The Whiteboard - 2014-12-18 (page 1 of 2)

« first day (1567 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3417 days later) »

user55340

2:13 AM

@durron597 Yep... north western wisconsin. Eau Claire is a nice place, you go north just a little bit and you're in the northwoods. However, that also means that to get anything more diverse than what is here is a 1.5h drive away. College students here often look west (MSP) or south (Madison) for a more cosmopolitan life.

user55340

4:33 AM

Btw, some good community advert adverts to up vote:

user55340

2

A: Community Promotion Ads - 2014

(Color variation of http://meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/a/6935/11732)

user55340

6

A: Community Promotion Ads - 2014

user55340

(I'm especially interested int hat color variation one - would be interesting to see next year with the two side by side which one gets more clicks... our own A/B testing)

5:44 AM

Do commercially available mobile phones have the capability of emitting sonar?

emitting? or emitting and interpreting results?

I am not interested about the interpreting results part...I mean it never walked my mind as of yet...

may be not today...I don't know.

I just saw this and I was wondering if there was an android app that does the same...

6:17 AM

I do have another doubt...this is regarding cross compiling and portability...won't the program work on windows machines too? -> unix.com/… ... how would you explain that the binary made on a unix machine won't work on a windows machine...?

4 hours later…

10:36 AM

@deostroll different formats of the binary

so the windows loader can't handle unix binaries

while unix needs wine to tell it how to handle windows binaries

Windows uses the portable executable format:

Portable Executable

The Portable Executable (PE) format is a file format for executables, object code, DLLs, FON Font files, and others used in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows operating systems. The PE format is a data structure that encapsulates the information necessary for the Windows OS loader to manage the wrapped executable code. This includes dynamic library references for linking, API export and import tables, resource management data and thread-local storage (TLS) data. On NT operating systems, the PE format is used for EXE, DLL, SYS (device driver), and other file types. The Extensible Firmware Interface...

while unix uses the executable and linkable format:

Executable and Linkable Format

In computing, the Executable and Linkable Format (ELF, formerly called Extensible Linking Format) is a common standard file format for executables, object code, shared libraries, and core dumps. First published in the System V Release 4 (SVR4) Application Binary Interface (ABI) specification, and later in the Tool Interface Standard, it was quickly accepted among different vendors of Unix systems. In 1999 it was chosen as the standard binary file format for Unix and Unix-like systems on x86 by the 86open project. ELF is flexible and extensible by design, and it is not bound to any particula...

4 hours later…

2:28 PM

@MichaelT Yeah he was in Menomonie

@GlenH7 You're tied for second place with 27. Maybe you can talk someone into giving you the Eureka badge.

user41796

2:50 PM

user image

user41796

Boom!

user41796

I need to find a carp question (-3) that's answerable so it can be edited and turned around

user41796

@deostroll The answer would be yes. First link is general theory: gizmodo.com/… And these two links are about using phones: spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/portable-devices/… news.sciencemag.org/math/2013/06/…

@GlenH7 Ask @WorldEngineer to give you Eureka

user41796

@durron597 pretty sure that one is out of his control... :-)

user41796

2:58 PM

But I should go update my MSE answer to explain how to get the hair boat hat and that might do it.

3:09 PM

It is said that object-oriented programming is the current dominant paradigm, but looking at all those "I have this array of arrays of arrays of dictionaries of strings to arrays of dictionaries of strings to arrays and want to convert it to an array of arrays of dictionaries of integers to dictionaries of integers to arrays of arrays of strings like this, how do I do that?" questions, I'm not so sure. Oh, and of course, I want to index all those dictionaries by value, not by key.

@JörgWMittag How many arrays could an arraychuck chuck if an array chuck could chuck arrays?

user41796

@JörgWMittag I think there's a perception behind OOP of "this is what you're supposed to use if you're a real programmer." But that perception ignores the fact that imperative and functional approaches solve certain problems more elegantly

yeah OOP is a tool in the toolbox

and is meant to serve your needs to solve a problem, not the other way around

user41796

@whatsisname BLASPHEMER!!!

user41796

:-)

3:18 PM

sometimes breaking encapsulation is much easier and sensible than not

sometimes it is good to have some mega class thats 1000 lines long

often times the SRP is a load of garbage

@whatsisname I agree with the first, but not the second

when exactly is it good to have a mega 1000 line long class?

sometimes something will have a boatload of boiler plate code that initializes something for example, and has a boatload of statements with very little conditional logic

imagine the contents of what the VS forms designer writes for forms

or when it is all actually handy like the string class in Java

that can be many many lines long, but there's usually not a single branch, so it's not worth splitting up

granted, it doesn't happen often, but it does sometime

@whatsisname lots of virtual calls though

user41796

3:22 PM

@durron597 I've got some ridiculously complex classes for one of the applications I write. They easily blow past 1k loc, and yes, I've ripped out as much functionality into separate classes as I could.

and, sometimes big chunks of that aren't reused or are going to be reused anywhere else

3:33 PM

Personally, I like having multiple tools in my belt. After all, a screwdriver and a hammer are good in very different circumstances.

user41796

@whatsisname congrats on another rep cap, btw. :-)

lol thanks

its still early in the day too

Ironically, though, my favorite tool is a screwhammer: deeply immutable objects with referentially transparent methods :-D

no love for the sawsall? (reflection hacking)

user41796

@ratchetfreak sawzall FTW

3:56 PM

so one of the companies I work for has been acquired by a company from New Jersey

its been a day and a half and the new owner is already obnoxious

user41796

@whatsisname East coast personalities can be ... different.

this guy fulfills the stereotype exactly

user41796

We had one of those stereotypical ones roll through the office about 1/2 year ago. Blech.

come april or so I'm sure they'll be done with me which will be nice

@GlenH7 let me guess you rolled him right through off a cliff?

3:59 PM

@whatsisname "hey tony, how you doin'?"

user41796

@ratchetfreak Fortunately, I didn't have to work directly with him

user41796

Just had to overhear him

Being originally from New York... not all East coast personalities are the same

on the upside I may have to go out to their place in NJ, which is just outside NYC

user41796

@durron597 agreed

4:00 PM

so if that happens I might as well visit because I've never been there

and I'll bring the wife

user41796

But that stereotype exists for a reason... And not just because of TV or Hollywood

user41796

@whatsisname contract basis?

yeah I'm just a contractor with this company

user41796

@whatsisname NJ and NYC are worth taking a look around "just because"

new jersey is not "worth taking a look around"

unless you like gas refineries

4:02 PM

and when this company was bought we were in the process of making a new product, and part of the deal is we finish making the new product

@whatsisname where in NJ is their place?

and so I'm 90% sure that once the new project is finished they'll be done with me

user41796

@durron597 Proof I'm from the midwest - what really surprised me was just how close everything is built up to the street.

user41796

Kind of a "duh" type thing given how the area developed. But it's atypical outside of the NE part of the country

north of newark somewhere

4:03 PM

@GlenH7 you make sacrifices when real estate isn't cheap and abundant

@whatsisname North of newark = north of downtown manhattan

except newark is to the west of manhattan

@whatsisname Well, yeah

user41796

@whatsisname don't argue with the local... They look at things differently... :-)

what i'm saying is, to go to the fun parts of manhattan you'll need to go SOUTHeast (most people think new jersey is south of manhattan, not all of it is)

the east part is the obvious part

anyway, new jersey transit is really good and an excellent way to go downtown with the wife. do not drive in though

yeah, well the place is def within the greater NYC metro area

yeah I wouldn't bother driving

I'd probably want to bike

4:11 PM

Biking from NJ to NYC is... not something I would advise. The George Washington Bridge is a madhouse and I don't even know if you can use the Lincoln tunnel without a car

@whatsisname panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/bridges-tunnels-faqs.html

take the metro to bridge the gap

thats probably what I'd do, I'd probably drive around in NJ for work-business, then ditch the car and metro into NYC and hang out

if you say "take the metro" in northern new jersey you'll get some weird looks. "you mean metro north? this isn't connecticut"

s/metro/subway/

@ratchetfreak yah, i know what it means. Anyway there is no subway out to northern new jersey, you need the light rail a.k.a. NJ Transit

@GlenH7 Here's the most recent question with more than 5 answers in java on SO: stackoverflow.com/questions/27550765/…

4:28 PM

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/266816/… I want to answer this but I am too lazy

and too grouchy that the GPL has been around for eons yet people still haven't figured it out

@whatsisname the GPL has been around for eons but most people haven't been thinking about how it works for eons

4:40 PM

most just see that it's an open source license and will copy it in

user41796

@durron597 Like I said, I still gotta be able to live with myself once the hats get put away. :-D

GPL+not understanding GPL is what caused the minecraft buckit fiasco

@ratchetfreak but...what caused the tatooine dijkstra fiasco? O_o

user41796

@whatsisname FTFY

@GlenH7 Are you sure your license question is right? I don't get how you can relicense something that you don't own under the GPL.

user41796

4:51 PM

@ThomasOwens it must be a GPL compatible license

user41796

BSD 2-clause or MIT for example

user41796

I'll add that into the answer in a moment. Work issue just popped up

I thought that if it was GPL compatible, that meant you could use it with the GPL. If you don't modify it, it keeps that license.

user41796

@ThomasOwens Sort of

Yo. Who's from Eau Claire?

user41796

4:55 PM

@ThomasOwens MichaelT

user41796

Alright - the GPL compatible thing...

The folks behind Boston Calling are putting on a music and arts festival in Eau Claire on July 17-18. Presale tickets go on sale today at 1pm eastern. @MichaelT

@GlenH7 Yeah. Let's say I make something under the MIT license. I don't get how someone who did no work can magically turn it into GPL.

user41796

When a compatible licensed project is subsumed within a GPL'd project, the subsumed project is re-released as a GPL licensed project. The original version of the subsumed project is still available under it's original license

user41796

But, if I pull the subsumed project out of the GPL application and use it for my application, I have to treat it as GPL because it was provided to me as a GPL project

user41796

That said, I'm also still free to go back to the original subsumed project and use it under the original license terms

user41796

4:57 PM

Effectively, it's a license fork

Can't you license different modules as different licenses, even in a project?

Assuming the licenses are compatible.

user41796

9

A: How are GPL-compatible licenses like MIT usable in GPL programs without being subject to the copyleft provision?

How are GPL-compatible licenses like MIT usable in GPL programs without being subject to the copyleft provision? Short answer: They're not. They'll become subject to the copyleft. Long answer: The Wikipedia article on license compatibility has a good section on GPL compatibility: Many...

user41796

@ThomasOwens Then you need to use either the LGPL or the AGPL

@ThomasOwens Because you gave him the right to relicense it. The right to license the work is one of the rights exclusive to the copyright holder, but just like any other right (say, the right to copy or the right to modify), you can give that right away to others either in a contract or in a license.

user41796

I'm not as familiar with those two

4:59 PM

@JörgWMittag I didn't know that the right to relicense was included in MIT (or BSD 2 clause).

> including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software

I'm guessing that "sublicense" means "relicense as GPL" in this case? That makes sense.

That same clause also allows people to use MIT licensed software in closed-source software, correct?

Yes, exactly. The "sub-" in here is to be interpreted the same way as in "sub-contractor", I think.

Or make modifications to an MIT licensed software package and redistributed under a different (including closed-source_ license.

That makes sense. That's why we can't include GPL software at work.

user41796

Ok, I have officially become upset at the misinformation in the other answers on that GPL question. Walking away now...

user41796

@ThomasOwens Yes, and yes.

user41796

Copyleft is exceptionally powerful in its claims

user41796

5:08 PM

And no one has really tested it out in a court of law (yet)

I'm kind of surprised by that.

Considering how many stupid court cases go around every year.

user41796

Licenses are essentially contracts. And contract law allows you to write pretty much anything you want, so long as both parties agree to the terms.

@ratchetfreak What exactly happened with Bukkit and GPL? I wasn't around when Wolvereness joined the team, but I was around when Dinnerbone, EvilSeph and grum started the whole thing in 2011.

user41796

I haven't heard of a good angle to attack the provisions of copyleft as the basis of it is fairly sound. It's extreme, but the protections in place to prevent extreme terms within contract law are fairly limited.

@durron597 Wolverness filed a DMCA against craftbuckit because it included closed-source MC server software

while craftbuckit was under GPL (IIRC could have been LGPL)

user41796

5:12 PM

@ratchetfreak That was after EvilSeph melted down and said the sky was falling and tried to shut the repo down

and it was revealed that mojang had the full rights

and around the time microsoft acquired mojang

user41796

@ratchetfreak to Bukkit. Not necessarily the code though

I remember discussing the whole thing with EvilSeph at length at the beginning of 2011. This was before anyone was actually talking to Mojang staff

user41796

@durron597 That was also before he sold out to mojang. :-)

user41796

I'd still like a solid answer from EvilSeph on why he took the repo down. And I'd like to know what wolvereness was trying to pull off. Lots of missing details in that story

5:14 PM

@GlenH7 He always wanted to be included with Mojang, even back then. I'll tell you, trying to write a server mod to obfuscated java code where the class names change every time there's a new server build is a gigantic pain in the ass.

Most open source developers are in it for the betterment of humanity. They prefer releasing the source code, making a donation to a charitable foundation, and not embarrassing their opponents, I guess. For example, when Microsoft shipped closed-source Linux drivers as part of HyperV, that was obviously a breach of the GPL. However, instead of suing MS or publicly ridiculing them as software pirates, the Linux community simply asked them to release the source code.

basically the guy decided that the license was invalid and that meant that his contributions were his property that he didn't want licensed to craftbucket

I never met Wolvereness

Then, they issued a joint press release, welcoming Microsoft to the Linux community and praising their dedication to open source.

Everybody wins, no humiliation, but … no citable court case, either. That's the way most of those go.

@JörgWMittag The open source community doesn't want to spend many thousands of dollars on lawyers

They're in it for the fun of it, not legal battles

I will say that we debated GPL vs. Apache vs. many other licenses before settling on GPL

5:16 PM

I'm pretty sure that if they filed a counter that wolverness wouldn't counter sue

I don't remember the details of the conversation but I remember having it.

@durron597 big mistake

@ratchetfreak It was ultimately EvilSeph's decision.

Dinnerbone, grum and I just wanted to write code and not think about that stuff

Forge explicitly removed all MC code from what they distributed and let the installer download the MC client

exactly for something like this

user41796

@durron597 I'm impressed that you were part of the beginning of Bukkit, that's awesome

5:19 PM

@GlenH7 Thanks. I should have stuck with it, my life would be very different right now

user41796

Disappointing that the issue didn't get resolved even though it was periodically brought up in the forums

I have a rather simple algorithm for choosing licenses for my own code: LOCcount(license) <= 0.01 * LOCcount(project)

:-D

user41796

It was explicitly called out that there were problems since the server.jar file was effectively incorporated into the craftbukkit server

user41796

@durron597 Have you looked at spigot?

Do you all know what hmod was?

user41796

5:20 PM

@durron597 predecessor to bukkit / craftbukkit, right?

@GlenH7 Yeah. It was a complete trainwreck

user41796

@durron597 It was also one of the first on the scene providing that functionality

that's how I got involved, writing hmod plugins

user41796

And I've heard the original MC code was pretty wretched too

it still is

notch didn't code for a team but for his own fun

user41796

5:21 PM

@ratchetfreak understandable

user41796

and probably that's what allowed it to see the light of day. He was coding it because he wanted to, not because he was trying to make something big

but the guy who wrote the original hmod lost interest and we decided to start over, a little bit like what's happening with John Gruber (wait... that's not the same John Gruber is it???) and Markdown

except we didn't call it hmod 2.0

user41796

His resignation letter makes complete sense - sh!t got way bigger than he had ever expected

I mean you can get the decompiled source through forge dev and look through the horribleness

@GlenH7 The original mc code was soooo awful

user41796

5:23 PM

IIRC, notch was "just" a hobbyist and things exploded in popularity. I can't fault him too much for it.

@GlenH7 I didn't even know he resigned. I'm not surprised

I bet he has more money than he'll ever need at this point

user41796

@durron597 shortly after the MS acquisition was announced

user41796

@durron597 100 $M+ afaik.

The main reason I quit Bukkit is that I got tired of Minecraft entirely

user41796

I think it was a $2B acquisition

5:24 PM

so I don't follow any of this anymore

user41796

Short version of his letter is that someone forwarded a video to him where he was mentioned in it

user41796

basically, the video was covering internet phenomenons and how they become an entity in and of themselves separate from the actual person

Yeah I googled it already

user41796

and he realized that who he thought he was was completely separated from what the world though of "notch" the thing

user41796

And to be fair, that would be really disconcerting when you think about how he got into it in the first place.

5:27 PM

I was an admin on buxville for awhile too. Good times.

user41796

And I'm 6 rep away from a rep cap today. W00t

user41796

@durron597 I run a private MC server (currently craftbukkit, about to be spigot) for my kids and their friends.

user41796

I haven't had time to play recently, but it's still fun for us.

user41796

My son is wanting to get into building mods for it, and learn how to program at the same time

Sometimes I wonder if, like, Treyarch developers enjoy playing Call of Duty

user41796

5:31 PM

Hard to say

It got to be a point where I was so involved in the code and trying to make new Craftbukkit features that it stopped being fun to play minecraft, so I stopped... and then coding seemed pointless too

To be fair, I haven't played Minecraft since beta and doing things for it has always been way more fun.

@hexparrot for me, s/beta/alpha/

user41796

@durron597 oh jeez, you may not even recognize the game now then.

Also for me. I don't believe I played beta either.

5:33 PM

@GlenH7 Well, actually I did get my girlfriend a copy of it for christmas last year for xbox and I ended up beating the game

For example, I logged in once in 2013 and I got the "you cut down a tree" achievement.

user41796

@hexparrot do you craft mods then?

I don't craft mods. But I do help people learn how to set up and secure servers via my hobbyproject MineOS

@hexparrot But I wasn't adding new features. I was writing a permission system for server configuration files in yml

user41796

@durron597 That's one aspect I'm upset with Mojang about. Each platform is incompatible with the others. So my kids' friends who play on consoles can't play on the server I host.

user41796

5:34 PM

@hexparrot props to you then. There's a lot of misinformation out there on how to secure things

@GlenH7 Yeah apparently the xbox version is wayyyy behind

user41796

@durron597 Would you consider coming back and fixing it? :-P

user41796

mod permission collisions is a royal b!tch to figure out

user41796

Essentials vs. WorldEdit vs. Portals: I'm looking at you!

@GlenH7 I never finished. I was so bored by the project, and by minecraft, that I quit in the middle.

sk89q is a beast of a programmer

I never looked at Essentials or Portals. But WorldEdit was around before I was

user41796

5:36 PM

@durron597 Essentials person, right? That's a mod I'm really impressed by.

no worldedit

user41796

WorldEdit is really, really good too.

user41796

Multiverse is super sweet for a server

user41796

I set the kids up with their own worlds to build in as well as joint worlds where anyone can jump in

Just today I saw a telltale version was announced. pcgamer.com/telltale-are-making-a-minecraft-game

user41796

5:39 PM

@hexparrot MineOS or MineOS Crux? MC on gamepedia says MineOS is defunct as of 2011, but looking at MineOS's about page, I see activity in the summer of this year.

5:50 PM

@GlenH7 I've been working on MineOS since 2011, without interruption.

In 2011, I made "MineOS CRUX" defunct because it was my sloppy, first-attempt at anything and everything linux

Well, or maybe second attempt. At any rate, it took a long time for me to move to a much better model which is making something that isn't dependent on a distributable ISO.

@GlenH7: guess what I just encountered? A not-so-obvious bug caused by......a constant being #defined with a typo

user41796

@hexparrot ah, that makes sense. I think I might go edit the gamepedia page to reflect that then. 'Cause they're confused. :-)

user41796

@whatsisname That's awesome and quite funny

« first day (1567 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3417 days later) »

Transcript for

Dec '1418

The Whiteboard

General Discussion for softwareengineering.stackexchange.com P...

coffee-day horror-stories monads my-code-is-compiling scotch the-other-monitor

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile