Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by ambiate on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @04:15PM
(#7098444)
I suppose this is an excellent example of testing prior to moving to production. I have 'ex nihilo ad absurdum' tattooed on my right forearm. It was more a reminder of the dark depression that spawns from philosophy and to distance myself from the subject. I would undo that decision if I had the choice.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by mikestew on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @04:51PM
(#7098749)
I'm afraid that's the conclusion I've come to with every idea for a tattoo I've had over the last 20 or so years. I can't come up with anything with which I care to be stuck for the rest of my life. "Yeah, that's not going to seem so clever in ten years, is it?" So my skin remains untouched by the inky goodness of my local tattoo artist.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by SiVal on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:19PM
(#7099369)
A tattoo is an oxymoron: a permanent fashion item.
My kids can't believe what we used to wear when I was their age. (It makes me laugh, too.) I look around at every garage sale and see $5 items that used to be considered quite elegant. I think of the hairstyles, room styles, humor styles, political causes, hobbies, relationships, and so much more that have flowed past like a river and disappeared around the bend.
Thank goodness, I'm not stuck today having to continue making any fashion statements I might have chosen years ago.
I tell my kids that I don't care if they get tattoos as long as they are the temporary kind. Maybe adults should switch to temporary tattoos, too. Treat them like any other form of fashion statement: make the statement you want when and where you want, then change when you want something else (and later you probably will want something else.)
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by scarecrowbob on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:10PM
(#7099304)
Not unrelated, but I have "Cheese is good" tattooed across my lower back... it's pretty ambiguous in meaning, but has served me well throughout my life... I only note this because of most of the things that I did as an undergraduate philosophy student, it's about the only thing I still find charming. You can't really test against an uncertain future.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by lostlogin on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @09:24PM
(#7100306)
This made me laugh, as my 3 year old daughter heard someone say Jesus, and assumed they said cheeses. She still think people are discussing cheeses every so often. Christmas was a very confusing time, as other food groups don't get birthdays.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by pavel_lishin on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @09:47PM
(#7100383)
I always preferred "ita erat quando hic adveni" as my latinese of choice. ("It was like that when I got here." If I could create a family crest, that would be my motto.)
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by javert on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:28PM
(#7099042)
Philosophy is just what we call the most fundamental systems of ideas that govern everything else. Naturally, it is the source for the gravest possible darkness. But it is also the source of the greatest possible light.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by tikhonj on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:31PM
(#7099064)
For some reason, people really like complaining about questions like this being closed.
I think this misses the mark for two reasons. One is simply that these sort of questions aren't really the point of SO, but I guess people disagree.
A bigger one is that closing is no big deal. People can still read the question and vote on answers! The only thing you can't do is add new answers. And given that there's already a perfectly good answer along with a bunch of other posts, more answers would just be adding to the noise.
Seems like a win-win to me, but others somehow construe this as the downfall of StackOverflow.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by DanBC on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:16PM
(#7099346)
The question doesn't appear to be closed, just protected.
Why is a Question asking about syntax of whitespace in bash not suitable for stack overflow?
There's a worse problem on English stack exchange where people will say that your question has been answered even though none of the words you used are in any of their suggestions. This not only hurts searchability of questions and answers, but fails to recognise that many people using the site have English as a second language.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by tikhonj on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:59PM
(#7099223)
With no or lax moderation, there's always the danger of becoming Reddit.
People come to StackOverflow because it has a good signal-to-noise ratio. Maintaining this ratio, and the reputation of the site as a resource rather than a discussion board is important.
I personally jump to StackOverflow results on Google pages because they almost always solve my problem exactly. If the results start being polluted by a bunch of less relevant discussions--which, being popular, are likely to rank well--I would probably stop using SO results as much.
On top of this, just leaving a question like this open hurts the question itself as well. There is no reason to want 100 different answers all pointing out the missing space in different words! That way lies madness and Quora--where many answers to popular "survey" questions only get read because of the follow feature and a Facebook-esque machine-learning-based feed.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by keammo1 on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:12PM
(#7099323)
This question, in fact seems, to have been flagged as getting posted on Reddit (or maybe getting significant traffic from them?). I'm seeing this above the answers:
"Welcome, Redditors! We're looking for answers that provide serious, practical solutions to the problem stated. If you'd prefer to post a joke or launch a tangential discussion, please do so on the corresponding Reddit thread."
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by drcube on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:01PM
(#7099240)
I'm not really one of those who criticizes SO that much. They can do what they want on their own website.
I'm just perplexed by the trend over all, especially with Wikipedia, for people to act like the internet is a library and shelf space is running out. Why would a site owner limit their user's contributions in any way except to conform to the law, and prevent trolling, spam, etc? Who knows how much value the next answer might have provided readers if they hadn't closed it down?
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by ppog on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:19PM
(#7099370)
It's not that anyone believes "shelf space is running out." It's signal to noise -- or, to be less judgmental, "findability." Sure, SO or Wikipedia have the storage capacity for people to post anything they wanted anywhere on the site, but that would make much more work for users to find the content they need -- they'd have to trawl through a much bigger mass of semi-relevant or irrelevant stuff.
This is not to say SO or Wikipedia has the balance right; but it's a sensible reason to "limit their users' contributions."
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by bhandziuk on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:21PM
(#7099383)
While space is not running out and SO could keep everything this is SO's advantage. They don't. they reject the chaff because it is clutter. you go to SO links because you know your odds are good that if a question is answered there one scroll wheel away is the real answer. Not 10 pages of forum away. Letting everything stay is like adding pages to forum posts. all noise.
which implies that about 99% of westerners walking around with Kanji tattoos either have gibberish font (hilarious, read up about it) or think they have some girls name but its actually "weeds / brush (vegetation) / wild grassland"
The concept that you'll look better with a foreign language phrase as part of your skin is weird / mildly amusing all by itself, but the really funny part is the execution is so often an epic fail. So you've got an illiterate foreign language on your skin, not just a foreign language.
Given the apparently extreme popularity of the above genre, ridiculous source code should fit right in.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by jordan0day on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @04:55PM
(#7098790)
I have a theory that foreign language tattoos (or code tattoos, for that matter) arise mainly from a desire to have something (seemingly) unique tattooed. That, and some signalling implying some hidden skill/knowledge that the tattooed person must have.
The uniqueness bit is somewhat ironic, considering it's the thing that a large part of your peer group is rushing to do, as well.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by VLM on Wednesday January 22, 2014 @07:26AM
(#7102167)
"considering it's the thing that a large part of your peer group is rushing to do, as well"
I'm just barely young enough that I'm considered somewhat rebellious for not having tattoos or piercings. From what I've seen of the general public, the peer pressure on younger people must be immense to get tattoos / pierced.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by user24 on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:53PM
(#7099194)
I remember when my brother proudly showed me his Chinese tattoo. He said "guess what it says". I looked at it for about 15 seconds and said "Tiger?" and he was like "how'd you know that?!".
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by DennisP on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:25PM
(#7099016)
Could be worse. I know someone who picked a tattoo out of the artist's book because it looked cool, and later discovered it was the logo of a Mexican prison gang.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by micampe on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:07PM
(#7099273)
You’ll see just as much english gibberish on chinese teens t-shirts. I haven’t seen any on tattoos, but they also seem to be significantly less common than in the US.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by daeken on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:05PM
(#7098865)
I'm an American hacker with a tattoo. For me, I wanted something that symbolized my life up until that point (and since, but I don't like to make assumptions about what I'll be doing in the future). So, I ended up with a very simple lambda on my left shoulder -- it was the best symbol to summarize what my life had been up until that point. Very few others ever see it, so it's really just for me; a nice reminder of my commitment to hackerdom.
Which begs the questions: which snippet is important/timeless enough to use and, of course, which language. As the OP found out the hard way one should use a Lang where whitespace doesn't matter.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by user24 on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:37PM
(#7099103)
I wanted to get <?=phpinfo();?> on my arm once. The thought of what it would output if run on a human still amuses me and if I had got it done, I don't think I'd be sick of it now, even though I've not coded in PHP for 2 or 3 years.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by deadfall on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @07:16PM
(#7099662)
The Augmented Reality tattoo is pretty cool and functional. I could see that catching on. I can imagine a screen floating with text massages instead of a animated character.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by kintamanimatt on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @04:03PM
(#7098351)
For once Betteridge's law of headlines doesn't apply because the answer is -- yes! At least it shouldn't be that difficult to laser off if he wants to redo it!
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by jonahx on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:29PM
(#7099052)
Well, at least it's not a total loss, since the SO mods take great joy in killing joy.
One wonders how they deal with the situation of their own joyfulness, because it too should obviously be killed, but in order to do that they'd have to unhold joyful and interesting questions, creating joy which itself necessitates killing, and so on. Fork bomb.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by kibibu on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:54PM
(#7099197)
Not only that, there are many great and informative questions/answers that are gone.
One of my favourites was "Most astonishing violation of the principle of least astonishment", and the answers were a catalogue of how-not-to-build-software. Examples of good behaviour are nice, but counter-examples are often just as informative. Alas, it was "not a good fit for a QA"
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by lucb1e on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:10PM
(#7099299)
> Welcome, Redditors! We're looking for answers that provide serious, practical solutions to the problem stated. If you'd prefer to post a joke or launch a tangential discussion, please do so on the corresponding Reddit thread.
Wrong, StackOverflow. I'm logged in with a years-old and couple thousand rep account so I kind of know the rules, and no HN is not Reddit thank you very much.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by m_myers on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:24PM
(#7099410)
The notice is playing the odds; it doesn't track referrers, and right now most of the traffic is actually coming from Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1vs4uu/have... to be precise). You might be surprised how many people with several thousand rep points forget the rules when they've been on Reddit recently.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by Someone on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:39PM
(#7099491)
Also: 1) an infinite loop will never use more than one CPU. Because of that, on almost any hardware less than 10 years old, normal users might barely notice an infinite loop that doesn't do I/O. A fork bomb, on the other hand, will try and create 2*N processes after N iterations, all of them competing on equal footing with your shell for CPU time and memory.
2) it is fairly easy to kill an infinite loop. Killing the explosion of processes that a fork bomb creates is a different thing. Between the time that you detect the process ID of a process to kill and the time you kill it, that process may have spawned a few new processes.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by JimmaDaRustla on Wednesday January 22, 2014 @09:19AM
(#7102604)
"Forever" being more symbolic - I've seen people use it and then define a variable "in love" or something of that corny nature.
Fork bomb, albeit could be somewhat symbolic of real life, just doesn't seem to have any clear meaning - so obscure that they even got the syntax wrong.
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by jonahx on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:27PM
(#7099034)
Could someone break down how that fork bomb works? In particular, why is the pipe and the background on one of the function calls needed to make it work?
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by ansible on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @05:41PM
(#7099126)
You could go the skin graft route, but that would be annoying.
IANAD, but if you tried to (gently) stretch the skin where you need the space (like with some tape and sticks) then over a period of months you'd grow some new skin in between. You don't want to stretch the skin too much too quickly, or you'll get stretch marks (like some pregnant mothers do).
Re:Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
by adamconroy on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @11:21PM
(#7100688)
It pays to check these things before making a big commitment. Reminds me of a girl I know who decided to change her first name by deed pole. She changed her name to Pheonix rather than Phoenix.
My kids can't believe what we used to wear when I was their age. (It makes me laugh, too.) I look around at every garage sale and see $5 items that used to be considered quite elegant. I think of the hairstyles, room styles, humor styles, political causes, hobbies, relationships, and so much more that have flowed past like a river and disappeared around the bend.
Thank goodness, I'm not stuck today having to continue making any fashion statements I might have chosen years ago.
I tell my kids that I don't care if they get tattoos as long as they are the temporary kind. Maybe adults should switch to temporary tattoos, too. Treat them like any other form of fashion statement: make the statement you want when and where you want, then change when you want something else (and later you probably will want something else.)
I think this misses the mark for two reasons. One is simply that these sort of questions aren't really the point of SO, but I guess people disagree.
A bigger one is that closing is no big deal. People can still read the question and vote on answers! The only thing you can't do is add new answers. And given that there's already a perfectly good answer along with a bunch of other posts, more answers would just be adding to the noise.
Seems like a win-win to me, but others somehow construe this as the downfall of StackOverflow.
Why is a Question asking about syntax of whitespace in bash not suitable for stack overflow?
There's a worse problem on English stack exchange where people will say that your question has been answered even though none of the words you used are in any of their suggestions. This not only hurts searchability of questions and answers, but fails to recognise that many people using the site have English as a second language.
People come to StackOverflow because it has a good signal-to-noise ratio. Maintaining this ratio, and the reputation of the site as a resource rather than a discussion board is important.
I personally jump to StackOverflow results on Google pages because they almost always solve my problem exactly. If the results start being polluted by a bunch of less relevant discussions--which, being popular, are likely to rank well--I would probably stop using SO results as much.
On top of this, just leaving a question like this open hurts the question itself as well. There is no reason to want 100 different answers all pointing out the missing space in different words! That way lies madness and Quora--where many answers to popular "survey" questions only get read because of the follow feature and a Facebook-esque machine-learning-based feed.
"Welcome, Redditors! We're looking for answers that provide serious, practical solutions to the problem stated. If you'd prefer to post a joke or launch a tangential discussion, please do so on the corresponding Reddit thread."
Why is that not a suitable question?
I'm just perplexed by the trend over all, especially with Wikipedia, for people to act like the internet is a library and shelf space is running out. Why would a site owner limit their user's contributions in any way except to conform to the law, and prevent trolling, spam, etc? Who knows how much value the next answer might have provided readers if they hadn't closed it down?
This is not to say SO or Wikipedia has the balance right; but it's a sensible reason to "limit their users' contributions."
http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/
which implies that about 99% of westerners walking around with Kanji tattoos either have gibberish font (hilarious, read up about it) or think they have some girls name but its actually "weeds / brush (vegetation) / wild grassland"
The concept that you'll look better with a foreign language phrase as part of your skin is weird / mildly amusing all by itself, but the really funny part is the execution is so often an epic fail. So you've got an illiterate foreign language on your skin, not just a foreign language.
Given the apparently extreme popularity of the above genre, ridiculous source code should fit right in.
The uniqueness bit is somewhat ironic, considering it's the thing that a large part of your peer group is rushing to do, as well.
I'm just barely young enough that I'm considered somewhat rebellious for not having tattoos or piercings. From what I've seen of the general public, the peer pressure on younger people must be immense to get tattoos / pierced.
Ha. I love it!
"No tattoos or piercings? What are you, one of those straight-edge weirdos?"
"No, I'm just like, you know, a normal person."
It said "tig" in a sort of Chinesey looking font.
Is there any cultural significance to it? Does anyone have any good hacker tattoo stories?
http://imageshar.es/52deec31f629007c14000e24
Which begs the questions: which snippet is important/timeless enough to use and, of course, which language. As the OP found out the hard way one should use a Lang where whitespace doesn't matter.
Ideas?
Here is my own one:
grep life /dev/urandom | strings
The search for life continues.
It's also a "useless use of cat"! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_(Unix)#Useless_use_of_cat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_%28Unix%29#Benefits_of_usi...
Go ahead and edit it then :)
This is why StackExchange sites will die.
Or perhaps they're just being subtle:
"This question was caused by a problem that can no longer be reproduced or a simple typographical error...."
One wonders how they deal with the situation of their own joyfulness, because it too should obviously be killed, but in order to do that they'd have to unhold joyful and interesting questions, creating joy which itself necessitates killing, and so on. Fork bomb.
One of my favourites was "Most astonishing violation of the principle of least astonishment", and the answers were a catalogue of how-not-to-build-software. Examples of good behaviour are nice, but counter-examples are often just as informative. Alas, it was "not a good fit for a QA"
Wrong, StackOverflow. I'm logged in with a years-old and couple thousand rep account so I kind of know the rules, and no HN is not Reddit thank you very much.
I figured it was going to be a forever loop or something...
A non-terminating loop will simply drag on forever, stealing cycles whenever it gets the chance.
2) it is fairly easy to kill an infinite loop. Killing the explosion of processes that a fork bomb creates is a different thing. Between the time that you detect the process ID of a process to kill and the time you kill it, that process may have spawned a few new processes.
More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb#Defusing
A curious analogy for being alive...
Fork bomb, albeit could be somewhat symbolic of real life, just doesn't seem to have any clear meaning - so obscure that they even got the syntax wrong.
Disclaimer: I'm pessimist.
IANAD, but if you tried to (gently) stretch the skin where you need the space (like with some tape and sticks) then over a period of months you'd grow some new skin in between. You don't want to stretch the skin too much too quickly, or you'll get stretch marks (like some pregnant mothers do).