An interesting website
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I found this recently when doing some google searches. I'll leave it up to the peanut gallery to deconstruct it. I still think I am in shock for seeing it.
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That's the second stupidest <blockquote> layout I've ever seen. Obviously, CSS didn't exist in 1978 when this website was created.
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Is it sad that I didn't even flinch when I saw it? My tolerances are too high; I run across websites that look stuck in the 1920s all the time. For example, the West Virginia State Police.
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@bstorer said:
My tolerances are too high; I run across websites that look stuck in the 1920s all the time. For example, the West Virginia State Police.
Is it still being updated? The Farba site seems to have been updated one and a half month ago. Also, it has a blockquote based layout. I mean, seriously.
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They say:
"We also firmly believe in maintainability"
surely, their home page is mantainable even with edlin only.
Andy
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@bstorer said:
Is it sad that I didn't even flinch when I saw it? My tolerances are too high; I run across websites that look stuck in the 1920s all the time. For example, the West Virginia State Police.
The style (or lack thereof) is only part of the charm of this site. Some of the content is truly amazing
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@derula said:
@bstorer said:
My tolerances are too high; I run across websites that look stuck in the 1920s all the time. For example, the West Virginia State Police.
Is it still being updated?
@WV State Police Site said:
<font color="#f3b31b" face="ARIAL" size="5"><font color="#f3b31b" face="Arial" size="6">State
Police Need Your Help</font></font>
<font color="#f3b31b" face="ARIAL" size="5">
</font>
<font color="#f3b31b" face="ARIAL" size="5"> </font>There's only one way to find out: we need to abduct someone and dismember the corpse and see if they post a new "unidentified body" link.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Waaaaay ahead of you.There's only one way to find out: we need to abduct someone and dismember the corpse and see if they post a new "unidentified body" link.
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@derula said:
That's the second stupidest <blockquote> layout I've ever seen.
Okay, I'll bite... what's the first?
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Wow, there is some scary stuff on that site. See, for example, the Examples page:
As we hope you will notice when looking at our sample code, we are firm believers in program comments. We have always believed that there should be a meaningful comment on every single line of source code (to be grabbed by our proprietary auto-documenter, if nothing else). We do not employ anyone who does not subscribe to this belief.
Which, naturally, leads to the following in their sample C code:
#include "stdio.h" //standard I/O header
#include "string.h" //standard string header
#include "dos.h" //standard header for DOS stuff
#include "FARBA.H" //Farba Research standard headerThanks, guys!
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(DIV ALIGN="center")
(A href="links.htm")
(IMG src="pictlink.jpg" WIDTH=400 HEIGHT=100 BORDER=0) (/A)
(/DIV)
Ok, no WTF there. Unless, of course, pictlink.jpg just happens to exactly match your background picture. And who would do that?
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@morbiuswilters said:
There's only one way to find out: we need to abduct someone and dismember the corpse and see if they post a new "unidentified body" link.
Interestingly enough, one might also look at this page: http://www.wvstatepolice.com/honor/hoh.htm The last fallen officer is dated to 2007. Although, right below it says "Last Updated: 06/25/2001. Time machine, crappy CMS or stupid webmaster?
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@Monomelodies said:
@morbiuswilters said:
There's only one way to find out: we need to abduct someone and dismember the corpse and see if they post a new "unidentified body" link.
Interestingly enough, one might also look at this page: http://www.wvstatepolice.com/honor/hoh.htm The last fallen officer is dated to 2007. Although, right below it says "Last Updated: 06/25/2001. Time machine, crappy CMS or stupid webmaster?
You've obviously never been to West Virginia... and the answer is probably 'c'...
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@cconroy said:
Which, naturally, leads to the following in their sample C code:
#include "stdio.h" //standard I/O header
#include "string.h" //standard string header
#include "dos.h" //standard header for DOS stuff
#include "FARBA.H" //Farba Research standard headerThanks, guys!
Awesome. No <stdio.h>, why should you? C++ style comments, when the front page of your website says you don't use C++, because it is "too slow and fat". Commenting the obvious, such as
comlinptr++; //bump command-line pointer k++; //bump the token pointer tknchars++; //bump token's char-count goto NXTCHAR; //go look for another char
and using goto as an extra, because that's so much faster than a while loop. And they also declare (in the DOS C example where this was taken from) quite a few variables global without static, including variables status, j and k. That can give a nasty surprise...
No, I'm really going to recommend these people (probably just one person) to NASA for critical code.
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There's just too many WTFs there... Wow, just wow...
"The above is a picture of a prototype device built by Farba Research. We have permission to show it to you, but not to tell you what it is (a classic "exercise for the reader"). Yes, that really is stainless steel and solid American black walnut.".
I've never used solid American black walnut for prototypes, anyone else? Our prototypes are normally thrown together or look almost identical to the real thing, depending on time constraints, but black walnut?
They do seem to ignore there own policy on some of the examples however. Some lines are not commented at all. They need to immediately discipline whoever wrote that piece of code.
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@a_dalessandro said:
surely, their home page is mantainable even with edlin only.
Are you kidding me? Real haxx0rs use cat and echo to code.
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@bstorer said:
@morbiuswilters said:
Damn it, a tank of gas and a day playing hookie wasted. >_<There's only one way to find out: we need to abduct someone and dismember the corpse and see if they post a new "unidentified body" link.
Waaaaay ahead of you.
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@Mole said:
I've never used solid American black walnut for prototypes, anyone else?
Um, no, but interestingly it looks like they were going for the rack-mount look. I wonder what style they favour for their racks - Shaker, Louis XIV? We need to know!
@Mole said:
Some lines are not commented at all
Yeah but be fair - many of the comments in the C example are all in caps to compensate.
Also, is Fortran always that fugly?
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@TGV said:
I think the best "representative lines" are these:@cconroy said:
Which, naturally, leads to the following in their sample C code:
#include "stdio.h" //standard I/O header
#include "string.h" //standard string header
#include "dos.h" //standard header for DOS stuff
#include "FARBA.H" //Farba Research standard headerThanks, guys!
Awesome. No <stdio.h>, why should you? C++ style comments, when the front page of your website says you don't use C++, because it is "too slow and fat". Commenting the obvious, such as
comlinptr++; //bump command-line pointer
k++; //bump the token pointer
tknchars++; //bump token's char-count
goto NXTCHAR; //go look for another charand using goto as an extra, because that's so much faster than a while loop. And they also declare (in the DOS C example where this was taken from) quite a few variables global without static, including variables status, j and k. That can give a nasty surprise...
No, I'm really going to recommend these people (probably just one person) to NASA for critical code.
... which to me translates as "I am going to piss your time and money up the wall while claiming an hourly rate by wanking around reinventing the wheel and refusing to use standard library routines because I think my way is always better".//function GETARGS.C -- gets command-line arguments (switches-first)
//written by E. Nicholas Cupery 27 MAR 95// This routine gets the raw command-line directly from the PSP, and decodes
// it into individual argument tokens. This is superior to the standard C
// "argc/argv[]" facility, for several reasons.ZZZZZ----- would not buy code from this seller again.
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This sounds a bit sinister to me:
http://www.farbaresearch.com/BHS61AF/Database.htm
!
;******************************************************************************
!********* F O U N D [we know where to find the following people] **********
;******************************************************************************
!...followed by lots of peoples' personal contact details. Do you think they checked the box?
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As they say, the website is optimized for speed. Can't argue with that (but please give it a try)
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I completely agree. As they say: "It does not contain any superfluous junk, such as gratuitous graphics".
Even the graphic for their links.html link on their homepage doesn't exist. And with no alt tag you don't even know it's there. But hey, it's optimised for speed!
Oh God, I just clicked that links link - my eyes will never recover!
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@renewest said:
As they say, the website is optimized for speed. Can't argue with that (but please give it a try)
Why would I want to argue with that? Whatever else I might think about their offerings, I have to respect the desire to use a company web site to present information about the company in a way that is fast, clear, and uncluttered. Call me a Luddite if you want, but I am sick and tired of going to FooCorp's website trying to get basic information about their product or company and having to wade through all sorts of crap to find it.
Too many companies think that I'm going to their site for *their* benefit; I'm not - I'm going there for *mine*.
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@Mole said:
Yes, that really is stainless steel and solid
American blackAfrican American walnut.".FTFY lest you incur the wrath of Kanye West.
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@bstorer said:
Is it sad that I didn't even flinch when I saw it? My tolerances are too high; I run across websites that look stuck in the 1920s all the time. For example, the West Virginia State Police.
...which apparently regards itself as a commercial entity, given its .com domain name.
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@upsidedowncreature said:
http://www.farbaresearch.com/BHS61AF/Database.htm
Heh, from the "Deceased" section:Ernest G. Pitzer -- Died 21Feb95 of heart failure in the hospital, the day after falling off the roof of the new house he was building. Needs amplification.
So, he was putting speakers on top of his house when the accident occurred?
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@cconroy said:
Ernest G. Pitzer -- Died 21Feb95 of heart failure in the hospital, the day after falling off the roof of the new house he was building. Needs amplification.
So, he was putting speakers on top of his house when the accident occurred?So I guess he accidentally off the roof.
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@dhromed said:
@cconroy said:
So I guess he accidentally off the roof.Ernest G. Pitzer -- Died 21Feb95 of heart failure in the hospital, the day after falling off the roof of the new house he was building. Needs amplification.
So, he was putting speakers on top of his house when the accident occurred?
Yeah, and then accidentally his heart. The whole thing!
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@derula said:
Yeah, and then accidentally his heart. The whole thing!
Until this bit, I was having visions of Rod Hull.
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@upsidedowncreature said:
This sounds a bit sinister to me:
http://www.farbaresearch.com/BHS61AF/Database.htm
!
;******************************************************************************
!********* F O U N D [we know where to find the following people] **********
;******************************************************************************
!...followed by lots of peoples' personal contact details. Do you think they checked the box?
Click that mailto link... What an odd way to deter spambots.
Also to be found on the "Contact" page... where they ask for someone to send an email if they see anything wrong with their web pages (emphasis theirs).
