I'm going to agree with viraptor here. If you want a data set that doesn't change, but you don't care what the numbers are, hire a monkey to hit some keys. Relying on the side effects of Random Number Generators (RNG) is equivalent to relying on a bug. A RNG is not designed to give you a sequence of numbers that will be the same across runs. The fact that you can make it do that is a side effect. Think of it as using a screwdriver to carve wood. You can certainly do it, but since the screwdriver was not designed to carve wood, you will never make anything worth my money. And if someone swaps your flat head for a phillips, things get worse. What happens if someone puts in a different RNG that has a different sequence from the same seed? Things become inconsistent and you'll have a horrible time debugging it. What happens if someone puts in a new RNG that doesn't have that side effect (like a RNG that determines the next value by heat on the processor, the phase of the moon, and the direction of the wind)? Bottom line: This is definitely a WTF.
Posts made by Cotillion
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RE: "How do I make Random the same number each time?"
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RE: Yeah, that explains everything!
[quote user="huh"]
because no one ever reads the documentation anyway.
[/quote]
Yeah, obviously no one who reads thedailyWTF would try to read documentation. I mean, all code is self explanatory, isn't it?
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RE: Odd Google search result
That's some major point for having "php?header" in the URL.
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RE: Banking WTF
[quote user="HeroreV"]The real WTF is checks. Stupid archaic little buggers. I worked at a bank for over a year and a half inputing the numbers on those horrid things. Do you know what it's like to sit still, inputing numbers hour after hour after hour? I hate checks.
[/quote]I sense some animosity.
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RE: Really expensive user training....
Unless you have separate systems/ports for debits and credits and only the debits part was pointed at a live system. Then you would be able to debit a real account and credit a fake one, effectively losing the money. I know it's a streach, but I have to keep up my hopes that they will hook it up the other way and use my account (debit from a fake system and credit my real account).
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RE: Brillant COWorker WTF
So is it just a technological "Who's on first?"
And I thought that the layers of a 2-tier system would be database/presentation, not client/server. (3-tier usually being database/business/presentation) What is a good definition of tiers?
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RE: Wtf in development. very unorthodox use of sql server
It all comes down to goals. If their goal is to get rid of dlls, aspx files, and vb files then they are doing that. If their goal is to make a good product then they need to think about what happens when that product gets popular. While their approach does technically work (as far as I understand), it doesn't scale well. If they worry about using all versions of VS then tell them to stick to one. You just have to get them to define a goal, make sure they want that goal, and then help them understand how best to acheive that goal. If that goal involves getting rid of files, then start looking at another job because that one won't last long. I'm not aware of any companies that made it big by getting rid of a few files.
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RE: Cable company wtf
They're trying to capture the market surplus. Basically, offer different rates for the same thing. Only a few people will search hard enough to find the best deal (which they still make money on). Everyone else will pay more for the same service and the cable company keeps the extra profits. They're just trying to be a little more subtle than used car salesmen and the major airlines.
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RE: Dear Google, fix this bug.
[quote user="NetersLandreau"]
slashdot reported yesterday: "A moderator at a Keyhole forum IDs the bug as a thrip, about 1mm long, squished under a glass plate during scanning."
Didn't mean to ruin the fun :(
[/quote]
So does that mean that google took satellite images that are digitally transmitted to earth, printed them out, put them on a table, and took a picture?
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RE: Windows NTFS and undeletable files
I've seen two files that were hard to delete. One was a file in the Recycling bin. The file wouldn't show up in the GUI (even with show hidden, etc checked) but when you tried to empty the recycling bin it would tell you it couldn't delete the file. I was able to delete it from the command promt. The other I could not delete from the command prompt. But I could rename the file and then delete the renamed file. Go figure.
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RE: Top notch code
[quote user="Astaedus"][quote user="nbit"]
I would have created the states list like this:
CreateState("AlasKa");
CreateState("ALabama");
CreateState("ARkansas");
CreateState("AriZona");
That way I don't even have to enter the abreviations as a seperate string.
[/quote]
You'd score a 3 here
[/quote]
ROFL! You would score a 2 for using that article.
I think that part of the score you get on top coder has to do with speed. If so, the coder here might have used a code generation utility to write out the code rather than thinking about the most effective/shortest way to write it.
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RE: It doesn't work without a space
I thought that too but it doesn't solve it. If the utility is at C:\SVN Dev\Executable.exe then the error says that it can't find "C:\SVN" (without quotes). If I include quotes then it says it can't find "C:\SVN Dev\Executable.exe" (including quotes). It looks like it includes the quotes (if you use them) as part of the path.
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It doesn't work without a space
At work we use a certain install authoring tool. It has a way to let you run an arbitrary utility before the main installation (we use it to check extra system requirements). After a nice back and forth about some problems it turns out that if the path to the utility on the build server has a space in it then the name of the variable (in the tool's proprietary scripting language) must also have a space. And if the path does not have a space then the variable must not have a space either. The explaination is that if the variable's name does not have a space then it stores it one way, and if it has a space then it stores it another way. Can someone explain that? I thought a string was a string.
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RE: Dont borrow AOL's strategy
[quote user="byte_lancer"]"broadband" [This is in quotes for a reason not yet disclosed] service.[/quote]
Why is broadband in quotes? Broadband means that it uses more than one frequency to communicate. If I'm right that your fibre optic line is not extremely expensive then it is likely baseband -- uses one frequency to communicate. Internet over co-axial cable is broadband. So is DSL. Did I just figure out the "reason not yet disclosed"?
Yes, I know I'm a nerd and one of the only people who uses the term broadband in its true sense. The term is abused everywhere and has nothing to do with speed. Telephone modems are technically broadband but a marketer would never tell you that (he likely wouldn't know either).
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RE: I am the el33t hax0r
[quote user="The MAZZTer"]Whenever you know more on the class subject than your teacher, particularly when the subject is computers and the story is being told on thedailywtf.com, it spells trouble.[/quote]
Back in 1998 I took an entry level college class on Java, from a business teacher. I know what you mean. I slept through all my classes and still got the highest grade. The teacher was using a better teacher's homework standards even though he couldn't teach like the better teacher. The class average was about 50%. -
RE: No Internet for you!
I work for an oil services company. We got bought by a bigger company that had no software programmers before. It took us 6 months to get the IT department to stop blocking "Computer/Information Technology" sites.
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RE: Website Log-in* WTF
Not to be rude but you need to include some articles ('the', 'a', 'some') in your post. Example: "I've coded the entire page". And the asterisks are a little distracting.
So I'll agree with rmr: What? -
RE: This wtf is a classic
More questions/WTFs:
3) Why does it take 3 hours to reboot the system when it fails? Do they have 3 hours of downtime every month for scheduled reboots?
4) This problem must have been first noticed in 2001 (when they implemented the reboot routeen). Why does it take 5 years to get a patch? -
RE: C# marshal-by-reference
Makes sense to me. If frmEntry inherits from MarshalByRefObject then .NET considers it to be capable of being a proxy. Therefore, you can't pass a field of it because you might be crossing process boundaries (which would break things). So you have to extract the value from its object. Assigning the value to a local variable makes a copy on the stack that you can use. Casting the decimal to a double would create a copy on the stack and then you can use that copy.
For C++ people: Think about passing a pointer to a variable to another machine or another process on the same machine. The pointer would mean nothing. C# recognizes that you might be doing that and tells you no. So you have to pass by value, not by reference. It's just a rare side effect of trying to hide pointers from you. -
RE: COWorker naming conventions
My favorite variable name is "jimmy". It gives the value such personality.
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RE: "Technical" Project Managers
@xrT said:
@Some Idiot said:
@xrT said:
@Will said:
@kuroshin said:
@kolbe said:
PM: How big is the file?
Me: Oh, pretty small -- probably only around 50k or so.
PM: Is it small enough so that I can write it down in my notepad?
Smarter people take printouts; but even that qualifies as a WTF.
No no no no, smarterer people print it out, place it on a wooden table, take a picture...
<font face="Tahoma">And fax it out folded...
</font>Compression. the polite way to send files.
Fold it over 9 times and it should fit into 100 bytes....
<font face="Tahoma">Yay! I've learned something new again... thanks!
On a side note: I know most people are having a hard time folding a paper equally the 7th or 8th time... so, nice job folding it 9 times!
</font>
That's why they're managers.
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RE: Not entertained
@tster said:
the story itself has some potential. your problem is in the telling. This story is more of a 1-2 minute story. most of the stuff in it is not anything we need or care to know. In the future just work on trying to compress your stories and leave out unneeded details and I'm sure we'll all enjoy them.
I agree. There are some odd things to your story and you could present it well, but you have to remember that "brevity is the soul of wit." Your second post was better.
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RE: MSDN... WTF?
@RayS said:
The naming convention is a little bit odd. They say themselves that .NET 3 is .NET 2 with extra stuff added.
"The .NET Framework 3.0 shares many components with .NET Framework 2.0,
and the common language runtime (CLR) and base class libraries are the
same as those in .NET Framework 2.0. Therefore, these shared components
stay at version 2.0."
.NET 2 SE or .NET 2.5 might have been a better name.
Maybe the next version (that would rightly involve a major version number increase) will skip one. So WinFX become 3.0 and what should have been 3.0 will be 5.0.
First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to
three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count,
and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not
count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to
three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third
number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch
towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
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RE: The WTF security module
Am I lost or was updateString used before it was declared? If I'm not lost, how did that compile?