The Whiteboard

Robert Harvey

12:56 AM

Anyone here heard of Microsoft Orleans, or know anything about it?

user15026

@durron597 that was a really good book.

Robert Harvey

For whatever reason, the teaching style in the Little Schemer series really grates.

durron597

3:50 AM

@AshleyNunn Agreed

user41796

3:10 PM

Would someone drop a 5th close vote on this question and put it out of its misery, please?

user41796

16

Q: Is the 'finally' portion of a 'try ... catch ... finally' construct even necessary?

Some languages (such as C++ and early versions of PHP) don't support the finally part of a try ... catch ... finally construct. Is finally ever necessary? Because the code in it always runs, why wouldn't/shouldn't I just place that code after a try ... catch block without a finally clause? Why us...

durron597

3:21 PM

@GlenH7 ... why does that question have so many upvotes?

user41796

@durron597 bikeshed; probably got tweeted

durron597

I don't understand what you mean by bikeshed in this context

Oh never mind, my understanding of the meaning of bikeshed was different than the actual meaning

user41796

@durron597 lots of folk think they know the answer, so it gets lots of attention. Upvotes occur because a visitor sees the question, thinks they could have answered or could have asked, and then says "yeah, I'll vote that up because it's good question."

durron597

@GlenH7 And I'm sure it hit the hot questions list

bbl

psr

6:23 PM

@durron597 Why wouldn't it be realistic? The publicly traded portion of the private sector economy is usually worth as much or more as it ever has in the past (measured by NPV of future profits, not by market). The NPV of future cash flows of competing investments doesn't really change dramatically either - so you would pretty much expect this to be the normal state, excepting mostly effects of interest rate swings,bouts of mass irrational behavior, and occasional real economic contraction.

whatsisname

7:00 PM

0

Q: How to ensure that the Programmer is not reselling my App?

I'm a teacher. I am paying a programmer to built my App to teach Spanish. I have created the whole App and every single functionality, activity, design, look, content, etc. The programmer I hire is giving me a Content Management System to upload all images and content. He doesn't answer all of...

algorithms

Stack Exchange

Blog - Stack Exchange: Targeted Jobs for Stack Overflow

Will Cole on January 27, 2015

Stack Overflow Careers was announced five years ago with a simple mission statement:

We believe that every professional programmer should have a job they love

To help you find a job you love, we need to match you with the right job at the right time. We do that by helping you create a profile that brings the right employers to you, and by showing you relevant job ads from our job board on Stack Overflow. With over 6,000 companies that advertise on Stack Overflow Careers, we’re getting closer to our goal of having a great job for every developer. …

user55340

7:27 PM

prsn_num -- person number? Or prison number? These are important questions.

psr

@MichaelT If you worked with MUMPS programmers they would be better about removing all the vowels, thus avoiding ambiguity. I mean, mbgty.

@JimmyHoffa Oh, right, that explains their space program too. They are architecture astronauts.

user41796

Anyone got any tricks on forcing silverlight 4 to release the memory it's holding?

user41796

Short version of problem - pulling images from an ip camera. I can't use the streaming component since SL4 can't work with that codec. So I pull images every second or so. However, SL4 BitmapImage or the EventHandler has a memory leak and some of the memory is never released. After about a minute, I've run about a GB+ of used memory within the browser and it bogs out.

user41796

Haven't figured out a way to re-use the bitmapImage so I don't have to create a new one each time

user41796

And I can't upgrade to SL5 where this is fixed because SL5 breaks another framework I have to use.

Ampt

8:15 PM

@MichaelT personal raison supplemental nutrition - number

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 The more pertinent question is why isn't the garbage collector releasing it?

user41796

@JimmyHoffa known issues within SL4

Jimmy Hoffa

Answer that, and you'll know how to solve it. Does the class have a finalizer? Is it still in use?

user41796

I have seen two arguments

Jimmy Hoffa

Take a memory dump and you can find out what's holding a reference

user41796

8:18 PM

the first is that the web page context / eventhandler has hooks into the eventhandlers from the bitmapimages. Since those never get released, the memory is never freed

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 you can simply null out the bitmapimages eventhandlers then

user41796

The other claim is that the stream feeding the bitmapImage is actually the problem because it doesn't get closed properly and the BI eventhandlers have hooks into the stream

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I think I'm going to give that a try as my next attempt

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 if you can't get setter access on them, just inherit the class, or if an interface is available simply decorate it

user41796

The other solution I have seen involves passing the image in as a byte stream, setting up a localized task to handle the two suspected bi.eventhandlers and then clearing them out. It's a lot of coding overhead that I'd rather avoid

user41796

8:22 PM

@JimmyHoffa it's only allowing += & -=

durron597

@GlenH7 Dumb question: fixing the other framework wouldn't be easier than trying to debug an internal memory leak to SL4?

Jimmy Hoffa

Normal when it's not in your class, if you derive or decorate you might be able to enumerate it and unsubscribe then

(if you didn't know already, you can foreach an event to enumerate the subscribers)

user41796

@durron597 no.... We're actually abandoning that framework for new development. But this project has to be done in the old one.

user41796

var eventHandlers = myBitmapImage.ImageOpened;
foreach(var eventH in eventHandlers){
    myBitmapImage.ImageOpened -= eventH;
}

user41796

right?

user41796

8:26 PM

Might just inherit and stash that in the constructor of the class then

Tom Au

8:59 PM

This is for Chris F, the moderator. I improved the following question, and wonder if it can be re-opened in its current form: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271208/…

durron597

You should type @ChrisF

to ping him... though I just did

but the BETTER thing to do is to flag the post "other - needs moderator attention"

and explain

user41796

@TomAu It also automatically goes into the reopen review queue once it's been edited after being closed.

user41796

Currently, 2 community members voted to leave closed and 1 voted to reopen.

Tom Au

@GlenH7: Coming from you, a valued (reopen) opinion.

@durron597:That's my preference, but ChrisF's "About Me" specifically asked people to use chat.

user41796

@TomAu Flagging for moderator attention allows for any of the moderators to review the request and potentially reopen. Dropping the request in here can also work, but doesn't have as clear of a mechanism to signal for a mod to look at it.

user41796

9:12 PM

That said, several of the regulars in here have the ability to vote through the reopen queue.

gnat

9:25 PM

@GlenH7 bikeshed - yes, tweeted - no (no mention of tweeting in rev history) - I cast CV fast enough to prevent tweeting. It simply got to hot list thanks to many answers (as usual with bikeshedding) and was kept in there despite close votes piling on...

43

Q: At smaller sites, penalize hot questions having 3-4 close votes

At smaller sites (up to 50-100 questions a day average) closing a question takes hours or even days. As an example, this SO question has got 5 close votes in 15 minutes, while its twin at Programmers has been struggling to get 3rd vote for over 10 hours. "Twin" here means, same question has bee...

feature-request vote-to-close hot-questions community-standards

^^^ unlikely will ever be implemented, as it is never going to be a problem for SO (with their 20,000 users eligible to close)

user41796

@gnat I wouldn't recommend holding your breath over that one... ;-)

gnat

44 secs ago, by gnat

^^^ unlikely will ever be implemented, as it is never going to be a problem for SO (with their 20,000 users eligible to close)

I know :)

business as usual

@Sejanus my theory is, SE team simply ignored this problem until recently, until they noticed that same issue is damaging Stack Overflow. Then, they woke up (at last) and launched "SE Quality Project". That project, in turn, seems to be primarily targeted to benefit Stack Overflow (as usual) but hopefully smaller sites will be able to get some of it too, as a side effect so to speak — gnat yesterday

nothing like that can ever happen to this "CV-penalization" request

durron597

@gnat What bugs me is that you know it's a 1 line fix

We're all programmers, we know how easy that one would be to do

gnat

@durron597 not necessarily, they've got some database sorcery under the hood which may be tricky to modify (denormalized field etc, as explained in this ancient request decline)...

user41796

Ah, the meta.SE question that generated so much of my rep there...

user20683

9:35 PM

pokes his head in

user20683

I don't know that that is star worthy

gnat

@WorldEngineer hello, World! am I 1000th or only 500th greeting you like that? :)

durron597

@WorldEngineer Well maybe a moderator will remove it for you

user20683

@durron597 ;)

durron597

@WorldEngineer How lucky! ;)

@gnat Still, I would think that the number of close votes on a question would be a lot simpler to access than looking through all the answers and running a formula on them. Especially since the # of close votes appears in a 10k tools list

user41796

9:45 PM

@WorldEngineer Everything is star worthy....

2

gnat

@durron597 maybe yes... or maybe no. Whatever, as long as they don't care at all, this makes no difference. Just think of it, they ignore not just feature requests (which could be understandable), but even questions about stats as long as these apparently are insignificant for SO (bonus rep, community protection). They hesitate to just run the query over their data, not to mention code change

user20683

3

user41796

Mmmmm, honey.

gnat

@GlenH7 and here's some vinegar to balance it: programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271334/…

user41796

Just 2 more and it closes...

gnat

9:55 PM

@GlenH7 would be fun to close it as a dupe of this one programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/271315/… (I honestly can't see any difference:) // hat tip to Glen

durron597

@gnat I hate flagging things as off topic - belongs on SO when it's really just awful and doesn't belong anywhere.

but it doesn't fit the other close reasons really

gnat

1

A: No custom off topic message when flagging on SO

After review, there is clearly a use-case for putting an "other" option here: blatantly off-topic questions, those that have no connection to a site's topic at all. Forcing flaggers to put these in the laps of moderators when a site does have people able to close and delete them isn't productive ...

"blatantly"? seems to fit

user41796

@gnat just keeping you honest. :-)

gnat

►

durron597

@gnat "(this question has nothing to do with software development)" - technically it does

gnat

10:08 PM

@durron597 I see. Too broad (as in "- click a mouse - what is mouse?") or unclear (as in "Unclear what help you need") may be better fit then

durron597

@gnat Do you have a page of "useful links to put in comments when downvoting/closing"?

gnat

6

A: Hide "not an answer" and "very low quality" flags in the moderator flag queue

Part of this is implemented, although not quite in the way you suggested: Very Low Quality and Not An Answer flags do not enter the moderator queue for 15 minutes after they're raised. This applies network-wide, except on Stack Overflow, Mathematics, TeX, Salesforce and Stack Overflow em Portugu...

5

Q: How can I write a good custom close message?

We only have so many canned, built in, close reasons. There are so many other reasons to close something at times - giving a better message than trying to shoehorn the reason to close something into too broad or primarily opinion. Custom close messages have the significant advantage when it com...

discussion close-reasons

durron597

ooh:

215

Vi and vim

Proposed Q&A site for people using vi and vim

Currently in commitment.

user15026

11:32 PM

Okay, it's likely you lot may have already figured this out, being smart and stuff, but I just bought my first headset (the one I had was a cheap as heck pack in with my Rosetta Stone stuff) and holy balls it's like angels are singing in my ears! And it is comfy too.

user41796

11:47 PM

@AshleyNunn :-) Wait until you really upgrade. Your mind will be blown. FWIW, I love the Audio Technica series. I currently sport a pair of the ath-m50's, which I've had for about 7 years now. They're freaking awesome. Coworker picked up a recent version of it, and they still sound amazing. AFAIK, the same driver technology is used in the more sanely priced versions in that line. Amazing sounds.

user20683

@GlenH7 I've got midrange Sonys, they do pretty well

user41796

Beats are good, btw, just over priced. Seinheiser continues to knock out quality sets. Bose is crisp & clear but lacks depth & bass. Koss is an overlooked brand that does amazingly well.

user41796

@WorldEngineer I've had both great and mediocre luck with Sony. I've found you have to listen to the set before you buy them. Only way to figure out the best in their various lines.

user15026

@GlenH7 I've got these: amazon.ca/gp/product/…

user15026

And I like them well enough for what I've spent

user41796

11:50 PM

Horrible was too harsh, so I modified that.

user20683

@GlenH7 I owned a pair of Koss before these, solid set

user41796

@AshleyNunn That's a really good sleeper brand. You'll never hear the audiophiles raving about them, but that means nothing about the quality they put out. And audiophiles often just want to hear themselves blather.

user41796

Speaking of which, I probably ought to go delete some of my prior comments. :-D

user15026

@GlenH7 I mostly wanted something that you know, didn't squish my ears and actually sounded okay

user41796

@WorldEngineer Discovering Koss is one of the things I'm grateful for having lived in MKE for.

user41796

11:52 PM

@AshleyNunn ding!

user20683

I was once of the opinion that bass is king but it's actually the smoothness of transition that's more a measure of quality

user15026

I am bad at knowing the details of how it sounds good, but damn, things sound good

user20683

@AshleyNunn I'm good at sounding like I know things about things ;p

user41796

@WorldEngineer Yes, this, most definitely. The transitions should be seamless. And the bass should be booming. :-)

user41796

Related question for my blue hued friends. How does SE go about picking pro-tem (sp?) moderators for sites about to go into public beta?

user20683

11:57 PM

@GlenH7 there's a thread called "who should the moderators be?"

user41796

@WorldEngineer That's easy enough then. :-)

user20683

you then nominate yourself or occasionally someone else

user20683

then you get upvoted or downvoted

user20683

then SE picks three

user41796

Typical mob rule; I like it. :-)

user20683

11:58 PM

usually the top three but there are exceptions

user15026

yeah, and they tend to look at stuff like how active you are in the beta/on the beta's meta etc

user41796

those are good bits to know. I've been trying to be active on Engineering's meta; and trying to help guide things

user41796

From what I've seen, there haven't been too many "active SE users" that have also been actively participating in that beta

user20683

@GlenH7 you'd have my support

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