Customer satisfaction is our highest priority… OK, maybe second-highest… or third... Everyone is looking at me as I break into a sweat. "Come on, come on," I mutter to my smartphone but already the harrumphing has begun. Why do English people harrumph when they're impatient? They could shout "Hurry up, fool!" or offer to help. But no, they always prefer to make a guttural hissing sound through their noses, …
Might I respectfully suggest, that if security is in any way a concern, that you DO NOT USE PUBLIC WIFI!!1!
Ahem. Sorry got a bit shouty there.
Also, there's a fine line between mocking the type of beverages sold in coffee shops ("extra-hot fair trade soya decaf caramel mint chocka mocha focka carbonated Bulgarian snow forest chai espresso latte plus vegan sprinkles and a twist of lemming"), and mocking the type of person that frequents such establishments. I tend to the latter, though I realise there is more than a little element of reverse-snobbery involved. I'm sorry about that too.
Certainly no auto-connect, saved password (therefore presumably no password and/or publicly advertised password), hence no useful encryption, public wifi in a public place.
Sure, things should be TLS nowadays for anything important and throw warnings if the intermediate certs are wrong, but even so. Even DNS hijacking is possible over the air on encrypted things and who deploys DNSSEC? And the easiest way to provide a fake cert for a site? Use a fake DNS record to pretend to be "authoritative" for that domain.
Wifi off, no auto-connect (except to your own, secured, trusted networks, I'd say).
To be honest, what kind of prat is trying to pay for a coffee with a phone app? And paying in cash is just as bad in this day and age. NFC payments or a card, people. Stop faffing around with proprietary tech that reinvents a wheel that's been around for over a decade now.
I literally cannot remember the last time I paid for anything in cash. I have precisely £0 and 0p on my person now. Even the pound-coin in the car for the shopping trolley is a fake one.
I have never used a proprietary app in a shop (I have PayPal and Android Pay on my phone for office-biscuit-fund-even-out matters, neither can authorise any payment whatsoever as NFC is off and they both need my password to work).
I haven't even used tap-payments yet.
I just use a card, like I have for the last 20 years.
"And paying in cash is just as bad in this day and age. NFC payments or a card, people."
Yes, I can't recall the number of shops I've been in where they've had a sign reading something like 'No cash. Cards only. Till drawer jammed.'
It was such a romantic evening in that country pub a few years back. The electricity failed and the place was lit by candles. The beer was hand pumped, and the till made that lovely 'Pink Floyd' cash register noise.
"Yes, I can't recall the number of shops I've been in where they've had a sign reading something like 'No cash. Cards only. Till drawer jammed.'"
I ventured into a shop with a similarly worded sign recently. I shrugged my shoulders, said "No custom" and ventured straight back out again.
Please accept this for both the story and the reference to the register in Money.
I use cash. I like cash. It's boring old US cash but no one has ever told me I can't use it, that it isn't welcome, that their shit doesn't work and I can't use it. Work fine in The US, Jamaica, Mexico, South America and some of Canada.
I was stopped for a search (pre 9/11) in Detroit once and the DEA guy (ATF guy was totally cool and funny) asked if I thought it was odd that I was carrying $1000USD on my person (meaning *he* thought it was odd) to which I replied: "Have you ever tried to get a cab from the airport to the hotel and then a hotel AND THEN a meal in Ogden Utah at 2200Hours when the power as out because of a (really cool) snow-storm, and nothing card related worked? Because I have and because of *that*, I'll just carry a bit of dosh to tide me over for a few *days* when I travel, in case of, you know, winter, storms, Murphy." (The punchline to this story is when I asked the ATF guy who the hell sneaks drugs *IN* to California, which was my destination.)
Cannot agree to the card alternative unless it is the pay-by-bonk variety.
People in the queue are usually in a hurry to get their cuppa or at least, justifiably, want to stand in the queue as little time as possible. The customer who holds everybody else up using a card to pay a few quid is the prat against whom the harrumphs will be pointless.
People in the queue are usually in a hurry to get their cuppa or at least, justifiably, want to stand in the queue as little time as possible.
In the USA, we still have paper checks, which people will write to pay for things. At the supermarket. In the "Express" lane. After the cashier has totaled. Using coupons. Without getting their picture ID ready. After having to get a price check from an employee for a $1 item located at the opposite corner of the store.
[That's why I don't take my Claymore to the supermarket anymore]
[That's why I don't take my Claymore to the supermarket anymore]
Bloody hell.. I knew the gun etc laws were stupid over there but you can even buy those in a supermarket? Or did you mean "don't take" as in that's what you normally use for personal defence?
(Actually the gun laws are probably fine, it's the damned culture that's the issue!)
"I just use a card, like I have for the last 20 years"
Were you that bastard who was in front of me in the corner store the other day trying to pay for a bottle of water and a packet of crisps with a bank card that necessitated the stores card machine using dial up to contact your bank , while i was waiting in the queue with a 15 pack of carlsberg getting heavier in one hand and the correct money (a tenner) in the other hand ready to slap on the counter as soon as you got out of the way?
I'd advise upgrade card to contactless - quicker than slapping a tenner down, but probably only in big shops, like wetherspoons.
The first figures I found in a lazy Googling were these:
"Fraud on contactless cards and devices remains low with £2.8 million of losses during 2015, compared to spending of £7.75 billion over the same period. This is equivalent to 3.6p in every £100 spent using contactless technology while fraud on contactless cards and devices accounts for only 0.5 per cent of overall card fraud."
That was from https://www.financialfraudaction.org.uk/fraudfacts16/
I happily use contactless for most small purchases now, even though I am well into cybersecurity and know the risks. Having per-transaction and per-day limits makes a lot of sense and limits the damage that could ever be done.
I'd advise upgrade card to contactless - quicker than slapping a tenner down, but probably only in big shops, like wetherspoons.
Oh I so love those cards! Someone left one beside a machine in a shop a couple of years back. I got lots of goodies off it over the next couple of days! Didn't even mind the extra driving to head to places outside my normal area, because - well, some other poor bastard was paying for the stuff! Didn't even have to take it out of my pocket!
Ok, I actually intended to be honest and turn the card in and all but I was going to pay for something else out of my account, lifted my wallet to grab the normal card from it, the machine beeped and I'd paid for my stuff accidentally with their card. After that it was just a bit of fun, and a fair bit of money (you can buy a lot of stuff in $90 increments!).
[Please note that the above is quite untrue, except the finding the card by the machine and turning it in on the spot - it is however quite possible I'm sure. Oh, and the paying for stuff by accident is something that happened but I had the newly issued card for the business in the wallet and when I went to get my own card, the system picked that up and paid for it. After that the business card stayed in the office unless I expected to be using it.
"...it is however quite possible I'm sure."
Yes, it is more than possible. Martin Lewis' site reports one victim still finding fraudulent transactions eight months after cancelling a lost card.
This is possible because banks do not automatically check all contactless payments immediately. Some are processed as 'offline transactions' and are only checked later. One bank told the Guardian that virtually all transactions for less than £15 were not immediately checked.
you are wrong, ive had cash fail ! I had a £10 note to pay for 2 pints and the pub refused to accept it because of the way it glowed under that UV fake note checker thing. So i had to switch to card and then go the bank after to get my £10 swapped.
I tend to use Apple Pay where possable as its faster than card or cash, then card, but keep a little bit of cash on me for when thats the most convenient or as a backup (we all in IT love backups dont we?)
The one i dont like is these pay apps, they are slower than anything else we have.
I literally cannot remember the last time I paid for anything in cash.
I literally can't remember when I was interested in faffing around with NFC (either in app form or in the form of a prox-enabled card).
Oh - yes I can. It was about 3 years ago. For about 5 seconds I was interested until I thought about the security implications. At which point, I went back to using cash and/or chip 'n PIN.
Stop faffing around with proprietary tech that reinvents a wheel that's been around for over a decade now.
Oh - the irony. How long has cash been around again?
I do admit to using NFC one - to pair my new Sony headphones to my phone. Haven't bothered since - it's just as easy to do manual Bluetooth pairing.
And that's the only thing I use bluetooth[1] for. Nasty, insecure, power-sapping, incapable of proper music streaming pile of drek that it is..
[1] Although I did use a bluetooth dongle on one of my linux boxes to allow my Nokia 770 to do data. But that was years ago, when I was young and foolish. I'm not so young now.
"I just use a card, like I have for the last 20 years."
Like my better half then eh? :)
I *have* to carry cash, as all the women in my life insist that everywhere takes cards, and are shocked (SHOCKED I tell you) when they discover various discount shops, takeaways, bars, food vans and market stalls don't in fact take whichever flavor of card they have.
Also never had anyone take five grand in cash from me, but have had that happen with a card. You know, with all those security features that allow it to decide that it being used in the Netherlands at 7pm, then two hours later is being used in Jakata. Where the PIN is incorrectly entered nine times, then correctly done....
Card fraud happens so often that it's often only when you are either on a super tight budget, aren't using your card much, or are doing some detailed budgeting do you notice the various weird and wonderful payments that are disappearing out of your account.
Nicking my cash at least requires physical access at the time.
Personally I prefer to drink coffee.
Although, to be fair, I remember my first visit to a Star*ucks (one of very few). After staring in horror at their lengthy menu covering half the wall, I just asked for 'coffee please' and they didn't bat an eyelid, just gave me a straight forward black coffee. Didn't taste too bad either.
Sadly, my own experience doesn't reflect that...
I went to a greasy spoon in a small northern market town for breakfast, and the menu included a pleasant variety of fried-meat-with-eggs options.
I ordered my food and asked for a black coffee to go with that. The waiter looked thoughtful for a few moments and said "err...I could do you an Americano, if that's OK?"
My thoughts turned to drawing up a map, charting the progress of caffeine-related poncification across the country...a bit like those grey-vs-red squirrel maps that you see in country parks.
"I'll have a tea."
It'll probably be served tasting faintly of coffee.
I didn't know Starbucks were masters of irony ... their coffee tastes nothing like coffee, so why would their tea?
[Last time I found myself unavoidably breakfasting in a Starbucks I did indeed opt for tea, and got handed a rather hipsterish upmarket nylon teabag stuffed with large tea leaves, and a cup of almost hot enough water. A surprisingly successful outcome, considering.]
" a pleasant variety of fried-meat-with-eggs options" puts me in mind of...
Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam, spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam, or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam
"I ordered my food and asked for a black coffee to go with that. The waiter looked thoughtful for a few moments and said "err...I could do you an Americano, if that's OK?""
Odds are that some salesman sold them a push-button machine based on his patter that people no longer drink "coffee", but a whole range different styles of "coffee" which are actually all the same shot of espresso adulterated in different ways. Since said machine doesn't have a button labelled "coffee" and the old filter coffee maker was thrown out, s/he no longer has any other option than to offer you the "list" and hope for the best.
Additionally, since it was "a small northern market town", I'm going to guess it was in Yorkshire, where a mug of tea is the staple drink if the pubs are shut and coffee is for posh, poncy, hipster southern softies who might be passing through. Did the room go quiet as you walked in while everyone else stared at you?
I remember the greasy spoons where it was instant (powdered, not freeze-dried) Nescafe - black or with cold milk in (and ordinary milk, too, no reduced fat choices, and with a fruit bowl of sugar on the counter, next to a teaspoon with a chain on its handle, and the other end of the chain nailed to the counter.
Unlike a visit to Star*ucks today, there was no confusion at all. I prefer that. I wish I could walk into Star*ucks and simply say "mug of Nescaff please".
Might I respectfully suggest, that if security is in any way a concern, that you DO NOT USE PUBLIC WIFI!!1!
Indeed. public WiFi + shit café app with sieve-like security + l33t h4xx0r who sets up their own AP with same name as shit public WiFi = arse handed to you on a plate.
""arse handed to you on a plate."
Don't say things like that. It'll be on the menu in no time at all."
It won't be on a plate, anywhere hipster enough to try such a thing would serve it on a breadboard or in a frying pan or something equally ridiculous.
Kudos also for the Denis Leary reference. That was from 1997 and is well worth a watch although entirely NSFW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f_dxLiuXuw
I agree with you about customer service "priority"; ie, there is no priority given to customer service, but...can I just say...
"the moment I walked in from the street, my data connection switched automatically from 4G to the café's Wi-Fi"
Rly? One of two things is true: Either you habitually connect to open Wifi wherever you go (Hint: bad plan), or you've used their Wifi previously, knowing how bad it is (Also hint: Also bad plan).
Either way....really?!
“I’d like you to make me a mocha-caramel-hazelnut frappe, with raspberry syrup, whipped cream, and a pinch of nutmeg. Then I’d like you to shove it up your ass and get me a cup of coffee.”
Enough of this talking! Coffee, woman! My consumption grows ever worse and Colleridges drugs are wearing off.
It's something I have disabled on my phone - My 5Ghz wifi is strong in all areas of my house, bar my bedroom. If I'm in there and watching the latest youtube video in 1080p@60fps (because why not?), I don't want it going "oh, the wifi signal to the current network is weak, lets switch to the (admittedly brilliant, because the nearest base-station is right outside my window) 4G connection and consume an entire month's allowance." In cases like that, I would prefer for the connection to die, (and I get a pop-up notification about this if/when it happens) to allow me to kick it onto the 2.4Ghz wifi, as it is somewhat reluctant to switch automatically ("but I can still just about connect to the 5Ghz, lets keep trying to reconnect to that!")
Recent-ish androids will detect ropey wifi and use 4G instead.
My Android gets it's wifi turned off when I leave the house. I used to use a location-aware app to do it but it started getting pretty flaky and either turning off wifi at home or not turning it off when out.
So I got SwithPro widget instead and just tap the wifi icon on the lock-screen to turn it off..
On the subject of error messages, as a developer I often fall foul of Windows failing to give precise information. The all time offender was when I was working with SPTI (SCSI Pass Through Interface) which unsurprisingly involves some quite complex API calls - you have to go through IOCTL, FFS! - often requiring structures with many members (ooh er missus) some of which point to yet more structures. To say nothing of the fact that you're using it to issues SCSI commands which have their own complexity and in the case of IDE drives are proxied by Windows.
So when you get error code 87 back from a call there is a tendency to use profanity. From MSDN:
''ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER
87 (0x57)
The parameter is incorrect."
My all-time favourite is closely related to this. Windows 9x / NT4, and probably all subsequent versions as well, would offer one particularly opaque message... (OK, one among many, but this one was more opaque than normal...)
Copying a big directory tree full of files with Explorer, and it gets a sharing violation, and complains that it is unable to open "DOOBLE" (example made up name...) without giving any hint as to which one of hundreds of files that match "DOOBLE.*" it might be trying to copy.
Lol. I once needed to use an internal error code to signify that special processing was required for an anticipated failure. Basically a built-in, behind the scenes try it another way instead. So when it came to defining the corresponding error string in our library I chose "This is not an error.".
There's no reason I can think of why anyone would ever have triggered that to appear but I like to chuckle and hope that someone somewhere got wound up by:
ERROR: This is not an error.
> ERROR: This is not an error.
Are you also responsible for my all-time favourite? Which was, during Windows logon process, an entirely blank screen except for a message box reading:
Error: No error occurred
(OK, I guess the real explanation here is either the variable supposed to hold the error number never got set or, more likely, there was another, successful, API call between the failed one and capturing the error code for display.)
Me? Work for Microsoft? Sir! I am offended.
You jest, but I seem to have spent a large part of my life working for Microsoft ... not officially, mind you -- they've never paid me, or anything ... just cleaning up after them and trying to make stuff work on their cranky and underdocumented OSes.
Never again!
Varnish is a web cache server (read: accelerator). They're actually borrowing from the Amiga, which IIRC came up with the term "Guru Meditation Error" while playing with a balancing board one day (where you're supposed to sit yoga-style on it and try not to let it tip).
Personal favourite in Windows comes from RRAS (Routing and Remote Access Service).
If you setup a site-to-site VPN and it can't connect it will offer you the option to check the unreachability reason (spectacular language I know). The most common unreachability reason is that the destination is not reachable.
The most common unreachability reason is that the destination is not reachable.
Back in the bad old days before I discovered the tools at Tweaking.com I had a customer's machine with a problem with the Windows firewall. Couldn't turn it off to put in a better firewall (even an old rusted-out sieve would do better!) either. After some hunting I discovered a FixIt tool from Microsoft that would completely reset the firewall. I downloaded it elsewhere, moved it to the machine, and fired it up.
"Error. No internet connection".
Er yes, thanks MS. I wonder under what circumstances someone would want a tool to fully reset the firewall? I'm guessing "when they have a perfectly functioning connection" is NOT high on that list.
And again. Oooh, maybe this time they'll work? Nope.
Well - the Windows Quantum Instability *might* collapse into a working state. I know it hasn't happened yet but still - in an infinite universe there's hope!
Maybe that's why Microsoft pushed Windows 10 so hard - they were trying to get to critical mass in the expectation that Windows Transcendance might happen and a newer, working version would spontaneously arise.
I suspect that the Heat Death[1] of the universe will happen first.
[1] Or Big Bang 2.0[2]
[2] Or Big Bang N+1
I worked for a company back in the late 1980's-early 1990's that had a UNIX version and a DOS version. I was technical support, and got a call one day from a customer running the DOS version.
"My data run just stopped working."
"Oh, what is the screen showing you?"
"Pinocchio".
"Eh?"
"Pinocchio".
I went to the programming department and asked the engineer who wrote the DOS port of the program. She said, "Oh, that's easy. The customer has run out of disk space for their data run. Tell him to delete some files on the disk and run the program again."
I did that, and the program ran correctly. I did not enquire of the programmer why "Pinocchio" was selected as the error message for "Disk full".
"what possible reason could there be for that?"
Maybe there was a preceeding dialog that was answered untruthfully, like "make sure you have at least x KB of free disk space"?
Under DOS it wasn't easy to check it from the batch file. Without involving 3rd party tools that is.
What does "<person> is not active on an IM device" mean? How can they be there but not there?
Of course it means "<person> is currently in a call and has not been using the keyboard or mouse for a while so may not be paying attention to the screen to see your message".
Only took five minutes Googling to find out. How much productivity is lost in man years with other people doing the same?
Microsoft, getting error messages wrong since DOS 1.0.
Ah, I see that Dabbsie here might like that secret hack where error messages and search engine results become more relevant the more swearwords you add to the query. (Finding the proper swearword shibboleth is left as an effin' exercise for the bleepin' reader.)
FWIW, I vaguely recall there is a school (probably as in: group of non-mammal meat sacks that would be more useful once tinned) of interface design that thinks the more cryptic the error message is, the more likely the user is to give the exact message. Of course, in reality, they tell you "it didn't work", to which the inner answer is "because you did 'it' wrong". If they ever give me a telephone that leaves the mic on for ten seconds after hanging up, I'm so getting sacked.
"FWIW, I vaguely recall there is a school (probably as in: group of non-mammal meat sacks that would be more useful once tinned) of interface design that thinks the more cryptic the error message is, the more likely the user is to give the exact message."
The idea is to give the user no room to interpret the problem, as that more often than not leads to miscommunications and the problem not getting fixed. The worst kind of person a tech caller can have is an impatient know-it-all. By leaving the user clueless, they're likely to be lost enough to just follow along for hope of an answer. That may be why that "Pinocchio" error message: to leave the user clueless so they get in the mindset to just follow what the tech says to do and not "interpret" things and go off the rails as a result.
Corporate errors for supported staff can be as cryptic as you like, as long as all all the support staff know what they mean and/or can easily get hold of someone who does.
But for the millions of users working at home, or in small businesses, there really should, in 2017, be messages that at least tell the recipient where to look for the source of the error.
"But for the millions of users working at home, or in small businesses, there really should, in 2017, be messages that at least tell the recipient where to look for the source of the error."
No, they're just as problematic as the corporate lemmings. Indeed, perhaps more so since you're more likely to find the "know-it-alls".
Indeed, perhaps more so since you're more likely to find the "know-it-alls".
Don't know if I'd prefer them or the 'know nothing at all and don't think logically' ones.
Over the weekend my aunt had a laptop keyboard die. Suggested she gets a cheap many-name brand wireless one (like less than she'll have spent on coffee since then cheap). She brought it, plugged everything in, put the batteries in, then rang to berate me for the crap I'd recommended to her, wasted money and so in. Eventually I took a trip out to see her (nearly an hour each way, lot of fuel for me) and found that a) she'd not removed the plastic wrapping that held the mouse batteries together (just somehow forced them, wrapping and all, into the space) and b) the 'spare" mouse batteries were the reason the keyboard wasn't working.
I did take great pleasure in berating her back - after all on the phone I checked that she's put the batteries in correctly and was assured 9rudely, I might add!) that she damn well knows how to put batteries into things. Made sure she covered fuel costs for my wasted trip.
So glad she's on W10. I'm not rich enough to have a laptop that runs it so can't support it...
(Icons for mobile users please Mr El Reg webmaster?)
Re- Wifi "hijacking" had something similar recently trying to get a bus ticket. Turns out the app was trying to access the bus companies wifi and of course it was behind one of those useless login screens- which the app did not present to you and was only evident if you opened up the browser.
And of course, the error message displayed had absolutely nothing to do with the app failing to get an internet connection.
First Bus has an "mTicket" app, with cheaper tickets, which "is not designed to work with Wi-Fi only devices such as tablets and iPods" - I haven't yet tried the app, for that reason (and because my phone is antique), but this sounds like it doesn't need Internet access when buying and "activating" a virtual ticket (it says it doesn't), it needs access at random.
(Or they're just covering their backside, possibly with varnish, or they think it will work but are not 100% sure. Althoughdthat probably goes for any app developer.)
And, yes, many of the buses do have Wi-Fi service.
As for using a cafe's app on a cafe's own Wi-Fi to buy the cafe's coffee - they want you to. Maybe you get the free twist of lemming (did anyone else want to ask about that?)
Many years ago i wrote a little DOS program (we'd call it an app these days). It was only for internal use at the org i was working at.
I had seen this posted on a forum somewhere as an obscure and apocryphal error message "CLOSE 'EM DOWN, CLANCY. SHE'S A PUMPIN' WATER"' with some debate about its authenticity.
I liked it so much I used it as the heading for my error messages along the lines of "CLOSE 'EM DOWN, CLANCY. SHE'S A PUMPIN' WATER: <error message here.>" for two reasons:
1) because it amused me
2) so it was a genuine error message
Every now and then I'll throw it in some code that only I'll see... because I'm a mature adult !!
In another job, long ago, one of my mature adult team habitually used mature adult language as test data in the product's database. (It's easier to spot than sample batch numbers.) A database escaped to a customer's site, as test data is wont to do. We were censured for using "unprofessional language". Having been in the profession for many years now, I think I could refute that accusation.
Thanks for the replys and thumbs up!
I've done a little research on Google (about 5 minutes worth!) and its come up with this:
All-Time Best Error Message
When a Texas Instruments 990 minicomputer was on the verge of crashing, the error message read: "SHUT 'ER DOWN, CLANCY, SHE'S PUMPING MUD!"
Here: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2552844/it-management/tidbits-and-timelines-from-the-past-40-years.html
There are a few other pages that discuss this and seem to agree with this as well but I'll not include them all but one other that is interesting re: Star Trek is here:
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/61/messages/332.html
Now to do some real work!!
Attending a function at our local bowling club and in the mens toilets im greeted with two signs:
"Our aim is to please, your aim would help. IF YOU ARE READING THIS YOU ARE NOT WATCHING WHERE YOU ARE WEEING!"
Followed by an instructional sign:
"If you are the Dribbler, would you please use the W.C and sit down"
And you know what, it didnt make one bit of difference to the floor!
I can just picture a sign to the effect of, "Please treat this toilet as you would your toilet at home" getting scrawled underneath, "I wouldn't know as I don't have a toilet at home. I DON'T HAVE A HOME!" as well as the expected refuse of a bum who uses public toilets as full bathrooms for lack of alternatives.
"Please treat this toilet as a person who owns a home and is quite houseproud would treat their own toilet"
FTFY.
I reckon if I got some managers involved and had a meeting we could go from "just about still comprehensible" and hit it right out of the park and into the "so convoluted you cant even remember why you came in the room" level
At a restaurant I visited frequently
, laminated to the wall above the men's toilet where you couldn't fail to see it.
"We promise not to piss in your food if you promise not to piss on our floor. If you want US to be sanitary with your food then YOU be sanitary with our bathroom."
Strange how their bathroom was nearly surgery operating room sterile & every man coming out had well scrubbed hands.
Then someone comes along and pisses-and-misses with the toilet seat down. When called out on ot, he replies, "I'll pisses-and with the seat up as soon as women pisses with the seat up."
PS. In response to the sign, he replied he came for the piss soup anyway.
General Failure is a close relative of General Protection Fault. They both come from a Bad Sector of town, and engage in Illegal Function Calls.
If/when General Failure shows an interest in your disk drive, you should probably replace the drive as he won't have any interest in the new one - for the time being.
What about ringing your telecomms company to report a problem with mobile data, then being put on hold for half an hour with occasional exhortations to visit their website? And then being asked for the postcode of the place where I was having problems? They've got the ID of the cell tower I'm connecting to them through, and the half-dozen or so I moved through on the way. How am I supposed to know the postcode of a public place through which I'm just passing? I could probably look it up on Google Maps, except I can't get a data signal .....
In the nine months between school and university, I worked as a technical editor*. In those days we had to make our own proof correction marks with a pencil. I don't think the option to buy packs of them was available. For much of the stuff I corrected, 20 marks would have been hopelessly inadequate.
How does a pack of correction marks work? Do you get five carets, five of the loopy deletion mark**, a couple of feet of underlining for bold and italic, and assorted subscript, superscript, caps, lc marks? What do you do if you need something exotic like wrong font?
* For a company that built nuclear power stations. In the intervening years I've been looking out for a "nuclear accident caused by faulty operating instructions" headline.
** Does it have a name?
You might find this amusing (or not)
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2016/03/16/magnets
What I didn't find amusing was the older version of Google Maps, before it had an official offline mode. If your cell data was switched off it would simply hang forever when rerouting or trying to display the map. No error message, no progress bar, nothing. I'd be stuck at a gas station in the middle of bumfuck trying to figure out where I was, much less how to get to where I wanted to go. I think that was the winner for "cause of most swearing"
I of course, can't use Android Pay because I'm one of those evil heretics that's rooted his phone. So I get to play the American game of "does it have a chip&pin slot, and if so, is it actually functional?"
I stopped at a expensive Mercedes dealership once, since they had a electric car charger, and I was severely low on charge. I was vastly amused to find their wi-fi didn't work, just like every other car dealership in the nation. (Strangely enough, the dealership staff were not at all snooty. They were very friendly and encouraged me to use the lounge while my bike charged.)
I had MS-DOS format say "Formatting 13,04.96M" once.
"My favourite demonstration of customer relations gone bland is when you receive those promotional emails with Mail Monkey placeholder text still in the header."
This isn't limited to promotional rubbish. Each month at a client, I receive an emailed remittance advice from "mail_server@company.com" - and it's not just the headers of the email; the attached PDF lacks any company details. I know who it's from having been receiving it for ages, but FFS!
my data connection switched automatically from 4G to the café's Wi-Fi
Maybe the shit starts here, with a mobile provider who takes the most from its customers by making 4G use limited or expensive, forcing you to use Wi-Fi to save some of your previous 4G bandwidth...
This side of the channel we begin to have very interesting offers with unlimited 4G for 20 € / months: no need to rely on crappy Wi-fi :woot!:
For the latter problem, I remember a sign seen in toilets I'll try to translate: "You're too pretentious: go one step forward, it's shorter than you think".
Every programmer these days always codes to assumes the network is 100% up all the time, the server/cloud they are connecting to will be 100% available, & that no data ever goes missing or has bad input or output data.
Hardware is unreliable. Networks fail. Servers go down. User input and data is unreliable. Other code you are connecting is going to be unreliable sometimes.
If programmers coded for 'trust but verify' or 'assume A going to B might fail' then systems would be far more reliable over all - instead of the constant hangs, crashes, and data disappearing into the void that is modern application development.
In the past, coders had to build their own environments from the ground up - hardware, networking, o/s, development tools - all of it made them realise there was a wider world beyond their code-bubble and their delusion other stuff they relied always worked all the time.
With a greater disconnect between coders and the infrastructure it runs or & the remoteness from others code they interact with, we now have a generation of coders have forgot to DISTRUST the IT and other code accordingly.
In the past, coders had to build their own environments from the ground up - hardware, networking, o/s, development tools
with their bare hands, scratching the required bits from slabs of granite twenty-eight hours a day, while sitting in a hole in the middle of a busy road with only a handful of cold, poisonous gravel for food.
Ah yes, it's almost like the BOFH's excuse calendar in reverse... "the network's always there", "we can always write small amounts of data to local storage", "javascript is always on", "that directory always exists", "a randomly picked number is unique", "but they wouldn't be able to input that with a keyboard anyway", "that can't go negative", and I'm sure I've missed a gazillion.
This very thing happens to me All Of The Time and I totally blame Apple Operating System.
It has a nauseating habit of connecting to any old Wi-Fi and disparaging the cellular data connection, causing inexplicable dead comms while it hums and haws "whats that gov? yes I'm looking, just a mo - just a mo - just a mo - just a mo...", and even when I tell it repeatedly "forget this network", it will disconnect for a moment, then the very next nano-second connect right back up to the exact same faulty network. Apple is BROKEN, the only way to defeat it is to shut off the Wi Fi radio completely. I hate Apple - I hate them, I hate them, their smug condescending attitudes. I shan't ever buy an Apple, the only reason I have this junk is because I got it gifted via the Staples recycling bin.
macOS has similar problems.
I recently had to do a full wipe and reinstall of OSX Sierra because it couldn't handle the idea that a Mac might have more than one user (so much for the BSD base).
It sat saying "About 5 minutes remaining" for four hours.
Then I gave up, restartes it and the second time it completed the "About 6 minutes remaining" process in a mere 45 minutes.
I assume it has failed to download something and stopped completely, but there was no indication in the UI whatsoever.
Even when it was making progress the second time - no hint that it had managed to do anything at all.
"I am trying to pay for my extra-hot fair trade soya decaf caramel mint chocka mocha focka carbonated Bulgarian snow forest chai espresso latte plus vegan sprinkles and a twist of lemming with my handset".
Why the fucketty fuck would you do that when you had cash in your pocket? What about all the poor saps waiting behind you for your app/card/touch transaction to authorise, when you could slap cash on the counter and get the fuck out of the way. Money works, and places which don't like being paid with money won't get paid by me - not petrol stations, not <insert preferred supermarket chain name here /> and most definitely of all, not pubs. (Being of a sensible disposition, I never buy coffee from coffee shops in the first place, because it's five times the price of making it at home and isn't as nice.)
Phew, glad to get that off my chest. And of course I agree with the main thrust of the piece - being ancient, my favourite stupid error message is still that old chestnut:
"Keyboard missing - press F1 to resume".
They don't write 'em like that any more. No, wait ...
"Money works, and places which don't like being paid with money won't get paid by me - not petrol stations, not <insert preferred supermarket chain name here /> and most definitely of all, not pubs. (Being of a sensible disposition, I never buy coffee from coffee shops in the first place, because it's five times the price of making it at home and isn't as nice.)"
One, what happens when NO places take cash anymore due to a rash of counterfeit notes being passed around or some other reason like government-mandated tracking?
Two, what if your home has hard water, making it rather hard to make a good cup of coffee at home?
(Being of a sensible disposition, I never buy coffee from coffee shops in the first place, because it's five times the price of making it at home and isn't as nice.)
That would mean that after sitting on trains for close to an hour, I would have to retrace my steps and travel another hour before I can enjoy coffee. So no. And the place I get coffee is serving a proper Italian espresso roast, available in fluid form as standard coffee, espresso and ristretto.
The original IBM PC keyboards were actually heavy enough to create a fair bit of vibration, so I would not be at all surprised if a keyboard plug occasionally came loose of its socket. In which case, it just needs to be pushed fully home and then you can press f1 to get rid of the message.
Sometimes, when writing a set of instructions, it's easy to miss out the first step -- here, "find and plug in a keyboard" -- because it's obvious to the person who has done the job many times. But there will always be somebody who does not think it so obvious. If some bloke in a factory in Stoke on Trent had remembered to write "Unplug the machine from the wall before attempting any of this" on a diagram he scribbled out in his lunchtime for a female admirer once, I would not be here today .....
Isn't it obvious what that means? It's a minimalist hipster icon meaning "nothing there". It's about as obvious as an icon displaying a sunflower for a photo gallery app[1]. Or pretty much any other fecking[2] app (ie most of them) where the icon is not related in any way to the function of the app that's liable to change into a totally fecking different icon with any or all new updates.
[1] For "app", read any fecking GUI based system of relatively recent vintage.
[2] Finally got around to adding "fecking" to the spelling dictionary. I'm using it too much nowadays. I'm turning into Victor Meldrew! (not that he said fecking, ever, but you get the point.)
"I literally cannot remember the last time I paid for anything in cash."
Due to card fraud, I do everything in cash. I even bought our cars cash and I never saw a happier car dealer than when I handed over the bank envelope full of notes. Maybe he thinks I'm a Mafia Don, but I get very good service every time...
After some card fraud I stopped using by debit card (unless it's in an ATM, in a bank if I can help it) and switched to credit card. My reasoning being that the debit card is using my money but a credit card is using the provider's money until I pay them, so they may be slightly more inclined to protect against such nastiness.
Though if in person, then I guess cash can be king. Also it may provide incentive for you not to spend over your means (or what you've got in your wallet). You can't buy yet another round of flaming sambucas if you don't have enough cash, whereas there may be temptation to swipe that contactless card...
The designer does the key flows and screens. This is passed off to some farm of fucking dev monkeys in an Indian village. At that point nobody gives a fuck. The project has ended for the design team and the nothing being paid for dev just get you some tard with a can't do mentality. Meanwhile the production team has changed twice and just about to start on something new.
When you ask why the app is nothing like the original designs and a sack of crap, the person responsible has left the shitty company.
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