• anonymous_coder() (unregistered)

    Heh - reminds me of the dual-core dual-processor rackmount we bought on spec for a customer for their developer, who then never got the hang of multi-threaded programming.

    The machine ran at a constant 25% load...

  • (cs)

    I have to say, I'm not buying this story at all. After all, what nonprofit doesn't have its own bee colony? What if the CLIENTS NEED HONEY!?!?

  • Loveknuckle (unregistered)

    This is the best WTF evar.

    BTW, I like Jake's writin' style. Keep up the good work!

  • (cs) in reply to anonymous_coder()
    anonymous_coder():
    Heh - reminds me of the dual-core dual-processor rackmount we bought on spec for a customer for their developer, who then never got the hang of multi-threaded programming.

    The machine ran at a constant 25% load...

    The dev should have sneaked in 3 instances of SETI@home or similar, then it would have looked like (s)he was a master of multithreaded efficiency :)

  • (cs)

    I for one think we should concentrate on protein folding before extraterrestrial intelligence. At this point, if we FIND something, what can we do with it?

    • We can't go investigate because we don't have interstellar travel, hell we don't even have interplanetary travel
    • If anyone was technologically advanced enough to come here, we would have nothing to offer them as allies and offer no resistance as enemies, so we'd either never meet them or just immediately get owned

    Therefore everyone should therefore concentrate on protein folding @ home, because if we solve some of the mysteries surrounding medical science maybe we can make humans smart enough to actually do all of that stuff above. AFTER that we can look for neighbors to hang out with! When it won't be like when your mom forces your little brother to come with you when you go out with your friends and he talks about pokemon or something the entire time. Awkward... heh ;)

  • (cs)

    "...it might be quicker to list the ventures they don't have: a tattoo parlor, a laser tag arena, and a bee colony."

    Presumably, then, other permutations of the above are, in fact, part of their organization. To wit:

    -A laser tag parlor -A bee arena -A tattoo colony

    Sounds like fun! Where do I get more information?

  • Nobody (unregistered) in reply to misguided
    misguided:
    I for one think we should concentrate on protein folding before extraterrestrial intelligence. At this point, if we FIND something, what can we do with it? - We can't go investigate because we don't have interstellar travel, hell we don't even have interplanetary travel - If anyone was technologically advanced enough to come here, we would have nothing to offer them as allies and offer no resistance as enemies, so we'd either never meet them or just immediately get owned

    Therefore everyone should therefore concentrate on protein folding @ home, because if we solve some of the mysteries surrounding medical science maybe we can make humans smart enough to actually do all of that stuff above. AFTER that we can look for neighbors to hang out with! When it won't be like when your mom forces your little brother to come with you when you go out with your friends and he talks about pokemon or something the entire time. Awkward... heh ;)

    WTF?

    (CAPTCHA, sanitarium... so fitting)

  • Jonathan Thompson (unregistered)

    You just know that with the scenario painted there, sooner or later that expensive server will go down the tubes, due to doo-doo corroding contacts, overheating, and an overabundance of sprayed bathroom "deodorizer" perfume that builds up over time and reduces cooling efficiency. Not to mention, a humid environment like a bathroom is the worst condition you could run such a thing in.

    Captcha: xevious (how are these created/selected???)

  • (cs)

    The bathroom-as-server-room is an undisputable WTF, but as for the hardware cost, I feel like I need to know what year this took place.

    It wasn't so long ago that spending $2250 per seat on hardware was actually a pretty damn good deal.

  • (cs) in reply to Nobody
    Nobody:
    misguided:
    I for one think we should concentrate on protein folding before extraterrestrial intelligence. At this point, if we FIND something, what can we do with it? - We can't go investigate because we don't have interstellar travel, hell we don't even have interplanetary travel - If anyone was technologically advanced enough to come here, we would have nothing to offer them as allies and offer no resistance as enemies, so we'd either never meet them or just immediately get owned

    Therefore everyone should therefore concentrate on protein folding @ home, because if we solve some of the mysteries surrounding medical science maybe we can make humans smart enough to actually do all of that stuff above. AFTER that we can look for neighbors to hang out with! When it won't be like when your mom forces your little brother to come with you when you go out with your friends and he talks about pokemon or something the entire time. Awkward... heh ;)

    WTF?

    (CAPTCHA, sanitarium... so fitting)

    Not sure what's so WTF about this, it's perfecly right. What's the point of spending CPU cycles with SETI when Folding@Home has immediate positive consequences?

  • (cs)
    Jake Vinson:
    The cost of the central server was €8,000 (roughly $11,000 USD).

    Did they buy it from the Department of Redundancy Department?

  • (cs) in reply to Nobody
    Nobody:
    (CAPTCHA, sanitarium... so fitting)

    They're ALL fitting, dingbat (except for "Xevious", which is just there to confuse the ankle-biters).

    I guess it makes sense that the people who aren't smart enough to figure this out, are also the ones most likely to obsessively post their CAPTCHAs.

  • (cs) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    Jake Vinson:
    The cost of the central server was €8,000 (roughly $11,000 USD).

    Did they buy it from the Department of Redundancy Department?

    I bought a CD player in Montreal for $15 CAD.

  • (cs) in reply to misguided
    misguided:
    I for one think we should concentrate on protein folding before extraterrestrial intelligence. At this point, if we FIND something, what can we do with it? - We can't go investigate because we don't have interstellar travel, hell we don't even have interplanetary travel - If anyone was technologically advanced enough to come here, we would have nothing to offer them as allies and offer no resistance as enemies, so we'd either never meet them or just immediately get owned

    Therefore everyone should therefore concentrate on protein folding @ home, because if we solve some of the mysteries surrounding medical science maybe we can make humans smart enough to actually do all of that stuff above. AFTER that we can look for neighbors to hang out with! When it won't be like when your mom forces your little brother to come with you when you go out with your friends and he talks about pokemon or something the entire time. Awkward... heh ;)

    I used to run the United Devices agent which did protein folding and similar, it got shut down recently because it was an experiment which they declared successful and therefore over... Can't say I understood that one myself. Didn't know about Folding@~ will go and download it forthwith

  • Nobody (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    Nobody:
    (CAPTCHA, sanitarium... so fitting)

    They're ALL fitting, dingbat (except for "Xevious", which is just there to confuse the ankle-biters).

    I guess it makes sense that the people who aren't smart enough to figure this out, are also the ones most likely to obsessively post their CAPTCHAs.

    onomatopoeia, yummy, waffles... not fitting, sanitarium however was.

    (and oddly enough, my CAPTCHA is xevious, figured you'd want to know)

    And to the other guy, I wasn't WTFing his comment on SETI, I'm not a huge fan either, I just thought the part about the little brother and pokimon was a bit odd. Sorry, should have trimmed down my quote.

  • David Hasselhoff (unregistered) in reply to tmountjr

    Actualy, you bought a CD player in Montreal for 15$ CAD.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered)

    It's "all tolled" as in tallied, not "all told"

    /english nazi

  • Shadow Wolf (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    It's "all tolled" as in tallied, not "all told"

    /english nazi

    "All told" is correct. In fact, the very first Google result for "all tolled", as well as the following three, explain the correct usage:

    http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/tolled.html

    I'll add that I have never seen anyone "all tolled" used before, which is also an indicator that "all told" is the correct usage.

  • Hux (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    It's "all tolled" as in tallied, not "all told"
    He was actually correct; you are incorrect.

    http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/tolled.html

  • (cs) in reply to misguided
    misguided:
    I for one think we should concentrate on protein folding before extraterrestrial intelligence. At this point, if we FIND something, what can we do with it? - We can't go investigate because we don't have interstellar travel, hell we don't even have interplanetary travel - If anyone was technologically advanced enough to come here, we would have nothing to offer them as allies and offer no resistance as enemies, so we'd either never meet them or just immediately get owned

    Therefore everyone should therefore concentrate on protein folding @ home, because if we solve some of the mysteries surrounding medical science maybe we can make humans smart enough to actually do all of that stuff above. AFTER that we can look for neighbors to hang out with! When it won't be like when your mom forces your little brother to come with you when you go out with your friends and he talks about pokemon or something the entire time. Awkward... heh ;)

    Well, if it detects a hostile alien fleet that will reach Earth in 10 years, it might give us a better idea of how to shape our budget.

    And if they're friendly, well we can still share our knowledge of distributed computing with them. Hell, the aliens from Independence Day couldn't even keep a few clocks synchronized.

    /To those saying WTF to this comment: He was responding to the other one saying the guy using 25% of his CPU should have ran 3 instances of SETI@home. It made perfect sense.

  • MG (unregistered)

    Long time reader, first time poster.

    Yes, the bathroom server closet is a WTF, but there are many reasons for deploying thin clients. In fact, hardware cost savings generally aren't THAT significant.

    When you factor in the lower support costs (machine is level set to a base image each time it is restarted, no moving parts to break, if one does break you can just slide in a spare with little to no reconfig) and the audit issues (presumably they have patient data - walking out the door with a thin client buys you nothing as no data is, or even can be, stored there, plus no chance data doesn't wind up on the server where it can be safely stored and backed up) $2,250 a seat may be a steal.

  • David C. (unregistered) in reply to tmountjr
    tmountjr:
    I bought a CD player in Montreal for $15 CAD
    Still redundant. What do you think the "D" stands for.

    You should either write "CAD 15" or "$15 CA".

    Just like a US-dollar amount should be written as "USD 15" or "$15 US". I typically see and use the first method when I writing in a forum where an unadorned "$" would be ambiguous.

  • (cs) in reply to David C.
    David C.:
    tmountjr:
    I bought a CD player in Montreal for $15 CAD
    Still redundant. What do you think the "D" stands for.

    You should either write "CAD 15" or "$15 CA".

    Just like a US-dollar amount should be written as "USD 15" or "$15 US". I typically see and use the first method when I writing in a forum where an unadorned "$" would be ambiguous.

    The $ in front scans better, and the USD removes ambiguity and can be skipped over by the eye if the reader care, the end result being that it's easier to read. English has lots of redundancy.

  • diaphanein (unregistered) in reply to Random832
    Random832:
    David C.:
    tmountjr:
    I bought a CD player in Montreal for $15 CAD
    Still redundant. What do you think the "D" stands for.

    You should either write "CAD 15" or "$15 CA".

    Just like a US-dollar amount should be written as "USD 15" or "$15 US". I typically see and use the first method when I writing in a forum where an unadorned "$" would be ambiguous.

    The $ in front scans better, and the USD removes ambiguity and can be skipped over by the eye if the reader care, the end result being that it's easier to read. English has lots of redundancy.

    CAD and USD are ISO standard abbreviations. So, you we should use proprietary abbreviations so you can claim eliminated redundancy? If you're arguing over something that trivial, I'd find your position at my company to be redundant.

  • Rick (unregistered) in reply to Rootbeer
    Rootbeer:
    The bathroom-as-server-room is an undisputable WTF, but as for the hardware cost, I feel like I need to know what year this took place.

    It wasn't so long ago that spending $2250 per seat on hardware was actually a pretty damn good deal.

    Considering the exchange rate, it seems as if this was quite a few years ago.

  • Scott Anderson (unregistered) in reply to David C.
    David C.:
    tmountjr:
    I bought a CD player in Montreal for $15 CAD
    Still redundant. What do you think the "D" stands for.

    You should either write "CAD 15" or "$15 CA".

    Just like a US-dollar amount should be written as "USD 15" or "$15 US". I typically see and use the first method when I writing in a forum where an unadorned "$" would be ambiguous.

    Considering "USD" and "CAD" are standard abbreviations for currency, I can't see how you could possibly make this argument.

    For your reference: http://www.xe.com/symbols.php

    There are a lot of different currencies that use the dollar sign. It's perfectly acceptable to specify a standard abbreviation after the amount.

  • Mario W. (unregistered)

    I can assure you, it was at the end of 2006 (with the 6-month-margin summer 2007). It was very hot in germany (where this happened). It's commonplace here that restroom-fand only work when the light is turned on. It was off all the time.

    My company is still designing "the brochure" (which is a non-tech WTF itself - I could tell if anyonle would like to hear the story) and maintaining the website (I guess I did the only non-bloated job there the whole company has ever seen).

    Soory for posting anonymously but getting my nickname in connection with this WTF would do me no good.

    Greetings from Germany

  • N2 (unregistered) in reply to Mario W.
    Mario W.:
    My company is still designing "the brochure" (which is a non-tech WTF itself - I could tell if anyonle would like to hear the story) and maintaining the website (I guess I did the only non-bloated job there the whole company has ever seen).

    Of course we want to hear it now.

  • Mario W. (unregistered)

    So actually we are an advertising company. As the whole ad-experience we also provide all the web-things. The wellfare-company is part of an even bigger wellfare organization (beeing one of the biggest in germany) in which my father (also owner of my advertising-company) is master of the management board in one of the state-unions. So there is one governing body and a lot os bigger and smaller unions. So that is why we got the job for "the brochure" (also because we do good work, but that does not count as an advertising company in germany).

    We got contracted in the middle of 2005 to create an corporate-image-book. We did and we did good work. But this book was costly in producing and not made for the wide public (created for other organizations for creating joint-ventures). For the public we were contracted to create "the brochure". It should only cost 200EUR in development because it should have been based on the corporate-image-book. WARNING: No exageration! The Boss of the Wellfare Organization has his wife as second in command. In the last 3 months she changed her image in the brochure 7(!) times. Frankly, but I do not take that much fotos of myself and I'm way better looking. As for the advertisement-pages in the brochure, they changed in the last 2 years from none to one to three to two to one back to none up to four and so on. The same is for all the other pages (overthrowing the whole layout all the time). Last week they wanted to change from DIN C4 to DIN A5 (don't know whether these formats are known in the use). The bill must have (for now) summed up to 5.000 or so. But as I see it, they have the money (the it-equipment is not exagerated either). This monday they wanted to take out one page of the brochure (not replacing it). So about every page has to be redone to be at the other side of the brochure (left pages require outher design that right pages). It's hard to deliver the whole situation.

    There is a multi-thousand-members non-profit organization with less to no knowledge about anything whith the leadership of a man and his even less competent wife throwing more money out of the windows than I earn in a year.

    When I was there to take photos we were called to take 10 (ten) photos. We came with two cameras and took 500 images (and a whole workday).

    It's like hell, only worse.

    But I think even worse than this is that they are not the most annoying customer of ours.

    Sorry for my bad english.

  • David (unregistered) in reply to diaphanein

    Maybe so, but I still prefer US$15 or CA$15. We should change the standard. Anyone know how to hook that up?

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Mario W.
    Mario W.:
    Sorry for my bad english.
    Why does this disclaimer usually feature only messages that are perfect in grammar, punctation and spelling? ;-)
  • 2f (unregistered) in reply to Mario W.
    Mario W.:
    There is a multi-thousand-members non-profit organization with less to no knowledge about anything whith the leadership of a man and his even less competent wife throwing more money out of the windows than I earn in a year.

    Welcome to the real world!

    It's amazing how some big companies can flush the money away so easily; look at sony...

  • Mogri (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Mario W.:
    Sorry for my bad english.
    Why does this disclaimer usually feature only messages that are perfect in grammar, punctation and spelling? ;-)

    s/english/English s/punctation/punctuation

    ;)

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Mogri
    Mogri:
    s/english/English s/punctation/punctuation

    ;)

    Damn :-)

  • Jonny (unregistered)

    Intersting. It's highly possible that the server side software was very poorly designed and perhaps it really did need an $8000.00 server to run it. I worked once on a system which required something like 2 gigabytes of memory to service roughly 50 clients. The "clients" were actually small data acquisition devices which sent 3 kb of data over a TCP stream every second. The server engineer had 4 threads servicing each client, most of the time each one was blocking in socket read/writes. Originally it serviced 20 clients before it would crash with std::bad_alloc, on account that each thread was pre-allocated something like 4mb for stack space. What was this server doing? Converting the raw data from an 7 bit ASCII text stream to a binary protocol and logging the data to a file. Where was this data going? To another box (because this one was so maxed out on resources) where a J2EE app would basically convert that to a simple web based view of the data. The real kicker was when he showed the application to the boss. The boss was "quite impressed" with his "mastery of multithreaded programming." He goes on to show the boss that, "Wait, it's totally scalable without changing any of hte code!" He goes and uses ulimit to increase the program's data segment, and the server now supported more clients.

  • Jon (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Mario W.:
    Sorry for my bad english.
    Why does this disclaimer usually feature only messages that are perfect in grammar, punctation and spelling? ;-)
    Because the people who are unskilled at English are unaware of it?
  • Christophe (unregistered) in reply to T $
    T $:
    What if the CLIENTS NEED HONEY!?!?

    If the clients eat too much honey, they won't be 'thin clients' for too much longer, will they?

  • diaphanein (unregistered) in reply to Jon
    Jon:
    Anonymous:
    Mario W.:
    Sorry for my bad english.
    Why does this disclaimer usually feature only messages that are perfect in grammar, punctation and spelling? ;-)
    Because the people who are unskilled at English are unaware of it?

    And besides, the proper term is "engrish".

  • AdT (unregistered) in reply to Rick
    Rick:
    Considering the exchange rate, it seems as if this was quite a few years ago.

    So you think someone should update Google?

  • KITT (unregistered) in reply to David Hasselhoff
    David Hasselhoff:
    Actualy, you bought a CD player in Montreal for 15$ CAD.

    Well, I suppose that's partially true. It might be 15$ CAD in Montreal but $15 CAD in Toronto.... a French/English thing.

  • TimmyT (unregistered)

    We have a few clients that have a server and thin clients exactly like this, they run Citrix with Wyse Winterms. They are mostly medical offices (ok, orthodontists, but still technically in the medical profession). Most of the work they do is imaging-related so the server needs a lot of RAM and good CPU power especially when there are a lot of users. The server hardware itself usually is around $4,000 USD but Citrix licensing has gotten quite expensive lately at $450 USD/seat (concurrent users). If the OS and Citrix licenses are included in that cost it could easily surpass $12,000 USD for 15-20 users. It's a great system though, Winterms run forever and rarely need support. Plus you can shadow someone's session remotely when they need desktop support, you upgrade applications one time and everyone has the new version, etc., and the "power users" can still use PCs.

    Some clients are now sticking with Microsoft Terminal Services which saves a lot of money, is almost as good as Citrix, but you lose the automatic load balancing when you have more than one terminal server.

    Captcha: tesla - whatever happened to them? They were a pretty good band back in the day!

  • Anthony (unregistered) in reply to TimmyT
    Captcha: tesla - whatever happened to them? They were a pretty good band back in the day!
    They actually put out a new album in 2004 called "Into the Now"

    Captcha: kungfu - Mine is mighty.

  • Matt Burgess (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Mario W.:
    Sorry for my bad english.
    Why does this disclaimer usually feature only messages that are perfect in grammar, punctation and spelling? ;-)

    Agreed. Wish my German was that "bad". :)

    Linguistic redundancy is not the evil that people seem to think it is. There are some examples of incorrect and redundant use especially of acronyms, and PIN number and ATM Machine jump to mind on that.

    But some other seemingly redundant acronyms are for disambiguation, and can't be called an error. RAID array (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk Array) and SMS message (Short Message Service Message) are good examples of this. Where the initialism is for the "format" or "platform" and the other word refers to the actual item.

    $40 clearly refers to forty dollars. USD clearly refers to the currency type. US would not be correct because that's a country, not a currency.

    There may be some redundancy but 40USD is less readable, US$40 isn't any better and $40 US is just plain wrong. If there's redundancy it's more correct and readable with it than without it.

  • Daza (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know

    You are aware there are other countries apart from the U.S. that use the dollar sign as their currency symbol? Australia for one? The dollar sign and 'USD' are definitely necessary. If you're trying to point out the use of 'D', it's pretty common place to do so.

  • Simmo (unregistered) in reply to Daza
    Daza:
    You are aware there are other countries apart from the U.S. that use the dollar sign as their currency symbol? Australia for one? The dollar sign and 'USD' are definitely necessary. If you're trying to point out the use of 'D', it's pretty common place to do so.

    Nice. But you see, as is often the case, the Yanks on this site seem to think they're the only people in the universe. I bet the original article was changed too - it refers to 100°F, not 38°C. I bet few people in Europe under the age of 30 know what that means

    Captcha: Poindexter. That, too, is fitting...

  • (cs) in reply to Mario W.
    Mario W.:
    There is a multi-thousand-members non-profit organization with less to no knowledge about anything whith the leadership of a man and his even less competent wife throwing more money out of the windows than I earn in a year.
    Well, now you know why they don't make a profit.
  • (cs) in reply to Daza
    Daza:
    You are aware there are other countries apart from the U.S. that use the dollar sign as their currency symbol? Australia for one? The dollar sign and 'USD' are definitely necessary. If you're trying to point out the use of 'D', it's pretty common place to do so.

    The symbol $ means "dollars". The D in USD means "dollars". Saying "dollars" twice is redundant. I never said it was incorrect. I never said it was not commonplace. I never said that the United States was the only country that uses the dollar sign as its currency. I only said that writing something that reads out loud as "eleven thousand dollars United States dollars" is redundant.

    I'm not sure what makes you think I'm American, but I would suggest that it is generally a good idea to try to set your personal prejudices aside before reacting the way you are.

  • (cs)

    TRWTF (TM) is that we now have Viagra ad on the front page. Bring back beanbag or fusball girls please

  • (cs) in reply to Simmo
    Simmo:
    Daza:
    You are aware there are other countries apart from the U.S. that use the dollar sign as their currency symbol? Australia for one? The dollar sign and 'USD' are definitely necessary. If you're trying to point out the use of 'D', it's pretty common place to do so.

    Nice. But you see, as is often the case, the Yanks on this site seem to think they're the only people in the universe. I bet the original article was changed too - it refers to 100°F, not 38°C. I bet few people in Europe under the age of 30 know what that means

    Captcha: Poindexter. That, too, is fitting...

    It's been observed that Britishers tend to use °F when it's hot and °C when it's cold, thus making either extreme seem even more extreme.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    It's "all tolled" as in tallied, not "all told"

    /english nazi

    Um, sorry to be the real English nazi, but it is actually "told". "Tolled" is the past tense of "to toll" - ringing a bell.

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