Some Error'd screenshots [kinda long post]



  • A few screenshots I've wanted to submit to the site but never bothered to...
    I'm hoping that this WTF-forum doesn't break the images or links (for the thumbnailed ones) :P



    Firstly, a few screenshots I've had from the stupid school computers last year, and only remembered recently:
    The Microsoft Word grammar checker being stupid:
    Microsoft Word grammar checker

    Error I got whilst trying to print off that same document (I blame this on the school's stupid print server software; it doesn't work correctly half the time):
    Printer error

    Unused icons on an iconless desktop?



    Some more recent screenshots:
    NeroLinux displayed a rather informative message (not on my computer, I'd never install NeroLinux :P):


    I still have no clue what this error means:


    MySpace.com often has some strange error that causes it to output raw ColdFusion code:


    It's rather ironic what happens on a cPanel-based server when the SpamAssassin daemon (spamd) fails:


    A CAPTCHA that didn't work as expected (yes, I tried "OOOOOOOOOOOOO", but alas, it didn't work):


    I hate goofs that appear on my friends list:



    And something I encountered more recently, filling in a VTAC application (application for University courses). An example of bad UI design; they used checkboxes instead of radio buttons. I can be an Australian citizen and a New Zealand citizen at the same time?



    So yeah. That's all for now. :D



  • (I can only hope) someone else would say it if I didn't:

     The real wtf is that someone out there likes myspace.  enough to have three different tabs of it.



  • @misguided said:

    (I can only hope) someone else would say it if I didn't:

     The real wtf is that someone out there likes myspace.  enough to have three different tabs of it.



    I only use MySpace because a large number of my friends use it. I personally prefer Facebook.
    And, that screenshot was a while ago, but I think the tabs were the Home page, My profile, and a message on a forum.



  • Don't you know it's possible to be a legal citizen in more then on country?



  • The major problem that I see here is that Nero is charging you for a program that they've coded in GTK1.  Excuse me while I go and throw up in the corner a little.
    Of course this does mean that the lack of text in that dialogue is probably just a font rendering issue.
    In either case, the choice of champions is K3b.

    As for your captcha issues, "OOOOOOOOOOOOO" clearly cannot work because the circles are not inside each other.  You should have used "((((((((O))))))))"
     



  • But why has nobody explained the semaphore yet?

     A semaphore is a handle to a resources that allows multi-threaded access to that resource without causing deadlocks.  This may be just as confusing as the original message, but let it be known that a semaphore is valid computing terminology, and not something that program just made up.  Sounds like the problem was another program was accessing i:\ . If not, then that message is a bit of a WTF.
     



  • @durnurd said:

    But why has nobody explained the semaphore yet?

     A semaphore is a handle to a resources that allows multi-threaded access to that resource without causing deadlocks.  This may be just as confusing as the original message, but let it be known that a semaphore is valid computing terminology, and not something that program just made up.  Sounds like the problem was another program was accessing i:\ . If not, then that message is a bit of a WTF.

    A semaphore IS valid terminology, but it doesn't have anything to do in an end user error message. Better would have been IMO, something like "an internal error has occurred. Try again in a minute, if the error occurs again, contact your system administrator." and then the semaphore thing hidden behind a "technical details" button. (Without that button, it would of course be an even bigger WTF
     



  • @PSWorx said:

    A semaphore IS a valid programming concept, but it doesn't have anything to do in an end user error message. Better would have been IMO, something like "an internal error has occurred. Try again in a minute, if the error occurs again, contact your system administrator." and then the semaphore thing hidden behind a "technical details" button. (Without that button, it would of course be an even bigger WTF)

    It's probably just printing the standard message associated with whatever error code it received from Windows.  That's reasonable as long as the errors are things like "No disk in the drive", that users will understand; the programmers probably didn't consider that more "technical" errors could occur too.  It's even possible that they were right under normal circumstances - maybe the error was caused by some third-party shell extension or something.



  • The real WTF is that anyone uses the phrase "is basically like" in [i]written English[/i]. It's bad enough when teenagers talk like this.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Daniel15 said:

    I can be an Australian citizen and a New Zealand citizen at the same time?
    Possibly. See: Multiple citizenship.



  • @qupada said:

    The major problem that I see here is that Nero is charging you for a program that they've coded in GTK1.  Excuse me while I go and throw up in the corner a little.

     

    To say, GTK1 has always been a bitch in modern Linux distros. But I couldn't believe that some program was still using it... The only thing I happen to have here which uses GTK1 is XMMS.

     
    GTK1 is soooooooo 2001...
     



  • As far as the CAPTCHA, it clearly says fnord. Perhaps it's color-blindness?

     



  • @Daniel15 said:


    I can be an Australian citizen and a New Zealand citizen at the same time?

     

    Affirmative. I am a citizen of both NZ and Australia 



  • I'm sorry, but the print message was what got me laughing. I guess this site has desensitized me to the other WTFs.



  • Other than the trailing " - The Administrative Section", the first one actually is a valid way to rephrase that sentence to remove the passive voice.  That's not to say that it's the best way, or even a good way at all.  But it's not a WTF.



  • Don't you know it's possible to be a legal citizen in more then on country?
    Nope, I didn't know that. Thanks for the clarification.
    However, the Yes/No options should still be a single checkbox, or radio buttons. Having a checkbox for Yes and a checkbox for No doesn't make sense.

    The major problem that I see here is that Nero is charging you for a program that they've coded in GTK1. Excuse me while I go and throw up in the corner a little.
    Well, not charging me specifically (it wasn't my computer), but yeah, I agree.
    The only other times I've seen GTK1 used was with XMMS (which I don't use any more; I use Amarok) and Audacity (an older release of Ubuntu came with Audacity compiled using GTK1... I had to compile it manually to get it to use GTK2.)

    Sounds like the problem was another program was accessing i:\ . If not, then that message is a bit of a WTF.
    Nope, I just tried accessing the device (it was a USB key) in Windows Explorer. It sat there for a while, and then displayed that error message. I tried unplugging it and then plugging it back in, but the same error occurred (even with a different USB port). My workaround solution was to plug it in to my Linux server, mount it, and share it via Samba.
    Of course, removing Windows from my system also helped. About a week after this happened, I formatted my PC and installed Debian Linux (I was already using Ubuntu on my laptop).

    The real WTF is that anyone uses the phrase "is basically like" in written English. It's bad enough when teenagers talk like this.
    Yeah, I must agree there. I wrote that back at the start of 2006, when I was only 15 years old. My English was horrible back then, compared to now (I'm 17 now.)

    Other than the trailing " - The Administrative Section", the first one actually is a valid way to rephrase that sentence to remove the passive voice. That's not to say that it's the best way, or even a good way at all. But it's not a WTF
    What? So you're saying that Dr. Janson and the secretary to edit patients' records, and enter new records basically like an office section, use administration Section is valid English? It sounds so wrong, though. English is stupid.


  • @Daniel15 said:


    Other than the trailing " - The Administrative Section", the first one actually is a valid way to rephrase that sentence to remove the passive voice. That's not to say that it's the best way, or even a good way at all. But it's not a WTF
    What? So you're saying that Dr. Janson and the secretary to edit patients' records, and enter new records basically like an office section, use administration Section is valid English? It sounds so wrong, though. English is stupid.

    Unfortunately yes. The problem is the "and" it confusing the sense of the sentence.

    Your seeing it as this: [Listing an item], and [listing another item] - [sentence fragment]
    The hypen (-) could have been a been a colon (:) or semi colon (;) depending upon meaning.

    The way that is meant to read is: [Start of sentence], [fragment: direct explanation, extensions, further information but not necessary to understand the sentence], [end of sentece].

    Simply you could write the main intent as [start of sentence] [end of sentence] and place the [fragment] in a footer somewhere.

    Hence

    Dr. Janson and the secretary to edit patients' records, and enter new records basically like an office section, use administration Section

    reads like

    Dr. Janson and the secretary to edit patients' records use administration Section.

    But you might also like to know that they (Dr. Janson and the secretary) also  enter new records basically like an office section

    Admittedly in the interest of style i would probably change the sentence to get rid of that "and".



    A student speaks English - A master realises that they can't speak English.


  • Sorry, but no. It is not valid English. There is a simple test to determine whether something is valid English or not, and this sentence fails it. The test is this: [i]would any native speaker of the language ever say this in the honest belief that they were speaking correctly?[/i] And this sentence fails horribly. No native speaker could ever come out with broken English like that and believe that they were uttering valid English. Therefore, it is not valid English, QED.

    The secondary WTF is that Word objects to the passive voice in the first place...



  • @Iago said:

    Sorry, but no. It is not valid English. There is a simple test to determine whether something is valid English or not, and this sentence fails it. The test is this: [i]would any native speaker of the language ever say this in the honest belief that they were speaking correctly?[/i]

    Unfortunately, this test must be corrected to: would any native speaker who isn't a blithering idiot ever say this...



  • @Iago said:

    Sorry, but no. It is not valid English. There is a simple test to determine whether something is valid English or not, and this sentence fails it. The test is this: [i]would any native speaker of the language ever say this in the honest belief that they were speaking correctly?[/i] And this sentence fails horribly. No native speaker could ever come out with broken English like that and believe that they were uttering valid English. Therefore, it is not valid English, QED.

    The secondary WTF is that Word objects to the passive voice in the first place...

    Clearly you overestimate the ability of people to speak the English language.  Plenty of native speakers bastardize the language in far more egregious ways than this.  To paraphrase Henry Higgins: Why can't the English speakers learn to speak?  But sadly, English is, like any other language, in that it's just a bunch of rules (with LOTS of exceptions).  For example: "I do be running," is a valid English sentence, but it's ugly and cumbersome.

    Also, if you think nobody would ever use a sentence like that, you need to read more E. M. Forster or David Foster Wallace, for whom sentences were meant to be filled with as many clauses as humanly possible.

    Word objects to the passive voice because proper style recommends against it.  And by proper style, I of course mean [u]Elements of Style[/u].  The reasons for this are that the passive voice is less direct and (snicker) more verbose.  Of course, Word frequently fails in making the sentence less verbose, mostly because it has no idea what the sentence says semantically.  Anyway, there are uses for the passive voice, be they for situations where blame cannot or will not be assigned (like the famous "I made mistakes," vs. "mistakes were made."), or for when the the direct object is actually what we want to discuss, such as in this example.  We care about the Administration Section, not Dr. Janson and his staff.  But how is Word to know?



  • I liked the first three the best. Genuinely funny, thanks for sharing.



  • @bstorer said:

    Word objects to the passive voice because proper style recommends against it.  And by proper style, I of course mean [u]Elements of Style[/u].  The reasons for this are that the passive voice is less direct and (snicker) more verbose.

    This only applies in some contexts. Notably, scientific papers are always written largely in the passive voice, as are most high-level textbooks. It is also frequently required in law, where the agent of the sentence is an unknown entity and the writer is obliged to avoid implying anything about it, so no pronouns can be used.



  • @asuffield said:

    @bstorer said:

    Word objects to the passive voice because proper style recommends against it.  And by proper style, I of course mean [u]Elements of Style[/u].  The reasons for this are that the passive voice is less direct and (snicker) more verbose.

    This only applies in some contexts. Notably, scientific papers are always written largely in the passive voice, as are most high-level textbooks. It is also frequently required in law, where the agent of the sentence is an unknown entity and the writer is obliged to avoid implying anything about it, so no pronouns can be used.

    Indeed.  There are many times where passive voice is much better.  I once had a professor in my freshman English class write "You use too much passive voice!" on one of my papers.  So I crossed it out and wrote underneath it, "Too much passive voice is used by me!"  She didn't find it as funny as I did.



  • My main memory of Word's grammar checker is from 1992, when I was doing a science fair paper, and suffered through Word complaining endlessly that my use of "hence" was archaic. Screw you, too, Word!



  • @Kain0_0 said:

    @Daniel15 said:

    Other than the trailing " - The Administrative Section", the first one actually is a valid way to rephrase that sentence to remove the passive voice. That's not to say that it's the best way, or even a good way at all. But it's not a WTF
    What? So you're saying that Dr. Janson and the secretary to edit patients' records, and enter new records basically like an office section, use administration Section is valid English? It sounds so wrong, though. English is stupid.

    Unfortunately yes. The problem is the "and" it confusing the sense of the sentence.

    Your seeing it as this: [Listing an item], and [listing another item] - [sentence fragment]
    The hypen (-) could have been a been a colon (:) or semi colon (;) depending upon meaning.

    The way that is meant to read is: [Start of sentence], [fragment: direct explanation, extensions, further information but not necessary to understand the sentence], [end of sentece].

    Simply you could write the main intent as [start of sentence] [end of sentence] and place the [fragment] in a footer somewhere.

    Hence

    Dr. Janson and the secretary to edit patients' records, and enter new records basically like an office section, use administration Section

    reads like

    Dr. Janson and the secretary to edit patients' records use administration Section.

    But you might also like to know that they (Dr. Janson and the secretary) also enter new records basically like an office section

    Admittedly in the interest of style i would probably change the sentence to get rid of that "and".



    A student speaks English - A master realises that they can't speak English.

     Hmm... When I see that, I see the "to edit patients' records" bit as a subordinate clause, which I would read as:

    Dr. Janson and the secretary, to edit patients' records, use [the] [A]dministration Section.

    Also, the "basically like an office section" bit got transferred to the wrong clause; it describes the "Administration Section", not the "enter new records". Other than that clause, I think you're right about the word ordering, but I feel like the punctuation wasn't quite right. I would render the sentence more like:

    Dr. Janson and the secretary, to edit patients' records and enter new records, use [the] [A]dministration Section, which is basically like an office section.

    Alternatives would include:

    To edit patients' records and enter new records, Dr. Janson and the secretary use the Administration Section, which is basically an office section.

     or

    Dr. Janson and the secretary use the Administration Section - basically an office section - to edit patients' records and enter new records.

     

    (Disclaimer: IANALinguist, I'm just going from what I learned in school...)
     



  • Or: 

    Dr. Janson and the secretary edit patients' records and enter new records using the Administration Section, which is basically an office section.

    Which says what they use to edit and add records, instead of saying what they use the administration section for. Different focus, so it might not be an identical meaning.


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