Comment On Cognos Kōans

What. The. Fuck? That last one makes no sense at all, and made my brain hurt.

P.S. First!

... greater than 40 and less than 10 ...

I love it.

Yep, that is a real bad one. 0_o

what the hell...this crap sucks.

why do idiots leave stuff like this in the final product!?

True zen error messages

rank > 40 && rank < 10 ???

maybe this needs level in a different time dimension...

RobbieAreBest:

rank > 40 && rank < 10 ???
maybe this needs level in a different time dimension...

OK, so it's saying that you need a greater rank than 40 but not one as good as 10. How could this be explained? Maybe...maybe the ranking is like the rankings at the Olympics, you know, with 1st being the greatest and work your way down from there to 2nd (Silver) 3rd (Bronze) etc.? Best explanation I can think of.

The sad part is that Cognos Powerplay is being used by some people at the company I work for. I smell Oracle all over this too. The new young CEO of Oracle is buying up every little piece of crap software he can find and releasing it whether it works or not as "Oracle Applications".
It all smells of stinky tofu to me.

I was going to say "If the last one knows so much, why doesn't it just snap the value to the closest in-range value instead of compaining?"

Until I read the second comment.

Can someone elaborate, what does the software do? Something like a realistic example/query/thing.

cognos powerplay is a data cube visualization tool; similar to what microsoft analysis services does.

sadly, i've used it/striven with it before.

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I think I'm on the verge of attaining enlightenment. Thanks!

surely that last error is saying "these values need to be in increasing order. This value is out of order. The previous value is 40 and the next value is 10"

the values could be 40,5,10, or 40,45,10, or similar. Either way, it's pointing out some data corruption that involves more than one value. If it only involved one corrupt value it'd be a series like 40,10,50 or 40,60,50

It's a double power play ..

Frymaster:

surely that last error is saying "these values need to be in increasing order. This value is out of order. The previous value is 40 and the next value is 10"

the values could be 40,5,10, or 40,45,10, or similar. Either way, it's pointing out some data corruption that involves more than one value. If it only involved one corrupt value it'd be a series like 40,10,50 or 40,60,50

Ah, so we discover who the QA person was on this now. Rationalize all you want, MonkeyBoy, it still sucks.

Frymaster:

surely that last error is saying "these values need to be in increasing order. This value is out of order. The previous value is 40 and the next value is 10"

the values could be 40,5,10, or 40,45,10, or similar.

The error message actually says what they are: 40, 50, 10.

Either way, it's pointing out some data corruption that involves more than one value. If it only involved one corrupt value it'd be a series like 40,10,50 or 40,60,50

If you consider 40, 60, 50 to "involve one corrupt value", then 40, 50, 10 can be said to involve one corrupt value, too (the corrupt value being 10). In fact, all your examples can: in 40, 5, 10 the corrupt value is 40, and in 40, 45, 10 it's 10.

The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...

- What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
- Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

T $:

OK, so it's saying that you need a greater rank than 40 but not one as good as 10. How could this be explained? Maybe...maybe the ranking is like the rankings at the Olympics, you know, with 1st being the greatest and work your way down from there to 2nd (Silver) 3rd (Bronze) etc.? Best explanation I can think of.

After thinking about it, I'd have to agree with what you're saying--0 is likely the "highest" number. Strictly speaking, this isn't a WTF, since when one talks in term of priority, lower numbers take precendence over higher numbers.

That said, the error message itself is a classic, and it's a tough choice between laughter and tears.

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the second one is great.
something happened and

A: Everything went fine.
or
B: Someone got messed up so badly there is not error message for it.

Don't you just love confirmation?

Foobar:

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(TR0100) THIS COMMENT IS NEVER PRINTED.

Hmm, I just noticed I have an error message in my application that says "Something went horribly, horribly wrong."
I should probably take a look at that. Some other time.

Well THIS COMMENT IS PRINTED, so there!

Most programmers just don't understand Murphy's law.

Ranks are like shot gun gauges, lowers the numbers get bigger results.

iToad:

- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

Actually, I think this could be solved the way mathematicians "solved" the square root of a negative number on the 19th century: create a new number "i", say it's the answer, and keep working from there.

Hereby, then, I define 'b' (from "backwards") as the number that answer the question: What's the number that is greater than x and lower than x-1, where 'x' is any real number?

Thus, the "obvious" answer to your question, is the number of backward steps involved (greater than 40 and less than 39; greater than 39 and less than 38 ... greater than 11 and less than 10) expressed in our new unit: 30b.

Feel free to develop the algebraic and geometric properties of this new mathematical entity, and well as those of its derived complex counterpart. I really don't feel like doing it myself. ;)

PS: negative number are a also themselves an earlier application of this same technique. Let's call the result of zero minus one '-1' and proceed from there. It's pure craziness, sure, but it works.

iToad:

The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...

- What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
- Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

- A clapping sound.
- Which one?
- Easy:

function solveKoan()

{

  char x = 127;

  assert (x > 40); // first condition

  x++;

  assert (x < 10); // second condition

  cout << "Problem solved! I'm so brillant!" << endl;

}

The number greater than 40 and less than 10

int i = -1

unsigned int j = i;



i < 10 && j > 40

Neat! The font my system has can't render the ō properly in the title of my browser. (Now, if this were the forums posting instead of main page, I would know how to embed a picture... instead I have no idea how to do this in BBCode...)

iToad:

The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...

- What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
- Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

Well, I think they're equal. The 40 is base-4 and the 10 is hexadecimal. So, they are both 16 in decimal, right?

Quo Erat Deranged

template <typename T>

void solveKoan(T value)

{

   T x = numeric_limits<T>::max();

   assert(x     > 40);

   assert(x + 1 < 10 + 1);  // x + 1 > y + 1 for all x > y, right?

   cout << "Problem solved! I'm so brillant!" << endl;

}

Dude:

what the hell...this crap sucks.

why do idiots leave stuff like this in the final product!?

You'd have to ask Microsoft.

Everybody knows the real answers is NaN

Ceci n'est pas une erreur.

Perhaps Rene Magritte was involved?

@DivineGod -- Genius, pure genius. Nice one.

alexgieg:

iToad:

- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

Actually, I think this could be solved the way mathematicians "solved" the square root of a negative number on the 19th century: create a new number "i", say it's the answer, and keep working from there.

Hereby, then, I define 'b' (from "backwards") as the number that answer the question: What's the number that is greater than x and lower than x-1, where 'x' is any real number?

Thus, the "obvious" answer to your question, is the number of backward steps involved (greater than 40 and less than 39; greater than 39 and less than 38 ... greater than 11 and less than 10) expressed in our new unit: 30b.

Feel free to develop the algebraic and geometric properties of this new mathematical entity, and well as those of its derived complex counterpart. I really don't feel like doing it myself. ;)

PS: negative number are a also themselves an earlier application of this same technique. Let's call the result of zero minus one '-1' and proceed from there. It's pure craziness, sure, but it works.

And while you're at it, could you give me the smallest positive integer that is the sum of two consecutive positive integers, the sum of three consecutive positive integers, and the sum of four consecutive positive integers?

D. T. North:

Dude:

what the hell...this crap sucks.

why do idiots leave stuff like this in the final product!?

You'd have to ask Microsoft.

Wouldn't one do better to ask Cognos?

x < 10 and x > 40. All angles > 40 degrees and < 10 degrees.

Carnildo:

And while you're at it, could you give me the smallest positive integer that is the sum of two consecutive positive integers, the sum of three consecutive positive integers, and the sum of four consecutive positive integers?

Sounds a bit like the story of the mathematician Srinivasa Aiyangar Ramanujan who was visited in hospital by his friend G.H. Hardy, with whom he often discussed the properties of numbers. Hardy commented that the number of the taxi in which he had just arrived, 1729, was a very uninteresting number. Ramanujan snapped back that it was a very interesting number, because it was the smallest number that could be represented as the sum of two cubes in two ways.

Andrew:

iToad:

The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...

- What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
- Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

Well, I think they're equal. The 40 is base-4 and the 10 is hexadecimal. So, they are both 16 in decimal, right?

Quo Erat Deranged

Wouldn't 16 be 100 in base 4?

Powerplay Transformer Helpful Error!

(TR1984) Could not load Level in Time Dimension NaN, Optimus Prime wins!

nobody:

Andrew:

iToad:

The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...

- What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
- Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

Well, I think they're equal. The 40 is base-4 and the 10 is hexadecimal. So, they are both 16 in decimal, right?

Quo Erat Deranged

Wouldn't 16 be 100 in base 4?

We have another kōan:
What is the decimal value of the base 4 number 40?

Nonsense! The answer will and always have been *42*!

and yes, we both know that this answer will surface up here eventually

Sgt. Preston:

nobody:

Andrew:

iToad:

The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...

- What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
- Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

Well, I think they're equal. The 40 is base-4 and the 10 is hexadecimal. So, they are both 16 in decimal, right?

Quo Erat Deranged

Wouldn't 16 be 100 in base 4?

We have another kōan:
What is the decimal value of the base 4 number 40?

Protip: base 4 has four digits: 0 1 2 3. You do the math.

iToad:

The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...

- What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
- Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

Answers:

1. Mu.
b. Wu.
ii. FILE_NOT_FOUND

iToad:

- What is the sound of one hand clapping ?

this

The first one must have been a programmer assuming execution would never get to that point, so he put in a "Uncharted waters" message to kill the program. The second one: I haven't used this software, but maybe it tried to get an error message out of a resource (useful for automated localization, just tell it to use different resource files when the user changes the language) and some idiot deleted/corrupted a resource for the error message, making it fire a default error message saying the message is nonexistant.

The Real WTF(tm) is that they used the "Information" icon for a fatal error...

So it is a priority queue. So that 10 is at higher priority, so 40 is a priority less than 10. But that explanation spoils the beauty of the error message.

(Captcha: bathe ... what are you implying, and how did you know)

Why didn't they just stick to the guru meditation?