The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

Silverhill · 2012-10-08 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
cellocgw:
Actually, a minim is a semi-obsolete term for a half-note in music notatation.
Nowhere near obsolete in Europe, only in the US where the language was terminally simplified by Websterites.

Yes, so instead of the intuitively obvious names such as breve, semibreve, minim, crotchet, and quaver (as well as semiquaver, demisemiquaver, and hemidemisemiquaver), the US uses opaque (if unpoetic) terms such as double-whole, whole, half, quarter, and eighth note (as well as sixteenth, thirty-second, and sixty-fourth).

scooby509 · 2012-10-08 Reply Admin

Maurits:
TRWTF is processing URLs manually instead of using the URL parsing library that comes with your language.

There is a certain mentality, especially fed by stuff like JSON, that wants to reduce all data types to integer, float, string, list and map. It's really aggravating in Java because everything is an ArrayList, HashMap and occasionally LinkedHashMap of whatever and static typing is just this elaborate ritual of repeating yourself endlessly.

2012-10-08 Reply Admin

foo2:
Anonymous:
someGuy:
you know, I thought the meme of being 'frist/first' had finally died off... now I see the mods are actually deleting those entries... good on ya, guys

Censorship is not OK.

Nor is being a dickhead (boring & predicable at that).

Of course it's ok. You may not like it, but it's absolutely ok. And it's better to know who the dickheads are then to keep covering them up.

hikari · 2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Anonymous Paranoiac:
All together now, "TRTWF is..."
CAPTCHA: "minim" a fashion term referring to low-rider jeans which contain the minimum amount of denim.

TRWF is, as ever, a lack of code comments. Code which makes no sense often makes a lot more sense when someone has written a comment that tells you why they did this seemingly weird thing.

Except the times when it just leads to an even bigger "WTF?", of course.

hikari · 2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Silverhill:
Matt Westwood:
cellocgw:
Actually, a minim is a semi-obsolete term for a half-note in music notatation.
Nowhere near obsolete in Europe, only in the US where the language was terminally simplified by Websterites.
Yes, so instead of the intuitively obvious names such as breve, semibreve, minim, crotchet, and quaver (as well as semiquaver, demisemiquaver, and hemidemisemiquaver), the US uses opaque (if unpoetic) terms such as double-whole, whole, half, quarter, and eighth note (as well as sixteenth, thirty-second, and sixty-fourth).

But you can't be elitist if you don't have esoteric terms!

Does any composer even use a breve? I've always wondered.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

It seems fairly obvious that this once did something. Maybe it changed a https:// request to http:// or vice versa. The requirements changed, and the code changed too... as little as possible.

The lesson here is that some WTF code isn't done by idiots. It's a series of reasonable, rational decisions, gradually moving towards the inane. Ware the creeping stupid!

Roby McAndrew · 2012-10-09 Reply Admin

hikari:
Does any composer even use a breve? I've always wondered.

There's a Pink Floyd track called "breve".

(That's Wright isn't it? Must check the track listing...)

Scarlet Manuka · 2012-10-09 Reply Admin

hikari:
Does any composer even use a breve? I've always wondered.

I've seen them in use, but very rarely.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Oh boy! I have seen this in prod. code.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Bill:
So why isn't your post deleted yet? Or this one for that matter? Yes, I posted a lame post, just so they'd delete it. I want my stuff to be deleted. I never get featured, but at least this way, I'll know somebody somewhere was indirectly aware of my pathetic existence for a brief moment.
Or, as an even worse insult, they could ignore me completely and leave this here.

What to do? What to do???

Look for a blakeyrat posting. Disagree with it (suggest Microsoft sucks rocks or that Linux and Open Source is the one true way). You'll initiate a cascade of posts sufficient to prove you exist for a week or more. Then repeat when the noise dies down.

[email protected] · 2012-10-09 Reply Admin

But the code does do something. It removes http:// from the url. It just does it in the most stupid way possible.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

If I saw code like that, rather than fixing it, I would add a comment like "// what in the actual f*ck..." on the last line.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Scarlet Manuka:
hikari:
Does any composer even use a breve? I've always wondered.
I've seen them in use, but very rarely.

If I remember rightly from school, I've only ever seen them in medieval and possibly renaissance music, before 4/4, 3/4 and 6/8 time became standard. Wikipedia alleges that they're still in "common" use but I assume only in modern scores of early music.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Lol, classic Steve!

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

It is a near obsolete term denoting a unit of measurement of liquid. The musical version (two crotchets) is in no way obsolete. BTW a "half-note" in UK (and probably everywhere else but dumbed down US) would be interpreted as a quaver, it being half a standard note (crotchet). A minim is half a semi-breve, so not only is it confusing, it is also wrong.

pscs · 2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Silverhill:
the US uses opaque (if unpoetic) terms such as double-whole, whole, half, quarter, and eighth note (as well as sixteenth, thirty-second, and sixty-fourth).

The problem with those names is that they imply they mean something, when they don't.

What does 'whole' mean? A whole what? A whole bar? No. A whole beat? No. What then?

At least a "semibreve" has no other meaning that what it is.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Chris:
Scarlet Manuka:
hikari:
Does any composer even use a breve? I've always wondered.
I've seen them in use, but very rarely.
If I remember rightly from school, I've only ever seen them in medieval and possibly renaissance music, before 4/4, 3/4 and 6/8 time became standard. Wikipedia alleges that they're still in "common" use but I assume only in modern scores of early music.

???

Because it lasts longer than a bar in most modern time signatures, the breve is now rarely encountered except in English music, where the half-note is often used as the beat unit (Gherkens 1914, 11).

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Silverhill:
Matt Westwood:
cellocgw:
Actually, a minim is a semi-obsolete term for a half-note in music notatation.
Nowhere near obsolete in Europe, only in the US where the language was terminally simplified by Websterites.
Yes, so instead of the intuitively obvious names such as breve, semibreve, minim, crotchet, and quaver (as well as semiquaver, demisemiquaver, and hemidemisemiquaver), the US uses opaque (if unpoetic) terms such as double-whole, whole, half, quarter, and eighth note (as well as sixteenth, thirty-second, and sixty-fourth).

Oh, give him a break! He's still used to measuring in such ununiform units as hogheads, rocks, and various limbs. Can't blame him if he grows up in a culture of impracticality.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

See this is why you should always be leery about using lines of code completed as a metric.

2012-10-09 Reply Admin

Hard to tell without context or comments, but it doesn't seem to consider forms like

http://http://www.organizedcybercrime.com/malware.html

-Harrow.

Cbuttius · 2012-10-10 Reply Admin

Really you can say that the semi-breve is the full "bar" in common (C) or 4/4 time, which is therefore not a fractional bar like 3/4 or 6/8 is.

A minim is two crotchets and half a semibreve. A breve is virtually unknown as it spans more than a bar in common time, so far more likely they would use two tied semibreves to indicate it as notes generally do not extend beyond a bar in their regular form and are written as tied notes.

A tied note is written as two notes with a curved line between them indicating that they are in fact one long note (therefore you should not sound the note again when it re-appears).

A minim is indicated like a crotchet but "unfilled" or like a semi-breve with a stem. You can also get a minim with a dot to indicate a 3/4 note (a full bar note in 3/4 time).

2012-10-10 Reply Admin

Cbuttius:
Really you can say that the semi-breve is the full "bar" in common (C) or 4/4 time, which is therefore not a fractional bar like 3/4 or 6/8 is.
A minim is two crotchets and half a semibreve. A breve is virtually unknown as it spans more than a bar in common time, so far more likely they would use two tied semibreves to indicate it as notes generally do not extend beyond a bar in their regular form and are written as tied notes.

A tied note is written as two notes with a curved line between them indicating that they are in fact one long note (therefore you should not sound the note again when it re-appears).

A minim is indicated like a crotchet but "unfilled" or like a semi-breve with a stem. You can also get a minim with a dot to indicate a 3/4 note (a full bar note in 3/4 time).

That read as:

A stur is a deng which is two plonks which are five sixth of a flenky, whereas a habs is a fswop's half nache.

It does not make any sense!

2012-10-10 Reply Admin

But but... what was it supposed to do? I can't even get that much from the code!

2012-10-10 Reply Admin

The breve rest is more common than the note itself. It is often used in conjunction with the digit 2 to denote two bars' rest, in the same way that the semi-breve rest is used to denote a bar's rest (even when the bar is shorter than a semi-breve).

For four bars' rest one can use a double breve, and the three rests can be combined for up to seven bars' rest if necessary. (Longer amounts of rest use a different system.)

Silverhill · 2012-10-10 Reply Admin

Butthead:
Cbuttius:
...A minim is indicated like a crotchet but "unfilled" or like a semi-breve with a stem. You can also get a minim with a dot to indicate a 3/4 note (a full bar note in 3/4 time).
That read as:
A stur is a deng which is two plonks which are five sixth of a flenky, whereas a habs is a fswop's half nache.

It does not make any sense!

Just as much (or: as little) sense as would, say, the more intricate elements of a programming language -- to one unacquainted with such things. Your lack of ability to understand musical terms does not imply the general lack of their intelligibility.

2012-10-10 Reply Admin

Techpaul:
Coyne:
Robert Hanson:
My father tells a story: A mathematician wants to read a book, but the room he is in is dark, and the light is off. In order to read, he turns on the light.
The next day, the mathematician wants to read a book, and the light is on in the room. He first turns off the light, reducing the problem to the one he solved the previous day.

You know that invites this, right?

A [computer programmer] wants to read a book, but the room he is in is dark, and the light is off. In order to read, he [writes a routine that] turns on the light.
The next day, the [computer programmer] wants to read a book, and the light is on in the room. He first [writes a routine that] turns off the light, [so that he can reuse the code from] the previous day.

All I can say is Shampoo Rinse Repeat

Just do me.

captcha: plaga

2012-10-12 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
Also, this code will be great with super-short URLs:
http://thenextweb.com/2009/12/06/worlds-shortest-url-shortener/

Definitely not going to throw an exception, especially an index out of range one...

That is TRWTF right there. Code that can randomly crash if used in the 'extreme' or maybe on second thought not so extreme situation of an url that is actually only 7 characters long.

2012-10-12 Reply Admin

also, http://http://example.wtf would produce http://example.wtf

...inb4 they read this and fix it by using while(substr($string,0,7) == "http://") { [...] }

Erzengel · 2012-10-15 Reply Admin

Sorry, what's a venous injection? Google gives me some medical jargon. Was that simply a joke, or is there a security attack I'm not aware of?

The GNDN Protocol

Leave a comment on “The GNDN Protocol”