The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

Gordon:
The format was known as 3 1/4 or 3 1/2 or even 3 inch more or less at random during its early days. 3 1/2 quickly became the accepted usage, but IIRC the diameter of the actual media is nearer 3.25"

As someone already pointed out, there were several competing formats between two and four inches.

Besides, a so-called 3.5" disk is actually a 90 millimetre disk. That's what the spec has for the measurements.

Now some vendors didn't know that, converted 3.5 inches and came up with 89 millimetres. WTF!

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

soer:
jjc:
frits:
Wow, work is blocking everyone of those images. I'm sure they're hilarious. See ya tommorow!

use pixlr to load the url of the picture. it worx

Yes is 'doez', but its pretty much a pain in the arse and destroys the flow of the web page.

All that needs to happen for this to work for everyone is for the stubborn what-nots at The Daily WTF to rename the 'ads' directory on their web server to something else - however, as they have shown, this is far too much hassle as it is still the same as last time they published some ad images!

I don't think it's AB that's doing this...I've never had a problem from work before, anywhere, and am currently running our corporate install of IE8 w/ no add-blocking ad-ons. No images here.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Nagesh:
frits:
Wow, work is blocking everyone of those images. I'm sure they're hilarious. See ya tommorow!

Wow! Frits has a job!

Once again, surfing pr0n from home is NOT a job... At least, not yet it is.

Not true: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/14/google-porn-in-the-plex_n_849034.html

HuffPo:
"Google asked Cutts how he felt about porn," writes Levy. "He'd have to see a lot of it to produce a system to filter it out of Google."
Though Cutts tried to get his co-workers to help him find porn sites to filter, they were simply too busy. So he upped the ante. After complaining to his wife that "No one will help me look for porn!" she volunteered to bake chocolate chip cookies for those that found porn that escape Cutts' filter.

And so, Look for Porn day was born, catered by the cookies of Cutt's wife.

So there you go. Not only did Google pay people to look at porn, they gave them a god damn cookie for it.

C4I_Officer · 2011-04-15 Reply Admin

Brazzy said: One thing that is obviously dishonest is praising a "durable methal hub" as an advantage in one sentence and the absence of "rigid metal shutters" in the next.

I think they were referring to the 3" Amstrad/Speccy/Osborne format. That one used super-expensive diskettes that had more moving parts than a VHS cassette, including a complex metal shutter which was INTERNAL to the diskette's casing and could only be opened by a lever buried on either side of the diskette (there were two independent shutters). Compared to THAT, the Dysan format was surely less complex.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

ggeens:
dogbrags:
Promoting computer security through a dialup connection. Nobody heard of forging caller id?
There is a fairly simple way to secure a dialup line: by calling back.
The server accepts an incoming call and reads the phone number and disconnects immediately. If the number is on a list of approved numbers, it calls out and establishes the connection.

If you do spoof caller ID, the outgoing call will still go to the authorized host.

It even works without caller ID, if the user sends the phone number over the connection.

That's still not 100% secure. The telephone connection is not broken until the caller hangs up. If the caller stays on the line and plays a dial tone, the server thinks that the caller has hung up and dials the registered number. The remote modem, still on the line, answers, and the insecure connection is now established.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

justsomedude:
soer:
jjc:
frits:
Wow, work is blocking everyone of those images. I'm sure they're hilarious. See ya tommorow!

use pixlr to load the url of the picture. it worx

Yes is 'doez', but its pretty much a pain in the arse and destroys the flow of the web page.

All that needs to happen for this to work for everyone is for the stubborn what-nots at The Daily WTF to rename the 'ads' directory on their web server to something else - however, as they have shown, this is far too much hassle as it is still the same as last time they published some ad images!

I don't think it's AB that's doing this...I've never had a problem from work before, anywhere, and am currently running our corporate install of IE8 w/ no add-blocking ad-ons. No images here.

If you use EasyList USA (the default filter subscription for AdBlock Plus), the images have already been explicitly whitelisted by the following rule:

@@||img.thedailywtf.com/images/ads/

So either:

Update your subscriptions;
Use a better filter set;
Manually add the above rule to AdBlock.

Oh yeah, there's a surprise 4th option:

Whitelist thedailywtf.com completely so Alex actually gets some support for his hard work.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

SCB:
ggeens:
dogbrags:
Promoting computer security through a dialup connection. Nobody heard of forging caller id?
There is a fairly simple way to secure a dialup line: by calling back.
The server accepts an incoming call and reads the phone number and disconnects immediately. If the number is on a list of approved numbers, it calls out and establishes the connection.

If you do spoof caller ID, the outgoing call will still go to the authorized host.

It even works without caller ID, if the user sends the phone number over the connection.
That's still not 100% secure. The telephone connection is not broken until the caller hangs up. If the caller stays on the line and plays a dial tone, the server thinks that the caller has hung up and dials the registered number.

This is a joke, right? Please tell me this is a joke. Play a dial tone? You think you're going to fool a computer into thinking it has an open line by playing it a dial tone? That is absolutely not how it ascertains whether the line is open.

Coyne · 2011-04-15 Reply Admin

Okay, I took the first ThoughtWare unit assessment and the result is below. Now what?

Unit 1 assessment:

   Orientation:          People:  3.3%  Task: 96.7%
   Communication Style:  Autocratic
   Teamwork Style:       Simon Legree
   Participation Style:  Thunderous roar
   Initiative Style:     Random fiat
   Support Style:        Overcooked spaghetti

   Employee motivation:  Whip
   Teamwork motivation:  Whip
   Feedback:             Whip

frits · 2011-04-15 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
justsomedude:
soer:
jjc:
frits:
Wow, work is blocking everyone of those images. I'm sure they're hilarious. See ya tommorow!

use pixlr to load the url of the picture. it worx

Yes is 'doez', but its pretty much a pain in the arse and destroys the flow of the web page.

All that needs to happen for this to work for everyone is for the stubborn what-nots at The Daily WTF to rename the 'ads' directory on their web server to something else - however, as they have shown, this is far too much hassle as it is still the same as last time they published some ad images!

I don't think it's AB that's doing this...I've never had a problem from work before, anywhere, and am currently running our corporate install of IE8 w/ no add-blocking ad-ons. No images here.
If you use EasyList USA (the default filter subscription for AdBlock Plus), the images have already been explicitly whitelisted by the following rule:

@@||img.thedailywtf.com/images/ads/

So either:

Update your subscriptions;

Use a better filter set;

Manually add the above rule to AdBlock.

Oh yeah, there's a surprise 4th option:

Whitelist thedailywtf.com completely so Alex actually gets some support for his hard work.

OK. We're going to go ahead and update our non-existant AdBlock software.

hoodaticus · 2011-04-15 Reply Admin

frits:
Abso:
soer:
All that needs to happen for this to work for everyone is for the stubborn what-nots at The Daily WTF to rename the 'ads' directory on their web server to something else - however, as they have shown, this is far too much hassle as it is still the same as last time they published some ad images!
Alternately, you could accept that if you use a plugin to remove some images from web pages then it might remove some images from web pages. And that someone running a web site with ads may not have much interest in accommodating the blocking of those ads.

So your saying that only jerks that instal a plugin are to blame for not seeing ads?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_filtering

I can't control what's being done by my system administators via proxy.

You could blackmail them and try to get them fired...

frits · 2011-04-15 Reply Admin

hoodaticus:
frits:
Abso:
soer:
All that needs to happen for this to work for everyone is for the stubborn what-nots at The Daily WTF to rename the 'ads' directory on their web server to something else - however, as they have shown, this is far too much hassle as it is still the same as last time they published some ad images!
Alternately, you could accept that if you use a plugin to remove some images from web pages then it might remove some images from web pages. And that someone running a web site with ads may not have much interest in accommodating the blocking of those ads.

So your saying that only jerks that instal a plugin are to blame for not seeing ads?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_filtering

I can't control what's being done by my system administators via proxy.

You could blackmail them and try to get them fired...

Not a possibility where I work. (Seriously)

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
SCB:
ggeens:
dogbrags:
Promoting computer security through a dialup connection. Nobody heard of forging caller id?
There is a fairly simple way to secure a dialup line: by calling back.
The server accepts an incoming call and reads the phone number and disconnects immediately. If the number is on a list of approved numbers, it calls out and establishes the connection.

If you do spoof caller ID, the outgoing call will still go to the authorized host.

It even works without caller ID, if the user sends the phone number over the connection.
That's still not 100% secure. The telephone connection is not broken until the caller hangs up. If the caller stays on the line and plays a dial tone, the server thinks that the caller has hung up and dials the registered number.
This is a joke, right? Please tell me this is a joke. Play a dial tone? You think you're going to fool a computer into thinking it has an open line by playing it a dial tone? That is absolutely not how it ascertains whether the line is open.

There's no signal that indicates whether or not a line is active. A modem, like any analog transmitter / receiver, listens for a carrier signal, so all you have to do is stop sending that.

The exchange knows when you've hung up because the circuit is physically broken and they detect a voltage drop, but all the other caller gets is a spoofable click of static.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

TrXtR:
? Find it so strange when people addblock their favourite sites. Like a big FU to the people that give you the content you enjoy.

And they're missing that really hot meditating woman.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

I just googled xor corporation thoth and the #1 hit was an Infoworld article from 1983 talking about Timothy Leary of all people and his relationship with the XOR Corporation.

(Maybe that explains the ad...)

ggeens · 2011-04-15 Reply Admin

SCB:
ggeens:
dogbrags:
Promoting computer security through a dialup connection. Nobody heard of forging caller id?
There is a fairly simple way to secure a dialup line: by calling back.
The server accepts an incoming call and reads the phone number and disconnects immediately. If the number is on a list of approved numbers, it calls out and establishes the connection.

If you do spoof caller ID, the outgoing call will still go to the authorized host.

It even works without caller ID, if the user sends the phone number over the connection.
That's still not 100% secure. The telephone connection is not broken until the caller hangs up. If the caller stays on the line and plays a dial tone, the server thinks that the caller has hung up and dials the registered number. The remote modem, still on the line, answers, and the insecure connection is now established.

You could make the outbound call on a second line.

hoodaticus · 2011-04-15 Reply Admin

TrXtR:
? Find it so strange when people addblock their favourite sites. Like a big FU to the people that give you the content you enjoy.

So what you're saying is that adblock is just like waiting for the commercial to go to the bathroom.

My pure soul recoils at the iniquity.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

3 1/4 ??? Actually there were quite a few ~3 inch drives that tried for the market. There was a 3" that had a 5 1/4 style envelope and a metal hub (no shutter), there was the one that made it, but you had to manually push back the shutter on the early ones and it locked open until you squeezed the right front corner and released it. There was one that had a rigid shell, but a open hub like the 5 1/4. HP picked the one that won out and seemed to make the difference, then Apple picked it for the Lisa, followed by the Mac later.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

Amstrad and many early "pc's" used the 3 1/4 " floppy drives, which fittd into the keyboard console, manufactured by SONY I believe. Lost out to the more readly available 3 1/2" units used on IBM PC and clones.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

Even with the images they don't make any sense.

2011-04-15 Reply Admin

dragoncity:
Amstrad and many early "pc's" used the 3 1/4 " floppy drives, which fittd into the keyboard console, manufactured by SONY I believe. Lost out to the more readly available 3 1/2" units used on IBM PC and clones.

Actually, Amstrad used the Hitachi "3-inch" floppy on their 8-bit machines: the CPC series, the PCW and the Spectrum+3. I remember seeing these and wondering why they had picked that particular format, given that everyone else seemed to have picked the Sony 3 1/2 format instead...

Time passed, and there was some significant announcement - the last manufacturer of 3-inch disks declared an end to production or something equally notable. Shortly after, on a British computer show, the presenter ( Tony Bastable ? ) asked Alan Sugar if Amstrad would be offering any form of trade-in or reduced price to existing customers who now wanted a 3 1/2 inch drive...

The look on Alan Sugar's face was exactly the same as if someone had said something rude about his mother. His reply was: "NO" and then an additional "NO" for emphasis...

( possibly in the same episode - but certainly the same series - was Bastable talking to the late Guy Kewney. They were looking at a new machine that wasn't on public display as apparently the manufacturer was embarassed that it showed up their existing range... it was the first Amiga... )

2011-04-17 Reply Admin

RE: Dysan 3 1/4 floppy disc.

They were submitted to whatever the standards organization was in the early/mid 80's for approval as the successor to the 5 1/4 floppy. The 3 1/4 inch was never sold to the public as far as I remember. I was the purchasing manager for Dysan at that time. Dysan was purchased by a competitor shortly after that. I have a "3 1/4 Flex Diskette" sitting on my bookshelf in a nice setup box. Any bidders? <g>

http://www.mediafire.com/PrimitiveSoftware (free and commercial excel programs)

2011-04-17 Reply Admin

Brazzy, Wikipedia does mention 3 1/4 disks, briefly, in an obscure location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk Search for "Dysan" for a brief mention of this being a Dysan and Shugart system that flopped (pun intended).

Check out the second and third pictures at http://www.regnirps.com/SEF/oddities.htm This guy actually has both drive and disk!

2011-04-17 Reply Admin

according to this wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_floppy_disk the 3¼ disk is not just a case of mixing up numbers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:325disk.jpg

2011-04-18 Reply Admin

Would someone please be kind enough to explain the logic behind the 825 character limit to the size of a note in Thoth?

2011-04-18 Reply Admin

Sudo:
Would someone please be kind enough to explain the logic behind the 825 character limit to the size of a note in Thoth?

Presumably a single - non-scrollable - text area ? ( eg: 15 lines with 55 characters per line... )

2011-04-18 Reply Admin

frits:
Anonymous:
justsomedude:
soer:
jjc:
frits:
Wow, work is blocking everyone of those images. I'm sure they're hilarious. See ya tommorow!

use pixlr to load the url of the picture. it worx

Yes is 'doez', but its pretty much a pain in the arse and destroys the flow of the web page.

All that needs to happen for this to work for everyone is for the stubborn what-nots at The Daily WTF to rename the 'ads' directory on their web server to something else - however, as they have shown, this is far too much hassle as it is still the same as last time they published some ad images!

I don't think it's AB that's doing this...I've never had a problem from work before, anywhere, and am currently running our corporate install of IE8 w/ no add-blocking ad-ons. No images here.
If you use EasyList USA (the default filter subscription for AdBlock Plus), the images have already been explicitly whitelisted by the following rule:

@@||img.thedailywtf.com/images/ads/

So either:

Update your subscriptions;

Use a better filter set;

Manually add the above rule to AdBlock.

Oh yeah, there's a surprise 4th option:

Whitelist thedailywtf.com completely so Alex actually gets some support for his hard work.

OK. We're going to go ahead and update our non-existant AdBlock software.

Sorry, I was replying to soer but I couldn't be bothered to find his original message so I just replied to the guy who replied to him. I didn't even read justsomedude's message about IE but having read it I assume he's taking the piss, only the highest order of retard would use IE.

2011-04-18 Reply Admin

csnyder:
If you're not seeing the images, check to see if you have AdBlock enabled - my AdBlock configuration (a fairly common one, I believe) blocked them all, leading me to a real WTF, as the captions by themselves are fairly meaningless.

Well, those are ads, aren't they?

2011-04-19 Reply Admin

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2011-04-19 Reply Admin

3.25 vs 3.5 was a real question in the mid 80's. I even have a whitepaper [somewhere] from HP saying why they think 3.5 would win.

2011-04-21 Reply Admin

The "hub" is the ring in the centre of the "floppy". The drive would grab hold of the ring, spin it, and that caused the soft magnetic surface to rotate.

A "rigid metal shutter" is used to enclose the media in the drive.

They're different parts.

Severity One · 2011-05-02 Reply Admin

csnyder:
If you're not seeing the images, check to see if you have AdBlock enabled - my AdBlock configuration (a fairly common one, I believe) blocked them all, leading me to a real WTF, as the captions by themselves are fairly meaningless.

I've got AdBlock, I'm seeing the images, but no adverts. Not entirely sure what I did to resolve this, because I've had this problem in the past, too.

Eric Cartman · 2024-04-15 Reply Admin

thanks for info

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