The Whiteboard

Robert Harvey

5:02 PM

Don't recall kicking people over a feminist argument.

Also, ridiculous meta question is ridiculous.

user55340

@RobertHarvey its more 'the lounge... again' and mods preferring to hang out with ~~sane~~ people who don't need rules.

user55340

Hmm... need to edit that...

user55340

There... that's better.

user55340

Hmm... though I had enough clear sky to go hunt some photos... pulled up the cloud cover map and realized otherwise.

user55340

user55340

5:06 PM

Little island of sun.

Ampt

5:24 PM

what is this software

are you planning your shots?

Robert Harvey

Interesting. Websites are now apparently trying to train people to not ignore their popups by putting the article in the popup instead of the main page, so you now have to think about whether or not to close the popup.

Jimmy Hoffa

14

Q: How do I drug a population in the most efficient way?

I want a whole city to be on drugs secretly, so they don´t know they are drugged by their government. The city is about 2 billion people and roughly structured like a Makropole from the Warhammer 40k universe. This means: Many levels 4 classes (Lower, higher, worker, and government class) L...

city-design

...just the first Q that was right at the top when I went to stackexchange.com...can't be ignored

Robert Harvey

Make them all moderators on Stack Overflow for a day.

Matt S.

@RobertHarvey The solution is to close out of those websites.

Robert Harvey

Several times now, I've opened an article from a link I stumbled across (out of curiosity; I know I really shouldn't, but "Man hides $1200 worth of meat in his pants" is too good to resist), close the immediate popup, and then go "Where the hell am I?"

Ampt

5:34 PM

you are the reason that clickbait exists Robert Harvey. I want you to write "I will not click on clickbait" 500 times on the chalkboard a la Simpsons.

2

Robert Harvey

Man hides $1200 worth of meat in his pants

user41796

"One Weird trick to permanently p0wn your system!"

user55340

@RobertHarvey No where near as fun as the $30M theft of maple syrup from the maple syrup reserve of Canada a few years ago... Why Does Canada Have a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve?

user41796

@MichaelT Let's not get them riled up shall we? We like them being apologetic and all. Don't jack with the syrup is all they ask in return.

Matt S.

@MichaelT Why wouldn't they have a maple syrup reserve. Isn't that their currency?

Ampt

5:37 PM

And don't you dare talk smack about hockey, eh?

user55340

user41796

@Ampt Unless it's the other town's team.

Robert Harvey

for (i=1; i<500; i++)
{
    printf("I will not click on clickbait\n");
}

user15026

@MichaelT Syrup is serious business

user15026

@Ampt If you wanna talk smack about Ottawa/Montreal/Guelph/London's teams I would be okay with that :P

user55340

5:40 PM

@RobertHarvey should be fprintf(chalkboard,"I will not click on clickbait\n"); -- gotta make sure you're printing to the right file handle... and you can assert it more easily without worrying about duping stdout and mocking Glen.

user41796

@MichaelT Yeah, let's get rid of the real me and just leave a mock in my place instead.

user41796

I'll head North and hang out in a Tim Horton's.

Ampt

@GlenH7 I've been mocking you this whole time.

Was that not the point of this room?

user41796

@Ampt Yep - good booze & horror stories rolled into one.

user55340

@AshleyNunn You know this person is going to be killed in their sleep.

user15026

5:43 PM

@MichaelT oh my goodness that is so rude :P

Ampt

I love how they keep looking up like "WTF man. Seriously?"

user55340

@Ampt and then the look back down, "maybe there is something here..."

Ampt

They sniff it to make sure they aren't missing it

hahahaha

Matt S.

@MichaelT I do the same with opening the fridge door.

user55340

@GlenH7 Pick up some whiskey / beer cupcakes while you are there...

Matt S.

5:46 PM

beer cupcakes?

user41796

@MichaelT I'd probably be able to couch-surf quite easily that way

user55340

@AshleyNunn here's another one for you to wonder at: imgur.com/gallery/ZhL9r15

user41796

@MichaelT that seems cruel

user55340

@GlenH7 I know, but showing mods pictures doesn't hurt them... it just makes them want to have cats... oh... you mean the cats. Yea.

Jimmy Hoffa

6:04 PM

@MattS. no, gee, that would be ridiculous, people can't carry around maple syrup in their wallets! It's just the backing for their currency. Totally different thing.

user55340

@GlenH7 got mine in first.

user55340

This question appears to be off-topic because it is seeking legal advice and subject to interpretation of EULAs. — MichaelT 29 secs ago

user55340

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about legal matters. — GlenH7 31 secs ago

user41796

@MichaelT Go check the edit I did to Telastyn's answer on design patterns.

user55340

@GlenH7 saw it... not enough emphasis.

user41796

6:08 PM

Yeah, still not enough, I realize. Not sure what markdown would support to make it even more obvious. Do we have a blink tag available?

user55340

@GlenH7 <blink>Dear God NO!.</blink>

Ampt

TOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMCCCCCCCCCAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTT

user55340

@Ampt You need to force it go where you want it some times...

user55340

animated cat gifs are funny. Look at the history

user41796

@Ampt Has the new Captain Kirk found his Kahn?

Ampt

6:13 PM

I'm trying to beat it into submission but keep hitting myself in the face.

user55340

See, even did clustering there for a bit.

Ampt

it refuses to find my log4j jar

user55340

@Ampt of course, its a cat... not a dog.

Ampt

Duh. I just had to turn my cat off and back on

user55340

@Ampt There's a purr switch on the belly. Easy to do.

Matt S.

6:18 PM

Robert Harvey

Ack. Stylecop has a #region prohibition. stylecop.com/docs/SA1124.html

user55340

@MattS. don't sit down too hard.

Robert Harvey

That goes on your chair?!

user55340

@RobertHarvey [SuppressMessage("StyleCop.CSharp.ReadabilityRules", "SA1124:DoNotUseRegions", Justification = "Reviewed.")]// just a bit more boiler plate code comments

Matt S.

@JimmyHoffa Oh wait. You're saying they're like how we use paper as currency for gold.

Gotcha.

enderland

6:29 PM

must have gone over your head?

user41796

→ 9 messages moved to ProgsTrash

user41796

Relocate what?

user55340

@GlenH7 Probably for the better....

user41796

@MichaelT Worst case would be that it inspired Robert to go study Haskell instead of chatting and then half of SO would be gone.

user55340

@GlenH7 Probably for the better....

user55340

6:31 PM

Though I will point out, the message is still stared here.

user41796

@MichaelT Dunno what you're talking about.

user55340

Hmm... did you try canceling stars too? (got an error on that one... and then reloading the page had it disappear... I blame caching)

user41796

There is no try, only do.

user55340

From the closed nearly roomba questions on SO...

user55340

1

Q: Ultimate Jedi challenge - Multiarmed Bandit / Reinforcement Learing/ Advanced AI with a lighsaber twist

This question was orignaly posted on cstheory but I believe the community of stackoverflow can also help. Any inspiration is warmly welcome. To the point. Imagine a following scenario (Long time ago...): You are a Jedi Master whose solemn purpose in life is to prepare your aprentice, let's cal...

algorithm reference artificial-intelligence genetic-algorithm reinforcement-learning

user41796

6:41 PM

@MichaelT WooHoo I've finally done my part to help make SO a better place.

user55340

> As this question is application-specific I will provide an extensive amount of properties, they are listed in decreasing importance/ease of extraction:

There are 5-20 ablities you want Luke to practice
You have a special algorithm that makes the practice session unique withing an ability
Each seassion have a binnary peformance scale - Luke lives (0) or Luke dies (1) (during practice Luke will only get snapped by R2D2)
If Luke fails a session he can play a special hologram explaining how he should have completed this specific practice session. You can assume that if he watches this hologr…

user55340

o_O

user55340

@GlenH7 You can always grab this query and go down vote things...

user55340

1

Q: AJAX MySQL Query Load

i new in ajax , there have anything simple that will allow me to load 10 rows from a MySQL table and then load 10 more, etc . can anyone show some example

ajax

user41796

burn please: programmers.stackexchange.com/a/257893/53019

user55340

6:45 PM

@GlenH7 burning.

Ampt

7:38 PM

This answer's on fiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrre

enderland

I like that song, kind of

Ampt

clearly you've never heard me sing

then you'd really hate it

enderland

i hope I've never heard you sing

user55340

Hot questions has some interesting juxtapositions in it currently...

user55340

enderland

7:46 PM

lol

Jimmy Hoffa

@WayneWerner

13

A: Should test data be checked into version control?

Your version control system should contain everything it needs to build, compile, test, and package an application for distribution (e.g. MSI, RPM). I would also argue build configurations and other scripts should also be in version control. I should be able to check out a project and have a com...

whatsisname

8:17 PM

large test suites are an undoing of git/hg style version control systems

in my opinion

having multiple gigs of data in SVN is no big deal, but in DVCS that gets to be super obnoxious

maybe some day some enterprising individual will figure out a way to make subtree clones/merges happen

Jimmy Hoffa

8:33 PM

@whatsisname git and hg do not support sub-tree retrieval??

that is flat out braindead.

cloning doesn't matter - it's a noop just creating a pointer where changes are a delta over the pointer so that part is totally irrelevant

but if you can't retrieve to local a subtree of your repo, then I don't understand how people in git/hg aren't just trying to carve their ears off in frustration

gnat

Shog, WHY CAN YOU TURN ON THAT FRIGGIN' MAGIC ONLY FOR QUESTION BODY? ALL-CAPS TITLES ARE JUST AS FRIGGIN' ANNOYING, ESPECIALLY IF YOU TAKE INTO ACCOUNT HOW THESE POLLUTE SITE FRONT PAGE — gnat 22 secs ago

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa the problem is that you have to download the entire repo when you clone

you keep a local copy on your hard drive

you are a complete copy of the entire rpo

repo*

and it's hard to know which changsets apply to a sub tree, since it doesn't take a complete snapshot every time you commit. when you download git, you download all the changes to all of the files, and then it iterates through them and rebuilds the file from bottom up. it's very fast, but without knowing which files are affected by which changesets, you have to have them all.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt I guess this makes sense being that repo's are local rather than central, but still I should imagine they'd allow a subtree clone

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa how do you know which changesets to fetch though?

user55340

The repo is a filesystem - not just a collection of directories (a la svn).

user55340

8:47 PM

It would be like giving asking for all the inodes for set of files in exif - you don't know what they are until you have all of them. But once you do have all of them, certain things are much faster.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt why do you need historical changesets, can't you just get a current state in your clone that has a ref to the changeset it's cloned from then let it start making local deltas which can be pushed from there?

does cloning a repo give you it's history too? Because that seems silly. I guess I'm used to centralized VCS where you create branches as noops that just act as a pointer to the changeset they're branched off, and then starts gathering deltas from there for all the changesets that exist as a part of that branch

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa so your local copy of the files isn't actually expanded out into the files themselves, but your local working area is. so you would have to go from the local repo into the working dir to find that out

@JimmyHoffa yes. you get everything. every commit, ever log, everything

user55340

@JimmyHoffa cloning a repo gives you the full history of everything in that repo.

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt ...that's stupid, what do I need every commit ever for? if I wanted that I'd clone off an older version....

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa when you want to go back to an old version, it's free

when you want to switch branches

user55340

8:50 PM

Because it is decentralized... you are potentially a server.

Ampt

it's free

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt ...which is a very rare thing to do

not worth the cost

Ampt

want to roll back a file to an earlier date? Freeeeeee

Jimmy Hoffa

it's not free - it costs you having full history in every repo

user55340

Using the filesystem analogy (which isn't completely wrong), changing versions is as simple as 'cd' on your system.

Jimmy Hoffa

8:51 PM

I'd rather have a shallow copy and not be able to roll back without going back to the repo I cloned off

user55340

Once you pay the upfront cost, its free.

Ampt

git repos are very small

user41796

@JimmyHoffa But that's the appeal of the DVCS

Jimmy Hoffa

but I understand the logical decision they made there

Ampt

unless you do stuff like keep giant binaries

user55340

8:51 PM

@Ampt Unless you are checking in binary diffs all the time...

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 you never have to go back to where you cloned from - I get it

that just seems... silly... you have to recombine peoples repos to a central place regardless

Ampt

and you can give what you have to another computer on your network if the server goes down

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt anybody not backing up their centralized VCS is an idiot, this is no different

user55340

@JimmyHoffa That is one pattern of development... its called 'github' for example. However, that wasn't how it was designed.

Ampt

Github is essentially just another computer that only keeps an unexploded git repo

user55340

8:52 PM

Consider the linux kernel... and you want to merge a branch from bob over there... well, you do it. He doesn't need to push it to a central repo.

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa just try branching in git and see how easy it is

then merge it back in

that's what sold me. branching functionality that doesn't break when the wind blows

user55340

@Ampt on git with binaries and doing it wrong... thedailywtf.com/Articles/Forever-Alone.aspx

Ampt

and being able to make local commits. you only ever check out your code once

no need to re pull in a new dir to work on a new branch

user55340

git-svn is a great thing when you've got a svn admin who is a bastard and doesn't want people making branches "because they are hard"

whatsisname

@JimmyHoffa: right, you can't really do a subtree of DVCS because of the underlining model

I wouldn't say its really brain dead, it's just that everything has a trade off, and the benefits of git, for the linux kernel developers, outweighed the drawbacks of losing sub-tree capability

Ampt

8:56 PM

@MichaelT doing a manual version control inside of version control? you've gotta be kidding me

user55340

Heh (former coworker at Netapp linked on linked in to me recently... she's now the "Principle Product Manager" for the CRM at EMC...)

whatsisname

@Ampt: git repos are not necessarily any smaller than SVN or other VCS repositories

user55340

@Ampt You checkout svn, make it into a git repo locally, do your git stuff, and then when you want to push back to svn it becomes a svn commit.

user55340

You can do the easy local branches, bisect, and such with git.

user55340

(git bisect is one of those magic things... I don't quite understand it yet, though I've seen git masters use it to great effect - git-scm.com/docs/git-bisect )

user55340

8:59 PM

Fighting regressions with git bisect

whatsisname

and while git doesn't have a central server by design, anyone with any sense using git in a multiple person project will designate a particular machine as a de-facto central server

Jimmy Hoffa

@whatsisname ....underlying

user20683

►

user20683

just a video to cheer people up if they are having a bad day

whatsisname

right

user55340

9:01 PM

@WorldEngineer Heh... its nice to see that he got a 'real' job in voiceovers.

user20683

@MichaelT who did?

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt ...I've never found branching difficult, people just get stressed about it because they think they're going to break something (I think that's why people get bothered by it)

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa it works great if your branch is entirely new files that no one else touches ever

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt alternatively, it's worked great for years for me across multiple companies...

user55340

►

user55340

9:03 PM

(and then basically everything that he posts: youtube.com/channel/UCVpankR4HtoAVtYnFDUieYA )

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa if SVN works for you, more power to you, never change. I've just personally had a lot of success with GIT

YMMV

user55340

@Ampt FreeBSD still uses csv.

user20683

CSV is good if you need centralized control

user55340

Its something that shows up every time someone talks about the freeBSD project (recently in the news with the LibreSSL project... its a "this is what we've done" and then another comment is "what is that CVS thing? Get with the 21st century and update to git... or at least svn..." and FreeBSD contributors are like "nope")

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt I like what I've seen of git - I just find this interesting to hear such a large issue that my years with TFS have made me assume would be there by default...

now I will say visual source safe branching was a nightmare

or more specifically, literally non-existent

whatsisname

9:12 PM

CVS is miserable

Jimmy Hoffa

clearcase branching and merging was easy enough though - except for the whole merging could at times require you to want to cut your eyes out - ok so it's merging was highly capable but enormously painful to do... but source control of that era blew

whatsisname

atomic commits are absolutely necessary in 2014 onwards, IMO

user20683

VSS is the stuff of legend in my world

user20683

but then again, I don't use Windows atm

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