• (cs)

    Looks fine to me: [image]

  • (cs) in reply to Spoe
    Spoe:
    #1 reminds me of a radio story I heard on NPR a couple years back. It was a report on the high demand in the People's Republic of China for Rabbis to certify products kosher. Makes a certain amount of sense with all the food products coming from China these days.

    However, one of the Rabbis interviewed mentioned regularly getting requests to certify furniture, electronics, toys and so forth Kosher.

    Maybe we can train a few of these guys to detect lead.

  • Anonymous TAL Web Site Programmer (unregistered)

    This is obviously a client side error. His browser is not Kosher compatible.

  • (cs)
    T0pC0d3r:
    The real WTF is ASP. When we make websites, we make them in machine code. That way no nasty errors like that pop up for the user to see.

    TopC0d3r, I suspect you're being generous (as always) to your colleagues. I bet you personally handle the machine language portions of those sites, which you've lovingly crafted into a nine-tier architectural framework. That way, instead of having to worry about gibberish like MOVSB and PUSH, your colleagues (underlings?) get to use easily understood high-level classes with names like "SecureSessionOptimizationStorePlugIn" and "PersistanceMediumWidgetMarshaller<UrlSnippetManager>."

    Am I wrong?

  • (cs) in reply to Steve
    Steve:
    Yay! I'm the guy that wrote the code for the This American Life web site. Pickles is one of our custom classes that handles database connectivity, and other miscellaneous functions.

    Here's another This American Life easter egg... if you select all, you'll see hidden text on the bottom of the page that says Choppity chop chop cha-pow!

    Pickles pickles, whoopy doo!

    He's not lying. The "choppity chop chop cha-pow" is real!

  • Sven (unregistered)

    Man that ASP.NET site is full of WTF-y goodness. Besides the weirdness of the pickles, the first question is why they are apparently compiling a live site with custom errors off (which is why you see the ASP.NET detailed error page) and debugging on (which is why you see the source code).

    Furthermore, they are using a SqlConnection withou putting it in a Using block, and the warning about a variable declaration without an As class means they are compiling with Option Explicit Off, which tends to be a good way to turn compilation errors into runtime errors (and isn't even the default, so they set it explicitly).

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to dave
    dave:
    Could be worse - [image]

    Who still uses ie3?

  • (cs) in reply to Rick
    Rick:
    In 1999 I was working for a company that made thermal management products, in other words, heatsinks. Big finned blocks of aluminum. For each of the heatsink products they used GE made us fill out forms verifying that our big inert chunks of metal were ready for Y2K. They were very serious about it too, there were penalties for not filing the paperwork.

    How do you know that the aluminum in the blocks wasn't going to transmute into something else (like mercury) on January 1, 2000? Did you do any testing to make sure it wouldn't?

    GE was only trying to be safe!

  • (cs) in reply to Vincent Curry
    Vincent Curry:
    Cap This:
    The solution to the CAPTCHA should be obvious to any human. Simply count the number of boxes.

    But then again, maybe you should add up the length of all the lines.

    Or maybe it wants you to total the area of the boxes. Hint: there's a possible optimization here...

    The answer to all three is in fact the same...

    How can they be all the same? You can't compare number of boxes to length or area.

  • (cs) in reply to Sven
    Sven:
    Man that ASP.NET site is full of WTF-y goodness. Besides the weirdness of the pickles, the first question is why they are apparently compiling a live site with custom errors off (which is why you see the ASP.NET detailed error page) and debugging on (which is why you see the source code).

    Furthermore, they are using a SqlConnection withou putting it in a Using block, and the warning about a variable declaration without an As class means they are compiling with Option Explicit Off, which tends to be a good way to turn compilation errors into runtime errors (and isn't even the default, so they set it explicitly).

    You can flame the creator of that site directly. He's posted on this thread.

    Name was Russell (I mean Steve).

  • J (unregistered)

    Shouldn't it be the "Temple of D'oh"?

  • Deke (unregistered)

    The "Y2k Ready" stickers were clearly a tongue-in-cheek marketing gimmick, not a WTF.

  • bbb (unregistered) in reply to jamface
    jamface:
    Pickling is a way of serializing data in python... so maybe that's what the guy was doing.
    Yes, he was serializing data in python with visual basic.
  • (cs) in reply to cthulhu
    cthulhu:
    T0pC0d3r:
    The real WTF is ASP. When we make websites, we make them in machine code. That way no nasty errors like that pop up for the user to see.

    Hmm I find that very hard to believe.

    You could do it in theory by opening up a text editor (say notepad) and typing the machine codes to file before compiling them. But seriously why would anyone ever need (or want!) to do that?

    These days we have proper editors to drag and drop html into place, we don't need to use notepad, etc.

    You say you would get no nasty errors by using machine codes, but I guarantee you would get EVEN MORE nasty errors because it's harder to understand. Your comment is really a WTF in itself.

    Somewhere in the spirit realm, P.T. Barnum is chuckling to himself.

  • Jollymorphic (unregistered)

    Related to the Python serialization library, perhaps?

    http://www.python.org/doc/2.5.2/lib/module-pickle.html

  • Jollymorphic (unregistered) in reply to Jollymorphic

    Sorry. Didn't read before posting.

  • notme (unregistered) in reply to Synchronos
    Synchronos:
    **) Actually I really hate the epicene way to say he/she with the word 'they'.

    Then say "hu", possessive form "hus".

  • (cs) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    From what I know about Mensa (second hand), I believe you actually need a pencil with rubbers on both ends.

    Rubbers at both ends? Sorry, I don't swing that way.

  • (cs) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    cthulhu:
    T0pC0d3r:
    The real WTF is ASP. When we make websites, we make them in machine code. That way no nasty errors like that pop up for the user to see.

    Hmm I find that very hard to believe.

    You could do it in theory by opening up a text editor (say notepad) and typing the machine codes to file before compiling them. But seriously why would anyone ever need (or want!) to do that?

    These days we have proper editors to drag and drop html into place, we don't need to use notepad, etc.

    You say you would get no nasty errors by using machine codes, but I guarantee you would get EVEN MORE nasty errors because it's harder to understand. Your comment is really a WTF in itself.

    Somewhere in the spirit realm, P.T. Barnum is chuckling to himself.
    What, because "those who really desire to attain an independence, have only set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done?"

    Am I missing something here, or was P.T.Barnum an early advocate of machine code as opposed to ludicrous and unwieldy frameworks?

  • EXH (unregistered)

    The Google page works fine in Firefox + Safari + Opera. The real WTF is Stephen Shwarz and whatever retarded browser he's using.

  • convicted felon (unregistered) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    Code Dependent:
    cthulhu:
    T0pC0d3r:
    The real WTF is ASP. When we make websites, we make them in machine code. That way no nasty errors like that pop up for the user to see.

    Hmm I find that very hard to believe.

    You could do it in theory by opening up a text editor (say notepad) and typing the machine codes to file before compiling them. But seriously why would anyone ever need (or want!) to do that?

    These days we have proper editors to drag and drop html into place, we don't need to use notepad, etc.

    You say you would get no nasty errors by using machine codes, but I guarantee you would get EVEN MORE nasty errors because it's harder to understand. Your comment is really a WTF in itself.

    Somewhere in the spirit realm, P.T. Barnum is chuckling to himself.
    What, because "those who really desire to attain an independence, have only set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done?"

    Am I missing something here, or was P.T.Barnum an early advocate of machine code as opposed to ludicrous and unwieldy frameworks?

    "There's a sucker born every minute."

    The implication being that cthulhu got trolled.

  • (cs) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    Am I missing something here, or was P.T.Barnum an early advocate of machine code as opposed to ludicrous and unwieldy frameworks?
    He was an early advocate of playing people for suckers.
  • ChrisWF (unregistered)

    I rather code my websites using Good Ol' Assembler...

    (RLY? ASM to IL)

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to ChrisWF
    ChrisWF:
    I rather code my websites using Good Ol' Assembler...

    (RLY? ASM to IL)

    Well you could write server-side scripts in ASM (using the Common Gateway Interface), you would still need XHTML and CSS and possibly Javascript.

  • (cs)

    What gets me about pickles is that its not just some random throwaway "foo" local variable thats being declared. "Pickles" is the name of the class. Da fuck?

  • (cs)

    Why can't Tyler see the three whitespaces in the captcha image??? pfffft

  • (cs) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    Who still uses ie3?

    I do. I've got a couple of old computers still running Win98, and since Microsoft Update requires IE 5.5 or later, it's not possible to upgrade.

  • anonymous_coder() (unregistered) in reply to bbb
    bbb:
    jamface:
    Pickling is a way of serializing data in python... so maybe that's what the guy was doing.
    Yes, he was serializing data in python with visual basic.
    Although you could probably do that with VB.NET and IronPython, that involves so many screaming WTFs the mind boggles...
  • Glen Fingerholz (unregistered) in reply to Carnildo

    Windows 98 shipped with IE 4. Why not use it (or better yet, do some searching to find installers for IE 5 and 5.5, and then use Windows Upgrade to get the latest IE 6)?

    (I never imagined I would be telling someone to install IE 6)

  • 008 (unregistered)

    Dish Network, where we never have user visible software bugs. Eve

  • Anonymous Cow-Herd (unregistered) in reply to cthulhu
    cthulhu:
    You could do it in theory by opening up a text editor (say notepad) and typing the machine codes to file before compiling them. But seriously why would anyone ever need (or want!) to do that?

    Agreed. Why would anyone want to type teh codes when they can have it emailed to them instead?

  • Argghhhhh (unregistered) in reply to dave

    What is that, IE4?

    Captcha: haero - to be brought to a standstill. Seems appt.

  • cthulhu (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that people are actually defending TopCoder's argument.

  • (cs)

    Well, so this just leaves to ask... how do you scratch your head on several levels? Isn't that painful?

    pa-tching!

  • OhDear (unregistered)

    I witnessed the Canadian military Y2K testing a ship. They were putting stickers on every item in the inventory that was Y2K compliant. There were stickers on fire-extinguishers and tools like drills. Where they had trouble though was when manufacturers(one was a wall clock) told them to bugger-off when asked about their tool's Y2K status.

  • Virtually Brillant (unregistered)

    My favourite Y2K story is from the Rinkworks Computer Stupidites pages - it's about an Intranet page with the messages:

    29.12.99 (...some headline...) 29.12.99 (...some headline...) 30.12.99 (...some headline...) 02.01.100 Success! No Y2K bugs!

  • Mrrix32 (unregistered)
    Pickle
    Got a Mugglecast listener doing your code?
  • Semaj (unregistered)

    And I thought finding a "Y2K Ready" sticker on a telephone cable terminal was odd

    CAPTCHA: luptatum

  • Stefan T. (unregistered)

    The bike could have an onboard computer displaying the time and date.

  • Wyrdone (unregistered) in reply to dave

    Yeah but your using what IE 4 in that example. IE4 didn't know a modern CSS style if it walked up and sucker punched him.

  • George (unregistered)

    The web gurus for This American Life are particularly notorious, apparently, for silliness. Not much of a surprise considering the show and its very entertaining cast.

    Links to their show MP3s, for instance, look like this:

    http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/314.mp3

    Speaking of their show MP3s:

    http://www.dirtygreek.org/journal/journalId/2006

  • Obloodyhell (unregistered) in reply to Rick
    Rick:
    In 1999 I was working for a company that made thermal management products, in other words, heatsinks. Big finned blocks of aluminum. For each of the heatsink products they used GE made us fill out forms verifying that our big inert chunks of metal were ready for Y2K. They were very serious about it too, there were penalties for not filing the paperwork.

    Process run amok.

    One more reason not to work for any behemoth company.

  • (cs)

    (old thread, I know) ... something else rather WTF-y from This American Life is their keypress handling javascript:

    function checkCR(evt) { var evt = (evt) ? evt : ((event) ? event : null); var node = (evt.target) ? evt.target : (evt.srcElement) ? evt.srcElement : null); if ((evt.keyCode == 13) && (node.type=="text")) {return false;} } document.onkeypress = checkCR;

    whoa. I like ?: as much as (probably more than) your average coder, but that is mind-bending. Reminds me of the eleven-ary operator article from a while ago...

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