What made you go WTF today?

[Loki]

"Hazardous materials released at Institute for Genomic Biology. Escape area if safe to do so. Otherwise seek shelter."

[Illusions]

"Hazardous materials released at Institute for Genomic Biology. Escape area if safe to do so. Otherwise seek shelter."

If you worked in a high-rise in NYC, and participated in their mandatory fire and emergency preparedness drills, this isn't anymore wtf than they were. Like in the case of a biological, chemical, or nuclear attack, if we're told to shelter in place, we're to seal the windows and doors, and not leave the building until we're told its safe. If you opt to leave the building, you won't be allowed back in, and if anyone attempts to enter that isn't NYPD, FDNY or other Gov't official, we're to disallow them entry as well.

[Loki]

This had a higher chance of leading to a zombie epidemic than a highrise fire. It's been contained now.

[Illusions]

This had a higher chance of leading to a zombie epidemic than a highrise fire. It's been contained now.

So how many people continued working straight through it like nothing happened?

[Loki]

It happened at 10 PM on Memorial Day, weeks after the semester ended. Probably only those who want to become zombies stuck around.

It does speak to the life grad students live that someone was working in the lab at that time.

Newest email suggests that not all is well in the building, but whatever the problem is, it's been contained. They still haven't said what the material was.

Edit: and now there's a severe thunderstorm with strong winds. Great night for zombies.

[Flixy]

This had a higher chance of leading to a zombie epidemic than a highrise fire. It's been contained now.

Most likely just a chemical spill? Either way, better get your supplies and shotguns

[Aimless]

This had a higher chance of leading to a zombie epidemic than a highrise fire. It's been contained now.

whatever the problem is, it's been contained

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1548359.html

[Loki]

It begins.

[GGT]

Not really a WTF, but neither is it a Happy or Messed Groove comment...

My best friend's father-in-law died a couple of days ago. He was in his mid 80's and lived a great long life. But this is her/their first experience with a family death...when they're the responsible adults in charge of all the arrangements. The widow wife can't do it on her own, even though they'd made "arrangements" many years ago, as a couple. The families aren't too far away, even though they're in different states.

But death never comes at "convenient" times. It's always sandwiched between graduations, spring breaks, summertime vacations, winter breaks or holiday vacations. A family death can't come at "convenient" times for any student, competitive athlete, or pregnant woman.

I was also thinking of (and getting lost in) divorced couples who remarry, and the many exponential relationships. But then it seemed more like a British sitcom, with John Cleese as the main character.

[Khendraja'aro]

Okay, once again it was the time for several WTFs regarding the results from the physics and chemistry tests my pupils had to write.

WTF #1:
One guy decided to calculate "4 / 2" with a calculator. He managed to get "1.9" as a result. I subsequently had a serious discussion with my colleagues - to this date we still don't know what he typed into the calculator, what he was thinking or even if he was actually thinking at all. The pupil ain't talking.

WTF #2:
The pupils were to decide whether "The mass of a body is equal to its weight force" was true or not and, if not true, give the reason for choosing false. One pupil's answer: "The mass is not equal to the force because it can be different." Yes, and tautological cat is tautological.

WTF #3:
Did you know that the unit of a velocity is "kg"?

WTF #4:
The pupil writes down Hooke's Law correctly ( "D = F / s") and then proceeds to calculate the result. By using "D = F * s".

WTF # 5:
The reason why we build all those big, huge smelting furnaces? Why, we're in desperate need of slag. (Steel? Who needs steel anyway?)

WTF #6:
The reduction of ferrous oxide with carbon? Won't work unless we add copper. (The pupils did that very same experiment themselves...)

WTF #7:
How to quench a fire of burning magnesium? Simply pour water on it. (Yes, they also did that experiment themselves as well...)

WTF #8:
Another pupil, confronted with the problem of burning magnesium, recognized that using water or CO2 won't work. However, using stuff like "sand" was simply too cheap. He suggested that one should cover the fire with gold granules in order to smother the fire, because gold is a noble metal and thus highly unreactive.

[Flixy]

WTF #8:
Another pupil, confronted with the problem of burning magnesium, recognized that using water or CO2 won't work. However, using stuff like "sand" was simply too cheap. He suggested that one should cover the fire with gold granules in order to smother the fire, because gold is a noble metal and thus highly unreactive.

Well, did you ask for a way to put it out, or to put it out economically?

[Khendraja'aro]

I actually asked for a "reasonable" and "usable" way.

I'm not an evil person - he got half a point for that answer, due to being technically correct but not fulfilling all the requirements

[Khendraja'aro]

And another chapter in the "WTFs my pupils produce" epic story.

So, here I am, unabashedly demanding of my pupils to explain to me how an electric motor works (Only the basics - and they got pictures!)
Since that's such an easy task, one girl sets off to revolutionize physics. Because two magnetice poles are not enough! Now we've got, besides the north and the south pole, also the west and the east pole. Not to mention that electric motors work better if you include two north poles and just one south pole.

Then there was the guy who did not quite grasp what I wanted of him. Because when confronted with the task "List three examples for advantages or disadvantages of using an electric motor inside a car" - he obviously only read the first and the last word. His answer:
"If you've got a car you can drive anywhere. With the energy produced, you can power a stereo or even(!) signal where you're turning next."

To misquote Charles Babbage: " I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a sentence."

[Ominous Gamer]

Then there was the guy who did not quite grasp what I wanted of him. Because when confronted with the task "List three examples for advantages or disadvantages of using an electric motor inside a car" - he obviously only read the first and the last word. His answer:
"If you've got a car you can drive anywhere. With the energy produced, you can power a stereo or even(!) signal where you're turning next."

To misquote Charles Babbage: " I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a sentence."

A proper answer for that would be ford, or ford mustang, no? Since he only read list car...

[Nessus]

That is def one of my all-time favourite quotes

[Ominous Gamer]

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blo...sent-hecklers/

How in the hell could someone think it was a good idea to admit to this?, on such shaky claims of payback to boot

Romney brags that yes, he sent hecklers
2:00 pm June 1, 2012, by Jay

Obama strategist David Axelrod, appearing at a rally in Boston this week, was confronted by an organized group of hecklers who disrupted the event and turned it into a shouting match. Axelrod and others immediately accused the Mitt Romney campaign of organizing and orchestrating the disruption using paid Romney staffers.



That seemed unlikely. At least, it seemed unlikely until Romney admitted it:

“Most of the events I go to, or many of the events I go to, there are large groups of, if you will, Obama supporters there heckling me,” Romney told the press. “And at some point you say, ‘You know what, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’ If they’re going to be heckling us, why we’re not going to sit back and play by very different rules. If the president is going to have his people coming to my rallies, and heckling, why, we’ll show them that, you know, we conservatives have the same kind of capacity he does.”

Asked for evidence that the Obama campaign is sending hecklers to Romney events, Romney staffers identified an incident at a New York City firehouse in which a press conference with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani was interrupted by heckling.

That incident in New York was indeed regrettable.
However, the sole rude and vulgar heckler turned out to be an Occupy Wall Street activist who had heard about the event and hustled over to interrupt it. What she did was way out of line, but there is no evidence whatsoever tying her to the Obama campaign or organization.

(BTW, the whole Occupy tactic of interrupting events and trying to shout down opponents is undemocratic and uncivil and harms the credibility of its cause. It’s a tactic of those unable or unwilling to debate.)

Now, if the Romney campaign has evidence that the woman in New York was following instructions from the Obama camp, or if it has evidence of an orchestrated effort by Obama supporters and campaign staff in other efforts, let’s see it. Such tactics by either side should not be tolerated .

But by sending paid operatives to disrupt the Axelrod event, and by bragging about it afterward, Romney is setting a dangerously confrontational tone, and he’s doing it from the very top.

This is barely June, people. We have a long way to go, and a country to run once it’s over.

– Jay Bookman

[Steely Glint]

America is a strange land with many peculiar customs.

[GGT]

Amercia #1!

[Steely Glint]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-n...ead-cat-862002 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-n...ead-cat-862002 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-n...ead-cat-862002

[Ominous Gamer]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...cent-off-sales

That Origin's boss trying to compare his platform to NordStrom as he defends the remark that sales cheapen games.

[RandBlade]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...cent-off-sales

That Origin's boss trying to compare his platform to NordStrom as he defends the remark that sales cheapen games.

Rather than Target, yes he's explaining what end of the market they're going for (not bargain bin).

What's the WTF in that?

[Ominous Gamer]

Its a digital good, its no different than the digital copy of the same game when its purchased elsewhere. There is no quality difference to justify a NordStrom price over a Target price; and Target did 7 times the sales volume of NordStrom.

and Target rarely does good sales, its the clearance that makes a walk through worth it.

EDIT:
EA was also a pretty popular publisher to see during Steam's previous sales. Aside from the Sims 3 series.
I seriously doubt none of these titles are going to end up in this years summer sale...

[Khendraja'aro]

My brother is currently enrolled at a university where one of the courses is about web design. His current task: Program a simple guest book.He had some problems with the SQL and asked me for advice. He also showed me the solution the professor gave them.This is what he gave them in order to create the table in a MySQL database:

CREATE TABLE guestbook
(
`id_gb` int(10) PRIMARY KEY auto_increment,
`g_id_user` int(10) NOT NULL default '',
`g_time` int(10) NOT NULL default '',
`g_msg` text NOT NULL default '',
`g_lock` int(1) NOT NULL default 0
);

These are the WTFs I see:

• I'm not exactly sure what purpose doubling the table name in the row name serves (e.g.: 'id_gb' instead of plain 'id') - I mean, if you must make absolutely sure that you're referencing the right table (like, when doing a JOIN) you'd want to reference the row by "guestbook.id" anyway. Also: All the other rows follow the paradigm of "g_row_name", why is id different?
• The default value for INT is an empty string. Not sure what kind of logic is behind that one. Also not sure which purpose a default value serves when using the row as a foreign key. NULL would be more descriptive and, if MySQL makes a zero out of the empty string, would not attribute all messages without a programmatically set foreign key to the user with the id of zero.
• A time row using Integer. Is there some kind of SQL database out there which doesn't have stuff like DATE or TIMESTAMP?
• And, of course, an empty string as a default value. I'm pretty sure that DEFAULT NOW() would be a better solution.
• A field to make a message non-editable using an Int. I myself would look for either a BINARY or a SET (if there's not BOOLEAN). Minor gripe, that one.
• Last, but not least: The TEXT row has a default. Which is not possible according to the MySQL manual - BLOB/TEXT may not have a default. Not to mention that even allowing an empty message to be saved makes no sense at all.

I think I now understand why my brother was having some problems...

[Illusions]

Maybe you can answer this for me Khen. Why is it that I quite frequently see in my site logs that if someone has checked out my site from a .edu ip address, they quite frequently then try to log in via the default wordpress or phpAdmin page? I can tell its not a bot, because the bots try everything from wordpress to blogger to joomla and myPhpAdmin to phpAdmin, even sql databases, for all versions, where-as the university students only try one or two types, eg. they'll try wordpress then phpAdmin, and when they fail, give up.

[Khendraja'aro]

It's not necessarily not a bot. Just not such a complex one that it'll try everything.

[Loki]

Expected cost of raising a child born today (until they turn 18): $234,000.

http://news.yahoo.com/cost-rearing-c...nvestment.html

[Timbuk2]

Fuck that shit.

Get a cat.

[Loki]

Or a brand new car every other year.

If you add the cost of college, then you could buy some really, really nice cars every 2 years.

[Ominous Gamer]

That total includes car payments

The list actually includes a lot of optional stuff, like magazines. Its not so much the "cost" of raising a child, but more about what could be "spent" on children by their parents and social programs.

[Loki]

Yeah, buying them stuff to read is optional.