The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Mason Wheeler · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Aaron:
Honestly, do you people just sit around all day waiting for opportunities to post the same two xkcd references?

Two? What's the other one?

sstair · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Damn, I was sure I was going to be first with the Hendrix ref...

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

EvanED:
NSCoder:
It should return "Slartybartfast". Now that's a random name.
How big of a geek am I for immediately recognizing that the correct spelling of that is Slartibartfast?

Not very. And even less since you think you are.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Mason Wheeler:
Aaron:
Honestly, do you people just sit around all day waiting for opportunities to post the same two xkcd references?

Two? What's the other one?

Oh, yes, I've been waiting for this question!!! I'll post the link to Bobby comic as soon as I find the link. Please nobody comment meanwhile!

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Azeroth:
Please nobody comment meanwhile!

Commenting as requested.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Perhaps it is actually referring to "Mary Random", a secretary in the HR department, and this is just a very severe case of hard-coding.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Maurits:
> Mary is a boy's name where?
Middle-Earth.

No. You're thinking of Merry, short for Meriadoc.

Adriano · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Mason Wheeler:
In Spanish, Italian, and probably a bunch of related languages, "Mario" is the masculine version of "Maria" (Mary), and is a fairly common male name.

And, in Spanish, Italian and probably a bunch of related languages (and some not so related, like German) Maria is commonly used as a second name, as in José María (Spanish), Carlo Maria (Italian), and Klaus Maria (German). Might depend on the country, though.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

MY NAME IS SUE.

HOW DO YOU DO?

NOW YOU GONNA DIE.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Mel:
Well, if there can be a boy named "Sue"...

Not to mention "the man they call Jayne".

Someone You Know · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

EvanED:
NSCoder:
It should return "Slartybartfast". Now that's a random name.
How big of a geek am I for immediately recognizing that the correct spelling of that is Slartibartfast?

It's not important.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Montoya:
The coder clearly forgot to randomize the possibilities. Here is the correct way to do this:
public static function getRandomName($gender) { $names = array('Mary'); shuffle($names); return $names[0]; }

This made me lough. I especially like how the $gender is unused.

captcha: abbas (how many of them?)

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Helix:
we have logged your IP address and will be running random DDoS

Like everybody sending e-mails containing only "Mary"?

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

So it's a stub function that was never fully implemented. Er. So? This actually looks like a good programming practice whose only fault was that this particular function wasn't important enough for someone to get around to implementing properly.

The fact that it was found by accident instead of during an investigation for why "Mary" keeps showing up in various places also shows it's not a very important method.

I wish the WTFs I find were this simple.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

The obvious solution is to place a phone book on a wooden table, set up a web cam to capture an image, use OCR convert the image to words and then pick a name from there. Just remember (VERY IMPORTANT!), every day you need to flip the page in the phone book or you'll end up with the same set of names as the day before.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

The precise "Mary" being returned is perfectly random, thank you.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Anon:
The obvious solution is to place a phone book on a wooden table, set up a web cam to capture an image, use OCR convert the image to words and then pick a name from there. Just remember (VERY IMPORTANT!), every day you need to flip the page in the phone book or you'll end up with the same set of names as the day before.

Also, we could handle the gender parameter by keeping every name and the associated gender (male, female, either or FILE_NOT_FOUND) in an XML file so that after reading a name from the phone book, you can look up what gender it is. If it isn't the gender requested, grab another name from the phone book.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

I'm guessing it's just a placeholder. The original author meant to elaborate, but the requirement for a random name came & went and there the function lies, waiting to be enhanced by the next voyager.

That would be you.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Anon:
The obvious solution is to place a phone book on a wooden table, set up a web cam to capture an image, use OCR convert the image to words and then pick a name from there. Just remember (VERY IMPORTANT!), every day you need to flip the page in the phone book or you'll end up with the same set of names as the day before.

That'll never work. Once you've OCR'd the page, you need to tabulate the results, print them out individually and stash them inside Kinder Eggs, fill a room full of the things, then toss a black, mute, blind, deaf, legless, hunchback, lesbian midget in to select one at random.

Just remember (VERY IMPORTANT), tie a rope around her waist and hold onto it tightly, or you'll never be able to retrieve her.

pbean · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

This is a new but increasingly common and popular paradigm. You first define a function with a generic name (getRandomName), and a generic/pseudo implementation to meet the basic requirements. When there's time and budget later on, you expand it with a more extensive implementation (getRealRandomName).

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

grzlbrmft:
I especially like how the $gender is unused.

I know exactly how that feels...

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Bub:
toss a black, mute, blind, deaf, legless, hunchback, lesbian midget in to select one at random.

Good luck getting HR to put that in the job description. Unless they can wrap the whole thing up in a single catch-all phrase...perhaps "somebody like Kevin"?

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Steve the Cynic:
C'mon guys, is nobody (aside from me, that is) going to mention Marion Morrison in the quest for confused names?
And never mind the problems my father had owing to the USian tendency to assume that Robin is a girl's name...

Eh, or a gay side-kick... er...not that there's anything wrong with that!!1!

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

powerlord:
No the real WTF here is using PHP for OO. ;)

I came here for a comment like this. Leaving satisfied.

TGV · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Herohtar:
Maurits:
> Mary is a boy's name where?
Middle-Earth.

No. You're thinking of Merry, short for Meriadoc.

And look, you've drawn a geek out of its shelter. Now what?

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Helix:
jspenguin:
http://xkcd.com/221/
int getRandomNumber()
{
    return 4;    // chosen by fair dice roll.
                 // guaranteed to be random.
}
XKCD references are banned on the daily wtf - we have logged your IP address and will be running random DDoS

void randomDDos() { run "DDoS 127.0.0.1"; }

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Where is Mary a boy's name? Perhaps you don't remember the 'Married With Children' episode where Kelley burned the beloved family couch. There was one copy of the couch left, owned by the designer. He changed his name to something that sounded more like Muh-Ray. How was it spelled? Mary. Isn't that a girl's name, they asked? No, a girl spells it mAry (vocal accent on the 'a'). He spelled it marY.

Yeesh. I have to stop falling asleep in front of the TV.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

TGV:
Herohtar:
Maurits:
> Mary is a boy's name where?
Middle-Earth.

No. You're thinking of Merry, short for Meriadoc.
And look, you've drawn a geek out of its shelter. Now what?

Hit geek with sword

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

TRWTF is that the function returns an incorrect value half the time. Here's the fix:

public static function getRandomName($gender)
   {
      return 'Pat';
   }

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

If you must know, we call that function to assign $whoWantsToDoYou and that it's the first thing the user sees after logging in. Helps morale around here. Anyway, we used to have a sizable list of switch-hitting sluts in the office (primarily in marketing and accounts payable) but sadly, after downsizing, Mary is all we have left.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

no_YOU_are:
If you must know, we call that function to assign $whoWantsToDoYou and that it's the first thing the user sees after logging in. Helps morale around here. Anyway, we used to have a sizable list of switch-hitting sluts in the office (primarily in marketing and accounts payable) but sadly, after downsizing, Mary is all we have left.

The recession has been particularly hard on the office sluts.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Yalpe Nismou:
So Mary is a boy's name where ?

In middle earth, Mary, of Mary and Pipin fame.

Also I once knew a guy named Marion, who went by Mary.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Luckily, no one has posted this [image]

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

jbarreneche:
Luckily, no one has posted this [image]

Nope, it was posted already...

captcha: gravis

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

To Hell with Mary...

public static function getRandomName($gender) { return 'Irish Girl'; }

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

return getRandomName("hermaphrodite") + " is Brillant";

Monomelodies · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

EvanED:
NSCoder:
It should return "Slartybartfast". Now that's a random name.
How big of a geek am I for immediately recognizing that the correct spelling of that is Slartibartfast?

I actually used that as a test-name in a previous version of our library. It generated code if classes weren't found, and the existence of a method 'slartibartfast' signalled it was a generated dummy-class. I even included a nice comment that people should feel free to change it if they ever needed a method named 'slartibartfast'.

Of course, that was before I decided that generated code was nonsense and it should just throw a FILE_NOT_FOUND exception ;)

NSCoder · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

EvanED:
NSCoder:
It should return "Slartybartfast". Now that's a random name.
How big of a geek am I for immediately recognizing that the correct spelling of that is Slartibartfast?

+42i geek points. I actually thought it might be an i, and considered checking it, but didn't. Although it's been about 13 years since I read it, I only recently read Neil Gaiman's book about h2g2, and I am the kind of person who generally remembers how words are spelled after seeing them once, so I'm not sure how I got it wrong. I must have done it deliberately, since the y adds extra randomness. Yeah, that's it.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

A Johnny Cash reference. Very nice.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

coad fale:
Helix:
jspenguin:
http://xkcd.com/221/
int getRandomNumber()
{
    return 4;    // chosen by fair dice roll.
                 // guaranteed to be random.
}
XKCD references are banned on the daily wtf - we have logged your IP address and will be running random DDoS
void randomDDos() { run "DDoS 127.0.0.1"; }

... And we close out with a User Friendly reference. (Actually a double reference--quite elegant.)

Zylon · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Kevin:
Nope, it was posted already...
captcha: gravis

Exactly the sort of low-grade WHOOOSH cognition we've come to expect from the sort of people who post their captchas.

EvanED · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Spike:
Yalpe Nismou:
So Mary is a boy's name where ?

In middle earth, Mary, of Mary and Pipin fame.

That's Merry, not Mary; as has been said before.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

"Random" is frequently used to mean "arbitrary"

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

mernen:
Actually, the "really random" method is called "real_getRandomName".

It's funny and all that MySQL has a function called that, but you should link to the actual function reference instead of the PHP frontend to it.

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Obviously some names had to get removed because else this line of code would be broken:

echo getRandomName().' has a little Lamb.';

Coyne · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Unfortunately, getReallyRandomnName() is already defined, too:

   public static function getReallyRandomName($gender)
   {
       return 'Spencer';
   }

He's going to have to go with getTrulyRandomName().

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

That's coding to requirements:

"Req 1.3.5: We want a function that returns some random name each time it's called"

"Mary" is some random name, let's return that!!

Smitty · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Anon:
> Hit geek with sword

You fight like a dairy farmer.

Maurits · 2010-02-10 Reply Admin

To all the Merry vs. Mary pedants... you do know his name was actually Kalimac, right?

2010-02-10 Reply Admin

Brian Manahan:
MY NAME IS SUE.
HOW DO YOU DO?

NOW YOU GONNA DIE.

Yeah, That's what I told him. Well I hit him hard right between the eyes, and he went down, but to my surprise, Come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear......

Quite Contrary

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