The Water Cooler - 2013-08-29

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12:54 AM

@RhysW: Ha! Glad I amused you. :)

1 hour later…

2:10 AM

I think its better to give comments, or give negative comments, instead of just clicking down vote, and being lazy. — Mahmoud Apr 20 at 15:25

-3

Q: Where is the place of technical people in the big picture as compared to visionaries or business people?

Dear fellow programmers I'm the CTO and the lead programmer at our start-up. Our CEO came into office with hurry and asked me to reschedule so we can pick a very important customer at the airport. When at the airport, I realized the customer is actually more of a business man, a visionary (and a...

tech-industry business

^^^ "Dear fellow programmers... I feel like we technical people are more of a tool, just a step, in the big scheme of things. One thousand of us could be replaced in a flash but one Steve Jobs can not be replaced by anything ..."

^^^ I'm going to nail this quote right above my computer monitor so that I stay grounded.

Is this an exam question? — Joe Strazzere Jun 18 at 23:02

2:31 AM

@RhysW If you have sufficient reputation you can vote to delete I believe. Even if questions were closed, they may have valuable information (or just have had so many eyes on them or links to them they should be kept around for that reason). Otherwise, the general concept is close -> delete I believe.

6 hours later…

8:41 AM

@JimG. I recently ranted about downvoting without comments (from a perspective of a downvoter :)

38

A: Dealing with "Find out who's going to buy the croissants"

I wasn't going to go out on a limb but since a follow up question has been asked... More importantly, why is it any of your business? ...I would like to address that. I for one am concerned about answers rather than the question. What I see in "Croissants", look painfully familiar to an is...

I downvoted maybe several hundreds low quality answers and pain and effort involved in making a difference goes far beyond tiny puny -1 rep penalty for the answer downvote.

Don't expect to make a difference if you just drop downvote and run away. Chances for it to work are less than 50/50, probably something like 30 against 70 or even 20:80. Yes, and that's fair, low effort makes low impact.

When other readers look at the answer having negative score without an explanation, they tend to think (unless it's obviously horrible) WTH guy invested an effort to write something and got downvoted …

9:36 AM

0

Q: Same question goes through close review queue twice, is that good or bad?

Recently stumbled upon a question that has been put into close votes queue twice: First round (3:1 Leave Open) Second round (4:1 Close) As far as I can tell, question entered the queue second time after first round votes on it expired and someone else cast a new vote. Is it good or bad that ...

discussion review vote-to-close

10:06 AM

@gnat your answer makes some very good points on how to combat sympathy upvotes

Morning all

hey there

hmm i think ill stop editing tags for now before i get on someones nerves, will do more tomorrow xD up to 12 atm

@jmac true, though im in that odd rep band where i cannot be the first to vote for deletion, but once someone else does i can add mine to it.

1 hour later…

11:24 AM

@RhysW: Rep ban? Seriously? For what reason?

11:51 AM

The two-man rule is a control mechanism designed to achieve a high level of security for especially critical material or operations. Under this rule all access and actions requires the presence of two authorized people at all times. Nuclear weapons Per US Air Force Instruction (AFI) 91-104, "The Two Person Concept" is designed to prevent accidental or malicious launch of nuclear weapons by a single individual. In the case of Minuteman missile launch crews, both operators must agree that the launch order is valid by comparing the authorization code in the launch order against a Sealed Aut...

12:07 PM

@JimG. He said rep band as in reputation band

12:34 PM

@JimG. Yes as michael says, not rep ban as far as i am aware! I certainly hope not anyway! xD

@gnat yeah what i find odd though is that i can be the second person, but i can never be the first person to suggest deletion, which i find odd

12:53 PM

@MichaelGrubey hows things going for you lately then? still dealing with support issues? xD

1:03 PM

@RhysW oh I think I can explain that, based on my own experience. When I first acquired a magic delete vote wand at Programmers, I cast a few questionable votes (that I wouldn't today). These slippery votes still hang in the tools, making it harder (to me myself, go figure) to review stuff coming in there. If you did too much of what I did back then, such kind of first hit suspension could make a good sense, usability wise. Thing is, delete votes are forever

3

Q: Why don't delete votes expire?

According to this question, reopen-votes have an expiry time (4 days) whenever the post has more than 100 viewers. However, another fact is that delete votes never expire, and only 3 such votes are required for deletion. Reopening requires 5 votes however. So it is far easier for a closed questi...

discussion vote-to-delete vote-to-reopen

@gnat true, though i have never had the ability to cast the first delete vote. though i think that doesnt come til 4k, what i find odd is that they dont trust me to cast the frist one but they do the second and third

unless of course post is deleted + undeleted, that cleans things up

@RhysW oh wait I need to check that deeper then

@gnat the basic review tools come before the 4k ones, so i can review others delete votes, but dont yet have the ability to cast them initially, not sure if that was intended to work like that or not

@RhysW could you please take a look into this question and tell if delete is shown to you? It has no del votes as of now, and delete link is shown to me there, although my rep is less than half of yours

@gnat i do see delete on that, maybe im going crazy

maybe the examples i was picking were too 'fresh' to be deleted

1:12 PM

user image

Freehand circles? perfect.

@RhysW too fresh may be the case. I tested few on hold questions (ie these closed for less than 5 days), there's no del vote shown to me there

211

Q: Closing changes: [on hold], unclear, too broad, opinion-based, off-topic reasons, bye-bye to Too Localized

After a ton of discussion, work and input from the community, we're rolling out the remainder of major closing changes that you've helped us design, as discussed in these prior posts. They're live, network-wide RIGHT NOW!!! See also: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/06/the-war-of-the-closes/ ...

discussion close-reasons announcements

that could have been the problem, maybe now that the ones older than 5 days show as something different it will be easier for me to identify what i can do where

@RhysW freehand circles aren't always "perfect". I learned rather hard way that outside of MSO, these are often not quite welcome

in The Whiteboard, Apr 30 '12 at 13:48, by gnat

@ChrisF here's the version with rounded rectangles and straight lines: http://i.stack.imgur.com/U9hkO.jpg Please don't tell guys at MSO I did it - they will laugh at me. Anyway, does it look er... sufficiently polite for Programmers?

@gnat yeah, i found people prefer it more if they arent red, someone said t me that things circled in red make it look like im shouting at them

1:28 PM

@RhysW Dont get me started on that...stressing out big time at work :/

@RhysW How about you?

@RhysW yeah. Preference for red freehand over green artificial seems to be MSO endemic thing

Not enough freehand. — agf Sep 19 '11 at 9:41

above has been at this screen shot

user image

You can never have enough freehand...ever.

@gnat personally i prefer that, red is a bit harsh on the eyes and freehand covers a large area around the item making it hard to focus on what they are pointing out

@MichaelGrubey things a bit slow here lately, but might be moving on soon anyways

@RhysW As in slow at the WPSE or at your actual workplace?

@MichaelGrubey both!

jmac, gnat me and michael all at once, all we need is jmort and enderland and its a party :P

2

1:40 PM

two hot questions in two days, so many new users, so much teaching to do... For all of you regular folk, any chance you could try to explain downvotes for the next couple days? Links to the 'on-topic' portion of the help center and 'good subjective, bad subjective' should help out those inclined to learn. Those that aren't should be closed promptly if at all possible -- we are getting a lot of upvotes from (what I assume are) new members on many of these...

@jmac its like you read my mind, started doing that recently, also started actually answering again hopefully we can get some of these new ones to stick around

Yeah, it's just rough at the start.

And I'm (unreasonably) disturbed by some random downvotes on some of my answers.

@jmac im pretty sure once we get out of beta that youll be voted as a mod, whether you agree or not is a different matter :P

I sincerely doubt I will (I'll leave the "will what" ambiguous)

But I'm on the other side of the world at any rate, and probably one of the least qualified people as I am quite new to this whole SE thing.

@jmac i dont think your location matters too much :P

@jmac i can say with 100% certainty that you will be nominated, even if im not the one to nominate you

1:45 PM

If my programming experience is limited to google visualization API (read: some javascript), microsoft office vba, and some C# and qbasic back in the day, think I can get hired as a developer by some company that is desperately looking for warm bodies?

I have no idea how the mod nomination process works, so I'll take your word for it.

@jmac you already have more skills in that list than i do, so yeah, just depends what kind of negotiation you would be happy accepting

I think I'd enjoy being a programmer after reading so many of the questions from developers on this site.

Like this, "people read my screen" thing -- that made me chuckle. I have no cubicle. I can see 10 people's screens, 10 people can see mine.

Any site that is non-work related (including stack overflow) is blocked by the proxy server.

its basically code for 'im looking at thigns im not supposed to be looking at' xD

Yeah, Japan is absolutely insane about the level they will go to in order to prevent you from looking at stuff.

@jmac ouch really? we have free reign where we are, though we can all see eachothers screens

i also read that some people fake sleeping at work as it is a sign of working hard

1:47 PM

We get mails sent around every week saying, "If you use japanese file sharing program you will be fired. If you post about the company, you will be fired. If you share on facebook during work even on your phone, you may be fired."

people real sleep at work during lunch.

and on the trains

Japan isn't a very religious country. 70% are buddhist. 70% are shinto. 70% have no religion at all.

So the concept of church is very foreign to them.

But I've figured it out -- if you explained a Japanese commuter train to a foreigner, I would explain it as a Japanese church.

how does that add up? xD

@RhysW I have applied for a job as a 2nd Line support person...I think its going to be interesting to say the least!

Some people read. Some people pray. Some people sleep. But it is silent and respectful. And those who speak are glared at with the evil eye.

some crazy salesman math right there :P

It's not actually a joke or poor math.

Shinto = happy stuff (births, weddings)

Buddhism = bad stuff (death)

1:50 PM

@jmac that seems like a good way of explaining it, id like to visit japan because i agree with a lot of what they do, not all, some things im very against, but i imagine it would be an interesting experience

Identity = non-religious

Japanese culture is intertwined with religion, but people view that as culture or religion. Think of it as Judaism. Is it a culture or a religion, or both?

You can have non-religious Jews, for instance.

And I don't think you actually agree with what you do, I think you agree with what you think they do, which is likely very different from what they actually do. But it is a great place to visit. Let me know if you head to Western Japan (Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe) and I'll buy you a beer.

I'll be back in a few, gotta do some chores

2:09 PM

Thankyou to whoever is following me through my tag edits approving them as i go!

Did a load this morning for you.

@RhysW The tags really need a good cleaning. I made a giant list of tags, and I think we can really cull them down to a minimum that will help categorize better (and have people organize their tags better), but I didn't have time to group and recommend one-by-one so I deleted the meta thread.

Just did some more then but have to come back in 9 hours as hit a 20 max :(

Which probably wasn't the brightest idea...

Because I forget how I made the damned thing. Pretty sure I took the tag list in HTML, copied it in to Excel, and did it with formulas (I think this eliminates any consideration I'd ever get to become a developer)

@jmac being a developer isnt about what you know as much as it is about what you are willing and able to learn

@jmac they really do need a cleaning so ive decided to put some time aside and give it a go, seeing which ones need deleting and which ones need defining, should also aid in people being able to correctly tag if they can see what circumstances the tags are for

2:13 PM

I get that (in theory). I was reading the codinghorror blog and looked at what Jeff asks potential employees over the phone interviews.

Those questions are bloody impossible for me to answer since I never studied CS. I have no idea about data types or the like. Math? No problem. Problem solving? No problem. Knowing what the difference between a linked list and hashed are? big problem.

Here is the article:

codinghorror.com/blog/2008/01/…

@jmac shrugs to be honest, i couldnt tell you off the top of my head

I guess coming from a business background (errr, in the sense that I work in business), the goal of programming to me is to get the right answer.

And I'm not a big stickler on how it gets done so long as it gets done on time.

So if someone can't tell me what the difference between an int and a long is, I don't think it's much of an issue so long as the program ends up working. Perhaps I am just on the wrong track here.

Dont we have a United-Kingdom tag as well as the UK? If so they should probably be synomamized

(my company is under the impression that the program doesn't need to even work -- that just having a bunch of stuff in it is sufficient to pat everyone on the back and call it a day)

@Chad yeah, synonyms are my next step after deletions and definitions

2:16 PM

(we have multiple systems designed in Excel 4.0 or whatever its VB equivalent was, it is incredible)

@jmac people should know the basics all the time, but information is so easy to come by its not needed to memorise everything, to me if someone is able to find the right information and put it to use correctly, then thats good enough for me

Ah, yeah, @RhysW I approved all your tag wiki edits, but I think everyone knows what 'blogging' is, the goal is to define what the tag applies to. So for instance, 'Anything involving blogging related to the workplace, such as confidentiality, use by future employers for research, use as a sample, etc.'

@jmac good point, ill make them more of a focus from that point

@RhysW Let's start a company. You be the brains. I'll be the guy who lets you work in peace and finds ways to sell the product.

Anyone else is welcome to join. All you have to bring is: coding ability, and a business idea.

sounds perfect, i was looking for a new job anyway :P

2:19 PM

I can probably sell it.

Man, you are doing good work on these tags @Rhys! You should make a meta thread showing 'tags done' and 'tags not done' so that people can contribute as well.

(I think I can make edits without approval, and could bang some out tomorrow)

hmm, business and company tags. not sure of their use to be honest

take a look at the questions tagged with them, and see if you can find a pattern

if not, suggest a burninate on the meta for them.

yeah i had a look at company and could see an obvious pattern

ill check for business

because that will be a synonym for company most likely

@jmac yeah, slow day at work so figured id put my time to good use :P

@RhysW I have the envious position of overseeing a project that was outsourced internally to one of our subsidiaries

hmm, i think business could be kept for the useage of beinging extra business to the company, i.e more clients, more projects ect

2:23 PM

and it was botched so incredibly badly, it was incredible.

@RhysW I would put that under "growing-business" or the like -- business is too generic and would pick up all sorts of other questions just because everything is related to business.

@jmac that doesnt surprise me, i rarely hear of these things going well!

@RhysW I gave the guy in charge the specs of the system, with a mind toward (1) adding features (2) maintainability (3) non-brokenness

he designed the system based on (1) expediency (2) what he thought was best (3) making sure nobody else could ever touch it so he was guaranteed usefulness in the future

@jmac i meant business as in 'im bringing some extra business your way' as in, extra trade, sort of, i guess its a bit ambiguous when i cant even define it properly :P

So now I have to explain to a bunch of people who have never even used amazon why this system isn't proper, and why it should be properly outsourced.

@jmac that is unfortunately all too common from what ive seen, had to clean some really messy pieces of work that i swear was written for job security

2:26 PM

Is it bad to say I'm not a fan of company politics?

@jmac not even a little bad!

oh, editing tag wikis counts as editing posts apparently

@RhysW Yeah, you get 2 rep per edit I believe.

(I learned that on stack overflow, where I put together my piece de resistance)

mm, and a badge for editing a lot, i thought edits counted only Q and A's not T's!

@jmac fantastic! very descriptive for sure!

Congratulations! You will be badged and respected by the whole wide community. As you should. Editing those things is boring.

It took me several tries to get people to combine the 4 separate tags that were all part of the current one tag

that killed me. It was such a low volume tag, and the audience was split in to 4, and despite it being something anyone with over 2,500 rep could do, nobody would vote synonyms for me.

They all said, "Let's ask the other regular users!" despite the fact that I was the only regular user. It made me sad. Finally I caved and went to meta chat, and animuson was nice enough to do it for me, and now the tag is lively.

Though asgallant will pass me in a hurry, bless his soul. He is awesome at this coding stuff. If I had a company, I'd hire him.

stackoverflow.com/tags/google-visualization/topusers

1.6k 4 9

google-visualization javascript google-charts-api charts php jquery google

@jmac haha, being friendly with mods is always the way to go for low volume, low user things that wont get any attention otherwise

2:33 PM

Mods have special powers. I don't know what he did, but it was magical.

well you could find out soon enough if we ever get out of beta :P

And screw modship, I'm aiming higher!

stackexchange.com/about/hiring/…

I will become a 'community manager'

(well, probably not, but it can't hurt to apply)

haha, well, thats one way to go i suppose!

Fluency in Japanese/English? Check.

Active on Stack Exchange? I suppose so.

Self-motivated? Indeed!

Enthusiastic, Outgoing, Positive, etc. Plead the 5th.

Extremely strong communication skills? Of course!

@jmac you do talk A LOT :P

2:36 PM

Mastery of diplomacy and persuasion? Of course!

you have to have most of it, youre a salesman, your career is built on being persuasive!

@jmac You got my vote on that

Ability to express disagreement clearly while still making people like and respect you? @Chad -- how am I doing on that one? Do you like and respect me?

Why would they need Japanese though just wondering...?

No idea. There is japanese.stackexchange.com

2:37 PM

@MichaelGrubey they dont, hes just showing off :P

No, really, they do RhysW.

oh they do

They actually do though @RhysW

my bad

xD

Community Manager (bilingual English/Japanese) - NYC or remote

2:37 PM

what are the chances of that

that you just happen to have both of those xD

I am reading off the required skills and showing my qualifications!

or has this been your life goal all along

and going to japan was just a stepping stone :P

@jmac just...just dont forget about us down here

Meaningful experience building online communities -- probably not. This is what will kill any chance of me getting the job.

us lowly answerers and taggers :P

2:38 PM

(Well, I mean, I have been involved in online communities, but I don't have an active blog as it is strongly discouraged by my employment contract)

Some aptitude and interest in areas such as psychology, political science, economics, sociology, or the humanities in general? Religion & Political Science double major. Oh yeah. Another reason I will fail to be gainfully employed.

those are harsh entry requirements!

Really? They actually aren't so bad, save for the 'building online communities' part, which seems lofty (but I really don't know to what extent they mean)

And the 'always be positive and have people like you' part, because unfortunately I do not have the patience of a @jmort

Religion & Political Science double major if you dont have it already you probably never will as youve gone past that stage in life is what i mean!

@jmac apart from one incident ive never seen you have any issues

No, I mean I already have that

I was a religion and political science double-major, so I am definitely all over the 'humanities in general' requirement.

ahh

was this position actually built around you? :L

2:43 PM

As you know, my father is, errrr, whoever owns Stack Exchange.

(Who owns Stack Exchange?)

Plot twist, i do

o_O

i dont really know, probably the person who created it?

Oh dear. Remember that I approved all those tag wikis!

Nah, Jeff Atwood moved away from SE.

i forget his name

2:44 PM

He is still an owner on paper, but not active.

john erricson or something like that currently isnt it?

And if Joel Spolsky was ever active in the running of it, it was a long time ago.

i think i just invented a person, was there ever a john erricson?

stackexchange.com/about/management

If there is, he isn't on the board.

Looks like it is Joel -- go figure.

i must have just made him up then, im sure he was someone important

Perhaps i existed in another life (July 31, 1803 – March 8, 1889) was the john erricsson of note!

2:46 PM

He is important! He was a Swedish-American Mechanical Engineer!

John Ericsson (July 31, 1803 – March 8, 1889) was a Swedish-American inventor and mechanical engineer, as was his brother Nils Ericson. He was born at Långbanshyttan in Värmland, Sweden, but primarily came to be active in England and the United States. He is remembered best for designing the steam locomotive Novelty (in partnership with engineer John Braithwaite) and the ironclad ship USS Monitor. Early career John's and Nils's father Olaf Ericsson who worked as the supervisor for a mine in Värmland had lost money in speculations and had to move his family from Värmland to Forsvik in 1...

im a couple of hundred years out it seems

He was old for someone in the 1800s, wow -- 86 for a male born around 1800?

I wonder what percentile he is for births in 1806.

OMG I didnt know Joel designed VBA... my respect for him has decreased

job - we have a tag, called job...hmm

Omg the VP of engineering is only 28

David Fullerton ♦, New York, NY

1.4k 8 24

jquery javascript html css div sql form-validation

2:48 PM

VBA is absolutely awesome Chad, I really don't know why people don't like it.

@RhysW I would say remove that tag fromany questions

It is really good and quick for doing really good and quick stuff in office applications.

@jmac every tool is a good tool until its in the wrong hands

we unfortunately are stuck with examples of people using it wrong day in and day out, hence the dislike

(I may be biased because it's likely the language I am best at)

(errr, computer language, definitely better at actual languages)

@jmac No it is really good at making engineers think that office is a development platform... that then come to real developers to figure out why their 80k line vba mess isnt workin

2:49 PM

Wrong use of VBA? You mean you aren't supposed to use it to try to turn Excel into database software?

Sorry, we're already speaking over my head here. I have no idea what a "development platform" is.

I agree vba is great for doing little things it is really bad at doing big things

(though I now know that office isn't one!)

VBA is the programming language that people think isnt a programming language, so some people make absolute messes with it, and it is not fun to clean up

Yes, it is awful at doing big things. It's great for automating tedious parts of working with office applications.

@Chad agreed, its redundant

2:52 PM

Okay, I'm probably one of those guys making a mess.

It took me a good 3 years to figure out the concept of functions that can have an argument passed in so you don't need to copy-paste 20 times.

hah, chrome tries to change burnination of this tag into urination of this tag

(okay, 3 years is an exaggeration)

It's pushing midnight, time to sleep, have to be up before 6.

(at least it's Friday).

ahh cya jmac! forgot about the time zones

Someone send an e-mail to Joel and let him know I'd be perfect for the Japanese community manager position, okay?

(since I'm sure one of you is buddy-buddy with him -- looking at you @gnat)

@jmac Where are you Jmac?

2:54 PM

I am from the US (East Coast). I live in Japan.

Have for the past decade, so the concept of "home" is a bit murky.

Is cool my Cousin lived their for 10 years returned to the states about 5 years ago

anyway, enjoy the rest of your day (what little is left @RhysW and @Michael) -- for those of you in the US, enjoy the entirety of the day.

Military @Chad?

@jmac enjoy friday! ill coax someone else into reviewing my tag edits while you are away :P

May the weekend treat you all well. Buy me a Pint at the Victoria if you are in the area @Rhys!

(I will pay for postage)

@jmac that can't be me. Look for someone with Portuguese

in The Whiteboard, Aug 23 at 21:27, by gnat

Portuguese, right now
Over me

in The Whiteboard, Aug 23 at 21:27, by gnat

3:03 PM

http://meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/2005/rhysws-tag-reviews-suggested-course-of-action

massive edit to this if anyone is keeping tabs on me :P

@jmac Many thanks and to you as well.

@RhysW have you ever had a drink there? I have heard its an amazing pub.

@MichaelGrubey i have not even heard about it until now!

someone from the US in Japan heard about it before i did!

i like that the person who proposed the workplace is still active on the SE, if not on WP itself

@jmac No he worked for Sony as an engineer

ettiquette is not a workplace topic – @Chad 3 mins ago

Im having a hard time with this, part of me is saying, 'i think there are occassions like business etiquette where this would be on topic' whilst the rest of me is screaming 'think of an example then' and i cant

2 hours later…

5:12 PM

@RhysW business ettiquette = professionalism

3 hours later…

7:48 PM

@Chad yes, thats the one i was trying to think of

3 hours later…

11:09 PM

@Chad I'm envious -- Sony is supposed to be a great company to work for (as far as Japanese companies go) -- most Japanese manufacturers have a huge issue keeping foreigners employed, so a 10 year stint is really impressive. What is he doing now that he is back home?

Oh sweet mother of mercy, we have our third hot question in as many days!

6

Q: How to deal with a developer who thinks all technical questions should be answered by him only?

I work as a UX Program manager in a large creative team where we take on a number of projects. The team by itself is pretty amazing and I get along with everyone and enjoy learning with everyone. However recently I have had problems with one of the senior developers who takes offense to everythi...

communication colleagues

May the new visitors quickly become productive members, and may our regulars help them get there more quickly.

11:46 PM

@rhysw Batna may not be the place in Algeria (I can't find the question with it), but rather Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement:

Best alternative to a negotiated agreement

In negotiation theory, the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement or BATNA is the course of action that will be taken by a party if the current negotiations fail and an agreement cannot be reached. BATNA is the key focus and the driving force behind a successful negotiator. A party should generally not accept a worse resolution than its BATNA. Care should be taken, however, to ensure that deals are accurately valued, taking into account all considerations, such as relationship value, time value of money and the likelihood that the other party will live up to their side of the bargai...

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