• DoTheMath (unregistered) in reply to Biggles
    Biggles:
    Bernard:
    I come from the UK - we like to use imperial for milk, beer and speed limits. Everything else is metric. Not sure how we ended up like this...

    O RLY?

    My milk comes in 500 ml cartons, which is lessthan a pint. Sure, they charge me as if it's a pint, but it's not really.

    Swing and a miss:

    500 ml = 1.05668821 US pints

  • Steve-o- (unregistered) in reply to Keith

    But isn't the point of the table to allow for shorter working weeks? I would guess that when there is a public holiday (UK English = Bank Holiday) then the developer thought that the users would go in and manually amend the table to ensure that the reports (?) are correct. Hard to hard code this due to Easter moving etc etc. In some languages there are functions for this.

    In VBA I personally would have had a table where you enter the public holidays and look up the date range and deduct these from a hard coded 5. Or am I missing something?

  • Steve-o- (unregistered) in reply to DoTheMath
    DoTheMath:
    Biggles:
    Bernard:
    I come from the UK - we like to use imperial for milk, beer and speed limits. Everything else is metric. Not sure how we ended up like this...

    O RLY?

    My milk comes in 500 ml cartons, which is lessthan a pint. Sure, they charge me as if it's a pint, but it's not really.

    Swing and a miss:

    500 ml = 1.05668821 US pints

    1 Imperial (UK) pint = 568.261485 millilitres

  • Loren Pechtel (unregistered)

    I'm wondering if there might be at least some sanity to this? Everyone seems to be assuming 5 days/week is set in stone but it isn't.

    1. Holidays.

    2. Overtime.

    A couple of times I have written code that is suspiciously like this: It contains some information about the day and auto-initializes more as needed. In both cases there is an editor somewhere that lets you change what's in the table--the auto-initialize takes care of the normal case (including holidays), a human can use the editor if there is something unusual.

  • (cs)

    re: 5 day work week

    Some employers let you do your 40 hours in 4 days.

    Now what do you do?

  • (cs) in reply to Bernard
    Bernard:
    I come from the UK - we like to use imperial for milk, beer and speed limits. Everything else is metric. Not sure how we ended up like this...
    It's the weights-and-measures equivalent of legacy code. It ended up like this because that's what happened.

    Beer is in imperial measures because the laws in that area are very explicit, speed limits/distances are again defined by law though that's probably easier to change than beer quantities, and milk's just plain inconsistent (it's formally sold in metric quantities, but in some cases those quantities are within 1mℓ of a pint, and in others it is in multiples of a quarter litre).

    As I said, legacy code…

  • BJ Upton (unregistered) in reply to Crabs
    Crabs:
    Bernard:
    I come from the UK - we like to use imperial for milk, beer and speed limits. Everything else is metric. Not sure how we ended up like this...

    Well, because a pint is the perfect amount of beer to be served in one glass.

    That's true.

    But have you measured a standard pint glass as used in the US? 14.5 ounces.

  • BJ Upton (unregistered) in reply to Loren Pechtel
    Loren Pechtel:
    I'm wondering if there might be at least some sanity to this? Everyone seems to be assuming 5 days/week is set in stone but it isn't.

    1. Holidays.

    2. Overtime.

    A couple of times I have written code that is suspiciously like this: It contains some information about the day and auto-initializes more as needed. In both cases there is an editor somewhere that lets you change what's in the table--the auto-initialize takes care of the normal case (including holidays), a human can use the editor if there is something unusual.

    Wouldn't it be easier to just have a table with the holidays in it?

  • (cs)
    Jake Vinson:
    And who can forget the classic scene from Vertigo in which Kim Novak's character hints at a passion for dendrochronology as she finds the years of her birth and death on the rings of a tree.

    For those of us who haven't seen this movie, can someone explain how this person is able to find the year of her own death in the rings of a tree?

  • BobB (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    Jake Vinson:
    And who can forget the classic scene from Vertigo in which Kim Novak's character hints at a passion for dendrochronology as she finds the years of her birth and death on the rings of a tree.

    For those of us who haven't seen this movie, can someone explain how this person is able to find the year of her own death in the rings of a tree?

    It's the ring that's bright red and generated when the tree fell on her.

    Captcha: transverbero - Verbs that like to cross dress?

  • happyman (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know

    The proper response to this question is to ask

    1. Do you believe in ghosts?

    2. Do you believe ghosts can possess people?

    3. Do you ever intend to see the movie?

  • american pints are for tossers (unregistered) in reply to DoTheMath
    DoTheMath:

    Swing and a miss:

    500 ml = 1.05668821 US pints

    1 US pint = 0.83267384 Imperial pints

    Thanks for playing.

  • happyman (unregistered)

    Whoops. My previous post is in response to the previous poster, who asked about the reference to "Vertigo."

  • iToad (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    re: 5 day work week

    Some employers let you do your 40 hours in 4 days.

    Now what do you do?

    In the past, I worked the following schedule:

    Employees will work one week of four, nine-hour days and one eight-hour day with a two-day weekend. The next week, the same employees will work four nine-hour days and have three days off for the weekend.

    The work force is broken into two schedules; A and B. Schedule A will work four nine-hour days and one eight-hour day the first week with Saturday and Sunday off. During the second week, Schedule A will work four nine-hour days and have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off.

    Schedule B will work a different schedule so that only half of the work force is off on each Friday.

    The hours of work for will be 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday with a 30-minute lunch. The Friday schedule will be from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

    The workweek will begin Friday MidShift and continue until MidShift the next Friday morning."

    Let's see the original developer code -this- schedule into a VB application.

  • Squeezey McFeelpants (unregistered) in reply to m
    m:
    "By the time he found the below snippet, he felt like he needed a cold shower."

    The code made him horny?

    Of course, with all that wood right in his face.

    Scrolling up, and down, and up, and down...

    brbshower

  • (cs) in reply to vt_mruhlin
    vt_mruhlin:
    ...the aliens who originally colonized earth had 6 fingers on each hand.
    You keel-a my father. Prepare to die.
  • Anaxscotia (unregistered)

    Surely TRWTF is that the day and the month are transposed in the comments.

  • John (unregistered) in reply to Biggles

    Umm, I've never seen milk sold in a 500ml carton in the UK, it's always 568ml, or a multiple of. It did strike me as odd when I moved over here (England) first, but since then I've become more English than them themselves.

  • (cs) in reply to JimM
    JimM:
    vt_mruhlin:
    The whole reason there are 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 12 inches in a foot, etc is that the aliens who originally colonized earth had 6 fingers on each hand.
    Amen. After all, digital just means "Can be counted on ones fingers"... ;^)

    12 fingerbones.

  • (cs) in reply to iToad
    iToad:
    snoofle:
    re: 5 day work week

    Some employers let you do your 40 hours in 4 days.

    Now what do you do?

    In the past, I worked the following schedule:

    Employees will work one week of four, nine-hour days and one eight-hour day with a two-day weekend. The next week, the same employees will work four nine-hour days and have three days off for the weekend.

    The work force is broken into two schedules; A and B. Schedule A will work four nine-hour days and one eight-hour day the first week with Saturday and Sunday off. During the second week, Schedule A will work four nine-hour days and have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off.

    Schedule B will work a different schedule so that only half of the work force is off on each Friday.

    The hours of work for will be 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday with a 30-minute lunch. The Friday schedule will be from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

    The workweek will begin Friday MidShift and continue until MidShift the next Friday morning."

    Let's see the original developer code -this- schedule into a VB application.

    Easy. He'd just code it both ways and comment out one way depending on which week it was.

  • (cs) in reply to John
    John:
    Umm, I've never seen milk sold in a 500ml carton in the UK, it's always 568ml, or a multiple of. It did strike me as odd when I moved over here (England) first, but since then I've become more English than them themselves.
    Yup. For evidence: One 1.13L (2 pint*) British milk (hope that link works, it's to a page that's normally in a frame and probably contains a session ID in the URL) We're not legally allowed to sell anything but beer in pints (and IIRC that's only when serving it in glasses, and it refers to the size of the glass, not the amount of beer, which just happens to fill the glass), which is why the bottle is marked with a stupid number of ml or litres first, then a nice whole number of pints in brackets. *UK pints, not US. US pints are wimps.
  • (cs) in reply to Addison
    Addison:
    akatherder:
    tdb:
    If we designed a new system of measures for time with no legacy support, we'd probably end up with day divided into 100 thousand units (10/100/100) and possibly a week of 5 or 10 days.

    Maybe if you're one of the few who use metric system. Here in the US we like our measurements (whether they be time, length, or mass) to be intuitive. 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard, 1760 yards = 1 mile.

    shivers- if you weren't being sarcastic I would be very frightened.

    Last time I checked well over 5.5 billion people used metric. I hope you like being in a club where you're the only member. Well, other then Burma and Liberia. But they don't count.

    Racist.

  • m0ffx (unregistered)

    I've opined this before...WTFs relating to DIY date/time manipulation code should be banned on the grounds of being too common.

  • (cs)

    So he felt like he needed a cold shower because the code turned him on so much? Eww...

  • (cs) in reply to hvm
    hvm:
    Imperial is used only in the former British Empire countries which don't amount to a large portion of the world population.

    Ever heard the saying "The sun never sets on the British Empire". There were around a third of the worlds population in the British Empire by the 1920's.

  • Marvin the Martian (unregistered) in reply to vt_mruhlin
    vt_mruhlin:
    The whole reason there are 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 12 inches in a foot, etc is that the aliens who originally colonized earth had 6 fingers on each hand.
    This doesn't explain the 60's in time- and angle minutes.

    Except your aliens have a 12pronged pen!s to continue their count with.

  • Aaron (unregistered) in reply to Not Wtf
    Not Wtf:
    I also heard TopCod3r got banned. If you go back and look at some previous articles it seems like all of his comments got deleted.

    http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Unprepared-For-Divide_By_Zero.aspx#220695

    http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Meet-Burt.aspx#220345

    Hmm looks like his comments are still around to me. Which ones got deleted?

  • Not Wtf (unregistered) in reply to Aaron
    Aaron:
    Not Wtf:
    I also heard TopCod3r got banned. If you go back and look at some previous articles it seems like all of his comments got deleted.

    http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Unprepared-For-Divide_By_Zero.aspx#220695

    http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Meet-Burt.aspx#220345

    Hmm looks like his comments are still around to me. Which ones got deleted?

    I don't know for sure. I was looking at the comments for the Hot Room story. A lot of other people's comments got deleted too, without explanation. I didn't go back and look through the older stories, but I remember at least one other time recently seeing comments mysteriously disappear (good comments, not FRIST POST!!!)

  • (cs) in reply to hvm
    hvm:
    Don't get this as an anti imperial system rant but why is 12inch=1foot, 3feet=1yard, 1760yards=1mile more intuitive than simple multiplication (or division) by 10 for each prefix?
    Don't take this as a defense of the imperial system, but as one who had to switch from metric to imperial, I can say that the imperial system is nicely anthropometric. A foot is about the length of my foot, an inch is about the width of my thumb (pressed down).

    That said, calculating is a lot harder, and there are a lot more units of measure to remember. I've had a recipe that called for a cup of something or other that was only sold in pints. I couldn't find anyone in the store who could tell me if a cup was larger or smaller than a pint (I wanted to buy a large enough quantity so I could measure at home).

    Oh, and ounce being both a measure of volume and weight? Epic fail.

  • Constant Mild Inebriation (unregistered) in reply to hvm
    hvm:
    Don't get this as an anti imperial system rant but why is 12inch=1foot, 3feet=1yard, 1760yards=1mile more intuitive than simple multiplication (or division) by 10 for each prefix? Also there are many people using the metric system, probably more than the ones using the imperial one: most of Europe, most of Asia (if I'm not mistaken China too which really boosts the number), probably most of South America etc. Imperial is used only in the former British Empire countries which don't amount to a large portion of the world population...

    They were units devised by those using them, as they were needed (i.e. from the bottom-up). Those who work with imperial units have no problem converting back and forth. It's very rare for the lay person to be required to convert between sub-systems (e.g. weights to volumes or vice-versa), so it's no big deal that there is no easy way to convert.

    Converting is not much of an advantage in metric, you still need to look up density if you want to convert liters of fuel to kilograms, but at least it's easier to estimate if you know that whatever substance floats or sinks in water.

    As the case with bottom-up design, sometimes two systems would have to be joined together that don't quite sync. That's why you get weird conversions like 11 yards equals 2 furlongs, and other cases where the units are separate and will likely always be, like troy weights and measures.

    A theory on a contributing factor as to why the bases never seem to be constant in Imperial measurements: Until fairly recent times, urban water was often not safe to drink. The beverage of choice was beer or wine, because fermentation and anaerobic storage would kill off most pathogens. As a result, most people lived day-to-day in a state of constant mild inebriation. In these conditions, the level of WTF-ery can approach a maximum, paradoxically coincident with productivity.

  • sep332 (unregistered) in reply to TopCod3r Fan Boy
    TopCod3r Fan Boy:
    Not Wtf:
    I also heard TopCod3r got banned. If you go back and look at some previous articles it seems like all of his comments got deleted. It is almost like he never existed now.

    TopCod3r post doubleplusungood refs unperson. unbellyfill dwtf too luaghwise. rewrite fullwise upsub anteposting.

    Dude, that was awesome! I can't believe no one else here seems to get it...

    Censorship seems to be getting more serious these days. http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/05/201205 and http://arstechnica.com/reviews/other/future-of-reputation.ars

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to A. Cube
    A. Cube:
    If we designed a new system of measures for time with no legacy support, we'd probably end up with day divided into 100 thousand units (10/100/100) and possibly a week of 5 or 10 days.

    The French tried a decimal time system--it didn't catch on.

    That's mostly because they made 10 day weeks without extra weekends.

  • (cs) in reply to Crabs
    Crabs:
    Bernard:
    I come from the UK - we like to use imperial for milk, beer and speed limits. Everything else is metric. Not sure how we ended up like this...

    Well, because a pint is the perfect amount of beer to be served in one glass.

    Normally I'd agree with you. Much more than a pint and your beer is flat and warm before you finish it. But remeber, the OP is from the UK. They like their beer flat a warm.

  • (cs) in reply to DoTheMath
    DoTheMath:
    Biggles:
    Bernard:
    I come from the UK - we like to use imperial for milk, beer and speed limits. Everything else is metric. Not sure how we ended up like this...

    O RLY?

    My milk comes in 500 ml cartons, which is lessthan a pint. Sure, they charge me as if it's a pint, but it's not really.

    Swing and a miss:

    500 ml = 1.05668821 US pints

    Or 500 ml = 0.879876 UK pints

    http://www.metric-conversions.org/cgi-bin/util/convert.cgi

    Who swung and missed?

  • (cs) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Take all the rocket engines on Earth, put them on one side of the planet (the "back" to speed up, the "front" to slow down) and fire them up (compensating for rotation) long enough to speed up [slow down] the planet until a year is a power of ten days long. Man prevails over nature and alters his environment. Problem solved.

    Or possibly this would have exactly the opposite effect that you intended. Firing rockets from the "back" will add energy, putting the planet into a higher orbit around the sun, which means that it will take longer to complete an orbit, effectively slowing it down. Using the "front" rockets to slow down will put you in a lower orbit, and you will make a complete circuit faster.

    You have to think "backwards" in terms of speed when dealing with Orbital Mechanics.

  • Constant Mild Inebriation (unregistered) in reply to Marvin the Martian
    Marvin the Martian:
    vt_mruhlin:
    The whole reason there are 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 12 inches in a foot, etc is that the aliens who originally colonized earth had 6 fingers on each hand.
    This doesn't explain the 60's in time- and angle minutes.

    Except your aliens have a 12pronged pen!s to continue their count with.

    Base sixty comes from twelve being counted on the phalanges on one hand as pointed by the thumb, times five on the other hand. This way of counting is still used today in some parts of the Middle East. It's a great base, lots of divisors, easy to work with.

    The ancient Babylonians were the originators. It was a very good system for its day, well ahead of the rest of the world. Drawbacks were powers of sixty were implied so you didn't know if ||| meant 3, 180 or 10,800, that had to be figured out by context, and no symbol for zero, just a space that could often get overlooked during transcription.

    It wasn't until Fibonacci's time that decimal started to be used in Europe. Before the learned used base 60 and Roman numerals. Fibonacci might write the square root of II as "most certainly greater than the sum of I and XXIV parts of LX and LI parts of MMMDC". Had a symbol for zero and an equivalent to a decimal point been established, we'd probably be using base 60 exclusively today.

  • TopCod3r Fan Boy (unregistered) in reply to Walleye
    Walleye:
    You have to think "backwards" in terms of speed when dealing with Orbital Mechanics.
    So, that's why the ringworld so unstable then?
  • bramster (unregistered) in reply to Walleye
    Walleye:
    snoofle:
    Take all the rocket engines on Earth, put them on one side of the planet (the "back" to speed up, the "front" to slow down) and fire them up (compensating for rotation) long enough to speed up [slow down] the planet until a year is a power of ten days long. Man prevails over nature and alters his environment. Problem solved.

    Or possibly this would have exactly the opposite effect that you intended. Firing rockets from the "back" will add energy, putting the planet into a higher orbit around the sun, which means that it will take longer to complete an orbit, effectively slowing it down. Using the "front" rockets to slow down will put you in a lower orbit, and you will make a complete circuit faster.

    You have to think "backwards" in terms of speed when dealing with Orbital Mechanics.

    and that, kiddies is why they call it "Rocket Science"

  • fsdfqsdqsdfsdfsdfqsdf (unregistered) in reply to Another TopCod3r fan
    Another TopCod3r fan:
    Ebs2002:
    I hear that topcoder's account was banned...

    What? Why? I have started reading the comment threads almost exclusively these days to see TopCod3r's response!

    ++

    Alex--

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to ContraCorners
    ContraCorners:
    DoTheMath:
    Biggles:
    Bernard:
    I come from the UK - we like to use imperial for milk, beer and speed limits. Everything else is metric. Not sure how we ended up like this...

    O RLY?

    My milk comes in 500 ml cartons, which is lessthan a pint. Sure, they charge me as if it's a pint, but it's not really.

    Swing and a miss:

    500 ml = 1.05668821 US pints

    Or 500 ml = 0.879876 UK pints

    http://www.metric-conversions.org/cgi-bin/util/convert.cgi

    Who swung and missed?

    http://www.google.com/search?q=500+ml+to+UK+pints

    Google knows ALL!

  • (cs)

    Forget the decimal time system, use teh binary!

    I'm posting this at 10:1001 pm, for example.

  • Evo (unregistered) in reply to fsdfqsdqsdfsdfsdfqsdf

    --

    evo++

  • Evo (unregistered) in reply to fsdfqsdqsdfsdfsdfqsdf
    fsdfqsdqsdfsdfsdfqsdf:
    Another TopCod3r fan:
    Ebs2002:
    I hear that topcoder's account was banned...

    What? Why? I have started reading the comment threads almost exclusively these days to see TopCod3r's response!

    ++

    Alex--

    --

    evo++

  • bramster (unregistered) in reply to Bappi
    Bappi:

    . . . snip

    Oh, and ounce being both a measure of volume and weight? Epic fail.

    Huh? Are you talking about, perhaps, the "Fluid Ounce?"?

    In the same vein. . . I like "gear-inches", where the mechanical (dis)advantage of a bicycle gear selection is described as the diameter of a corresponding Penny-Farthing bicycle's front wheel, to which the pedals were solidly affixed. The lower the number, the easier to push the pedals.

    When faced with a really steep hill, one used the 24-inch gear, i.e., two feet.

  • iMalc (unregistered)

    Time to chop that tree down and plant a nice thin new sapling already!

  • fnord (unregistered) in reply to Bappi
    Bappi:
    I couldn't find anyone in the store who could tell me if a cup was larger or smaller than a pint (I wanted to buy a large enough quantity so I could measure at home)
    2 cups per pint, just FYI.
  • Anonymous Cowherd (unregistered)

    Don't worry, thread readers; I hear that TopCod3r is all right. He went to live on a farm, where he can run and play. Irish Girl is there too. They're very happy. Please don't cry.

    captcha: pecus (That's dirty.)

  • Marvin the Martian (unregistered) in reply to Constant Mild Inebriation
    Constant Mild Inebriation:
    They were units devised by those using them, as they were needed (i.e. from the bottom-up). Those who work with imperial units have no problem converting back and forth. It's very rare for the lay person to be required to convert between sub-systems (e.g. weights to volumes or vice-versa), so it's no big deal that there is no easy way to convert.

    This is obviously a complete lie. Having moved from Metric to Imperial territories, it just baffles me: as you go from small to large, the units switcheroo randomly and I dare you to convert them. What you imply is a worldview in which all putters about leisurely. It necessitates a stroboscopic view in which small has nothing to do with medium sized, and medium with large; and slow nothing with fast.

    For instance, the sugar I use can go from teaspoon via tablespoon to ounce then pound then ??, suddenly becoming (metric or not, unspecified) tonnes. While human weights have stones. So, if I need half a teaspoon of medicine per pound of bodyweight, there's a good chance my doc miscalculates and kills me. Speeds in miles/hour, with no easy relation to yards/minute --- so forget about a feel for "I'm doing XX miles/hour, so the next 100yards will take me YY".

    It's almost as bad as the football statium as surface unit and double-decker as weight.

  • TopCod3r Vot3r (unregistered)

    I think TopCod3r banned rumor is due to his comment getting deleted on the Engineer Story: http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Sticking-to-the-Method.aspx#220076

    Alex, should really run a story on him! Imagine an article with these quotes:

    I am not a Java programmer (although I am sure it would be easy for me), but I have chosen to go into the more lucrative field of Visual Basic, since it is higher demand and has more room for promotion

    Even on the password recovery screen (forgotten password), you should not show the password on the web page. For example, on my companies website, that I developed, if you forget your password, then you can retrieve it by entering your login name and type in the email where you want the password to be sent, and it will mail you what your password is, but NEVER (NEVER!) display the password in plain text on a web page.

    It is hard to find people who have the right mix of skills and personality. Some people realize halfway through my technical interview that they lack the required knowledge and simply cut it short and walk out of the room, I assume in embarrassment.

    Here are some examples of programs I have written for our technical support group: ud.exe - this goes up a directory, so instead of typing "cd.." you can simply type "ud" ud2.exe - this goes up TWO directories at once, so it is like doing ud twice. ud3.exe - this goes up THREE directories at once (you get the picture by now I hope). mkdirrandom.exe - makes a new directory with a random name, using a random number generator I wrote (I adapted the code someone posted on this site).

    One of the tricks I use when some of my software is running slow is to hand out a really cheap USB stick to the user and tell him or her to plug it into their computer and that it boosts performance of my application by up to 20%. It works especially well on salespeople and executives. I keep a jar of USB drives on my desk in case this happens. I just counted and I have 12 of them in my jar right now. I bought 20 of them from MicroCenter last month, so that tells you how useful they are... at $5 a pop (I expense them).

  • (cs) in reply to Crabs

    You mean half a liter, plus a bit?

    Well, it's better than the U.S. pint, which is just short half a liter. The silly muffins.

Leave a comment on “Code Dendrochronology”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article