Comment On Divisive Placeholder

"I spotted this poll in the September 30th edition of the The Herald Sun," writes Geoff, "while I'm strongly in support of 'here here here question here here here', it is clearly a hotly contended topic." [expand full text]
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Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:07 • by Tachikoma (unregistered)
The Herald Sun: Waste of paper.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:09 • by Alias Undecover (unregistered)
Exactly 100 votes, perfectly fifty-fifty distributed? How likely is that? Hear, hear, hear!

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:10 • by Alice (unregistered)
Apparently the json2.js was added in deliberately to prevent people from hotlinking to the file on the json servers.

See: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/json/message/1413

They just didn't want people embedding json2.js rather than using their own file system.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:10 • by Ocson (unregistered)
Isn't it obvious? If you give them 39 cents, you have the honor of being sold the item for free!

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:11 • by Buddy (unregistered)
I think that's the best looking handler for divide by zero I've ever seen. Kudos to the developer.

I'd like to create a number class combining complex numbers and standard deviations, but still deciding whether to normalize as (X±x)+i(Y±y) or as (X+iY)±(x+iy).

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:15 • by Rodnas (unregistered)
296030 in reply to 296029
Buddy:
I think that's the best looking handler for divide by zero I've ever seen. Kudos to the developer.

I'd like to create a number class combining complex numbers and standard deviations, but still deciding whether to normalize as (X±x)+i(Y±y) or as (X+iY)±(x+iy).


I think you should get laid by a sexy blond chick. You might get that "geek" thing f&*#ed out of you. :)

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:15 • by Junkie
Sorry hunny, but I didn't get the shot of you giving birth - I was taking a picture for TDWTF.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:18 • by valerion
So, your wife's giving birth and all you can think about is "ooh, that'll make a great picture on TDWTF or Failblog!"

+100 internets.

-1000000 parenting points.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:20 • by PeriSoft
296033 in reply to 296031
Junkie:
Sorry hunny, but I didn't get the shot of you giving birth - I was taking a picture for TDWTF.


My wife would have murdered me if I'd taken a picture of her while she was giving birth. And, for that matter, WHY? Good lord, what a horrific experience. Up until the moment my son appeared, it was just about the worst thing imaginable barring an actual emergency. It's like - Hey, honey! I got this great picture of you being hit by a car and dragged half a mile!

Ugh.

The bit right after the giving birth was truly awesome, but the 20 hours before it? Not so much.

And given the stress I was under, if I'd seen that heart rate thing, the first hospital tech I could get my hands on might have gotten thrown out the window into the lake.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:22 • by dpm
TRWTF is that the people of Spring Lake, Michigan could not think of a better nickname for their high school team than "Lakers". Seriously, the Spring Lake Lakers?? That's the best you could do?

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:28 • by hytrjfgiyur (unregistered)
296036 in reply to 296033
Where are free software fans and RMS's followers who think that code is more matter than human life?

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:33 • by TarquinWJ
Saul, "maybe" you might want to look into the field of browsers - yours appears to be about 8 years old...

Unrelated, but can you use 1.7 CPUs for WCS? Can't see any other reason for it to need to give a figure to 1 decimal place.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:36 • by OutThere (unregistered)
IMPORTANT: Remove this line from comment before posting.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:38 • by RogerC
I'm guessing Rob T lives above the Large Hadron Collider.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:41 • by frits
Funny how the pot one has a picture of a guy smoking a pipe directly beneath the marquee.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:48 • by Brazen (unregistered)
Man VMWare's ESX server error messages are the worst. I've banged my head against that same useless error before, which I think ended up being unable to access the license server or something mundane like that, which would have been an easy fix with a proper error message.

Several of their errors are like that. In fact probably all of them are. The error messages give no help whatsoever and usually lead you to look in the wrong place for the problem.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:49 • by nB (unregistered)
296044 in reply to 296027
Alice:
Apparently the json2.js was added in deliberately to prevent people from hotlinking to the file on the json servers.

See: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/json/message/1413

They just didn't want people embedding json2.js rather than using their own file system.

Before I even read that link I was wondering how dumb one had to be to load scripts from another site...

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:49 • by Anon (unregistered)
296045 in reply to 296035
dpm:
TRWTF is that the people of Spring Lake, Michigan could not think of a better nickname for their high school team than "Lakers". Seriously, the Spring Lake Lakers?? That's the best you could do?


It was between "Lakers", "Douche bags" or "Shit Sandwiches"

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 09:58 • by John H (unregistered)
I like "Continue installation anyways?"

How long til one of these has an "anyhoo"?

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 10:01 • by Synchronos (unregistered)
The United States have [sic] 53 states: Alabama, Alaska, ... , Wisconsin, Wyoming, True, False, FILE_NOT_FOUND. Certainly "Off" is not among them.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 10:05 • by dgvid
296048 in reply to 296046
John H:
I like "Continue installation anyways?"

How long til one of these has an "anyhoo"?


Risky, though. That could lead to "A, whatchacallit, error has occurred and whatnot."

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 10:20 • by @Deprecated (unregistered)
296050 in reply to 296048
dgvid:
John H:
I like "Continue installation anyways?"

How long til one of these has an "anyhoo"?


Risky, though. That could lead to "A, whatchacallit, error has occurred and whatnot."


This is awesome. My next product is going to use these, thanks! I can't wait to see what they look like translated.

"This software package needs to have one or more thingies, but you only have minus one thingies. Your program may end up running backwards. Would you like to continue anyhoo?"

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 10:22 • by operagost
296051 in reply to 296035
dpm:
TRWTF is that the people of Spring Lake, Michigan could not think of a better nickname for their high school team than "Lakers". Seriously, the Spring Lake Lakers?? That's the best you could do?

They'd already tried the "Springers", but a bunch of off-duty cops showed up and pinned the school board members to the floor.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 10:34 • by FIA (unregistered)
"I noticed this password expiration warning on the machine that goes PING while my wife was giving birth," Abe writes."


There, FTFY.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 10:53 • by toth
I pity the poor sucker who runs on 0.6 CPUs.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:10 • by Dignissim (unregistered)
296055 in reply to 296044
nB:
Before I even read that link I was wondering how dumb one had to be to load scripts from another site...


Well, for one, google wants you to do it.
http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:14 • by SuperJames (unregistered)
TRWTF is that the "json2.js" file is being hot-hosted by www.json.org!

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:23 • by Bob (unregistered)
Tim Morrison suffers from the classic geek, "That's a bit strange, but there's no possible way it could be done for a good reason because I know that everyone else on the planet is an idiot!"

http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/12/10/crockford-alert/

See it all the time in geek circles:
"Why did you remove that?"
"I didn't understand it, so I rewrote it."

How the fuck can you rewrite something you don't understand?

Anyway, rant over.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:25 • by Charles400 (unregistered)
296058 in reply to 296035
dpm:
TRWTF is that the people of Spring Lake, Michigan could not think of a better nickname for their high school team than "Lakers". Seriously, the Spring Lake Lakers?? That's the best you could do?


They used to be the "Springers", but they kept throwing chairs and getting into fights whenever the camera panned their way.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:32 • by Math Pedant (unregistered)
296059 in reply to 296029
Buddy:
...
I'd like to create a number class combining complex numbers and standard deviations, but still deciding whether to normalize as (X±x)+i(Y±y) or as (X+iY)±(x+iy).


Just wanted to say that neither one of those is a standard deviation, it is an error or tolerance measurement.

(But I like the second form better FWIW)

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:36 • by shadowman
296060 in reply to 296033
PeriSoft:
Junkie:
Sorry hunny, but I didn't get the shot of you giving birth - I was taking a picture for TDWTF.


My wife would have murdered me if I'd taken a picture of her while she was giving birth. And, for that matter, WHY? Good lord, what a horrific experience. Up until the moment my son appeared, it was just about the worst thing imaginable barring an actual emergency. It's like - Hey, honey! I got this great picture of you being hit by a car and dragged half a mile!

Ugh.

The bit right after the giving birth was truly awesome, but the 20 hours before it? Not so much.

And given the stress I was under, if I'd seen that heart rate thing, the first hospital tech I could get my hands on might have gotten thrown out the window into the lake.


Yeah it's not always like it is in the movies y'know. We spent about 24+ hours of sitting around in a hospital room before any real birthing actually happened.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:37 • by IT Girl (unregistered)
296061 in reply to 296028
Ocson:
Isn't it obvious? If you give them 39 cents, you have the honor of being sold the item for free!


So that you can "go back smarter"

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:40 • by golddog (unregistered)
296062 in reply to 296057
Bob:
Tim Morrison suffers from the classic geek, "That's a bit strange, but there's no possible way it could be done for a good reason because I know that everyone else on the planet is an idiot!"

http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/12/10/crockford-alert/

See it all the time in geek circles:
"Why did you remove that?"
"I didn't understand it, so I rewrote it."

How the fuck can you rewrite something you don't understand?

Anyway, rant over.


A couple of jobs ago, me and another dev were in a meeting with a couple of manager-types to see how other dev's project was going and whether I could provide any help.

When discussing one aspect, other dev said, "I didn't know what that code was doing so I took it out." (my emphasis).

Needless to say, me and the managers spent a few minutes after to discuss this approach...

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:43 • by Quirkafleeg (unregistered)
Hmm. 10-hash bag pot. These people seem to be confused…

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:45 • by Erik (unregistered)
Babies look like slimy little aliens when they first come out. There's no reason to take a picture until after they've been cleaned up and at least look like clean little aliens.

A closeup of the heart rate monitor is probably the only safe picture to take in a birthing room. Anything else will likely result in divorce, death (yours), or both.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:46 • by IT Girl (unregistered)
296065 in reply to 296063
Quirkafleeg:
Hmm. 10-hash bag pot. These people seem to be confused…


Maybe it's because I glanced at my phone, but I read 10 pound bag pot.. seemed like a good deal to me.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 11:52 • by RayS
296066 in reply to 296062
golddog:
A couple of jobs ago, me and another dev were in a meeting with a couple of manager-types to see how other dev's project was going and whether I could provide any help.

When discussing one aspect, other dev said, "I didn't know what that code was doing so I took it out." (my emphasis).

Needless to say, me and the managers spent a few minutes after to discuss this approach...

Well that's the approach that works in the rest of the engineering world, and you computer folk like to pretend that you're engineers, so play by our rules.

If a car engineer finds a badger in your engine and has no idea why it's there, you damn well want him to remove the badger, not leave it there in case it does something he doesn't understand.

That's how engineering works - something unexplained in the middle of your engineeringy thingy - remove it!

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:00 • by kjb (unregistered)
296067 in reply to 296043
Brazen:
Man VMWare's ESX server error messages are the worst. I've banged my head against that same useless error before, which I think ended up being unable to access the license server or something mundane like that, which would have been an easy fix with a proper error message.

Several of their errors are like that. In fact probably all of them are. The error messages give no help whatsoever and usually lead you to look in the wrong place for the problem.


Why would they give you reasonable error messages when they can charge out the nose for support?

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:01 • by Steve the Cynic (unregistered)
296068 in reply to 296066
RayS:
If a car engineer finds a badger in your engine and has no idea why it's there, you damn well want him to remove the badger, not leave it there in case it does something he doesn't understand.

If he's looking in the engine of *my* car, then he is a mechanic, not an engineer.

jugis: Jugis of cider, excellent! Jugis of, um, flesh, even better. Jugis of silicone, well, ok, but I'd rather they were real.

(2)

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:08 • by frits
296070 in reply to 296066
RayS:
golddog:
A couple of jobs ago, me and another dev were in a meeting with a couple of manager-types to see how other dev's project was going and whether I could provide any help.

When discussing one aspect, other dev said, "I didn't know what that code was doing so I took it out." (my emphasis).

Needless to say, me and the managers spent a few minutes after to discuss this approach...

Well that's the approach that works in the rest of the engineering world, and you computer folk like to pretend that you're engineers, so play by our rules.

If a car engineer finds a badger in your engine and has no idea why it's there, you damn well want him to remove the badger, not leave it there in case it does something he doesn't understand.

That's how engineering works - something unexplained in the middle of your engineeringy thingy - remove it!


So if you were an electrical engineer who was tasked with designing a power supply and didn't understand the RF module hooked up to it, you'd take it out?

I don't think you're an engineer. Maybe the kind that drives trains.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:10 • by EatenByAGrue (unregistered)
RayS:
If a car engineer finds a badger in your engine and has no idea why it's there ...


Actually, I believe the correct response to this situation is "Badger? Badger? We don't need no steenkin' badger!" And then remove it.

Of course, I'm now wondering why someone might find a badger in your engine and have a good idea why it's there.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:12 • by TarquinWJ
296072 in reply to 296070
frits:
So if you were an electrical engineer who was tasked with designing a power supply and didn't understand the RF module hooked up to it, you'd take it out?
Like any good engineer, you take it out, dismantle it (pull apart all those metal plates, they're not important, mkay), so you can make yourself believe you now know how it works, then try to put it back together again, beat the metal case back into something like the right shape, and put it back on the circuit board. Then try and work out where those extra 3 components you are left with should have ended up. Never mind, they're probably not important...

(Every serious electronics engineer did this at least once with a stereo as a teenager. Fact.)

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:17 • by NotARealName (unregistered)
296073 in reply to 296066
RayS:
golddog:
A couple of jobs ago, me and another dev were in a meeting with a couple of manager-types to see how other dev's project was going and whether I could provide any help.

When discussing one aspect, other dev said, "I didn't know what that code was doing so I took it out." (my emphasis).

Needless to say, me and the managers spent a few minutes after to discuss this approach...

Well that's the approach that works in the rest of the engineering world, and you computer folk like to pretend that you're engineers, so play by our rules.

If a car engineer finds a badger in your engine and has no idea why it's there, you damn well want him to remove the badger, not leave it there in case it does something he doesn't understand.

That's how engineering works - something unexplained in the middle of your engineeringy thingy - remove it!


But a piece of code in another piece of code is something you would expect to meet. A badger in your engine is not the same thing.

If the car engineer found a piece of engineering in my car and removed it without knowing what that 'engineery' thing was - I'd be looking for a new car engineer type person.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:20 • by Zolcos
296074 in reply to 296035
dpm:
TRWTF is that the people of Spring Lake, Michigan could not think of a better nickname for their high school team than "Lakers". Seriously, the Spring Lake Lakers?? That's the best you could do?

Not as bad as Dollar Bay, MI. Their team is called the "Bays".
The Dollar Bay Bays.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:21 • by MRAB (unregistered)
296075 in reply to 296066
RayS:
golddog:
A couple of jobs ago, me and another dev were in a meeting with a couple of manager-types to see how other dev's project was going and whether I could provide any help.

When discussing one aspect, other dev said, "I didn't know what that code was doing so I took it out." (my emphasis).

Needless to say, me and the managers spent a few minutes after to discuss this approach...

Well that's the approach that works in the rest of the engineering world, and you computer folk like to pretend that you're engineers, so play by our rules.

If a car engineer finds a badger in your engine and has no idea why it's there, you damn well want him to remove the badger, not leave it there in case it does something he doesn't understand.

That's how engineering works - something unexplained in the middle of your engineeringy thingy - remove it!


The badger is there to stop the radiator freezing in cold weather. It the Green alternative to anti-freeze. :-)

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:31 • by KMan (unregistered)
... the password expiration warning! (0:

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:41 • by Carl (unregistered)
Maybe I needing later infinity dollars to buy the grass seed. Oh never mind, I'll just go to the Orchard Market and buy the grass.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:41 • by mypalmike (unregistered)
I just thought I'd mention that none of these are WTFs. They are all perfectly acceptable in embedded systems where you don't have a file system.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:44 • by B. O. (unregistered)
296081 in reply to 296047
Synchronos:
The United States have [sic] 53 states: Alabama, Alaska, ... , Wisconsin, Wyoming, True, False, FILE_NOT_FOUND. Certainly "Off" is not among them.
Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it.

Re: Divisive Placeholder

2010-01-15 12:44 • by Software "Engineer" (unregistered)
296082 in reply to 296066
RayS:
golddog:
A couple of jobs ago, me and another dev were in a meeting with a couple of manager-types to see how other dev's project was going and whether I could provide any help.

When discussing one aspect, other dev said, "I didn't know what that code was doing so I took it out." (my emphasis).

Needless to say, me and the managers spent a few minutes after to discuss this approach...

Well that's the approach that works in the rest of the engineering world, and you computer folk like to pretend that you're engineers, so play by our rules.

If a car engineer finds a badger in your engine and has no idea why it's there, you damn well want him to remove the badger, not leave it there in case it does something he doesn't understand.

That's how engineering works - something unexplained in the middle of your engineeringy thingy - remove it!


And most software people would recognize the software equivalent of a badger in the engine... hence, this fine website.

But as evidenced by a lot of the non-WTFs that get offered up here, and by the number of "I don't see the WTF" comments on clear consensus WTFs here... what belongs and what doesn't isn't uniformly obvious. And "drop it because I don't understand it" is really more about arrogance ("If I don't see the need, the need doesn't exist") than about sound engineering.
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