• St (unregistered)

    Anyone explain the search error?

  • dkf (unregistered) in reply to St
    St:
    Anyone explain the search error?
    Probably clock skew. The Real WTF is that everyone isn't synchronizing with NTP.
  • Faster than the speed of time (unregistered)

    Those were obviously 83 overclocked seconds, which equal 10 normal ones.

  • Cope with IT (unregistered)

    1010100 1101000 1100101 100000 1110010 1100101 1100001 1101100 100000 1010111 1010100 1100110 100000 1101001 1110011 101100 100000 1110100 1101000 1100001 1110100 100000 1110100 1101000 1100101 100000 1100001 1101110 1110011 1110111 1100101 1110010 100000 1101001 1110011 100000 110100 110010 100000 1100110 1101111 1110010 100000 1101111 1100010 1110110 1101001 1101111 1110101 1110011 100000 1110010 1100101 1100001 1110011 1101111 1101110 1110011

  • (cs) in reply to Faster than the speed of time
    Faster than the speed of time:
    Those were obviously 83 overclocked seconds, which equal 10 normal ones.
    Best. Reply. Ever.
  • Malcolm Parsons (unregistered)

    "Error number 0 has occured because:"

    The past tense of the word "occur" is "occurred" spelled with 2 letter R's.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    10206662-4802

    10206662-3490

    [10206662-7]10206662-234[/10206662-7]

    10206662-15: 10206662-5590

    {10206662-562} {10206662-36}

  • Mil (unregistered)

    Why the lower bound is a number but the upper bound is a length?

  • Mil 2 (unregistered)

    Why the lower limit is a number, but the upper limit is a length?

  • (cs) in reply to Cope with IT
    Cope with IT:
    1010100 1101000 1100101 100000 1110010 1100101 1100001 1101100 100000 1010111 1010100 1100110 100000 1101001 1110011 101100 100000 1110100 1101000 1100001 1110100 100000 1110100 1101000 1100101 100000 1100001 1101110 1110011 1110111 1100101 1110010 100000 1101001 1110011 100000 110100 110010 100000 1100110 1101111 1110010 100000 1101111 1100010 1110110 1101001 1101111 1110101 1110011 100000 1110010 1100101 1100001 1110011 1101111 1101110 1110011
    Yes, but that answer wasn't available.
  • Look at me! I'm on the internets! (unregistered) in reply to Faster than the speed of time

    Oh those wacky integers! They never fail to crack me up.

  • Zock (unregistered) in reply to Mil
    Mil:
    Why the lower bound is a number but the upper bound is a length?

    That's easy. The input has to be greater than the given number, but they don't want the user inputting arbitrary large numbers, so it needs to be limited somehow - thus the need to fit within the given, although largish space. Not a WTF at all.

  • Simon (unregistered) in reply to Zock
    Zock:
    Mil:
    Why the lower bound is a number but the upper bound is a length?

    That's easy. The input has to be greater than the given number, but they don't want the user inputting arbitrary large numbers, so it needs to be limited somehow - thus the need to fit within the given, although largish space. Not a WTF at all.

    Difficult to tell whether you're being sarcastic...but the error message doesn't actually make any sense. Its a definite WTF.

  • (cs) in reply to Simon
    Simon:
    Zock:
    Mil:
    Why the lower bound is a number but the upper bound is a length?

    That's easy. The input has to be greater than the given number, but they don't want the user inputting arbitrary large numbers, so it needs to be limited somehow - thus the need to fit within the given, although largish space. Not a WTF at all.

    Difficult to tell whether you're being sarcastic...but the error message doesn't actually make any sense. Its a definite WTF.

    I agree. People using low-DPI, mile-wide monitors will never be able to fit that number within the 40,000 inch limit, let alone a larger number.

  • Skeet (unregistered) in reply to Faster than the speed of time

    Why that 83 seconds is a variable in the first place is beyond me. What exact formula are they using to calculate how long 10 seconds is? The time is takes for the guy at McDonald's to burn the french fries?

  • (cs)

    Ahh, you mean 10 Microsoft seconds.

  • Just Some Guy (unregistered) in reply to St

    My guess: the submitter ran one search, then attempted another 7 seconds later. The website penalizes people who submit queries too quickly by making them wait 90 seconds. 7 of those seconds had already elapsed, hence 83.

    Or else it's just broken, and that's at least equally likely.

  • Molten Core (unregistered) in reply to Faster than the speed of time
    Faster than the speed of time:
    Those were obviously 83 overclocked seconds, which equal 10 normal ones.
    And now please show me a photograph of the CPU cooler...
  • Richard O'Shay (unregistered)

    My machine's so overclocked it can run an infinite loop in 12 seconds.

  • Mr (unregistered)
    I was hoping that it wouldn't count my search that was 73 seconds in the future against me.

    One possible explanation is that since he didn't wait 10 second, he was penalized with extra seconds. If not, the users could just refresh the browser twice a second until 10 seconds have gone. It's a sort of "idiot protection".

  • Starblue (unregistered)

    I want a "Not OK" button on my error messages ...

  • Netrilix (unregistered)

    It's actually rather simple. If you try to search too fast, it penalizes you by not letting you search for a longer period of time. So the user searched once, fine. Then they searched again within 10 seconds, and it said "Nope, and now you have to wait 90 seconds"... and then they tried again and it said "Nope, and you still have 83 seconds left to wait".

  • Tim (unregistered)

    The corrupted database held the error messages for the client.

  • (cs)

    Easy: He double-clicked the search, because it was taking so long to respond and the forum penalized him 90 seconds. Hence 83 remaining. It's load protection to keep bots from overwhelming phpBB, which has absolutely horrendous search performance.

  • (cs) in reply to Zock
    Zock:
    Mil:
    Why the lower bound is a number but the upper bound is a length?

    That's easy. The input has to be greater than the given number, but they don't want the user inputting arbitrary large numbers, so it needs to be limited somehow - thus the need to fit within the given, although largish space. Not a WTF at all.

    I think you should present your new theory for a Nobel prize in mathematics.

  • Smash (unregistered) in reply to Malcolm Parsons
    Malcolm Parsons:
    "Error number 0 has occured because:"

    The past tense of the word "occur" is "occurred" spelled with 2 letter R's.

    ... said the grammar nazi.

    In a so badly-designed dialog, I don't really think a small typo is worth even a mention.

  • Smash (unregistered)

    On number1: it is actually quite easy to enter a number within those conditions. The only way to break condition #2 ( <= 39370.079in ) would be by using some HUGE fontsize and a 64-bit floating point value, milked to the last precision digit.

  • BlueCollarAstronaut (unregistered) in reply to Richard O'Shay
    Richard O'Shay:
    My machine's so overclocked it can run an infinite loop in 12 seconds.

    Chuck Norris can run an infinite loop in 10.5 seconds.

  • (cs) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    St:
    Anyone explain the search error?
    Probably clock skew. The Real WTF is that everyone isn't synchronizing with NTP.
    Hmm... I'm hoping the CS definition of "clock skew" is different from the EE definition, as the EE clock skew is usually measured in nanoseconds or picoseconds. I think you could only get a clock skew on the order of 73 seconds if your L1 cache was stored on the moon or something.
  • 008 (unregistered)

    Third one:

    Error routine grabs it's explainations out of a resource, and entry 0 doesn't exist. Yawn.

  • Christophe (unregistered)

    Give 'em 39370.079 inches and they'll take a mile.

    But seriously, the real WTF is that it's inches, not centimeters

  • Christophe (unregistered) in reply to Christophe

    After a second look, that is almost exactly one kilometer.

    Hmmm....

  • nigrhatr (unregistered)

    negro

  • tharpa (unregistered) in reply to Smash
    Smash:

    ... said the grammar nazi.

    The word you are looking for is "purist." Nazis are best-remembered as being one of the groups that murdered millions of people -- I am not aware that they were especially strict about spelling. Now if Malcolm was literally murdering millions of people for spelling errors, then maybe the grammar Nazi analogy would fit.

    A purist is someone who uses the word "purist" correctly.

Leave a comment on “A Numbers Game”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

« Return to Article