The Daily WTF

Papering Over the Problem

Remy Porter — Thu, 24 May 2012 15:00:00 GMT

There are certain baselines that telecom companies care about. If, for example, your company is responsible for a set of network devices at the local airport, detecting and correcting failures quickly was very important.

Miguel was the IT support for the team ulitmately accountable for those devices. His first major project for them sounded fairly simple: when an alert condition occurs, generate a printed report. He was given a generous budget and told to do whatever it took for delivery.

It wasn't the biggest problem he'd ever had stacked in front of him. The supervision system that actually did the monitory and raised alerts was designed to be easy to tap into. Once he understood the system, generating a series of printed reports was little more than a step-and-repeat process. It was easy, and he had a lot of time and budget left over. So Miguel did what most people do in those situations: he slacked off for a bit and splurged on hardware. They wanted a dedicated printer for these reports, so he bought them the newest, niftiest laser printer he could find. Its main selling points were speed and a long MTBF.

The work was done, even with his splurging, he was still on time and under budget, so Miguel grabbed the boss and setup a demo. Miguel rubbed off a fake alert, and a moment later the printer spit out a nice report announcing the error. Miguel smiled at his boss and started to explain how reliable the printer was, but his boss cut that thread short like a guillotine.

"This is completely useless," the boss said as he started to ream Miguel. "This isn't what I wanted at all!"

Miguel felt like a sucker; had he misunderstood the requirements so badly? "Detect alerts and print a report," wasn't the most complex thing, ever. "I'm not sure what the problem is?" Miguel asked.

The boss took a deep breath and tried to draw down. "The printer doesn't make any noise."

"And that's bad?"

"Of course it's bad! How are the technicians going to know to log into the superviser program and check the alerts if they can't hear the printer?" The boss sighed. "Well, this was your first project. We all make mistakes. I'll help you cover it, this time. There's an old dot-matrix printer in the supply closet. You're off-square now, but use that instead and everything will be square."

CodeSOD: Representative Table

Alex Papadimoulis — Wed, 23 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

"This is a small peek into the production database of one of our client's systems," writes Walter. "I wish I could say that this was an unused table, an isolated occurrence... or even that I had some other job prospects. But sadly, none of those are the case."

mysql> select * from month

+-------------+
| month       |
+-------------+
| NULL        |
| June        |
| July        |
| 3           |
| T           |
| C           |
| A           |
| 1           |
| 2           |
| L           |
| 4           |
| P           |
| D           |
| S           |
| 7           |
| NO          |
| January     |
| August      |
| February    |
| March       |
| April       |
| May         |
| September   |
| OCTOBER     |
| NOVEMBER    |
| December    |
|             |
| 0           |
+-------------+
28 rows in set (0.04 sec)

Confessions: The Soft CPU Upgrade

Alex Papadimoulis — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:00:00 GMT

"Years ago," writes Maxime, "we found ourselves plagued with a brand new, unusably sluggish website. Most of the team blamed the esoteric VMCMWTH-based architecture (i.e. View-Model-Controller-Model-What-The-Huuhhhhh) that was pioneered by the Chief Developer. But the Chief Developer and the CTO (who also happened to be his uncle), blamed the hardware. More specifically, it was the 'inferior, off brand' CPU."

"Now despite the fact that this 'inferior, off brand' CPU commanded over 40% of the market, and that no one had ever experienced any performance problems on it ever, the powers-that-be refused to even consider the possibility that the non-performance was a result of their poorly-designed system."

"Replacing all of the production servers to get a new CPU was extremely expensive – especially when it would come out of Network Operation's much-needed budget – and obviously wouldn't do anything except delay resolving the actual problem. After a few clandestine meetings with network operations, I thought up a novel way to deliver a CPU upgrade..."

#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/kernel.h>
#include <linux/smp.h>


static char *cpuname = "HyperTurbo 256-bit, AwesomeCache enabled";

int init_module() {
    loff_t i;

    for (i=0; i < nr_cpu_ids; i++) {
        strcpy((&cpu_data(i))->x86_model_id, cpuname);
    }

    return 0;
}

"Sadly, after the Chief Developer ran his own series of tests, he found that the performance was tremendously improved and that no other changes were needed. A year or so (and many customer complaints) later, they finally decided to 'upgrade' the website."

Error'd: Element of Violence

Alex Papadimoulis — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

"Avast blocked itself from updating on reboot," Tejio writes, "if it can't trust itself, who can it trust?"

"While browsing for a USB cable from Amazon, I found this bargain for £10431.80," wrote Dazzie Bee, "and it even comes with free shipping!"

"This panel usually displays real-time bus information," wrote Tom Wright, "the fact that the two errors are actually different suggested to me that I had just caught it as it broke. No such luck - it was still displaying the same thing on my way home."

"I recently got an 'ultra high capacity' battery for my HP laptop," wrote Tod, "I noticed that the Quick Setup guide included an unexpected instruction: 'Replace this box with PI statement as per spec'. It's repeated several times, so it must be important!"

"I got this message trying to buy a game that was included as a demo with my xbox," wrote Ryan, "it was a fun game, but I just can't justify the $53.6M cost. If it was only $50M... maybe."

"I got this from Symantec's online store," writes, D.J.. "Repeatedly.

"I guess Adobe 'Reader' doesn't 'like' too much 'violence'," notes Andrew D.

Representative Line: Sanity Check

Alex Papadimoulis — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

"Lucky me," Ryan wrote, "I got assigned to work on Legacy, an application whose name accurately describes itself. I'm pretty sure that this system manages to have a WTF/line ratio greater than 1.0, especially if we include the 'minor' ones, like the System.Environment.Exit calls peppered throughout library code that causes the app to inexplicably exit."

"But beyond minor annoyances like that, or the random number generator class that seems to exist solely to duplicate the behavior System.Random, I discovered this gem inside a class method."

// Sanity check
const int expected_length = 199 + 6;

Ryan adds, "I don't even want to know why a constant is declared inside a class... or what makes 199 + 6 better than 205. My head hurts."

Long Distance

Remy Porter — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Lawrence's employer had heard that this newfangled "Desktop PC" could reduce their IT costs, and they wanted in on it. It was the mid 80s, and at the time, their plants scattered all over Alabama connected to a central mainframe via dumb terminals connected over very expensive leased lines. It was time to upgrade, and Lawrence wasn't in charge of it. He didn't get called in until things went wrong.

"This new PC system is really slow," he was told while on a plant tour. That didn't sound likely- the PCs were running blisteringly fast 4.77MHz, 8088 CPUs with 16Kb of RAM, and since someone had connected "arithmetic-heavy accounting usage" to "floating point processing", they all had 8087 co-processors. There was no way they were slow, especially since half the time they were just running a 3270 terminal emulator.

But sure enough, when they fired up the terminal emulator, it was slower than anything. Going from the login screen to the menu, and then from the menu to the order fulfillment screen took multiple minutes. Was the 300-baud smartmodem that slow? Lawrence fiddled connections, tested the line, and then eventually got around to cranking the volume on the modem's speaker. No, the modem wasn't that slow.

Whoever had configured the deployment had tried to mirror their old system as closely as possible. In the old system, the terminal started a new connection every time the user pressed enter, and then disconnected from the mainframe until the user triggered the next command. So in the new system, they did the same thing- which meant each time the client finished loading a screen, the modem would hang up.

That particular problem was easy to fix, and simply involved making sure each PC had its own phone line, and that the terminal emulator made sure to keep the connection open. But one of their remote offices, someplace deep in the Alabama backwoods, proved intractable- they couldn't connect at all.

Lawrence tried diagnosing their problem remotely at first. The phone line seemed good- he could dial it; the plant users could dial out. He shipped them a fresh modem, and eventually a fresh PC, but nothing seemed to make a difference. They couldn't dial the mainframe. So he had to go out to the plant.

Having learned his lesson, the first thing Lawrence did was crank the volume on the modem speaker. When the computer attempted to dial out, he heard the sound of touchtone bleeps followed by a crackly voice saying, "Number please."

That particular plant was so back in the backwoods of Alabama that it didn't have direct-dial long distance. The users were so used to it that they didn't even think it could be the problem. The small town phone company had no firm plan when they would start doing it. Lawrence helped pack up the PCs and reinstall the dumb terminals. By the time he left that company, they were still using them. They might still be using them today.

Coded Smorgasbord: FAIL FAIL,FAIL FAIL,FAIL FAIL and More

Alex Papadimoulis — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

"We're had been using a manufacturer's web service, but started getting errors all of a sudden," wrote Peter Lindgren. "Something has really, really failed."

<StatusCode>InternalServerError</StatusCode>
<StatusDescription>Internal Server Error</StatusDescription>
<WebHeaders>
  <X-Backside-Transport>FAIL FAIL,FAIL FAIL,FAIL FAIL</X-Backside-Transport>
</WebHeaders>

"Fortunately, a short time later, it started working again with this message."

<StatusCode>OK</StatusCode>
<StatusDescription>OK</StatusDescription>
<WebHeaders>
  <X-Backside-Transport>OK OK,OK OK,OK OK</X-Backside-Transport>
</WebHeaders>

"I'm not sure of the purpose of this," Jasmine wrote via the Submit to The Daily WTF visual studio extension, "maybe the stack was just too small or something?"

Public Function Save() As Boolean
    Try
        SaveMeeting()
    Catch ex As Exception
        Throw ex
    End Try
End Function

"I was asked to modify some simple web page used to generate an online store," Mihai Todor wrote, "here's a Javascript function that I found in it, which is used to validate the required fields."

function checkdata() {
    dataok = true;
    t1 = document.forms.signup.firstName.value;
    t2 = document.forms.signup.lastName.value;
    t3 = document.forms.signup.userName.value;
    t4 = document.forms.signup.password.value;
    t5 = document.forms.signup.passwordConfirm.value;
    t6 = document.forms.signup.email.value;
    t7 = document.forms.signup.url.value;
    t8 = document.forms.signup.adminFrontname.value;
    t9 = document.forms.signup.locale.options.selectedIndex;
    t10 = document.forms.signup.currency.options.selectedIndex;
    t11 = document.forms.signup.timezone.options.selectedIndex;
    t12 = document.forms.signup.packetType.options.selectedIndex;
    t13 = document.forms.signup.captcha_code.value;
    if(t1 == '' || t2 == '' || t3 == '' || t4 == '' || t5 == '' || t6 == '' || t7 == '' || t8 == ''){
        alert("Please fill-up all the fields");
        dataok = false; return(dataok);}
    if(t4 != t5){
        alert("Please enter the password again");
        dataok = false; return(dataok);}
    if(t9 == 0){
        alert("Please select a locale");
        dataok = false; return(dataok);}
    if(t10 == 0){
        alert("Please select a currency");
        dataok = false; return(dataok);}
    if(t11 == 0){
        alert("Please select a time zone");
        dataok = false; return(dataok);}
    if(t12 == 0){
        alert("Please select a packet type");
        dataok = false; return(dataok);}
    if(t13 == ''){
        alert("Please fill-up the code field");
        dataok = false; return(dataok);}
    return(dataok);
}

"I've seen these types of constants on The Daily WTF before and always questioned if they were real," wrote Sterge, "and then I saw these."

public static final String SLASH = "/";
public static final String PERCENT = "%";

"I'm on a team that maintains a pretty 'serious' banking application," Giga B wrote, "it's pretty serious about the number of parameters in functions."

public void WriteStep1Data(int LoanRequestID,
                           string InsertDate,
                           string OperatorID,
                           string FirstName,
                           string LastName,
                           string BirthDay,
                           int DocuemntTypeID,
                           int MaritialStatusID,
                           string DocumentIssueDate,
                           string DocumentExpireDate,
                           string DocumentIssuer,
                           string DocumentNo,
                           string PersonalNo,
                           int UniversityDegreeID,
                           string Address,
                           string Address2,
                           int RealAddressLivingPeriod,
                           int ChildrenCount,
                           int FamilyMembersCount,
                           decimal MonthlyIncome,
                           decimal MonthlyFamilyExpanses,
                           string HomePhoneNumber,
                           string MobilePhoneNumber,
                           string WorkPhoneNumber,
                           string EmailAddress,
                           string JobOrganizationName,
                           string JobOrganizationAddress,
                           string JobOrganizationActivity,
                           string JobOrganizationPhoneNumber,
                           string JobPosition,
                           string JobWorkingYears,
                           string JobBossName,
                           string JobBossPhoneNumber,
                           byte ClientSex,
                           decimal FinTotalProductsAmount,
                           decimal FinCommissionAmount,
                           int FinLoanPeriod,
                           decimal FinFirstPaymentAmount,
                           decimal FinLoanAmount,
                           decimal FinMonthlyPaymentAmount,
                           string GuarantorName,
                           string GuarantorLastName,
                           string GuarantorBirthDate,
                           string GuarantorPersonalNo,
                           int? GuarantorDocType,
                           string GuarantorDocumentNo,
                           string GuarantorDocIssuer,
                           string GuarantorDocIssueDate,
                           string GuarantorDocExpireDate,
                           string GuarantorTelHome,
                           string GuarantorTelMobile,
                           string GuarantorAddress,
                           string GuarantorAddressReal,
                           string GuarantorJobName,
                           decimal GuarantorIncome,
                           byte? GuarantorSex,
                           decimal HistoryPlaticAnnualTurnOver,
                           string HistoryDescription,
                           string MarketingQ1,
                           string MarketingQ2,
                           int StatusID,
                           string DateViewed,
                           string DateAnswered,
                           string BackOfficeUserID,
                           string RepaymentDate,
                           string ShopID,
                           string CalculationGroupID,
                           decimal RegFeeAmount,
                           int clientDeptNo,
                           int guarantorDeptNo,
                           int guarantorMaritialStatusID,
                           string AccountCodeWord,
                           string ClientFatherName,
                           string ClientBirthPlace,
                           string ClientCityAttendingToReg,
                           string GuarantorFatherName,
                           string GuarantorBirthPlace,
                           string GuarantorCityAttendingToReg,
                           string GuarantorJobActivity,
                           string GuarantorJobPosition,
                           string GuarantorJobContactPhone,
                           string GuarantorJobCodeWord,
                           string GuarantorEmailAddress
    )
{
   ... snip a few hundred lines ...
}

"I learned a neat trick from our enterprise framework," Eli noted, "if you want to convert an int to a double, just do this!"

double d = Double.valueOf(new Integer(i).toString()).doubleValue();

"I had to look over some C# code written by a colleague of mine," notes John D, "the following lines represent just the tip of the iceberg of the pain that I had to go through while understanding the code."

bool true1 =true;
bool true12 = true;
.... snip ....
true1 = false;
true1 = false;

"I found this pattern in source code I have been working on," wrote Nas Nubian, "this is how some developer decided to open a new window for when users click on a links."

<a href="/the/path/to/the/url" 
  onclick="window.open(this.getAttribute('href'),'_blank');return false;">
  link text
</a>

"So," wonders Johnny B, "I guess GUID from our production db servers are better than local GUID?"

Function GetNewGuid()
    Dim cnGuid, rsGuid
    
    Set cnGuid = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
    Set rsGuid = CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset")

    cnGuid.Open = _
        "Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;" + 
        "Data Source=<production server>; " + 
        "Initial Catalog=<production DB> " +
        "user id = '********';" + 
        "password='*********'""

    rsGuid.Open "SELECT newid() as Guid", cnGuid

    If Not rsGuid.EOF Then
        GetNewGuid = rsGuid("Guid").Value
    End If
End Function

"The comment says it all," wrote Michael.

/**
 * Defines the value for none. Default is "none".
 */
public static String NONE = "none";

"This is snippet of code I found in a large program I maintain," wrote Brian. "The original developers have long since moved on. Funnily enough, this particular code was properly mutexed, but I guess the paranoid programmer doesn't trust mutexes. I only wish the original developers were so 'paranoid' when it came to avoiding things like buffer overflows, memory leaks, and sql injection."

if ( resData.state() == RESOURCE_STATE_ACTIVE )
{
    elapsedTime.setBase( resData.startTime() );
    if ( elapsedTime.diff() >= maxDuration )
    {
        // Do one more validity check, the paranoid programmer knows
        // the state may have changed since the last check.
        if ( resData.state() == RESOURCE_STATE_ACTIVE )
        {
            resourceActiveTooLong( resData );
        }
    }
}

Error'd: Squared Interior Design

Alex Papadimoulis — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

"I found this ad for an interior design company," wrote Wouter, "they probably do a lot of rectangular designs."

"How am I supposed to troubleshoot this?" wonders Jeff Mitchell.

"I'm not really sure what happened here, but I had to use Chrome's developer tools to hack my birthdate into the form so I could submit it," writes Dave.

"I need this form to renew my immigration documents," writes Jack Nathan, "what do i do now?!?"

"My mother's middle name has 3 characters." wrote Julie Crowner. "I only have a middle initial. Fortunately, we're the only ones impacted by this. Well, except Ada. And Aja. And Ala, Ali, Ama, Ami, Amy, Ana, Ann, Ara, Ava, Bea, Bee, Bev, Deb, Dee, Dot, Eda, Ela, Ema, Ena, Era, Eva, Eve, Exa, Fae, Fay, Flo, Gay, Gia, Ica, Icy, Ida, Ila, Ilo, Ima, Imo, Ina, Ira, Isa, Iva, Ivy, Iza, Jan, Joe, Joi, Joy, Kai, Kay, Kia, Kim, Kya, Lea, Lee, Leo, Lia, Liz, Lou, Lue, Luz, Lyn, Mae, Mai, May, Meg, Mia, Mya, Nan, Nia, Nya, Oda, Ola, Oma, Ona, Ora, Osa, Ota, Ova, Pam, Pat, Rae, Ray, Roy, Sky, Sue, Tai, Tea, Tia, Tom, Ula, Una, Ura, Val, Zoa, Zoe, Abb, Abe, Ace, Acy, Ada, Add, Alf, Ali, Amy, Ann, Ari, Art, Asa, Bee, Ben, Bob, Bud, Cal, Cam, Cap, Cas, Che, Con, Coy, Dan, Dax, Dee, Del, Doc, Don, Dow, Ean, Ebb, Edd, Edw, Eli, Ell, Ely, Eva, Fay, Fed, Foy, Gay, Gee, Geo, Gil, Gus, Guy, Hal, Ham, Hoy, Huy, Ian, Ida, Ike, Ira, Irl, Iva, Ivy, Jan, Jax, Jay, Jeb, Jed, Jep, Jim, Job, Joe, Jon, Joy, Kai, Kay, Kem, Ken, Kim, Kip, Kit, Lea, Lee, Lem, Len, Leo, Les, Lew, Lex, Lim, Lon, Lou, Loy, Luc, Lue, Lum, Lyn, Mac, Mae, Mal, Mat, Max, May, Mel, Moe, Nat, Ned, Nim, Noe, Obe, Oda, Ola, Ole, Ora, Ott, Ova, Pat, Rae, Ras, Ray, Red, Rex, Rey, Rob, Rod, Roe, Ron, Roy, Sal, Sam, Sid, Sie, Sim, Sol, Son, Tab, Tad, Taj, Tal, Ted, Tex, Tim, Tod, Tom, Toy, Tre, Tye, Val, Van, Vic, Von, Wes, Yee, Zeb, and Zed." What will people with all these middle names do?

"My company recently partnered with a developer who had a custom application written in Microsoft Access that we are now forced to train/support/install," writes Ben Reisner. "The following error message is just one of many that has an interesting definition of Equal."

Kira Russell snapped this when it was a bit cold in North Wales.

"I'm still getting used to my new keyboard, and occasionally hit the '\' and ENTER keys at the same time," writes Michael Dowden. "I was pretty sure I had done this one morning when I logged in to Windows for the first time, however I got in okay and figured all was well...until I got back from a morning meeting, having locked my workstation. I was greeted with the usual login prompt (screenshot attached), but with '\' appended to my username. I was forced to hard boot my machine since Windows doesn't allow you to edit your username on the locked-login screen."

CodeSOD: Epoch Billing System

Mark Bowytz — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Everybody in the IT department was quite happy -- even a little surprised -- with how well the outsourced project to replace the legacy billing system was progressing.

Well, actually, the project managers weren't all that surprised. Over the past four months, they'd pumped out reams of specs and design documents, often boasting that their level of planning hadn't been seen since the Apollo missions. So, for them, the fact that everything was turning out as designed spoke volumes about the success of their planning and processes.

New Billing Code

Jeff and the other developers who were stuck supporting the existing billing system until the big cutover (still a few months away) wanted to see what this super system looked like under the hood. After all, because they were expected to support the new system once it came online, shouldn't they at least have an understanding of how the underlying code worked?

The developers made their case for months before the project managers gave up on their "it's not done yet" rhetoric and reluctantly handed over a few modules that they'd deemed bug-free.

When Jeff got his hands on the code, one line in particular caught his eye:

int strElapsedDays = ( 
 convertDate(intDay1, intMonth1, intYr1) - 
 convertDate(intDay2, intMonth2, intYr2)) / DAY;

Unusual Process

Knowing that C# had built-in functions to easily determine the span of days between two dates, Jeff thought the approach was a little strange. Once he tracked down convertDate, things got even weirder:

public const int DAY = 86400;
public const int WEEK = 604800;
public const int YEAR = 31449600;
        
private static int convertDate(int day, int month, int year)
{
 
  int[] months = new int[] 
     { 0,31,59,90,120,151, 
       181,212,243,273,304,334 };

  return ( ((year - 1970) * DAY * 365) + 
           (((year - 1970)/4) * DAY) + 
           (months[month - 1] * DAY) + ((day-1) * DAY) );
}

Caught off guard, Jeff just stared at the function for a good 10 minutes, trying to figure it out. When he did, it hit him like a ton of bricks. Rather than using the built-in C# date functions, the developer had opted to convert a date into its Unix Epoch -- the number of seconds elapsed since Jan. 1, 1970 -- and work from there.

Jeff had to admit, the solution was a little bit genius. Unfortunately, it wasn't a fit because the new system was running on a Windows server. So Jeff did his duty and raised the matter with the project management team so it could be added to the bug-fix queue for the offshore team.

Weeks later, Jeff followed up with one of the members of the project management team, just out of curiosity, to see if the fix had been made. To his surprise, it hadn't been addressed -- nor would it be any time soon. Apparently the "bug" was downgraded to a feature request because -- in the eyes of the project managers -- if an application functioned as it was designed, there wasn't a need to go back in and change it.

Epoch Billing System was originally published in the March 2011 edition of Visual Studio Magazine. VSM is the leading site for enterprise .NET developers, and offers a free magazine subscription for influential readers.

The Online Ordering System

Alex Papadimoulis — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:30:00 GMT

Local businesses aren't exactly known for their web savviness or IT prowess. And for the most part, that's just fine. You'd be better off judging a prospective attorney on the suit he wears rather than the website he maintains, as that at least has some tangential relationship to practicing law. But usually, you'd just go with whomever a trusted colleague recommended, anyway.

For restaurants however, this is quickly changing. With smartphones becoming the norm, many people will use the web to discover the restaurants around them, see what menus they have, and get a general vibe for the place. And as such, local restaurants do become judged by their web savviness – or at least, their ability to maintain a halfway-decent website.

Ludovico Gardenghi found himself in this exact position when looking for a local eatery that offered take-out. He stumbled upon the website of a nearby place that, despite having a hideously orange, flash-only website, looked like it'd be a good place to get dinner. And as luck would have it, there was even big, orange button that shouted ORDER ONLINE NOW!!!!!

Clicking on that button led to a rather curious page that described the process for placing an order. The exact words on the page were in a different language, and it translated to something like this:

Order Online Today!
Already familiar with ordering online? Then just head to the online ordering system now. Otherwise, just follow these few simple steps.

Ordering online is really easy:

After reading these instructions, click on the orange, "online ordering system" button below to sign-on to the system

When you click on that link, you will be asked to open a connection to a remote server. Click the "accept" button to immediately sign-on, or click the "save" button to create a shortcut on your computer. With a shortcut, you'll then be able to directly access the online ordering system, even without opening our web site just by clicking on the icon (extension .rdp).

Once you accept the connection, a grey screen will appear, asking you for a password. Do not enter a password here; just click the OK button to continue.

Wait a few moments for the online ordering system to load.

If you've already registered, just you can enter your user ID and password, otherwise click on "Register" button and fill out the registration form.

online ordering system

Clicking on the hideously orange "online ordering system" button downloaded an .rdp file:

    screen mode id:i:2
    autoreconnection enabled:i:1
    username:s:beneeats
    domain:s:
    alternate shell:s:
    shell working directory:s:
    disable wallpaper:i:1
    disable full window drag:i:0
    disable menu anims:i:0
    disable themes:i:0
    disable cursor setting:i:0
    bitmapcachepersistenable:i:1

And opening that .rdp file of course opened a connection to their server using Remote Desktop Connection.

"I didn't try to log in as Administrator," wrote Ludovico, "mostly out of pity." Clicking the OK button did exactly what it advertised:

"I couldn't help myself and pressed Ctrl-Alt-End. This brought up Task Manager, allowing me to run anything I'd want (cmd.exe and explorer.exe were already in the history), or change the password, shut down the machine, etc.

Ludovico adds, "I did not dare to check if I could run things as other users, but I could see other users logged in ('cash desk', 'administration'), presumably so that the complete database of users, orders, and payments could be easily accessed from home. I visit this website from time to time and it has surprisingly survived over the past few years, though I would really love to know the story which led to this innovative online ordering system being created in the first place."

And that story, dear readers, I'll leave as an exercise of your imagination. Feel free to share your version of the story in the comments.

CodeSOD: The Bit Setter

Alex Papadimoulis — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

"Bit manipulation can be tricky," writes Nathan, "especially if you have no familiarity with bitwise operators or logic."

"At least, that's what my smarter-than-built-in-language-features colleague must have thought when he authored setBit. Fortunately, his code was the only one that utilized this function, as it doesn't quite work as advertised."

/*
 *    setBit($val, $bit, $switch)
 *
 *    This will switch all the bits specified by $bit to on or 
 *    off in $val depending on $switch. So, if $val = 8, and 
 *    $bit = 4, $switch is true, it will turn on the 4 bit, 
 *    and $val will end up being 12; Now, if $val = 12, and $bit 
 *    is 5, if $switch is true, $val will be 13, if false $val 
 *    will be 8. So, all the bits of $bit is turned on or off
 *
 */
function setBit($val, $bit, $switch = true) {
    $val = (int) $val;
    $bit = (int) $bit;

    // set some strings that humans would consider false
    // but would be converted to true if converted by PHP
    if (is_string($switch)) {
        switch ($switch) {
            case 'false' :
            case 'down' :
            case 'off' :
            case 'not' :
            case '0' :
            case '' :
                $switch = false;
                break;

            default :
                $switch = true;
                break;
        }
    }

    if ($switch) { // we are turning the bits on
        $newval = $val | $bit; // val OR bit
    }
    else { // we are turning the bits off
        $newval = $val & ( ~ $bit); // val AND ( NOT bit)
    }

    return $newval;
}

Sponsor Appreciation, nullnull, and More Error'd

Alex Papadimoulis — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Please take a few moments to check out the great companies that sponsor The Daily WTF.

TDWTF Sponsors

JRebel is a JVM-plugin that makes it possible for Java developers to instantly see any code change made to an app without redeploying. JRebel lets you see code changes instantly, reloading classes and resources individually and updating one at a time instead of as a lump application redeploy. Download your FREE Trial Today!

Joyent - This cloud ain't for storing music. Running your apps on Joyent's open-source SmartOS is a different, smarter cloud choice. Automatic and Free 400% vertical scaling, copy-on-write with ZFS, DTrace for killer visibility (heat maps! flamegraphs!) Come check out our stack.

Inedo - the makers of BuildMaster, the free, and easy-to-use, web-based deployment and release management tool. Going far beyond Continuous Integration and into Continuous Delivery, BuildMaster delivers a series of robust features unparalleled by other build-promote-deploy-distribute tools. They're also behind the upcoming ProGet, a NuGet package repository that lets you host and manage your own personal or enterprise-wide NuGet feeds.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program...

"I don't know what they were thinking putting this ad up," writes Christian Riesen, "but I think I can hold my enthusiasm for that gigantic jackpot easy."

"I spotted this while upgrading the Samsung KIES software on Windows," writes Scott Coonce, "I wasn't sure if I should accept the empty license agreement or not."

"I got this error when trying to upgrade PostgreSQL," writes David, "they must really like cloud computing."

"I was rushing to catch my train at St. Pancras the other day," notes D Bee, "but it appears there was plenty of time before it departed."

"I'd hate to be selfish and not share null with the other readers of the Daily WTF," wrote Dwayne, "I hope you find the same benefits of null that I have."

"The newspaper didn't really contain any interesting news," writes Wout van Poppel "but at least it has interesting photo captions which serve to draw attention quite well."

"Free drink every 0 stars?" writes Andrew ,"wow, now I really want to get to be a 'Gold' members!"

CodeSOD: Mybad

Alex Papadimoulis — Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

"At my company," writes Ryan L, "we have a 'certain' developer who has been here a while but is very reluctant to learn or improve. In fact, he actively works against the rest of us when we want to implement pesky things like proper version control, design patterns, or architecture to our code behind having 3000-line code-behind files."

Ryan continues, "I was exploring our SVN logs and came across something checked in by this "engineer". It was a single file, with a commit message of 'Mybad'. The file turned out to be a config file. Here was the previous version checked in:

<app key="ContactEmailAddress" value="jdoe@initrode.com"/>

"and here was the modified value:"

<app key="sContactEmailAddress" value="jdoe@initrode.com"/>

"Yes," Ryan added, "he did a commit with no indication of what the commit was for, simply to add a Hungarian Notation prefix to a configuration file setting, in case we weren't sure that 'ContactEmailAddress' was a string."

CodeSOD: Self Documenting

Alex Papadimoulis — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:15:00 GMT

"A little while back, someone introduced the concept of 'self-documenting' code to our team," writes Ryan L. "It was certainly a step forward, but it's somehow taken us two steps backwards. Consider, for example, the following code from an MVC controller."

if (TheFormIsInvalid()) return View("Index", form);

... snip ...

private bool TheFormIsInvalid()
{
    return ModelState.IsValid == false;
}

"Is it really that much easier to follow than if (!ModelState.IsValid)? I'll set that question aside for the moment to instead present some other code from the same class that handles online registrations for events:

public bool IsEligibleToSeeThisEvent(EventRegistrationInformation eventRegistrationInformation)
{
  if (ThisEventDoesNotRestrictRegistrantsBasedUponActivityType(eventRegistrationInformation))
      return TrueBecauseThisEventDoesNotRegistrictBasedUponActivityType();

  var activityTypes = GetTheActivityTypesAttachedToThisEvent(eventRegistrationInformation);

  if (NoActivityTypesAreAttachedToThisEvent(activityTypes))
      return TrueBecauseThereAreNoActivityTypesToFilterOnThisEvent();

  if (TheUserIsNotLoggedIn(eventRegistrationInformation))
      return FalseBecauseNoActivityTypesAreAvailableForUsersWhoAreNotLoggedIn();

  return ThereIsAtLeastOneSharedActivityTypeBetweenTheEventAndCurrentUser(
           eventRegistrationInformation, 
		   activityTypes);
}

private static bool TrueBecauseThisEventDoesNotRegistrictBasedUponActivityType()
{
  return true;
}

 private bool ThisEventDoesNotRestrictRegistrantsBasedUponActivityType(
    EventRegistrationInformation eventRegistrationInformation)
{
  return eventActivityTypeFilterRetriever
      .DoesThisEventHaveARestrictionBasedOnActivityTypes(
          eventRegistrationInformation.EventId) == false;
}

private bool ThereIsAtLeastOneSharedActivityTypeBetweenTheEventAndCurrentUser(
    EventRegistrationInformation eventRegistrationInformation, 
	IEnumerable<ActivityType> activityTypes)
{
  var currentActivities = registrantActivityRetriever
    .GetRegistrantActivityProductCode(eventRegistrationInformation.AccountId);

  return activityTypes.Any(x => currentActivities.Any(y => y.Id == x.Id));
}

private static bool FalseBecauseNoActivityTypesAreAvailableForUsersWhoAreNotLoggedIn()
{
  return false;
}

private static bool TheUserIsNotLoggedIn(EventRegistrationInformation eventRegistrationInformation)
{
  return eventRegistrationInformation.IsLoggedIn == false;
}

private static bool TrueBecauseThereAreNoActivityTypesToFilterOnThisEvent()
{
  return true;
}

private static bool NoActivityTypesAreAttachedToThisEvent(IEnumerable<ActivityType> activityTypes)
{
  return activityTypes.Any() == false;
}

private IEnumerable<ActivityType> GetTheActivityTypesAttachedToThisEvent(
    EventRegistrationInformation eventRegistrationInformation)
{
  return eventActivityTypeFilterRetriever.GetAll(eventRegistrationInformation.EventId);
}

Error'd: Out of Service

Alex Papadimoulis — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:00:00 GMT

"I came across this 'digital' sign in NY Penn Station," Dan wrote, "for some reason, it makes me think of Mitch Hedberg."

"I'm going through the process of applying to law school," wrote Alex M, "it's not an easy process, but so far it has been incredibly streamlined and, even more surprising since it's entirely online, hitch-free. And then I came to a certain school's application. Not only was it redundant (in certain sections, triply so -- apparently they wanted my name three times just to make sure I remembered it), but I discovered that gender isn't merely a Male/Female/Other, but in fact is a binary proposition for each possible state."

"I was really confused about what I was supposed to choose," writes Audun Kvasbø.

"I was accessing the MSDN Academic Alliance site to download Visual Studio," wrote Louis W, "but I wasn't sure which school I went to. Is it 'Arizona State University' or 'ASU'? Perhaps 'Arizona State Univerrsity'? And what's 'is dept'?"

"My opinion is important to Congressman Peters..." notes Eric, "so long as I don't express it with the forbidden words."

"My uncle recently ordered a product sample on the internet," wrote Alex van Herwijnen, "when it got delivered, he noticed this oddity in the address."

"I guess leading digit in 'Brooklyn' is not just silent but invisible," writes Gabriel Goldberg.

"I did a search for a user in Sametime," wrote Ken Brittain "Apparently there are too many user with that name...or none at all."

TDWTF Sponsors
		JRebel is a JVM-plugin that makes it possible for Java developers to instantly see any code change made to an app without redeploying. JRebel lets you see code changes instantly, reloading classes and resources individually and updating one at a time instead of as a lump application redeploy. Download your FREE Trial Today!
		Joyent - This cloud ain't for storing music. Running your apps on Joyent's open-source SmartOS is a different, smarter cloud choice. Automatic and Free 400% vertical scaling, copy-on-write with ZFS, DTrace for killer visibility (heat maps! flamegraphs!) Come check out our stack.
		Inedo - the makers of BuildMaster, the free, and easy-to-use, web-based deployment and release management tool. Going far beyond Continuous Integration and into Continuous Delivery, BuildMaster delivers a series of robust features unparalleled by other build-promote-deploy-distribute tools. They're also behind the upcoming ProGet, a NuGet package repository that lets you host and manage your own personal or enterprise-wide NuGet feeds.