem is that Ken Burns creates documentaries, not propaganda reels.

  • (cs) in reply to Quinnum

    Running with no pagefile may be slower because when you don't use your RAM enough (unused RAM should be free as in "Willy"), the OS can only free code pages (since they still sit on the disk where it loaded them from) and not data pages (because it doesn't have a place to put them). Relative slowdown happens when these data pages are less frequently accessed than the code pages becuase it would have saved disk accesses to swap those data pages out. However, in http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000422.html some folks argue that Windows frees pages even when it doesn't have to, which makes it less responsive (i.e. slower) with a pagefile in some cases.

  • (cs)
    Andrew:
    Ze describes (at 1 minute 25): http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/05/050906.html

    Forget his explanation of Ken Burns... The explanation of the park sign and stalls was better.

    rohanprabhu:
    The "Please be patient, I heard you the first time" isn't a WTF.. it's a cute popup :D

    And one I'd like to see more of, working in a school. Impatience seems to flood through the gates every morning and leave at 3.30... Both staff and students seem to think that a computer should do everything within 0.2s of clicking something. If it doesn't, they click again, which when printing results in 5 or 6 copies before they finally stop.

    [twisti]:
    J:
    with 2Gb of RAM or more, no paging file is necessary.
    Only someone with no clue about how memory management works would suggest something that stupid.

    I don't know if it's always stupid. Depends on what you want to do. I run a few boxes with no swap and only 128 or 256MB of RAM... And they all use RAM disks to run from too.

    Peter Norton. NOT!:
    Thanatos:
    13,825 years seems a pretty generous trial period.
    Considering it's a Symantec product, it doesn't sound so generous at all -- more like an eternal punishment...

    You haven't used anything beyond Norton Internet Security, have you? The Corporate Symantec AV is fine. I rarely even think about it. And Ghost is fairly useful too. The only Symantec product I can think of that's in any way painful is NIS.

  • boz (unregistered) in reply to mendel

    so in a nutshell we have to use pagefiles because a) some sorry excuse of a programmer writes a program that eats, drinks and crunches the memory. b) we're enterprisey users that plays crysis on vista while drawing on autocad and rendering 3dstudio.

    aside from jokes, I understant why are we using pagefile, it still feels stupid.

  • some random trial-period hack (unregistered)

    Screenshots of insanely-long trial periods should be banned from Error'd unless the submitter can submit proof of written documentation from the manufacturer (on company letterhead, photographed on a wooden table) that bogus date in the screenshot is an actual bug and not the result of the end-user having hacked the trial-period.

  • (cs) in reply to foo
    foo:
    I don't think so. If you look at the two long numbers, the fingerprint one is 3997806 = 0x3D006E and the Norton one is 5046354 = 0x4D0052. They both look like small 16-bit numbers that are being displayed from a 32-bit field. The Norton one is probably 0x52 = 82 days and the Verisign one is 0x6E = 110 fingerprints.

    How about UNICODE string buffer overflow?

  • (cs) in reply to alegr

    Some things never change. Back in the day, there was a bug in the arcade game "Sinistar". If you could die twice (get hit twice at the same time), the game would decrement your life counter twice. If it was your last life, it would decrement it to -1 (0xFF for an 8 bit number). Thus, you could get 255 lives by dying twice.

  • Transverbero (unregistered) in reply to hehe
    hehe:
    I don't see the problem with the quit dialog.. "Do you want to quit? AND did you save?". its not asking if you want to save..

    It's against 3997806 apple interface guidelines.

  • (cs)

    Pictures 2, 3, 4 and 6 are not close to WTFs. Hints: creativity, a real effect, rounding, hacking Picture 5 did not load for me. Picture 1 is probably the only worthwhile entry.

    Shame.

  • Jesper (unregistered)

    ImgBurn is an example of a program that works well, but which has a TERRIBLE user interface. It's clearly written by an amateur programmer, a technical-minded person who hasn't has much talent for designing user interfaces.

    It's a program for burning CD's and DVD's. It shows a VERY small window which cannot be resized, and the UI is very peculiar.

    It contains more "funny" messages like the one shown here.

  • (cs) in reply to Shinobu
    J:
    with 2Gb of RAM or more, no paging file is necessary.
    Nope. Some programs explicitly request pagefile-mapped memory (mostly the 16-bit kind that I can't run on XP x64), without a pagefile the allocation will fail, and the program will crash and burn. So you need at least a minimal pagefile to run these, but of course other than that the system will be fine without one.
    Shinobu:
    Of course, WinXP hits its absolute ceiling at less than 4GB, even though (IIRC) IA32 supports segmented addressing in 32-bit mode as well, which is probably what Linux kernels use when compiled to support large amounts of RAM.
    32-bit XP used to support PAE (Page Addressing Extensions, aka 36-bit ram addressing), and Windows Server 2003 still does. It was removed because very few drivers, and none of the drivers for performance parts typically found in desktops with e-peen amounts of ram, supported it (or at least had working support), leading to a LOT of bluescreens. If you use that much ram you really have to have a 64-bit OS. A program on 32-bit Windows can only use 2GB of mapped memory, without some horrendous hacking anyway, so you generally don't need much more than that.
    Cam:
    A detailed explanation might exceed the limits of this forum, but a simple link and some politeness would be nice: http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php#TurnOff
    That is horrifically out of date. It mentions machines with 128MB of ram FFS. A modern system will probably run faster without the pagefile because it won't try to write to it. Disk activity is the bottleneck in a modern system, so the less the better. When you're not maxed out on ram usage, Windows will try to make sure that the pagefile contains up-to-date copies of the least-used memory pages, so that they can be swapped to the pagefile instantly if another program needs a lot of ram in a hurry. When a program is minimized all its ram pages are flushed to the pagefile, making the program's apparent memory usage go down, often significantly. If the program is actually still active, and the physical ram pages that were just freed haven't yet been assigned to another program, they will be assigned back to the original app complete with contents, so that it doesn't need to re-read them from the pagefile.
  • (cs) in reply to Ferg
    Ferg:
    All the pagefile is used for besides the temporary memory dump shown is storage of memory pages that haven't recently been used. It does this to free RAM for other applications and prevent page faults. So yes, not having a pagefile is in general a bad thing in that the system is more vulnerable to page faults
    WTF? Only a system that does have a page file is vulnerable to page faults. In fact, one could say that storing memory pages in a page file is the (single leading) cause of page faults. (Please educate yourself to what a page fault is.)

    What you want to say is that a system without a page file is more vulnerable to out-of-memory errors than a system with a page file, provided the RAM size is equal.

  • AC (unregistered)

    THE REAL WTF IS THAT HE'S USING NORTON ANTIVIRUS AM I RITE GUYS :D

  • Andrew Cook (unregistered) in reply to rohanprabhu
    rohanprabhu:
    The "Please be patient, I heard you the first time" isn't a WTF.. it's a cute popup :D
    It is a WTF, but unfortunately it's the best possible UX for this situation.

    ImgBurn is a CD/DVD burning program, which relies on the Image Mastering API and, in turn, device I/O. The WTFery of IMAPI means, among other things, operations cannot be immediately cancelled. (Plus, ImgBurn insists, whether it's its requirement or IMAPI's, that the disc be finalized and made Red Book legal, even if it's mostly otherwise a coaster.) Thus, when the user clicks Cancel, ImgBurn has work to do still, which may take some time.

    Now picture a typical user: Cancel. ... Okay, maybe it didn't hear me, Cancel. Cancel! tap tap tap tap bash bash bash BASH BASH BASH <link to German kid video>

    Thus, ImgBurn provides visual feedback in the form of a modal dialog that it recognises that the Cancel button has been clicked a second time, with a "cute" message, so that the user doesn't get upset that it isn't doing anything. The problem is, of course, that that's exactly what the user's going to think anyway. sigh

    CAPTCHA: appellatio... mind went straight to the gutter on this one...

  • (cs) in reply to Andrew Cook
    Andrew Cook:
    Thus, when the user clicks Cancel, ImgBurn has work to do still, which may take some time.

    How hard is it to accept the FIRST cancel and put up a progress dialog informing of cancel action (finalizing the disc if they're so insistent)? Is user feedback such an effort? Yukky app.

  • from the future (unregistered)

    I don't get the one about "Time and Attendance Records".

  • weirdbeardmt (unregistered)

    This is something that really irritates me and really lets TDWTF down, when stuff like the Ken Burns effect gets posted as a WTF when it's anything but. The lack of decent editing in the main articles is bad enough but an additional 3 seconds research (which might equal 3 seconds total, it seems) before clicking "Publish" would save the site from some really shocking mistakes.

  • My Name (unregistered)
    Hey twisti, So you're saying virtual memory on a disk is mandatory no matter the amount of physical RAM? Let's try to remember why virtual memory was created in the first place. Idiot.
    "Virtual memory on disk" does not make any sense.
    You clearly don't seem to understand at all what a page file is used for nowadays. This isn't 1975. Go read a book or something before you make yourself look like a fool in public. Your post literally belongs on the front page of this website.

    I'll put it in simple terms for you: No, just because you only use 500mb of your 2gb ram does NOT mean turning off the page file will have no effect. In fact, turning off the page file will slow your system down considerably. If you do not have the knowledge to understand why, then I suggest Google, your CS for beginners teacher or a public library, as a detailed explanation would exceed the limits of this forum.

    You can have virtual memory without having a paging file. The benefits you are talking about are a result of virtual memory, not the paging file.

    Contrary to what you say, virtual memory does not make a system faster. In fact, a real time system using virtual memory management is an contradiction.

    You are both idiots, but entertaining nonetheless.

  • (cs) in reply to Herohtar
    Herohtar:
    DaveK:
    Well, nevermind the philosophical consequences of having a negatively-sized pagefile - it would be handy though, since by simply writing vast amounts of random data to it, we could reverse the overall accumulation of entropy and thereby prevent the heat death of the universe

    No, TRWTF here is the fact that windows needs the pagefile to be at least as large as the amount of physical memory in the system so it's big enough to be used to store a full crashdump after a BSoD. So how on earth did Dan manage to windows up and running and logged in and all the way to the control panel with zero RAM in his PC?

    That is not true -- I'm looking at my system settings right now and I can set my pagefile size all the way down to 2MB. In fact, there is an option for no pagefile at all.

    Perhaps you need to read that again, but a bit more carefully:

    DaveK:
    windows needs the pagefile to be at least as large as the amount of physical memory in the system so it's big enough to be used to store a full crashdump after a BSoD.

    It's no use ignoring half the sentence and complaining that what's left over doesn't make sense; those other words are there for a reason and they change the overall meaning.

  • (cs) in reply to raptor
    raptor:
    DaveK:
    So how on earth did Dan manage to windows up and running and logged in and all the way to the control panel with zero RAM in his PC?
    Big cache.

    LOFL! I didn't think of that!

  • Moon (unregistered)

    The real WTF here is the amount of time it apparently takes for common knowledge to sink in. That is jpgs are used for photos and NOT interface screenshots. Because of their algorithm they don't work on such material and result in bloated pictures with artifacts (as seen here) if used anyway instead of gif or better yet png (thanks to Micros~1 for taking ages to support it properly) which look better and are way smaller.

  • MM (unregistered)
    "13,825 years seems a pretty generous trial period."
    It would be, but this has only 13,816 years and 6 months. Why, it's practically stingy.
  • neomodo (unregistered)

    yannow some applications actually recommend that you turn off your page file altogether - Like Pro-Tools

    When you have substantial memory a pagefile doesn't add anything. If you are running I/O intensive applications vs. Disk intensive applications could make a real difference. I wish people that actually know something would make their grand generalizations instead of morons with either antiquated knowledge of computers or no real knowledge of computers spouting off their ignorant b.s.

  • hpc.codemonkey (unregistered) in reply to Quinnum

    Because sometimes going to the drive to load a cache of data you've already processed is faster than loading the original data and processing it again; especially if the drive is otherwise idle, or the original data is on slow media.

  • Nate (unregistered)

    The iMovie Ken Burns entry is actually not an error.

    See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Burns_Effect

  • opp (unregistered)

    Ken Burns refers to the Ken Burns Effect used in post processing of video. This effect involves panning an image around. Learn Things!

  • Kalmi (unregistered) in reply to Keith Hackney

    I had a trial version of Delphi once(I don't remember what version...). And one day it decided that it liked me and said that I had ~360 days left... And afterwards it kept "renewing" the trial license... I didn't really see any logic in it.... :)

  • Matt (unregistered)

    To everyone talking about the Ken Burns effect, I read it as a WTF when it added " - C" to Ken Burns. Which makes sense with what TDWTF said as Cut starts with C. I don't think it had anything to do with Ken Burns not being an actual effect.

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