The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

hoodaticus · 2011-01-26 Reply Admin

Not a Troll:
I was going to make a comment here, but then I realized that I'm not a troll.

Shucks, that means I can't quote you in this comment.

2011-01-26 Reply Admin

Penguin Parade:
Gunslinger:
Bob:
TRWTF is that Chrome decided to translate the page...
And unwrapped the code to a single line, without adding a scrollbar...

TRWTF is using Chrome...

CAPTCHA: genitus - someone who uses Chrome, opposite of genius.
Clearly you've never worked on a headless operating system.

For the uninformed, a "headless" operating system is one that operates without the convenience of fancy windows and multiple colors. That's right: a real man's OS. It's just you and the keyboard, and you can put that mouse behind the tyre of your neighbors minivan because you won't be using it. How are you going to browse the web, use wget to pull the file and then ftp it to your backup headed OS? No way! A real man doesn't have a headed OS. Us real men use Chrome and view our web pages IN TEXT. No, I'm not talking about reading HTML tags: I'm talking about viewing web content as God intended it: pure text. In fact: I'm filling out this form on Chrome on my headless operating system right now.

Now: sudo go get me a beer!

ITT loonix lusers yelling at winblows suckers

IHBT, but, **headless actually means no monitor, not text-only; headless systems can run X and headed systems can be text-only; these text-only systems can also use mice in BSD.

LOREM IPSUM DOLAR SIT

CAPTCHA: amet

hoodaticus · 2011-01-26 Reply Admin

Nagesh Kukunoor:
hoodaticus:
So, dipshit, how do you think tabular Excel would import a deeply-nested XML node tree without jumping through hoops?
If the file was saved from Excel, yes. I know this. Do not doubt me. I have used excel libraries in VC++ application to do this.

Exactly which part of not "jumping through hoops" fails to localize in your native tongue?

2011-01-26 Reply Admin

Kopf ist ein Nomen, etwas must im Grossebuchstabe schreiben

luis.espinal · 2011-01-26 Reply Admin

TimG:
luis.espinal:
Look, the SOD sample below contains repetitive statements and computations (in color for ease of identification): ... Why would someone compute, re-compute, and uber-re-compute the exact same string date parsing operation and comparison (both of which are invariant)?
Maybe the joke is on you, and all those date parsing operations have been overloaded to have side-effects. Where's your fancy Software Engineering 101 now, huh?

My fancy Software Engineering 101 is still here, telling me that you are bringing a highly improbable red herring (overloading general-purpose text-to-date conversion functions with side effects) to make you feel good about presenting a false point. Something to do with fancy concepts such as logic or reasoning.

It is still here telling me that such an improbable thing would make the SOD a bigger WTF, and that such a monstrous combination of simple-to-avoid programming malpractices would almost surely (see def) will never happen. Every time one of such turds come into existence is a crying screaming call for help in the dark fancy clamoring for such fancy stuff.

But then again, we can always build more edge cases that are 1) highly improbable, and 2) when they do occur, they increase the need for fancy soft. eng. Any other improbably WTFery edge cases up your sleeve?

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

luis.espinal:
TimG:
luis.espinal:
Look, the SOD sample below contains repetitive statements and computations (in color for ease of identification): ... Why would someone compute, re-compute, and uber-re-compute the exact same string date parsing operation and comparison (both of which are invariant)?
Maybe the joke is on you, and all those date parsing operations have been overloaded to have side-effects. Where's your fancy Software Engineering 101 now, huh?

My fancy Software Engineering 101 is still here, telling me that you are bringing a highly improbable red herring (overloading general-purpose text-to-date conversion functions with side effects) to make you feel good about presenting a false point. Something to do with fancy concepts such as logic or reasoning.

It is still here telling me that such an improbable thing would make the SOD a bigger WTF, and that such a monstrous combination of simple-to-avoid programming malpractices would almost surely (see def) will never happen. Every time one of such turds come into existence is a crying screaming call for help in the dark fancy clamoring for such fancy stuff.

But then again, we can always build more edge cases that are 1) highly improbable, and 2) when they do occur, they increase the need for fancy soft. eng. Any other improbably WTFery edge cases up your sleeve?

TRWTF is you just ignored that whole discussion of trolling. Troll Baiting 101.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Waffle:
luis.espinal:
TimG:
luis.espinal:
Look, the SOD sample below contains repetitive statements and computations (in color for ease of identification): ... Why would someone compute, re-compute, and uber-re-compute the exact same string date parsing operation and comparison (both of which are invariant)?
Maybe the joke is on you, and all those date parsing operations have been overloaded to have side-effects. Where's your fancy Software Engineering 101 now, huh?

My fancy Software Engineering 101 is still here, telling me that you are bringing a highly improbable red herring (overloading general-purpose text-to-date conversion functions with side effects) to make you feel good about presenting a false point. Something to do with fancy concepts such as logic or reasoning.

It is still here telling me that such an improbable thing would make the SOD a bigger WTF, and that such a monstrous combination of simple-to-avoid programming malpractices would almost surely (see def) will never happen. Every time one of such turds come into existence is a crying screaming call for help in the dark fancy clamoring for such fancy stuff.

But then again, we can always build more edge cases that are 1) highly improbable, and 2) when they do occur, they increase the need for fancy soft. eng. Any other improbably WTFery edge cases up your sleeve?

TRWTF is you just ignored that whole discussion of trolling. Troll Baiting 101.

Oh no! Maybe it was me who just got troll baited! No I feel stupid.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Pyrexkidd:
Rhywden:
Then again, if the softwar's got anything to do with the German tax code, I can see why it's _that_ complicated.
Fun fact: The German tax code is as large as ALL other countries' tax codes lumped together.

as opposed to the hardwar?

Whatever you do, just don't mention the war.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Hey guys! See lotsa activity here, sorry for only posting now! Was kinda busy getting LAID last night...

Does that make me a troll?

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

using for variable names another language than english has as advantage to avoid name collisions with standard function names

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

DateTime anfang = DateTime.Parse(T012_lbl_Berichtigungszeitraum_Anfang.Text);
Datetime ende = DateTime.Parse(T012_lbl_Berichtigungszeitraum_Ende.Text);
DateTime change = DateTime.Parse(Convert.ToString(table17["T017_txt_addChangeDate"]));
DateTime changeRounded = GetRoundedDate(change);
DateTime yearstart = new DateTime(2005,01,01);
bool anfangLeer = T012_lbl_Berichtigungszeitraum_Anfang.Text == "";
bool endeLeer = T012_lbl_Berichtigungszeitraum_Ende.Text == "";
decimal maximum  = Math.Max(Math.Max(Math.Abs(T012_lbl_AenderungVorsteuer100EUR), Math.Abs(T012_lbl_AenderungLaufJahrEUR)), Math.Abs(T012_lbl_AenderungGanzesJahrEUR));

if (
	(
		(
			(
					maximum >= 250
				&& (change < yearstart)
				&& (changeRounded > anfang || anfangLeer)
			)
			||
			(
					maximum >= 1000
				&& (change >= yearstart)
				&& (changeRounded >= anfang || anfangLeer)
			)
		)
		&& (change <= ende || endeLeer)
		&& (changeRounded <= ende || endeLeer)
	)
	||
	(
		anfangLeer && change < yearstart && T012_lbl_AenderungVorsteuer100EUR >= 250
	)
)
    T012_lbl_VorsteuerKorrekturErfolgt44.Text = "ja";
else
    T012_lbl_VorsteuerKorrekturErfolgt44.Text = "nein";

There's a huge amount of duplication in there. Even after wasting a lot of space on nice formatting the simplified version is still less than half as long as the original.

There was a small top level OR condition that was repeated 3 times. Other sub conditions were repeated 6 times but with small changes. Ie. some additional brackets to ensure a simple search replace won't find it. And about every individual calculation in there was performed about a dozen times. Niiiiiiiice!

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Just thought I'd post up this useful reference I used last week:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa140066(v=office.10).aspx

I was creating an XML document and using XSLT to generate Excel-compatible XML because I wasn't permitted to install the Office Interop Assemblies.

Butchering XML for "business analysts" makes me sad.

Scarlet Manuka · 2011-01-27 Reply Admin

The Corrector:
FTFY (10 Points for anyone who can tell me what language that is.)

Flemish'd That For You?

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

pjacquot:
using for variable names another language than english has as advantage to avoid name collisions with standard function names

tosses a box with the label 'attention' to pjacquit

Now happy, or do you want some more?

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

The German variable names make this even more fun to read.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

TrXtR:
Hey guys! See lotsa activity here, sorry for only posting now! Was kinda busy getting LAID last night...
Does that make me a troll?

No, it makes you a liar.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

23 words plus punctuation:

    if (!changedBetweenStartAndEnd)
    {
        return false;
    }

    int limit = changed < year2005 ? 250 : 1000;

    return (vorsteuer >= limit) || (vorsteuer <= -limit) ||
           (laufend   >= limit) || (laufend   <= -limit) ||
           (ganzes    >= limit) || (ganzes    <= -limit);

There are some discrepancies (in some cases they use '>' for comparison, in other cases '>=') and one special case (which is repeated three times), but basically, this is it.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

You hadn't have a look at the austrian taxcode.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Seit wann ist die tägliche wtf auf Deutsch?

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

luis.espinal:
TimG:
Maybe the joke is on you, and all those date parsing operations have been overloaded to have side-effects. Where's your fancy Software Engineering 101 now, huh?
My fancy Software Engineering 101 is still here, telling me that you are bringing a highly improbable red herring (overloading general-purpose text-to-date conversion functions with side effects) to make you feel good about presenting a false point. Something to do with fancy concepts such as logic or reasoning.

You really thought I was being serious when I suggested that someone would overload date-parsing with side-effects? Hear that high-pitched sound? That's the doppler effect from a joke streaking 10km over your head.

Less coffee, my friend. Or more. One of the two. =)

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

You can call me a troll, I don't mind, but "exceling" at Excel is like "failling" at failing. You're doing it wrong.

But no, seriously, the time it took you to master Excel could have been used to learn something much more productive. Anyway, it's your time of course, you are free to do as you choose. But don't come here bragging about it ... we're not some middle-aged soccer moms easily impressed by your leet Excel skilz.

CAPTCHA: esse Troll feed time I guess.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
TRWTF is German tax legislation.

Say what you want about Germans: they build supreme automobiles.

Take my Corolla for example. I get 45mpg in the city, and that's with the gasoline being 20% ethanol. I bet if I was using pure gasoline I'd get 60 (which, coincidentally is only 5 more mpg than I get on the highway). I've driven over 200,000 miles and had only 4 oil changes. You read that right: 4. That's literally 1/10th of what American vehicles require. Unlike American vehicles, my Corolla doesn't have to sacrifice performance for efficiency. I've done 10.5 seconds in the quarter mile, easily beating the Mustanges and Chargers who showed up. You should have seen the look on those gear heads' faces! I guess the key is to build your car smarter. And that's what the Germans excel at.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

<>:
Say what you want about Germans: they build supreme automobiles.
Take my Corolla for example. [...] I guess the key is to build your car smarter. And that's what the Germans excel at.

You think Toyota is German? So much for smarter.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Bob:
Lockwood:
T012_lbl_VorsteuerKorrekturErfolgt44.Text = "frißt";

FTFY

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

I love this place.

Unfortunately I am compelled to use WinBlows at work ;(

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

hoodaticus:
Nagesh Kukunoor:
hoodaticus:
So, dipshit, how do you think tabular Excel would import a deeply-nested XML node tree without jumping through hoops?
If the file was saved from Excel, yes. I know this. Do not doubt me. I have used excel libraries in VC++ application to do this.
Exactly which part of not "jumping through hoops" fails to localize in your native tongue?

Clearly, you love to insult foreigners? I know exactly what jumping through hoops is. Opening a CSV file also requires jumping through hoops for Excel.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

[quote user="Penguin Parade]Clearly you've never worked on a headless operating system.

For the uninformed, a "headless" operating system is one that operates without the convenience of fancy windows and multiple colors. That's right: a real man's OS. It's just you and the keyboard, and you can put that mouse behind the tyre of your neighbors minivan because you won't be using it. How are you going to browse the web, use wget to pull the file and then ftp it to your backup headed OS? No way! A real man doesn't have a headed OS. Us real men use Chrome and view our web pages IN TEXT. No, I'm not talking about reading HTML tags: I'm talking about viewing web content as God intended it: pure text. In fact: I'm filling out this form on Chrome on my headless operating system right now.

Now: sudo go get me a beer![/quote]

I hate to nitpick, but a headless OS is an OS without any interface. That is to say, no console or GUI. Much like your average server/PBX... Having said that, I do still think that text interfaces are superior to GUIs. (And no, I hate Linux...)

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Is that you Fawlty? :-)

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

The one advantage to the original cruft that I can think of - and its a small one, more than outdone by a lack of commenting - would be if it matched up with the actual language in the tax code. Even if that was the case (which its probably not), its still very poorly structured.

When it comes to financial software though, having somewhat redundant code that's obviously traceable to the business requirements is often better than having beautiful code that requires a lot of study to track back.

The original post, as presented, is obviously neither.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Say it with me now: "Woosh..."

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

[quote user="<>"][quote user="Anonymous"]TRWTF is German tax legislation.[/quote] Say what you want about Germans: they build supreme automobiles.

Take my Corolla for example...quote]

Corollas are Japanese you pillock

boog · 2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Nagesh Kukunoor:
I know exactly what jumping through hoops is. Opening a CSV file also requires jumping through hoops for Excel.

Those two statements seem to contradict each other.

What hoops? What's so difficult about opening a CSV in Excel? Maybe you could actually try to open a CSV in Excel real quick, and tell me what hoops you have to jump through?

hoodaticus · 2011-01-27 Reply Admin

TrXtR:
Hey guys! See lotsa activity here, sorry for only posting now! Was kinda busy getting LAID last night...
Does that make me a troll?

There's a first time for everything.

hoodaticus · 2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Nagesh Kukunoor:
hoodaticus:
Nagesh Kukunoor:
hoodaticus:
So, dipshit, how do you think tabular Excel would import a deeply-nested XML node tree without jumping through hoops?
If the file was saved from Excel, yes. I know this. Do not doubt me. I have used excel libraries in VC++ application to do this.
Exactly which part of not "jumping through hoops" fails to localize in your native tongue?

Clearly, you love to insult foreigners? I know exactly what jumping through hoops is. Opening a CSV file also requires jumping through hoops for Excel.

I like to insult everyone, including myself. I'm an Equal-Opportunity Asshole.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Jaco:
<>:
Anonymous:
TRWTF is German tax legislation.
Say what you want about Germans: they build supreme automobiles.
Take my Corolla for example...

Corollas are Japanese you pillock

Toyota does build cars in Germany - if you count Formula One race cars ;) [Yes, his Corolla sure isn't a F1-racer...] Aside from that, Toyota only has some finance and information service businesses in Germany, totalling ~1500 employees.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

boog:
Nagesh Kukunoor:
I know exactly what jumping through hoops is. Opening a CSV file also requires jumping through hoops for Excel.
Those two statements seem to contradict each other.
What hoops? What's so difficult about opening a CSV in Excel? Maybe you could actually try to open a CSV in Excel real quick, and tell me what hoops you have to jump through?

Text gets converted to numbers for 1. So "045" becomes 45.

boog · 2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Nagesh Kukunoor:
Text gets converted to numbers for 1. So "045" becomes 45.

That's Excel in general. If you paste "045" into Excel it becomes a number. It has nothing to do with CSV.

frits · 2011-01-27 Reply Admin

TrXtR:
Hey guys! See lotsa activity here, sorry for only posting now! Was kinda busy getting LAID last night...
Does that make me a troll?

OK...So what did you do for the other 23 hours and 58 minutes of your day?

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

boog:
Nagesh Kukunoor:
Text gets converted to numbers for 1. So "045" becomes 45.
That's Excel in general. If you paste "045" into Excel it becomes a number. It has nothing to do with CSV.

Congratulations. You win. I am too paralyzed to respond any further on this.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Tim:
rnd * 1000:
The Article:
Databases? Naaah... just use a bunch of XML (or sometimes CSV) files.
Phillip needs to be drug out into the street and shot if he thinks there's a difference between XML and CSV. What does it matter what format it's saved in: it's read by Excel the same. And if that's how they want to manage their databases, what's wrong with that? It's a lot simpler and easier to understand than writing obtuse sequel statements on the command line. TRWTF is developers that think that everyone is as computer-savvy as they are.
as someone who has worked with XML and CSV I can assure you there are plenty of differences. XML is a documented standard and had tools available which adhere to that standard. just try processing a CSV file containing non-ascii characters, whitespace, quotes, leading spaces, line breaks etc etc and see what I mean

As someone who has seen obvious trolls before I can assure you that you have just fallen victim to one. I didn't read far into your post as you actually started to explain the differences. That we all already know.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Mark:
Bobbo:
Meine kopf ist kaputt.
Kopf ist ein Nomen, das muß man mit einem Großbuchstaben am Anfang schreiben.

FTFY.

Also Bobbo must write "Mein Kopf ist kaputt."

CAPTCHA: esse - eat! in (dated) german

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Hitler:
Seit wann ist die tägliche wtf auf Deutsch?

Seit der Führer ein englisches Kürzel für "Was Zur Hölle!" verwendet.

Rechner-Automatisierte-Turingprüfung-zur-Separierung-von-Ariern-und-Rechnern (RATSAR): Populist - was der Vorposter war.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Lukas:
<>:
Say what you want about Germans: they build supreme automobiles.
Take my Corolla for example. [...] I guess the key is to build your car smarter. And that's what the Germans excel at.
You think Toyota is German? So much for smarter.

So many trolls in this forum to adjust your troll detector on and it still is not working?

Obviously german troll-detectors are sub-par!

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

boog:
Nagesh Kukunoor:
I know exactly what jumping through hoops is. Opening a CSV file also requires jumping through hoops for Excel.
Those two statements seem to contradict each other.
What hoops? What's so difficult about opening a CSV in Excel? Maybe you could actually try to open a CSV in Excel real quick, and tell me what hoops you have to jump through?

There is no written-in-stone definition what the separator char is. Even excel offers "Save as Text (tab-delimited)" in the "Save as..." options, which technically still is a CSV-file.
When opening a CSV-file excel must guess the content type of each column and often enough it guesses wrong. However defining it manually makes the exercise a "jump-through-hoops" for the user.
Nothing is limiting the number of rows and columns in a CSV-file, but opening it in Excel is. So generating a report of data in CSV-format may end up in data loss when opening in excel.

And as noone has pointed this out so far: XML is a hierarchical data structure, while CSV is flat like a single table in a relational database.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

The Corrector:
The Article:
"I recently was hired by a very large company government," writes Philipp B
FTFY

Not necessarily correct. Esp. quite a lot of corporates and esp. banks operating in germany are affected by german tax legislation.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

My Name Is Missing:
Imagine if Hitler had used these guys; a lot more people would be alive today.

He seemed to be aware of this. He contracted to IBM: http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

Some quotes to treat Akismet: Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. (...) Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.

Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust.

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

<>:
Anonymous:
TRWTF is German tax legislation.
Say what you want about Germans: they build supreme automobiles.
Take my Corolla for example. I get 45mpg in the city, and that's with the gasoline being 20% ethanol. I bet if I was using pure gasoline I'd get 60 (which, coincidentally is only 5 more mpg than I get on the highway). I've driven over 200,000 miles and had only 4 oil changes. You read that right: 4. That's literally 1/10th of what American vehicles require. Unlike American vehicles, my Corolla doesn't have to sacrifice performance for efficiency. I've done 10.5 seconds in the quarter mile, easily beating the Mustanges and Chargers who showed up. You should have seen the look on those gear heads' faces! I guess the key is to build your car smarter. And that's what the Germans excel at.

60 meters per gallon? That's not very good at all! Hahahahahahah!

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Sounds like IBM....

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

Design Pattern:
My Name Is Missing:
Imagine if Hitler had used these guys; a lot more people would be alive today.
He seemed to be aware of this. He contracted to IBM: http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
Some quotes to treat Akismet: Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. (...) Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.

Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust.

Hi, IBM? Yeah, it's me, Hitler. Soo.. I need to find all of the Jews, you know, from everywhere. I have a big truck filled with .. uh.. ice cream? Yeah, ice cream. So I need to find every Jew. So I can give them some ice cream. Can you do it for a disproportionately massive amount of bloo.. erm.. honest currency? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Heil to you too. Buh-bye,

2011-01-27 Reply Admin

LOL, your IE loads ten minutes? Mine is up and running in 2 seconds.

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