The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

The rest of the world doesn't matter, because we are in jail.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

snoofle:
Tom:
make dates YYYYMMDD

+1 This (I do it all the time)

So do I (and, apparently, many other posters). But we are writing software that has to accept input from users who cannot understand why on earth we would want them to use another date format that they have never seen before. Users in Europe and North America want to read, or enter, the DD/MM/YY or MM/DD/YY format that they are used to.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Bryan the K:
TL;DR The real WTF is VB amirite?
First??

actually, yes, TRWTF is VB in this case

pjt33 · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Garmoran:
snoofle:
Tom:
make dates YYYYMMDD

+1 This (I do it all the time)

So do I (and, apparently, many other posters). But we are writing software that has to accept input from users who cannot understand why on earth we would want them to use another date format that they have never seen before. Users in Europe and North America want to read, or enter, the DD/MM/YY or MM/DD/YY format that they are used to.

But these are users who wouldn't know what to do with a CLI, so we have no excuse for not making the GUI use a suitably unambiguous control.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Here are a few examples: ...

And the same for you. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22fourth+of+july+holiday%22&btnG=Search&hl=en&rlz=1T4GGHP_enUS433US433&sa=2

Seeing that (both formats used) I have no doubt that even your fellow countrymen get confused when they see an all-numeric date on something (let alone the rest of the world) ...

Captcha: damnum. Truly a damnum situation to be stuck in.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Patrick:
Come on, get real

You want them to use 2011.3956 instead of counting months and days?

Damn, shit just got double!

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

OldCoder:
Enter State: Furious!

And now I must show you the angry leg...

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Yep, but not to Americans. They still cant figure out why the whole world uses "the wrong date format"

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Meep:
SeySayux:
Someone who can't be bothered to login from work:
Meep:
Zebedee:
It was fairly obvious from the first sentence that this was going to have something to do with the unusual way Americans represent dates.

Ah, as opposed to the international standard of yymmdd, or, wait, is it ddmmyy?

It just breaks my heart that I'm not a European and don't have a bunch of obsessive compulsive Belgian bureaucrats to regulate every fucking aspect of my life.

Belgium can't regulate anything, they can't even elect a government right now. Seriously, they went for nearly eight months without one. They might still be without one for all I know.

I'm sure the US and everywhere else in the world has its own fair share of stupid bureaucratic laws anyway.

Actually, the elections are over, it's the government formation that's taking a long time. But I guess that's a tad difficult to understand for an American that's used to a two-party winner-takes-all system.

The government formations are taking almost 13 months now and still counting. Wikipedia has a nice article about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Belgian_government_formation

Next time you bash Belgium, please study it first. Thanks.

But to recap: he's saying Belgium can't regulate anything, and you're countering by saying that they're just lost in the sauce because of months of pointless negotiations just to form a government, but soon they'll gear up to start producing unbelievable quantities of red tape.

Is there a point to this? I mean, will you ever have enough regulation, enough laws and enough welfare?

"Belgium" doesn't regulate anything in Europe, that's the work of the Eurocrats who just happen to have their offices in Brussels. The Eurocrats come from all over Europe and are responsible for the rising housing costs on the east side of Brussels.

Anyway, Belgium has 6 governments: 1 federal government and 5 regional governments. The 5 regional governments work just fine. The problem at the federal level is that only one part of the country wants a smaller federal gov't. The concept of a small federal gov't shouldn't be too unfamiliar to USA-ians (or whatever you peeps want to call yourselves).

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

LANMind:
Severity One:
Well, the typical American unawareness of people in other countries doing things differently (actually, the entire world doing things differently) is an issue, of course.

Wrong, we aren't unaware. We just don't give a fsck, because the rest of the world in general - and the French in particular - doesn't matter.

Yes , but it wont be too long before you start giving a fsck: when China and India start outsourcing to US. Till then, maybe you should give a fcsk about your poor grammar. It should be "beause the rest ... don't matter".

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

anon:
Yea, have to agree with several people, TRWTF is that not one developer bothered testing with their date format switched to DDMMYYYY since it could not have been more obvious it was related to that.

THIS. Times ten. Not one person was aware that other countries have different date formats and not one of them thought of configuring a machine like a French machine.

In three years of constant bug reports.

The fact that VBA lets you change the system time pales into insignificance compared to this.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

LANMind:
Wrong, we aren't unaware. We just don't give a fsck, because the rest of the world in general - and the French in particular - doesn't matter.

Yep. This is the basic issue in the US. I remember back when that Arab guy got killed. It was all over the game forums (run by an American crowd). Seems it was "unusual" that nobody in Europe thought it was great, wonderful, best thing in the world, etc.

Get over yourselves. Seriously.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

So while attemtping to diagnose what is clearly an internationalisation issue (someone in another country reports an issue with dates...) the developers never bothered to try changing thair locale settings?

kabelo · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Blame it on the american developer --- date('Y-m-d'); or is it date('d-m-Y');

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Bort:
It's because when you say the date out loud, you don't say "5th July." You say "July 5th."

Define 'You', because I always say 'The 5th of July', as do most people outside of the US (in my experience anyway).

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Bort:
Bort:
It's because when you say the date out loud, you don't say "5th July." You say "July 5th."

Holy shit. Another guy named Bort who was thinking exactly what I was thinking.

Recent statistics show that Bort is a name commonly given to morons, maybe that could explain some of your surprise?

Dorus · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

I just tried to write down 15 june 1917 13:45:32 in Dutch, the way i pronounce it: vijftien juni negentien-zeventien tweeëndertig seconden na kwart voor twee 's middags That comes down too: 5-10 june 9-10-7-10 2-30 seconds after a quarter to two in the afternoon

Luckely we would write that as: 15 juni 1917 13:45:32

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

like in nineteen-eightyfive? ;)

Severity One · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Julius Caesar:
As an American, I admit I'm not all that familiar with parliamentary governments. But 13 months to form a government?

Actually, 13 months and still no government yet. Even the Dutch, who like to poke fun at the Belgians, have stopped laughing.

I think after Britain's last election it took them about a week, and usually it's a matter of a couple of days.

It was actually a bit longer than that, and that's because there was a 'hung parliament', which is Britspeak for no party having an outright majority.

Israel may have the most parties in their parliament of any country -- I read once that Israel has NEVER had a majority government, not sure if that's true -- and they're constitutionally limited to 45 days to form a government.

There's probably a reason for that. Israel must have one of the most messed up political situations in the world. And I'm only talking about their parliament, not about the wider regional conflict.

Anybody else on here from countries with parliamentary systems? How long does it usually take to form a government? I'd guess when one party has a majority, it's a day or two, but when you have to form a coalition, presumably longer.

It really depends. Some countries have proportionate representation, others don't. Some countries have an election threshold, others don't. Some countries have a head of state (usually a president, but there are quite a few left monarchs in Europe) with executive power, others don't.

As a rule, the more parties there are in parliament, the longer it takes a government. Case in point: Belgium has the Christian-democrats, social democrats, liberals (the European meaning of the word), greens, and nationalists. And all of these times two: one in Dutch, and one in French. Plus a couple of fringe parties.

But the bigger problem in Belgium is that the two main language areas are quite different, both culturally and economically. The biggest issues are that the Flemish (Dutch speaking) generate a higher portion of the GDP than the Walloons (French speaking), and aren't willing to have a flow of money going south. Another issue is the francophonisation of traditionally Dutch-speaking areas around the capital Brussels (which is officially bilingual). And then there are some historical sore points, of when the Flemish were poorer than and discriminated by the Walloons.

On the other hand, whilst a parliamentary system that relies on coalitions may be more unstable than a presidential system, the government can almost always count on a majority in parliament. (As an example, the Netherlands have a solid reputation for stable government, even though the vast majority of the post-war governments made the full four years between scheduled elections.)

This is in contrast to the USA, where the Founding Fathers created the state with so many checks and balances that nobody can become too powerful, and as a result, the president and Congress are often in each others' hair.

This is not to say that one system is better than the other; each has its pros and cons.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Strangely, I had a similar experience. I worked at a large company in a past position and was assigned a relatively simple task, to write a program in VB to give the disk cost for storage. We had a common formula to measure how much it would cost a department to store their files on a network share.

Everything went well, and I used a standard system API to obtain the free space of the desired network share, performed the calculations and returned the cost to the user to approve.

I spread the program to numerous testers and it was even included in the beta push of our product. All went well - up to the release.

Suddenly, my manager was deluged with calls, saying my program was failing. It was traced down to one API call that, if you weren't on the latest service pack of Windows, or hadn't applied a patch, it would fail.

No problem, I said. They can just update. "They could, but they refuse to" my manager told me. Why? They didn't want to bother with it, was the implication (not said out loud, of course).

Where were these Luddites?

France.

Every other tester - worldwide - had no problems. Because of France, my module was pulled from the project.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

DDSez:
LANMind:
Severity One:
Well, the typical American unawareness of people in other countries doing things differently (actually, the entire world doing things differently) is an issue, of course.

Wrong, we aren't unaware. We just don't give a fsck, because the rest of the world in general - and the French in particular - doesn't matter.

Yes , but it wont be too long before you start giving a fsck: when China and India start outsourcing to US. Till then, maybe you should give a fcsk about your poor grammar. It should be "beause the rest ... don't matter".

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Well done, Moe. Well done. You managed to slip an article by the moderators containing all of the standard Troll tactics. Europe? Check. Date format? Check. BOFH? Check. VB? Oh, man, you really nailed them with that one.

I think your set to receive the Medal of Honor, my lad.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

In code and in storage you always use: YYYYMMDD because it sorts well, it searches fine and you never ever have troubles finding out which date is meant.
To display and to parse input you use the system preferences of the pc you work on: That means 2 little functions to handle the GUI dtIntern => dtDisplay and dtDisplay to dtIntern.

The Real WTF is that they did over a year talking and searching for something that a good programmer knows within 1.65 seconds after receiving this bugreport. So its not a victory at all, its a shame!

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Dear Moe,

In case you can’t tell, this is a grown-up place. The fact that you insist on using your ridiculous date format clearly shows that you’re too young and too stupid to be using VB.

Go away and grow up.

Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Spike:
a good programmer knows within 1.65 seconds after receiving this bugreport.

Whatever. I guess in your opinion, every programmer should be a Jeopardy Champion. Moe is glorified tech support, and not really on that caliber.

bjolling · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Severity One:
It really depends. Some countries have proportionate representation, others don't. Some countries have an election threshold, others don't. Some countries have a head of state (usually a president, but there are quite a few left monarchs in Europe) with executive power, others don't.
As a rule, the more parties there are in parliament, the longer it takes a government. Case in point: Belgium has the Christian-democrats, social democrats, liberals (the European meaning of the word), greens, and nationalists. And all of these times two: one in Dutch, and one in French. Plus a couple of fringe parties.

But the bigger problem in Belgium is that the two main language areas are quite different, both culturally and economically. The biggest issues are that the Flemish (Dutch speaking) generate a higher portion of the GDP than the Walloons (French speaking), and aren't willing to have a flow of money going south. Another issue is the francophonisation of traditionally Dutch-speaking areas around the capital Brussels (which is officially bilingual). And then there are some historical sore points, of when the Flemish were poorer than and discriminated by the Walloons.

On the other hand, whilst a parliamentary system that relies on coalitions may be more unstable than a presidential system, the government can almost always count on a majority in parliament. (As an example, the Netherlands have a solid reputation for stable government, even though the vast majority of the post-war governments made the full four years between scheduled elections.)

This is in contrast to the USA, where the Founding Fathers created the state with so many checks and balances that nobody can become too powerful, and as a result, the president and Congress are often in each others' hair.

This is not to say that one system is better than the other; each has its pros and cons.

To explain this to an American I always apply our situation to the USA. Assume that:

USA consists of only 2 states: North & South for example
North speaks English, is richer, votes Republican
South speaks Spanish, is poorer, votes Democrat Both North and South agree that the division of authority between the federal level and the state level is wrong and want to change it. North wants more power for the states so they everyone can solve specific state problems themselves without approval from the other state. South wants more authority for the federal government so that everyone in North and South gets treated equally.

In order to change anything however, they need to change the constitution which requires they compromise. How long would that take in the US, finding a compromise between 'more power to the states' and 'more power to the federal government'?

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Steve The Cynic:
Oh, and it has dead-keys for accents. That's lame on any keyboard layout.

Are you kidding? That's the only way to do an accent on a capital letter without resorting to alt+numpad!

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Master and Commander of the Troll Amry:
Well done, Moe. Well done. You managed to slip an article by the moderators containing all of the standard Troll tactics. Europe? Check. Date format? Check. BOFH? Check. VB? Oh, man, you really nailed them with that one.
I think your set to receive the Medal of Honor, my lad.

Actually I think you're minions went a little out of control. I noticed yesterday that all these European comments started popping up in what would have been long after midnight.

In other words: a bunch of fake Europeans were trolling each other, who thought they were trolling real Europeans and/or Americans.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Medinoc:
Steve The Cynic:
Oh, and it has dead-keys for accents. That's lame on any keyboard layout.
Are you kidding? That's the only way to do an accent on a capitol letter without resorting to alt+numpad!

Fixed that for you, Yank.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Bert Glanstron:
Dear France,
In case you can’t tell, this is a grown-up planet. The fact that you insist on using your ridiculous date format clearly shows that you’re too young and too stupid to be using VB.

Go away and grow up.

Sincerely, Bert Glanstron

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Here in Monaco, we generally try to follow the U.S. standards for date format. We have found that it makes business with America easier, and most of our European counterparts understand the format already anyway.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Nagesh:
HP PhaserJet:
Anonymous non Coward:
"Most common usage See also: Category:Date and time representation by country [edit] Date See also: Date format by country
In terms of dates, most countries use the "day month year" format. In terms of people the big-endian form is also very common, since that is used in East Asia, Iran and partially in India."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country

Medium Indian is roughly use , in ... The USA only.

So that's about the same as with USI.

What's "Medium Indian"?
I am Medium Indian only.

Does that mean you can channel the spirits of the deceased, but only if they died in India?

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Bombomil (guest):
Here in The Netherlands we swap, when speaking, some of the digits in the value. Like 21 becomes een-en-twintig (one-and-twenty). If the value has 4 digits we often pronounce it as a number of hundreds. This means that something like 2345 becomes drie-en-twintig honderd, vijf-en-veertig (three-and-twenty hundreds, five-and-fourty).
I would just love to see that expressed in computer-programming (most, but not all pairs of digits swapped). It would make a language as white-space an easy one to decipher. :-)

Oh, by the way: wasn't yesterday "the fourth of july" for you guys ? :-p

Actually, the English have that even worse. At least we Dutchies stick with it.

For Dutch numerical order orders you get:

Written:        1 - 12* - 123456 - 123456789 - 123456.789 - 12.3456789 - 1.23456789
Pronounciation: 1 - 21* - 132465 - 132465798 - 132465.798 - 12.3465798 - 1.32465798

Just like the English "twelve", it has a custom pronunciation

English have it reversed for the 10 range, but not the 20 - 90 ranges: Fourteen, yet twenty-four.

And then you have eleven and twelve, which don't fit in either.

frits · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

drusi:
Nagesh:
HP PhaserJet:
Anonymous non Coward:
"Most common usage See also: Category:Date and time representation by country [edit] Date See also: Date format by country
In terms of dates, most countries use the "day month year" format. In terms of people the big-endian form is also very common, since that is used in East Asia, Iran and partially in India."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country

Medium Indian is roughly use , in ... The USA only.

So that's about the same as with USI.

What's "Medium Indian"?
I am Medium Indian only.
Does that mean you can channel the spirits of the deceased, but only if they died in India?

I bet he has a huge rack, like the ghost whisperer and that other medium, too.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

pjt33:
I hope you told him the truth. Lots of Brits lie and say that we don't celebrate it because they're too embarrassed to admit that we call it Thanksgiving and have a second cup of tea with our cucumber sandwiches at 4p.m. to celebrate not being responsible for the current clowns competing for the White House.

Even though your prime minister is typically in his pocket. Who's the fool - the fool or the fool who follows him?

Wasn't that Sir Alec Guinness?

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Chelloveck:
YYYY-MM-DD. Learn it. Live it. It is the One True Date Format. Thou shalt have no other date formats before me.

Except for YYYY-M-DD, of course, where M is the month's number written in Roman number format. Helps distinguish the month from the day without having to resort to locale-specific month names. Example: 2011-VII-06.

Among other advantages, it also sorts correctly. Patent pending.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

The One True Date Format is 0.511.011.M03

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

The Corrector:
Bert Glanstron:
Dear United States of America,
In case you can’t tell, this is a grown-up planet. The fact that you insist on using your ridiculous date format clearly shows that you’re too young and too stupid to be using VB.

Go away and grow up.

Sincerely, Bert Glanstron
FTFY

FTFY ^^

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Master and Commander of the Troll Amry:
Well done, Moe. Well done. You managed to slip an article by the moderators containing all of the standard Troll tactics. Europe? Check. Date format? Check. BOFH? Check. VB? Oh, man, you really nailed them with that one.
I think your set to receive the Medal of Honor, my lad.

Trolling? Or a desperate attempt by Eurofags to maintains self-confidence in the face of their growing irrelevance?

If life is so great over there, why don't you just keep to yourselves and enjoy it?

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

What you folks mean is "Middle Endian" referring to having the day in the middle like MM/DD/YYYY.

Technically this designation isn't even correct since Endianness names are determined by where the most significant part of a value are. Thus MM/DD/YYYY would still be "Little Endian" from that perspective. More accurate would be "Messed up little Endian". (If you mistype it again with an 'I' you get a good title for a potential Bollywood Exploitation movie)

True "Middle Endian" would be either DD-YYYY-MM or MM-YYYY-DD.

Earlier in the discussion there was mentioning of the Norwegian? tombstone date format YY DD/MM YY. I'll call that "Outer Endian"...

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Kempeth:
Matt Westwood:
Hortical:
Matt Westwood:
Till you've been to a proper Bonfire Night party in Britain you haven't lived. The birthrate rockets (no pun intended) around the beginning of August.

"...you haven't lived..." Yes, I'm sure everything you have is better than everything everyone else has.

But of course. We rule the world, always did, always will.

Yeah. You know that "Special Relationship" they always talk about. They just don't want to admit the US is still a colony... ;-p

Also do you have any measurement unit that scales to another through a power of ten? I seriously cannot imagine how one can stay sane working with all those weird units...

It's actually much more useful having non-decimal units when using mental arithmetic, particularly for monetary units, since you can easily divide a 240-pence pound by 2,3,4,5,6,8,10,12 etc. Its got lots of factors.

A similar analogy is angles in degrees or time, both of which are based around the same sexagesimal number system (base 60).

operagost · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Rast a mouse:
Maybe if the presumabley American team responsible used a logical date format like the rest of the world in the first place this would never have happened.

I assume you mean the ISO 8601 format, which is YYYY-MM-DD? No? Oh, European xenophobia again.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Troll des Affaires étrangères est étranger.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Kempeth:
What you folks mean is "Middle Endian" referring to having the day in the middle like MM/DD/YYYY.

"Middle" is not a size, so it does not go between Big and Little - Medium does. Respect consistency.

Medium Indian - is that when the vegetables are still a little bit raw on the inside?

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

le réel est pire que l'échec de Visual Basic pour applications, n'est-ce pas?

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

quibus:
Except for YYYY-M-DD, of course, where M is the month's number written in Roman number format. Helps distinguish the month from the day without having to resort to locale-specific month names. Example: 2011-VII-06.
Among other advantages, it also sorts correctly. Patent pending.

I'll see your 6th July and raise you 14th September. See how well IX sorts after VIII (no-one uses VIIII)

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

MrBester:
quibus:
Except for YYYY-M-DD, of course, where M is the month's number written in Roman number format. Helps distinguish the month from the day without having to resort to locale-specific month names. Example: 2011-VII-06.
Among other advantages, it also sorts correctly. Patent pending.

I'll see your 6th July and raise you 14th September. See how well IX sorts after VIII (no-one uses VIIII)

No one uses vi either, but they still have to ship it with every effing Linux distro.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

operagost:
Rast a mouse:
Maybe if the presumabley American team responsible used a logical date format like the rest of the world in the first place this would never have happened.
I assume you mean the ISO 8601 format, which is YYYY-MM-DD? No? Oh, European xenophobia again.

That would constitute to a logical date format. Both Little and Big endian have their uses, however middle endian is just silly ^^

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

MrBester:
quibus:
Except for YYYY-M-DD, of course, where M is the month's number written in Roman number format. Helps distinguish the month from the day without having to resort to locale-specific month names. Example: 2011-VII-06.
Among other advantages, it also sorts correctly. Patent pending.

I'll see your 6th July and raise you 14th September. See how well IX sorts after VIII (no-one uses VIIII)

The Romans did. IV and IX were invented much, much later.

operagost · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

bjolling:
Severity One:
It really depends. Some countries have proportionate representation, others don't. Some countries have an election threshold, others don't. Some countries have a head of state (usually a president, but there are quite a few left monarchs in Europe) with executive power, others don't.
As a rule, the more parties there are in parliament, the longer it takes a government. Case in point: Belgium has the Christian-democrats, social democrats, liberals (the European meaning of the word), greens, and nationalists. And all of these times two: one in Dutch, and one in French. Plus a couple of fringe parties.

But the bigger problem in Belgium is that the two main language areas are quite different, both culturally and economically. The biggest issues are that the Flemish (Dutch speaking) generate a higher portion of the GDP than the Walloons (French speaking), and aren't willing to have a flow of money going south. Another issue is the francophonisation of traditionally Dutch-speaking areas around the capital Brussels (which is officially bilingual). And then there are some historical sore points, of when the Flemish were poorer than and discriminated by the Walloons.

On the other hand, whilst a parliamentary system that relies on coalitions may be more unstable than a presidential system, the government can almost always count on a majority in parliament. (As an example, the Netherlands have a solid reputation for stable government, even though the vast majority of the post-war governments made the full four years between scheduled elections.)

This is in contrast to the USA, where the Founding Fathers created the state with so many checks and balances that nobody can become too powerful, and as a result, the president and Congress are often in each others' hair.

This is not to say that one system is better than the other; each has its pros and cons.
To explain this to an American I always apply our situation to the USA. Assume that:

USA consists of only 2 states: North & South for example

North speaks English, is richer, votes Republican

South speaks Spanish, is poorer, votes Democrat Both North and South agree that the division of authority between the federal level and the state level is wrong and want to change it. North wants more power for the states so they everyone can solve specific state problems themselves without approval from the other state. South wants more authority for the federal government so that everyone in North and South gets treated equally.

In order to change anything however, they need to change the constitution which requires they compromise. How long would that take in the US, finding a compromise between 'more power to the states' and 'more power to the federal government'?

Well, it took about six months to get the requisite 9 states to ratify the Constitution (and another 1.5 to get the last four) out of 13. But the scenario you're proposing is suspiciously similar to that which started the Civil War, with simply the North and South reversed and no language barrier.

Trans-Atlantic Time Trap

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