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What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)

etherrotmutex.blogspot.com

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Re: What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)

#31
post #22
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mutex is a synchronization primitive implementing mutual exclusion. When created with a name, they can be used to synchronize processes across the whole OS. For instance, a named mutex is a good way to ensure the program can only be running in a single instance. Specifically, the program creates a named mutex on startup, and locks it forever. If failed to lock, it shows a message saying "another instance is already r…

what does ether-rot refer to?

In 2003, “ether” might have referred to “Ethernet”, wired networking.

Rot might have referred to decay or a rotation cipher, like ROT13. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROT13

I think here they are essentially random like “I hope no one else uses Correct Battery Horse Staple for their globally unique ID”.

https://xkcd.com/936/

Re: What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)

#32
post #7

Back when I was in high school and programming on the original IBM PCs I wrote a program that would graph "solids of rotation" (a function rotated around the X axis). Well I chose the obvious name based on the 8.3 filename limitations. One day someone looked over my shoulder and said "you named your program solid rot???" Oops.

Is/was "solid rot" slang for something somewhere?

In my head it was just part of solid and rotation which was exactly that the code did and all I ever thought of, but once the other person pointed it out it was like "oh, right".

Re: What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)

#33
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah we need to use a good mocking nickname for that company.

Yeah, something that really emphasizes how much of a boomer tech company they are. Something like that website all the boomers use: Facebook.

Faceboomer?

Re: What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)

#34
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, something that really emphasizes how much of a boomer tech company they are. Something like that website all the boomers use: Facebook.

Meta is to Facebook what Alphabet is to Google. I don't think we have to worry.

Agree. Though, in my outsider perception Alphabet == Google + a bunch of failed stuff + self driving cars.

Whereas Meta == Facebook + an absurd $$$$$ attempt to convince the public wearing headsets is revolutionary + forget about that whole destroying society thing.

At least the self driving cars might have positive net impact.

;-)

Re: What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)

#35
post #20
post #7

Back when I was in high school and programming on the original IBM PCs I wrote a program that would graph "solids of rotation" (a function rotated around the X axis). Well I chose the obvious name based on the 8.3 filename limitations. One day someone looked over my shoulder and said "you named your program solid rot???" Oops.

It gets worse. A very long time ago a was working for a startup that was doing real-time speech compression, for telephony applications, using a DSP, with the compression/decompression implemented in assembly language. The code had two processes, an analysis process and a synthesis process. My colleague named the entry point to the synthesis process synth_entry, and he named the entry point to the analysis process an…

I think programmers get used to the idea that some names for things are never meant to be spoken and don't ever say them in their head to see what they'd sound like.

Re: What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)

#37
5 people have posted about this very thing over the past 14 years and this will be searchable for decades going forward, either through Google or the way back machine, or possibly through a publicly funded way back machine like alternative.

Meanwhile the odds that your tweet or FB post will be searchable and archivable anywhere close to that is extremely low.

The open Internet is so much better. I hope we start moving back towards it.

Re: What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)

#38
post #20
post #7

Back when I was in high school and programming on the original IBM PCs I wrote a program that would graph "solids of rotation" (a function rotated around the X axis). Well I chose the obvious name based on the 8.3 filename limitations. One day someone looked over my shoulder and said "you named your program solid rot???" Oops.

It gets worse. A very long time ago a was working for a startup that was doing real-time speech compression, for telephony applications, using a DSP, with the compression/decompression implemented in assembly language. The code had two processes, an analysis process and a synthesis process. My colleague named the entry point to the synthesis process synth_entry, and he named the entry point to the analysis process an…

I wouldn’t be surprised if I have a few “anal”s lying around in veritable names I’ve written over the years.

We have a lot of “analysis” in our application and I bet I have shortened them a few times, and in my head I would have pronounced it as uh-naa-l not realizing what it also looked like.

Re: What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex (2017)

#39
post #33
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, something that really emphasizes how much of a boomer tech company they are. Something like that website all the boomers use: Facebook.

Faceboomer?

I've heard BoomerBook
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