The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
I think you'll find that "BST" is abbreviationese for "British Summer Time". And the UNIX epoch is normally quoted as 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, even if that isn't necessarily the right time zone/standard.
And the British don't use BST in the middle of January, even if it is sometimes hard to tell British summer and winter apart.

You've fallen for one of the classic blunders. British January is indeed usually UTC, but that particular January was on British Standard Time.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Tristram:
Damien:
Umm:
This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???
OK maybe you meant nineteen-nineties but still...

I'm puzzled by what distinction you're trying to draw by introducing the nineteen- prefix. If someone says nineties to you, what year, decade or time period do you assume, if it's not the nineteen-nineties?

In ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Oddly enough, there are historical documents around 1513 with a discussion pretty similar to this one, as they were coming up with that rhyme. It is a good thing they needed "14" in there to make the rhyme fill the meter, or the actual century of Columbus' voyage would be lost to the annals of history.

Hmmmm · 2013-01-08 Reply Admin

lmm:
Steve The Cynic:
I think you'll find that "BST" is abbreviationese for "British Summer Time". And the UNIX epoch is normally quoted as 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, even if that isn't necessarily the right time zone/standard.
And the British don't use BST in the middle of January, even if it is sometimes hard to tell British summer and winter apart.

You've fallen for one of the classic blunders - The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: British January is indeed usually UTC, but that particular January was on British Standard Time.

FTFY

Soviut · 2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Maltz:
Overly Attentive Gizzard:
"The fuck?" is all I could muster at this one.
Maybe at some point it did translate to a proper color and that was factored out when a stupid intern tried to "fix" something he didn't understand?

This.

If this was written in the early 90's, the clients probably couldn't even display more than 256 colors, and maybe less depending on how new the hardware was at the time. It's hard to imagine the original program used 24bit values for color.

24bit colour wasn't invented after 2000. Given that the client application is written in VB, there's a good chance they are Windows CE devices. Those supported bit depths higher than 8-bit (256 colours) and so did the languages running on them; Even VB.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

F:
Dates were frequently cited as (e.g.) "... the first year of the reign of King Xyzzy ...". So the first year after the birth of Jesus would naturally be labelled year 1.

And what about the year of this alleged birth? The zeroth year would naturally be labeled year zero, would it not?

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

F:
the first year of the reign of King Xyzzy

He's a king? I always figured he was the spirit of some long-dead wizard, trapped in a cave. With knife-throwing dwarfs, a snake, and more treasure than you can carry out in 10 trips.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Soviut:
24bit colour wasn't invented after 2000.

I had a box of 24 crayons in 1980. One bit for each crayon used or not used, and presto you have a highly specific color. Pixel size was a bit lame however.

Oh, and "colour"? Get with the tens already. The two thousand tens.

Soviut · 2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Joey:
Oh, and "colour"? Get with the tens already. The two thousand tens.

As I recall, from 2010 to present, we Canadians still spell it with a U.

Matt Westwood · 2013-01-08 Reply Admin

lmm:
Steve The Cynic:
I think you'll find that "BST" is abbreviationese for "British Summer Time". And the UNIX epoch is normally quoted as 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, even if that isn't necessarily the right time zone/standard.
And the British don't use BST in the middle of January, even if it is sometimes hard to tell British summer and winter apart.

You've fallen for one of the classic blunders. British January is indeed usually UTC, but that particular January was on British Standard Time.

"British Standard Time" - no, no, no - British Summer Time. It was an experiment to see whether it was better to have darker mornings and lighter evenings. It was just about getting light by 9 a.m. It was great.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Arnold Judas Rimmer:
eVil:
The thought of that code just made me turn #1AC898

What, purple?

Sorry, but that's definently white. At least according to the code...

Captcha: enim - like enum - they should have used an enum

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Mister Slowcoach:
Is it not the case that 65535 and FFFF return different colours? I'm also a little confused at the -2147483633 and &H80000005 and &H8000000F ...

That's the whole point. Those are strings; the numerical values have no real meaning.

OhNoDevelopment · 2013-01-08 Reply Admin

It's happening, thedailysnoofle is becoming reality

Zylon · 2013-01-08 Reply Admin

I'm surprised that nobody has pointed out that the only colors supported by the client code are a subset of the CGA colors. This would explain the "Return Color.Orange 'bright yellow" line. CGA only supported red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, and white and black, in high and low intensities.

gar37bic · 2013-01-08 Reply Admin

I may be a pessimist, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same problem cropped up in 2090! :P

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

urza9814:
....in what frame of reference? As soon as you have motion, you lose any hope of a universal, non-arbitrary time standard.

So don't move then. Gee, was that so hard?

ThePants999 · 2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Overly Attentive Gizzard:
"The fuck?" is all I could muster at this one.

Since the second post could only muster "what", I'm glad you've completed it between you :-)

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Ben Jammin:
Zach:
Did I miss something or is the color just in BGR format with leading zeroes? So "FF" is parsed as hex 0x000000FF and so is (1,0,0) in the 0..1 RGB color space. "FF00" is 0x0000FF00 and so is (0,1,0): green (or "lime"). Orange then seems to be high red, medium-high green, and high blue, which makes sense.
Admittedly, there are still a few WTFs in there. The dark vs. light grey values seem to have been reversed. It also seems that "8000000F" is treated as light grey, although I'm guessing the value is in aBGR format and the "80" refers to transparency (which we're going to quietly call grey 'cause argh).

Then again: if this is how the color management works, I can't wait to see the widget layout system.
I believe what you missed is that the colors are serializable, and don't really need to be strings.

Ah that's good then. We'll not convert colours to strings, we'll just serialize them into sequences of bytes that represent characters.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Damien:
If someone says nineties to you, what year, decade or time period do you assume, if it's not the nineteen-nineties?

The eighteen-nineties were the gay ones. The nineteen-nineties were mine.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Zach:
Admittedly, there are still a few WTFs in there. The dark vs. light grey values seem to have been reversed. It also seems that "8000000F" is treated as light grey, although I'm guessing the value is in aBGR format and the "80" refers to transparency (which we're going to quietly call grey 'cause argh).

This, and this, and where are the other 48 shades?

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Bill C.:
Zach:
Admittedly, there are still a few WTFs in there. The dark vs. light grey values seem to have been reversed. It also seems that "8000000F" is treated as light grey, although I'm guessing the value is in aBGR format and the "80" refers to transparency (which we're going to quietly call grey 'cause argh).
This, and this, and where are the other 48 shades?

Ha, you had me checking the HTML there.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

RichP:
Damien:
Umm:
This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???
OK maybe you meant nineteen-nineties but still...

I'm puzzled by what distinction you're trying to draw by introducing the nineteen- prefix. If someone says nineties to you, what year, decade or time period do you assume, if it's not the nineteen-nineties?

Groan. Here we go again... It's exactly that kind of thinking that created the Y2K mess. Please think of the poor slobs wasting time by trolling dailyWTF archives in 2099 and fully qualify your dates, people!

Qualify dates certainly. Record things specifically - gotcha. Be specific when you make a vague reference to a rough time period - Get Fucked, Fuckhead!

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

pezpunk:
i fail to see a viable case for the term "90s" referring to any decade other than the one spanning AD 90 to AD 99, at least by default. any other interpretation would be unnecessarily arbitrary and unintuitive. of course, prefacing all comments with a set of default assumptions, in xml format for human readability, would clear up these kinds of misunderstandings and allow greater flexibility in the long run.

Yes, because when everyone talks about the sixties (only decade worth a damn) their talking about 60AD to 69AD.....

Language is always vague and fucksticks misinterpret things (usually deliberately) while pedants pick holes in the factuality of possible interpretations. If anyone reading this site was unable to decipher that nineties referred to the years between 1990 and 1999 (inclusive)....<insert finish to the sentence>

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Soviut:
Joey:
Oh, and "colour"? Get with the tens already. The two thousand tens.

As I recall, from 2010 to present, we Canadians still spell it with a U.

I think all of the English speaking world does. Sadly, the United States is not part of the English-speaking world.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
lmm:
Steve The Cynic:
I think you'll find that "BST" is abbreviationese for "British Summer Time". And the UNIX epoch is normally quoted as 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, even if that isn't necessarily the right time zone/standard.
And the British don't use BST in the middle of January, even if it is sometimes hard to tell British summer and winter apart.

You've fallen for one of the classic blunders. British January is indeed usually UTC, but that particular January was on British Standard Time.

"British Standard Time" - no, no, no - British Summer Time. It was an experiment to see whether it was better to have darker mornings and lighter evenings. It was just about getting light by 9 a.m. It was great.

That would be great - in the middle of summer here it gets light around 5AM and we're lucky if it's dark by 9PM. When I was a kid it was GREAT - long days to go swimming. Now that I have kids, it SUCKS. Try getting a one year old to go to sleep at 7PM when it's still broad daylight!

Silverhill · 2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Tom:
And what about the year of this alleged birth? The zeroth year would naturally be labeled year zero, would it not?

It would not. Zero-based indexing was still a little way into the future. Years are labeled when they begin (unlike hours, which are labeled when they end), so the first day following the (alleged) birth was the first day of AD 1 -- the first year of Dionysius Exiguus's reckoning.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

mog:
pezpunk:
i fail to see a viable case for the term "90s" referring to any decade other than the one spanning AD 90 to AD 99, at least by default. any other interpretation would be unnecessarily arbitrary and unintuitive. of course, prefacing all comments with a set of default assumptions, in xml format for human readability, would clear up these kinds of misunderstandings and allow greater flexibility in the long run.
Yes, because when everyone talks about the sixties (only decade worth a damn) their talking about 60AD to 69AD.....
Language is always vague and fucksticks misinterpret things (usually deliberately) while pedants pick holes in the factuality of possible interpretations. If anyone reading this site was unable to decipher that nineties referred to the years between 1990 and 1999 (inclusive)....<insert finish to the sentence>

...they're talking about 60AD to 69AD...

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

jones:
Soviut:
Joey:
Oh, and "colour"? Get with the tens already. The two thousand tens.

As I recall, from 2010 to present, we Canadians still spell it with a U.
I think all of the English speaking world does. Sadly, the United States is not part of the world.

FTFY.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Aussie:
Matt Westwood:
lmm:
Steve The Cynic:
I think you'll find that "BST" is abbreviationese for "British Summer Time". And the UNIX epoch is normally quoted as 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, even if that isn't necessarily the right time zone/standard.
And the British don't use BST in the middle of January, even if it is sometimes hard to tell British summer and winter apart.

You've fallen for one of the classic blunders. British January is indeed usually UTC, but that particular January was on British Standard Time.

"British Standard Time" - no, no, no - British Summer Time. It was an experiment to see whether it was better to have darker mornings and lighter evenings. It was just about getting light by 9 a.m. It was great.
That would be great - in the middle of summer here it gets light around 5AM and we're lucky if it's dark by 9PM. When I was a kid it was GREAT - long days to go swimming. Now that I have kids, it SUCKS. Try getting a one year old to go to sleep at 7PM when it's still broad daylight!

So you want to turn back the clock 1-2 hours in summer? (Otherwise it's still bright at 7, even without DST.)

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Average Dickweed:
mog:
pezpunk:
i fail to see a viable case for the term "90s" referring to any decade other than the one spanning AD 90 to AD 99, at least by default. any other interpretation would be unnecessarily arbitrary and unintuitive. of course, prefacing all comments with a set of default assumptions, in xml format for human readability, would clear up these kinds of misunderstandings and allow greater flexibility in the long run.
Yes, because when everyone talks about the sixties (only decade worth a damn) their talking about 60AD to 69AD..... is clearly inferred.
Language is always vague and fucksticks misinterpret things (usually deliberately) while pedants pick holes in the factuality of possible interpretations. If anyone reading this site was unable to decipher that nineties referred to the years between 1990 and 1999 (inclusive)....<insert finish to the sentence>
...they're talking about 60AD to 69AD...

No.

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

D'oh:
Aussie:
Matt Westwood:
lmm:
Steve The Cynic:
I think you'll find that "BST" is abbreviationese for "British Summer Time". And the UNIX epoch is normally quoted as 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, even if that isn't necessarily the right time zone/standard.
And the British don't use BST in the middle of January, even if it is sometimes hard to tell British summer and winter apart.

You've fallen for one of the classic blunders. British January is indeed usually UTC, but that particular January was on British Standard Time.

"British Standard Time" - no, no, no - British Summer Time. It was an experiment to see whether it was better to have darker mornings and lighter evenings. It was just about getting light by 9 a.m. It was great.
That would be great - in the middle of summer here it gets light around 5AM and we're lucky if it's dark by 9PM. When I was a kid it was GREAT - long days to go swimming. Now that I have kids, it SUCKS. Try getting a one year old to go to sleep at 7PM when it's still broad daylight!
So you want to turn back the clock 1-2 hours in summer? (Otherwise it's still bright at 7, even without DST.)

I meant getting light by 9AM sounds like a great plan....We have too many daylight hours here, and I think we should swap some of our daytime for some night time from somewhere where there's too much - maybe Greenland will be interested - although it might be more fun to make deals with the Scandinavians - they seem to have a lot of other stuff I'd like to trade....

2013-01-08 Reply Admin

Average Dickweed:
mog:
pezpunk:
i fail to see a viable case for the term "90s" referring to any decade other than the one spanning AD 90 to AD 99, at least by default. any other interpretation would be unnecessarily arbitrary and unintuitive. of course, prefacing all comments with a set of default assumptions, in xml format for human readability, would clear up these kinds of misunderstandings and allow greater flexibility in the long run.
Yes, because when everyone talks about the sixties (only decade worth a damn) their talking about 60AD to 69AD.....
Language is always vague and fucksticks misinterpret things (usually deliberately) while pedants pick holes in the factuality of possible interpretations. If anyone reading this site was unable to decipher that nineties referred to the years between 1990 and 1999 (inclusive)....<insert finish to the sentence>
...they're talking about 60AD to 69AD...

Not sure how much sense that makes....

"If anyone reading this site was unable to decipher that nineties referred to the years between 1990 and 1999 (inclusive).... ...they're talking about 60AD to 69AD..."

da Doctah · 2013-01-09 Reply Admin

jones:
Soviut:
Joey:
Oh, and "colour"? Get with the tens already. The two thousand tens.

As I recall, from 2010 to present, we Canadians still spell it with a U.
I think all of the English speaking world does. Sadly, the United States is not part of the English-speaking world.

I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. Listen closely:

Gray is a color. Grey is a colour.

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

Aussie:
Matt Westwood:
lmm:
Steve The Cynic:
I think you'll find that "BST" is abbreviationese for "British Summer Time". And the UNIX epoch is normally quoted as 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, even if that isn't necessarily the right time zone/standard.
And the British don't use BST in the middle of January, even if it is sometimes hard to tell British summer and winter apart.

You've fallen for one of the classic blunders. British January is indeed usually UTC, but that particular January was on British Standard Time.

"British Standard Time" - no, no, no - British Summer Time. It was an experiment to see whether it was better to have darker mornings and lighter evenings. It was just about getting light by 9 a.m. It was great.
That would be great - in the middle of summer here it gets light around 5AM and we're lucky if it's dark by 9PM. When I was a kid it was GREAT - long days to go swimming. Now that I have kids, it SUCKS. Try getting a one year old to go to sleep at 7PM when it's still broad daylight!

Where I live we use this invention called a "curtain" which does an adequate task of ensuring that any room to which it is fitted can be made significantly darker than that of the ambient light-level outside. I've heard they're quite easy to make, although we also have places where you can exchange moderate quantities of money for a ready-made product, and you might even be able to get someone to help you install it, if for any reason it proves too difficult for you to do yourself.

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

Soviut:
24bit colour wasn't invented after 2000. Given that the client application is written in VB, there's a good chance they are Windows CE devices. Those supported bit depths higher than 8-bit (256 colours) and so did the languages running on them; Even VB.

'Early 1990s' is pre-Windows 95.

Windows CE was initially released in 1996, so not really 'early 1990s'

There were colour handheld devices in the early 1990s, but they weren't common or cheap and didn't have big screens. Most things were B&W (eg Apple Newton, PalmPilot etc) with later ones advancing to greyscale towards the end of the 1990s. For specialised situations you may have had colour, but for most handheld applications the cost wasn't worth it.

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

Soviut:
24bit colour wasn't invented after 2000.

No, but it was rare in the early 1990s.

I remember seeing a VGA display for the first time (in around 1989 IIRC) - in a university computer lab. We all stood around admiring the quality of rendering of a scantily clad woman (including the professors)...

But, remember that VGA was not 24 bit colour. It was only 18 bit colour (3 x 6 bits) and that was from a 256 colour palette.

We had to wait a few more years before "true colour" (24 bit) became available as a standard feature on a desktop PC, and even then it was rare - and not on handheld devices until MUCH later.

Cbuttius · 2013-01-09 Reply Admin

The real WTF (from the comments not the article) is that people think they can get more hours of daylight by adjusting their clocks (rather than setting their alarm clocks in summer time to get up an hour earlier).

I do know though that it is a very psychological thing. When I worked in Belgium for the whole summer of 1998, whenever I returned to England I kept my clocks in Central European Time (1 hour ahead of what it was in England). In particular it made getting up for early flights back much easier as my clock had its time an hour later than it really was. I did have to know to order the cab for the time it really was, not the time my clock said it was.

Cbuttius · 2013-01-09 Reply Admin

By the way I'd file this article as a CodeSOD not a feature article which means we've had 3 CodeSODs this week.

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

mog:
pezpunk:
i fail to see a viable case for the term "90s" referring to any decade other than the one spanning AD 90 to AD 99, at least by default. any other interpretation would be unnecessarily arbitrary and unintuitive. of course, prefacing all comments with a set of default assumptions, in xml format for human readability, would clear up these kinds of misunderstandings and allow greater flexibility in the long run.
Yes, because when everyone talks about the sixties (only decade worth a damn) their talking about 60AD to 69AD.....
Language is always vague and fucksticks misinterpret things (usually deliberately) while pedants pick holes in the factuality of possible interpretations. If anyone reading this site was unable to decipher that nineties referred to the years between 1990 and 1999 (inclusive)....<insert finish to the sentence>

i appreciate the seriousness with which you treated my comments. next i expect a sincere appraisal of my suggestion that we all preface our comments with XML of global assumptions in the future.

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

I don't see why it's necessary to specify a century on the date in this case. As the story involves computer, clearly it could not have been referring to the 1890s or any earlier century, as electronic computers had not been invented yet. And it cannot be referring to any century after the 1990s, as the world ended on December 21, 2012, so there are no future centuries.

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

Tom:
F:
Dates were frequently cited as (e.g.) "... the first year of the reign of King Xyzzy ...". So the first year after the birth of Jesus would naturally be labelled year 1.
And what about the year of this alleged birth? The zeroth year would naturally be labeled year zero, would it not?

That's hardly some ancient, obsolete convention. When, for example, you start a new job, don't you typically refer to the time from when you start to 12 months later as "my first year at this job"? Or do you really call it "my zeroth year at this job"? If the latter, I think you're in a decided minority.

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

mog:
Yes, because when everyone talks about the sixties (only decade worth a damn) their talking about 60AD to 69AD.....

Wow, you must have different memories of the 60s than I do. As I recall the decade started with Nero in power, and he was a terrible emperor! Then we went through Galba, Otho, and Vitellius in rapid succession. They were turbulent and violent times, full of uncertainty. I, for one, was glad when the 60s ended.

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

Cbuttius:
The real WTF (from the comments not the article) is that people think they can get more hours of daylight by adjusting their clocks (rather than setting their alarm clocks in summer time to get up an hour earlier).
I do know though that it is a very psychological thing. When I worked in Belgium for the whole summer of 1998, whenever I returned to England I kept my clocks in Central European Time (1 hour ahead of what it was in England). In particular it made getting up for early flights back much easier as my clock had its time an hour later than it really was. I did have to know to order the cab for the time it really was, not the time my clock said it was.

It has to do with coordinating that effort with everyone around the world as well.

Sure, you can get up an hour earlier... but then what? Do you go to work earlier and leave earlier? What if you can't?

As developers and tech folk, that doesn't have a huge impact to us. But if your job depends on having an optimal amount of daylight (or lack there of), it sure as hell does.

BlueKnot · 2013-01-09 Reply Admin

The first error case creates a valid input for the second function. If it ever gets to Purple something has definately gone out of plumb.

BlueKnot · 2013-01-09 Reply Admin

Warren:
This might seem over-engineered but how else could you implement an "error" case of white at one stage and purple at another....

The first error case creates a valid input for the second function. If it ever gets to Purple something has definately gone out of plumb.

I'm more baffled by

Return Color.Black 'color

and

Return Color.Orange 'bright yellow

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

Return Color.White ' bright black

2013-01-09 Reply Admin

Gumbull:
I remember seeing a VGA display for the first time (in around 1989 IIRC) - in a university computer lab. We all stood around admiring the quality of rendering of a scantily clad woman (including the professors)...

So there's a well established tradition of women in computer science? I should change professions.

2013-01-10 Reply Admin

jay:
mog:
Yes, because when everyone talks about the sixties (only decade worth a damn) their talking about 60AD to 69AD.....

Wow, you must have different memories of the 60s than I do. As I recall the decade started with Nero in power, and he was a terrible emperor! Then we went through Galba, Otho, and Vitellius in rapid succession. They were turbulent and violent times, full of uncertainty. I, for one, was glad when the 60s ended.

Are you part of one of those seditious cults, by any chance? I can see no other excuse for referring to the reigns of those emperors with such strange numbers.

no laughing matter · 2013-01-10 Reply Admin

Soviut:
24bit colour wasn't invented after 2000.

24bit colour was invented in 1977:

"1977 Alvy Ray Smith implements first 24-bit red, green, blue (RGB) paint system Paint3 at the NYIT, for three E&S or Genisco frame buffers in parallel."

2013-01-10 Reply Admin

moz:
jay:
mog:
Yes, because when everyone talks about the sixties (only decade worth a damn) their talking about 60AD to 69AD.....

Wow, you must have different memories of the 60s than I do. As I recall the decade started with Nero in power, and he was a terrible emperor! Then we went through Galba, Otho, and Vitellius in rapid succession. They were turbulent and violent times, full of uncertainty. I, for one, was glad when the 60s ended.
Are you part of one of those seditious cults, by any chance? I can see no other excuse for referring to the reigns of those emperors with such strange numbers.

Well, yes, of course at the time we called it the 800s (Anno Urbis). I was speaking proleptically.

2013-01-10 Reply Admin

no laughing matter:
Soviut:
24bit colour wasn't invented after 2000.
24bit colour was invented in 1977:
"1977 Alvy Ray Smith implements first 24-bit red, green, blue (RGB) paint system Paint3 at the NYIT, for three E&S or Genisco frame buffers in parallel."

Interestingly, 1977 isn't after 2000.

Color Me Stupid

Leave a comment on “Color Me Stupid”