The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2011-08-21 Reply Admin

History Blistery:
anonymouse:
Those Jam tarts predate the Norman Conquest of England by 4 years.
My 10th grade history teacher told me that was the one single date I had to remember.
Seriously, history teachers everywhere, why the obsession with particular dates? I mean what difference does it make if I put on the test that England was invaded in 1066 or 1099? Wouldn't it better serve all of our goals to have students understand that England was invaded, who did it, why, what effect it had... stuff like that instead of an exact date!! After all, we're still not memorizing the month, day or hour. Oh, you mean even you don't know the exact hour? I think that proves my point quite nicely.

Never been a fan of history, never been much good at it, never really cared. Actually, I don't think I've ever been in a situation caused by not knowing some random fact of history.

Then again, we only invaded this country in 1788 so perhaps we're too young to have a history...

2011-08-21 Reply Admin

QJo:
hoodaticus:
swim:
1,080 million kilometers per hour: it's not just a good idea, it's the law!
I think you meant billion, not million.
Oops. I read the comma as a point.

You read the comma as a point? So you're actually a European, then?

Probably not if he thought 1000*1 million. = 1 billion (vs 1 milliard)

Might be wrong, but I thought there was only one country that insists on using Short Scale rather than Long Scale (as I say, might be wrong, because Wiki claims it is rare in the English Speaking world...I guess according to Wiki America IS the English Speaking World)

2011-08-21 Reply Admin

Wait wait wait, was London not the capital of England in 1666, when the great fire happened?

Scarlet Manuka · 2011-08-21 Reply Admin

Some guy from some place:
Might be wrong, but I thought there was only one country that insists on using Short Scale rather than Long Scale (as I say, might be wrong, because Wiki claims it is rare in the English Speaking world...I guess according to Wiki America IS the English Speaking World)

Long Scale used to be somewhat common in Australia when I was a kid, but we've been on Short Scale for probably 20 years or more with very few exceptions. I'd also heard years ago that the UK was now using Short Scale. I have no reason to doubt the summary in Wikipedia.

2011-08-22 Reply Admin

Doc Brown:
If you want to discover your car's time travel functionality, just go faster than 88 mph. Then you'll see some serious shit.

Sadly, the only serious shit I saw was red and blue lights, and it wasn't hyperdrive. ;_;

I think the sales tax bit is a scam. A few pennies here and there add up to a small vacation at the end of the year.

Matt Westwood · 2011-08-22 Reply Admin

Some guy from some place:
QJo:
hoodaticus:
swim:
1,080 million kilometers per hour: it's not just a good idea, it's the law!
I think you meant billion, not million.
Oops. I read the comma as a point.

You read the comma as a point? So you're actually a European, then?
Probably not if he thought 1000*1 million. = 1 billion (vs 1 milliard)

Might be wrong, but I thought there was only one country that insists on using Short Scale rather than Long Scale (as I say, might be wrong, because Wiki claims it is rare in the English Speaking world...I guess according to Wiki America IS the English Speaking World)

10^9 = 1 billion is I think standard now throughout the world, even in Britain nowadays. The word milliard for 10^9 is archaic and quaint.

2011-08-22 Reply Admin

To change your buess eny, just c on the edit ***ton and select a new state and ***ign a new contact.

Severity One · 2011-08-22 Reply Admin

"I opted for the 'sports' package when I bought my car," wrote Quentin, [...]

That's not the 'sports' package, but the 'space' package. This will be fixed in the next version of the web site.

2011-08-22 Reply Admin

To clarify things up. This is iGo running on a Win6.5 mobile phone. The app started to go wild on one of my trip, indicating speeds that where a bit over optimistic at the least. This is a screenshot of the application while consulting the trip statistics.

I used "French" as preferred language, and indeed the translation was incomplete/wrong everywhere in the app.

ParkinT · 2011-08-22 Reply Admin

What is more shocking with the AF Portal: If you look closely you will see that each user can CHANGE THEIR GENDER!!

{I wasted my money on an expensive operation!!}

2011-08-22 Reply Admin

Quentin:
To clarify things up. This is iGo running on a Win6.5 mobile phone. The app started to go wild on one of my trip, indicating speeds that where a bit over optimistic at the least. This is a screenshot of the application while consulting the trip statistics.
I used "French" as preferred language, and indeed the translation was incomplete/wrong everywhere in the app.

Thanks! That's all I wanted to know.

Kuba · 2011-08-22 Reply Admin

History Blistery:
anonymouse:
Those Jam tarts predate the Norman Conquest of England by 4 years.
My 10th grade history teacher told me that was the one single date I had to remember.
Seriously, history teachers everywhere, why the obsession with particular dates? I mean what difference does it make if I put on the test that England was invaded in 1066 or 1099? Wouldn't it better serve all of our goals to have students understand that England was invaded, who did it, why, what effect it had... stuff like that instead of an exact date!! After all, we're still not memorizing the month, day or hour. Oh, you mean even you don't know the exact hour? I think that proves my point quite nicely.

Thank you. At least someone here gets what the history is all about. Numerology is one thing it's not, even if the numbers happen to be dates.

C-Octothorpe · 2011-08-22 Reply Admin

Labias and Gentialia:
HellBabe:
Labias and Gentialia:
<enticing erotic blasphemies>
Ooh, you just managed to make quite some people upset I think. For me the crucifix is an exciting idea though.
<3 <3 <3 I think I'm in love. <3 <3 <3
There's this pounding sensation in my... um... somewhere.

Just remeber: on the internet, men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents...

2011-08-22 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Labias and Gentialia:
HellBabe:
Labias and Gentialia:
<enticing erotic blasphemies>
Ooh, you just managed to make quite some people upset I think. For me the crucifix is an exciting idea though.
<3 <3 <3 I think I'm in love. <3 <3 <3
There's this pounding sensation in my... um... somewhere.
Just remeber: on the internet, men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents...

That doesn't deter me in the slightest, as you should know by now. I love it when they're dressed up in those cute little uniforms.

2011-08-22 Reply Admin

Oh, it's not just that. There's also the end of the Mayan calendar, various "decodings" of the Bible indicating Armageddon/Rapture in 2012, predictions of major solar activity (okay, really in 2013, but close enough), etc. My big fear is that it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy....

2011-08-23 Reply Admin

km:
Wait wait wait, was London not the capital of England in 1666, when the great fire happened?

It was by then, but the king only returned from Oxford in February, and parliament did not meet again in Westminster until after the fire was out.

2011-08-23 Reply Admin

Nostradumbass:
Oh, it's not just that. There's also the end of the Mayan calendar, various "decodings" of the Bible indicating Armageddon/Rapture in 2012, predictions of major solar activity (okay, really in 2013, but close enough), etc. My big fear is that it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy....

Sooner or later someone will say that the world will end tomorrow, and they'll be right.

Eternal Density · 2011-08-24 Reply Admin

Colossians 3:8 "But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth." Yep, it does say that in the Bible.

2011-08-25 Reply Admin

Labias and Gentialia:
C-Octothorpe:
Labias and Gentialia:
HellBabe:
Labias and Gentialia:
<enticing erotic blasphemies>
Ooh, you just managed to make quite some people upset I think. For me the crucifix is an exciting idea though.
<3 <3 <3 I think I'm in love. <3 <3 <3
There's this pounding sensation in my... um... somewhere.
Just remeber: on the internet, men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents...
That doesn't deter me in the slightest, as you should know by now. I love it when they're dressed up in those cute little uniforms.

The men? 0_o

2011-08-26 Reply Admin

One of my funnier moments in creating an application was in the same realm as #1.

One of my customer's requests was that the user input be filtered for profanity/vulgarity before putting their content out visible for the world.

I knew there wasn't going to be a perfect solution for this, but I did the research and came back with my suggestion of erring on the side of false positives, putting items that were flagged into a queue that had to be reviewed by a human and then a decision made.

I then collected a random assortment of "bad words" and put them into a database table to check against.

In the admin section of the application, there was a section to review potentially bad content where it would show the content and then list the words it thought were inappropriate. The second related section was for managing the "bad word" list, to remove words that were being too much trouble or add ones that were slipping through.

When I had this all put together and was demoing it to my customer, by the end of it we were both in tears from laughing so hard. It wasn't the words themselves, but seeing them all together listed out for use in the application and trying to have a serious discussion about it, the absurdity of it all and such.

2011-08-29 Reply Admin

If you check it, the larger amount is actually an approximation to 8.5% (ie correct) whereas the smaller amount is an approximation to 8%. My GUESS is that where it indicates "TAX(8.5%)", that part is just pure text (ie you can put whatever you want in that field and it makes no difference), and that the state tax was changed recently from 8->8.5 The code also PROBABLY had hard-coded the tax amount internally, and maybe in a few different places. When they increased the state tax, the programmer didn't update everywhere and thus a few conditions still give out the old one (maybe initial receipt is fine, but copy receipt recalculates in a different place -instead of a function which gets called when needed, the code was copy-pasted). Just a wild guess...

2011-09-23 Reply Admin

Nook Schreier:
On the first, I like how the site's FAQ gives you a complete list of all the words that they don't want to appear on their site...

I like how they wrote Faq. I would have made sure to write it F.A.Q. to not tempt people to pronounce it like an UnAcceptable word when complaining on the phone - but maybe it's a planned excuse to be able to hang up on you.

2011-10-03 Reply Admin

I bet you see some awesome porn on that church sign.

2012-01-18 Reply Admin

The China Buffet one is phony. The two receipts are slightly different colors and the font for the tax on the left one is wrong. Compare the size of the 5 to the lines above and below it.

UnAcceptability

Leave a comment on “UnAcceptability”