The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

operagost:
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.

Don't forget the part where the Northern-controlled Congress was successfully keeping the South impoverished by leveraging unreasonable tariffs.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Sir Robin-The-Not-So-Brave:
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.

Really, you let them put that in your backyard? Hey, we've got a whole lot of nuclear waste and the greens won't let us put it in Yucca Mountain, we're just going to dig a small hole, well away from anything populated, just a few thousands barrels, no one will notice.

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).

Having read (some of!) the EU constitution, you don't grok limited, enumerated and delegated government. I'm still not sure why the EU bothered with a constitution at all.

While my familiarity with Belgium government is limited, I understand it has the same deficiencies common in Europe: you have a federalist structure, but the institutions, the political culture and the legal framework are modernized versions of the structures in the old fractious European aristocracy. This isn't a bad thing, it's a consequence of the fact that you never fundamentally broke with the old aristocracy but reformed it; the concept just isn't what Americans are familiar with. Our politics are on a very different cultural and historical footing than Europe's.

BTW, when did we stop calling ourselves Americans??

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

I don't understand why this is so hard.

The One True Date Format is "YYYYWWD", WW represents the week number.

The obvious advantage of this format is that the D parameter (being only 1-7) can be encoded in 3 bits instead of the usual 4, so the value will fit nicely in a 25-bit register, or for you on modern hardware, it can include a 9-bit representation of the number of pentiminutes past midnight in a single 36-bit data word.

--Joe Cogito ergo vindico. I think I'm right, therefore...

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.
Technically this designation isn't even correct since Endianness names are determined by where the most significant part of a value are

Um, no. The most significant part of the value is by definition its big end. Being most significant is what makes it the big end. The Swiftian terminology tells which of the ends is written down first (i.e., at the lowest address in memory or as the leftmost character in an LTR script).

Thus MDY, which begins with a unit of intermediate significance, is middle endian.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Oh, and it's actually not "One True Date Format", the real specifier is "Won True Format" So TRWTF is... YMYDYMYD. Of course, YMMV.

--Joe

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

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

Say what you want about my country, my people, my way of life and my mother, but NEVER say a single, derogatory word about vi!!!

You don't know what you're talking about if you don't get on your knees and THANK GOD for vi!!!

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

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

No, I say the "5th of July".

Here in the Imperium Romanum, we say "The third of the Nones of July".

Shouldn't it be Quintilis? After all, you're still alive, Gaius!

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

bjolling:
Severity One:
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'?

It takes 4 years (minus 3 days), the states-rights people lose, and the government becomes more federal. No compromise necessary.

Been there, done that.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

The real WTF is that frogs were using their software under the admin account which allows you to change date. Reporting software under admin account, seriously?

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Civil War Revisionist Historian:
operagost:
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.
Don't forget the part where the Northern-controlled Congress was successfully keeping the South impoverished by leveraging unreasonable tariffs.

You mean the part the Southern plantation owners fabricated to foment unrest and make the case for secession?

What freed slaves all over the world wasn't that everyone suddenly had a change of heart and decided that slavery was immoral. Plenty of people were genuinely abolitionist, but that didn't become 90+% until well after slavery had ended.

What happened was industrialization, which required large numbers of workers concentrated in factories. Slavery, for a number of reasons, isn't suited to staffing a factory. The biggest is probably that it's cheaper to pay workers a wage than to take care of all their expenses for them and police them 24/7.

Plantation owners completely controlled the media and the government in the South; you had a regional oligarchy. The economic divide was because in the South the plantation owners made themselves "too big to fail" while the Northern economy was restructuring and industrializing. You had an agrarian economy compared to an early industrial economy, but the average Southerner had no idea why because all he heard was propaganda about devious Northerners.

In a way, it's fortunate that they took us to war: in the course of the Civil War, the North killed a quarter of a million rabid pro-slavery zealots, and all that remain are a pitiful remnant of the descendants of cowards.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Meep:
BTW, when did we stop calling ourselves Americans??

The Canadians were bitching about it.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Meep:
Civil War Historian:
Don't forget the part where the Northern-controlled Congress was successfully keeping the South impoverished by leveraging unreasonable tariffs.

You mean the part the Southern plantation owners fabricated to foment unrest and make the case for secession?

What freed slaves all over the world wasn't that everyone suddenly had a change of heart and decided that slavery was immoral. Plenty of people were genuinely abolitionist, but that didn't become 90+% until well after slavery had ended.

What happened was industrialization, which required large numbers of workers concentrated in factories. Slavery, for a number of reasons, isn't suited to staffing a factory. The biggest is probably that it's cheaper to pay workers a wage than to take care of all their expenses for them and police them 24/7.

Plantation owners completely controlled the media and the government in the South; you had a regional oligarchy. The economic divide was because in the South the plantation owners made themselves "too big to fail" while the Northern economy was restructuring and industrializing. You had an agrarian economy compared to an early industrial economy, but the average Southerner had no idea why because all he heard was propaganda about devious Northerners.

In a way, it's fortunate that they took us to war: in the course of the Civil War, the North killed a quarter of a million rabid pro-slavery zealots, and all that remain are a pitiful remnant of the descendants of cowards.

Obviously, industrialization was appealing to the Northern States, where winter still requires extensive preparation to keep your livestock from dying. Meanwhile, the fertile South has longer growing seasons and more fertile soil, making it naturally more appealing to agriculture. (You can have as many factories as you want, but you still need food, BTW).

What people fail to realize is that the North was doing to the South what the British did, sparking the Revolutionary War. "Taxation without representation" was a problem because they wanted to eliminate the taxes which made products shipped across the Atlantic "cheaper" that the local farmer could sell (if all this sounds suspiciously like Walmart, there's a reason why that we won't get into right now). The Northerners had all their nice factories, but no one to sell their stuff to because it was then cheaper for the Southern farmer to import from overseas. Solution? Tax the imports until it was cheaper! Also, tax exports until the South had so much surplus that they had to sell the raw materials at lower prices! The South came to the same conclusion that the early colonies did: "This Union is not in our best interest."

Unfortunately for them, the North was just as unreasonable as Britain: they liked their stranglehold--they couldn't exist without it! Industrialization is better for things like bullets and guns and uniforms. That, coupled with a higher population ultimately doomed the courageous and strategically superior Confederation.

Might does not make right.

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".

Actually, if you remove the clause "- and the French in particular -", you'll find that "don't matter" in your correction is poor English. "Doesn't" refers to the world, not the French. If you're going to try and correct my grammar, please try be, you know, correct.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

No, you don't use hyphens there. You use dashes. There's a difference, people!

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Civil War Historian:
the fertile South has longer growing seasons and more fertile soil.

You might want to recheck that fact, Mr. "Historian".

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Civil War Historian:
You can have as many factories as you want, but you still need food, BTW.

Last time I checked, it's hard to subsist on cotton and tobacco.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Yankee Doodle:
Civil War Historian:
the fertile South has longer growing seasons and more fertile soil.

You might want to recheck that fact, Mr. "Historian".

It depends on what you're growing. Seriously.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

I have swapped your days and months an odd number of times. Pray I don't swap them any more.

ContraCorners · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Civil War Historian:
Meep:
Civil War Historian:
Don't forget the part where the Northern-controlled Congress was successfully keeping the South impoverished by leveraging unreasonable tariffs.

You mean the part the Southern plantation owners fabricated to foment unrest and make the case for secession?

What freed slaves all over the world wasn't that everyone suddenly had a change of heart and decided that slavery was immoral. Plenty of people were genuinely abolitionist, but that didn't become 90+% until well after slavery had ended.

What happened was industrialization, which required large numbers of workers concentrated in factories. Slavery, for a number of reasons, isn't suited to staffing a factory. The biggest is probably that it's cheaper to pay workers a wage than to take care of all their expenses for them and police them 24/7.

Plantation owners completely controlled the media and the government in the South; you had a regional oligarchy. The economic divide was because in the South the plantation owners made themselves "too big to fail" while the Northern economy was restructuring and industrializing. You had an agrarian economy compared to an early industrial economy, but the average Southerner had no idea why because all he heard was propaganda about devious Northerners.

In a way, it's fortunate that they took us to war: in the course of the Civil War, the North killed a quarter of a million rabid pro-slavery zealots, and all that remain are a pitiful remnant of the descendants of cowards.
Obviously, industrialization was appealing to the Northern States, where winter still requires extensive preparation to keep your livestock from dying. Meanwhile, the fertile South has longer growing seasons and more fertile soil, making it naturally more appealing to agriculture. (You can have as many factories as you want, but you still need food, BTW).

What people fail to realize is that the North was doing to the South what the British did, sparking the Revolutionary War. "Taxation without representation" was a problem because they wanted to eliminate the taxes which made products shipped across the Atlantic "cheaper" that the local farmer could sell (if all this sounds suspiciously like Walmart, there's a reason why that we won't get into right now). The Northerners had all their nice factories, but no one to sell their stuff to because it was then cheaper for the Southern farmer to import from overseas. Solution? Tax the imports until it was cheaper! Also, tax exports until the South had so much surplus that they had to sell the raw materials at lower prices! The South came to the same conclusion that the early colonies did: "This Union is not in our best interest."

Unfortunately for them, the North was just as unreasonable as Britain: they liked their stranglehold--they couldn't exist without it! Industrialization is better for things like bullets and guns and uniforms. That, coupled with a higher population ultimately doomed the courageous and strategically superior Confederation.

Might does not make right.

"Taxation without representation" doesn't really apply here. The southern states WERE represented in Congress right up until their secession.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

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.

I think you meant the international standard of yyyymmdd, or mayber dd-MMM-yyyy

CAPTCHA: I wanted to augue my eyes out after this.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

I assume you meant an ASCIIbetiacal sort, where "-IX-" would come after "-IV-" of the roman numerals I to XII, with punctuation first

-I- -II- -III- -IV- -IX- -V- -VI- -VII- -X- -XI- -XII-

April-September-May or may not sort correctly on your calendar.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Civil War Revisionist Historian:
Meep:
Civil War Revisionist Historian:
Don't forget the part where the Northern-controlled Congress was successfully keeping the South impoverished by leveraging unreasonable tariffs.

You mean the part the Southern plantation owners fabricated to foment unrest and make the case for secession?

What freed slaves all over the world wasn't that everyone suddenly had a change of heart and decided that slavery was immoral. Plenty of people were genuinely abolitionist, but that didn't become 90+% until well after slavery had ended.

What happened was industrialization, which required large numbers of workers concentrated in factories. Slavery, for a number of reasons, isn't suited to staffing a factory. The biggest is probably that it's cheaper to pay workers a wage than to take care of all their expenses for them and police them 24/7.

Plantation owners completely controlled the media and the government in the South; you had a regional oligarchy. The economic divide was because in the South the plantation owners made themselves "too big to fail" while the Northern economy was restructuring and industrializing. You had an agrarian economy compared to an early industrial economy, but the average Southerner had no idea why because all he heard was propaganda about devious Northerners.

In a way, it's fortunate that they took us to war: in the course of the Civil War, the North killed a quarter of a million rabid pro-slavery zealots, and all that remain are a pitiful remnant of the descendants of cowards.
Obviously, industrialization was appealing to the Northern States, where winter still requires extensive preparation to keep your livestock from dying. Meanwhile, the fertile South has longer growing seasons and more fertile soil, making it naturally more appealing to agriculture. (You can have as many factories as you want, but you still need food, BTW).

So basically, "yeah, there was that industrial revolution thing going on which completely explains the discrepancy, but rather than address a major historical era, I'm going to change the subject and hope no one notices."

What people fail to realize is that the North was doing to the South what the British did, sparking the Revolutionary War. "Taxation without representation" was a problem because they wanted to eliminate the taxes which made products shipped across the Atlantic "cheaper" that the local farmer could sell (if all this sounds suspiciously like Walmart, there's a reason why that we won't get into right now).

If only there was an actual list of all the complaints the American colonies had against the British. Oh wait, yes there is. "For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent" is one complaint out of about 30. And, as another poster pointed out, they were represented.

The South was perfectly willing to ignore states' rights when it suited them, as with the Fugitive Slave Act. Oh yeah, forgot, "it wasn't about slavery." Right, just keep telling yourself that.

The Northerners had all their nice factories, but no one to sell their stuff to because it was then cheaper for the Southern farmer to import from overseas. Solution? Tax the imports until it was cheaper! Also, tax exports until the South had so much surplus that they had to sell the raw materials at lower prices! The South came to the same conclusion that the early colonies did: "This Union is not in our best interest."

Let me get this straight: the Northerners built factories to produce goods, got frustrated when the South imported goods instead of buying them from the North, and those Damnyankees never thought to export their goods?

Really? This is what passes for history down there?

Unfortunately for them, the North was just as unreasonable as Britain: they liked their stranglehold--they couldn't exist without it! Industrialization is better for things like bullets and guns and uniforms. That, coupled with a higher population ultimately doomed the courageous and strategically superior Confederation.

Ah, a "historian" who doesn't understand the difference between strategy and tactics.

If you're strategically superior it means that you're better equipped for winning the war in the long run, meaning that you've got more soldiers, more supplies and a better means of getting supplies to soldiers. The Confederacy was tactically superior to the Union, in that they won more battles.

Might does not make right.

I guess it's all the South had, given that it's kind of fucking hard to win an argument defending slavery. (Not that they didn't try when they could stack the Supreme Court, e.g. Dred Scott.)

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Marcus Junius Brutus:
Julius Caesar:
TheCPUWizard:
Bort:
It's because when you say the date out loud, you don't say "5th July." You say "July 5th."

No, I say the "5th of July".

Here in the Imperium Romanum, we say "The third of the Nones of July".

Shouldn't it be Quintilis? After all, you're still alive, Gaius!

No thanks to you ... Et tu?

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

"If we print the GL-DLG-ADM report on the fifth day of the month," he explained in an e-mail, "it will 'swap' the day and the month on our computer. So, if my computer says it's Oct. 5, then the report will change my computer date to May 10. But, this only will happen if the report is one page long."

A perfectly reproducable problem, so I'd like to ask the submitter...

"Moe went back and dug through the code, but couldn't find a thing."

Do you always just browse the codebase when trying to fix a problem? Do you know what a debugger is for? Are you capable of using a debugger?

Moe is a developer FAIL.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

shixilun:
Mason Wheeler:
ShatteredArm:
Dates (and everything else) should be in order from most general to least.

So do you find the way the US (and pretty much the entire rest of the world, for that matter) does mailing addresses to be objectionable?

Within China, addresses are big-endian (e.g., province city district street number).

US Zip Codes go from high-order to low-order. The first digit is a region code, digits 2 & 3 are are a sub-region within that region, and then digits 4 & 5 are a city code within the sub-region. (Initially these were in alphabetical order, except it didn't seem to occur to anyway to leave gaps in the numbers for new cities that might be created later, so those tend to come at the end.) Then the plus-4 part is typically a section of a street within the city. (Though PO boxes generally each get their own plus-4 code, and some bigger businesses get their own plus-4.)

So sorting by zip code does put letters or packages that go to places that are near each other in the real world, near each other in the sort order.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Gary:
Duh! Just run the reports on Jan 1, Feb 2, March 3, etc.

+10!! Here's a man who knows how to create practical work-arounds!

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Soy Americano:
The real WTF is how people don't understand that people speak different languages. Don't assume that any other country follows the same dates or numbers you do.

Do you know that when you're talking to a French person, you can't just talk about a calendar: you have to say "calendrier". And you can't talk about a field being true or false: they say "vrai" and "faux". It seems like those people have a different word for EVERYTHING! What are they thinking? This makes communication awfully difficult. Why can't they just speak plain English like everybody else?

Severity One · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Severity One:
(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.)

That should be 'didn't make the full four years'.

Interestingly, we evil Europeans have managed to rekindle the American civil war. We're very good at starting wars. Winning them is another issue, of course.

Severity One · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Joe:
Oh, and it's actually not "One True Date Format", the real specifier is "Won True Format" So TRWTF is... YMYDYMYD. Of course, YMMV.

Nah 'YMMV' is possibly the worst date format in existence. Look at it, only one digit for the year, two for the months, and one for the... thingy.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
Ton:
Ton:
We need a 'like' option for posts... or in this particular case: a 'ftw!' option...

Argh. I meant to quote "Yup. Just like that grand American holiday, "July the 4th," that we just saw... ".

As a Brit in the US one 4th of July, I was asked by a native how we celebrate 4th of July in Britain.

I've heard it's not quite as big a holiday over there as it is here.

Equally curious, Guy Fawkes Day is not a big holiday in Vatican City.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Best translation I can think of for WTF would be "Qu'est-ce que c'est que ce bordel ?"

So: LVQQCQCB, c'est VB.

French is verbose.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Swapper:
I have swapped your days and months an odd number of times. Pray I don't swap them any more.

Actually, could you just swap them one more time? Thanks awfully.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

There's an easy solution, we'll have a vote.

US ~300 million votes to write it as we say it France ~65 million votes to write it sequentially

All we have to do is agree that the Chinese don't get to vote. :)

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Yikes...

yep, VB (more specifically, setting a function to a value sets the system time? WTF?! not having to declare variables and their type? WTF?!) is the real WTF here. Oh, and the whole "silently failed call" when it gets passed an invalid date is a real gem too. If VB just had proper error handling (of ANY kind, even barfing an invalid return value such as -1 like C APIs do would be better, because it would trash the date completely on many more days and the cause would become obvious) or made people define their variables (thus throwing an error concerning the reserved word conflict) this wouldn't have happened.

Oh, and YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss is where it's at. Got to left-pad all fields with 0s or the columns don't line up and you lose the benefit of free sort-by-time.

captcha: captcha "jokes" were last funny in 2008

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Severity One:
Joe:
Oh, and it's actually not "One True Date Format", the real specifier is "Won True Format" So TRWTF is... YMYDYMYD. Of course, YMMV.
Nah 'YMMV' is possibly the worst date format in existence. Look at it, only one digit for the year, two for the months, and one for VICTORY.

FTFY.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

kastein:
Yikes...
yep, VB (more specifically, setting a function to a value sets the system time? WTF?! not having to declare variables and their type? WTF?!) is the real WTF here.

Typical Windows, yeah?

ASSOC Displays or modifies file extension associations. ATTRIB Displays or changes file attributes. BREAK Sets or clears extended CTRL+C checking. CACLS Displays or modifies access control lists (ACLs) of files. CD Displays the name of or changes the current directory. CHCP Displays or sets the active code page number. CHDIR Displays the name of or changes the current directory. CHKNTFS Displays or modifies the checking of disk at boot time. COMPACT Displays or alters the compression of files on NTFS partitions. DATE Displays or sets the date. ECHO Displays messages, or turns command echoing on or off. LABEL Creates, changes, or deletes the volume label of a disk. MODE Configures a system device. PATH Displays or sets a search path for executable files. SET Displays, sets, or removes Windows environment variables. TIME Displays or sets the system time.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Meep:
The South was perfectly willing to ignore states' rights when it suited them, as with the Fugitive Slave Act. Oh yeah, forgot, "it wasn't about slavery." Right, just keep telling yourself that.

It wasn't directly about slavery - it was about economics (as all wars are).

The way people phrase things today, they make it sound like the south are a bunch of meanies that wanted to keep slaves just for the hell of it. Just because they were EEEEVVVVVIIIILLLLL.

They needed slaves in order to outproduce their competition. Slavery (then and now) was/is the free market at work.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Zebedee:
BTW, has anyone figured out what to call that decade yet? Or even this one?

The past decade was The Noughties (twenty-nought-one, twenty-nought-two). This decade is the Teens. Or the twenty-teens if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

The US date format proves that "9/11" was an inside job.

They did the British attack on "7/7" so as not to confuse the American public...

nonpartisan · 2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Matt Westwood:
Scarlet Manuka:
paul:
So now if I try to localize my program using built-in date functions, I have to fucking worry about the order of the month and day? Unbelievable.
I'm not sure where you got this from. If you want to display a date to the user, format it using vbLongDate or vbShortDate as appropriate, which use the long and short date formats defined in regional settings. (There are also vbGeneralDate, vbLongTime and vbShortTime formats, all of which use the user's settings.) The problem is lazy developers who hardcode the date format to whatever they're used to.
~~:
Eeeeee... Function parameters' order depending on the system locale? Is everybody sane there in VB land?
There was only one function parameter in this instance: the date to which you want the system date to be set. The programmer just assembled a string in his favourite date order and hit the Date function with it, so the Date function did its best to interpret it. If he'd used a Date object, or even a string formatted with the system setting, there'd have been no problem.
But it's highly likely, as others have mentioned, that the programmer didn't intend to be calling Date at all in this code - rather, he probably intended to use a local variable to store a formatted string. Multiple fails here still, including using a variable with the same name as an inbuilt function, (presumably) omitting the variable declaration, and not using the regional settings to format your date string.

... and failure to respond to the alarm bell (alluded to but not stated explicitly elsewhere) that the program would only run when the user was configured as "administrator".

Objection: presumes facts not in evidence.

It could be there were other applications that "required" Administrator access and this one just enjoyed the ride. The original story stated they realized on dates after the 12th, the assignment silently failed. No reason to think it wouldn't do the same if no Administrator rights.

(I throw "required" in quotes because a little research on the permissions may allow for giving the necessary rights without full-blown Administrator access. I teched in a communications center [call center for an ED] one time where an application "needed" Administrator rights but we didn't want users with that much leeway. FileMon, RegMon, a few Registry changes late, poof regular user access worked just fine.)

2011-07-06 Reply Admin

Actually, the rest of the world would say "the 5th of July".

It might be a little more verbose but I believe both are a reflection of the date format.

2011-07-07 Reply Admin

Elezar:
My best guess is that during the Revolutionary War, people were trying to be "less British" in as many ways as possible, so changed even little things like the way they write/say dates.

LOL. I'm pretty sure during those days most of them were illiterate peasants, who couldn't care less what date it was, and how it's written. Whereas today in the US, I think general population is much more edu... wait a minute!

Severity One · 2011-07-07 Reply Admin

nonpartisan:
It could be there were other applications that "required" Administrator access and this one just enjoyed the ride. The original story stated they realized on dates after the 12th, the assignment silently failed. No reason to think it wouldn't do the same if no Administrator rights.

This is actually a very good point. The number of times I had to repair my son's computer (the boy is eight years old now) because some rubbish software, usually from Activision, won't run unless you're administrator, and my son is very much like me, and will try EVERYTHING... well, you get the idea.

2011-07-07 Reply Admin

I think you mean 1.21 jiggahertz.

2011-07-07 Reply Admin

I am pretty sure that if the U.S. ever change their date format, it will be to YYYY-DD-MM...

2011-07-07 Reply Admin

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.

Oh yes, we're still without one. 389 days now, and counting. I hope I'm wrong, but I have the impression that the end is not in sight.

To be correct, we do have a government. Several of them, in fact; it's only the federal government where the politicians are showing of their incompetency in this particular way. We still have a Flemish government, and a Brussels government, and a Walloon government, and governments of the Francophone and German speaking communities where policitians have other means of being incompetent.

2011-07-07 Reply Admin

Cujo DeSockpuppet:
Come on, we all know the only real date format worth using is YYDDD. It saves a lot of space on my punch cards.

And just wait for the next decade bug.

2011-07-07 Reply Admin

Sean:
There's an easy solution, we'll have a vote.
US ~300 million votes to write it as we say it France ~65 million votes to write it sequentially

All we have to do is agree that the Chinese don't get to vote. :)

It is more like:

US ~300 million Rest of the world: more than 6000 million

2011-07-07 Reply Admin

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

Well, actually, I say "5 July". But I write 2011-07-05 or "5 Jul 2011" depending on my audience and purpose. Most of my peers do. We live in California, Utah, and Illinois. But we use dates a lot, so we like standard formatting.

2011-07-07 Reply Admin

mike5:
Elezar:
My best guess is that during the Revolutionary War, people were trying to be "less British" in as many ways as possible, so changed even little things like the way they write/say dates.

LOL. I'm pretty sure during those days most of them were illiterate peasants ...

Umm ... no.

I heard a lecture once by a college professor talking about the Federalist Papers. These were, you may recall, essays written by supporters of the new Constitution urging people to vote in favor of its ratification. He mentioned that he assigned some readings from these to his students, and many of them complained that this was very difficult material. The Federalist Papers just assume that the reader is very well-versed in history, philosophy, and political theory. So, he said, he had to explain to the class, "Yes, but you have to understand that the Federalist Papers were not written for undergraduate history majors in a 21st century American university. They were intended for the average farmer in upstate New York in 1789."

Trans-Atlantic Time Trap

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