The Weird and The Wonderful

The Weird and The Wonderful forum is a place to post Coding Horrors, Worst Practices, and the occasional flash of brilliance.

We all come across code that simply boggles the mind. Lazy kludges, embarrassing mistakes, horrid workarounds and developers just not quite getting it. And then somedays we come across - or write - the truly sublime.

Post your Best, your worst, and your most interesting. But please - no programming questions . This forum is purely for amusement and discussions on code snippets. All actual programming questions will be removed.

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Re: WebUSB...

Munchies_Matt9-Dec-16 12:51

Munchies_Matt

9-Dec-16 12:51

My god, all those IoTs dying, the shock, the horror!!!!!!

Re: WebUSB...

F-ES Sitecore11-Dec-16 23:53

F-ES Sitecore

11-Dec-16 23:53

Munchies_Matt wrote:
Has USB ever been dangerous?

$5 'Poison Tap' hacks locked computers - BBC News[^]

Re: WebUSB...

Munchies_Matt12-Dec-16 1:12

Munchies_Matt

12-Dec-16 1:12

Right, so its an RNDIS USB device that gives the PC a new route to its IP address, and sniffs for cookies.

Now tell me, how is 'WEB USB' going to make that any safer?

Re: WebUSB...

Richard Deeming12-Dec-16 1:24

Richard Deeming

12-Dec-16 1:24

I don't think either of us were saying that connecting USB to the net would make it any safer. We're just responding to your question:

Munchies_Matt wrote:
Has USB ever been dangerous?

by giving you examples of times when USB has been extremely dangerous. Smile | :)

"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer

Re: WebUSB...

Munchies_Matt12-Dec-16 2:20

Munchies_Matt

12-Dec-16 2:20

Richard Deeming wrote:
I don't think either of us were saying that connecting USB to the net would make it any safer

You didn't read the OP's link then?

Re: WebUSB...

Marc Clifton18-Dec-16 14:09

Marc Clifton

18-Dec-16 14:09

It sounds like they're talking about USB drivers for Linux. I haven't had to go to a website to download a USB driver for Windows in years. Many years.

But just try and get some USB device on Linux to work, yeah, 3 days and 15 drivers later, it still doesn't work.

Marc

V.A.P.O.R.ware - Visual Assisted Programming / Organizational Representation

Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny

Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802

Re: WebUSB...

Member 1234567822-Dec-16 13:15

Member 12345678

22-Dec-16 13:15

How is different from installing driver?
now we do same thing, driver be downloaded
someone still have to make driver even with this webusb? can make harmful driver and steal data so not safer?

Well, I FINALLY have been able to login to a website for school...

Brisingr Aerowing6-Dec-16 4:41

Brisingr Aerowing

6-Dec-16 4:41

Said website is for Psychology 120, as I need to participate in research studies for credits.

I (along with numerous other students) couldn't log in, as we would get an invalid credentials error, no matter what (and yes they were valid).

Yesterday I found out that the issue was a very messed up validation function that failed for seemingly random valid inputs and succeeded for seemingly random invalid inputs.

The function was only supposed to be one line, sent to the person in an email (copy and paste), calling a REST service to match the user ID against the database. The person writing it somehow managed to mess that up and break the site.

The function was apparently about 300 lines when the idjit was done.

Messing something simple like that up requires a special kind of stupid. How do you mess up a F****** ONE LINE FUNCTION, WHEN THE ACTUAL CODE WAS GIVEN TO YOU?!?

What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?

The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.

Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???

Re: Well, I FINALLY have been able to login to a website for school...

Tim Carmichael6-Dec-16 4:55

Tim Carmichael

6-Dec-16 4:55

He refactored it... it didn't meet his design specifications.

Re: Well, I FINALLY have been able to login to a website for school...

nanik8816-Dec-16 20:41

nanik88

16-Dec-16 20:41

yes yes yes thats good

Re: Well, I FINALLY have been able to login to a website for school...

Nelek9-Dec-16 1:18

Nelek

9-Dec-16 1:18

Brisingr Aerowing wrote:
that failed for seemingly random valid inputs and succeeded for seemingly random invalid inputs.

mandatory xkcd[^]

Brisingr Aerowing wrote:
Messing something simple like that up requires a special kind of stupid. How do you mess up a F****** ONE LINE FUNCTION, WHEN THE ACTUAL CODE WAS GIVEN TO YOU?!?

Gimme codez plzzz, its urgntzzz

On a crazy but serious note:
Scenario one: the mouse can be a bitch and deselect part of the text you have to copy, then if you delete the message and you empty the trash-bin before you paste the copied code... you might end in a situation where you have to finish the code you were given, having no idea of how to do it.

Scenario 2: You copy while you have a remote desktop open, and someone else have filled the clipboard with other kind of code. Then you paste the wrong content due to the remote desktop bug, you don't checked at all what you are pasting and you deploy something compilable that makes no f***ing sense in that place.

And no... it didn't happen to me (but a colleague in other land). I have only suffered the consequences of both scenarios and had to repair one of them D'Oh! | :doh:

M.D.V.

If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.

Re: Well, I FINALLY have been able to login to a website for school...

Nathan Minier9-Dec-16 1:55

Nathan Minier

9-Dec-16 1:55

Brisingr Aerowing wrote:
Messing something simple like that up requires a special kind of stupid. How do you mess up a F****** ONE LINE FUNCTION, WHEN THE ACTUAL CODE WAS GIVEN TO YOU?!?

I think that the code which tested your login credentials against every bank site was a friendly security feature, not a bug.

I'm not sure how else I would personally squeeze 300 lines of of a login check.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli

Not cool, not cool at all

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter5-Dec-16 7:18

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter

5-Dec-16 7:18

Was hunting a bug in a PHP plugin, and found this:

PHP

do_something($object-id);

PHP told nothing...do_something got the value 1...I spend 20 minutes on that...

Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.

Re: Not cool, not cool at all

Nathan Minier7-Dec-16 1:55

Nathan Minier

7-Dec-16 1:55

It's missing the critical piece:

PHP

//TODO: Do something with $object
do_something($object-id);

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Benjamin Disraeli

What else would you expect?

kmoorevs14-Nov-16 7:17

kmoorevs

14-Nov-16 7:17

strNumber = "0"
strResult = FormatNumber(strNumber, 0, TriState.True, TriState.False, TriState.False)

returns "0" as I expected, however

strResult = FormatNumber(strNumber, 0, TriState.False, TriState.False, TriState.False)

did not... D'Oh! | :doh:

What was I ~~not~~ thinking? Laugh | :laugh:

"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

Re: What else would you expect?

Eddy Vluggen14-Nov-16 7:26

Eddy Vluggen

14-Nov-16 7:26

kmoorevs wrote:
What was I ~~not~~ thinking?

You weren't thinking that '0' without the trailing 0 would be ''. It is only so for fractionals, according to the docs, so how is '0' a fractional number?

And what is TryState.UseDefault? Is it the default of the bool-type, or a default that is specific to that function? Which is it, true or false? WTF | :WTF:

FormatNumber Function (Visual Basic)[^]

Bastard Programmer from Hell Suspicious | :suss:

If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]

Re: What else would you expect?

kmoorevs14-Nov-16 7:42

kmoorevs

14-Nov-16 7:42

Eddy Vluggen wrote:

And what is TryState.UseDefault?

Definitely not something I would try or trust for this function! (at least where I was using it) Supposedly, it's based on the computer's regional settings, but I couldn't nail it down to exactly where.

"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse

What goes around, comes around...

Duncan Edwards Jones9-Nov-16 1:34

Duncan Edwards Jones

9-Nov-16 1:34

for (Int16 i = 1; i <= 2; i++)

I suppose this is the DRY principle taken to its logical conclusion

Re: What goes around, comes around...

Sander Rossel9-Nov-16 2:07

Sander Rossel

9-Nov-16 2:07

My first thought was "that will execute three times" and then I noticed it starts at 1 D'Oh! | :doh:

VS2015 would also give the advice to "simplify" Int16 to short (as Int16 is waaaay to esoteric for us simpletons) Big Grin | :-D

Read my (free) ebook Object-Oriented Programming in C# Succinctly.
Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need.
Or read my articles here on CodeProject.

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
— Edsger W. Dijkstra

Regards,
Sander

Re: What goes around, comes around...

Midi_Mick9-Nov-16 2:24

Midi_Mick

9-Nov-16 2:24

I could just imagine the next few lines being

if (i == 1) {
}
else {
}

(Maybe too much time looking in QA)

Cheers,

Mick
------------------------------------------------
It doesn't matter how often or hard you fall on your arse, eventually you'll roll over and land on your feet.

Re: What goes around, comes around...

Duncan Edwards Jones9-Nov-16 4:48

Duncan Edwards Jones

9-Nov-16 4:48

Fortunately not - though it does have an inner loop that is a foreach and I think it could be refactored away. Got to put some tight unit tests down around it first as there is little or no intent in evidence from code or comment.