Not necessarily sucky just...wha?

[fireheart]

I can sort of understand the stores playing Christmas carols after the Christmas Pageant we have down here (here's a clip), but this store was playing them BEFORE that.

[sms001]

Have you seen the one about the "come from" instruction? ....Someone has actually implemented the ComeFrom".

No I hadn't. Brief once over of wiki says python and ruby both allow it now too. Sounds like a REALLY good way to irk the person maintaining code after you though. Oddly enough, my first foray into teaching myself programming was on a PCJr.'s implementation of Basic, but I somehow managed to wrestle it into something approaching structured out of sheer OCDedness. Glad there wasn't a comefrom then.

[dalesys]

... the "come from" instruction?

Pairs well with the Go Near and If Maybe ... Sometimes control constructs.

[wolfie]

Really just wanted you to know someone got your joke,

Thanks. I guess you know that there are 10 kinds of people: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Have you seen the one about the "come from" instruction? I've seen it (years ago) posted on an office wall. As a bit of humour, someone came up with a (hypothetical) instruction that was even more borked than a goto. Of course, a while after that, when I read about constructors and destructors in C++, my first reaction was "Someone has actually implemented the ComeFrom".

[Jay 2K Winger]

We all know it's all one big commercial racket! *whispers* It's all run by a big Eastern Syndicate you know...

Slander and calumny.

It's a big Northern Syndicate. Godfather Christmas always gets his cut.

[Estil]

Aw, c'mon - you already know why! It's to get a jump start on the annual consumer feeding frenzy collectively known as 'the holidays'. It's the same reason Christmas trees were in the stores in September. Yes, sir, retail just can't get enough of that holiday sales push. I figure inside of 20 years that the Christmas season will start in May. "Hurry hurry! Only 218 shopping days until Christmas! Buy this buy this buy this buy this buy this! Grandma got run over by a reindeer...."

And people wonder why I'm burned out on Christmas by Dec 1st. Bah f*cking humbug!

We all know it's all one big commercial racket! *whispers* It's all run by a big Eastern Syndicate you know...

[sms001]

Steal them from February... OCTober no longer the eighth, ditto NOV and DEC.

lol. Learned this from the other end actually. Once I learned that 'oct' meant 'eight' I wondered why my birth month was the tenth and looked into it. Guess an ego went with the whole "god-emperor" thing.

But computers don't use base 7.

Quite aware, thanks. (About thirty years in the industry.) Although I've seen several white papers on ternary and associated systems.

Really just wanted you to know someone got your joke, and I had two other "number" months to choose from. The 27 result from November would have worked, I suppose, but wouldn't have the nuance of extending the holiday season even further.

[wolfie]

Now if we could only find a way to squeeze 34 days into September....

But computers don't use base 7. Base 10 (because it's used by humans), and various forms of base 2 (pure binary, base 16, and base 8 as a holdover from when Sperry used it) are what you'll find.

Interesting tidbit: Some VERY early versions of Windows NT filled unused memory with a reserved value (easy to see if it had been "hit" when it shouldn't have - it would have the wrong value). Since NT was a 32 bit operating system, they chose the number 3735928559 as the reserved value for each DWORD of memory. What's so special about it? It's also 0xdEAdbEEf (capitalization based on how hexadecimal is usually done on 7-segment displays).

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Last week I was in the superstore from hell, waiting in line at the pharmacy. The woman in front of me in line and I passed several minutes complaining about the Christmas music blaring from the overhead. Can't we get through one holiday at a time, please?

I heard the opposite complaint on the radio the other morning . . . a lady called into a local station complaining that they weren't playing Christmas music yet!!!

Too bad I didn't call in and tell them to suggest to her to pop in her favorite CD's and listen to them in private if she was that insistent. Not everyone wants to hear Christmas music in November, kthanxbye.

[Seshat]

Now if we could only find a way to squeeze 34 days into September....

Steal them from February. That's what Julius and Augustus (July and August) Ceasar did.

It's also why SEPTember is no longer the seventh month, OCTober no longer the eighth, ditto NOV and DEC.

[dalesys]

Now if we could only find a way to squeeze 34 days into September....

10-4 on that, good buddy.

[sms001]

31OCT is the same as 25DEC.

Now if we could only find a way to squeeze 34 days into September....

[fireheart]

Sorry, but I heard them in Woolworths yesterday!

My local Foodland (read: independent mom-and-pop-esque supermarket) has not started the carols yet. When they do though, they're actually fairly good about it.
What they'll do is they'll play the radio, then a Christmas carol. Then a few more songs on the radio, then a christmas carol.

Gradually by the time December rolls around, they are getting into full-on carol mode, but at the same time, they're not pissing off shoppers by playing carols on loop.

[wolfie]

The one local contemporary Christian Station I listen to does that every Halloween. And it stops exactly at midnight on the 31st.

Do they have a geek as a DJ? After all, to a programmer, 31OCT is the same as 25DEC.

[KatherineB]

Sorry, but I heard them in Woolworths yesterday!