• Dismayed (unregistered) in reply to An Orphan

    "For Fuck's Sake"?

  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    So Merry Christmas/[...]/Winter Solstice/

    I assume you mean "Summer Solstice"...

     Only if you live in Australia, mate.

     

     Chris

     

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Pingmaster
    Pingmaster:

    You're assuming that each orphan couple would only have one child then, or that you are using your orphans to breed orphans.  The optimal strategy would be to buy slaves (orphans or not) breed them until you have sufficient children then kill the slaves, thus orphaning the children. If you are unable to purchase slaves then you must ensure that each orphan breeding pair produces at least three children to cover for killing the two parents.  Amateurs.

    That's pretty wasteful though.  There's no need to breed them monogamously -- just pair up one male with as many females as you need.  Once the females produce two orphans, you can kill the stud and all the mothers.  Usually I try to find pregnant orphans, just to speed things along -- even if the father is still technically alive, no one knows who he is.

     

  • (cs) in reply to Pingmaster
    Pingmaster:
    real_aardvark:
    darin:

    Broken Hack:
    So does it take a full thousand orphan souls to summon the Codethulhu, or can I get by with just 997? I got outbid at the last second on ebay for those last 3.

    No problem, just breed the ones you have. 

    Darin is obviously not wise in the ways of Codethulhu.

    The trouble with breeding orphans is that, to get three more, you have to kill six of the ones you already have. Buying orphans is fine -- even Madonna does that. Killing them strikes me as a little extreme, just for a J2EE application.

    (Augh! I hate this software.)

    You're assuming that each orphan couple would only have one child then, or that you are using your orphans to breed orphans.  The optimal strategy would be to buy slaves (orphans or not) breed them until you have sufficient children then kill the slaves, thus orphaning the children. If you are unable to purchase slaves then you must ensure that each orphan breeding pair produces at least three children to cover for killing the two parents.  Amateurs.

    Well, the assumption isn't mine; it's implicit in Darin's solution.  And the purchase of slaves would seem to be outside the terms of reference, just as is *hem hem* making sure there's a copy of the original code somewhere...

    If you really wanted to pursue this line of strategy, I would suggest that breaking in to a maternity ward, finding three children whose fathers are visiting, stealing the children and slaughtering the parents would be a far more sensible thing to do.  Better still; make it the acute ward.  That way there's a far greater probability that both parents will be around.

    It is hardly the mark of an amateur to ignore the fact that 3 > 2 in this context.  You obviously haven't been anywhere near a requirement specification lately. (Agile development, anyone?) My biology is shakier than my arithmetic, but as far as I am aware the relevant calculation is 3 * 9 = 27, which leaves project start-up with a delay of 27 months -- hardly acceptable when you're busy hiring contractors on a 3 month basis.  Why, you could have patched and unpatched the codebase nine times over in that time ...

    I did, however miss Anonymous' point, for which I apologise.  Yes, you only need one male.  If you're lucky enough to have 83 fertile females out of the original 97 (and no, I'm not going to calculate the probability), then bingo: there's a pretty good chance of twins in at least one case, maybe two.  Only nine months and you can start the project! Better yet, induce birth at 24 weeks, keep the religious nutters happy,  stone the parents to death and you're good to go in six months.  I'd want an early start bonus for that... Of course, you have to deal with the contingency that you might not get twins first time round, so you should build that in to the contract.  Then  again, you might not get twins the second time round, either.

    What was the question again?

    Actually, it's probably a whole lot easier to build an OrphanBot for Ebay, which was the original strategy.

     Thinking of "How would you move Mt Fuji?" I would suggest that the Codethulhu problem would make an excellent interview question.
     

  • (cs) in reply to Rammer
    Anonymous:

    So Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Yule/Winter Solstice/Pagan kids get presents day/Birthday of invisible sky fairy/Santa Claus day/Consumerism gluttony day/Holidays !

    You forgot Festivus. 

  • anon mouse (unregistered) in reply to JoshJ
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    And on that note, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, All! Today's article will be the last new one of 2006; the next week and a half will be "Best of 2006."

    What about a happy xmas? dont tell me you are the victim of this "dont say xmas, we do not all celebrate it" stuff. because then, wishing a happy new year is invalid too. not all of us are celebrating a new year.

    captcha: initech. the name of the company?

     

    Oh for fuck's sake.  This "war on christmas" thing the religious zealots keep crowing about is nonexistent.   


    US Population, Census 2000:


    Christianity: 79.8%

    Other Religions: 5.2%

    No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic: 15% 


    Yes, you 80 percent are being persecuted SO HORRIBLY.  Take your BS and shove it.

     Merry Christmas to you too.

  • hallo.amt (unregistered) in reply to chocobot

    I'd like to borrow your stuff

     

    P.S: I'd buy a J2EvilEdition cup as well 

  • (cs)

    Bravo, Alex!   The last article of the year was a doozy.  I couldn't stop laughing!  (Lovecraft rocks!)

     

  • yoda-san (unregistered) in reply to smbell

    yeah, backups are a PITA.  Easier to decompile.

  • Chouser (unregistered) in reply to Jackal von ÖRF

    Ask and ye shall receive. Java 2 Evil Edition Mug:

    http://www.zazzle.com/product/168377367699559944

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

    Anonymous:
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    J2EE (Java 2 Evil Edition, not to be confused with Java 2 Enterprise Edition)


    So. Anyone with graphics skills to get a logo for "Java 2, Evil Edition" mugs?

    I will happily volunteer to be the first to buy one :)


    Well, maybe... just maybe, there is an image that could be used at http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/2084/javaeehiti4.jpg.

    Looks great. :) Just make the small texts slightly larger, so that it would be easier to read when printed on a mug.

     

    PS: Starting with Java EE 5 it's actually written "Java EE" and not "Java 2 EE", but in this context that's not very important. (http://java.sun.com/javaee/)

  • minime (unregistered) in reply to David Vallner
  • Z.T. (unregistered) in reply to Trotsky

    Anonymous:
    I love the Metallica reference in the title....great stuff Alex!

    Dude, read this.

  • Trotsky (unregistered) in reply to Z.T.

    Dude, read this

  • (cs)

    As written in the Necodenomicon:

    "After compilation, decompilation.  After decompilation, recompilation."

     

  • Dark (unregistered)

    I would have loved this job. Decompilation rocks. The whole mystique of man vs. machine. It's much more interesting than churning out yet another container class. And "the pay was fantastic". What could be better?

     

  • (cs) in reply to Dark
    Anonymous:

    I would have loved this job. Decompilation rocks. The whole mystique of man vs. machine. It's much more interesting than churning out yet another container class. And "the pay was fantastic". What could be better?



    The job goes something like this:
    1. Decompile a module.
    2. Clean it up enough to fix it.
    3. Recompile and deply.
    4. Throw away all of my cleanup work.
    It's step 4 that makes it soul-crushing.  If it had been "Put the cleaned-up module in source control", then
    the job could be considered satisfying because your labour isn't quite so useless.



  • (cs) in reply to minime
    Anonymous:

    Cool. May I have a high resolution version of the picture? I don't understand the language (Spanish?) of that site, and if I were to order from there, the shipping costs would be more than the cost of the mug...

  • minime (unregistered) in reply to Jackal von ÖRF
    Jackal von ÖRF:
    Anonymous:

    Cool. May I have a high resolution version of the picture? I don't understand the language (Spanish?) of that site, and if I were to order from there, the shipping costs would be more than the cost of the mug...

    oops, it's english now, here is the image http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=javalogobu6.png

    The site is from USA so shipping cost is no that high (for you, for me it's another story...) :P 

  • (cs)

    Alex Papadimoulis:
    "...contractors needed for a one-to-three month contract to maintain proprietary supply-chain management software."

    WTF? Did he not realise something was wrong when they wanted to "maintain" something for such a short period of time? 

  • Marc (unregistered)

    Great story! And very well written. THUMBS UP

  • bork (unregistered) in reply to Marc

    We know what decompiled code looks like...

    Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

  • (cs) in reply to real_aardvark

    real_aardvark:

    My biology is shakier than my arithmetic, but as far as I am aware the relevant calculation is 3 * 9 = 27, which leaves project start-up with a delay of 27 months -- hardly acceptable when you're busy hiring contractors on a 3 month basis.

    I worked this out in Microsoft Project.  1 pregnant orphan gives birth in 9 months.  So I assign 9 orphans to the task to get it down to 1 month.  Add a bit in for the unforeseeable vacation requests and sick leave, so 1 and a half months, tops.  If this doesn't work, it will be the orphans' fault for not following my project plan.

    (must make a mental note to remove all computers so that the orphans don't waste time viewing TheDailyWTF)

  • (cs)

    I am happily ignorant of these matters, but I would assume that when you decompile and recompile a module, you won't get the original back.

    Do it seven times and I would expect the resulting code to bear little resemblance to anything sane... It would do the job, but in a way that no human could possible comprehend without serious graying of hair.

    Or so I imagine.  Anybody know better?

  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to stighemmer
    stighemmer:

    I am happily ignorant of these matters, but I would assume that when you decompile and recompile a module, you won't get the original back.

     Depends.  You don't get back anything really human from a decompile, but repeated decompiles and recompiles by themselves do not progressively degrade the code.  If you decompile, recompile without having changed anything, and then decompile once more, the first decompile and the second decompile will be pretty much identical.
     

     

    Do it seven times and I would expect the resulting code to bear little resemblance to anything sane... It would do the job, but in a way that no human could possible comprehend without serious graying of hair.

    Or so I imagine.  Anybody know better?

     The main problem is that the decompiled code is horrendous to work with (doubly so if the code sucked to begin with, which it apparently did).  And by decompiling, modifying, then recompiling and throwing away the source *again*, you're willfully destroying any chance that things will *ever* be better.  The guy who went through seven decompiles and recompiles didn't necessarily have code at the end that was any worse than the code at the beginning...but he *had* seen about 90% of his back-breaking, eye-watering labor in patching the decompiled code thrown away.  Seven times.

     

    Chris
     

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Decompiled code is not a very pretty thing. Many of the "niceties" of Java code -- comments, variable names, differentiation between FOR and WHILE loops -- are simply non-existent. And when the original code is developed by the Great Old Consultants, it becomes much worse than "not very pretty." It becomes pure evil.

    I dont see any problem here at all. All you need is a simple neural network to name variables, insert comments...

     

  • Clay (unregistered)

    I think this one qualifies as the MonthlyOMFG.

  • (cs) in reply to bork
    Anonymous:

    We know what decompiled code looks like...

    Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

     

    ;-D

  • (cs) in reply to minime
    Anonymous:
    Jackal von ÖRF:
    Anonymous:

    Cool. May I have a high resolution version of the picture? I don't understand the language (Spanish?) of that site, and if I were to order from there, the shipping costs would be more than the cost of the mug...

    oops, it's english now, here is the image http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=javalogobu6.png

    The site is from USA so shipping cost is no that high (for you, for me it's another story...) :P 

    I did some improvements to the design, so that the logo would follow Sun's latest Java Logo Usage Guidelines a bit better (except for that one small section discussing "design abuse" ;-)

    Here it is.

  • Anonymous P.M.Doubleday (unregistered) in reply to Trotsky

    Dude,

    Anyone who want's to sound cool by addressing a (presumed) peer as dude knows that one has to end the sentence with "Dude."

     -- as in --

    Dude.

    PS Fowler's English apparently allows the alternative sign-off, which is:

    Doh! 

  • Zbyszek (unregistered)

    I had a pretty same task in my work - needed to decompile JEE application to get newer version of code out of it. But I had older version and SVN so I moved only all changes onto old codebase, then I refactored them so they were not so evil. :D

  • SoulOfOrphan (unregistered)

    Hahahaha...... this story is so sad I almost start to cry..... this is how I have it at work, and I am one with this monster!!!!

  • A_L (unregistered)

    Yay 10 years ago today. Still insane?

  • Likorn (unregistered)

    Well the name of the article is quite unique and intimidating i think

  • Ikoarn (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.
  • (nodebb)
    Comment held for moderation.
  • (nodebb)

    I guess this is interesting

    Addendum 2022-12-14 11:26: Interesting staff. What is interesting that i remmebere Call of Ctulhu actually, it was a great game. And i have also recently started to play N64 Games which is also very interesting experience to me, because i've never played those games before. It is also interesting to explore all of those vast worlds and theese games also actually have very good gameplay. So i'm glad that i got acquinted with them

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