Comment On A Y2K Holdover

I hope you have been sitting on that mayo picture for a while. It is kind of late to just throw that out of the fridge.

I typed "world peace" into Google and eBay sponsored "World peace. Great selection at low prices!"

Or, maybe, February 19th? One can never be sure...

That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.

tgies:

That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.

This. Not a WTF.

How does the mayo know to expire at exactly 05:31? Is that local time, GMT, or the time zone of the manufacturing plant?

So... let me get this straight: "Ferdy" decided it's real funny to name a VPN "Europe and Middle East" and submit resulting screenshot here. And the real WTF is that Alex accepted and published this infantile submission, right?

One time I saw the year given as "19108".

tgies:

That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.

You're amazing! Nobody could understand this without your help... Thank you!!! And pleaze, send me teh code ;-)

Drved:

How does the mayo know to expire at exactly 05:31?

Expiry dates really annoy me. We have people here that try and throw milk out just because 'the label says it's off'... suggest to them that they smell or taste it first and they look at you aghast.

I don't know why the pot of honey I bought yesterday has a date at all, it's never going to bloody well go off.

"50% off!?," Dan noted, "with those kind of savings, I could start two wars in Iraq!"

No, you can't. You can't even afford a single war in Iraq.

Maarten

Imagine if that mayo had an expiry date a few days later. Hmm... FEB2308, still good for 300 more years...

BTW, those two digit dates on food really annoy me. What's 0908? Can't you print two more digits or just drop the useless time and print a proper date instead?

The real WTF is that the Iraq War one didn't include an eBay ad offering great "new and used Iraq Wars".

Anon:

Imagine if that mayo had an expiry date a few days later. Hmm... FEB2308, still good for 300 more years...

BTW, those two digit dates on food really annoy me. What's 0908? Can't you print two more digits or just drop the useless time and print a proper date instead?

I always wondered why the 'Expire' included a time.
Can I really use that Mayonnaise right up until 5:04PM?

The one on Operating Systems probably made a poor assumption that it would only be used on Windows.

So when he tried to get the Operating System version and instead of it saying Windows XP Operating System, it used a null string. Still a WTF nonetheless.

Cursorkeys:

I don't know why the pot of honey I bought yesterday has a date at all, it's never going to bloody well go off.

To make you throw out some perfectly servicable honey and buy more.

If you look closer at the error dialog, you can spot a two-spaces gap between "with" and "Operating Systems".
This means that the string was
"This setup is for users with $OS_NAME Operating Systems only" and somehow the programmer forgot to assign the $OS_NAME variable properly.
Still a WTF, but a smaller one.

The time is there to pinpoint what time it was bottled. This is helpful if there are some Quality problems. The best buy date is always X number of days from the time of bottling. I agree its a WTF that they can't add 2 more digits. On the flip side of the coin, they may be trying to make the string as short as possible to not draw attention to it.

The last one is hardly a WTF. The two dates are probably generated by two different algorithms; sometimes the first one comes earlier, sometimes the second one does. Of course, the software could've determine the earliest date by itself, but heck, maybe both are important.

I was writing my comment at the same time as Pitchingchris -- he was in advance of five mins, though ;-)

The last one isn't a WTF either. Business file 4 times a year, and it just saying that records are dumped from their system two times a year.

This keeps people form saying "I submitted them 9 months ago!"

pitchingchris:

On the flip side of the coin, they may be trying to make the string as short as possible to not draw attention to it.

Most likely the length of the message is constrained by the printer that sprays the date code onto the bottle as well as the speed of the processing line.

The print head would typically have all the nozzles for a single line of text (fixes the message width) and the dwell time of the jar under the print system sets the number of rows that you can print.

My money's on the "Operating Systems" one being from an MSDN disc, and should read "MSDN Operating Systems" (as in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718657.aspx)

laoreet:

The last one isn't a WTF either. Business file 4 times a year, and it just saying that records are dumped from their system two times a year.

This keeps people form saying "I submitted them 9 months ago!"

Since the code displays both dates, how hard would it be for it to compare the two and just display the one that comes first? Sounds like a WTF to me...a lazy programmer WTF

OzPeter:

Most likely the length of the message is constrained by the printer that sprays the date code onto the bottle as well as the speed of the processing line.

The print head would typically have all the nozzles for a single line of text (fixes the message width) and the dwell time of the jar under the print system sets the number of rows that you can print.

Absolutely correct (I used to work on these). The print head is fixed in relation to the conveyor, and the product moves past - not even stopping. On the fastest types, the ink is continuously pumped through the nozzles, and steered electrostatically (to the target or the recirculating collector). The print head is a big chunk of precision-machined stainless steel, cost proportional to width. A 'cheap' system might only have a head width of about one inch, 48 nozzles, which would match the photo.

TRWTF is mm/dd/yy

Maarten Sneep:

"50% off!?," Dan noted, "with those kind of savings, I could start two wars in Iraq!"

No, you can't. You can't even afford a single war in Iraq.

Maarten

One of the best comments I've ever seen on this site.

ParkinT:

Anon:

Imagine if that mayo had an expiry date a few days later. Hmm... FEB2308, still good for 300 more years...

BTW, those two digit dates on food really annoy me. What's 0908? Can't you print two more digits or just drop the useless time and print a proper date instead?

I always wondered why the 'Expire' included a time.
Can I really use that Mayonnaise right up until 5:04PM?

The time is not there for you. By using the expiration date + time, the manufacturer and retrailers can determine EXACTLY when a product was produced. Therefore, if a manufacturer knows that there was a bad lot produced around 5PM, it knows it should discard/cancel the product lot with times around there.

Tom_fan_63:

tgies:

That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.

You're amazing! Nobody could understand this without your help... Thank you!!! And pleaze, send me teh code ;-)

Shut up. Tom_fan_63 is making a valid point.
Edit: on second thought, if the date had been before the 13th, it might not have been so obvious; so the format is a bit wtf-ish.

Maarten Sneep:

"50% off!?," Dan noted, "with those kind of savings, I could start two wars in Iraq!"

No, you can't. You can't even afford a single war in Iraq.

Maarten

Well, only if I gave up coffee and beer.

Ahhh... Now I see. George Bush has been shopping from the "Cripple Our Economy" online store. Clbuttic mistake.

Cursorkeys:

I don't know why the pot of honey I bought yesterday has a date at all, it's never going to bloody well go off.

No, but it will turn into that delicious blend of honey with coagulated, granulated goodness. That texture mixed with a peanut butter sandwich is heaven, I tell ya. Heaven.

me:

So... let me get this straight: "Ferdy" decided it's real funny to name a VPN "Europe and Middle East" and submit resulting screenshot here. And the real WTF is that Alex accepted and published this infantile submission, right?

The Dutch electronics giant Philips uses this as the name for its VPN software to be used by 120,000+ employees. I don't know if they chose the name or if this is a default in the VPN software though.

me:

So... let me get this straight: "Ferdy" decided it's real funny to name a VPN "Europe and Middle East" and submit resulting screenshot here.

Actually Contivity VPN Client is usually set up by big corporates with preconfigured VPNs to the company's own networks. The name would usually be set by system admins...

That said, I'm not above a bit of infantile naming. My careful choice of name when signing up for a particular real estate newsletter still makes me smile long after the joke should have worn off:

An error has occured while trying to post this comment!

Edss:

TRWTF is mm/dd/yy

Seconded. dd/mm/yyyy is the reason I don't get bungled even when products have two-digit years. 29MAY08 ... oh no, DON'T EAT THAT CHEESE!!

Once again, idiots cant read. FEB1908 is 19 February 2008. If you want to be stupid, please return to the 20th century...

tgies:

That first one is pretty dumb; it's obviously 2008-02-19. I see that format for expiration date stamps all the time.

You missed the "C". It's obviously an unix timestamp: Fri, 29 May 2105 14:15:40.

Shambo:

I hope you have been sitting on that mayo picture for a while. It is kind of late to just throw that out of the fridge.

Are you kidding? I just threw one out from May 2007...

danixdefcon5:

Edss:

TRWTF is mm/dd/yy

Seconded. dd/mm/yyyy is the reason I don't get bungled even when products have two-digit years. 29MAY08 ... oh no, DON'T EAT THAT CHEESE!!

Thirded. Damned american date formats. yyyy-mm-dd <3

pitchingchris:

The best buy date is always X number of days from the time of bottling.

Reminds me of some items I saw in a store recently (bags of walnuts). The 'Best Before' date was Feb 29, 2009. I'm guessing they were packaged on Feb 29, 2008 and the system blindly just upped the year (like MS SQL Server did for their certificates...)
I KNEW I should have taken a pic...

leppie:

Once again, idiots cant read. FEB1908 is 19 February 2008. If you want to be stupid, please return to the 20th century...

Fine, I admit it. I can't read.

Which character am I getting wrong?

The mayo's not a Y2K bug.

That's a 'We're too cheap to put in a printer that will print the extra 2 digits' bug.

The Mayo expired Circa Feb 19, 08 5:31.

<.<

You guys know that food expiration dates are just hours from manufacturing date right, and that they normally just round to the nearest day?

Anonymous Coward:

danixdefcon5:

Edss:

TRWTF is mm/dd/yy

Seconded. dd/mm/yyyy is the reason I don't get bungled even when products have two-digit years. 29MAY08 ... oh no, DON'T EAT THAT CHEESE!!

Thirded. Damned american date formats. yyyy-mm-dd <3

Since it was bottled in America, than TRWTF is yall complaining about it.

I can save you 90% on the War In Iraq, if you sign up for a 2 months subscription

One time I saw the year given as "19108".

Actually, that is probably day 191 of 2008.

Ian