• Joe (unregistered)

    I get it - you wrote "less then" instead of "less than"!! ha!

    .... wouldn't this have been easier if you just posted some code?

  • Mike (unregistered)

    I still don't get it. Does it have to do with the dash before the > sign?

  • john (unregistered)

    W(hy)TF not just map them to their proper xml entity encodings?

  • I get it (unregistered)

    I think he meant the -> as a way of "mapping". Although, this is very confusing, because he is using less than/greater than symbols too.

  • Jim (unregistered)

    XML? That's entirely too complex for this group of coders.

  • john (unregistered)

    ah i speed read past the "very lame joke" part.

  • Andy Brummer (unregistered)

    Joe,
    I suppose the code would have been simpler, but str.Replace("<", "less then").Replace(">", "greater then").Replace("&", "and"); just doesn't do this justice.

    John,
    The problem is that the backend system choked on any & character even if it was part of an entity, and the field needed to be "human readable"

    -Andy

  • ~JOSh-X (unregistered)

    This sounds all too familiar ;-) HAHA

    But I don't get the joke...

    ~JOSh-X

  • ~JOSh-X (unregistered)

    Oh... I just got it!

    He found that '<', '>', and '&' all caused errors, so he suggested that they replace all instances of those with string versions (that could later be changed back?).

    The company then implemented that "suggestion," and haywire ensued.

    ~JOSh-X

  • Stephen Caldwell (unregistered)

    Wow. It took you guys much to long to get what was going on in that post. I thought that the WTF was pretty obvious rather quickly. Maybe I'm just better than you :-)

  • Manni (unregistered)

    The WTF was blatantly obvious early on. Bruce Willis was a ghost THE WHOLE TIME. Makes you think, hm?

    Seriously though, this was a bit of heavy reading to find out that someone took a lame joke and actually instituted it. A couple sentences with a few lines of code would have sufficed. I'm not sure why the rest of the back story was needed.

  • skicow (unregistered)

    The WTF is why people are entering a phone number in that format!

    I've NEVER seen <555> 555-5555, I've seen (555) 555-5555 and 555-555-5555 though.

  • Bud (unregistered)

    Just FYI, I found out Bruce Willis was a ghost halfway through the movie. Maybe we're not as smart as you Manni...

  • CmdrData (unregistered)

    skicow - I agree with you!

    I have NEVER seen <555> 555-5555. However, I've seen just about everything else:

    (555)-555-5555
    555-555-5555
    555.555.5555

    etc.

  • Jim (unregistered)

    Manni: I thought I would take the time to tell you something. Don't take it the wrong way. Just understand I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I've read many of your holier-than-thou, I-am-somebody posts, and I have to say what Sean Connery told that kid in Finding Forrester. YOU THA MAN DAWG, YOU THA MAN.

  • Than! (unregistered)

    THAN idiot. THAN!

  • Nanna Gratzi (unregistered)

    Dear "Than!",
    Your grammar leaves a lot to be desired.

  • Manni (unregistered)

    @Jim: As you can tell by the nature of my dialogue, I spend an extensive amount of time in the urban community, and I would like to convey my confusion resulting from your post. It was my understanding that when my "homies" and "peeps" refer to me as a "dawg", that they are, in fact, giving me "props". I have always accepted this as a positive statement, so I am unsure why I would "take it the wrong way" as you stated in the early portion of your message.

    In closing, I humbly request that you "keep it real", and I wish nothing but the best for you in life and in your quest for "bling".

    -Manni

  • Manni (unregistered)

    @Bud: I never said I knew the secret all along, I was simply stating a fact about the major surprise twist. It took me until the third time watching that damned movie before I figured out that EVERYONE in that movie was dead. Maybe I was too busy focusing on the major underlying theme that American foreign policy in terms of trade embargoes has been too heavily focused upon importing substandard goods, thereby eliminating American jobs. It truly was a deep movie, and I was touched. A lot.

  • icelava (unregistered)

    then != than

    LOL. How often you do always take on a system that oughta be sent off to the scrap yard? :)

  • Raoul Duke (unregistered)

    --So instead of EnterServiceRequest.asp the pages --were all something like --MainPage.asp?id1=101&id2=345

    I dont think this is a WTF, it looks like an incomplete attempt at good-practice web based session management? See URL provided...

  • Viagra (unregistered)

    Hey, do u know the pharmaceutical term for viagra? ......


    Mycoxafloppin :-D

  • Fubarer (unregistered)

    No, no... what left me gaping was the 'y' in the first word of the title of this post. :-)

    Seriously though, I have to ask... why are you still working there, Andy? :-P

  • Chilly Homeslice (unregistered)

    Manni: Greetings...I mean, whassup from the urban community! It's been a while since we've seen you in the 'hood. Have you forgotten about us? Please keep it real and visit from time to time. Possemaster X and DJ Peckerwood send their regards. Peace out big homie!

  • WanFactory (unregistered)

    moral of the story: dont make lame jokes.

    I once got sick, but came in to work the next day trying to be a good employee, my boss told me I looked terrible, I should go home and not spread my germs (sounded like a good idea, after all making co-workers sick does not sound like good employee behavior). I spent the next week at home sick.

    A week after that I got fired for abusing my sick time. My ex-boss did not believe I was sick and said that no one gets sick for a week, 3days should be tops. When I reminded my ex-boss about the instructions to go home because I looked terrible and should not spread my germs, my ex-boss said that those instructions were a joke, that my misunderstanding her was another example of my poor communication skills, and thus another reason to fire me. Wonderful, I get fired for being to dull to get a joke.

    It all turned out ok though, I got a nice severance package and got a new job at a great company that was great for my career. Timing was perfect because the opportunity to join the good company would have vanished very quickly.

  • not likely (unregistered)

    WanFactory...I think there's more to the story than what you are telling us. People don't get fired for being sick for a week. More than likely it was a gradual "poor performance" or "poor employee" sort of thing.

  • question (unregistered)

    I've always wondered about this. "Homie" sounds like a male term. What is the female version of a homie? Is it a "homette"?

  • Anon Cow (unregistered)

    Important lesson: Don’t Joke with Management. The only thing funny to them is your humiliation and suffering. Irony will not be detected. I find it hard to believe that a programmer would make such an asinine change to a program. But I could see how management would approve such a request.

    @question
    I don't think Homie is as gender specific as it once was. First, let me say, I’ve never lived in an urban area (compared to wherever you guys are from... a big city here is like 50000 people...), so all I have for my "street lingo cred" is what I learned on TV. But I believe its short for "Home Boy"... and "Home Girl" isn’t right, but it still sounds better than Homirl... so, just like I say “You Guys” (northern "Yous Guys" or southern "Yall" )and refer to a group of men and women, homie should refer to anyone that’s from a local "hood" and is on your side of whatever local conflicts exist. (side note: why did white(self inc) people just notice that theres been a war between red and blue America... though it surprises me there are so many republicans in the "hood", I thought blacks were democrats)

    @Mani, Jim, Bud, etc...
    PLEASE GO BACK TO SLASHDOT!

    If you don’t have a witty Comment about today’s WTF, funny anecdote on the subject or something entertaining, please don’t post anything. I know I’m just bitching too, but at least I tried to make it funny.

    I have you all beat! I knew he was dead before I even got to the F***ing theater! (because some lame ass in the next cubicle wouldn’t stop yakking about it) but HA, I knew before you... so nany nany bo bo!

  • Tom (unregistered)

    homely

  • gangsta (unregistered)

    The correct feminine version of "homie" is either "bitch" or "hoe."

  • Sam (unregistered)

    I am completely clueless about what goes on in "the hood". Could you help me understand some stuff? Like, some guy came up to me and said "Yo pimp-playa, word to your posse's crew!" I had no idea what he was talking about. What does it all mean.

  • foxyshadis (unregistered)

    Some of the comments here make me shake my head. ("Who on earth would use angle brackets? I've never seen those used.") Especially since other countries use very different # formats. Storing phone numbers is easy and virtually foolproof, XML or no - just strip out all non-numeric symbols, and use your favorite format() function to pretty them up later. (Different formats for different countries obviously.) This has the side benefit of making it easy to input and looking cleaner.

    I suppose some of you guys would be the type to return mysterious unfriendly errors when a phone number entry field isn't formatted exactly the way you expect, but neglecting to include the desired format? (This attitude is pandemic online.)

  • Gary (unregistered)

    "In the middle of deciphering this convoluted mass of crap..." - that's gotta be self-deprecating.

  • tharpa (unregistered) in reply to question
    question:
    I've always wondered about this. 'Homie'; sounds like a male term. What is the female version of a homie? Is it a 'homette'?

    "Homie" is short for "homeboy." I have never heard anyone use the phrase "homegirl," but if they did, it would seem that "homie" could be used as an abbreviation for that as well, though "homette" would remove any doubt.

    On a related vein, has anyone noticed that the word "actor" is now sometimes used for females who act, whereas previously it was "actor" only for males, and "actress" for females? I do not know if this would affect the usage of "homies" vs. "homettes".

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