• Ace (unregistered) in reply to Alex
    Alex:
    Sure, given billions of dollars and hundreds of the smartest programmers on Earth, nothing is impossible.

    Aside from doing the same thing with fewer resources (money, time, and people).

  • (cs) in reply to Ziplodocus
    Ziplodocus:
    The real WTF is they didn't use regex

    They wanted to get Jamie Zaw-whatshisname on board, so first rule of working Jamie - NO REGEX.

  • (cs) in reply to jj
    jj:
    Nagesh:
    and her milk!
    ilk?

    Yes yes. that is what I meant, but I type-oed and then left it there to attract fish like you.

  • (cs) in reply to DrPepper
    DrPepper:
    Maybe the search box can't be psychic; but the "system" can be.

    I heard on NPR last week, of a unmarried teen girl who got a package from Target with samples/coupons for diapers, formula, etc -- two weeks before she told anyone she was pregnant.

    Turns out that by analyzing shopping patterns -- buying a larger purse, etc -- Target can make a pretty good guess at who might be pregnant.

    That's scary.

    Only reason I know target is because of the credit card information they gave to all hackers.

  • (cs)

    Also there is nothing straight forward in MVC application. The whole thing is nightamarish to start with. Then you have routes and views and controllers to add to mix.

    "Matz" only made ruby for joke purposes, but then some people got serious with it. Much like C++ and Strawstrup.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to Gina
    Gina:
    Valued Service:
    The center of the universe is where the expansion of the universe is evenly distributed in all directions.
    If the universe is infinite, how can it be expanding???
    "Cardinality" and "Measure" and "Bounded" are completely different things and "Infinite" in one doesn't always mean "Infinite" in the other.

    If this article scares you, that's because the best treatment we (humans) have of infinity is scary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measure_%28mathematics%29

    See also (much more fun): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilberts_hotel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fractals_by_Hausdorff_dimension

  • RFox (unregistered) in reply to Bobby Tables

    At least that opcode ensures a 50% hit rate on the branch prediction cache ;-)

    Bobby Tables:
    PB:
    BBW ; branch both ways

    That one might be dependant on which sites you browse with that CPU.

  • (cs) in reply to gramie
    gramie:
    Ninny:
    Toronto is the centre of the universe
    For certain values of "the universe"

    the horrible hockey team universe?

  • My Name Indeed (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    jj:
    Nagesh:
    and her milk!
    ilk?

    Yes yes. that is what I meant, but I type-oed and then left it there to attract fish like you.

    I thought it was just because you were paid with things like goats and milk.

  • (cs) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    If I poured an infinite amount of water into a bowl with infinite dimensions, could you say there's no stream going in, because it cannot have a position.

    The flow rate of all fictional streams is zero.

  • Sabre (unregistered)

    TRWTF is PHP, amirite?

  • Ninny (unregistered) in reply to Ziplodocus

    This is a Canadian joke. People from Toronto think they're all that and TO is the center of the universe (which IS NOT TRUE lol)!

  • Hawking (unregistered) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    The center of the universe is where the expansion of the universe is evenly distributed in all directions.
    Ummm, that would be everywhere.
  • (cs)

    A designer is a designer, because Pigs is Pigs.

  • (cs) in reply to Sabre
    Sabre:
    TRWTF is PHP, amirite?

    The Mechanical Turk of software.

  • (cs)

    And here I was expecting it end with "and so Lawrence left to join Microsoft and introduce Cortana to the world".

  • Reductio Ad Ridiculousum (unregistered) in reply to Kainsin
    Kainsin:
    #include <dowhatiwantnotwhatitype.h>
    +1

    Short and full of pith.

  • Kver (unregistered)

    I had an employer that asked for this; he wanted our online directory search engine to be 'smart enough' to 'know' what you were looking for.

    After about 5 revisions it turned out everyone was looking for only paid advertisers, and to save clutter 'other' results were relegated to page 2 and beyond. Even if there were no paid advertisers. So 98% of searches had result pages that read:

    Sorry, no premium results found. Page: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
  • Jeff (unregistered)

    This is the comment you wanted to read, specially selected for you.

  • Kent (unregistered)

    I had someone ask me to write him a Perl module (they're so cute when they know a few buzzwords, but not what they mean) to ensure that his web site was always first on search engine results.

    I guess it never occurred to him that someone else might want the same thing, much less what the "Perl module" should do to resolve such a conflict.

    Fast forward a few years: if I got the same request again I'd just put a proxy in front of Big Bossman's computer to inject his company name in his search results every time.

  • Big Bossman (unregistered)

    Hey, I searched for "Atlanta" from my computer at home, and it showed some stupid stuff like cities and sports teams instead of MyAwesomeCompany.com!

  • Reductio Ad Ridiculousum (unregistered)

    Somewhat related to today's topic of "predictive analytics"...

    I needed to google something. So I did so, and looked up as I'm hitting enter. I found that I had misplaced a hand and typed "okabes if fane aursgiw'"

    I laughed and, as I went to correct myself, I took a quick look at the results to see what, if anything, the googs would display.

    Sitting there was the first link, showing exactly what I wanted.

    " Showing results for planes of fame airshow' No results found for okabes if fane aursgiw' "

    #include <dowhatiwantnotwhatitype.h> indeed.

  • (cs) in reply to Kent
    Kent:
    I had someone ask me to write him a Perl module (they're so cute when they know a few buzzwords, but not what they mean) to ensure that his web site was always first on search engine results.

    I guess it never occurred to him that someone else might want the same thing, much less what the "Perl module" should do to resolve such a conflict.

    Fast forward a few years: if I got the same request again I'd just put a proxy in front of Big Bossman's computer to inject his company name in his search results every time.

    Perl browser extension to inject the HTML. Bam.

  • (cs) in reply to Reductio Ad Ridiculousum
    Reductio Ad Ridiculousum:
    Somewhat related to today's topic of "predictive analytics"...

    I needed to google something. So I did so, and looked up as I'm hitting enter. I found that I had misplaced a hand and typed "okabes if fane aursgiw'"

    I laughed and, as I went to correct myself, I took a quick look at the results to see what, if anything, the googs would display.

    Sitting there was the first link, showing exactly what I wanted.

    " Showing results for planes of fame airshow' No results found for okabes if fane aursgiw' "

    #include <dowhatiwantnotwhatitype.h> indeed.

    Is that considered an off-by-one error?

  • Reductio Ad Ridiculousum (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:

    Is that considered an off-by-one error?

    Qfsibqt.

  • Adam (unregistered) in reply to PB

    Modern?

    Those have been around since the PDP-11.

    (yes, I have fortune too -.o)

  • P (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    nobulate:
    "This is 2014, and if we can put a man on Mars, then we can make a comment posting form smart enough to eliminate frist posts!"
    Come on, there are days when the first comment is actually meaningful!

    Only after Remy has deleted the post (and any replies to it) that said "frist" :)

  • Scooter (unregistered)

    A bittersweet memory is called up from this. I'm sitting in a meeting where all of the "high level executives" have decided that their application should be as easy to use as an ATM machine - punch in the code, ask for what you want and VOILA here's the money...

    ... um, this is a CMS with authentication and authorization required, then business rules to ensure the process is sound, and oh yeah, I need to confirm this is what you want to actually do and so on... so you don't come screaming at me that your whole project was deleted just because you pressed the delete button (by itself? it can't actually delete itself) and now want methuselah to automagically drag it back from the dead ...

    Short response: This is a bit more complicated than that. Longer response : Perhaps you should give your more affluent users some breadth that they understand the system and have had at least some level of training and intelligence on the topic. I know, UNDERSTANDING, TRAINING, and INTELLIGENCE are optional qualifications these days, so I'll just respond "This is a bit more complicated than that..." and attempt to frame the problem into the inadequacies of a marketer's limited understanding...

    If you're stuck with an audience that is this troglodytic , RUN don't walk to the nearest exit. It's a sure sign you're not in the right place.

  • Brosmith (unregistered)
  • Scooter (unregistered) in reply to Brosmith

    Excellent absurdum nauseam...

  • Bill C. (unregistered) in reply to Jeremy
    Jeremy:
    faoileag:
    Actually, Becky is not too far off with her remark "This is 2014, and if we can put a man on Mars, then we can make a search smart enough to give the users what they want."

    Google does this, it's called "search engine bias".

    So she searches for Paris for the first time and sees: Paris, Daughter of Michael Jackson Paris, France. Paris, Texas,

    She clicks on "Paris, Texas" and the next time she searches for Paris she sees: Paris, Texas, Paris, France. Paris, Daughter of Michael Jackson

    System of ordering: Last selection first, then matches from the related category (placenames), then remaining matches.

    First of all, I hate it when people/clients do this. "Well, google does it!" Yeah, we'll, google is a billion dollar a year company with an army of the world's best programmers, and have honed the most advanced searching algorithm on the planet. You paid us $3000 to make you a store.
    Stop complaining, take the billion dollars from your client, and build a clone of Google.
    Jeremy:
    Secondly, she doesn't want it to "learn her" either. She wants "Atlanta" to return the city when she wants it to, and "Johnny Atlanta" when she wants it to. There is no reasonable "learning" that can meet that requirement, nor does (as another posted suggested) detecting certain formats (in this case city names) and promoting those.
    Oh you're right. Scratch my previous comment. Even Google can't figure out what women want.
  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to Gina
    Gina:
    gramie:
    Ninny:
    Toronto is the centre of the universe
    For certain values of "the universe"
    If the universe is infinite, isn't everywhere the center of the universe???
    On the line of all real numbers, it is often convenient to put zero at the centre, but you're right in this case that any real number could be the centre.

    On the ray of nonnegative real numbers, where is the centre? This ray is equally infinite as the entire line, but your logic falls apart.

    Toronto is the centre because the half plane east of Yonge St. and the half plane west of Yonge St. are poles apart.

  • Windsor-Lee (unregistered) in reply to Ace
    Ace:
    Alex:
    Sure, given billions of dollars and hundreds of the smartest programmers on Earth, nothing is impossible.

    Aside from doing the same thing with fewer resources (money, time, and people).

    You just copy the original work, using cheap labor.

  • (cs) in reply to Norman Diamond
    Norman Diamond:
    Gina:
    gramie:
    Ninny:
    Toronto is the centre of the universe
    For certain values of "the universe"
    If the universe is infinite, isn't everywhere the center of the universe???
    On the line of all real numbers, it is often convenient to put zero at the centre, but you're right in this case that any real number could be the centre.

    On the ray of nonnegative real numbers, where is the centre? This ray is equally infinite as the entire line, but your logic falls apart.

    Toronto is the centre because the half plane east of Yonge St. and the half plane west of Yonge St. are poles apart.

    The centre of the non-negative real number line is infinity, of course. It's infinite in length. Half of infinity is infinity. Du-uh, for fuck's sake.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    Gina:
    gramie:
    Ninny:
    Toronto is the centre of the universe
    For certain values of "the universe"
    If the universe is infinite, isn't everywhere the center of the universe???

    If I poured an infinite amount of water into a bowl with infinite dimensions, could you say there's no stream going in, because it cannot have a position.

    The center of the universe is where the expansion of the universe is evenly distributed in all directions.

    IMO is the universe infinite? No. It's only as big as its contents. The rest of the universe is irrelevant.

    If a bowl has infinite dimensions, then by definition you can't pour water into it, or add anything to it, because nothing else exists.

    And you can't have a bowl of water that's infinite in only two dimensions, since it would form a sphere under the weight of its own gravity, but meh.

  • Philosoraptor (unregistered)

    Hmmm, isn't this "psychic" feature kind of what Google invented with their auto-suggest on their search box?

  • DaveB (unregistered)

    I suppose you could train a camera on Becky's face when she starts typing and check for micro expressions. Then show your results for a miniscule amount of time and when she starts to frown/anticipate.... remove the result and show another one.

    Train your algorithm to show->check face->vanish + new result->check face->.... till you recognise a smile

    Subliminal search result enhancement.

  • Scourge of programmers. (unregistered) in reply to DaveB
    DaveB:
    I suppose you could train a camera on Becky's face when she starts typing and check for micro expressions. Then show your results for a miniscule amount of time and when she starts to frown/anticipate.... remove the result and show another one.

    Train your algorithm to show->check face->vanish + new result->check face->.... till you recognise a smile

    Subliminal search result enhancement.

    A big whopping lie perpetuated by modern television shows like "lie to me". There are no micro-expressions, you annoying gnat.

    Captcha: Damnum.

  • Dale (unregistered)

    Dilbert wrote about the boss who wanted a telepathic interface.

  • Trevor (unregistered) in reply to John
    John:
    The problem is that to the user a simple look up is as deep a magic as a full text search.

    But TRWTF is that management can't be bothered to learn the difference and won't believe there is a difference when told so.

    They shouldn't have to: the real WTF is your inability to communicate effectively with non-technical folks.

  • Jay (unregistered)

    This is hardly a new or unusual requirement. Women have been demanding this of their husbands for thousands of years. I recall the day that my then-girlfriend said to me, "I want a man who knows me so well that I don't have to tell him what I want. He just knows." Foolishly I didn't take this seriously at the time. I married her, and then I was a villain because I failed to give her the things she wanted without her having to tell me. I fondly recall one conversation shortly before our divorce that ended with me saying, "If you just told me what you want me to do, maybe I'd say, 'Oh, okay, I can do that.' Hey, maybe I'd even think it sounded like something fun!" But she refused to tell me what she wanted from me. I was supposed to guess.

    No reason why women should expect any less from computers than they expect from husbands.

  • (cs)

    I dont know if anyone else has pointed this out, but I'm sure we all know that the answer to this problem is... SSDS!

    Anyone who doesnt know what SSDS is should visit the forums now, just look for the tread started 5 years ago with 50+ pages of comments!

  • (cs) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    This is hardly a new or unusual requirement. Women have been demanding this of their husbands for thousands of years. I recall the day that my then-girlfriend said to me, "I want a man who knows me so well that I don't have to tell him what I want. He just knows." Foolishly I didn't take this seriously at the time. I married her, and then I was a villain because I failed to give her the things she wanted without her having to tell me. I fondly recall one conversation shortly before our divorce that ended with me saying, "If you just told me what you want me to do, maybe I'd say, 'Oh, okay, I can do that.' Hey, maybe I'd even think it sounded like something fun!" But she refused to tell me what she wanted from me. I was supposed to guess.

    No reason why women should expect any less from computers than they expect from husbands.

    Wasn't that the Boondocks episode from this week?

  • iMalc (unregistered)

    First you propose: When the search would give results in multiple columns, you could present the user a question: "Do you mean a person or company, containing Atlanta?". The question would not come up if the results only appeared in one column. See how that goes down.

    If that doesn't work, just flip it around buddy. Ask her: What should it show if someone types in "Atlanta"? Do not accept any counter-questions she has about it. Insist she provides you an answer; a single answer.

    You can usually eventually either get through to such people, or you can make them look stupid enough that they are taken off the job.

  • Beta (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    I recall the day that my then-girlfriend said to me...
    I had a girlfriend like that. Once, by a combination of luck and near-supernatural Sherlock-Holmesian insight, I was able to guess the obscure and totally non-obvious thing that she really wanted. Her gratitude lasted about two and a half seconds.
  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to Jay
    Jay:
    I recall the day that my then-girlfriend said to me, "I want a man who knows me so well that I don't have to tell him what I want. He just knows."
    She TOLD you that? You should have known.
  • DaveB (unregistered) in reply to Scourge of programmers.

    Oh thats were my theory breaks down? Not the subliminal result presentation?

    Thank god, we were talking about lies and not satisfied smiles forming up you old miser

    Captch a:paratus

  • Maj najm (unregistered) in reply to Alex
    Alex:
    Sure, given billions of dollars and hundreds of the smartest programmers on Earth, nothing is not impossible.
    FTFY
  • CigarDoug (unregistered) in reply to Brosmith

    Is this just a rip-off of a Dilbert comic; or it is some super-cool, ironic way of reading Dilbert comics that only the super-cool, ironic kids know about?

    [image]

    Let me go dig out my Arcade Fire t-shirt so I can fit in.

  • CigarDoug (unregistered) in reply to Brosmith
    Brosmith:
    Is this just a rip-off of a Dilbert comic; or it is some super-cool, ironic way of reading Dilbert comics that only the super-cool, ironic kids know about? [image]

    Let me go dig out my Arcade Fire t-shirt so I can fit in. As soon as I figure out the difference between Reply and Quote. Or I bother to register so I can edit my earlier post.

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