The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2007-12-20 Reply Admin

What would be even better is if the buttons read "Red Pill" and "Blue Pill".

2007-12-20 Reply Admin

FinnGamble:
Obviously, the real WTF is that it's 2007 and we are still using internal combustion engines in our 102 model Hondas! Where are the hover cars I was promised when I was a kid?!

What? And put all the construction workers out of a job??

2007-12-21 Reply Admin

Its Oracle Reports. Its a valid error message when you are creating Matrix (crosstab..whatever you call them) reports and you drag a field out of the frame. It just tells you that its not going to be able to create the Matrix report like you want. Not a WTF other than maybe a funny way to say it.

Ahem. As a former Oracle Report Builder user, I beg to differ. This is dialog is a WTF for at least four reasons:

It's way too easy to make it occur. A matrix report in Oracle Report Builder is a confusing collection of virtually indistinguishable boxes onscreen. If you drag the wrong one, you get this error message. Worse, in some cases for the spacing to be right, the boxes have to be occupying the same pixels...you have to drag them around to manipulate the right one at all.
It should never exist. Undo functionality should be sufficient.
The default ("Yes") is wrong. You put a lot of effort into the matrix; destroying it is not cool.
No undo. I said above undo "should" be sufficient...well, they don't have undo for this operation, so it's not.

2007-12-21 Reply Admin

George Bush:
Pitabred:
TopCod3r:
Anttu:
I've seen that some Germans want to write year numbers in this format: 1998 -> 98 1999 -> 99 2000 -> 100 2001 -> 101
Does the last picture have something to do with this?

That is EXACTLY why I always offset my years starting from 1920 instead of 1900, that way you can still use a 2 digit number to store the year, and it lasts alot longer, until 2019 this way...

1998 -> 78 1999 -> 79 2000 -> 80 2001 -> 81

Its a much better solution. I think in a couple years, I will change my algorithm to base off of 1930 that way it gives you another 10 years without having to change it.

Why not store it as a full 4 digit year? Are you strapped for a few bytes or something? Do it right the first time, and you don't have to keep hacking around design issues.
There's this new thing called SARCASM. Ever heard of it?

Is that some new type of fuel made from cow dung?

2007-12-21 Reply Admin

Anttu:
I've seen that some Germans want to write year numbers in this format: 1998 -> 98 1999 -> 99 2000 -> 100 2001 -> 101

I'm a German living in Germany, and this news to me.

2007-12-21 Reply Admin

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandad drove a 102 TAVRVS. Does that count?

2007-12-21 Reply Admin

alcari:
Always press continue. You will be reborn a messiah to two races.

The races of the idiots and the morons, I presume.

LiquidFire · 2007-12-21 Reply Admin

betlit:
108? *cough*perl*cough*

No, no, this is JavaScript, and is probably IE's fault. (Badly written) Perl would say 20108.

2007-12-21 Reply Admin

Indeed. I'll wager 100 quatloos that this was a perl script.

I once got in trouble by pointing out a similar error to a new boss. I was doing a code review and I added it in with other more general comments (mostly of a "conform to company style" nature). I guess he was embarrassed or something that he was basically coding in Y2K errors only a few months before the new year.

He was supposed to be a hot-shot, multi-language supercoder. But he's just one more data point in my theory that more someone is hyped up like that, the greater the likelihood they will be a disappointment with a Napoleon complex.

He's a VP now, so I suppose that could be another data point. In some industries, folks rise to their level incompetency.

2007-12-21 Reply Admin

LiquidFire:
No, no, this is JavaScript, and is probably IE's fault. (Badly written) Perl would say 20108.

It doesn't have to be. Check this:

bill@foo:~/tmp$ perl -e 'print "Year = " . (localtime(time))[5];' Year = 107

If they were doing string concatenation, then they might wind up with 20108. But, yeah, it could be javascript as well.

2007-12-21 Reply Admin

It's JavaScript. From the page in question:

	if(max.toString().substring(0, 2) == "YR")
	{
		// Math.round() will explicitly convert the string value to an integer
		max = new Date().getYear() + Math.round(max.toString().substring(2, max.toString().length));
	}

2007-12-22 Reply Admin

I just spent about 20 seconds staring at the advert trying to figure out where its WTF was.

2007-12-22 Reply Admin

slamb:
Its Oracle Reports. Its a valid error message when you are creating Matrix (crosstab..whatever you call them) reports and you drag a field out of the frame. It just tells you that its not going to be able to create the Matrix report like you want. Not a WTF other than maybe a funny way to say it.

Ahem. As a former Oracle Report Builder user, I beg to differ. This is dialog is a WTF for at least four reasons:

It's way too easy to make it occur. A matrix report in Oracle Report Builder is a confusing collection of virtually indistinguishable boxes onscreen. If you drag the wrong one, you get this error message. Worse, in some cases for the spacing to be right, the boxes have to be occupying the same pixels...you have to drag them around to manipulate the right one at all.

It should never exist. Undo functionality should be sufficient.

The default ("Yes") is wrong. You put a lot of effort into the matrix; destroying it is not cool.

No undo. I said above undo "should" be sufficient...well, they don't have undo for this operation, so it's not.

That is why they give you a cancel button. I wont disagree that only being able to undo the last operation is completely ridiculous, but thats why its being phased out in favor of BI/XML Publisher. Oracle Reports itself is a WTF.

And yes I do agree matrix reports are impossible to actually use.

2007-12-23 Reply Admin

The Hover cars were doomed with the death of J Edgar Hover!

Just get back on your bike and start pedalling

2008-01-03 Reply Admin

The browser used was Firefox with a classic Netscape theme: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3471 -- it only looks like an old browser.

2008-01-05 Reply Admin

anon:

It's JavaScript. From the page in question:

	if(max.toString().substring(0, 2) == "YR")
	{
		// Math.round() will explicitly convert the string value to an integer
		max = new Date().getYear() + Math.round(max.toString().substring(2, max.toString().length));
	}

2008-01-05 Reply Admin

anon:

It's JavaScript. From the page in question:

	if(max.toString().substring(0, 2) == "YR")
	{
		// Math.round() will explicitly convert the string value to an integer
		max = new Date().getYear() + Math.round(max.toString().substring(2, max.toString().length));
	}

2008-01-14 Reply Admin

...the matrix is a prison 4 our minds...must be some kind of a parallel world in our world...like a dimension into another one...sometimes you can break the rules and do incredible things if youre mind passes a certain level of accepting this world we are living in...you can think whatever you want to thik...it's youre choise.

2008-01-21 Reply Admin

Nice way to steal from the Kevin Smiths Flying Car sketch

2008-03-22 Reply Admin

Then how would the person get out if they wanted out of the system?

2008-03-25 Reply Admin

anon:

It's JavaScript. From the page in question:

	if(max.toString().substring(0, 2) == "YR")
	{
		// Math.round() will explicitly convert the string value to an integer
		max = new Date().getYear() + Math.round(max.toString().substring(2, max.toString().length));
	}

2008-04-03 Reply Admin

anon:

It's JavaScript. From the page in question:

	if(max.toString().substring(0, 2) == "YR")
	{
		// Math.round() will explicitly convert the string value to an integer
		max = new Date().getYear() + Math.round(max.toString().substring(2, max.toString().length));
	}

2008-04-15 Reply Admin

Well, obviously 00 is 1900, 99 is 1999 and 108 is, well. 108.

2008-07-10 Reply Admin

Troy McClure:
slamb:
Its Oracle Reports. Its a valid error message when you are creating Matrix (crosstab..whatever you call them) reports and you drag a field out of the frame. It just tells you that its not going to be able to create the Matrix report like you want. Not a WTF other than maybe a funny way to say it.

Ahem. As a former Oracle Report Builder user, I beg to differ. This is dialog is a WTF for at least four reasons:

It's way too easy to make it occur. A matrix report in Oracle Report Builder is a confusing collection of virtually indistinguishable boxes onscreen. If you drag the wrong one, you get this error message. Worse, in some cases for the spacing to be right, the boxes have to be occupying the same pixels...you have to drag them around to manipulate the right one at all.

It should never exist. Undo functionality should be sufficient.

The default ("Yes") is wrong. You put a lot of effort into the matrix; destroying it is not cool.

No undo. I said above undo "should" be sufficient...well, they don't have undo for this operation, so it's not.

That is why they give you a cancel button. I wont disagree that only being able to undo the last operation is completely ridiculous, but thats why its being phased out in favor of BI/XML Publisher. Oracle Reports itself is a WTF.

And yes I do agree matrix reports are impossible to actually use.

I am an Independent Artist and geometry/maths have been my greatest inspiration and recently i made a picture entitled:
Mcclure's Matrix which was derived from ideas developed by Penrose & others...this and other images can be perused at: htt://picasaweb.google.com/peterhugomcclure/ImagesByPHM402

Best regards pete mcclure.

         A scrawny cat peers
         Rather too expectantly...
         Into dark waters

Have a nice day!

What Is The Matrix?

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