Posting code over messenger



  • Not really a WTF but it's amusing. I develop Silverlight applications for my company and we use Windows Live Messenger a lot because we have remote workers. Posting XAML code verbatim can trigger emoticons. Totally unexpected.



  • This happens in quite a few messengers, including Novell's GroupWise Messenger (which is a "corporate" messenger).

    Makes me wonder if Office Messenger, MS's corporate messenger, also does this.



  • @mott555 said:

    Not really a WTF but it's amusing. I develop Silverlight applications for my company and we use Windows Live Messenger a lot because we have remote workers. Posting XAML code verbatim can trigger emoticons. Totally unexpected.

     

     

    There may be individual Proper Nouns in your post that directly resolve to technology that has a viable use case somewhere. 

    Combining Silverlight, WLM, XAML, and surprise that a prog w/emoties needs code blocks or escaping to prevent conversion... all these things in one single post... not really not really a WTF.

     

     



  • Yep.  Office Messenger 2007 R2 does, anyway.  It's the first option under "Instant message settings" on the "General" page--"Show emoticons in instant messages".

    It's one of the first things I turn off in any instant messaging program.

     



  •  The first time I read:

     "Have you tried cleaning the building?" 

     Yes, a clean office sometimes helps a lot



  • @powerlord said:

    This happens in quite a few messengers, including Novell's GroupWise Messenger (which is a "corporate" messenger).

    Makes me wonder if Office Messenger, MS's corporate messenger, also does this.

    Big Green's Lotus SameTime does this too.



  • @Lingerance said:

    Big Green's Lotus SameTime does this too.

    Not when your cheap-ass company is still running version 6.5.1. Yay obsolescence!



  • @Smitty said:

    @Lingerance said:
    Big Green's Lotus SameTime does this too.

    Not when your cheap-ass company is still running version 6.5.1. Yay obsolescence!

    Pretty sure even the newest version of a Lotus product is still obsolete.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Smitty said:
    @Lingerance said:
    Big Green's Lotus SameTime does this too.

    Not when your cheap-ass company is still running version 6.5.1. Yay obsolescence!

    Pretty sure even the newest version of a Lotus product is still obsolete.

    No, the newest version is in perpetual beta and has an extremely low chance of being released for sale. Close though.



  • I love when somebody sends me an email and there is a lone "J" somewhere.

    Took me a long while to find out thats a smiley (in a custom font or something).



  • @Shinhan said:

    I love when somebody sends me an email and there is a lone "J" somewhere.

    Took me a long while to find out thats a smiley (in a custom font or something).


    J is the :) with a circle in wingdings



  •  D:

    :c



  • @Shinhan said:

    I love when somebody sends me an email and there is a lone "J" somewhere.

    Took me a long while to find out thats a smiley (in a custom font or something).

    We germans have a smiley in our official alphabet: ü



  • @XIU said:

    @Shinhan said:

    I love when somebody sends me an email and there is a lone "J" somewhere.

    Took me a long while to find out thats a smiley (in a custom font or something).

    J is the :) with a circle in wingdings
     

    Microsoft: Ignoring the fact there is a smiley in unicode: ☺



  • @Zemm said:

    Zemm: Ignoring the fact that Microsoft doesn't have a time machine


    FTFY



  • @BPFH said:

    Yep.  Office Messenger 2007 R2 does, anyway.  It's the first option under "Instant message settings" on the "General" page--"Show emoticons in instant messages".

    It's one of the first things I turn off in any instant messaging program.

     

     

     Could be worse.  I remember a time when Lookout Distress would mangle C++ double-slash comments by placing file: in front of them.

     Before sending the message, that is.

     It caused endless hilarity on newsgroups, as you can imagine.



  • @julmu said:

    @Zemm said:

    Zemm: Ignoring the fact that Microsoft doesn't have a time machine


    FTFY

    U+263A WHITE SMILING FACE
    In Unicode since: 1.1

    Unicode Version 1.1 – Released: June 1993

    Well, looks like they indeed have a time machine – it's just set to 16 years in the past.



  • @wolff said:

    @julmu said:
    @Zemm said:

    Zemm: Ignoring the fact that Microsoft doesn't have a time machine


    FTFY

    U+263A WHITE SMILING FACE
    In Unicode since: 1.1

    Unicode Version 1.1 – Released: June 1993

    Well, looks like they indeed have a time machine – it's just set to 16 years in the past.

    And Wingdings was created in 1990 according to Wikipedia.



  • I think the point is that it shouldn't be used anymore.  Instead of a :) being automatically converted into a Wingding J, it should be converted to a proper Unicode smilie.  (Assuming such a conversion is desired in the first place.)



  • @Xyro said:

    I think the point is that it shouldn't be used anymore.  Instead of a :) being automatically converted into a Wingding J, it should be converted to a proper Unicode smilie.  (Assuming such a conversion is desired in the first place.)

    I'm sure that's an extremely high-priority bug and the Outlook guys are going to get RIGHT ON IT.

    How does Lotus Notes handle this, BTW?

    My guess: it embeds a Javascript in the HTML mail that calls out to a webservice which returns an XML file containing the URL of an uncompressed .bmp format smiley image to download. The Javascript then calls the the URL, but uses Document.Write to do so which has a > 10% chance of overwriting the entire email with nothing but the smiley image (or a broken image icon if you're in any browser that doesn't support .bmp.) The option to turn this behavior off is located in "Location -> Browser -> Email Smileys -> Calendar Update Frequency -> Email Smileys (again) -> Turn Off Automatic Email Smileys", but it's not a checkbox, it's a text field you have to type "please" into. And spelling counts. And if you disable it, as a side-effect it also removes the ability to use Bold style when composing emails.

    When confronted with this, a Notes admin will argue:
    1) It's the user's fault for wanting smileys in the first place
    2) Users should be "trained" in the use of Notes
    3) That your admin sucks, he should have customized the default mail database to make it work better
    4) That his own installation doesn't have that problem at all
    5) That just because Microsoft does things a certain way doesn't make that the best way, and besides Notes is older than Outlook anyway



  • @Xyro said:

    I think the point is that it shouldn't be used anymore.  Instead of a :) being automatically converted into a Wingding J, it should be converted to a proper Unicode smilie.  (Assuming such a conversion is desired in the first place.)

    No, smilies should be left the fuck alone or replaced with images. If I see :) I know exactly what it means, whereas when I see the horrid squashed-up Unicode version I have to spend at least 10 seconds squinting to figure out what it is. Not to mention that :) is 2 keys whereas the Unicode version is at least 5. Someone was really thinking hard when they decided to use a Unicode code point for such a "vital" character.



  • @Xyro said:

    Assuming such a conversion is desired in the first place.
    @The_Assimilator said:
    No, smilies should be left the fuck alone or replaced with images.
    :|



  • I had a collegue accidently delete one of his XP boot files. Can't remember what it was called but it essentially points the boot loader to the OS partition(s). Anyway, he asked me to copy the text out of mine and send it to him via Messenger. Afterall, the machines were identical and it was only a line or two of content. Of course, Messenger inserted its emoticons, the collegue blindly pasted it into his file and rebooted his PC. He was greeted with something along the lines of 'Your boot.ini file is corrupt. Press F1 to reboot'.



  • @DaEagle said:

    I had a collegue accidently delete one of his XP boot files. Can't remember what it was called but it essentially points the boot loader to the OS partition(s). Anyway, he asked me to copy the text out of mine and send it to him via Messenger. Afterall, the machines were identical and it was only a line or two of content. Of course, Messenger inserted its emoticons, the collegue blindly pasted it into his file and rebooted his PC. He was greeted with something along the lines of 'Your boot.ini file is corrupt. Press F1 to reboot'.

    How do you paste graphical emoticons into a text file?



  • @Spectre said:

    How do you paste graphical emoticons into a text file?
    Presumably it only pasted the text.



  • @Lingerance said:

    @Spectre said:
    How do you paste graphical emoticons into a text file?
    Presumably it only pasted the text.
     

    When I tried it it replaced the emoticons with spaces



  • I remember sending C# code over Messenger and having bits of it turn into emoticons. It was quite annoying at times.
    I don't think I've actually used Messenger in a few years as I didn't like the new layout at some point and eventually it told me I couldn't sign in unless I upgraded. None of the friends I talked to on Messenger seem to have noticed.



  • @DaEagle said:

    I had a collegue accidently delete one of his XP boot files. Can't remember what it was called but it essentially points the boot loader to the OS partition(s). Anyway, he asked me to copy the text out of mine and send it to him via Messenger. Afterall, the machines were identical and it was only a line or two of content. Of course, Messenger inserted its emoticons, the collegue blindly pasted it into his file and rebooted his PC. He was greeted with something along the lines of 'Your boot.ini file is corrupt. Press F1 to reboot'.

     

    I'm going to make a  wild guess and say it was boot.ini



  • @powerlord said:

    @DaEagle said:

    I had a collegue accidently delete one of his XP boot files. Can't remember what it was called but it essentially points the boot loader to the OS partition(s). Anyway, he asked me to copy the text out of mine and send it to him via Messenger. Afterall, the machines were identical and it was only a line or two of content. Of course, Messenger inserted its emoticons, the collegue blindly pasted it into his file and rebooted his PC. He was greeted with something along the lines of 'Your boot.ini file is corrupt. Press F1 to reboot'.

     

    I'm going to make a  wild guess and say it was boot.ini

    Shit, you must have Psychic Debugging Powers like Raymond Chen.



  • @Eternal Density said:

    I remember sending C# code over Messenger and having bits of it turn into emoticons. It was quite annoying at times.
    I don't think I've actually used Messenger in a few years as I didn't like the new layout at some point and eventually it told me I couldn't sign in unless I upgraded. None of the friends I talked to on Messenger seem to have noticed.

    This sort of thing, plus having to run 3 different messenger programs to talk to 3 different people, is what drove me to start using libpurple-based clients like Pidgin and Adium.



  •  @The_Assimilator said:

    @powerlord said:

    @DaEagle said:

    I had a collegue accidently delete one of his XP boot files. Can't remember what it was called but it essentially points the boot loader to the OS partition(s). Anyway, he asked me to copy the text out of mine and send it to him via Messenger. Afterall, the machines were identical and it was only a line or two of content. Of course, Messenger inserted its emoticons, the collegue blindly pasted it into his file and rebooted his PC. He was greeted with something along the lines of 'Your boot.ini file is corrupt. Press F1 to reboot'.

     

    I'm going to make a  wild guess and say it was boot.ini

    Shit, you must have Psychic Debugging Powers like Raymond Chen.

    Yup.  Either that or I actually read the error messages.

     Of course, the entire joke there relies on you spotting the "Can't remember what it was called but it essentially points the boot loader to the OS partition(s)." bit.  Maybe I should have edited the quote before replying to make that line stand out more.



  • @The_Assimilator said:

    @powerlord said:

    Shit, you must have Psychic Debugging Powers like Raymond Chen.

    Yup.  Either that or I actually read the error messages.

     

    Are you sure your Sarcasm Detector (TM) is turned on?



  • @b-redeker said:

    @The_Assimilator said:
    @powerlord said:
    Shit, you must have Psychic Debugging Powers like Raymond Chen.
    Yup.  Either that or I actually read the error messages.
    Are you sure your Sarcasm Detector (TM) is turned on?

    What we've got here is a failure to communicate.  Either that or powerlord's sarcasm immunization mutated and is actively attacking his nervous system.

    powerlord, why DON'T you think we all know -- especially DaEagle who posted it -- that the problem was in the modified boot.ini?   I'm just curious.


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