• jim (unregistered) in reply to Mikademus
    Mikademus:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    In a move that may not have been the wisest career choice, Daren held the first page in the air above his head and let the other taped-together pages cascade to the floor. With over seven-feet of highlighted code in hand, Daren said: "this is what's wrong with the code."

    So he openly challenged the directors' judgement, technical know-how and budget spending. Of course a status-and-prestige-oriented personality would go for him after having ostensibly proved being a clear and present danger to his tenure.

    It sounds more like he begged the director for permission to make basic improvements to the subsystems involved in the application he was told to maintain. Eventually, he got sick of a director that is badly micromanaging a single report and confronted him.

    Here's an application you have to maintain. You're not allowed to document the application. You're not allowed to change how the data for the application is acquired. You're not allowed to correct known bugs in the application even if it would save hours in generating the report. But you are entirely responsible for the report, so make sure it keeps working.

  • Anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to gl
    Anonymous:

    unklegwar:

    <snip>

    This is just like measuring distance in units of time: "How far is it to your house from here?" "Oh, about 20 minutes"

     

    You could always express the distance to your house in fractions of light-years. 

     186,000 miles per second, it's not just a good idea, it's the law!

     

    Technically it is 186,281.96 (and a crapload more)

  • damon (unregistered)

    This reminds me of that monty python scene where the eager young idiot tries to improve the efficiency of some guy hitting things with a hammer.  I wonder if the building collapsed after he fixed that VB5 app.

  • jim (unregistered) in reply to jo42
    jo42:

    Note to Daren S (for future reference :) :

    People don't like to be told they are stupid and forked up...

    If the director takes any suggestions that the application could work better as the director being stupid and forked up, then the director is stupid and forked up and will probably not last long in a successful company. Either the director will get kicked or the company won't stay successful.<P>

    Any IT professional knows that at some point, any existing application might be considered obsolete and should be refactored or even rebuilt from scratch. Insisting on using a specific application and refusing to allow improvements just because you were instrumental in it's construction is simply ego. Today's best company application could be completely obsolete next year. You can't insist on using it just because killing it might be embarrassing to you.<P>

    Everyone has seen companies throw more and more money into an app stuck in beta longer and longer because it just it would be embarrassing to the people in charge to admit it was a failure.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Yes, I'm "Daren"
    Anonymous:

    Thanks J!  I appreciate the validation; I wouldn't believe this story either if someone had told me it.

    Alex did a good job anonymizing the story, but all the pertinent facts are as he described them.  And yes, Page_Load was indeed a couple thousand lines of spaghetti code. 

    One of the original authors of this was the same person who implemented a web service which accepted a serialized "object" as parameter.  His approach was to de-serialize the XML from the SOAP stream into a C# object, then reserialize it into XML with a different schema (I've no idea why), then access the "properties" through XPath queries, rather than just accessing the properties of the C# object.



    What did the director end up doing? Did you get fired?
  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to WhiteEcho
    Anonymous:

    My last job, I kept if more than 5 years and managed to keep it until the voice of the "The IT guy is not doing anything" people managed to overcome that of the "We need the IT guy" people.

     When they sacked you, did you give them a business card? I'd love to do that - screw up the system and I'll fix it for a rather substantial sum with favorable payment terms.
     

  • (cs) in reply to Tuldas

    Anonymous:
    Seven feet of buggy code, not seven pages.

    I cannot comment on his skills but he certainly was a tall developer.

    "Seven feet of buggy code", I'll store this phrase alongside "works as coded".

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P

    Plus, measuring temperature in centigrade is just plain dumb. 



    Little known fact:  At the intended standard temperature/pressure, water does NOT freeze at 0 deg C and it does NOT boil at 100 deg C.  They screwed it up.

    -0.001 °C and 99.974 °C

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celsius#The_melting_and_boiling_points_of_water
  • Expat (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Nah, Celcius is better...  at 0 degree Celcius is "Man, it's cold!", but at 0 degree Fahrenheit is "Man, I'm f### freezing my b###, what the $%# I'm doing outside!!!!", !! :-D

    (I can't think on the usefulness of Kelvins) 

    At the end I guess is as dumb as meassure the temperature in x=1.8(Tc)+32

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Plus, measuring temperature in centigrade is just plain dumb. 

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Who would use feet to measure length anyway?


    Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units.  7 feet would be 2 meters or so.  Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World.  My 2 cents.

    Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P

    Plus, measuring temperature in centigrade is just plain dumb. 


    It's easier to calculate with (1 meter being 10 deci-meters, n'all). Besides, having a unified system might save money in the long run...

    I don't know which temperature scale is the most dim witted; celsius or farenheite. Just to be different I think I'de vote for kelvin, and wait for the weather laidy so say stuff like:
    "This year, July was very hot with temperatures as high as 316 degrees in the shade."
    Although I think jokes like that would get old quick...
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Expat
    Anonymous:

    Nah, Celcius is better...  at 0 degree Celcius is "Man, it's cold!", but at 0 degree Fahrenheit is "Man, I'm f### freezing my b###, what the $%# I'm doing outside!!!!", !! :-D

    (I can't think on the usefulness of Kelvins) 

    At the end I guess is as dumb as meassure the temperature in x=1.8(Tc)+32

    The correct temperature scale would be something similar to the following:

    0 is cold (avg "cold" amongst "normal" people)

    10 is hot (avg "hot" amongst "normal" people)

    5 is "just right" (as decided amongst "normal" people)

    who cares about the rest? :P

     

    note, i mention "normal" people because there are the wacked-out freakos who think 40F (roughly 4.5C) or 120F (roughly 49C) are "just right" 

  • Expat (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    note, i mention "normal" people because there are the wacked-out freakos who think 40F (roughly 4.5C) or 120F (roughly 49C) are "just right" 

    Yeah, and usually they're the closest ones to the room's temperature control 

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to mdb0251
    Anonymous:

    Likewise, a company can take their clients to McDonald's and it will satisfy their hunger, but they shell out more money to go some place fancy. Something finely crafted will always be appreciated more than something that just gets the job done.

     
    Yes, but as my dad always said: "This is not the Olympics.  There are no points awarded for difficulty." 

    I wish your dad was right, but the guy writing "enterprise" applications using whatever fashionably complex framework of the day generally gets paid a heck of a lot more than the guy writing simple python scripts that do effectively the same thing.

  • (cs) in reply to nobody
    nobody:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Who would use feet to measure length anyway?


    Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units.  7 feet would be 2 meters or so.  Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World.  My 2 cents.

    Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P

    Plus, measuring temperature in centigrade is just plain dumb. 


    It's easier to calculate with (1 meter being 10 deci-meters, n'all). Besides, having a unified system might save money in the long run...

    I don't know which temperature scale is the most dim witted; celsius or farenheite. Just to be different I think I'de vote for kelvin, and wait for the weather laidy so say stuff like:
    "This year, July was very hot with temperatures as high as 316 degrees in the shade."
    Although I think jokes like that would get old quick...

    Phew, it's lucky, you guys don't design Mars orbiters and landing units. :)

    Anyway, let's introduce a system that divides units into 1/16th-s. It's certainly easier to calculate with if you're a real hax0r. Just imagine how cool it was if we could say things like "The Sun-Earth distance is exactly 0xDEADBEEF new meters."

  • zerrodefex (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Who would use feet to measure length anyway?


    Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units.  7 feet would be 2 meters or so.  Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World.  My 2 cents.

    Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P\

    Obviously you weren't a science or engineering major.  Computer science does not count.

    It is far quicker and easier to convert between units in SI as everything is in multiples of 10.  For example, once you know that the meter is standard for distance and kilo means 1000 then you know that a kilometer is 1000 meters.  Now tell me, can you remember off the top of your head how many feet are in a mile, or how many cups in a gallon, or pounds in a ton?

    captcha: stfu (oh yeah) 

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Who would use feet to measure length anyway?


    Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units.  7 feet would be 2 meters or so.  Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World.  My 2 cents.

    Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P

    Plus, measuring temperature in centigrade is just plain dumb. 



    And how many hogshead per foot squared http://www.google.com/search?q=hogshead+per+foot+squared ) are you tall?

    Did you even know there was a measure of unit called a hogshead?

    Honestly, it's like saying "Jeez, why use all these new programming languages? Assembly JUST WORKS!
  • (cs) in reply to biziclop
    biziclop:
    Phew, it's lucky, you guys don't design Mars orbiters and landing units. :)


    Lucky for me or the units? Or the happy tax payers, perhaps?
    I don't know a flying fork (be careful with those, btw.) about Mars orbiters and landing units, so if I ever get a job designing such things, it would indeed be a WTF.
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to nobody

    nobody:

    It's easier to calculate with (1 meter being 10 deci-meters, n'all). Besides, having a unified system might save money in the long run...

    I don't know which temperature scale is the most dim witted; celsius or farenheite. Just to be different I think I'de vote for kelvin, and wait for the weather laidy so say stuff like:
    "This year, July was very hot with temperatures as high as 316 degrees in the shade."
    Although I think jokes like that would get old quick...

    so, because of a bunch of lazy scientists, we have to develop a new system?

    Me, I like the precision apparent in the fact that 1 pole is 1/320 of a mile, or that a 1 yard = 2/11 of a pole. :P
     

  • (cs) in reply to R.Flowers
    R.Flowers:

    Anonymous:
    Who would use feet to measure length anyway?

    I use my hands, and a tape measure. 

    Actually, practitioners of parkour use their feet/shoes in measuring distances. For example if you know that you can jump 8 shoe lengths from a standstill, then you can measure the length of a gap and avoid hurting yourself needlessly if it's too long. Nobody carries a tape measure when doing parkour, so it's pointless to know in centimeters how far you can jump.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Volmarias

    Volmarias:

    And how many hogshead per foot squared http://www.google.com/search?q=hogshead+per+foot+squared ) are you tall?

    Did you even know there was a measure of unit called a hogshead?

    Honestly, it's like saying "Jeez, why use all these new programming languages? Assembly JUST WORKS!

    Yes, I was aware, but were you aware that a hogshead is not a unit of length? :P

    It is a brewery term for volume, and if I remember correctly, 1 hogshead is about 55 gallons .. give or take ...

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to zerrodefex

    I actually can remember all the conversions...both between Imperial units and between Imperial and SI.  Not that I disagree that metric is nicer, but "I can't remember the conversions" isn't much of an argument IMHO.

     Not to mention the SI binary units...yea...those have really caught on....so which "kilo" is it today...1000 or 1024?
     

  • (cs) in reply to Expat
    Anonymous:

    Nah, Celcius is better...  at 0 degree Celcius is "Man, it's cold!", but at 0 degree Fahrenheit is "Man, I'm f### freezing my b###, what the $%# I'm doing outside!!!!", !! :-D

    (I can't think on the usefulness of Kelvins) 

    At the end I guess is as dumb as meassure the temperature in x=1.8(Tc)+32

    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Plus, measuring temperature in centigrade is just plain dumb. 

     

    I think he was probably refering to the fact that  Fahrenheit is more "precise" in terms of whole degrees, as that is one of the main arguments for its use:

     

    Fahrenheit supporters assert its previous popularity was due to Fahrenheit's user-friendliness. The unit of measure, being only 5/9 the size of the Celsius degree, permits more precise communication of measurements without resorting to fractional degrees. Also, the ambient air temperature in most inhabited regions of the world tends not to go far beyond the range of 0 °F to 100 °F: therefore, the Fahrenheit scale would reflect the perceived ambient temperatures, following 10-degree bands that emerge in the Fahrenheit system:<snip>

    From the wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farenheit
     

  • Polari (unregistered) in reply to Volmarias

    How about we stop the SI vs imperial units -debate right here? Anyone who's ever done any unit conversions knows SI units are infy better, and anyone who has any common sense knows that trying to change the system used by a big country would be pretty damn awkward. Imperial units are merely bad, not completely horrible. Huge respect for the guy who manages to get US and UK catch up with the rest of the world, but I won't be holding my breath.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to zerrodefex
    Anonymous:

    Obviously you weren't a science or engineering major.  Computer science does not count.

    It is far quicker and easier to convert between units in SI as everything is in multiples of 10.  For example, once you know that the meter is standard for distance and kilo means 1000 then you know that a kilometer is 1000 meters.  Now tell me, can you remember off the top of your head how many feet are in a mile, or how many cups in a gallon, or pounds in a ton?

    captcha: stfu (oh yeah) 

    um, since I'm the one who wrote "why should we convert? ...", I assume this is directed at me ...

    And, yes I have an actual engineering degree.  (I have degrees in EE, Physics, Math, and CS.)
     

    For some things, SI works fine.  For a lot of everyday uses however, I like Imperial.
  • An apprentice (unregistered) in reply to Jon

    Fortunately this steaming pile of code can be fixed easily.

    Step 1: Remove all comments (assuming there are any).

    Step 2: Remove all whitespace.

    Step 3. Rename all variables into two-character-combinations to shave more space. Use #defines or equivalent macro feature if necessary (bonus points if you have to write your own preprocessor).

    Step 4. Similarly, use #defines to abstract away frequently used pieces of code, like "!=0){" into convenient two-character combinations

    Now you have reduced your seven feet of code down to a much more manageable amount. Refactoring is all about removing redundancy!

  • Freman (unregistered) in reply to jo42

    In my experience - ANYTHING that improves a painful manual process, releives work load from staff (especially if it's my own) and gets the job quicker is deemd a waste of time and to be fought against by anyone with power.

    You build a business a perfactly good administration system with fields that cover everything they had on paper and in they're old Access database... and what do they do?

    Continue using access, continue using paper (in fact they use even more now because they insist on printing out all of the admin screens every time there's a change made, and all of the support tickets (I'd hate to see the SQL query to sort those pages...)) AND they use the admin system... Then they complain because they're quadruple entering, and that cost of printer toner is going to send us broke...
     

  • (cs) in reply to zerrodefex
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Who would use feet to measure length anyway?


    Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units.  7 feet would be 2 meters or so.  Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World.  My 2 cents.

    Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P\

    Obviously you weren't a science or engineering major.  Computer science does not count.

    It is far quicker and easier to convert between units in SI as everything is in multiples of 10.  For example, once you know that the meter is standard for distance and kilo means 1000 then you know that a kilometer is 1000 meters.  Now tell me, can you remember off the top of your head how many feet are in a mile, or how many cups in a gallon, or pounds in a ton?

    captcha: stfu (oh yeah) 

     
    5280, 16, and 2000.

     
     Remembering those numbers isn't hard. What is easy in SI and hard in imperial is "how many meters are in 5.43 km" vs "how many feet in 5.43 miles." The former is still trivial; the latter almost everyone would pull out a calculator for. (And almost everyone who wouldn't pull out a calculator would pull out paper and pencil.)

  • Concerned Citizen (unregistered) in reply to shadowman

    11 inches = 1 metric foot

  • - (unregistered) in reply to vecctor

    I have never seen anyone using celsius with fractional degrees when talking about the weather. We simply have no need for it.

    And at 0C water freezes, that's a very natural starting point.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Freman

    "...in they're old Access database..."

     OK, now that Firefox has a spell checker for web forms, they really need to get that grammar checker hooked up pronto.

    It would also be nice if they could add special checks for "loose" instead of "lose" and "lead" instead of "led", but I'll take what I can get.

    They can try and sell it to techies by having the web form complain that their forum comment "failed to compile" because the "comment compiler" expected "their" at line 9, character 45, but found "they're" instead.
     

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that he wasn't greeted as the hero he is.

    He's not a hero; he's a no-good interloper.  As long as something works, that's all that matters.  In fact if there more steps, tricks, and turns; that makes it more interesting.  Anyone who modifies a system such that things are simplified is insulting the creator who was rewarded based on the level of complexity (not of the requirements, but of the solution).
     

    I like to think of it this way: A ferarri is also really complex solution to a rather simple problem.

    Perhaps you too are being sarcastic.

    The requirements a Ferrari fulfills are not simple.  A Ferrari might only be as complex as it needs to be; I don't know.  The creators of the system in today's wtf would've made a car that might go around the track fast once, but you'd never be able to change a part and would eventually explode into a great, effulgent ball of fiery metal (or balsa wood or whatever).


  • (cs) in reply to EvanED
    EvanED:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Who would use feet to measure length anyway?


    Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units.  7 feet would be 2 meters or so.  Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World.  My 2 cents.

    Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P\

    Obviously you weren't a science or engineering major.  Computer science does not count.

    It is far quicker and easier to convert between units in SI as everything is in multiples of 10.  For example, once you know that the meter is standard for distance and kilo means 1000 then you know that a kilometer is 1000 meters.  Now tell me, can you remember off the top of your head how many feet are in a mile, or how many cups in a gallon, or pounds in a ton?

    captcha: stfu (oh yeah) 

     
    5280, 16, and 2000.

     
     Remembering those numbers isn't hard. What is easy in SI and hard in imperial is "how many meters are in 5.43 km" vs "how many feet in 5.43 miles." The former is still trivial; the latter almost everyone would pull out a calculator for. (And almost everyone who wouldn't pull out a calculator would pull out paper and pencil.)

    Arguing about which system is the better is like arguing about which programming language is the better. The first question should be: better for what? For everyday use, both systems work. And for science, well you use computers and calculators in science, so it doesn't really matter either. It did matter though in the 19th century, when all this standardization was invented. Nowadays the only thing that matters is to use the same system within a specific project. See Mars Climate Orbiter.

  • beanie (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    Yes, I was aware, but were you aware that a hogshead is not a unit of length? :P

    It is a brewery term for volume, and if I remember correctly, 1 hogshead is about 55 gallons .. give or take ...

     Yeah, he meant to say cube-root of a hogshead (which is a length).

    And speed can be measured in parsecs per fortnight.

    ow.

  • Dear Lord (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that he wasn't greeted as the hero he is.

    He's not a hero; he's a no-good interloper.  As long as something works, that's all that matters.  In fact if there more steps, tricks, and turns; that makes it more interesting.  Anyone who modifies a system such that things are simplified is insulting the creator who was rewarded based on the level of complexity (not of the requirements, but of the solution).
     

    You're right!  Just like my old boss used to say: The "Gaz-in's" and "Gaz-out's" are all that matter.

    Who cares what poor schmucks are left to maintain this code* for the rest of their miserable lives.

    * Don't touch The Black Box™  for goodness sake!

     

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that he wasn't greeted as the hero he is.

    He's not a hero; he's a no-good interloper.  As long as something works, that's all that matters.  In fact if there more steps, tricks, and turns; that makes it more interesting.  Anyone who modifies a system such that things are simplified is insulting the creator who was rewarded based on the level of complexity (not of the requirements, but of the solution).
     

    I like to think of it this way: A ferarri is also really complex solution to a rather simple problem.

    Likewise, a company can take their clients to McDonald's and it will satisfy their hunger, but they shell out more money to go some place fancy. Something finely crafted will always be appreciated more than something that just gets the job done.

     Ferrari's and fancy restaurants are AESTHETIC, and most beings can appreciate them. What's aesthetic about 7 feet of bad code??

     captcha: paula - how appropriate!

  • (cs)

    that man is my hero

    /we're not worthy
    //we're not worthy

  • (cs) in reply to Dwayne

    absolutely the correct response.  there will always be jobs for people like darren. 

    for people like the director  - pain!

     Brilliant!

  • Guy (unregistered) in reply to mare

    Remember, it's a factory.  Most factories haven't upgraded to metric yet.

    My workplace, however, has.  I measure my source code output in petabarn/femtofortnight.

  • (cs) in reply to EvanED

    28670.4, in case you're wondering. And yes, I'm the person who did it in my head as a point of honour... (but I did check it afterwards)

  • (cs) in reply to WhiteEcho
    Anonymous:

    My last job, I kept if more than 5 years and managed to keep it until the voice of the "The IT guy is not doing anything" people managed to overcome that of the "We need the IT guy" people.

    Last I heard, the multiple IT shops supposed to replace all my different tasks are doing an awful job and end up being more costly than me, plus they don't have anybody to tell them how to do menial IT tasks (they also realized that nobody was ordering print cartridges anymore when they ran out on an important production day).

    Sometimes you do not want to me confrontational, just shut up to keep the job and look around.

      that sux (losing your job for that reason).  seems it's always tempting to mgt to outsource IT; there's the cost argument, there's the "The IT guy is not doing anything"  school of thought as well.   2 responses to that:

    1)  just because you don't SEE him doing anything doesn't mean he's not

    2)  maybe he's got more time to "not do anything" because he's efficient, or has made the processes efficient. 

    one of the rewards of doing your job well (along with your huge salary, VBG) is that you do have more leisure.  sad it's confused with not doing anything....

  • m0ffx (unregistered) in reply to Charlie
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Who would use feet to measure length anyway?


    Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units.  7 feet would be 2 meters or so.  Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World.  My 2 cents.

    I dunno about the States, but in the UK, with younger people metric is more common, it's mostly older people who stick with imperial units. Anything technical or scientific is SI. The main exception is road distances and speeds are still in miles (per hour). However, no country I know of uses the SI units for speed - metres per second.

    Plus, measuring temperature in centigrade is just plain dumb.

    Not really. A scale where water, the most common substance that we observe undergoing melting and boiling, freezes at 0 and boils at 100 seems quite sensible to me (yes I know turns out it's slightly off, but not to an everyday level of significance). I find Fahrenheit annoying, and the defining points are much less, well, defined - salt & ice in unspecified proportions, and human body temperature, which varies.

    Of course neither are SI, that's Kelvin (not "degrees Kelvin" either, just "Kelvin"!), but it's just 273(.16) + the Celsius temperature. And can be represented by an unsigned number!

    186,000 miles per second, it's not just a good idea, it's the law!
    Technically it is 186,281.96 (and a crapload more)

    Both wrong!

    The speed of light is DEFINED as 299,792,458 m/s. EXACTLY. That speed defines the metre, with the second defined as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom"

    The yard is now defined as 0.9144 metres, so the speed of light in miles per second will be a terminating or recurring decimal, not "a crapload more" if that is meant to imply irrationality.

    In my view the Kelvin can and should be redefined by defining the Boltzmann constant, and then the definition comes from the Joule, from the second and the Newton, from the kilogram, metre and second, the metre coming from the second. The kilogram ought then to be defined as 1000/12 x the mass of the defined Avogadro number of Carbon-12 atoms, or alternatively, by defining the joule, perhaps from the energy emitted in one second by the light from our beloved caesium-133 hyperfine transition.

    CAPTCHA: enterprisey. I think that Mr Fahrenheit's definitions were pretty enterprisey.

  • gl (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P

    Plus, measuring temperature in centigrade is just plain dumb. 

     

    The strangest disparity I have seen after moving to the U.S. is the way that blood sugar levels are measured.  Most of the world measures in millimoles per liter, and you would think that the U.S. would either use that or an Imperial system measurement, but they actually use...

     

     ... wait for it...

     

     milligrams per deciliter!

     

    So they went through all the trouble of converting in order to use a non-standard measurement anyway.  This may be the real WTF of the day.

    reference: 

    http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2005/NEW01250.html

     

     

     

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    Who would use feet to measure length anyway?


    Only an American or British, as every other country use SI units.  7 feet would be 2 meters or so.  Yes those two countries should convert to SI system, but why USA/UK would care of the rest of the World.  My 2 cents.

    Why should we convert? The imperial system came before SI! Sometimes, it is just better ot use an already existing (and functional) system rather than consuming resources (time, energy, money) developing a new system and then trying to convince everyone that yours is better. SI is no more a golden hammer than COBOL is. :P

    Plus, measuring temperature in centigrade is just plain dumb. 

     

    Indeed, it's dumb. It's better to use the *Celsius* scale, which isn't the same.

     

    Anyway, SI IS better than the english system. Calculations are easier, physics constants are usually 1 (nice and handy), and it's so much clearer. Let's also remember that the imperial/english system was NOT the only one in use: the french had their own system, based on the roman system, and older than the english one, which they abandoned in favor of SI. Same goes for the spanish one: also roman-based, also older than the english one, also abandoned in favor of the SI, with the added bonus that spaniards don't like the french (that does tell something). Today nobody talks about quintales, celemines, arrobas, et cetera. Several othe countries did the same. Why is USA so backwards in this regard, I'll never understand.

     


  • Mr. Physics (unregistered) in reply to zerrodefex
    Anonymous:

    It is far quicker and easier to convert between units in SI as everything is in multiples of 10.  For example, once you know that the meter is standard for distance and kilo means 1000 then you know that a kilometer is 1000 meters.  Now tell me, can you remember off the top of your head how many feet are in a mile, or how many cups in a gallon, or pounds in a ton?

    captcha: stfu (oh yeah) 

    Yep, I can. 5280, 16, and 2000 respectively.

    I can also tell you off the top of my head that a slug (the British unit for mass, not the animal) weighs 32 pounds (the British unit for weight, not the British unit of currency).

    British units are very good for commerce: 1 foot is made up 12 inches.  12 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4,and 6.  The original calendar was to have 360 degrees (and because of this, the circle has 360 degrees) because 360 is such a nice number.  It not only equals 12*30 (12 30-day months), but is evenly divisible by 2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,12, (and many others).  (There's no love though for 7 or 11 -- sigh.)

    Anyway, British units are so much nicer because there are more prime factors to play with which makes commerce easy.  (I don't want a full dozen -- I only want a third of a dozen.)   The metric system is dumb!  It only uses prime factors of 2 and 5.  Neither is it easy to represent many fractions.  How do you represent a third of a killogram?  333.33333333333333333333333333333333333333333...(etc...)  mg?  Stupid! Stupid! Stupid.  I mean, who creates a system of measurement just because it matches the number of fingers you have.  Bah!!!

    Oh and by the way, the British were dumb enough to abandon the unit system named after them.  They've turned to the dark side and have been using the metric stystem for quite a while.

    captcha: shizzle

     

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Nah, Celcius is better...  at 0 degree Celcius is "Man, it's cold!", but at 0 degree Fahrenheit is "Man, I'm f### freezing my b###, what the $%# I'm doing outside!!!!", !! :-D

    (I can't think on the usefulness of Kelvins) 

    At the end I guess is as dumb as meassure the temperature in x=1.8(Tc)+32

    The correct temperature scale would be something similar to the following:

    0 is cold (avg "cold" amongst "normal" people)

    10 is hot (avg "hot" amongst "normal" people)

    5 is "just right" (as decided amongst "normal" people)

    who cares about the rest? :P

     

    note, i mention "normal" people because there are the wacked-out freakos who think 40F (roughly 4.5C) or 120F (roughly 49C) are "just right" 

    "This thermostat goes to eleven." 

  • Mr. Physics (unregistered) in reply to mfarah
    mfarah:

    Anyway, SI IS better than the english system. Calculations are easier, physics constants are usually 1 (nice and handy), and it's so much clearer. Let's also remember that the imperial/english system was NOT the only one in use: the french had their own system, based on the roman system, and older than the english one, which they abandoned in favor of SI. Same goes for the spanish one: also roman-based, also older than the english one, also abandoned in favor of the SI, with the added bonus that spaniards don't like the french (that does tell something). Today nobody talks about quintales, celemines, arrobas, et cetera. Several othe countries did the same. Why is USA so backwards in this regard, I'll never understand.

    Physics constants are not usually 1 in SI units.  cgs units are kind enough to have the electromagnetic units equal to 1.  Planck, Stoney, and Schrodinger had the right idea of having am many physical constants equal to 1 as possible (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_units).  Too bad that most observations we deal with on a daily basis have obscenely large nubers in these "natural unit" systems.  Oh well!

     

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered)

    Financial services provider? Lots of Microsoft code? Wonderful WTFery?

    Sounds like eSignal, isn't it?

    Captcha: enterprisey. Yes, it is.

  • Dave (unregistered)

    What's funny is that half the posts are about how many pages and/or the length and content of the printout.  This is a story--not a word problem.  I swear half the posters are autistic--but without the math skills.

  • Factotumtree (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward

    Yes, put, roooobi-un-raaails lets you proookrum vit much more choy!!!

  • Anonononymous (unregistered) in reply to zerrodefex
    Anonymous:

    Now tell me, can you remember off the top of your head how many feet are in a mile, or how many cups in a gallon, or pounds in a ton?

    captcha: stfu (oh yeah) 



    Yes, 5280, 16, 2000

    Ok, I admit on the cups I had to do some math in my head.

    The real advantages to metric come when combining the units though. Newton = kg m/s^2, Joule = Newton-meter = kg m^2/s^2

    Any science or engineering courses I took did work in metric because it made thing easier. But I just like Farenheit better as a temperature scale, 0-100F nicely framing the range of atmospheric temperatures I tend to run into. (rarely see 100+ or sub-zero temperatures)

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