That's right after the startup, not when trying to add a new module.
That's right after the startup, not when trying to add a new module.
Just run into this one when starting up IDEA 10:
Module 'core' already exists in the project.
Would you like to remove module 'core' from the project?
Remove which one? The one already open, or the one it's trying to open? How did it save 2 modules under the same name in the first place?
Can't you `%macro data_aggregation_procedure 1` `%macro some_other_procedure 2` and then `%prog data_aggregation_procedure`?
(or something like that)
That said... I just imagined what could happen if someone decided to add local symbols to C macros (just expand them to "__mlocal_"+sha1(filename+macro_name)) So much space for new WTFs... Also IOCCC contestants would have new possibilities.
@blakeyrat said:
@Lingerance said:Oh, and more specifically ISA 2003's (IIRC, number is probably off) MMC has like 150x100 pixels of actual working area (when used with a 800x600 resolution [which is the reso I got to work with])I don't know what ISA 2003 is.
@blakeyrat said:
Filed under: ), English has no concept of parenthesis inside parenthesis-- stop it
Oh... is blakeyrat out of his comfort zone? (he probably is by now (since he's annoyed by nested parentheses (which are perfectly ok (and actually make me feel like I'm writing lisp))))
(Actually), (((to avoid) misunderstandings), ((we could) ((properly chunk) (the sentences)))). (Easier), (isn't it?)
@blakeyrat said:
As if any Linux program related to power management has ever worked in the history of ever. 10 years after every other OS on Earth has managed it, Linux still can't put a freakin' laptop in sleep mode
A data point: I had 3 laptops. Of those, 3 could sleep under linux without problems and 2 could hibernate correctly. Under XP (it was before vista time) one of them could sleep and hibernate, another (Vista this time) could hibernate only, the last one couldn't do either (Vista too). I had way more power-management issues under Windows, so it's not that clear cut.
@blakeyrat said:
It bothers me, I have a friend like you who's big into Linux (well, OS X, but same shit) and spends all his time just doing stupid shit. "Hey look I wrote a decompiler for shared libraries!" "Why?" "IT'S FUN!!!" Not only is it not fun, but he spends hours and hours on these dumb projects and they're all completely useless...
Seriously? What do you care. If it's fun for him, it's fun for him. Some people write decompilers, some collect pebbles. Who are you to say what is fun and what isn't? I have crazy fun writing utilities I might not need in the future, but which give me some interesting lessons.
Understanding shared libraries gives you insight into low-level information which might be useful for you one day when doing an actual project. Messing about with stuff is the best way to learn. Guess who are you going to ask for help the next time you have some crazy dependency / linking problem in a large project...
@blakeyrat said:
It's always been nicer to use than Linux.
... LOL (yeah, I guess it depends on what you do, but for my work, Windows is a toy)
@Enterprise Architect said:
@smxlong said:In blatant disregard of blakeyrat, I have a rewrite, unfortunately more in C++ style than Java, but whatever, you Java freaks have arrays, right?That's way too simple to be valid C++. Let's throw a template in there for good measure:
This still seems too simple though…template <typename T> class Mapper { private: typedef std::map<T, T> map_t; map_t mapping; public: void addMapping(T x, T y) { mapping[x] = y; } T operator() (T x) const { typename map_t::const_iterator entry = mapping.end(); for (typename map_t::const_iterator i = mapping.begin(); i != mapping.end(); ++i) { if (i->first >= x) break; entry = i; } return entry == mapping.end() ? 0 : entry->second; } };// ...
Mapper<int> mapper;
mapper.addMapping(145, 1);
mapper.addMapping(117, 2);
mapper.addMapping(68, 3);
mapper.addMapping(51, 4);
mapper.addMapping(22, 5);
mapper.addMapping(10, 6);
Runing swig over the resulting object and adding a webservice server in perl that wraps the functionality should help...
@TarquinWJ said:
Sounds like the most useless waste of time ever. Clearly nobody cares what anybody on that site thinks. Not worth wasting your time by using it.
More like someone saw http://getsatisfaction.com/ and thought - cool, I'll just copy what they do.
Similar BT story from one guy at work: he lives in a house previously owned by his parents. The phone line was attached to his parent's account of course. One day he decided to upgrade the line, but to do that he needed to register the line on his own account. WTFs in order or appearance:
@Rhamphoryncus said:
You have legions of disgruntled fans. Give them clear goals and put them to work. A quick googling for "community server export" shows some promise, and I'm sure that, for whatever platform you decide to switch too, you'll find someone experienced enough to help you import to it.
You can simply convert all of the exported data to XML. I heard that it's a superior new format - it could be very useful here! And it has "namespaces", so you can even embed the link to your site at the top and put your own name before the tags - pretty cool, eh?
@Faxmachinen said:
@viraptor said:
Debugging any application with this kind of introspection is hell (re.pl / Dumper's outputs):
[snipped]I'm not sure what you're trying to say with that. ...
That if I can't figure out a type of some value by printing it out, there is no hope for proper debugging of something. Sure there's "in context X" output... but that doesn't help me in any way, does it? I don't know any other language that would do this and it's certainly not an improvement (makes both writing and debugging harder) - so what else can I say - it looks broken to me. You're free to show me one use case where presenting a hash, list and array in the same way are an improvement over presenting them as what they actually are.
@b-redeker said:
So basicaly what you're trying to do is use Perl as if it was Java. Which is cool, only then I understand you hate it.
I'd write Java differently. I'm trying to use perl in such way that it is easy to debug and maintain, which is a completely different thing. I don't see any value in using lists. Ever. Please show a case when it's more useful than an array if you think such case exists. Or in using variable number of parameters (you can always pass options in {key=>val} as the last parameter when "options" are needed)
@toth said:
Perhaps TRWTF is that you're using $_ as a standard variable, rather than a special variable and using it where it's meant to be used.
I do not choose the code I work with. If it includes $_ I get crazy scoping rules. If it didn't include crazy scoping for special variables, I wouldn't complain - again - what's the usecase when this is an improvement? (no - `chomp` without arguments is silly, not an example here)
@dhromed said:
I'm going to have a look at python soonishlike. I hear it's awesome, even though I still don't think formatting should affect execution to that degree.
The only people who actually have a problem with this are ones who don't indent code properly... If you keep it consistent (don't you always?) it's pretty much a nonissue. This is trivial to get used to.
@Xyro said:
Magic $X variables. Just look them up when necessary. Or use English;
Use english doesn't help when you're maintaining someone else's code.
@Xyro said:
The scoping rules are totally sane, or at least I've never come across any crazy ones.
Standard example (not surprising if it's your code, pretty surprising if it happens in a function you don't control):
sub bad_stuff { while(<>) {something_else;} }Also - `use` imports into global scope - actually... kind of does. Makes it fun to change modules into strict.
$_ = 20;
print "now it's $_\n"; # 20 here
bad_stuff;
print "now it's $_\n"; # not available here
@Xyro said:
Do you mean lists verses list references..?()
vs[]
? One is a list, the other is a scalar reference to a(n immutable) list. Not a difficult concept for programmers.
Ah - concept is trivial - I agree. Debugging any application with this kind of introspection is hell (re.pl / Dumper's outputs):
$ (1,2,3,4)
$ARRAY1 = [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ];
$ [1,2,3,4]
$ARRAY1 = [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ];
$ my %a = (1=>2, 3=>4)
$ARRAY1 = [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ];
$ (1,2,3,4) eq (1=>2, 3=>4)
1
$ (1,2,3,4) == (1=>2, 3=>4)
1
$ \[1,2,3,4]
$REF1 = \[ 1, 2, 3, 4 ];
$ \(1,2,3,4)
$ARRAY1 = [ \do { my $v = 1 }, \do { my $v = 2 }, \do { my $v = 3 }, \do { my $v = 4 } ];
I don't care that some of this stuff is "correct" in some bizarre way. Thanks to this, debugging perl is harder than it should be.
@Xyro said:
Single quotes don't interpolate, double quotes do. Not that hard to remember. You can also use q() and qq()
Yes, ' " q qq qx qw m qr s and all the options that can take after the string. Ah, but then you can use a delimiter you want, qw/, qw{, ... Not that hard to remember.
@Xyro said:
Not sure what the random psuedo-OO-lib conventions mean. Perl's OO isn't that strong, but is it really $that->hard()
? (#returns "no")
Yes, but is it Moose, or Mouse? Or home-made? Are they type-checking-compatible? Can I assign to $that->{hard} to change the value (you can in some modules). Will $that->{hard} = ... call some function?
@Xyro said:
$_=q(print"\$_=q($_);eval");eval
It's not that I can't or don't want to learn this stuff. I know it and see how much easier my life would be, if someone used a "sane language"™ instead
@ender said:
@realmerlyn said:It's perfectly readable to someone who has studied it....as long as "study" means "read through perlintro and played with it for a few afternoons", then I completely agree.
Are you sure, you'd remember all the magic $X variables, crazy scoping rules, grouping vs lists, quoting vs interpolation rules, 10 randomly created pseudo-OO-lib conventions, etc. in a couple of afternoons? Yeah... I believe you. I have to deal with perl every day and it still continues to surprise me.
Even if you do, some library can suddenly return you a dualvar which is an integer and a string at the same time and screws all your current plans. Damn it, if perl doesn't know if something is a number, only if it Scalar::Util.looks_like_number, how should anyone else know? use bytes. no bytes. use bytes. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
Perl drives people insane!
Actually, the worst misfeature I've found in perl so far, was that `next` ignores function frames... Yeah... If you're confused:
sub something {
next if blah;
...
}
for my $a (@arr) {
something();
}
The `next` inside `something` will actually skip to the next value in the loop outside of that function. Pretty, isn't it?
@henke37 said:
Either it is interpreting a pointer as a string, or ...
It's most likely C# / .NET. It's a delegate += event handler. It's kind of a built-in collection for callbacks that does the right thing when you do += or call it. So there is no magic as far as the syntax / statement construction goes... the wtf is propagating textchange event as a click event.
@Zecc said:
@Phillipus said:
Being a programmer, I don't even want to think about what sort of nasty error could possibly have caused this. Also, how did the system get the timing to work out so that we could both hear each other while obviously answering our phones at different times....?
In that case, never look at telephony code... It's usually a written using the common pattern "multithreaded event-based state-mangling machine of death". After a couple of years of working with telephony software, I'm amazed each time I get a call that's routed correctly.
Another idea for the explanation: His father called him at the same time someone called you. Enter a strange state / race condition. You get the same channel he got reserved. In the best case, his father and your caller get disconnected, in the worst case, some exchange somewhere explodes.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Is it a problem with Chrome, my PC, me, or CS?
When in doubt, blame CS, then Canada. Or both. You might also try blaming French.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
Not seeing the WTF myself. Is it that you didn't give him the (slightly poorly requested) additional information regarding what might be affected?
I'm assuming that the upgrade is to some system that doesn't actually affect everything else in the office - basic desktop functionality, email, the air-con and phone systems, for example. In this case, the poor bloke is obviously asking for some bracketing as to the kind of problems that might crop up.
I see what you mean, but a) the name of the system is something everyone in our office knows about ; b) the list mentioned potentially affected elements ; c) this actually was a "I can tell you when it happens, most likely it will stop working in some way" situation.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
In the original situation, the correct answer to the question is presumably along the lines of 'The only issues we are expecting to see in this context would be within X application itself' or some such, so the sales guy knows not to worry about, say, his emails.
He basically got an answer along the lines of "[some elements (listed above)] will stop working in some way"
@dhromed said:
- returns completely wrong values for invalid input.
Interesting... what's the right value for invalid input then? (imho exception, but that's not a value...) why is false better than random() in your opinion?
Got an interesting email lately. We've been doing some minor changes, and the people on the support mailing list got a short summary, which ended with:
"It has worked for our testing although it may be that there are unexpected problems with some [list of things] [...]"
To which we got a reply from one of the sales managers:
"What sort of unexpected problems are we thinking might happen ?"
Yeah...........
@TarquinWJ said:
Taken at 20:19 the day before the train is due? After all, there is no leading 0 and no AM/PM, so there is no way to tell if this is morning or evening.
That's only the case in weird countries. UK is 24h by default, so no leading 0 required. (yes - that wasn't true some years ago, but now it's hard to find any official time in the 12h format)
@Dark Shikari said:
I still am not quite sure what the author of this was trying to accomplish.
Don't be bad to the author. He has to spend his time at work writing very sad sad code with lots of sad values :( Maybe he's just depressed?
@Dark Shikari said:
Return: sad - SAD value
@tin said:
But what is so hard about testing a CD before making hundreds of copies and distributing them?
The testing.
Also, thinking appears to hurt many people, so they only do the bare minimum.
I have to disagree with snoofle... a lot. Debug-print statements in own local code are ok. But in the repo? Just keep a patch queue locally while you're working on something. Everyone says "we'll remove it before shipping". However, almost everyone has "removing debug statements I forgot about before merging" commit in their main branches anyways. (does everyone use the same scheme? do you know all initials? is noone ever going to update from your branch, polluting their own code with your debugs?) Now... if some problem takes long enough to fix that you commit "work in progress", it definitely needs a proper test anyways. If you need to commit a print-debug statement while fixing code which already has a failing test, I think there will be much more wrong about your code (or the test is too general). What about 1=2? Why not mock the database?
Unless you're working on some prehistoric code that is so tightly coupled, you could never create a test for anything in less than a week. It would make sense in that situation...
I know that changing what everyone is used to can be annoying... but if the guy doesn't want any broken code in the repos, I can see some good points there. (easier merging, clean change history, easier teamwork, ...) For local work / work in progress, there's always git/hg/bzr/...
@bullrider718 said:
That being said, for the life of me I cannot fathom how removing all power sources from a computer is any different than simply shutting the computer down, especially considering Sony's belief that this is a software issue.
These days shutting down is almost a software thing. Some components are powered all the time. (so you can get Wake-on-lan and other funky features)
@bullrider718 said:
Additionally, what could possibly come from waiting one minute after the power sources are disconnected??
Most capacitors have time to discharge.
@bullrider718 said:
Am I missing something here, or is this "fix" the colossal WTF that I think it is?
Proably a WTF. But if they sound very certain of it - give it a try. I had a laptop which shut down every time I connected the USB plug too quickly and stayed completely dark, until I disconnected and reconnected the battery. (100% repeatable) Actually, I just remembered it was also a Sony VAIO - maybe it's really a common problem?
@Jaime said:
Three spaces is a weird indent, but it is consistent and correct.
Oh no - three spaces (5 or 7 also work) indenting is perfect for proving that you should really use tabs instead. It goes like this:
- (tab person) We could use tabs and everyone can just see whatever they like.
- (spaces person) No we need to use spaces! Spaces FTW!!!
- (tab person) Ok, 3 spaces it is.
Do they charge for the balance info message? That would explain a lot...
@Smitty said:
All of this is done because Auditing has decreed that it be so, and woe unto he who angers an auditor.
Just to be clear: Do you do any actual work there, or do you just have to fill some forms all the day and noone bothers you then? How's that migration from Win 3.11 going? and How much work do you do for government / military? (I can't imagine anyone doing this in a "normal" company)
@Smitty said:
Their stated purpose was that it would 'help them keep a finger on the pulse of the department', whatever the hell that means.
I think they could do better. There's not enough micromanagement. Every modified line of code should be signed off by at least 2 managers! And be specified in 2 requirement documents. How can they know what's going on otherwise?
Snoofle, does Dilbert have a cubicle anywhere near your desk? If you meet him at work tomorrow, tell him I'm a big fan and love the cartoon he's starring in. Can I expect your cubicle story in the next strip?
(seriously - can workplace be any worse than this?)
@astonerbum said:
The OP was saying that why would they upgrade their servers to B and at the same time upgrade some of A. The smart thing to do is to eliminate variables by making cluster B run. If B fails, keep A going so the site still works worst case scenario. Once you know B is stable, then you can upgrade A. See thats called semi-intelligent management.
I may understand it incorrectly, but I read it as: after the move they had no more servers in the first datacenter and mixed A/B servers in the second, but only a full set of A could actually run the site... I'm not sure what was their grand plan - we may have too little information to say that reverting to the old setup was possible. I say it's a bit foolish, but innocent, until proven wtf'y.
While they did this, they also replaced a few old servers with new ones (1st WTF, doing this at the same time).
Not sure about this one... It seems much easier (if you have a fast enough link), to synchronise the data first and then simply switch off the old server in datacenter A and switch on the new ones in datacenter B. You also minimise the downtime (theoretically). I think it was a good decision to do it at the same time.
Also if you don't earn loads of money and simply run a community site, there's not much you can do if you have a hardware problem that causes a kernel panic... if it only occurs under high load and after many hours of normal operation, everything might have worked well during the testing. They dealt with that as well as they could (especially when they don't have a proffesional admin on the team - only volunteers).
Random problems, cheap service - sure. But it's not like they're going to lose all the popularity overnight (think twitter crashes). Dunno... everyone can experience some downtime once in a while - if they don't have people responsible for proper uptime, it's not a big wtf when some crashes happen.
@SQLDave said:
C'mon, c'mon...don't keep us in suspense. What is Step 2?!?!?!?
Step 2: "add a noodle and JAM IT!" (I'd expect)
@SkaveRat said:
@realmerlyn said:If the content length is 0, does it really *have* a type? :)Thats's ... that's one of the most philosophical questions I've heard for a long time
Depends on what kind of a programer you are... Do you prefer:
- untyped "null" (None, nil, NULL, ...)
- monadic "Maybe Image"
?
@morbiuswilters said:
VoIP call management in Ruby? *weeps*
Almost - SIP testing framework... The weirdest piece of software I've ever seen. I love to hate it. Unfortunately there's nothing better out there (which sets the standard on a rather low level)
I don't think this needs much explanation... enjoy:
def start
@run = true
1.upto(@num_threads) do |i|
@tg.add(
Thread.new do
Thread.current[:name] = "WorkerThread-"+i.to_s
while @run
msg = @q.pop
#@ilog.debug("Message #{msg} picked up from queue") if @ilog.debug?
@ilog.info("Message picked from queue, now parsing") if @ilog.info?
r = Message.parse(msg)
2.times do # one optional retry
case r
when Request
@ilog.debug("REQUEST RECEIVED #{r}") if @ilog.debug?
logsip("I", r.rcvd_from_info[3], r.rcvd_from_info[1], r.rcvd_at_info[0], r.rcvd_at_info[1], r.rcvd_at_info[2], r)
if r.to_tag && !r.attributes[:_sipper_initial]
# call_id, local, remote
s = SessionManager.find_session(r.call_id, r.to_tag, r.from_tag)
if s
s.on_message r
break
else
if hndlr = SIP::StrayMessageManager.stray_message_handler
@ilog.debug("Found a stray message handler for the request, invoking it") if @ilog.debug?
ret = hndlr.handle(r)
case ret[0]
when SIP::StrayMessageHandler::SMH_DROP
@ilog.warn("A stray request #{r.method} being dropped by SMH") if @ilog.warn?
...
One function. Goes up to 14 levels of indentation in one place. 199 lines, 3 (!) of them empty. Contains: new threads, if, while, unless, .upto (block), .each (block), case, single and double letter variables. At level 8 of indentation you can spot some uses of 'break' and 'next'.
Operates on shared resources, factory/locator, timer callbacks, parser, text constants, magic values (ret = ....; ret[0], ret[1]?), dispatches resulting objects. And of course does the obvious "2.times do # one optional retry" when operating on a message (still not sure why). And of course is written in Ruby, so you never know if something is a class method, attribute, constant or other element.
Ah yeah - and I think there's a bug somewhere in there... I'm trying to fix it....
I was browsing stack overflow today and run into this gem: How can I use credit card numbers containing spaces?
I would just ignore the post, but this one was strange... asked by a guy with 11k reputation points? His profile says: "An engineer working in Java SE security for Sun." Now I'm really, really worried about Java security.
@Master Chief said:
Personally I'm sick and tired of everything computer related being designed for joe blow idiot.
Yeah - cause noone else relyes on a simple fact that connectors should usually fit only in the right socket... If you have a choice of crawling under the table to look where you plug something into and simply reaching with your hand to feel where the socket is, I bet most people just do the latter. Technical or not.
Also, if you ever get a laptop that has usb and ethernet sockets right next to each other, you learn pretty quickly that usb connector fits *perfectly* into rj45 port.
@blakeyrat said:
Can you imagine the outcry if there were an undocumented publically-accessible class in the .net framework? Or in the Win32 API?
Wait... undocumented win api call? No way! http://nibuthomas.com/category/undocumented-winapi/
If undocumented features surprise you, you're not programming long enough.
My libgweather-common also includes only one file. It's ubuntu 8.10
"hedgehog" is just the name of my main machine (it's a tradition since... ~ slackware 3.5)
@tgape said:
@dtech said:
@viraptor said:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 919K 2008-10-24 05:57 Locations.xmlTRWTF: Who installs their software/distro on 6 AM in the morning?
For what it's worth, before I got married, I was frequently still up at 6AM on Saturday.
1. You beat me to it, but yeah... it's 6AM at night, not 6AM in the morning.
2. It's the package creation time, not local installation time:
[vi@hedgehog ~]$ sudo apt-get install dc
...
[vi@hedgehog ~]$ ls -la `which dc`
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 32712 2007-12-05 12:33 /usr/bin/dc
[vi@hedgehog ~]$ LANG=C date
Mon Apr 20 02:25:42 BST 2009
XML there is a WTF of course, but... what kind of distro installs all languages at once?
[vi@hedgehog ~]$ ls -lh /usr/share/libgweather razem 928K -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 968 2008-10-24 05:57 locations.dtd -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 919K 2008-10-24 05:57 Locations.xml
@morbiuswilters said:
@chrismcb said:
Mr Pedia says " It [a hasmap] works by transforming the key using a hash function into a hash, a number that is used as an index in an array"Wow, that is totally incorrect. The fact that you didn't know hash tables don't work that way shows your ignorance.
It's not totally incorrect. I guess he just didn't include the ending of that sentence, which would be something like "... as an index in an array of buckets that contain lists of objects".
@DeLos said:
People should not interview personalities and only stick to technical merits and not consider whether the person would be easy/fun/acceptable to work with?
(can google jokes) =/= (funny person)
Dance for us DeLos! Entertain!
@Blat said:
... using your generator to plot "random"pixels onto bitmaps of varying dimensions. The human eye will qucikly pick up visible patterns from many "random" number generators.
Just thought that a presentation may be useful: http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/newtcp/
@DaveK said:
in order to make your point (which I don't disagree with, btw).
Sorry about that! Yeah - I guess I'll need my first pair of glasses soon... I feel ashamed, and would gladly remove the previous post...
I know why I'm denied the credit card -> it's because I haven't lived in UK long enough and every time I get close to the limit, they rise it (it happened 3 times already). Actually the first time limit was ok, but then I was with Lloyds only 2 months and they refused to give credit cards to new accounts. My credit rating is perfectly clean, but that's just what you have to go through when you move between countries too frequently :/
I could get some crappy credit card with high APR but I'm not interested in that at all.
@DaveK said:
You've really never heard of Experian? Or just pretending not to in order to make your point (which I don't disagree with, btw).
No, I haven't. Also, which point do you disagree with?
That sending documents that make identity fraud possible via normal mail is stupid?
That applying for something in the name of a customer without informing him about it is not ok?
That contacting the customer through 3 different entities (Experian, bank proper, fraud protection section of the bank) about one thing, instead of using an internal channel of communication is lame? (which would also mean that they have less chances to corrupt my data on the way)
That their fraud protection system asks you to do things that I don't want to do exactly because it prevents the scams in the first place? (Even scammers are inteligent enough, not to send you mail asking for a photocopy of a credit card bill with all the details on it)
Do you really want to defend what they do? Do you send your details / private documents in reply to every single mail that says some company needs it? If yes - then don't be surprised next time someone cleans your account and sells the house you live in.
Just to be a little bit constructive: They could just ask me to either sign all the documents in the bank - not by mail. They could also ask me for permission to share my details (they already have the photocopy of my passport and proof of my address) with the company that they have to cooperate with, to enable the protection for my account. If they're really unable to make it safer, they could at least send me the information that company XXX will ask me for the details, before they do that.
This week, after being denied a credit card for the N'th time, I decided to enable bank's fraud protection on my debit card. It's one of the standard schemes where they're supposed to monitor your account's usage profile and ask you for confirmation if something doesn't look right. Everything seemed allright and I was happy with the service (apart from the fact that they keep calling it "identity fraud protection" for some reason).
Yesterday things got a bit more interesting... I got two letters sent to the correct address, but the postcode had a mistake - last two characters were swapped. One was from the bank, the other one was from some company, I've never heard about which asked me to send them two documents out of (originals - photocopies not accepted):
Additionally they want a photocopy of my passport, or a birth certificate.
Funny thing - there's no contact number on the letter, no name, no reason given for that request, no additional information. It starts with "Thank you for your application" even though I never contacted them. There's only a reference number and the company's logo. They attached a prepaid envelope, addressed to a PO Box. It ends with "Yours sincerely, Consumer Help Service". I asked in the bank and they don't see any problems with that.
So yeah... the letter is now in trash and I'm cancelling my "identity fraud protection" on Monday. I'm still thinking whether I want to keep the account... On the other hand - if I ever need to start a scam based on stolen identities, I see I don't even have to try hard. If anyone responds to a letter like that, it should be a really easy job :)
And while I'm talking about the identity protection - the WTF bank is Lloyds TSB, and the WTF credit reports company is Experian. DIAF!
I agree that Dell rep failed here by not selling her Windows. Also I agree that she's a complete retard if she can't find a solution to such a basic problem herself. But your post is just a flamebait...
@morbiuswilters said:
The woman was sold what is, for all intents and purposes, a defective product.
You mean that the software which I'm using without problems for the last 4 years (at work, university, home) is defective for all intents and purposes? Could you maybe be a little bit more specific? I'm very happy with it so far.
@morbiuswilters said:
Hell, a lot of people barely know the difference between different versions of Windows and for all this woman might have known, "Ubuntu" could have been a version of Windows. It's about as descriptive of a name as "Vista".
What next? Article about someone whining that they got "7" but wanted "XP" and their internet connection didn't work and they had to get a divorce because of that?
@morbiuswilters said:
The whole attitude being expressed here is precisely why Linux will never be mainstream. The community is full of pathetic nerds who only see Linux as some kind of status symbol or rebellion and not as a practical tool.
Do you know if she asked anyone for help? If she even tried to resolve the problem? I guess what she could do is go to google (on some university computer) and search for "ubuntu verizon" - second link is http://www.stevehargadon.com/2007/10/ubuntu-710-gutsy-update-and-verizon.html where you get links to 3 places describing installation (ubuntuforums is the last one). What exactly is wrong with that community? I'm not sure what's your problem and what you expect the "community" to do - go to her house and fix it for her?
@morbiuswilters said:
At the very least, the "desktop Linux" crowd should have taken this opportunity to help the woman and demonstrate that Linux isn't that "scary" but it seems they would prefer to mock the poor woman for inadvertently using their product.
I'm not sure what takes more time - moaning about the problem to a TV station, or fixing it. There are step-by-step instructions available. I will mock her if she's too dumb to read them. Finding them is much easier than ordering a new laptop! Also - how was the "desktop Linux" crowd supposed to know she has a problem before she asked a question?
@morbiuswilters said:
See, Microsoft got to where they are by throwing their efforts into helping regular people get their work done.
I'm sorry, but could you maybe use some examples? I'm not sure what are you talking about... I was trying to fix a network connection (wifi) in Vista some time ago and it seems my only options were:
- restart system
- reinstall drivers
What is it exactly that they are throwing their efforts into? And no - nothing on the first X pages on google suggested a solution to the problem.
@morbiuswilters said:
It seems that FOSS community (which almost never creates anything new and just emulates popular apps from other platforms) can't be bothered with actually producing and supporting a useful, practical product.
Why exactly is emulating a successful application bad? And again - what more do you want the community to do? Are you aware, that you can *gasp* BUY SUPPORT for ubuntu if you need it?
Did you simply want to complain about linux crowd, or did you have some new ideas to offer?