TDWTF Forums

network Block WTF

Indrora — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:28:04 GMT

My school uses an outdated website blocker. When blocked it does an HTTP REDIRECT to a URL. Well neat, I thought, I can make this do my bidding!
HTTP:// (proxy-IP):81/cgi/block.cgi?URL=[insert-url-here]&IP=[insert-ip-here]&CAT=[insert-category-here]&USER=[insert-username-here]

I was able to produce this, among other things with my engineering of the blocker:

I lol'd when they saw their own website blocked under pr0n. as well, the "review" link redirects to an email (mailto:) url of mailto ::admin@company.localdomain&subject=please unblock my site

...seriously?

DOA — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:57:03 GMT

I've decided to buy some stuff from amazon and I figured that that I might as well check out all those books I keep hearing about; Code Complete, The Pragmatic Programmer, etc, etc. All was well until I got to Peopleware.

Can someone explain to me why this costs 130$? And that's in amazon.com. I live in the EU so I checked amazon.co.uk first where it costs -get this- 153 quid or 175 euro. That's 240 bucks. For a book. I can buy a bookcase for that.

What the hell is in that book, the answer to life, the universe and everything? Or is it the materials? Is it made out of diamond dust ink on gold-plated pages?

This is some serious overheating.

Aimee the Great — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:11:50 GMT

Screenie this time!

On the other hand, from a different program ...

I knew Canada was cold, but this is a little ridiculous.

Both from my old computer. Very simple explanation: Only one temperature sensor.

Average age of TDWTF'ers

Renan "C#" Sousa — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:31:39 GMT

I don't know if this has been made before, but a quick search on the site returned no results. Out of curiosity, how old are you guys? I'm 25. BTW, I was introduced to IT in general when I was 16, but only took it seriously when I got into CS in college when I was 21.

Everything on the net is bollocks

Indrora — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:16:28 GMT

I hate it coming from the hellhole we know as DaniWeb, but something tells me that WebSense hasnt been archiving the minions of Moot... [article]

Covering the last six months of 2009, the report is based upon the findings of the ThreatSeeker Network which is used to discover, classify and monitor global Internet threats and trends courtesy of something called the Internet HoneyGrid.

Well then, looks like I need to go feed the bees that occupy the tubes.

Nobody shares knowledge better than this

SpectateSwamp — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:41:25 GMT

Step 1 build your hoard:
===============

It's best keep copies of your knowledge in the lowest format possible. Text, jpg pics, mpg video, mp3 audio etc
Then you don't have to drag around copies of the proprietary software that goes with it.

Do many of your notes at home and bring them to the office (keep the latest version)
As well make lots of notes at work, doing screen captures of important functions and details.
Document the important know-how that you brought to the Company.
For knowledge co-workers have shared with you (add that to your hoard)
Gather pictures from the company picnic or evenings out. Always take pictures of key whiteboard details.

By Hoarding all the important details you now have something to share!

If you are in a non-sharing environment. (no copies allowed) Then keep even more notes at home (and
email those to the office) use a digital camera or camcorder to secure the other info you need. Or have
a more gutsy co-worker do the copies for you.

Sharing knowledge is about opening this valuable hoard to others.
There would be no point in backing it up and keeping the files current, without a personal copy.

For the most part, I very seldom used company notes and screen captures once I left.
It was probably the fact that I referenced them lots and depended on the info so much that I
wanted a copy on leaving. The main thing is the staff that remained had it.

How to share knowledge using Swamp search:
=============================

This app makes it easy for everyone to organize their data. It can also play random samples of
my: Video, Music, Pics and text. This helps me stay familiar with my own data hoard.

Archiving video, photo or audio files requires 2 text lines. The first contains the details
and the second line is the path to the file. ie "c:\search\myvid023.mpg" or c:\search\mypic03328.mpg
Even if this search was no longer available, the above data would still be valuable and easy to get at.

To share knowledge you have to show it off. I used it to display random screen captures, when co-workers
drop by. Set it to play from a USB drive. If staff like it. Give it to them.

Examples of sharing:
=============
We cataloged 5000+ family album pictures in the late 1990's then burned copies, set to auto display and gave
copies to family members, media. A local magazine published the "Oldie" black and white pics a few times.

If I was scanning those pictures today. I'd probably use a camcorder to video them in. Going picture
to picture, zooming in on the details and explaining who was who.

I did 2000+ screen captures and many notes during a 10 month span of doing telco billing system conversions...

I have photos and scans of my media attention since the early 80's (at my fingertips ready to share)

Knowledge sharing is retricted due to a number of factors. Don't let that scare or stop you.

There is no reason not to hoard and share your family data. Just do it.

In Case of Power Outage

AlpineR — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:49:01 GMT

During the big Snowpocalypse blizzard here in Washington, DC, the local CBS station had some helpful hints crawling along the bottom of the screen, including what to do if your power is out:

Don't heat your home with cooking grills.
Use multiple blankets to stay warm at night.
Avoid opening your refrigerator to keep the food cold longer.
A generator can power your television and converter box.

Sound advice, but I think they missed their target audience.

Read/Write windows file metadata

spammer32 — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:57:49 GMT

Is it possible to read/write metadata stored in files under the windows os? (The data you can reach by right clicking a file in Windows and choosing properties)?

Just plain awful website

campkev — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:22:21 GMT

http://yvettesbridalformal.com/index.htm

I guess the URL got pissed off at me.

Aimee the Great — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:36:26 GMT

I was going through the Error'd thing and copying the image locations of some funny pics, to paste into an IM window. (I'm too lazy to upload them myself.) And most of them were http://thedailywtf.com/forums/PostAttachment.aspx. But after a while of doing that, I ended up with this odd URL in my clipboard:

http://thedailywtf.com/forums/omgstfuomghowmanylinksareyougoingtopostjeez.aspx

Unfortunately, no screenshot. I am highly confused.

You Rock Alagasco

campkev — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:08:24 GMT

Just signed up for eBill with Alagasco (Alabama Gas Co). WTF's in the procedure:
1) Had to type in my account #, which had 8 consecutive 0's in it. That's fun to figure out. Minor, I know, but evidently it is a problem for more than one person as the page saiid "Enter your account number, including all the 0's
2) Username had to be six characters long, but my password only had to be 5. Great. Thanks for making sure my username is more secure than my password.
3) As soon as I had finished registering, it took my back to the login page and made me login again.
4) As soon as I logged in, it told my my password was expired and made me change it. So now, I have to change it to a non standard password, which I know I'm gonna forget.

Need help passing arrays from vb .NET to ActiveX control (*.ocx)

Urlik — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 14:36:59 GMT

Hi all,

I have an application written in Visual Basic 6 that uses an ActiveX control written in Visual C++ 6. I'm moving the visual basic 6 application to visual basic .NET (2003). The problem is when I try to pass an array from the visual basic code as a parameter of a function of the control.
In Visual Basic 6 the code is something like this:

Dim dummy(10) as Long
'...
'some code
'...
call myActiveXControl.myFunction(dummy(0))

myFunction expects a reference of the first element of an array of Integers. Passing the first element of the array works fine in visual basic 6.

But if I try the above code in vb .NET, changing the definition of the array for this one (type Long in vb 6 is Integer in vb .NET) :

Dim dummy(10) as Integer

it does not work, the ActiveX control cannot even retrieve the contents of the array.

I suppose the solution has something to do with marshaling, but I don't have any idea of what to do

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks in advance

Your password is too good

fsphil — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:59:10 GMT

From apc.com:

Wait, what?

Certificate Error

durnurd — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:10:04 GMT

I just got an email from IT about the certificate on the internal server being expired (it just expired). They sent a link about how to get around it, but since the linkpointed to our internal server, I had to follow the standard steps in Firefox (I understand the risks, yes add an exception, yes really add it) to actually view the web page that tells me how to do exactly what I just did.

Netscape is the second most widely used browser

rad131304 — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:34:46 GMT

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fea_docs/FEA_CRM_v23_Final_Oct_2007_Revised.pdf

See the bottom of page 66:

Netscape Communicator – Netscape is the second most widely used World Wide Web browser.

c++ flow control - did I miss something?

blatant_mcfakename — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:44:34 GMT

Is the coder who wrote the following code (which I found earlier tucked away in a project) a genius who knows something I don't, or is it just as pointless as I suspect?

for(int i=1; i<=2; i++)
{
switch(i)
{
   case 1:
     /* do something */
     break;
   case 2:
     /* do the next thing */
     break;
}
}

Get max ID

bobzilla — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:32:24 GMT

Our company just recently had a developer leave to head to greener pastures. He had gotten his "Master of Science in Computer Information Systems - Database Management and Business Intelligence Concentration" and he felt he wasn't being paid what he was now worth. Shortly after he left we got into some of his code and found this function that was used to get the maximum ID from a table. I'm not sure, but I think there's an easier way to do it.

private long GetDocumentInfoDocID(string strDocTypeID)
        {
            long    nDocID = 0;
            long    nRows   = 0;
            bool    bDateID = false;
            bool    bRows   = true;
            string strSQL = "";
            string strMsg = "";

            string strDocInfoFile = "DocumentInfo" + "_" + strDocTypeID;

            MySqlCommand dtCommand = null;
            MySqlDataReader dtReader = null;

            try
            {
                strSQL = string.Format("select * from " + strDocInfoFile);
                dtCommand = dtConnection.CreateCommand();
                dtCommand.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
                dtCommand.CommandText = strSQL;

                dtReader = dtCommand.ExecuteReader();

                bRows = dtReader.HasRows;

                while (bRows)
                {
                    bDateID = true;
                    if (bDateID == true)
                    {
                        if (dtReader != null)
                        {
                            bRows = false;
                            dtReader.Close();
                        }
                        // Get the number of items in the current date
                        strSQL = string.Format("select * from " + strDocInfoFile);
                        dtCommand.CommandText = strSQL;
                        dtReader = dtCommand.ExecuteReader();
                        while (dtReader.Read())
                        {
                            nRows++;
                        }
                        nDocID = nRows;
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                strMsg = string.Format("Error in reading DocumentInfoInfo table by function:GetDocumentInfoDocID, Exception: {0}", ex.Message);
                LoggerInfo(strMsg);
                throw new MyException(strMsg);
            }
            finally
            {
                if (dtReader != null)
                    dtReader.Close();
            }
            return nDocID;
        }

It's a password, but not a password

ais523 — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:48:39 GMT

Here's a fun account creation form I came across today:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/account_apply.cgi?iid=

Try to guess what the secret word is for. At first I thought it was a password, with weird security restrictions (at least 5 letters long, must be letters only), but then I noticed the lack of any confirm box. A confirm box isn't needed, though; if you try typing in the "secret word" box, you'll find it's a normal text box that echos, rather than a password.

Even more fun, it's stored in plaintext. I know this, because on the next page it's sent back to me; I then get an email with a link to another page in, which asks me to type in the secret word (which is not included in the email). So it's a bit like a temporary password used for account creation (which many websites email to you), except that you provide it yourself and it isn't allowed to be very secure. And it's used only to authenticate a link that they've just sent to an email account you provide. (Luckily, you're asked to set an actual username and password after that.) Although this is explained at the top of the page, it still doesn't explain why a system like this is used; the only possibility that I can see that the secret word would insure against, would be if someone else was reading your email, and decided to follow the link and create an account in your name instead. Unfortunately, in such a rather implausible case, such a person could simply use the form themselves, filling in your email address, and then using the secret word to make sure that it was they who managed to create the account, rather than you. And all this is relatively pointless, as as far as I can tell duplicate names are allowed on the initial signup form; it's only the username that has to be unique, and the username/password aren't prompted for until you've already gone through the email confirmation.

My best guess is that this is some attempt to look like security, rather than actually give any security.

Anti-spam take on a clbuttic mistake

fennec — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:28:35 GMT

An acquaintance of mine was "really looking forward to" this film, and I'd never heard of it, so I checked it out, and discovered this. It appears that a) at.com is a URL shortening service, and b) Fandango uses regular expressions in its anti-spam engine without any niceties like escaping the period in .com. Also, they still get spammed.

Secure Payslips

metallurg — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:54:27 GMT

The (supposed) industry leading, multi-national engineering compary I work for has just implemented a new payslip system. They email a password protected pdf copy of your payslip every month.

Sounds fine so far, right? The wtf is that they also send a second plain text email, at the same time as the payslip, that contains your password. Every month.

I'm *almost* surprised by this. Although, given that the industry-leading, fantastic, brilliant application that runs the core business is based on VB6 may say something.

Toyota's pedal recall: Speculation

Weng — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:53:36 GMT

The more I hear about Toyota's pedal problems (and see the disassemblies of all the affected parts) the more it becomes clear to me that the pedals are probably just an inexepsnvie scapegoat for some fucked ECU programming.

Consider this scenario:

Due to moisture, intentional design, random electrical voltage variations, whatever, the accelerator pedal "sends" (it's actually a passive magnetic field sensor, but whatever) an out-of-range value.(Let's assume 256)

The ECU receives this value and sets the throttle position. The code responsible for setting the throttle position (whee, more magnets) dutifully jams the throttle right the hell wide open (hey, you asked for 256, I can only physically go to 255 - so you get 255).

The ECU then takes the value it received from the pedal and tries to do some calculations with it. This either overflows a buffer somewhere and wedges the thing right away, or produces another garbage, out-of-whack number which in turn gets sent on to another function which wedges when it receives out-of-spec values.

Your car is now running at wide open throttle, the "read the throttle position and react to it" loop is wedged, and your car is stuck in a runaway situation. Go stomp on the brake pedal, or shift into neutral or something.

Now, Toyota's proposed fix is to take the accelerator pedals and stick a plastic shim in them to reduce the range of travel. This works because in 99.999% of the cases, the faulty value is being sent when the pedal is at or really close to the full travel position (when it would send 255) - so lets say this shim reduces the maximum position to 250. That's a lot more room for error caused by bad voltage, condensation, whatever. Yeah, the customer can't intentionally hit that last bit of throttle position, but we're talking about Toyotas here - they aren't exactly sports cars. As a result, the only way anyone is going to send a faulty value to the ECU is with aftermarket equipment (not their problem) or a a seemingly random event which can easily be written off as user error.

Why would Toyota fix the pedals instead of just modifying the code? The unit cost for one of the pedal assemblies is $15 ($120 retail, but that's beside the point). It can be pulled in about 45 seconds and either replaced with a pre-modified part, or modified in about 5 minutes, and reinstalled in about 45 seconds.

Fixing the code on the ECU would require fixing it in code, testing the everlasting piss out of it (which takes time and costs money), fixing any issues that arise during testing, etc. - the more they cut corners on processing resources, the longer and more expensive this will be - and then they have to get that code onto ECUs. This, at a minimum, would involve pulling the ECU, taking it into the shop, pulling it apart, attaching an in-place flash harnass (not standard equipment at any car dealership) to the chip in question, flashing it, hoping and praying it worked properly, reassembling it, and reinstalling the ECU. At worst (and this is the most likely case, because if I were going to build a safety-critical system like an ECU, I'd be using burn-once chips so the customer can't fuck with it) it requires replacing the ECU - which costs a damn hell of a lot more than $15.

Are we connected?

b_redeker — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:06:17 GMT

So... would you say I'm currently connected?

Spell checker... in Lotus Notes 8.5

Daid — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:24:53 GMT

Following is a list of words that our Lotus Notus spell checker found wrong while typing an email. It also find that 'third' is wrong only 50% of the time, not depending on the context. You can retype it to make it right. Good thing I could disable it at all.

currently development workflow third effort estimations requests I've attached XML those between departments 2nd with configuration while 3th development quite they allow escalation example our could pick resolve cannot resolved until linked internal simpler because don't other setup testing reachable but working VPN reach location admin rights poke around

It does manage to suggest the following 'fixes' for the errors:
tiro effers Ijver attachés XXL tahoe beweend departement witz whifte CD quine They allooi escalaties exempel oir court pack remolie kanoot resolveert units linkerd Interpol simplex besausen donut otters set-ups testis regale buts wrokkig VIN ready locatieven ademing richtas poker afrondt

Lotus Notes - It's better then eating glass!*

* - Depending on the quantities of glass.

Outer Join or WHERE NOT EXISTS

belgariontheking — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:42:42 GMT

I think I know already, but which would be faster if you wanted to find only the records that don't join?

Method 1: Do an outer join and then a WHERE table2.whateverfield IS NULL

Method 2: do a WHERE NOT EXISTS

Job Title question : Mgmt is trying to retitle my position

Abbacabba — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:01:09 GMT

Management here wants to re-title my position, for two reasons 1) since I'm doing quite a bit of different work than was originally planned and 2) so they know what to post incase they need to replace me in the future.

They want my input. After a quick glance over my skill set and job duties, what would we need to describe this position as?

I'll just list things I'm at least proficient in, I will not list things I have a passing knowledge of.

About me :

~10 years software development.

Languages : C, C++, Perl, PHP, C#, TCL, Unix shell scripting, SQL (TSQL, PLSQL)

Systems : MS-Dos, Windows 3.1 to 7 for client, NT 4 to 2008 for server, OS/2, IBM MVS & z/OS, Linux ( multiple distros), AIX

Current position

I do all sorts of in-house software. The range is single user apps to large systems spanning multiple OS's.

One of the larger projects I've designed and coded is about 100k lines of C#, and a database where I have been the sole designer and maintainer.

I have near total freedom to design as I see fit, restraints are usually budgetary.

Skills required to replace me in my current role:

Windows and Unix admin, Database design, .NET up to 3.5 (C#, ASP.NET), C++, Perl, good skills in designing large and efficient data processing systems.

Given this small level of information what would you see this as being titled? (is more information required to render a decision?)