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What is the Best Bug-as-a-Feature?
Bat Country wonders: "The workflow system, at the department I develop for, was hand-coded by my predecessor in a rather short amount of time, resulting in somewhat unreadable code with a number of interesting 'features.' When I took over maintenance of the code base, I started patching bugs and cleaning up the code in preparation for a new set of features. After I was done, I got a pile of complaints about features that had disappeared, which turned out to be caused by the bugs in the code. So, that leads me to ask: what is your favorite bug that you either can't live without or makes your life easier?"
In Second Life, if you zoom your camera up to a wall, you will normally just zoom in to see closer detail of the wall. But once up against the wall, swing the camera around to the side, and you can "back your way in" through the wall. Release and click again, and the camera is now "mounted" inside the house. Its so much fun to watch people inside their homes, especially when your avatar is prevented from entering the property. Some even pay for a little orb that still tells them that no one is detected within 30m. Its fun because the clicks still work, too, like right clicking on someone and IM'ing them.. to tell them that you liked their last outfit more than this one, or the couch looked better in the other corner.. really freaks them out. That is definitely a "bug" (or feature) I couldn't live without... not in SL at least.
Intelligent Life on Earth
As a programmer, I'm amused by both.
4 and 4.0 are equal by value but not in precision. 4 has one significant digit, while 4.0 has two. This is important because multiplying it by 1200 (which has two significant digits), yields two scientifically different answers. 4*1200 yields 5000 (5 x 10^3) while 4.0*1200 yields 4800 (4.8 x 10^3).
So, in the end, it depends, just like everything else.
IMarv
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
I think you're describing the Unix feature that you can replace an executable file while it is in use; the program that is using it will continue to see the deleted version of the file, and new programs will see the new version.
That's not a bug, it's a feature. It's the reason why you don't have to reboot Unix machines after a software update, as you do for Windows.
The Rockwell 6502 was a hard-wired processor; there was no "illegal instruction" check. So, any bit-patter you loaded as an instruction would try to do something. Sometimes, because of the internal open-collector busses, you'd get neat "something OR something" that wouldn't normally happen.
Here's the I'm Feeling Lucky hit on it: 6502 Opcodes.
Thing is, the results might vary from implementation to implementation. So they might not work usefully on the 6510, which was otherwise a 6502 with an I/O register at $0000-$0001.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3 176
One way to lessen the chance of mistakes when using "rm" is to always use "ls" in place of "rm" first, then when the list of files looks right, replace the "ls" with "rm".
I have a script "lrm" which does this: ls the files, ask for confirmation, and then delete (if confirmed).
Heh, thank you. As an engineer I was also going to make this point, I'm glad I'm not the only one who realizes that the number of 0s after a decimal carries with it some hefty implications in the manufacturing and engineering realm. Working for a bearing manufacturer I can tell you that the difference between a part with a diameter of 4.00cm and a part with a diameter of 4.00000cm is a few hundred dollars.
Collector's Edition
ug. You should always make a file named "-i" in important directories to prevent this. That way when you do something dumb, like "rm * .old" the "-i" gets seen as a command line switch to "rm" and you get asked for confirmation.
-Hal
I always enjoyed cars with "child-safe rear windows" which don't roll all the way down. In many cases, this is because the rear wheel well cuts into the door, reducing the space available for the window.