• (cs) in reply to TheReligion2000
    TheReligion2000:
    Someone You Know:
    Robert Hanson:
    Reminds me of the French class I took. In French, you modify the verb being used depending on whether the subject is "male", "female" or "plural". Some things are obviously male or female, while others are not (is a book male or female?)

    My instructor told us that trying to "reason out" the gender of an object is useless. Just memorize which bucket a thing goes into; one bucket is "male" and the other is "female".

    Especially since "reasoning out" the gender is often wrong. In French, the word for "handbag" is masculine and the word for "mustache" is feminine, for instance.

    and vagina is male and penis female

    Those frogs

    Actually, you are wrong -- both are masculine.

    Now tell me, where is the logic about english stress accents?

  • Kyle Söze (unregistered) in reply to Coincoin
    Coincoin:
    Now tell me, where is the logic about english stress accents?
    We don't need no stinkin' logic.
  • dolo54 (unregistered)

    So the real WTF is the U.S. Postal system... that's obvious.

  • PC Paul (unregistered) in reply to JC
    JC:
    http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&q=&ll=51.411661,-0.306673&spn=0.002583,0.006491&t=k&z=17&om=1

    Obviously this program was designed to handle situations just like this.

    Try this instead.. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&q=&ll=51.411661,-0.306673&spn=0.002583,0.006491&t=k&z=20&om=1

    You can hand tweak the 'z' value up to 20 in some places. I didn't realise any of the UK was up to that level yet though.

  • PC Paul (unregistered) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    A mobius strip, here's how to make one.
    1. Cut a strip of paper.
    2. Give the paper a half twist.
    3. Join the two ends together to form a "ring".

    Now guess how many sides this strip of paper has. It actually only has one side. To prove it, take a pen and without lifting it draw along the middle of the side until you reach your stating point, then find the side without a line. Interestingly, there is also only one edge.

    If you really want to freak yourself out, try cutting along that line.

    Then do the same cut-down-the-middle to the result.

    When you get over that, try making a new mobius strip but this time only cut it 1/3 of the way in from one edge, until the cut meets itself.

    True WTFness in all it's glory.

  • (cs) in reply to PC Paul
    PC Paul:
    KattMan:
    A mobius strip, here's how to make one.
    1. Cut a strip of paper.
    2. Give the paper a half twist.
    3. Join the two ends together to form a "ring".

    Now guess how many sides this strip of paper has. It actually only has one side. To prove it, take a pen and without lifting it draw along the middle of the side until you reach your stating point, then find the side without a line. Interestingly, there is also only one edge.

    If you really want to freak yourself out, try cutting along that line.

    Then do the same cut-down-the-middle to the result.

    When you get over that, try making a new mobius strip but this time only cut it 1/3 of the way in from one edge, until the cut meets itself.

    True WTFness in all it's glory.

    You can't call WTF on reality!
  • (cs)

    WTF? Somehow the writeup to the code doesn't make sense.

    "usually when there are not a whole lot of addresses on a street -- the vendor puts them in the Both range"

    So "If Not IsNumeric(StreetNumberValue)" means there aren't a lot of addresses on the street?

    As for the string builder, is the problem that its using BOTH concatenation AND string builder goodness?

  • (cs) in reply to NiceWTF
    NiceWTF:
    To clarify, my post was to explain the seemingly weird data model used by the address data vendor. It may actually make some sense when they sort the table by zipcode (which is likely).

    Each zipcode is for 'odd, even, or both' sides of a street.

    Right, its a WTF if you assume the "odd", "even", or "both" refers to a number, since numbers clearly cannot be both odd and even. However it makes perfect sense if you consider that it refers to which side of the street you are talking about.

    But this just goes to show, be very clear in your documentation. This would have looked fine had they just added "side of street" to the comments in the code.

  • (cs) in reply to Coincoin
    Coincoin:
    Now tell me, where is the logic about english stress accents?

    You have to know the origin of the word. English comes from many different sources, and as a result you have many different conventions with regards to pronunciation and spelling. It doesn't mean there are no logical systems to it, it means there are several different logical systems.

    Its much like maintaining software that has been contributed to by many different developers who each use different coding styles. Yeah, it may look funny when you look at it as a whole, but it doesn't mean the one developer didn't have a logical reason to put his {'s on the same line as the if statement, nor does it mean that the other didn't have a logical reason to put his {'s on the next line.

  • (cs) in reply to Steve Boyko
    Steve Boyko:
    I'd like to see the buildings that are on both sides of the street. Does the street run right through the middle of the building? ;)

    Cul-de-sacs aside, most likely the label was for the postal carriers so they would know which side of the road to watch for the given address. "Both" means its undetermined, and the building could be on either side. So the carrier has to check both sides.

  • rhook (unregistered) in reply to nwbrown

    Yeah. What nwbrown said. The real "Wtf" when it comes to dealing with addresses, both postal and physical (which are not necessarily the same thing) is that they are a hell of a lot more complicated than they first appear. Virtually every database system that I've seen handling addresses naively assumes a hierarchy something like {Number, Street, Town, State, Country}. In that worldview, then it is indeed correct to assume that the street number is either odd or even. The reality is that a street address does not necessarily have a street number, so the answer to the question "odd or even?" is "mu".

    I for one live for the day that all addresses are latitude, longitude and altitude. Will make my life infinitely easier.

  • Southern (unregistered)

    Remember the times when things were done in the simpliest and most effective way, or at least the correct way ... Oh, wait I think that never happened at all.

  • (cs) in reply to SomebodyElse
    SomebodyElse:
    Dustin_00:
    blunden:
    Nice one.

    Odd comment.

    Actually, it is an Even comment. (#141320)

    But the content (one) is odd.

  • eighties (unregistered)

    I had only read the abstract to this article, and I was already asking myself ... "WTF?".
    This brings back fond memories of pseudo-trinary boolean types perpetuated by the world's best WTF'ers.

  • Someone (unregistered) in reply to Steve Boyko
    Steve Boyko:
    I'd like to see the buildings that are on both sides of the street. Does the street run right through the middle of the building? ;)

    Why not?

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to KattMan

    (Not wanting to be pedantic, but) it's about how they sound, not meaning. Kind of like whether you say 'a' or 'an' in English depending on the first letter of the next word.

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to Steve

    That was meant to be a reply to the comments about gender in French...

  • Dazed (unregistered) in reply to rhook
    rhook:
    The real "Wtf" when it comes to dealing with addresses, both postal and physical (which are not necessarily the same thing) is that they are a hell of a lot more complicated than they first appear. Virtually every database system that I've seen handling addresses naively assumes a hierarchy something like {Number, Street, Town, State, Country}. In that worldview, then it is indeed correct to assume that the street number is either odd or even. The reality is that a street address does not necessarily have a street number ...
    Agreed. Having lived at an address of the structure: House Name, Street Name, Village, Postal town, County, Postal Code, Country, I can confirm that on-line forms (and even paper forms) are frequently awful to fill in.

    I once worked for a Yellow Pages organisation - i.e. an organisation whose continued existence depends on getting names, addresses and telephone numbers correct. The part of their database which handled just those entities was around 60 tables.

  • (cs) in reply to RobbieAreBest

    I should have concurred!

  • (cs) in reply to different
    different:
    I live on a block that has a few fractional addresses (really!).

    How would their algorithm handle: "38 1/2 xyz street" ?

    Here in Germany, when a larger property is divided into smaller ones and each requires a new house number then they it will "numbered" 38a, 38b, 38c ... and so on (in this example the original house number was assumed to be "38"). I don't know what will be done when there are not enough letters in the alphabet, though.

  • (cs) in reply to rjnewton
    rjnewton:
    SomebodyElse:
    Dustin_00:
    blunden:
    Nice one.

    Odd comment.

    Actually, it is an Even comment. (#141320)

    But the content (one) is odd.

    Now you know why there's even, odd and both. That comment is odd and even and so it's both...

  • netjeff (unregistered) in reply to rhook
    rhook:
    I for one live for the day that all addresses are latitude, longitude and altitude. Will make my life infinitely easier.
    Maybe not infinitely easier. Plate tectonics introduces changes to the coordinates of ground-points. For example, a building in Honolulu moves about 6 cm every year (to the northwest) according to the ITRF.
  • snqow (unregistered) in reply to different

    that's nothing! My alma matter had a building numbered 43425.2!

    captcha: bathe. no way! I did bathe last month already!

  • Darwin (unregistered) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    Steve Boyko:
    I'd like to see the buildings that are on both sides of the street. Does the street run right through the middle of the building? ;)

    I will quote:

    "Our house, in the middle of the street."

    And I will quote Steven Wright:

    "My house is on the median strip of a highway. You don't really notice, except I have to leave the driveway doing 60 MPH."

    "The other night I came home late, and tried to unlock my house with my car keys. I started the house up. So, I drove it around for a while. I was speeding, and a cop pulled me over. He asked where I lived. I said, 'right here, officer'. Later, I parked it on the freeway, got out, and yelled at all the cars, 'Get out of my driveway!'"

    "I bought a house, on a one-way dead-end road; I don't know how I got there, but I can't leave."

    And the Pretenders:

    "In the middle of the road is my private cul-de-sac. Well, I can't get from the cab to the curb without some little jerk on my back."

  • smithy953 (unregistered)

    and if the number is 100 would it be odd and 200 would be even? the code dosnt consider the 0's at the end of a multi didgit number, so what would it class them as, or dose it have another bonus system that just makes a drunken monkey coder (for all ya tu users) spin a bottle of grouse n see which side its gonna go, its a minor glitch bt tht is gna gt annoyin

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