• RBH (unregistered) in reply to freakinhuge

    i see Dead people.

  • feugiat (unregistered)

    They probably choose a random number.

    Obligatory Dilbert reference:

    http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/

  • captzimmo (unregistered) in reply to Saky
    Saky:
    Actually, there is a bug in this code, its missing one '9' !!

    And the most important one, too!

  • (cs) in reply to ozBash
    ozBash:
    which means all the zeroes after about 300 are meaningless.
    TRWTF: these are 9s, not 0s

    You're confused because they snipped part of the code:

    const zero = 9;
  • VictorSierraGolf (unregistered)

    Well, every Warhammer 40K fan knows now, why the Imperium can't really figure out how stuff works, when studying old artifacts from Terra...

  • S (unregistered) in reply to Jerry
    Jerry:
    K:
    Frank:
    Values between 10^300 and 10^308 in PHP are reserved for error codes.
    I hadn't realized PHP had that many different error codes.
    10^8 errors ought to be enough for anyone... even php.

    That's not 10^8 error codes. That's 10^308 - 10^300, which is at least 10^307 error codes. Still, better to just be on the safe side with possible error codes.

  • Candy (unregistered)

    This is just a time limit of 9 brazillion seconds.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Candy
    Candy:
    This is just a time limit of 9 brazillion seconds.
    How are brazillion seconds different to regular seconds? Do they do it differently in South America?
  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    This is just shocking in every way. This is the closest I've ever come to calling BS on an article but I'm not going to because I've worked with people who would think this is a good idea. Admittedly it was a summer job caring for downs syndrome kids, but still.

    If I ever saw this in my codebase I would be having serious words with the developer about his career prospects. The words "burger" and "king" would be involved.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Candy:
    This is just a time limit of 9 brazillion seconds.
    How are brazillion seconds different to regular seconds? Do they do it differently in South America?

    I think brazillion comes after kabillion. And they do do it differently in South America. Oh yes.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Anonymous:
    Candy:
    This is just a time limit of 9 brazillion seconds.
    How are brazillion seconds different to regular seconds? Do they do it differently in South America?

    I think brazillion comes after kabillion. And they do do it differently in South America. Oh yes.

    I'll have to stop you right there frits, I strongly suspect we don't want to know what you're getting at...

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered)

    I'm wondering whether there's a history behind this.

    Suppose someone was set the task to increase the timeout because it kept timing out. "Want me to set it to infinite?" No, says PHB, infinity's scary, all we want to do is set it to bigger than ... etc.

    The developer doubles the time from 1 minute to 2. Then to 4. And so on. Tired of the shouting, he sets it to 99999999999 or something that unfortunately breaks the 2^31 (or whatever it is) limit on int size, and wraps it to a neg number. Instant timeout again, but by this time the programmer has been fired for not having done the task that PHB has assigned.

    But this time there's a rookie on the case. Rookie inherits the problem that 99999999999 still isn't enough, so keeps increasing it and increasing it by doubling the number of digits, having learned somewhere that if a parameter is not big enough, double it. Each time the actual int that is interpreted by the machine is smaller than adequate. This goes on and on till finally something evolves that actually works somehow.

    Not saying it's likely, but it's possible.

  • the beholder (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Candy:
    This is just a time limit of 9 brazillion seconds.
    How are brazillion seconds different to regular seconds? Do they do it differently in South America?
    Yes, the southern hemisphere does turn faster than the northern. We brazilians were the first to notice it and that's why it is named after us.
    frits:
    I think brazillion comes after kabillion. And they do do it differently in South America. Oh yes.
    Well played sir. I concede defeat... ;)
  • the beholder (unregistered) in reply to S
    S:
    That's not 10^8 error codes. That's 10^308 - 10^300, which is at least 10^307 error codes. Still, better to just be on the safe side with possible error codes.
    I heard WTFU has introductory high-school level math classes starting next monday. You should definitely apply.
  • Brandon (unregistered)

    My Question, why is the code resetting the timeout to that rediculous number for every insert, rather than one time at the beginning of the file. Does the simple SQL insert really take till the end of time?

    And who's going to be around when this is done anyway?

  • (cs)
    $valor = $valor;

    It's not TRWTF, but it a nice little XTRAWTF.

  • (cs)

    How does that even (compile|get interpreted without a runtime error)?!

  • BlueCollarAstronaut (unregistered)

    That's pretty impressive, but I wonder if that computer has the techmology to handle a timeout of

    99999999999999999999999999999999999109999999...

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Brandon
    Brandon:
    My Question, why is the code resetting the timeout to that rediculous number for every insert, rather than one time at the beginning of the file. Does the simple SQL insert really take till the end of time?
    I have seen this misspelling so many times recently. Is this one of those me-me things you young folk like to throw around?

    In other news, get off my lawn you damn kids! But seriously, did I miss the memo on "rediculous" or what?

  • (cs)

    If you started working at age 18 and will retire at age 67 then 1,577,881,080 seconds would take you through retirement if you created this mess on the first day.

    So put in 9999999999 and if it fails after that, why would you care?

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to WhiskeyJack
    WhiskeyJack:
    How does that even (compile|get interpreted without a runtime error)?!
    Auto conversion to infinite I think. I thought the same thing but remember this is PHP, if it can't do a thing it just takes a random guess at what it thinks you wanted.
  • SR (unregistered) in reply to Arvind
    Arvind:
    Count the time left before you would retire from the company. Add 1 second to it. The number you get is "freaking huge enough". Don't waste your time.

    If I'd spotted that his retirement wouldn't have been far away.

  • (cs)

    I'm waiting for Hear a Blog to narrate this post.

  • drusi (unregistered) in reply to Anon

    The strongest timeout.

    Anon:
    Oh well, I really didn't believe people posted fake WTFs in here but this thing is just too bad. I refuse to believe this really happened.

    I believe it.

    Probably some "programmer" got frustrated with a timeout and just added as many nines as it took before he got bored.

    His frustration may have been due to working on the wrong part of the code to begin with. I worked with a guy once who added a five-second delay into one of my scripts to avoid trying to use the results of an asynchronous HTTP request before it was done loading. (We were stuck doing some fairly complex things around a jqGrid that neither of us understood all that well.) It wouldn't have bothered me if he hadn't put it in an "else" branch that got executed INSTEAD of the request in question, tested exactly once (upon which, by chance, everything happened to work out), called it fixed, and stuck a comment above the delay that lambasted anyone reading the code for even thinking of removing it.

  • Chubber (unregistered)

    You just know that there was an argument in the coding cubicles that went something like this:

    Norm: Your email parser isn't completing.

    Harold: It's because your database server is too slow.

    Norm: My know my database server is on a slow server, you have to work around that.

    Harold: I am. I am giving the script plenty of time to complete.

    Norm: No your not, it's timing out too quickly. Can't you prevent PHP from stopping the script?

    Harold: I could, but I am NOT going to make it wait FOREVER. That's bad programming practice.

    Norm: But 9 seconds? That's not enough time if the server is swamped. Make it wait longer.

    Harold: Longer!?! How about 99 seconds? Or 999 seconds? I know, how about (holds down the 9 key while making angry faces at Norm...) THAT long! Will that make you happy!

    Harold stomps off, exit stage left...

  • deltafalcon (unregistered)

    That's 131,008 9's... Took a bloody long time to count 'em all!! :D

    More to the point, how would you express that many nines in words... How many centuries would that many seconds equal... To the supercomputer!

  • (cs) in reply to Frank
    Frank:
    Obviously, the boss told him "I'm sick of this thing timing out. Set it to the highest possible number you can!"
    You may be right. Then again, this seems more like the boss decided to go in and "fix" it himself.
  • Doug (unregistered)

    A long one, I think. To Rio de Janeiro, by preference

  • Lyle (unregistered)

    Oh yeah? MY timeout code used 131009 9's. That's more than 10 times as large!

    -- Lyle

  • (cs)

    Maybe he thought that set_time_limit took the parameter in yocto-seconds? Even if he did, that's still a freakin' long-ass time limit.

  • JayC (unregistered) in reply to S
    S:
    That's not 10^8 error codes. That's 10^308 - 10^300, which is at least 10^307 error codes. Still, better to just be on the safe side with possible error codes.

    Ignoring the first math error, 10^308 - 10^300 = 10^300 *(10^8 - 1), or still somewhere around 10^308, we're talking about floating points, of which there are not 308 or so significant digits stored.

  • germaniac (unregistered) in reply to freakinhuge

    I can see it too, looks like Guernica

  • George Hotelling (unregistered)

    That sets the timeout to about 10^131000 seconds. For perspective, the Sun will become a red giant and swallow the Earth in about 1.6*10^17 seconds

  • (cs)

    Original coder was probably a Yoko Ono fan.

  • Bill's Kid (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Brandon:
    My Question, why is the code resetting the timeout to that rediculous number for every insert, rather than one time at the beginning of the file. Does the simple SQL insert really take till the end of time?
    I have seen this misspelling so many times recently. Is this one of those me-me things you young folk like to throw around?

    In other news, get off my lawn you damn kids! But seriously, did I miss the memo on "rediculous" or what?

    Are ridiculing his spelling?

  • Greg (unregistered)

    Not sure of the scale here, but the age of the universe is ~4.3 x 1017 seconds - or about 1061 planck moments.

    10**300 seconds would be enough time to create and destroy about 6 universes in series.

  • FuBar (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    But seriously, did I miss the memo on "rediculous" or what?
    The memo is: If you can spell 'ridicule' you can spell 'ridiculous'. You seldom see the misspelling 'redicule', but 'rediculous' is way too common.
  • (cs) in reply to captzimmo
    captzimmo:
    Saky:
    Actually, there is a bug in this code, its missing one '9' !!

    And the most important one, too!

    Wo ist dein nein? LOL

  • FuBar (unregistered) in reply to captzimmo
    captzimmo:
    Saky:
    Actually, there is a bug in this code, its missing one '9' !!
    And the most important one, too!
    Nah, the decimal point is in the wrong place. It was supposed to be before the first '9'.
  • FuBar (unregistered) in reply to George Hotelling
    George Hotelling:
    That sets the timeout to about 10^131000 seconds. For perspective, the Sun will become a red giant and swallow the Earth in about 1.6*10^17 seconds
    It's over 9000!
  • (cs) in reply to FuBar
    FuBar:
    Anonymous:
    But seriously, did I miss the memo on "rediculous" or what?
    The memo is: If you can spell 'ridicule' you can spell 'ridiculous'. You seldom see the misspelling 'redicule', but 'rediculous' is way too common.
    Yeah, so if you could be sure to spell it that way from now on, that'd be great... And we'll go ahead and get you another copy of that memo, mkay?
  • neminem (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    I have seen this misspelling so many times recently. Is this one of those me-me things you young folk like to throw around?
    No way. That's the most rediculous thing I've heard, evar.

    (Yes it is. So is evar. Also borken. And sometimes teh, though that one's more frequently an actual typo.)

  • Mijzelf (unregistered) in reply to Coyne

    Because it would have popped out '42' after 10000000003 seconds.

  • Mijzelf (unregistered) in reply to Coyne
    Coyne:
    If you started working at age 18 and will retire at age 67 then 1,577,881,080 seconds would take you through retirement if you created this mess on the first day.

    So put in 9999999999 and if it fails after that, why would you care?

    Because it *would have* popped out '42' after 10000000003 seconds.
  • trwtf (unregistered) in reply to Mijzelf
    Mijzelf:
    Because it *would have* popped out '42' after 10000000003 seconds.

    No, we've already got 42. It would have popped out the question to which 42 is the answer.

  • drusi (unregistered) in reply to FuBar
    FuBar:
    George Hotelling:
    That sets the timeout to about 10^131000 seconds. For perspective, the Sun will become a red giant and swallow the Earth in about 1.6*10^17 seconds
    It's over 9000!
    Don't you mean it's over 9999?

    captcha: damnum. Number of dams? Send the noncommittal response to hell?

  • Bobbo (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    That guy who lives next door to Beavis and Butthead:
    In other news, get off my lawn you damn kids! But seriously, did I miss the memo on "rediculous" or what?

    'Rediculous' is probably the new 'prolly'. It's ridiculous.

  • (cs)

    This reminds me of the abomination known as MathCad. Numeric infinity is defined as 10^307. Numbers are, however, double values. This means that you can actually do something like this (if I can remember the syntax correctly): a := 10^308 (∞ < a) = true

  • (cs) in reply to Bobbo
    Bobbo:
    'Rediculous' is probably the new 'prolly'. It's ridiculous.

    No no, it's "Riddikulus". The Boggart-banishing spell.

  • Mark (unregistered)

    I don't know what units that time limit is in, but the entire universe is only about 410240038000000000 seconds old.

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