@dhromed said:
@nat42 said:
PRINT NOT(1)
-2
What happens with NOT(-2) ?
What a stupid question. If you didn't just post that to be a dick then you should drink a shit-tonne of coffee before being allowed near a keyboard again.
@dhromed said:
@nat42 said:
PRINT NOT(1)
-2
What happens with NOT(-2) ?
What a stupid question. If you didn't just post that to be a dick then you should drink a shit-tonne of coffee before being allowed near a keyboard again.
@beginner_ said:
Exactly and AFAIK this still is the case for VBA, speak MS Access. So the WTF is VB(A) and Access and not the developer.
Sorry, why do you think this a WTF? Did you read the posts above?
As far as I am aware, oldschool BASIC (from which VBA is obviously derived) never had true/false constants, nor boolean variables, and if you used AND, OR or NOT outside of a condition they behaved as bitwise operators; so it followed that if you wanted to pretend that AND, OR and NOT were logical operators then using -1 as true was the best/sanest choice a BASIC programmer had...
PRINT NOT(0)
-1
PRINT NOT(-1)
0
PRINT NOT(1)
-2
@blakeyrat said:
Well, Google might have weird errors, but at least it knows who Michael Dorn is!... oh.
What are you complaining about? That picture is clearly the deceased Michael Dorn, an actor from the German soap "Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten".
@blakeyrat said:
This thread on StraightDope.Grumble, grumble. It's like a thread full of Cassidys. (Thought thankfully, no Bridget99s.)
Is the WTF the conclusion of the Coding Horror article (as was referenced in the first Straight Dope post) ie. that programming concepts as simple what a variable is and assignment are "literally unteachable to a sizable subset of incoming computer science students" ? (based on an "acedemic paper" that "reads like a blog entry" and suggests that half a class failing a very basic test on variables and assignment 3 weeks into an introduction to programming course is due to the half of the class that failed being "unteachable").
Hmm could the issue be explained by:
Except, as a concept it's hardly a challenge...
A waitress asks what you and your friend will be drinking, you order a beer and your friend orders a double scotch on the rocks, you think "that sounds good" and tell the waitress to change your order to "what he's having".
Am I to believe that half of all computer science students couldn't figure out what two drinks should be sent to the table in problem above (I think it is conceptually similar to the example 3 line problem given)?
Can I suggest a compromise:
Private Shared Function IsQuarter(ByVal month As Integer) As Boolean If month<1 Or month>12 Trace.Write "I KNOW I only get a value 1 -> 12. Visual Basic is BASIC. So is the IQ of the developers that use it most of the time." Trace.Write "In other news, apparent the sky should be falling as IsQuarter function was called with in invalid input, which is umpossible." Return False End If Return (month Mod 3 = 0) End Function
Are we all happy now?
Um 'Beyond Ben', the second result from Google is the one you want anyway. It explains the issue and why it occurs (apparently the 'MacOS version is a "Preview" version')
At least if you are only going to click the first Google result (and not utilise the 'cache' version of a page*) you should use the "I'm feeling lucky" option...
* seriously is their anywhere Googlebot can't go? Need a login for help? Not Googlebot. Chicka got a boyfriend? Not for Googlebot...
AMMENDMENT: Apparently the issue was fixed before you encountered it, so obviously Adobe just hates you.
@TarquinWJ said:
@scgtrp said:version 4 or higherWell, they couldn't tell you to use anything higher, since IE 8 still claims to be using version 4 of Netscape 4's Mozilla engine:
Mozilla/4.0 ([snip])Firefox 3.6, Safari 4 and Chrome 5 all claim to be version 5:
Mozilla/5.0 ([snip])For similar reasons Opera 10.50 claims to be version 9.80:
Opera/9.80 ([snip])Remember that the important version number you're supposed to quote to user is the one the browser sends as a User-Agent header, not the one that the user can see in the "about" dialog. The more you can confuse users by telling them meaningless numbers, the more exciting life will be.
What a comphrensive explanation has been writ here. I had a vague enough understanding of this that I might have turned an unhelpful quip had this not been penned; but this is a most pleasant and refreshing find on a sidebar article. If 'twas in my power to bestow the honour of plus one Internet points for the raising of the tone of this forum then you good TarquinWJ would certainly be considered.
Please do forgive my nitpickery for I can not help but want to elaborate upon your explanation because it seems inevitable (otherwise) that we shall see remarks from those who will not recognise this as a term from a bygone era. For it was during the great browser wars of century last that this relic did come to be accepted into the parlance of the day.
What may be considered as excuse for the preservation of this term in the context quoted though is that the content is contained solely within markup that should prevent a casual (or n00b-prone) observer from discovering it and becoming concerned. It is well worth considering that within the population of such users, such a vast majority will be using browsers with frames supported and enabled, that it really is unsurprising that the fallback message could reconsidered.
If this is the most notable and glaring flaw of the routing device, then it would please me to discover its identity.
@metallurg said:
Wow; that is insecure. Our payslips are emails with attached zipped PDF files, encrypted with a randow password for strength! [All passwords are allocated by payroll and can not be changed; they consist of two [2] numeric digits. I estimate that with that level of security one would need at least a 1 minute with a 386-based PC to brute force the files; clearly we have the superior system!!]I should mention that the password for the payslips is really hard to work out - it's the persons surname, followed by their start date.
@El Disposo said:
@shepd said:@El Disposo said:
If you do that, we can very easily take you to court for theftYou can take someone to court for just about anything very easily, the question is if you will win. I think a good lawyer could easily prove your changing the price was an offer, and their server permitting you to buy the product at that price was acceptance.
Nope, there was a case of this sort already, so there's precedent. Doing that would fall under the terms of the DMCA and you would lose. (Circumventing copy protection, no matter how trivial it may be, is illegal.)
It's approximately equivalent to noticing that your neighbor's front door is only locked shut by a hook over a nail inside, and pushing hard enough on the door that the nail is pulled out of the wood. It doesn't matter how crappy the lock is: if you had to break it to get in, you're guilty of breaking and entering.
Ah, I see what you are doing there - do please return my arguments when you are done with them, sir!
@DaveK said:
... actually a warm living feeling fleshy human being rather than a cold inanimate unaware lump of metal, on the grounds that said human is now dead, then OP should have posted a photograph of a small pile of corroded rust instead of a supposedly sexy robot in the first place, or it's not a fair comparison at all!
You're very modest.... to make that claim implies you've resolved the problems of strong AI, consciousness and free will just in passing in order to be able to say that the bot even has a will to not be willing with! A Nobel winrar is you!
@DaveK said:
@DescentJS said:
Dude... don't go there. Seriously. She has ... gears ... down there.@DaveK said:
@benryves said:
I like John Spectacle's response. :-)The reply to JS's response is even better:@prof3ssor said:
My offspring are bots and they will be brought up in binary, learningYeah.... right. Because no human woman is ever going to want to reproduce with you, ya damn kook!
to program using vacuum tubes, watching movies in 1s and 0s and produce
offspring whose Intelligence Quotiant is exponentially greater than
their own.
Depends on what sort of bots:
Anyway, I think that rather proves my point. Anyone who prefers the above to the below:
is doing it wrong.
Actually neither of them do that much for me, and neither are living [according to good ol' Wikipedia Brigitte died June 11, 1996 (aged 88)]. At least the droid might be salvageable for scrap [or eBay] ...
Sir, I call shenanigans on your doing it wrong and say that the bot wouldn't do it with him willing either!
Where's the WTF? It all seems fairly reasonable to me; I assume they don't want people high-kicking the vertical mounted flushing buttons... I really would like to think TRWTF (R) is that people really need reminding of basic hygiene and manners, but given some of the restrooms I have visited I can't blame them for spelling out such terms (some of the nightclubs I have been to required one to choose between actual wading or Mission-Impossible-style gymnastics in order to access the "facilities").
OK, I've a minor WTF from the intrawebz to share.
This site [ http://www.drinkiq.com/ ] which some liquor mogal knocked up to show how responsible they really are forces you to select your country and then directs you to the relevant content for your country. Not all the countries in the list have site, and in fact quite alot of the countries sites result in a 404: Page Not Found (eg. Belarus, and Great Britain). If you do select a country that is supported, then most of the text is regionalised, however the large Flash clip featuerd on the page features just cycles through the same 5 common laguages regardless of your selection - English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese (unsure which, sorry).
It's all rather silly if you ask me (and I realise, that you didn't).
@Nelle said:
When you want to make sure a column in the db is really, really, really unique:Yea, I want unique dB to un-ique - plz send me teh Coeds!!
EDIT: Hard day; Had beer.
FYI - Really, really, really unique is the least of your problems: One of the applications I support (1st / 2nd level only - thank Christ) has non-unique primary keys; this has yet to cause problems (?) but it makes me feel all dirty just knowing about it. Then in a web app I support, I'm being asked to reuse the same values to authenticate 2 different accounts knowing it'll cause hell (apparently of my colleagues take the adage "the customer is always right" literally)
@tdb said:
@Carnildo said:NB: There is a space between PASCAL and the "(" for a reason, "my_boolean" is not an argument for the macro!@morbiuswilters said:Why have the PASCAL macro take the return type as an argument though? Why not just my_boolean PASCAL func(...)?far pointers? weeps
And what is this "PASCAL (my_boolean)" nonsense?
Platform independance. In theory, FAR will be #defined as "__far" when compiling for Win16 (we haven't targeted that platform for a decade) and PASCAL(my_boolean) is a macro that expands to "my_boolean pascal" or "my_boolean __pascal" on platforms that support it, while expanding to "my_boolean" on everything else. In practice, it's just a pain in the ass: the PASCAL macro breaks Xcode's code-navigation, while FAR is just so much noise.
@Carnildo said:
...and PASCAL(my_boolean) is a macro that expands to "my_boolean pascal" or "my_boolean __pascal" on platforms that support it, while expanding to "my_boolean" on everything else.
I'm pretty sure that "PASCAL" works just like "WINAPI" when used with the appropriate Microsoft Windows headers (ie. it means __stdcall for Win32), I even recall seeing PASCAL in some of the sample MSDN code from around 2000-2002.
@Lingerance said:
True. However, it'd also make sense to A) deny the request instead of disabling the accounts...
Security-wise, if you know for certain that the account should not be used for 9 months then disabling the account seems like the right thing to do; and if the user has confirmed this to be the case then, for 9 months at least, disabling the account should not affect the user.
Provided the colleague then set a reminder to re-enable the account in 9 months time, setting the ticket to resolved seems more than reasonable to me (leaving the ticket open could mess up SLAs, etc)
The only apparent WTF would be taking the user's request at face value; and actually pertained to the changing function of the "automatic account-hasn't-been-touched-so-I'll-disable-the-account-bot" - the user apparently confirmed just wanting to be able to log into the system in several months time without having to log another ticket to have their account re-enabled. I've done enough support to know that for most users you should focus giving them what they ultimately want, rather then trying to implement their requests as per theirs guesses at how it the system may support them.
@Vechni said:
Don't mid me, just leveling up my thread necromancer.
Gah! Tricked the zombie thread I was.
@PSWorx said:
Ok, I can imagine that the print screen function may seem arcane and counterintuitive for some computer newbies. But, I mean, they at least have to know copy/paste, do they? I mean, come on...
The situation: The user has encounter some error message and become to flustered to read the text aloud, describe the situation that led to the error, or even name the program they need help with, is only babbling unhelpfully...
User: It says error-something... auto-whose-it failed, help! I need this to work now and it's not working... [and repeats this in several variations for about 3 minutes without pausing to take a breath]
Me: OK, I think I "understand" [I say lying to be reassuring] but can you email me a print-screen of the error message; do you know how to do that?
User: Yes; but our "print-screen" expert told me it's busted on my computer.
Me: [mouths: WTF?!] Hmmm, could we try it anyway, maybe we will be lucky and it will work today? Can you press the key labelled "Print Screen" or "P-R-N-T S-C-R-N" on your keyboard, it's usually above the numeric keybad on the righ hand side.
User: I did push it, but like our expert said it's broken. There is nothing printing out at all.
Me: Ummm, that's all right. Could you open Microsoft Word for me?
User: Alright
Me: Now, go to edit and choose "Paste". Is that the screen showing the error.
User: Umm, yes. How did it do that?
Me: That's ok, you'll have to tell the "expert" that it is working after-all. That is actually how it is supposed to work. Can you save that Word document to your desktop and send it to me... Thanks.
Sorry but where is the WTF here?
SelectObject is part of the Win32 API http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd162957(VS.85).aspx - as such, you would expect it to be used by a non-portable Win32 library responsible for drawing pretty-much anything to the Windows GUI [well, using the GDI atleast]
Unless this is one of the library's exports, I can't see anything that surprising here except that the Mac port could get away with keeping this function while crippling it so horribly. I think TDB is right, just use Winelib...
@mucki_at said:
I stumbled accross thisintereseting approach to webdesign: http://www.acdc.at (not related to the band).
The big red warning essentially says: "Dear Visitor, we would like to play the title music ofGodfather here to improve the overall effect, but that would cost us EUR 150,-.We understand that artists have the right to earn money for their works, but we cannot force our customers to pay such high prices for a little music. Therefore we now have a young artist to compose the background music for our and all our customers pages."
If you click on "Leistungen" and then on "und so funktoinierts", you even get a friendly computer voice telling you that "We will make you an offer you cannot refuse" (in german).
From what I can tell, this is not ajoke, or a student project, but a serious company. At least they list a valid austrian tax id number on their contact page.
Wow, Just freakin' Wow...
You ever take a dump and look down and the thing's so massive it fills the entire bowl, and you feel a small sense of something almost akin to pride - only it isn't pride ('cos it's about friggin a dinosaur shit - and you know that'd have to be some kinda faux-pride you'd have there - 'cos it's shit)
...oh just me? We'll I image that's how I imagine the team over at ACDC: The Godfather of Webdesign must feel about their site.
It's Shittiness, but in a way that is _almost_ made from awesome, but you know it isn't.
They just crapped a dino-turd onto the internet.
@SlyEcho said:
You obviously knew what was going on, so why didn't you reconnect the cable yourself?...
Because not being licensed, it wasn't worth the trouble. With multiple pending jobs (ie. my forementioned neighbour's reconnect and another unrelated one aswell) at the box I'd have a reasonable chance of being caught out, even if I was just fixing some of the mess.
@SlyEcho said:
And what does correlation or causation have to do with any of this?
Imagine you've a program, you change some code and it stops working. I assume you'd doublecheck the code you changed before checking anywhere else. Even if your changes didn't cause the issue, in someway it seems it must relate to it.
The phone company failed to consider a correlation between a disconnect for one tennant in a building and another complaining that their line had been disconnected that day. The phone company insisted on multiple field visits to rule out every other possible cause first. XKCD is right: "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'. " That's today's lesson, and it applies to most things that you may do, not just or least coding and IT stuff. (I'm sorry, I had hoped not to rub anybody's nose in it)
I love this site - it keeps me at least a little bit sane. I work in 1st level support, and I suspect (or perhaps hope) that this exposes me to a much larger number of WTFs than most of you whom are lucky enough to have developer positions.
But for my first Side Bar WTF submission I thought that I'd post a recent issue I had with my telephone line (never mind that it is a company I used to work for, posting as a customer means I won't have the same issues with anonymisation I may face with any later posts).
Correlation doesn't imply causation
The current XKCD** reminds us that: "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'. "
I get home one night to find my phone line completely "dead" - not dead as maybe misused to mean silent or not working, but dead as in no connection to a POTS port at the exchange, nor a connection to the DSLAM for my DSL modem. Pissed at the situation I take a stroll to see if I can suss out the issue.
There is no obvious sign of work nor a fault anywhere along the path the line (ULL) takes to the exchange, nor at the exchange itself, but at the MDF in my building I find some clues. In addition to terminals still glistening from the fresh removal of soldered wires, and the few strands of wires which litter the floor below the box, there is a note on a card.
The note says that a telephone technician named "Gavin" (from my phone company) came to remove a neighbour's connection from the MDF earlier that day, so that it could later be reconnected by their new "naked"-DSL provider (I think this is a WTF in itself - 2 technicians having to make 2 separate onsite visits to make a single minor change to the wiring of the twisted pair in the box).
It is quite obvious to me at least, that despite the spaghetti cabling and the company's badly kept log book*, that they disconnected the wrong pair from inside the box.
It takes a few calls to report the fault. The first stage in the process is denial. "There is no fault", I am told. Apparently the automated test from the exchange card says that it (the card) is functioning perfectly.
Then there is anger. The next rep I call and speak with sees that I have already called, and decides that it is late enough that their supervisor has left and I can cop some verbal abuse - after all the automated testing has already been run and it says that I must be lying.
Luckily, by the third rep we skip to the acceptance stage, and I get to report my fault, or at least I get to report a fault. My request to add a note to the case, "Customer requests technician check MDF" is met skepticism. I patiently explain the issue in laypersons terms (as is a big part of my job in support remember), as the rep doesn't seem to know anything other then the checklist she has been given. Somewhat surprisingly the rep is happy to be enlightened, and agrees to add my observations on the issue to the case's notes, though as she insisted on writing it based on her new found understanding of the version she wrote was likely unintelligible.
Technicians come and they go, they check the line and the exchange and after finding no fault they suggest the fault must be inside the premises. In the visits made, none have checked the MDF. They remind me of their costs for pointing out problems in my premises or with my equipment, and insist that I stay home from work for their next visit as they will need to check the points inside my home.
I get the necessary 1/2 day off work, and let the technician do his job. I let him rule out a basic issue within the premises and politely ask him to check that I am connected to the MDF. It doesn't take long for him to confirm that I was disconnected by his colleague and he reconnects me. He doesn't do a good job of it though and as a result my DSL has been 3/4 of the speed and my phone line static-y ever since. Yet I daren't report it, as I am sure it could all end worse (given the same bunch of line techs and reps) the next time around...
* The log book, which has been well preserved from the 70s inside the box's door, contained no updates from the last few decades and listed a floor & premises which clearly could never have been part of the building it was apparently for.
** Oh, and before some of you complain about the inclusion of the XKCD comic, be nice, the comic reminded me to post this and thus I felt it warranted inclusion. I like XKCD, and if you don't then just don't read it (it's not like MFD - you don't have to read it just incase it gets better or features an Irish Girl reference)
OK, forgive the ignorance, but what language is this?
@Chuck Mango said:
if s.length==5 || s.length==6 || s.length==7 || s.length==8 || s.length==9 || s.length==10 || [...etc...] || s.length==24 || s.length==25 then
I'm not up with developments in VB / VB .net, but is that what this is - and if so, when did it get a || operator - which seems to function c style no less?!!
This reminds me however: I wish I could post the awesome hilarity that is one of my company's few surviving Excel/VBA, but its devs would kill me (I'm just the poor support tech) - I thought that I didn't know VB until I saw its code and it became clear I could know far less, it's filled with a kind of paranoid ignorance of the basics of the language and Excel that's timeless. I hope I can divolge this much: the original programmer was obsessed with ensuring that things would die - from removing a toolbar 3-4 times in different functions which only call each other (comments like "just to be sure..."), to religiously setting local variables to vbNull just before they went out of scope (and not before this)
@dtech said:
@Wolftaur said:It also shouldn't tell you to disconnect from the internet -- after all, that would kill your porn gigatorrent downloads. (The net, just for downloading software kits and patches? HA!)you can disconnect from the internet. It's for all of those poor dail-up developers out there (<0.1% m'thinks)
NB: it still says the part about disconnecting even if you were not
connected to the internet for the entire installation (having downloaded
everything in advance)
That's not a licence agreement, this is a license agreement -
"H. a.You assign to us all your rights, and you will procure that persons permitted by you to access your game server assign to us all their rights..."
Hmm, ensure numlock state set to "on" from bootup in BIOS config, remove offending numlock key with screwdriver from back pocket, knockup a program to poll the numlock status and force it to on(just in case), appologise to the user explaining the oversight that the numlock key had not been removed earlier -- umm, then again, maybe I've been doing 1st level support too long...