4 ms·

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thesaddestmoment.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thesaddes... One of the funniest thi

• codemac 12y ago
  JAMES: I announce my desire to go to lunch. BRYAN: I verify that I heard that you want to go to lunch. RICH: I also verify that I heard that you want to go to lunch. CHRIS: YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO TO LUNCH. JAMES: OH NO. LET ME TELL YOU AGAIN THAT I WANT TO GO TO LUNCH. CHRIS: YOU DO NOT WANT TO GO TO LUNCH. BRYAN: CHRIS IS FAULTY. CHRIS: CHRIS IS NOT FAULTY. RICH: I VERIFY THAT BRYAN SAYS THAT CHRIS IS FAULTY. BRYAN: I VERIFY MY VERIFICATION OF MY CLAIM THAT RICH CLAIMS THAT I KNOW CHRIS. JAMES: I AM SO HUNGRY. CHRIS: YOU ARE NOT HUNGRY. RICH: I DECLARE CHRIS TO BE FAULTY. CHRIS: I DECLARE RICH TO BE FAULTY. JAMES: I DECLARE JAMES TO BE SLIPPING INTO A DIABETIC COMA. RICH: I have already left for the cafeteria.
  • lectrick 12y ago
    This is amazing. And also begs the question, how is "authority" established so much easier "in real life" vs. digitally? Side channel information?
    • ddispaltro 12y ago
      Take the succession order of the commander and chief, there a strict successive order when shit happens. It's master election vs the generals problem. Personally, I find master election much easier to cognitively reason about.
    • mkramlich 12y ago
      use of force (cops, military) Chris: You do not want to go to lunch. Rich points gun at Chris. Chris: Let me rephrase that. I misspoke. I'm sorry.
• morgante 12y ago
  I'm definitely recommending that as requiring reading in all algorithms or distributed systems classes.
• riffraff 12y ago
  OT, but for the uninitiated who you enjoyed the above and didn't know him, the James Mickens USENIX column is absolutely hilarious and insightful. Other examples can be found towards the bottom of his MSR page[0] (search for "humor"). [0] http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/
  • dghf 12y ago
    http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thenightwatch.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mickens/thenightw... in particular is a thing of beauty. Indeed, the common discovery mode for an impossibly large buffer error is that your program seems to be working fine, and then it tries to display a string that should say “Hello world,” but instead it prints “#a[5]:3!” or another syntactically correct Perl script, and you’re like WHAT THE HOW THE, and then you realize that your prodigal memory accesses have been stomping around the heap like the Incredible Hulk when asked to write an essay entitled “Smashing Considered Harmful.”
    • tormeh 12y ago
      "Smashing considered harmful" - The Hulk About C++: "When it’s 3 A.M., and you’ve been debugging for 12 hours, and you encounter a virtual static friend protected volatile templated function pointer, you want to go into hibernation and awake as a werewolf and then find the people who wrote the C++ standard and bring ruin to the things that they love."
      • dghf 12y ago
        Also about C++: "One time I tried to create a list<map<int>>, and my syntax errors caused the dead to walk among the living."