• mike5 (unregistered)

    param = ""; if(comment.count == Comments.FRIST) { param = "&1st&"; }

    if(param == "&1st&") { return Comments.FRIST; }

  • Leo (unregistered)

    All this deserves is a flat "what.", but I can't just put that in a comment because Akismet doesn't like it.

  • Warren (unregistered)

    This might seem over-engineered but how else could you implement an "error" case of white at one stage and purple at another....

  • (cs)

    Well, so much for trying to understand the "logic" behind the "color string"…

    Anyway, I, for one, would like to formally and wholeheartedly congratulate snoofle for his first article as a TDWTF writer.

  • Umm (unregistered)

    This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???

    OK maybe you meant nineteen-nineties but still...

  • Joe (unregistered)

    OMG snoofle???

    {bows respectfully}

    OK guys enough of that. Time to start ripping him apart.

  • (cs) in reply to Umm
    Umm:
    This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???
    Doesn't mean that the code was originally committed to SVN, just that someone has committed it since. (It could have been originally in CVS or RCS or even — $DEITY help us — SCCS; there are tools for migrating.)
  • eVil (unregistered)

    The thought of that code just made me turn #1AC898

  • QJo (unregistered)

    Call me Mister Slowcoach, but is it not the case that 65535 and FFFF return different colours? I'm also a little confused at the -2147483633 and &H80000005 and &H8000000F ...

  • Arnold Judas Rimmer (unregistered) in reply to eVil
    eVil:
    The thought of that code just made me turn #1AC898

    What, purple?

  • (cs) in reply to ZPedro
    ZPedro:
    Anyway, I, for one, would like to formally and wholeheartedly congratulate snoofle for his first article as a TDWTF writer.

    Considering that I spend more time searching the Side Bar for snoofle stories than reading the Feature Articles, I'd say the debut was long overdue.

  • Zach (unregistered)

    Did I miss something or is the color just in BGR format with leading zeroes? So "FF" is parsed as hex 0x000000FF and so is (1,0,0) in the 0..1 RGB color space. "FF00" is 0x0000FF00 and so is (0,1,0): green (or "lime"). Orange then seems to be high red, medium-high green, and high blue, which makes sense.

    Admittedly, there are still a few WTFs in there. The dark vs. light grey values seem to have been reversed. It also seems that "8000000F" is treated as light grey, although I'm guessing the value is in aBGR format and the "80" refers to transparency (which we're going to quietly call grey 'cause argh).

    Then again: if this is how the color management works, I can't wait to see the widget layout system.

  • Zach (unregistered) in reply to Zach

    (I meant to say that orange includes a medium blue component. Whoops.)

  • Ben Jammin (unregistered) in reply to Zach
    Zach:
    Did I miss something or is the color just in BGR format with leading zeroes? So "FF" is parsed as hex 0x000000FF and so is (1,0,0) in the 0..1 RGB color space. "FF00" is 0x0000FF00 and so is (0,1,0): green (or "lime"). Orange then seems to be high red, medium-high green, and high blue, which makes sense.

    Admittedly, there are still a few WTFs in there. The dark vs. light grey values seem to have been reversed. It also seems that "8000000F" is treated as light grey, although I'm guessing the value is in aBGR format and the "80" refers to transparency (which we're going to quietly call grey 'cause argh).

    Then again: if this is how the color management works, I can't wait to see the widget layout system.

    I believe what you missed is that the colors are serializable, and don't really need to be strings.

  • epv (unregistered) in reply to Zach

    I'll give you a hint. Those values aren't hex or ints.

  • eVil (unregistered) in reply to Arnold Judas Rimmer
    Arnold Judas Rimmer:
    eVil:
    The thought of that code just made me turn #1AC898

    What, purple?

    Under either RGB or BGR that doesn't look even slightly purple.

    Do you operate in RBG or BRG?

  • Ben Jammin (unregistered)

    I like that the thin client code is VB while the server is C#. I don't know the reason behind it. Maybe the company switched to C# and the thin client survived in VB, or maybe they use the different languages to really let the programmers know which side they are coding for. Either way, I still find it amusing.

  • Damien (unregistered) in reply to Umm
    Umm:
    This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???

    OK maybe you meant nineteen-nineties but still...

    I'm puzzled by what distinction you're trying to draw by introducing the nineteen- prefix. If someone says nineties to you, what year, decade or time period do you assume, if it's not the nineteen-nineties?

  • (cs) in reply to lscharen
    lscharen:
    ZPedro:
    Anyway, I, for one, would like to formally and wholeheartedly congratulate snoofle for his first article as a TDWTF writer.

    Considering that I spend more time searching the Side Bar for snoofle stories than reading the Feature Articles, I'd say the debut was long overdue.

    Aye. I am surprised that some of his more recent stories have not been posted as "The Best of the Side Bar".

  • (cs) in reply to Damien
    Damien:
    Umm:
    This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???

    OK maybe you meant nineteen-nineties but still...

    I'm puzzled by what distinction you're trying to draw by introducing the nineteen- prefix. If someone says nineties to you, what year, decade or time period do you assume, if it's not the nineteen-nineties?
    If it were the 1890s would one use a Difference Engine to see what was modified on that last commit?

  • (cs) in reply to Damien

    Well, how can people just assume that? I mean, why don't they just get off their lazy butts and say "1990s"? I mean, I don't know shinola about the stupid 1990's. Dumb stupid era

    What is wrong with people? How can they be so sloppy? I mean, why don't we just throw out the damn, stupid calendar If no one's going to use it? I mean geez, a bunch of ninies and feebs. Morons, morons, all of you, man!

    //How can I let that comment pass without a MST3K reference?

  • jonkenson (unregistered) in reply to Damien
    Damien:
    Umm:
    This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???

    OK maybe you meant nineteen-nineties but still...

    I'm puzzled by what distinction you're trying to draw by introducing the nineteen- prefix. If someone says nineties to you, what year, decade or time period do you assume, if it's not the nineteen-nineties?

    I'm interested in this answer as well

  • (cs) in reply to Anketam
    Anketam:
    lscharen:
    ZPedro:
    Anyway, I, for one, would like to formally and wholeheartedly congratulate snoofle for his first article as a TDWTF writer.

    Considering that I spend more time searching the Side Bar for snoofle stories than reading the Feature Articles, I'd say the debut was long overdue.

    Aye. I am surprised that some of his more recent stories have not been posted as "The Best of the Side Bar".
    ...coming soon ;)

  • (cs) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Anketam:
    lscharen:
    ZPedro:
    Anyway, I, for one, would like to formally and wholeheartedly congratulate snoofle for his first article as a TDWTF writer.
    Considering that I spend more time searching the Side Bar for snoofle stories than reading the Feature Articles, I'd say the debut was long overdue.
    Aye. I am surprised that some of his more recent stories have not been posted as "The Best of the Side Bar".
    ...coming soon ;)
    w00t!
  • Overly Attentive Gizzard (unregistered)

    "The fuck?" is all I could muster at this one.

    Maybe at some point it did translate to a proper color and that was factored out when a stupid intern tried to "fix" something he didn't understand?

  • (cs) in reply to Damien
    Damien:
    Umm:
    This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???

    OK maybe you meant nineteen-nineties but still...

    I'm puzzled by what distinction you're trying to draw by introducing the nineteen- prefix. If someone says nineties to you, what year, decade or time period do you assume, if it's not the nineteen-nineties?

    Groan. Here we go again... It's exactly that kind of thinking that created the Y2K mess. Please think of the poor slobs wasting time by trolling dailyWTF archives in 2099 and fully qualify your dates, people!

  • Maltz (unregistered) in reply to Overly Attentive Gizzard
    Overly Attentive Gizzard:
    "The fuck?" is all I could muster at this one.

    Maybe at some point it did translate to a proper color and that was factored out when a stupid intern tried to "fix" something he didn't understand?

    This.

    If this was written in the early 90's, the clients probably couldn't even display more than 256 colors, and maybe less depending on how new the hardware was at the time. It's hard to imagine the original program used 24bit values for color.

  • Maltz (unregistered) in reply to Arnold Judas Rimmer
    Arnold Judas Rimmer:
    eVil:
    The thought of that code just made me turn #1AC898

    What, purple?

    Leave Mr. Gloop alone. Even on a good day, he's #A2C8BF

  • (cs) in reply to Ben Jammin
    Ben Jammin:
    I like that the thin client code is VB while the server is C#. I don't know the reason behind it. Maybe the company switched to C# and the thin client survived in VB, or maybe they use the different languages to really let the programmers know which side they are coding for. Either way, I still find it amusing.
    Your answer is in the first paragraph.
  • pezpunk (unregistered) in reply to Damien

    i fail to see a viable case for the term "90s" referring to any decade other than the one spanning AD 90 to AD 99, at least by default. any other interpretation would be unnecessarily arbitrary and unintuitive. of course, prefacing all comments with a set of default assumptions, in xml format for human readability, would clear up these kinds of misunderstandings and allow greater flexibility in the long run.

  • ronpaii (unregistered)

    I don't see a WTF; I see evolution of the client code.

    Considering that Industrial devices without a file system in the 1990s, followed some strange standards. Looking back you may find that the codes directly set both color and some other attribute, like blink. There may even be another function that takes the color codes and sets this attribute. If the original developer discovered the color object and fixed the code on the devices; it would require all the deployed server code to be updated to eliminate the color codes.

  • Umm (unregistered) in reply to RichP
    RichP:
    Damien:
    Umm:
    This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???

    OK maybe you meant nineteen-nineties but still...

    I'm puzzled by what distinction you're trying to draw by introducing the nineteen- prefix. If someone says nineties to you, what year, decade or time period do you assume, if it's not the nineteen-nineties?

    Groan. Here we go again... It's exactly that kind of thinking that created the Y2K mess. Please think of the poor slobs wasting time by trolling dailyWTF archives in 2099 and fully qualify your dates, people!

    Exactly. Those of us who were not in diapers or nursery school in the nineteen-nineties learned through prolonged torture to be precise with dates. (Searching old musty code for Y2K errors is slightly less fun than self-applying a full body tattoo with a dull fountain pen. Also, it takes longer, is more error-prone, and causes greater pain when things go wrong.)

    And for those poor slobs in 2099, we probably ought to specify Earth calendar, unadjusted for relativistic effects, just to be sure.

  • guest (unregistered) in reply to Zach
    It also seems that "8000000F" is treated as light grey, although I'm guessing the value is in aBGR format and the "80" refers to transparency
    It could well be that the upper 0x80 is an indication that its a system-defined color (as opposed to an RGB one), and the 0x00000F the index (IIRC VisualBasic did it that way). If so its the value for COLOR_BTNFACE (which is a gray shade) as used with (for example) GetSysColor (in User32.DLL).

    In that case the translation makes sort of sense, as the values are not colors, and need to be converted.

  • HowItWorks (unregistered) in reply to Ben Jammin
    Ben Jammin:
    I like that the thin client code is VB while the server is C#.
    Being from "the early nineties" most likely VB3 or VB4, definitely before VB.Net.

    Is part of the WTF that they continue to use '"Industrial" handheld devices' for the client that are now* approximately 20 years** old?

    • 8 January, 2023 Gregorian calander, 1615 UTC, for those who want precise ** outer rim Milky Way, Solar System, Earth standard years
  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to HowItWorks
    HowItWorks:
    * 8 January, 2023 Gregorian calander, 1615 UTC, for those who want precise
    You did that on purpose, right?

    The One True Date Format for today is 2013-01-08.

  • Alfred (unregistered) in reply to Umm
    Umm:
    Those of us who were not in diapers or nursery school in the nineteen-nineties learned through prolonged torture to be precise with dates.
    Those of us who were in diapers in the eighteen-nineties have always kno...

    Nurse!

    Have you seen my cane?

  • Mark (unregistered)

    Case "65535" Return Color.Orange 'bright yellow

    "Ah, now I get it".

  • HowItWorks (unregistered) in reply to Dan
    Dan:
    HowItWorks:
    * 8 January, 2023 Gregorian calander, 1615 UTC, for those who want precise
    You did that on purpose, right?
    No, but it's more fun that I did.
    The One True Date Format for today is 2013-01-08.
    Additional trivia, it's known the Gregorian monk trying to calculate the birth of Jesus for his calander made an error of at least 5 years. Plus he started at year 1 rather than 0 because the concept of zero was not understood. Only emphasizing that dates and times systems are arbitrary human constructs.
  • (cs) in reply to Umm
    Umm:
    Exactly. Those of us who were not in diapers or nursery school in the nineteen-nineties learned through prolonged torture to be precise with dates.
    You are dumb. Anyone reading this 80 years or more from now would see the date stamps and automatically know that of course we're not discussing a WTF that occurred in the future, or predating the existence of digital computers. Dummy.
  • Jack (unregistered) in reply to HowItWorks
    HowItWorks:
    The Gregorian monk trying to calculate the birth of Jesus for his calander made an error of at least 5 years. Plus he started at year 1 rather than 0 because the concept of zero was not understood. Only emphasizing that dates and times systems are arbitrary human constructs.
    Yet more proof that we really need to convert over to counting Planck-times since the Big Bang, and none of this local-planetary-orbits-since-a-mythological-event nonsense.
  • lmm (unregistered) in reply to Jack
    Jack:
    HowItWorks:
    The Gregorian monk trying to calculate the birth of Jesus for his calander made an error of at least 5 years. Plus he started at year 1 rather than 0 because the concept of zero was not understood. Only emphasizing that dates and times systems are arbitrary human constructs.
    Yet more proof that we really need to convert over to counting Planck-times since the Big Bang, and none of this local-planetary-orbits-since-a-mythological-event nonsense.

    Seconds are well-defined (caesium-133 hyperfine transitions IIRC), so really one just needs to count the number of seconds since the beginning of time (1970-01-01 01:00:00 British Standard Time).

    Sadly POSIX gets this almost-but-not-quite correct; it screws up royally wrt leap seconds.

  • F (unregistered) in reply to HowItWorks
    HowItWorks:
    Dan:
    HowItWorks:
    * 8 January, 2023 Gregorian calander, 1615 UTC, for those who want precise
    You did that on purpose, right?
    No, but it's more fun that I did.
    The One True Date Format for today is 2013-01-08.
    Additional trivia, it's known the Gregorian monk trying to calculate the birth of Jesus for his calander made an error of at least 5 years. Plus he started at year 1 rather than 0 because the concept of zero was not understood. Only emphasizing that dates and times systems are arbitrary human constructs.

    No, he started at 1 because that was the accepted style of counting years. Dates were frequently cited as (e.g.) "... the first year of the reign of King Xyzzy ...". So the first year after the birth of Jesus would naturally be labelled year 1.

  • (cs) in reply to lmm
    lmm:
    [Seconds are well-defined (caesium-133 hyperfine transitions IIRC), so really one just needs to count the number of seconds since the beginning of time (1970-01-01 01:00:00 British Standard Time).

    Sadly POSIX gets this almost-but-not-quite correct; it screws up royally wrt leap seconds.

    I think you'll find that "BST" is abbreviationese for "British Summer Time". And the UNIX epoch is normally quoted as 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, even if that isn't necessarily the right time zone/standard.

    And the British don't use BST in the middle of January, even if it is sometimes hard to tell British summer and winter apart.

  • (cs) in reply to pezpunk
    pezpunk:
    i fail to see a viable case for the term "90s" referring to any decade other than the one spanning AD 90 to AD 99, at least by default. any other interpretation would be unnecessarily arbitrary and unintuitive. of course, prefacing all comments with a set of default assumptions, in xml format for human readability, would clear up these kinds of misunderstandings and allow greater flexibility in the long run.

    We're going to party like it's AD 99. But the developer of this WTF isn't invited.

  • (cs) in reply to Mark
    Mark:
    Case "65535" Return Color.Orange 'bright yellow

    "Ah, now I get it".

    TRWTF, as this detail illustrates, is that "Color" is actually "Flavor". Notice also the consistent use of "Lime" instead of green.

    (And from past experience with the Slush Puppy dispensers at Snappy Mart in Silver City, New Mexico, "Blue" should actually be "Coconut".)

  • urza9814 (unregistered) in reply to lmm

    ....in what frame of reference? As soon as you have motion, you lose any hope of a universal, non-arbitrary time standard.

  • urza9814 (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic
    Steve The Cynic:
    lmm:
    [Seconds are well-defined (caesium-133 hyperfine transitions IIRC), so really one just needs to count the number of seconds since the beginning of time (1970-01-01 01:00:00 British Standard Time).

    Sadly POSIX gets this almost-but-not-quite correct; it screws up royally wrt leap seconds.

    I think you'll find that "BST" is abbreviationese for "British Summer Time". And the UNIX epoch is normally quoted as 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, even if that isn't necessarily the right time zone/standard.

    And the British don't use BST in the middle of January, even if it is sometimes hard to tell British summer and winter apart.

    ....in what frame of reference? As soon as you have motion, you lose any hope of a universal, non-arbitrary time standard.

    [Sorry -- forgot to quote!]

  • urza9814 (unregistered) in reply to lmm
    lmm:
    Jack:
    HowItWorks:
    The Gregorian monk trying to calculate the birth of Jesus for his calander made an error of at least 5 years. Plus he started at year 1 rather than 0 because the concept of zero was not understood. Only emphasizing that dates and times systems are arbitrary human constructs.
    Yet more proof that we really need to convert over to counting Planck-times since the Big Bang, and none of this local-planetary-orbits-since-a-mythological-event nonsense.

    Seconds are well-defined (caesium-133 hyperfine transitions IIRC), so really one just needs to count the number of seconds since the beginning of time (1970-01-01 01:00:00 British Standard Time).

    Sadly POSIX gets this almost-but-not-quite correct; it screws up royally wrt leap seconds.

    Aaand I quoted the wrong one. You people add posts too fast! ;)

    Anyway, this is what the following comment was supposed to be referencing, heavy apologies for reposting again:

    ....in what frame of reference? As soon as you have motion, you lose any hope of a universal, non-arbitrary time standard.

  • (cs) in reply to lscharen
    lscharen:
    ZPedro:
    Anyway, I, for one, would like to formally and wholeheartedly congratulate snoofle for his first article as a TDWTF writer.

    Considering that I spend more time searching the Side Bar for snoofle stories than reading the Feature Articles, I'd say the debut was long overdue.

    This. (and why I wish I could just +1 your comment)

  • Tristram (unregistered) in reply to Damien
    Damien:
    Umm:
    This was written in the early nineties but the code is in SVN???

    OK maybe you meant nineteen-nineties but still...

    I'm puzzled by what distinction you're trying to draw by introducing the nineteen- prefix. If someone says nineties to you, what year, decade or time period do you assume, if it's not the nineteen-nineties?

    In ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

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