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Pre-Twitter, Disney would already have filed the lawsuit.
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Flight duration now less than 12 parsecs
Unfortunately, somebody doesn't know that a parsec is a measure of distance, not time. 
a unit of distance used in astronomy, equal to about 3.26 light years (3.086 × 1013 kilometers). One parsec corresponds to the distance at which the mean radius of the earth's orbit subtends an angle of one second of arc.
Although bizarrely, a parsec has time in its definition.
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Quote: Although bizarrely, a parsec has time in its definition
No, an arcsecond is just a 3600th of a degree. Just like an arcminute is a sixtieth of a degree, which happens to be part of the definition of a nautical mile.
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These days at the office I'm in charge of emailing license activation keys to customers who request them if, say, their machines can't access the internet to do automatic activation after a new install.
We have a dialog box that shows users their license key, a unique machine code, and a text field in which they're expected to paste the activation key we generate for them. There's clear instructions on that dialog box that they need to email us their license key and machine code, and there's a button to copy those values to the clipboard.
Every once in a while someone will send us a screenshot of the dialog box showing the key/machine code. Which means we have to type in those values. Neither are exactly short strings, so there's always a risk of us mistyping something - this is why there's a "copy to clipboard" button, so we can copy them from a plain text source.
When interacting to customers, I always go out of my way to be a nice guy, but sometimes I'm very tempted to respond in kind, by taking a screenshot of our licensing software showing the activation key they have to paste, with the note, "now you know why that Copy button is there".
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A picture is worth a thousand wrong keystrokes.
I'd rather be phishing!
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Maximilien wrote: A picture is worth a thousand wrong keystrokes.
That's brilliant. I may actually use that one with customers I know have a sense of humor. I can't think that's too passive-aggressive.
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dandy72 wrote: by taking a screenshot of our licensing software showing the activation key they have to paste
That's like the guy who got a ticket mailed to him with a picture by one of those automatic camera systems of him speeding.
So he mailed in a picture of his money.
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I remember that one. And then the cops mailed him a picture of handcuffs. 
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And a colleague faxed a photocopy of the floppy disk with his weekly status report on to our boss.
(That was back in the 90's - I feel old now)
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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excuse my dumbness, but
1. you have a button the user presses to copy the info to the clipboard,
2. and then the user creates and email, pastes the clipboard, and emails that to you,
why not have the button send the email as well?
- problem solved
- user only see magic.
next step: take it to a web api
... user presses the button, minute later everything is done for them.
= less work all around, isn't that what computers are supposed to be used for??
Signature ready for installation. Please Reboot now.
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Well, he writes in the first paragraph that it's for the machines that can't register over the internet. I would assume a mail client need internet as well.
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Jorgan has it right. This is for those people who can't have the software automatically activate itself because their machine is isolated or locked down in some fashion that prevents it from accessing the internet.
The best we can do under those circumstances is prepare all the information they need to send to us.
Otherwise, what you're suggesting is already in place. The user only sees magic, as you put it.
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I still don't understand. If their machine can't access the internet then they have to use another machine to see your instructions and email you back with numbers displayed on their machine. If you don't specifically tell them not to send a screenshot then it's reasonable for them to take a picture, so that they don't have to write down the numbers to type into to the other machine.
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Member 10652083 wrote: If you don't specifically tell them not to send a screenshot then it's reasonable for them to take a picture, so that they don't have to write down the numbers to type into to the other machine
That's why we give them a button to copy that text to the clipboard. If you've remoted into the machine that's not connected to the internet, it's even easier to paste it back (Ctrl-V) from the clipboard, than launching some tool to take a screenshot.
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A machine not connected to the Internet is not likely to allow remoting in the first place.
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Quote: A machine not connected to the Internet is not likely to allow remoting
Many of my file servers, etc are NEVER connected to the internet. They also don't have monitors or keyboards/mice so the only access is via remote desktop.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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If that's the case, then it's even harder to get a screenshot off of that machine, unless you're taking a picture with a phone or the like. Which I've never claimed to be the case.
For that remaining 1%, fine, they can't use the button. That's no reason for us to what, take it away?
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Ah, I did not consider remoting into the machine. I assumed two unconnected machines, in which case copying to the clipboard of one machine is useless in the other machine.
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I hang around in IT troubleshooting forums every now and then and indeed, the new habit of posting screenshots as much as possible instead of text is extremely annoying. In the meantime, I go as far as to tell people to post the error message (or whatever message they get) in text.
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Most Microsoft error messages cannot be copied and pasted. I've been waiting many years for that.
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1. I just copypasted an error message from the shell, worked just fine
2. Even if there's no copypasting, copying the text manually (as in "typing it out") isn't too much to ask from any computer user
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It could be worse. I get screen 'captures' that have been taken with their phone.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I wasn't suggesting this was the worse thing imaginable. They could've involved a printer, a scanner, and a PowerPoint file. And perhaps a fax in there somewhere.
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I routinely receive screen captures encapsulated inside Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents, with Excel being the most popular. I've never received one in an Access or Publisher format, and only one as a OneNote file (how apropos).
I empathize with the OP, however. We have a similar scheme with dongles that are field programmable. The user gives us a serial number and we send them an activation code that is a list of 8-15 four-digit numbers. Even though we handle copy/paste nicely, we still get phone screen captures that are blurred and barely readable.
Software Zen: delete this;
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