« first day (1535 days earlier)      last day (3410 days later) » 

Tim
1:36 AM
Hi Is this question suitable on unix.se?
I like Ubuntu, except that every one or two years if I don't upgrade to the latest Ubuntu release, many applications will not be updated for my old Ubuntu release. For example, I am using the long term release 12.04, but I notice some applications don't work and update now as well as before, and some new applications that are developed for the latest release using some libraries of new versions aren't easy to install on 12.04.
I am not very comfortable with installing operating systems, and backing up my data, so I am always behind in terms of getting the up-to-date OS release.
 
@Tim nope
you are basically asking us to our opinions about how/when should you upgrade your system
in which case, at least among regulars of this room, is very divided
 
Tim
Is my problem a disadv or adv of Ubuntu?
 
I don't see a problem, just a matter of your preference
 
Tim
some said Debian is more stable than Ubuntu. But does Debian's stability come at some cost?
 
Terribly old sources?
Actaully... to quote Linus:
> …you don’t make binaries for Debian stable because Debian stable has libraries that are so old that anything that was built in the last century doesn’t work.
That's why I only know one person who uses Debian stable ;)
 
Tim
1:50 AM
is "debian stable" same as "debian"?
 
@jimmij lol, when I saw that on the starboard I thought we were talking bash and I was horrified, then I read the context ;P
@Tim I think maybe @Braiam can explain that better than I could..
 
@Braiam If I knew it was that simple >.>
 
@Seth that's why I prefer being a 2D creature... humans always believe things are more complicated than they actually are
 
@Braiam lol.
 
Tim
1:58 AM
Thanks.
But does Debian's stability come at some cost?
 
I believe I answered that?
 
@Seth really, I'm the only one?
 
Tim
"Debian stable has libraries that are so old that anything that was built in the last century doesn’t work."
 
@Gilles no, Faheem does too
 
Tim
I don't understand that why "anything that was built in the last century doesn’t work."
 
2:00 AM
@Gilles Ohh, you're number 2 now ;)
 
@Tim is a metaphor
libraries in stable normally are 2-4 years behind
 
@Tim he probably meant “anything built this century”
that would be an exaggeration, whereas what Seth quoted doesn't make sense
 
Tim
@Gilles that makes more sense.
Some package I am using have their features changed a lot in new versions, e.g. Okular and Wine. If I want to use the new features, does that mean that I better use ubuntu than Debian?
 
no.
It really just depends on what you choose.
If you use Debian testing or Debian unstable you'll get much newer packages, at the cost of slightly less stability of course.
 
stop typing faster than me Seth ¬_¬
 
2:04 AM
@Gilles @Gilles "in the last century" is generally taken to mean last 100 years.. At least around here.
 
Tim
@Seth Debian testing or unstable have newer packages than latest Ubuntu?
 
I'm not sure on that count.
unstable might.
What packages are we looking at? Okular and WINE?
 
Tim
@Seth yes
 
let me check.
 
Tim
@Seth What is more stable: Debian testing or unstable, and latest Ubuntu? Is it Ubuntu?
 
Tim
How is "stable" defined?
 
> stable is solid rock
at least that's Debian stable
 
Tim
qualitative or quantitative measures/metrics for "stable"?
 
@Tim I would say an Ubuntu release is on par with Debian testing, but I don't think anything can beat Debian unstable for newer packages.
 
@Seth Arch
 
2:07 AM
Or that.
But Arch has a big learning curve.
 
Tim
How bad can Debian "unstable" be in terms of "unstable"?
 
hmm, debian testing has a slightly newer okular than the latest Ubuntu stable.
checking WINE
 
Tim
@Seth In Debian Unstable, the kernel should be stable?
the packages are not stable and easy to be broken?
will the OS crash more often in unstable ?
 
@Seth just check the links to Debian tracker... down right is Ubuntu version, and middle left is Debian's
 
Ubuntu and Debian are equal when it comes to WINE.
@Braiam oh sweet.
 
2:10 AM
or this qa.debian.org/… for wine
 
@Tim @Braiam is more qualified to answer that than I.
 
@Seth in English-speaking regions “in the last century” usually means “in the 20th century”
@Seth Arch. Debian unstable can take weeks, even months to get new packages, which is totally unacceptable for the bleeding edge crowd.
Meanwhile I let other people test stuff for me. I use Debian stable or Ubuntu LTS.
 
Tim
"an Ubuntu release is on par with Debian testing", then what are pros and cons of each of the two? How do you choose between the two?
 
@Gilles Maybe Linus meant "within the last century"? I don't know the exact grammar I just know I understood it and I'm sure most people I know would. Not saying someone might not, just I think it made some sense.
@Gilles Oh really? That sounds pretty bad for "unstable" :/
 
@Seth Debian gets a new version whenever the maintainer feels like it. Or less often if there's some complex change in the packaging.
Arch just builds stuff, and if it breaks, well, if you use Arch, you should know how to fix it
 
2:15 AM
dammit, today is not my day to type stuff in chat... bye >:/
 
@Gilles ah. Thanks for the input.
 
@Gilles Well put, I hope you get some useful answers.
 
Is there a linux distro aimed at high performance computers? (I used lubuntu on my laptop due to hardware restrictions and recently upgraded to a much better laptop and am wondering if there's something that will let me utilize the full power of the hardware)
 
2:31 AM
@JEETTRIVEDI To do what?
You can use the full power of a machine by attempting to calculate pi or find prime numbers.
And laptops are not high performance. By definition.
 
I mostly work with matlab and python and C# coding, recently started learning 3d rendering
 
OK, then use any distro at all. They will all use as many resources as you have available to do matlab or rendering.
 
Yeah, I guess you're right, thanks
 
That includes Lubuntu.
 
Tim
C# in ubuntu? @JEETTRIVEDI
 
2:34 AM
Yeah, I use Monodevelop
 
Tim
@JEETTRIVEDI where do you intend to deploy your C# program?
or where can you deploy them?
 
What do you mean where?
 
Tim
both Ubuntu and Windows?
 
Tim
On Ubuntu, are you running C# program on mono? or Windows inside VM
 
2:37 AM
They're very simple programs, mazesolver, blackjack game, some discrete event simulations etc. Made them for a class at school
I have a dual boot setup with windows 7 and lubuntu
 
hi
anyone there?
 
Tim
@JEETTRIVEDI Me too. But I am thinking to erase Windows
install Windows in VM.
@JEETTRIVEDI What class is it?
 
Data structures and Algorithms
I would've used a VM but my laptop doesn't have enough RAM to do that
So I went for the dualboot option
 
Tim
How much RAM is needed? considering 64-bit ubuntu and 64 bit Windows inside VM
 
I'd think probably more than 1gb
My hardware was quite out of date, I recently upgraded to an Asus G750JM
 
Tim
2:40 AM
Is your laptop old? Most laptops have 4GB RAM at least
 
Yeah, was quite old, now upgraded
That's why I had to use lubuntu
because it couldn't handle ubuntu well
and had issues with windows
however, lubuntu is amazing
 
Tim
@JEETTRIVEDI Is your course Advanced one? Game theory, simulations, ..., they are high level.
 
It's a second year course so I believe it's not advanced
 
Tim
what books do you use?
 
We didn't have a formal textbook, the prof told us to refer directly to the MSDN website should we have any issues. There was a recommended reading "Modern Software Development Using C# .NET" by Richard Weiner
What do you mean by what books do I use?
 
Tim
2:51 AM
I meant book for data structure and algorithm course.
 
3:06 AM
Ohk
 
Tim
3:21 AM
@Gilles: If I remember correctly, you use Debian stable for personal, and Ubuntu for work? What made your such choice?
In other words, what are/were your considerations for making such choice?
 
@Tim I've been using Debian since the last century and it suits me
Before that I used Slackware and then Red Hat (not RHEL, this was the last century, remember). Neither had an upgrade mechanism that worked well. Debian is also a more finished product, for example packages come with associations for file types, which last I saw Fedora still hadn't gotten right.
I've used Ubuntu when I wanted a Debian with better support for recent hardware. It's close enough to Debian that I don't mind.
I used Debian unstable when I was in my experimental phase, in college. I might have used Arch if it had existed back then. Now that I use a computer to get things done, I stick with stable distros.
 
Tim
@Gilles: Thanks. Narrow down to debian (stable or testing) and Ubuntu, which you use depends on hardware support only?
 
 
5 hours later…
8:18 AM
@Seth I don't get it, you saw what?
 
Hi! I have a question- I am using Ubuntu 14.10 Blender 2.72b and I want to save my game as Windows runtime game. How do I do it?
 
 
2 hours later…
10:34 AM
@Tim I find Debian stable mostly works well for me. Recently a release has been stable for 2 years, which is about right. Any shorter, and one is having to do a full upgrade more frequently than one wants to. Any more, and everything becomes seriously out of date.
 
10:48 AM
For things which one wants to keep up to date more frequently, one has to do backports.
@AdriansNetlis There is a blender stack exchange
Surprising amount of traffic for something I've barely heard of:
578
Blenderblender.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for people who use Blender to create 3D graphics, animations, or games.

Currently in public beta.

7,338 visits a day?
 
Tim
11:37 AM
@FaheemMitha Thanks. what is the measure/metric for distinguishing "stable", "testing" and "unstable".
Do you consider give a chance to Ubuntu? Why or why not?
 
@Tim This is already documented all over the place. Should be easy to find a link - one sec.
See debian.org/releases - the beginning
@Tim Don't understand the question
 
11:58 AM
> * Handle multiple display managers which don't ship a systemd unit or the
corresponding postinst logic for updating display-manager.service: Add a
generator to ensure /etc/X11/default-display-manager is controlling which
display-manager is started. (Closes: #771287)
^ lets see if that fix the DM issues when you have more than one installed
 
 
3 hours later…
2:59 PM
@Anthon I'm pretty sure its only supposed to migrate if 3 or 4 people pick migrate... Hopefully it at least requires majority! I'd suggest flagging for diamond-mod attention if you notice any in the future, I believe the mods can force a question to close w/o migration.
 
Hi @derobert
 
3:19 PM
@FaheemMitha Hey. Yes, I know about your ffmpeg question, working on it now...
 
@derobert Ok. <raises hands>. Hey, I didn't say anything...
 
0
Q: Why doesn't this tee with process substitution produce the 1st and chosen lines?

SisyphusWhat I want is printing the output the first line ( table head ) of ps aux and the grep result. After search, I come up with following. ps aux | tee >(head -1 > /dev/tty) | grep mongo But I find the stdin of grep mongo is cut off. Also, if I omit > /dev/tty, what will the stdout of head -1 ...

That's actually an interesting question that got closed as a dup. Well, interesting after the edits.
Also happens to be one I know the answer to :-)
 
@derobert So, it isn't a dupe, then?
 
@FaheemMitha Doesn't seem to be of the one it's currently closed as a duplicate of. Not 100% sure there isn't a different person asking that "why didn't this work" question, but I don't remember one
 
If I understand the question correctly, he is asking why something isn't working. The supposed dupe is asking how to do something.
Ok, voting to reopen too
 
3:33 PM
@FaheemMitha Well, he's asking "hey, I wanted to do X. I tried this approach, which I believe should work. I know I could do alternative approach Y [the duplicate question], but why didn't X work?" ... Note OP's edit at the bottom.
 
@derobert Sure. Asking why things don't work as expected can be interesting.
Sometimes one can learn something by observing something not working as expected.
 
Actually... I looked harder at the duplicate question. Its actually already answered there... you just have to scroll down a bunch.
5
A: How to grep a specific line _and_ the first line of a file?

ThorYou could also use tee and head: ps aux | tee >(head -n1) | grep syslog Note however that as long as tee is unable to ignore SIGPIPE signals (see e.g. the discussion here) this approach needs a workaround to be reliable. The workaround is to ignore SIGPIPE signals, this can for example be done...

 
@derobert Hmm, well, that wasn't the question, though. So still counts, imo.
 
@FaheemMitha Yeah, slightly different, but the reason its breaking is the same, the SIGPIPE handling.
 
@derobert Ok. Still worth answering directly, imo
If someone had the same question, would they think to look there?
 
3:43 PM
@FaheemMitha Yeah. If it gets reopened I (or anyone else) feel free to answer it there. Its too bad there isn't a better way to point to specific answers other than comments.
 
@derobert Why is a comment a bad way?
 
@FaheemMitha Well, its separate from the closed-as-duplicate message. Would be nice if that message could somehow point to an answer... Not sure how to do that, of course, as you want to allow future (possibly better) answers as well.
 
@derobert Oh, I see. That could be proposed as a feature.
on meta stackexchange I suppose. Seems reasonable to me.
Could always be updated/adjusted later. Should also be optional.
 
 
1 hour later…
4:54 PM
@FaheemMitha BTW, sorry for how long that answer is taking. Have you updated your ntp yet? :-/
 
@derobert ntp?
If that is an acronym, this would be a good time to mention I hate 'em. Except the ones I use, of course.
 
@FaheemMitha Network Time Protocol. ntp.org
Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a networking protocol for clock synchronization between computer systems over packet-switched, variable-latency data networks. In operation since before 1985, NTP is one of the oldest Internet protocols in use. NTP was originally designed by David L. Mills of the University of Delaware, who still oversees its development. NTP is intended to synchronize all participating computers to within a few milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). It uses a modified version of Marzullo's algorithm to select accurate time servers and is designed to mitigate the effects...
 
@derobert Oh, that NTP. Why does it need updating?
And doesn't it update itself?
Or was there some security issue?
More information, please.
 
@FaheemMitha Yes, security issues. CVE-2014-9293 CVE-2014-9294 CVE-2014-9295 CVE-2014-9296 support.ntp.org/bin/view/Main/…
Of course, it can't be important, otherwise someone would have come up with a catchy name and graphic.
 
@derobert Oh, well I guess I get to wait on Debian for this.
If it is this one, then yes.
ntp (1:4.2.6.p5+dfsg-2+deb7u1) wheezy-security; urgency=high

* Apply patches from the Red Hat security update:
+ ntp-4.2.6p5-cve-2014-9293.patch
+ ntp-4.2.6p5-cve-2014-9294.patch
+ ntp-4.2.6p5-cve-2014-9295.patch
+ ntp-4.2.6p5-cve-2014-9296.patch

-- Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> Sat, 20 Dec 2014 18:37:08 +0100
 
5:02 PM
@FaheemMitha Then see DSA-3108-1
@FaheemMitha Yep, that's it.
 
At some point I seem to have enabled automatic upgrades.
So I don't necessarily see the upgrades come in.
 
> testing migration, excuses:
Too young, only 0 of 5 days old
**Not touching package due to block request by freeze (check https://release.debian.org/jessie/freeze_policy.html if update is needed)**
oh fuck
 
@Braiam presumably the release team will unblock that...
but yeah, you may want to pull that from unstable if you're running publicly-accessible ntp server and haven't otherwise mitigated.
 
@derobert still running jessie?
 
@FaheemMitha Only on my desktops, not servers. Servers run stable.
 
5:08 PM
@derobert Ok, so both then.
 
Yes, a bunch of servers running oldstable too.
 
The fun systemd experiences were with jessie, I assume. Any improvement on that?
 
@FaheemMitha Well, at least they'll stop changing things soon...
 
sudo aptitude -t unstable upgrade '?and(?name(ntp), ~i)' FTW!
 
@FaheemMitha also, I have a weird config, which despite its continuous breaking was still worse with sysvinit.
 
5:12 PM
@derobert Oh. Why weird?
 
@FaheemMitha I have 1. bring up network (including a bridge); 2. bring up openvpn; 3. mount some filesystems
 
@derobert I assume that is necessary.
 
Convincing init systems to not consider those "some filesystems" as remote-fs is interesting
 
@derobert Do tell
 
Well, by default, remote-fs is everything in fstab that is NFS, etc.
sysvinit did that too.
 
5:16 PM
And that is undesirable?
 
Yes. Because, openvpn and a lot of other things say they can't start until remote-fs is available, to support /usr (etc.) on NFS.
 
@derobert no joy... nobody had requested it
 
@Braiam I suspect the person who did the NMU will.
 
@Braiam time to step up
 
So the default setup is "mount requires OpenVPN, OpenVPN requires mount". Systemd does support actually declaring dependencies on a path (and mine are under /mnt, so nothing would depend on them, except I'd add depends to kdm), but that's not what Debian does.
On my other machines, systemd hasn't been a problem at all. Its the weird config on this machine.
 
5:21 PM
@derobert I don't understand the problem.
 
@FaheemMitha /mnt/foo depends on openvpn. openvpn depends on remote-fs. remote-fs depends on /mnt/foo
 
So openvpn and NFS don't play nice together?
@derobert so how is this usually handled?
clearly recursive dependencies are bad.
 
Well, systemd drops one of the depends arbitrarily. That's how it handles that mess.
 
@derobert heh, circular dependency :P
 
I suspect most people don't have OpenVPN come up at system start and then mount a remote filesystem over it.
 
@derobert That does not sound like an ideal solution
@derobert You need both of them to come up automatically on system startup?
 
@FaheemMitha Well, I could always run mounts by hand. But they need to be up before I log in to the desktop.
 
@derobert Ok
 
I guess the other solution is probably autofs or similar. Since the first access won't be until after openvpn is up.
with sysvinit, it required at least:
anthony@Zia:~$ ls /etc/insserv/overrides/
mountnfs.sh openvpn rsyslog umountnfs.sh
oh right, there is actually another complexity...
dnsmasq needs to come up after OpenVPN as well.
... and before the mounts
And the OpenVPN start script happily returns once the daemon is started, which is often before the VPN is actually up...
 
6:16 PM
@derobert I hope you aren't writing it directly in your browser. Browsers can crash.
 
@FaheemMitha Stack Exchange actually auto-saves your draft answer server side.
 
@derobert Oh, that explains why I keep seeing my drafts popping up after I exited an editing session. Regardless, it is not a feature I would rely on. Never rely on third parties to keep your data safe.
 
@FaheemMitha Yes, and indeed at the moment it appears to be broken :-P
 
@derobert huh
 
@FaheemMitha It'd normally give a message that it was autosaved, it's not. And when I check in another browser, it doesn't show the latest.
But no, normally I write answers straight in the browser, unless its really long. They don't crash that much...
 
6:22 PM
@derobert I tend to write anything non-trivial in a text file. Normally using version control.
You could always publish a draft and refine it later.
 
Indeed.
 
7:04 PM
 
@Braiam indeed, left a comment, going to go to lunch then finish the ffmpeg answer...
 
7:28 PM
 
7:43 PM
@Braiam Your icon with the hat looks really weird.
 
there fixed @faheem
 
I was just watching the 1970 film "The Railway Children." It's official. I am old and jaded. I spent the whole time thinking how improbably nice everything and everybody was.
 
8:15 PM
no @mikeserv, I don't fall for it
 
 
2 hours later…
9:48 PM
@FaheemMitha /me curses the lack of TeX support on Unix.SE.
 
@derobert mm? I haven't seen the need for it...
 
@Braiam Answering @FaheemMitha's ffmpeg question really needs it...
I'm having to write out things like «H» × dar ÷ PAR. Or PAR⁻¹
 
@jimmij this is the message I was replying too (little grey arrow on the left of the message). I thought you were talking backticks in bash at first glance..
 
@derobert You should write a petition.
Actually, if I recall correcting, tex.sx itself doesn't support TeX.
Weird though that might seem.
 
10:04 PM
if I'm not wrong the only thing SE supports is MathJax
 
@FaheemMitha Well it also stands to reason that people where, in general, more open and kinder back in in the day.. (that depends on locale somewhat as well I suppose)
 
@FaheemMitha No site supports TeX, only Mathjax. For tex.SE, the differences would be disastrously confusing
 
Or so it seems anyway.
 
@Seth How do figure that? I think it is just that it is a childrens book. And Nesbit consciously tailored it to be appealing to middle-class households.
The UK during that time period was pretty bad. Worse than it is now, I'd say.
Mass education and a some semblance of a welfare state have made the British Isles a bit less of a hell-hole than it was in centuries past.
@Gilles So it was argued. I don't see why they couldn't have some sort of on-off switch.
And yes, by TeX both myself and Anthony meant MathJax, I'm pretty sure.
BTW, has anyone here actually read any Nesbit? Just curious. Perhaps @terdon. He seems to get around.
 
10:08 PM
@FaheemMitha Yep. That's what I was thinking of.
 
@FaheemMitha Well I'm not from the UK nor was I around that far back but all the people I talk to attest that it was. Never locked your doors, left your keys in the car, gave strangers rides, etc etc. I do see your point though, it is much too unrealistic even taking into account supposed cultural shifts. Spoke slightly too soon, sorry ;P
 
@derobert spending a lot of time on the ffmpeg question. If so, sorry about that.
@Seth I wasn't around in the UK in 1900, obviously, so hard to say. But sure, I can see there might have been cultural shifts that might not all be for the good. For example, modern London is supposedly a rather dangerous place. Drugs and violence. Maybe it was a bit less scary in 1900, though I don't see why.
If anyone here is from the UK, feel free to educate us/me.
I did live in the UK, but it was in a smaller place, which didn't feel dangerous at all.
Dickens, for example, paints a rather convincing picture of England as hell on earth, circa the 1850s. See, for example, the early parts of David Copperfield. It gets brighter later on, but the earlier parts are the most believable.
 
10:32 PM
0
A: Burning a video file with non-standard aspect ratio to DVD

derobertThe basic approach is to add black borders to your video to make it fit in one of DVD's allowed aspect ratios. TLDR: skip down to In Conclusion. A few definitions First, though, I need to define a couple of different things: An aspect ratio is simply the width of something divided by the hei...

... and no, I haven't proofread it. Or even reread it at all. Hopefully it makes sense.
 
As a Brit who has been around for a while (maybe not London in the 1900's, but still) I have to say London is really not considered dangerous or full of crime
As big cities go, it's actually pretty safe.
 
grumble <sup>4</sup>⁄<sub>3</sub> grumble TeX ... MathJAX ... grumble
 
10:56 PM
@RoryAlsop Ok. Thanks for the feedback. Though there are bad areas, I gather. True of any big city, granted.
@derobert That looks very through, thanks. I hope you didn't spend too long writing it. Now, if only we could make sure people see it...
Maybe add some keywords? :-)
@RoryAlsop from your profile, Scotland, apparently. In my mind, Scotland + crime = Transpotting. :-)
 
@FaheemMitha well, I'm not sure what keywords to add to attract everyone. Some pop idol's name, I guess?
Or maybe the name of a popular TV show, and 'download' or 'torrent'
 
@derobert LOL. The obvious thing is the error message, but I think I already covered that.
I'm not sure what is being asked here:
1
Q: Get apt's key ids and fingerprints in machine-readable format

Naftuli Tzvi KayI'm trying to patch an issue in puppetlabs-apt to enable the use of key fingerprints as identifiers to ensure that a certain key is present by its 40-digit key fingerprint. I'm having difficulty checking that the key is present and I need a command which will output the following: The 8-digit ...

@derobert so, after inspection, the kalvan recipe does make sense?
@derobert the good news is that googling "unknown mpeg2 aspect ratio" has my question (and your answer) at spot no 10.
 
@FaheemMitha yes, it does. Though I think (as I mention) there is a slight bug in it. I posted a followup on that forum too, asking about that bug.
 
: That's very through. I'll read through your answer and try to understand it. I gave up on this ages ago, but with a recipe that actually works, maybe time to try again.
Incidentally, this recipe converts everything to 16:9. What is something else is a better fit?
 
@FaheemMitha You can change the numbers to use 4:3 instead
The numbers to change are actually given in that answer...
 
11:11 PM
@derobert Ok.
I'll read it.
Does a TV running off a DVD player actually show an aspect ratio that is 16/9 or 4/3?
 
@FaheemMitha depends on the TV
some "smart" tv's will try to scale up/down to the screen size
 
@Braiam you mean they will try to match the aspect ratio of the screen if it isn't 16/9 or 4/3?
@derobert you said earlier this might be on topic for another SE site. Which one did you have in mind?
 
@FaheemMitha to whatever the tv is set on
 
@FaheemMitha I was thinking of the video production site, not sure if it actually belongs there.
 
@derobert Ok, I thought you might mean that one. Based on a quick look at the site, I don't think so. I could be wrong, though.
@derobert in your post to that forum, you forgot to include a link to the unix.sx question. :-)
 
11:27 PM
I didn't want it to come across as shameless self-promotion.
 
@derobert What's life without a little shameless self-promotion? Also, if thingy actually sees your post, he will be in a better position to understand your point if he can see your calculations.
Btw, your profile looks weird too. With that sun thing.
 
@FaheemMitha yep, I need to get a new hat. I put them on as soon as I'm awarded them.
 
btw, fingerprint[-8:] just means 8 from the end I think. it treats the string as a array. - means counting from the right. you can test it
In [1]: a = "abcdefghij"

In [2]: a[-2]
Out[2]: 'i'

In [3]: a[-3]
Out[3]: 'h'

In [4]: a[-4]
Out[4]: 'g'

In [5]:
Oops, sorry
In [5]: a[-4:]
Out[5]: 'ghij'
So -8 is the last eight characters.
 
Yeah. I guessed that, but I didn't want to confirm something correct in a language I don't know. Especially when I can easily give the desired behavior on fairly plain English instead.
Anyway, I'm off.
 
11:43 PM
@Faheem - Scotland != crime. Scotland = mountains, lochs, heather, haggis, whisky
The UK is an incredibly safe country - we don't do guns, we're nearly as apologetic as the Canadians...
 

« first day (1535 days earlier)      last day (3410 days later) »