The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2014-07-07 Reply Admin

So the WTF here is: Programmer builds a little system using a mishmash of sed and Yacc and C++ and held together with duct tape and band aides. He's really proud of how he got all this stuff to somehow hang together. But then he's surprised and frustrated when it proves to be difficult to maintain.

Hmm, a program developed using no coherent design methodology and no consistent approach, using half a dozen languages. How in the world could that end up being difficult to maintain? It's baffling.

2014-07-07 Reply Admin

operagost:
Captain Oblivious:
Salad:
TRWTF is calling football soccer. What is wrong with you?

You know soccer is was coined by English people, right? It's a shortening of Association Football, with 'er' stuck on the end.

What you don't seem to realize is that there are like 5 different kinds of football, even in England and greater Britain. Association Football is what you commoners commonly, but wrongly, call "football".

TL;DR: It's "Association Football" or "Soccer". "Football" is just ambiguous.

Addendum (2014-07-06 14:10): Also, "The word "soccer" was in fact the most common way of referring to association football in the UK until around the 1970s, when it began to be perceived incorrectly as an Americanism."
Also, in American football, the ball used to be snapped with the foot as well as the hand. Field goals also used to score more points than touchdowns; thus, the kicking game was more important. It was once feasible to move the ball, at least laterally, with the foot, in a game that was pretty much a merger of a soccer-like game and a rugby-like game.

Unlike Brits, we don't change the name of a game when we feel like it.

Unlike Americans, we don't change the rules of a game when we feel like it.

2014-07-07 Reply Admin

Jim the Tool:
The real WTF is the USA amirite?
No wait, it's the USA thinking that they are the best at anything good.

Funny thing, the USA made it to the round of 16 as 2nd place in their group, which was judged to be among the more competitive this year. This despite Soccer being a very distant 5th choice sport in the US. (Gridiron) Football, Baseball, Basketball, and to a slightly lesser extent Hockey are the sports people choose in the US when they want to make millions of dollars at their sport.

Soccer is a very distant fifth place here. If you choose Soccer as your sport, you are hoping to at best get a college scholarship and if you're really lucky to live comfortably playing professionally. Median pay in the NFL is north of $750,000/year in a league with 32 teams of 50+ players/team. MLS median is $100,000 for roughly 20 teams with ~20 players/team. No one dreams of making it rich at soccer in the USA, and top athletes choose another sport.

In the vast majority of other countries competing at the top of the FIFA rankings, (Association) football is the dominant sport, or at worst co-dominant. Despite everything skewed against Soccer in the USA, we currently sit at #13 in the FIFA world rankings. That's not too bad by my count.

2014-07-07 Reply Admin

Mark:
Jim the Tool:
The real WTF is the USA amirite?
No wait, it's the USA thinking that they are the best at anything good.

Funny thing, the USA made it to the round of 16 as 2nd place in their group, which was judged to be among the more competitive this year. This despite Soccer being a very distant 5th choice sport in the US. (Gridiron) Football, Baseball, Basketball, and to a slightly lesser extent Hockey are the sports people choose in the US when they want to make millions of dollars at their sport.

Soccer is a very distant fifth place here. If you choose Soccer as your sport, you are hoping to at best get a college scholarship and if you're really lucky to live comfortably playing professionally. Median pay in the NFL is north of $750,000/year in a league with 32 teams of 50+ players/team. MLS median is $100,000 for roughly 20 teams with ~20 players/team. No one dreams of making it rich at soccer in the USA, and top athletes choose another sport.

In the vast majority of other countries competing at the top of the FIFA rankings, (Association) football is the dominant sport, or at worst co-dominant. Despite everything skewed against Soccer in the USA, we currently sit at #13 in the FIFA world rankings. That's not too bad by my count.

America. Even when we suck at something, we are still better at it than half the world.

Captain Oblivious · 2014-07-07 Reply Admin

QJo:
operagost:
Captain Oblivious:
Salad:
TRWTF is calling football soccer. What is wrong with you?

You know soccer is was coined by English people, right? It's a shortening of Association Football, with 'er' stuck on the end.

What you don't seem to realize is that there are like 5 different kinds of football, even in England and greater Britain. Association Football is what you commoners commonly, but wrongly, call "football".

TL;DR: It's "Association Football" or "Soccer". "Football" is just ambiguous.

Addendum (2014-07-06 14:10): Also, "The word "soccer" was in fact the most common way of referring to association football in the UK until around the 1970s, when it began to be perceived incorrectly as an Americanism."
Also, in American football, the ball used to be snapped with the foot as well as the hand. Field goals also used to score more points than touchdowns; thus, the kicking game was more important. It was once feasible to move the ball, at least laterally, with the foot, in a game that was pretty much a merger of a soccer-like game and a rugby-like game.

Unlike Brits, we don't change the name of a game when we feel like it.

Unlike Americans, we don't change the rules of a game when we feel like it.

Yeah, FIFA rules only change every year...

2014-07-07 Reply Admin

Mark:
If you choose Soccer as your sport, you are hoping to at best get a college scholarship

The real WTF is giving people free education money for being good at sports.

chubertdev · 2014-07-07 Reply Admin

Soccer is TRWTF. It's the only sport that I know of where every rule is designed to make the game more boring.

Captain Oblivious · 2014-07-07 Reply Admin

Really? It's almost exactly the same sport as basketball and hockey. They're all dribbling/goal games, with different rules about the number of players, offsides, and goal tending. Soccer fouls rules are pretty darn close to basketball foul rules.

The pace is slower than either of them, but then again, they play on a 100+ yard long field. And the games are longer. It turns the game into an endurance match.

North American Football is the weird one, with the constant time-outs for repositioning and play calling and the hyper-specialization of skills and the bizarre sign language and the 120 page long rule book that is written on letter sized pages like a legal document "At the end of a fourth overtime period, there will be another coin toss pursuant to Section 1, Article 2, and play will continue until a winner is declared".

chubertdev · 2014-07-07 Reply Admin

Captain Oblivious:
Really? It's almost exactly the same sport as basketball and hockey. They're all dribbling/goal games, with different rules about the number of players, offsides, and goal tending. Soccer fouls rules are pretty darn close to basketball foul rules.
The pace is slower than either of them, but then again, they play on a 100+ yard long field. And the games are longer. It turns the game into an endurance match.

North American Football is the weird one, with the constant time-outs for repositioning and play calling and the hyper-specialization of skills and the bizarre sign language and the 120 page long rule book that is written on letter sized pages like a legal document "At the end of a fourth overtime period, there will be another coin toss pursuant to Section 1, Article 2, and play will continue until a winner is declared".

-field is too large -too many players -offside -PKs in elimination games -draws -free kick versus PK determined by where player flopped -no penalty for clearing a ball wildly -no penalty for kicking a ball out of play

Addendum (2014-07-07 15:52): -no golden goal

2014-07-07 Reply Admin

If it is a holiday then why don't you simply post a new article the day before rather than the cop out that it is a holiday..christ

chubertdev · 2014-07-07 Reply Admin

Darren:
If it is a holiday then why don't you simply post a new article the day before rather than the cop out that it is a holiday..christ

It's very probably that since it is their website, they can do whatever they want with it, regardless of what entitled visitors complain about.

Severity One · 2014-07-08 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
Soccer is TRWTF. It's the only sport that I know of where every rule is designed to make the game more boring.

Um... and American football is any better? I find the game, when it's being played, fascinating to watch. It's almost like watching army manoeuvres.

The problem with American football is that they play a couple of seconds at most, after which the game is stopped. I can't stand that. They don't stop rugby or Aussie rules, so why then with American football?

Severity One · 2014-07-08 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
It's hard to get excited about a game that usually has a final score of 0-0, or in a real struggle, 1-0. Even more so a game where a tie or even a loss doesn't eliminate you from the competition.
Many Americans who paid even partial attention to the World Cup (me, not even that) had the same reaction: "Oh, we lost. So that's it, then. What? We're not eliminated? WTF?!"

Billions of people have absolutely no problem getting excited over a game that ends in 0-0. Bear in mind, Belgium vs. USA was 0-0 at the end of regular playing time, and it was a fantastic game.

The score argument is silly anyway. If you want many points, go and watch tennis.

It's true that many aspects of football are baffling to Americans. You don't know beforehand how long the match is going to last, for example. The referee decides and nobody else. And you cannot interrupt a match for a commercial break: there would be a popular revolt.

And that you don't get necessarily eliminated if you lose a game in the first round is because it's a tournament. I'm sure they have tournaments in the USA, right? Best of seven in basketball play-offs perhaps?

CigarDoug:
One more thing: Why doesn't FIFA have an 'S'? It is soccer we are talking about, right?

Because it's a French name: Fédération Internationale de Football Association. The French word for football is, as explained, "football".

Addendum (2014-07-08 03:32): Anyway, what I forgot to mention is that football is a very unpredictable game. You'd think that Costa Rica, as a tiny Central American country with 3.5 million inhabitants, wouldn't stand a chance in a group with three former world champions (Italy, England and Uruguay), but you'd be wrong. They came close to reaching the semi-finals.

It's also a game where you can see different systems and approaches battle one another. Greece are said to be playing anti-football, all defence and scoring on the counter, but it does get them quite far, and actually won them Euro 2004.

Belgium vs the USA (I keep mentioning that one), and Netherlands vs Australia, were battles with flair and technicality against power and perseverance.

Current world champions Spain (until Sunday that is), which had the best team ever, and dominated the past six to eight years, got absolutely hammered in their first game. They were indomitable, but others teams adapted to their "tiki-taka" style of play, which is now officially dead.

That's what fascinating. You cannot, ever, underestimate your opponent. You can have the best footballer in the world in your team, but you need a combination of talent, power, fitness, tactics, and working as a team. In that sense, it's a very complete game, and since no team has the ideal combination of all those factors, it becomes fascinating.

The last four remaining are Brazil (not so much talent as in previous decades, very physical, and enjoy the home advantage), Germany (good all-rounders, very good as a team), Argentina (the best footballer in the world, Lionel Messi) and the Netherlands (combination of talent, fitness, physicality and superb tactics). Four very different teams, and all of them stand a good chance of being world champions.

2014-07-08 Reply Admin

Captain Oblivious:
QJo:
operagost:
Captain Oblivious:
Salad:
TRWTF is calling football soccer. What is wrong with you?

You know soccer is was coined by English people, right? It's a shortening of Association Football, with 'er' stuck on the end.

What you don't seem to realize is that there are like 5 different kinds of football, even in England and greater Britain. Association Football is what you commoners commonly, but wrongly, call "football".

TL;DR: It's "Association Football" or "Soccer". "Football" is just ambiguous.

Addendum (2014-07-06 14:10): Also, "The word "soccer" was in fact the most common way of referring to association football in the UK until around the 1970s, when it began to be perceived incorrectly as an Americanism."
Also, in American football, the ball used to be snapped with the foot as well as the hand. Field goals also used to score more points than touchdowns; thus, the kicking game was more important. It was once feasible to move the ball, at least laterally, with the foot, in a game that was pretty much a merger of a soccer-like game and a rugby-like game.

Unlike Brits, we don't change the name of a game when we feel like it.

Unlike Americans, we don't change the rules of a game when we feel like it.

Yeah, FIFA rules only change every year...

FIFA is not a British organisation.

2014-07-08 Reply Admin

CigarDoug:
Many Americans who paid even partial attention to the World Cup (me, not even that) had the same reaction: "Oh, we lost. So that's it, then. What? We're not eliminated? WTF?!"

It's possible for neither of the Superb Owl finalists to have won their division. Why is that a problem?

chubertdev · 2014-07-08 Reply Admin

Severity One:
chubertdev:
Soccer is TRWTF. It's the only sport that I know of where every rule is designed to make the game more boring.
Um... and American football is any better? I find the game, when it's being played, fascinating to watch. It's almost like watching army manoeuvres.
The problem with American football is that they play a couple of seconds at most, after which the game is stopped. I can't stand that. They don't stop rugby or Aussie rules, so why then with American football?

That's the funny thing. When watching soccer, they're still playing, and it's easy to not pay attention when they're around midfield, since it takes about ten minutes to get from one side of the field to the other. Even though the clock stops for nothing, there's very little action when it comes to soccer.

chubertdev · 2014-07-08 Reply Admin

[sarcasm]The worst thing about soccer is that they never score that many goals.[/sarcasm]

excession · 2014-07-08 Reply Admin

I used to write oddball one-off scripts for site administrators, they were in AWK, or Perl, and nobody else understood AWK (it was brilliant for parsing logs). If there were problems with the script, I was the only person who could 'fix it'. Eventually management told me to stop supplying one-off scripts that did stuff, due to muffled complaints (ie I never heard the complaints!) from disparaging remote administrators.

Having a kludge like the OP in production would be farcical, and therefore perfectly expected. :/

Severity One · 2014-07-09 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
That's the funny thing. When watching soccer, they're still playing, and it's easy to not pay attention when they're around midfield, since it takes about ten minutes to get from one side of the field to the other. Even though the clock stops for nothing, there's very little action when it comes to soccer.

You're a funny man. The Germans scored four times in the span of six minutes yesterday.

What I find amazing is that some people are determined to be sarcastic about football, why they don't like it, and so on, and so forth. All this negativity, for what?

2014-07-09 Reply Admin

Severity One:
CigarDoug:
It's hard to get excited about a game that usually has a final score of 0-0, or in a real struggle, 1-0. Even more so a game where a tie or even a loss doesn't eliminate you from the competition.
Many Americans who paid even partial attention to the World Cup (me, not even that) had the same reaction: "Oh, we lost. So that's it, then. What? We're not eliminated? WTF?!"
Billions of people have absolutely no problem getting excited over a game that ends in 0-0. Bear in mind, Belgium vs. USA was 0-0 at the end of regular playing time, and it was a fantastic game.

The score argument is silly anyway. If you want many points, go and watch tennis.

It's true that many aspects of football are baffling to Americans. You don't know beforehand how long the match is going to last, for example. The referee decides and nobody else. And you cannot interrupt a match for a commercial break: there would be a popular revolt.

And that you don't get necessarily eliminated if you lose a game in the first round is because it's a tournament. I'm sure they have tournaments in the USA, right? Best of seven in basketball play-offs perhaps?

CigarDoug:
One more thing: Why doesn't FIFA have an 'S'? It is soccer we are talking about, right?
Because it's a French name: Fédération Internationale de Football Association. The French word for football is, as explained, "football".
Addendum (2014-07-08 03:32): Anyway, what I forgot to mention is that football is a very unpredictable game. You'd think that Costa Rica, as a tiny Central American country with 3.5 million inhabitants, wouldn't stand a chance in a group with three former world champions (Italy, England and Uruguay), but you'd be wrong. They came close to reaching the semi-finals.

It's also a game where you can see different systems and approaches battle one another. Greece are said to be playing anti-football, all defence and scoring on the counter, but it does get them quite far, and actually won them Euro 2004.

Belgium vs the USA (I keep mentioning that one), and Netherlands vs Australia, were battles with flair and technicality against power and perseverance.

Current world champions Spain (until Sunday that is), which had the best team ever, and dominated the past six to eight years, got absolutely hammered in their first game. They were indomitable, but others teams adapted to their "tiki-taka" style of play, which is now officially dead.

That's what fascinating. You cannot, ever, underestimate your opponent. You can have the best footballer in the world in your team, but you need a combination of talent, power, fitness, tactics, and working as a team. In that sense, it's a very complete game, and since no team has the ideal combination of all those factors, it becomes fascinating.

The last four remaining are Brazil (not so much talent as in previous decades, very physical, and enjoy the home advantage), Germany (good all-rounders, very good as a team), Argentina (the best footballer in the world, Lionel Messi) and the Netherlands (combination of talent, fitness, physicality and superb tactics). Four very different teams, and all of them stand a good chance of being world champions.

When I post a contrary opinion in an online forum (using facts, logic, history, etc.), I usually get raked over the coals for daring to oppose the OP's brilliant opinion. "Troll" is usually the knee-jerk reaction I get, which now apparently means, "I'm upset that you dared to disagree with me".

This is my first post where I actually set out to troll, sarcasm and all (FIFA - heh). I caught a big fish with my first try. I can see the appeal.

Severity One · 2014-07-09 Reply Admin

Too bad, though, that you missed my condescending tone. Yes, I can recognise a troll: big, ugly, slow-witted creatures. But don't worry, next time I'll mention it when I'm explaining something as to a child.

chubertdev · 2014-07-09 Reply Admin

Severity One:
chubertdev:
That's the funny thing. When watching soccer, they're still playing, and it's easy to not pay attention when they're around midfield, since it takes about ten minutes to get from one side of the field to the other. Even though the clock stops for nothing, there's very little action when it comes to soccer.
You're a funny man. The Germans scored four times in the span of six minutes yesterday.
What I find amazing is that some people are determined to be sarcastic about football, why they don't like it, and so on, and so forth. All this negativity, for what?

When all the analysts said that you'll never see a World Cup game like that again, they were right. Most are low scoring, and very boring.

2014-07-09 Reply Admin

Severity One:
What I find amazing is that some people are determined to be sarcastic about football, why they don't like it, and so on, and so forth. All this negativity, for what?

To give androids power to play football. If you want positivity, you'd have to learn how Isaac Asimov would have powered his robots.

2014-07-16 Reply Admin

Kick the USA's ass? It took you more than 90 minutes to make a goal and the game ended in 2-1.

(And I am not American).

Classic WTF: The Program Generator Program

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