• Mnc_ (unregistered)

    "THIS MESSAGE IS NEVER PRINTED". I've seen my fair share of these. Shrugs

  • Didiman (unregistered) in reply to lizardfoot

    Well you have to know, to really good developers @Oracle are working for the DBMS, all the others are doing the Application crap

  • There were no your name or the your name is not available. (unregistered)

    There were no comments or the comment message is not available.

  • (cs) in reply to Carnildo
    Carnildo:
    And while you're at it, could you give me the smallest positive integer that is the sum of two consecutive positive integers, the sum of three consecutive positive integers, and the sum of four consecutive positive integers?

    I hadn't heard that one before, but surely it is over-stated? Neither the positivity nor the middle condition are necessary for contradiction; just "sum of 2 consecutive integers" (which must always be odd) and "sum of 4 consecutive integers" (which must always be even). As for the answer... am I allowed to use modular arithmetic ? ;-p

  • (cs) in reply to alexgieg
    alexgieg:
    Hereby, then, I define 'b' (from "backwards") as the number that answer the question: What's the number that is greater than x and lower than x-1, where 'x' is any real number?

    Well, it cannot be a number, since numbers are well-ordered and this is precisely the quality that's being violated here, in almost precisely but not entirely the way the use of imaginary numbers doesn't violate it.

    The only option I can think of, is that they have reordered the digits. Let's assume they're still working in base 10, then they might count like this: 0, 2, 4, 3, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. That would make 30 > 40 and 30 < 10. If we move the digit 1 past digit 5, we would actually obtain 40 < 50 < 10, which is what the application requires. Then this error message would simply be the result of a small bug in the consistency check.

    Doesn't that make much more sense?

  • (cs)

    In the vein of the first error message, I'm reminded of some code I saw once:

    switch (errorcode)
{
  case FILE_NOT_FOUND: fprintf(stderr, "File not found.");    break;
  case ACCESS_DENIED:  fprintf(stderr, "Access denied.");     break;
  // ...
  // etc
  // ...
  default:             fprintf(stderr, "None of the above."); break;
}

    'Cause, of course, it's perfectly helpful when you get the error message "None of the above".

    Addendum (2007-09-06 03:58): As for the third error, I think either the "ranks count backwards and the error's badly worded" camp is right, or it's in fact the 10 that's in error, not the 50, but the error came up for the wrong one... Think about it: in the sequence 1,2,3, 40, 50, 10, 98,99,100 - the first number to be not strictly between its neighbours is the 50, even though it's the 10 that's out of place. So if a program just looped through the numbers in order and complained about the first one where p[i-1] < p[i] < p[i+1] wasn't true, then it'd complain about the 50 (and helpfully suggest you move it into 40 < x < 10)

  • Alcari (unregistered) in reply to freelancer
    freelancer:
    Sgt. Preston:
    nobody:
    Andrew:
    iToad:
    The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...
    • What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
    • Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
    • What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

    Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

    Well, I think they're equal. The 40 is base-4 and the 10 is hexadecimal. So, they are both 16 in decimal, right?

    Quo Erat Deranged

    Wouldn't 16 be 100 in base 4?

    We have another kōan: What is the decimal value of the base 4 number 40?
    Protip: base 4 has four digits: 0 1 2 3. You do the math.

    I believe the exact number to be OVER NINE-THOUSAND!

  • (cs) in reply to Alcari
    Alcari:
    I believe the exact number to be OVER NINE-THOUSAND!
    While simultaneously being less than eight thousand, of course?
  • 28% genius (unregistered) in reply to Carnildo
    Carnildo:

    And while you're at it, could you give me the smallest positive integer that is the sum of two consecutive positive integers, the sum of three consecutive positive integers, and the sum of four consecutive positive integers?

    Don't ask me to solve your Project Euler problems.

  • ThisJustIn (unregistered) in reply to iToad
    • What is the sound of one hand clapping ? Quoth Terry Pratchett: "Cl", since the other hand does the "ap"
  • ThisJustIn (unregistered) in reply to iToad

    [quote user="iToad"]The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...

    • What is the sound of one hand clapping ?

    Freely quothing Terry Pratchett: "Cl" since the other hand does the "ap".

  • Cope with IT (unregistered) in reply to TGV
    TGV:
    Well, it cannot be a number, since numbers are well-ordered and this is precisely the quality that's being violated here, in almost precisely but not entirely the way the use of imaginary numbers doesn't violate it.
    Apart from the fact that complex numbers are numbers, but are not ordered. There's no way of deciding whether i would be less than or larger than 1.

    Captcha: muhahaha - Yes, indeed.

  • sxeraverx (unregistered) in reply to RobbieAreBest

    Maybe not a different time dimension but a different algebra. A ring comes to mind, for example, with the integers from 0 to 99. rank>40 && rank<10 would suggest all the integers from 40 to 10, on the side that includes 41.

  • Izzy (unregistered)

    The last one just needed a bit of adjustment with the sonic screwdriver. Right then, I'll be off now. <sound of Tardis departing>

  • (cs) in reply to Frymaster
    Frymaster:
    surely that last error is saying "these values need to be in increasing order. This value is out of order. The previous value is 40 and the next value is 10"

    the values could be 40,5,10, or 40,45,10, or similar. Either way, it's pointing out some data corruption that involves more than one value. If it only involved one corrupt value it'd be a series like 40,10,50 or 40,60,50

    Ahhh... With that logic, you must be the Frymaster at the local McDonald's. <g>

  • (cs) in reply to iToad
    iToad:
    The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...
    • What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
    • Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
    • What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

    Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

    Why are there Braille markings on the Drive up ATM?

    Ponderables

  • (cs) in reply to T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM
    T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM:
    Foobar:
    There is no comment or this comment is not avaliable.
    (TR0100) THIS COMMENT IS NEVER PRINTED.
    Don't you recognize the Jedi Mind Trick? "These are not the Droids you are looking for"

    "I was never here!"

  • (cs) in reply to too_many_usernames
    too_many_usernames:
    (Now, if this were the forums posting instead of main page, I would know how to embed a picture... instead I have no idea how to do this in BBCode...)

    Opening square bracket, img, closing square bracket, the URL to the image, opening square bracket, /img, closing square bracket. Voilá!

    Who says that Worse Than Failure isn't educational? :-)

  • TallGuy (unregistered) in reply to RobbieAreBest

    Now, personally I think the guys suggesting bases, modulo, and ring algebra are on the right track with this, but maybe the coder just included debug information in the error message. I mean:

    "time rank which is greater than its preceding level and less than its following level"

    transates to:

    time rank (ie 50)

    preceding level (40) and < following level (10)

    Really, who hasn't included the variables' values in an error message at some point in their work?

  • (cs) 
    A student was playing a handheld video game during a class.
The teacher called on the student and asked him what he was doing.
The student replied that he was trying to master the game.

The teacher said, "There exists a state in which you will not attempt to master the game, and the game will not attempt to master you."
The student asked, "What is this state?"
The teacher said, "Give me your video game, and I will show you."

The student gave him the game, and the teacher threw it to the ground, breaking it into pieces. The student was enlightened.

    [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_koan#Victory]

  • AnotherAnon (unregistered) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    iToad:
    The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...
    • What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
    • Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
    • What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

    Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

    Why are there Braille markings on the Drive up ATM?

    Ponderables

    I see your point but haven't you ever used a drive through ATM on foot? Apparently not.
  • (cs) in reply to D. T. North
    D. T. North:
    You'd have to ask Microsoft.

    Ok. Your comment establishes two things:

    1. Your brain stayed south when you went North.
    2. You're another stupid "bash MS for everything, even when they aren't responsible and have nothing to do with it" /. moron.

    Seriously, a-hole - if you don't have the intelligence to post something that comes close to making sense, save the rest of us the trouble of seeing your nonsense.

    Nothing wrong with blaming MS for things that are their fault. Being dumb enough to blame them just because, even when it has nothing to do with them, is wrong. It's about as intelligent as "Gee, my 1975 model microwave quit working. Stupid Microsoft!" Get a brain, will ya?

  • perdidopunk (unregistered) in reply to Sgt. Preston

    somebody's reading Gödel, Escher, Bach.

  • Sgt. Preston (unregistered) in reply to freelancer
    freelancer:
    Sgt. Preston:
    nobody:
    Andrew:
    iToad:
    The last example makes an excellent Zen koan for programmers...
    • What is the sound of one hand clapping ?
    • Does a dog have Buddha nature ?
    • What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?

    Meditate on these questions and become enlightened.

    Well, I think they're equal. The 40 is base-4 and the 10 is hexadecimal. So, they are both 16 in decimal, right?

    Quo Erat Deranged

    Wouldn't 16 be 100 in base 4?

    We have another kōan: What is the decimal value of the base 4 number 40?
    Protip: base 4 has four digits: 0 1 2 3. You do the math.
    Very good. Now look up kōan, mieditate on the resistance of 40 as a base 4 number to rational comprehension, and be enlightened.

  • Troy Mclure (unregistered) in reply to lizardfoot
    lizardfoot:
    The sad part is that Cognos Powerplay is being used by some people at the company I work for. I smell Oracle all over this too. The new young CEO of Oracle is buying up every little piece of crap software he can find and releasing it whether it works or not as "Oracle Applications". It all smells of stinky tofu to me.

    a) You smell b) There is no "new young CEO" of Oracle - it it still Larry Ellison as it has been forever.

    But good try

  • rumpelstiltskin (unregistered) in reply to alexgieg

    [quote user="alexgieg"][quote user="iToad"]- What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?[/quote]Actually, I think this could be solved the way mathematicians "solved" the square root of a negative number on the 19th century: create a new number "i", say it's the answer, and keep working from there.

    Of course, you can't just define numbers to have any old property (even if the "numbers" otherwise satisfy things like well-ordering, spelled out in the Principia); that's what Godel's Theorem is all about. A more serious issue is, we aren't talking about numbers. We're talking about ranks. Mapping between ranks and numbers reverses orders. The message makes perfect sense, and just isn't meant to be read by someone who doesn't know what the hell he is doing.

  • Khanmots (unregistered)

    x > 40, x < 10 ...

    That's easy, you've just got to realize that they're not using base 10. It's easy to come up with a base where it makes sense.

    Like... base -16

    Then we can convert those numbers to the base 10 we're used to and you'll see just how much that makes sense!

    converting 40 from base -16 to base 10 gives -64 converting 10 from base -16 to base 10 gives -16

    So now we've got x > -64, x < -16

    Seems OK to me!

  • Chucara (unregistered)

    Nothing beats the Xboc Media Center error message:

    Error! Success!

  • JohnB (unregistered) in reply to Mnc_
    Mnc_:
    "THIS MESSAGE IS NEVER PRINTED". I've seen my fair share of these. *Shrugs*
    And I created one. "This error message should not appear. Please contact computer services if you see this message."

    Turns out that the user department had, uh, misspoken when they advised that all the data had been validated and sorted correctly for the conversion. My "throw-away" test caught the incorrect sort; my end-of-run balance totals caught the mistakes in the user department's validation.

    On the other hand, they were very apologetic, fixed the data that caused the sort problem and found every missing penny (one account was off by $0.02 and only a half-dozen or accounts out of several thousand were incorrectly captured) so the (approximately) $5,000,000 conversion went smoothly in the end (and this was back in the 1970s when a dollar was still worth a dollar).

  • ChaosL00 (unregistered)

    A value great than 50 and lest than 10. The answer is simple.

    50/0.

    It's both greater than 50 and less than 10 :D

  • ChaosL00 (unregistered) in reply to ChaosL00

    opps should be greater than 40 less than 10

    the answer 50/0

  • OmniCog (unregistered)

    As a "user" of Cognos products for nearly two years, I just knew they would show up here eventually. Most of their oft confusing software is not nearly so entertaining... However, if you hold your mouth just right and hop up on your left foot and down on your right, and the moons of Saturn happen to align, it can do some pretty incredible stuff. Haven't caught it in too many actual errors - but lots of not-so-obvious ways of doing things.

  • Matt Flowers (unregistered)

    The second one is a Warning, not an Error.

  • (cs) in reply to raluth
    raluth:
    Carnildo:
    And while you're at it, could you give me the smallest positive integer that is the sum of two consecutive positive integers, the sum of three consecutive positive integers, and the sum of four consecutive positive integers?

    I hadn't heard that one before, but surely it is over-stated? Neither the positivity nor the middle condition are necessary for contradiction; just "sum of 2 consecutive integers" (which must always be odd) and "sum of 4 consecutive integers" (which must always be even).

    They're there to mask the true answer. Without the "smallest positive" condition, there's no reason to select one solution over another (and if this did have a numeric answer, it would have infinitely many). The "sum of three" condition is there to draw attention away from the "sum of two" and "sum of four" conditions.

  • (cs) in reply to Siloria
    Siloria:
    ... greater than 40 and less than 10 ...
    It's a circle, like a clock face. An acceptable answer is anything that is not between 10 and 40.

    Of course, every outside number is technically "between" 10 and 40 as the number wheel loops back around to 10 again, but it's understood that the numbers counting up from 10 to 40 are the unacceptable ones.

  • dan krüsi (unregistered) in reply to alexgieg
    alexgieg:
    iToad:
    - What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?
    Actually, I think this could be solved the way mathematicians "solved" the square root of a negative number on the 19th century: create a new number "i", say it's the answer, and keep working from there.

    Hereby, then, I define 'b' (from "backwards") as the number that answer the question: What's the number that is greater than x and lower than x-1, where 'x' is any real number?

    Thus, the "obvious" answer to your question, is the number of backward steps involved (greater than 40 and less than 39; greater than 39 and less than 38 ... greater than 11 and less than 10) expressed in our new unit: 30b.

    Feel free to develop the algebraic and geometric properties of this new mathematical entity, and well as those of its derived complex counterpart. I really don't feel like doing it myself. ;)

    PS: negative number are a also themselves an earlier application of this same technique. Let's call the result of zero minus one '-1' and proceed from there. It's pure craziness, sure, but it works.

    Bravo! It really does work!

  • (cs) in reply to bambuti
    bambuti:
    Answers:
    1. Mu.

    That's what I was going to say! I'd applaud, but I only have one hand.

  • nobody (unregistered)

    Unfortunately, reading the comments on this site tends to enlighten me as to where a lot of this software comes from. The first ten or twenty posters on this thread didn't even read the error message, and it took the following 5 or 10 posters to explain the simple concept of ordering integers.

    sigh

  • Cognos8 Reportnetuser (unregistered)

    Just wait until you upgrade until the next version. They've added a nice validation tool to check your syntax...Great in theory except for when you get an error such as:

    There are errors in other parts of this report, but not related to this expression!

  • (cs)

    The secret to life, the universe and that which is below ten and above forty is 41-i^2.

  • Arioch (unregistered)

    At least the software was really tested and the message was not really printed, but only displayed on monitor!

    I just was killed how State QA testing is produced:

    Cross checking between ... reports has revealed ... that neither ... test lab has performed certain tests, expecting that the test was done by the other.

    http://nyvv.org/blog/2007/01/secrets-of-voting-machine-testing.html

  • Fish Basket Gordo (unregistered) in reply to alexgieg
    alexgieg:
    iToad:
    - What is the value that is greater than 40 and less than 10?
    Actually, I think this could be solved the way mathematicians "solved" the square root of a negative number on the 19th century: create a new number "i", say it's the answer, and keep working from there.

    Hereby, then, I define 'b' (from "backwards") as the number that answer the question: What's the number that is greater than x and lower than x-1, where 'x' is any real number?

    Thus, the "obvious" answer to your question, is the number of backward steps involved (greater than 40 and less than 39; greater than 39 and less than 38 ... greater than 11 and less than 10) expressed in our new unit: 30b.

    Feel free to develop the algebraic and geometric properties of this new mathematical entity, and well as those of its derived complex counterpart. I really don't feel like doing it myself. ;)

    PS: negative number are a also themselves an earlier application of this same technique. Let's call the result of zero minus one '-1' and proceed from there. It's pure craziness, sure, but it works.

    Nice!

  • phil (unregistered)

    The most brilliant part would have to be the Cognos banner ads playing before and after the post.

  • Phreack (unregistered)

    When you finally become enlightened enough to enter the next time dimension, everything will make sense.

  • (cs) in reply to alexgieg
    Thus, the "obvious" answer to your question, is the number of backward steps involved (greater than 40 and less than 39; greater than 39 and less than 38 ... greater than 11 and less than 10) expressed in our new unit: 30b.

    Fantastic! You've just discovered my girlfriend's IQ: 30b. That's her all right.

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