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Have I tattooed a syntax error on my arm?
- kintamanimatt 13y agoFor 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!
- VLM 13y agoExcellent, the source code equivalent of http://hanzismatter.blogspot.com/ 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.
- kintamanimatt 13y agoI've heard of some tattoo artists that grab a copy of the barcode for Tampax or Corn Flakes when they're asked to do a barcode tattoo.
- jordan0day 13y agoI 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.
- VLM 13y ago"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.
- jordan0day 13y ago> I'm just barely young enough that I'm considered somewhat rebellious for not having tattoos or piercings. 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."
- VLM 13y agoOr, I'm a cop, or, I'm so poor I can't afford the tattoos they have.
- DennisP 13y agoCould 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.
- user24 13y agoI 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?!". It said "tig" in a sort of Chinesey looking font.
- micampe 13y agoYou’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.
- JimmaDaRustla 13y agoSyntax error or not, tattoo still seemingly dumb. I figured it was going to be a forever loop or something...
- pavel_lishin 13y agoWhy is a non-terminating loop better than a fork bomb?
- tinco 13y agoA fork bomb will quickly take up your systems resources and invariably will force you to turn off your computer. A non-terminating loop will simply drag on forever, stealing cycles whenever it gets the chance.
- Dylan16807 13y agoDragging on doing nothing is what I would call 'dumb'. Fork bombs actually do something, and pose interesting challenges.
- Someone 13y agoAlso: 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. More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb#Defusing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb#Defusing
- cdcarter 13y ago> A fork bomb will quickly take up your systems resources and invariably will force you to turn off your computer. A curious analogy for being alive...
- ambiate 13y agoI 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.
- pavel_lishin 13y agoWhat does 'ex nihilo ad absurdum' mean? I only know what little goofy Latin I've picked up online, and my guess is "absurdity out of nothing".
- ambiate 13y agoOut of nothing to the absurd. (Take that with a grain of salt, we're on the same level.)
- pavel_lishin 13y agoI 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.)
- mikestew 13y agoI'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.
- piyush_soni 13y agoGo for Henna tattoos ... They are temporary .. like a few days/weeks. :)
- javert 13y ago
- GuiA 13y agoI've noticed that quite a few American hackers have tattoos - at least way more than the hackers from where I come from (France). Is there any cultural significance to it? Does anyone have any good hacker tattoo stories?
- iwasphone 13y agoThere's no cultural significance, it's just (hetero) male bonding.
- mhurron 13y agoTattoos have simply become more acceptable in some circles where they previously were not.
- jordan0day 13y agoI think it probably has more to do with just how prevalent tattoos seem to have become in America in general.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ctide 13y agoI have my username tattooed in binary on my arm: http://imageshar.es/52deec31f629007c14000e24 http://imageshar.es/52deec31f629007c14000e24
- PhearTheCeal 13y agoThat's actually a pretty aesthetic pattern of 1's.
- famousactress 13y agoBut is it unicode!?
- daeken 13y agoI'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.
- yread 13y agoHow is this question not blocked yet?
- kintamanimatt 13y agoBecause there's a definitive answer and it's reasonably free from opinion.
- Jun8 13y agoI thought this guy went too far, but no, it seems there are a lot of examples of code tattoos:http://readwrite.com/2012/01/03/32_more_of_the_best_and_worst_tech_tattoos#awesm=~otCsrUoTC8IRhY http://readwrite.com/2012/01/03/32_more_of_the_best_and_wors... 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?
- callesgg 13y agoi liked the cat /dev/random | sort Boringly it does not work as /dev/random never closes Here is my own one: grep life /dev/urandom | strings The search for life continues.
- glhaynes 13y agoi liked the cat /dev/random | sort Boringly it does not work as /dev/random never closes It's also a "useless use of cat"! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_(Unix)#Useless_use_of_cat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_(Unix)#Useless_use_of_cat
- lucb1e 13y agoGlad you linked that page, please scroll down a bit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_%28Unix%29#Benefits_of_using_cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_%28Unix%29#Benefits_of_usi...
- Dylan16807 13y agoThat section is nonsense. It says that < at the start of the line is less left-to-right than 'cat' at the start of the line.
- lucb1e 13y ago> That section is nonsense. Go ahead and edit it then :)
- staunch 13y agoYou broke the #1 rule of tattoos: only get one in a language you're proficient in :-)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- callesgg 13y agoha Great story. It bugs the crap out of me is when bash stuff wont work in more "modern" shells.
- kibibu 13y agoThis is the opposite, it works in zsh but not bash.
- Crito 13y agoI wonder if a skilled plastic surgeon could re-arrange his skin to add space between those characters and remove it on either side of the tattoo.
- ansible 13y agoYou 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).
- lucb1e 13y agoI think some bleach would work miracles for adding white space.
- Theodores 13y agoOr he could squeeze in a square of white ink.
- aspensmonster 13y ago> put on hold as off-topic by FreshPrinceOfSO, Christian Payne, billinkc, ajma, Maxime Rouiller 23 mins ago 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...."
- jonahx 13y agoWell, 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.
- kibibu 13y agoNot 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"
- jonahx 13y agoCould 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?
- m_myers 13y agoIt recursively calls both itself and another copy of itself. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/991142/how-does-this-bash-fork-bomb-work http://stackoverflow.com/questions/991142/how-does-this-bash...
- tikhonj 13y agoFor 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.
- drcube 13y agoLeaving it open is no big deal either. Or would that be the downfall of SO?
- castis 13y agoThere are valid reasons that the question was closed. Those reasons are known and expected to be enforced.
- drcube 13y agoI'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?
- ppog 13y agoIt'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."
- a3n 13y agoHow come he didn't tattoo the failing unit test first?
- ozh 13y agoAt least the tattoo inker should have run some CLI tests first... duh. Can't trust those people.
- lucb1e 13y ago> 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.
- m_myers 13y agoThe 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_i_tattooed_a_syntax_error_on_my_arm/ 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.
- Pitarou 13y agoAt least none of the letters were upside down. You should see some the absolute travesties of Chinese character tattoos.
- adamconroy 13y agoIt 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.