The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

You guys are "the real WTF". You have problems...

I mean, it's all about "finding the real WTF" and making look other people/commenters less good than yourself. By being cocky or making the comments other commenters look bad. Must be a sad moment in your life every time you do it - or a sad life, that depends...

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

lucusloc:
Well, since a binary digit is discreet and cannot actually be less than one, a fraction of a binary digit actually represents the uncertainty of the value. if you have 99/100ths of a bit, that means that you are only 99% certain of the value of that bit.

Are you aware of the difference between discreet and discrete? </pedant>

And I see bits every day that are indeed less than one. They can be zero, and when I learned about numbers, lots of many years ago, zero was considered to be less than one.

bannedfromcoding · 2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Nick:
Mel:
But once we got past the demo and the install and started using it, we discovered that when two people entered a command at about the same time, the first one would run to completion before the second one even said "Processing". So, naturally, with all 8 users doing their jobs as fast as they could, the system was "down" 95% of the time. Because, of course, if it didn't say "Processing" within 1/3 of a second, they'd enter the command again. Five times, just in case.
This sounds more like a usability issue, just print "Waiting for free slot..." as soon as the user enters the command.

The catch is, the system was singletasking or coop-multitasking. The one job that was running blocked the TTY handler, and the OS did not even know other users typed something (even less reply to it) until that job ended.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Patrick:
Ren:
Bluesman:
Scott:
Patrick:
leo:
Anders:
mib = mibibit = [crappy marketing speak redacted] mb = millibit = (1/1024) bit MiB = Mebibyte = [crappy marketing speak redacted] MB = Megabyte = 1048576 bytes

ftfy
ftfy
ftfy
ftfy
ftfy
ftfy

ftfy

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

PITA:
Izhido:
Can somebody just burn me for not being able to look up stupid internet acronyms?

STFU

ftfy

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Sammy:
You guys are "the real WTF". You have problems...
I mean, it's all about "finding the real WTF" and making look other people/commenters less good than yourself. By being cocky or making the comments other commenters look bad. Must be a sad moment in your life every time you do it - or a sad life, that depends...

Are you starting another argument about irony? Cause you're figuratively killing me here!

julmu · 2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Sammy:
We guys are "the real WTF". We have problems...
I mean, it's all about "finding the real WTF" and making look other people/commenters less good than ourselves. By being cocky or making the comments other commenters look bad. Must be a sad moment in our life every time we do it - or a sad life, that depends...

FTFY

Bellinghman · 2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Malenfant:
As usual, 'common knowledge' is actually nonsense. Imperial may be based on day-to-day activities, i.e a yard is ~a stride, but in practice this is irrelevant, as we want exact, not approximate. My stride is significantly longer than a yard, so using this approximation gives a wildly in-accurate value. The fact that supposed engineers would cite this as a reason is especially odd.

QFT

The fact that the enthusiasts for Imperial units can't even make up their minds what size their units actually are doesn't help. The Imperial pint, for example, is 20 fluid ounces, but a lot of people think it's 16 (clue, guys, 'Imperial' means 'as per the British Empire' - and not US Customary Units). And what's with changing the size of your unit depending on where you are or what you're doing? "How far is a mile?" "Depends, mate, are you in a boat?"

I can quite understand where the customary systems came from, but when there are dozens of different measures of what a foot is, or a pound, you need some form of international standard agreement. The relative lack (and it's only relative) of confusion with so-called Imperial units is only because the SI units have wiped out all but one or two competing alternatives.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

ClaudeSuck.de:
campkev:
Anders:
mb = millibit = (1/1000) bit MB = Megabyte = 1000000 bytes

How exactly do you have a thousandth of a bit?

Don't you know that there are also things like 1.5 dimensions?

Indeed, non-integer Hausdorff Dimensions exist, we commonly know things with those dimensions as "fractals" (Yes, their name makes sense know, doesn't it?), e.g. the sierpinski triangle has a dimension of approximately 1.585.

Someone You Know · 2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Nick:
Mel:
But once we got past the demo and the install and started using it, we discovered that when two people entered a command at about the same time, the first one would run to completion before the second one even said "Processing". So, naturally, with all 8 users doing their jobs as fast as they could, the system was "down" 95% of the time. Because, of course, if it didn't say "Processing" within 1/3 of a second, they'd enter the command again. Five times, just in case.
This sounds more like a usability issue, just print "Waiting for free slot..." as soon as the user enters the command.

If it can't print "Processing" on the screen in that situation, what makes you think it can print "Waiting for free slot..." in the same situation?

The problem is that it can't do two things at once. Changing the details of the second thing you're trying to do is not going to change the fact that it can't do that second thing until it's done with the first thing.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Mike Caron:
What, no one suggesting that he reverse the polarity on the phaser grid? THAT will make it run faster!

Yes...we've often ran an A1 Diagnostic and reconfigured the array to solve problems like this as well.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Kilobyte: http://xkcd.com/394/ duh.

Note: sub-bits are a common side effect of secret sharing algorithms. Headaches are a common side effect of bitsize calculations.

captcha: delenit, properly capitalized as DeLenIt().

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

[quote user="unekdoud"]Kilobyte: http://xkcd.com/394/

FTW!

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

sino:
Eyjafjallajökull:
Dwayne:
Eyjafjallajökull:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s11563.htm http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Metrication/metric_land.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_opposition
Those are some of the dumbest things I've ever read. Particularly the second one. (Hint: whenever you see someone use the word "intellectual" as an insult, expect to hear something utterly stupid from them in short order.) I suppose we should switch to base 16 rather than base 10 too, because it's divisible by 2 more times?

Nice ad hominem argument.

That's not Ad hominem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)...

From the article: Person 1 makes claim X There is something objectionable about Person 1 Therefore claim X is false

Applied to this case: Person 1 makes claim that the metric system is impractical and inferior to Imperial. Person 1 refers to intellectuals with contempt, which I find objectionable. Therefore their claim to the impracticality of the metric system is false.

"That's dumb. That guy is a moron" is not a relevant argument.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

LAST!

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Eyjafjallajökull:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s11563.htm http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Metrication/metric_land.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_opposition

My god, such useless articles & stories.

Being a belgian myself, my brain nearly exploded reading the second one. I couldn't even finish reading it because it's really just so full of absolute nonsense it would cause my brain to hemorrhage (or was it hemoRAGE?).

Pints are used here in quite a different context. While surely, countless centuries ago it came from a pint as a unit, it now simply denotes either (or both) the type/shape of glass and the type of beer (pilsner). A pint is usually 25cl, but it might very well be 33cl at times. That happens in languages sometimes. Over the ages, the meaning or use of a word changes.

The retard writing the article will also find the measurements for teelepel, koffielepel, kop, etc in the bloody book itself. Probably in front or at the back cover. Those measurements are usually left out to keep cooking simple...

For the woodshop stuff? If you cut the 1 meter beam in 3 pieces, you cut on 33,3 cm or so? The thickness of the saw you use will cause more loss of precision than the measurements will? The carpenter doesn't use 1 meter boards because they are simply rarely called for, not because it's hard to cut in 3 pieces? And then the writer of course goes on to say the unit should be 120 cm instead of 100 cm for ease of use of carpenters. Except, that unit wouldn't be much use for plumbers or whatnot? But I guess carpenters would be helped so much by saying 1 meter = 120 cm, rather than just ordering 120cm boards, right?

And so on & so forth.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Malenfant:
Anon1:
fjf:
NotaDBA:
anon:
you must be one of the people who prefer using imperial units to metric

Ease of conversion between submultiples of units does not outweigh the arbitrariness of scale of those units. Imperial units are based on day-to-day activities on a human scale.
[citation required]

Wasn't aware citations were required for common knowledge.

As usual, 'common knowledge' is actually nonsense. Imperial may be based on day-to-day activities, i.e a yard is ~a stride, but in practice this is irrelevant, as we want exact, not approximate. My stride is significantly longer than a yard, so using this approximation gives a wildly in-accurate value. The fact that supposed engineers would cite this as a reason is especially odd.

That's a straw man. The yard has been standardized for centuries. The fact that supposed engineers would would consider fallacies to be a valid argument is even more odd.

Malenfant · 2010-04-21 Reply Admin

TakeALoadOffBetty:
Malenfant:
Anon1:
fjf:
NotaDBA:
anon:
you must be one of the people who prefer using imperial units to metric

Ease of conversion between submultiples of units does not outweigh the arbitrariness of scale of those units. Imperial units are based on day-to-day activities on a human scale.
[citation required]

Wasn't aware citations were required for common knowledge.

As usual, 'common knowledge' is actually nonsense. Imperial may be based on day-to-day activities, i.e a yard is ~a stride, but in practice this is irrelevant, as we want exact, not approximate. My stride is significantly longer than a yard, so using this approximation gives a wildly in-accurate value. The fact that supposed engineers would cite this as a reason is especially odd.

That's a straw man. The yard has been standardized for centuries. The fact that supposed engineers would would consider fallacies to be a valid argument is even more odd.

No. The point is, that if they are standardized, they are NOT based on day-to-day activities on a human scale unless you happen to be the mythical 'standard human'. The original argument for using imperial given by NotaDBA is the fallacy here.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Swa:
Pints are used here in quite a different context. While surely, countless centuries ago it came from a pint as a unit, it now simply denotes either (or both) the type/shape of glass and the type of beer (pilsner). A pint is usually 25cl, but it might very well be 33cl at times. That happens in languages sometimes. Over the ages, the meaning or use of a word changes.

WTF? I come from the UK and we use pints as well - to denote a measure of volume equal to one pint. A pint is nothing to do with the shape of the glass or the contents therein - it is a measure of volume and ONLY a measure of volume. Stop bastardising our measurements you heathen Belgians.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Don't you mean the phase variance?

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Ensign Redshirt:
Don't you mean the phase variance?

"I'm sorry Jim - he's dead!"

boomzilla · 2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Malenfant:
No. The point is, that if they are standardized, they are NOT based on day-to-day activities on a human scale unless you happen to be the mythical 'standard human'. The original argument for using imperial given by NotaDBA is the fallacy here.

Huh? The units were based on human scale activities and have been standardized. Are you really saying that if it's not exactly to some particular person's personal measurements, then it's not human scale?

In any case, the state of standardization doesn't really address why you would think that astronomically derived units with arbitrary base 10 scales are better.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

The Wanderer:
RandomUser423682:
And most people are against the "binary unit prefixes" for one of two reasons: 1) kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, etc. sound stupid [granted; they could have done better]; and 2) "we've always done it the other way."
For #2: no, we haven't, or there wouldn't be any ambiguity.
Yes, we have [always done it the other way].

...

The problem with that is that, for one reason or another, people aren't consistent about it.

It seems we are using different definitions of "always". I shall have to concede the point in cases where "always" roughly means "with a probability approaching pure chance."

Malenfant · 2010-04-21 Reply Admin

boomzilla:
Malenfant:
No. The point is, that if they are standardized, they are NOT based on day-to-day activities on a human scale unless you happen to be the mythical 'standard human'. The original argument for using imperial given by NotaDBA is the fallacy here.
Huh? The units were based on human scale activities and have been standardized. Are you really saying that if it's not exactly to some particular person's personal measurements, then it's not human scale?
In any case, the state of standardization doesn't really address why you would think that astronomically derived units with arbitrary base 10 scales are better.

For your first point, I'm saying that the way they were originally conceived is irrelevant. 'Human Scale' is a pointless phrase. Are you saying a meter is in some inhuman scale?

For you're second point, at what point did I say that one was better than the other? Please don't put words in my mouth.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Malenfant:
TakeALoadOffBetty:
Malenfant:
Anon1:
fjf:
NotaDBA:
anon:
you must be one of the people who prefer using imperial units to metric

Ease of conversion between submultiples of units does not outweigh the arbitrariness of scale of those units. Imperial units are based on day-to-day activities on a human scale.
[citation required]

Wasn't aware citations were required for common knowledge.

As usual, 'common knowledge' is actually nonsense. Imperial may be based on day-to-day activities, i.e a yard is ~a stride, but in practice this is irrelevant, as we want exact, not approximate. My stride is significantly longer than a yard, so using this approximation gives a wildly in-accurate value. The fact that supposed engineers would cite this as a reason is especially odd.

That's a straw man. The yard has been standardized for centuries. The fact that supposed engineers would would consider fallacies to be a valid argument is even more odd.

No. The point is, that if they are standardized, they are NOT based on day-to-day activities on a human scale unless you happen to be the mythical 'standard human'. The original argument for using imperial given by NotaDBA is the fallacy here.

The anti-metrication position does not propose using non-standardized units. You represented their position as such and argued against that position. That is a straw man.

boomzilla · 2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Malenfant:
For your first point, I'm saying that the way they were originally conceived is irrelevant. 'Human Scale' is a pointless phrase. Are you saying a meter is in some inhuman scale?

Maybe not the measure itself, but the forced base 10 certainly makes a lot of stuff harder to deal with. Though the gap between meter and centimeter is awfully large. Does anyone use decimeters?

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Cliff notes anyone:
Where I work, we slow things down intentionally so management can compalin about something that is actually fixable isntead of making stupid nonsensical requests.
I remember hearing the tale of some atuomated unit tests litterally had a sleep comamnd in there to sleep for 15 minutes.

Do you use a Speed-up loop?

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
lucusloc:
Well, since a binary digit is discreet and cannot actually be less than one, a fraction of a binary digit actually represents the uncertainty of the value. if you have 99/100ths of a bit, that means that you are only 99% certain of the value of that bit.
Are you aware of the difference between discreet and discrete? </pedant>
And I see bits every day that are indeed less than one. They can be zero, and when I learned about numbers, lots of many years ago, zero was considered to be less than one.

Shouldn't it be <pedant>Are you aware of the difference between discreet and discrete?</pedant> ... just being pedantic ;-)

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

TakeALoadOffBetty:
Malenfant:
TakeALoadOffBetty:
Malenfant:
Anon1:
fjf:
NotaDBA:
anon:
you must be one of the people who prefer using imperial units to metric

Ease of conversion between submultiples of units does not outweigh the arbitrariness of scale of those units. Imperial units are based on day-to-day activities on a human scale.
[citation required]

Wasn't aware citations were required for common knowledge.

As usual, 'common knowledge' is actually nonsense. Imperial may be based on day-to-day activities, i.e a yard is ~a stride, but in practice this is irrelevant, as we want exact, not approximate. My stride is significantly longer than a yard, so using this approximation gives a wildly in-accurate value. The fact that supposed engineers would cite this as a reason is especially odd.

That's a straw man. The yard has been standardized for centuries. The fact that supposed engineers would would consider fallacies to be a valid argument is even more odd.

No. The point is, that if they are standardized, they are NOT based on day-to-day activities on a human scale unless you happen to be the mythical 'standard human'. The original argument for using imperial given by NotaDBA is the fallacy here.

The anti-metrication position does not propose using non-standardized units. You represented their position as such and argued against that position. That is a straw man.

Heeey Wiilbuur. All this taaalk of straaaw iis maaaking me huuungry

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
lucusloc:
Well, since a binary digit is discreet and cannot actually be less than one, a fraction of a binary digit actually represents the uncertainty of the value. if you have 99/100ths of a bit, that means that you are only 99% certain of the value of that bit.
Are you aware of the difference between discreet and discrete? </pedant>
And I see bits every day that are indeed less than one. They can be zero, and when I learned about numbers, lots of many years ago, zero was considered to be less than one.

And here I thought lucusloc meant that a binary digit won't rat you out...to your wife? ...boss? ...unit tests? That's a handy digit!

;)

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Eyjafjallajökull:
Dwayne:
Eyjafjallajökull:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s11563.htm http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Metrication/metric_land.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_opposition
Those are some of the dumbest things I've ever read. Particularly the second one. (Hint: whenever you see someone use the word "intellectual" as an insult, expect to hear something utterly stupid from them in short order.) I suppose we should switch to base 16 rather than base 10 too, because it's divisible by 2 more times?

Nice ad hominem argument.

You don't know what that means, do you?

Those writings were particularly stupid.

If you deliberately choose to use lengths and measurements that are awkward to use and then complain about it, you're stupid. If you choose to use measurements of pointless accuracy and choose inconvenient lengths in your building project and then complain about it, you're stupid. If you choose to use a new measurement system that your eyes haven't gotten used to and then complain about your hastily made bad measurements, you're stupid. If you complain about the lack of products of less usability in stores that wouldn't be any cheaper or provide any advantage over the ones they are selling, you are stupid. If you choose to use uncommon and uncomfortably long names of pointless accuracy and then complain about people not using them instead of their commonly used terms, you're stupid.

I remember someone complaining about how inconvenient it was to say "30 to 60 centimeters" when you want some building supplies to be put handily somewhere "about one or two feet from the wall". What's wrong with "half a meter"?

alegr · 2010-04-21 Reply Admin

DudeWaitWhat:

You can't have divisions of a bit. A millibit can't exist. A bit is a Binary digIT. A digit is an indivisible unit. The concept it represents may or may not be, but it itself is indivisible.

In arithmetic encoding, one source bit or byte or a 'character' of another size can be represented as a fraction of bit, or fractional number of bits. Amount necessary for a character is equal to -log2 of its probability. For example, if probability of character 'a' is 0.976, it will require about 0.1 bit to represent in the encoded stream.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

yername:
Eyjafjallajökull:
Dwayne:
Eyjafjallajökull:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s11563.htm http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Metrication/metric_land.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_opposition
Those are some of the dumbest things I've ever read. Particularly the second one. (Hint: whenever you see someone use the word "intellectual" as an insult, expect to hear something utterly stupid from them in short order.) I suppose we should switch to base 16 rather than base 10 too, because it's divisible by 2 more times?

Nice ad hominem argument.
You don't know what that means, do you?

Those writings were particularly stupid.

If you deliberately choose to use lengths and measurements that are awkward to use and then complain about it, you're stupid. If you choose to use measurements of pointless accuracy and choose inconvenient lengths in your building project and then complain about it, you're stupid. If you choose to use a new measurement system that your eyes haven't gotten used to and then complain about your hastily made bad measurements, you're stupid. If you complain about the lack of products of less usability in stores that wouldn't be any cheaper or provide any advantage over the ones they are selling, you are stupid. If you choose to use uncommon and uncomfortably long names of pointless accuracy and then complain about people not using them instead of their commonly used terms, you're stupid.

I remember someone complaining about how inconvenient it was to say "30 to 60 centimeters" when you want some building supplies to be put handily somewhere "about one or two feet from the wall". What's wrong with "half a meter"?

Most people on earth are stupid. Units should be easy to use for everybody. The articles Volcano linked are anecdotal evidence supporting NotaDBA's original argument...completely relevant. Saying they're "stupid" as an argument against NotaDBA's argument is an irrelevant argument.

Throwing away centuries of evolution of units based on actual human usage and replacing them with smaller set of arbitrarily-based units just doesn't make any sense.

In addition, the metric system does not add any new or superior functionality. The only apparent progression is the ease of conversion between "units". How is 0.45 in functionally non-equivalent to 450 kilo in?

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Imperialist:
How is 0.45 in functionally non-equivalent to 450 kilo in?

450 mili in that is ;)

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Except a bit is the smallest amount of data one can have. A millibit doesn't exist.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Depends, are you in management now?

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

It has been quite a while since I worked on PDP-11 and RSTS/E. Our boss at SPU was great to work for, but we all did everything we could to keep him from writing code. He could, but no one could understand it, let alone maintain it. My favorite memory was when Larry Wall (yes, that Larry Wall) reversed the direction of the computer's front panel lights. It took the boss about 2 minutes in the computer room to ask, "Is there something different with the computer?"

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

So... this article is saying that Scotty fudged the numbers to make Kirk believe he was a better engineer than he actually was?

Hmmmmm....

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Jared:
Except a bit is the smallest amount of data one can have. A millibit doesn't exist.

Sure, but if you're counting data flow over time, you can end up with fractional bits per second. Not that values that low are normally interesting.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Imperialist:
Imperialist:
Most people on earth are stupid. Units should be easy to use for everybody. The articles Volcano linked are anecdotal evidence supporting NotaDBA's original argument...completely relevant. Saying they're "stupid" as an argument against NotaDBA's argument is an irrelevant argument.

Except that Dwayne, who took no part in your conversation, simply commented that the articles, which were stupid, were, in fact, stupid. That is not ad hominem and can never be. The comment was irrelevant to the conversation, because it was not part of it. It wasn't an argument. It was a comment.

Imperialist:
Imperialist:
Throwing away centuries of random changes to arbitrary units based on some dead guy's exaggerated physical characteristics and "that's what we've always done" and replacing them with smaller set of units arbitrarily based on universal physical constants just doesn't make any sense.

FTFY. It makes sense because: * Harmonization (same units of measurement for the whole world). * Smaller set of units. * Easier conversion between "units". * More convenient. * Simpler because the underlying definitions are metric.

But I'd like to stay out of it, because I didn't take part in this conversation in the first place. I'd just like to say that if everything "commonplace", "scientific" or "engineering" was metric (screws, etc) things would be simpler world over. I'm still against the mebicrap, though, because bits really are only powers of ten or related to SI units in telecommunication and those people could just explicitly use 10^6, etc. when it matters.

Imperialist:
Imperialist:
In addition, the metric system does not add any new or superior functionality. The only apparent progression is the ease of conversion between "units". How is 0.45 in functionally non-equivalent to 450 kilo in?

450 mili in that is ;)

What is a "mili"?

Functionally non-equivalent? You can measure length in parsecs using a number system based on pi if you want. That is functionally equivalent too.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

mike:
Jared:
Except a bit is the smallest amount of data one can have. A millibit doesn't exist.

Sure, but if you're counting data flow over time, you can end up with fractional bits per second. Not that values that low are normally interesting.

Well, if your system leaks information 3 millibits per second through a vulnerability, they could be reading your passwords fairly quickly. But sure, "normally".

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

yername:
What is a "mili"?

In some languages, the prefix is "mili". For instance, in Spanish, "milli" would be pronounced "mi-yhee" (kind of a subtle "gh" sound there actually). Hence, Spanish for millimeter is milímetro.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

boomzilla:
In any case, the state of standardization doesn't really address why you would think that astronomically derived units with arbitrary base 10 scales are better.

If only the cnofusion between astronomy and geography (hint: Earth's equator in the original meter definition) was the biggest fallacy of the imperialists.

Sure, base 10 is rather arbitrary, but people are used it for most things and can do computations with it. If people were binary or hexadecimal, it would make sense for units to be so as well.

It's the mixing of bases that's so strange about imperial units. Division might be easier in some cases, but addition and multiplication (far more common IMHO) are more difficult. What's 10 * (2 ft 9 in)? Answer quick!

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

boomzilla:
Maybe not the measure itself, but the forced base 10 certainly makes a lot of stuff harder to deal with. Though the gap between meter and centimeter is awfully large. Does anyone use decimeters?

As opposed to the gap between foot (or yard) and mile (any of its many variants)?

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Imperialist:
Throwing away centuries of evolution of units based on actual human usage and replacing them with smaller set of arbitrarily-based units just doesn't make any sense.

Except that most of this "evolution" took place under conditions (such as ways of travel and transportation or packaging and distribution of goods) that were vastly different from today's and thus are not very relevant anymore.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Richard:
"This lasted for months..."
And Eric was still working there instead of walking out and letting someone else prop up Kevin? Now there's the WTF...

0.1 months.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

No-one seems to have picked up on the part that said that the system only "flew" after Eric installed a patch that enabled the system to use in-memory disk caching.

I assume RTE would keep low priority jobs out of memory so if the patch had been done to the original machine and the accounting priority boosted it would have had most of the 1MB for caching and hence "flown".

So it seems that Kevin was actually right and Eric was wrong when he said nothing could be done.

That would make Eric the WTF.

2010-04-21 Reply Admin

Metrics.

I'm Australian and was raised on Imperial units and went through the conversion to decimal in 1966.

We've ended up "humanising" the metrics so the large size of personal drinks tend to be 600ml (close enough to the old Imperial pint) rather than 500; while standard lengths of building materials tend to be in multiples of 300mm (close enough to the old Imperial foot .. e.g. 1.8m, 2.1m etc)

On the jump between units .. for distances we tend to use 100mm (4 inches) as an approximation between cm and metres .. so "4 to 500mm" and for weights 100gm (1/4 Imperial pound) so "between 5 and 600 grams of bacon please").

Oddly we still tend to use feet for the height of humans .. probably because it doesn't need to be calculated from. If we want a difference we'd be more likely to say someone is 5cm taller.

Remember that we had the full Imperial suite so our money was in pounds, shillings and pence and half-pence. So the multipliers were 2 half-pence to the penny, 12 pennies to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound then we shifted to a base ten.

Do I want to return to that? You've got to be kidding. I have fun watching my kids' faces when I describe what we were brought up on.

2010-04-22 Reply Admin

That reminds me of when I worked IT for a city library. Our original anti-virus software was pushed upgrades as part of the daily startup scripts.

The librarians who started the machines would see it updating the virus signatures.

Then we upgraded all the anti-virus software so that it could automatically get the updates themselves. From our perspective this was much better. It did have a side-effect though. The startup time was about 2 minutes shorter and we received call after call, day after day, from concerned librarians who had noticed that the systems were no longer updating the antivirus signatures on startup. We would reassure them over and over again that the signatures were being updated, they just weren't seeing it.

Eventually, my boss had had enough and told us to put something in the startup script so that the librarians would think the signatures were being updated.

We added a little echo statement something like "Updating anti-virus signatures" and made it sleep for 90 seconds.

The librarians were happy. Too happy. They smugly complained that they were right all along and that we hadn't been listening to them. We got concerned calls from the Director asking why it took us a week to fix the anti-virus updates and not listening to the librarians.

2010-04-22 Reply Admin

julmu:
Sammy:
We guys are "the real WTF". We have problems...
I mean, it's all about "finding the real WTF" and making look other people/commenters less good than ourselves. By being cocky or making the comments other commenters look bad. Must be a sad moment in our life every time we do it - or a sad life, that depends...
FTFY

Thanks. Doesn't make it any better, though.

I'm Givin' Ye All She's Got!

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