The Whiteboard

12:25 AM

cv-plz This question and this question

Robert Harvey

New moderator technique: paste a link to a canonical answer into the custom close reason. Example:

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Q: Average in Mysql

I have a database in mysql workbench like this that update every second I need to find average of "suhu_udara" every hour or every 3600 data Please help me , thank you

@RobertHarvey Nice. Could you put a first two CVs on those questions so they hit the queue?

They are the last university questions, and I'm out.

Robert Harvey

Done.

12:43 AM

@RobertHarvey thx

@Marc one of the best ways to deal with SE when you're unsure about a question is to go to the site's (whatever site- I do this on sites I don't know well) main chat and ask in there if the question makes sense and how to write it clearly. The 20 rep thing is confusing if you're new but just by joining various sites you'll get a bump to your rep and get to 20 pretty quickly. I think if you join 10 sites you automatically get 100 rep on all sites or some such for instance

Anytime I want to ask a question on a site I don't know well like IT security or pets or home improvement I go ask in their chat room my question and see what I can do to make it clear and fitting to the site before posting it. The reason SE is so persnickety about question quality is because it's not here to solve your problem, it's actually here to gather authoritative helpful-to-many questions and answers- like Wikipedia is there to gather authoritative helpful-to-many information

@Marc read this:

Generics to solve baseclass type variance

3 hours ago, 6 minutes total – 14 messages, 3 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked 22 secs ago by Jimmy Hoffa

Tell me if my description of your problem is accurate or makes sense to you

user15026

@JimmyHoffa No, the 100 rep bonus comes from having 200 rep on one site

@AshleyNunn You don't tell me what to do!

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Not generally, no :)

@Marc If that is your question I think we can easily edit it down to something more clear and concise- I think your question was such a mess because you didn't understand the problem well which is understandable, that's why you wanted to ask about it

if it's not, then I completely missed the mark on what your question was

@AshleyNunn still, you get a rep bump from joining some number of sites don't you? Or at least you used to

user15026

12:51 AM

@JimmyHoffa Not as far as I am aware

user15026

as far as I am aware, there's just the 100 for having the 200 rep somewhere

either way, answer a simple question or two, suggest edits to questions or answers and you'll get rep. Programmers is a very difficult site to gather rep on because we tend to focus on pretty advanced things, SO is much easier because you just need to show someone what bugs are in their code and bingo bango you get rep in no time

user15026

@JimmyHoffa Yeah, there are quite a few vote-happy sites that you can start on, if you just want to get that quick bump. Just make sure you ask decent stuff, and give good answers, and 200 rep isn't that hard to get to in most places if you're careful about quality.

Marc

1:32 AM

@JimmyHoffa I think your example is good. But the problem is confusing me too much at the moment. So I can't say what should the question about after an edit.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa its not too hard, it just that you need to give sensible and helpful answers that are more than a sentence or so.

Marc

Generics seem to be the easiest way to solve this design issue. But this would be a Java like solution. I started to form a question where I keep out all of the programming languages and discuss it with design patterns. The reason for this is that I often end up with code which is not reusable enough or it is reusable, but I have to implement the same code at different places (duplicates).

The composition pattern advice was good, but I don't understand this design pattern well enough. It seems to me that you end up in a bunch of interfaces, for which I've to implement the behaviour methods over end over again. This makes me headache.

Q: Where do I go if I want to make a difference?

1:47 AM

Hello!

First time here

I asked this off-topic question

0

I recently read this article: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/429690/why-we-cant-solve-big-problems/ I'm a relatively young computer programmer, with around three years working experience under my belt. While I do enjoy the tasks I do as a programmer, it bothers me that I know ...

career-development future

I was told to get 20 reputation and ask here, which I did

user55340

I would suggest that you get 20 rep to get into chat and ping me (and others) there. You can find 'making a difference' in different places... and they're not at all glamourous. — MichaelT May 12 at 2:58

user55340

Whee! That was my advice....

the tl; dr is that in the face of global warming, the entire field of programming seems pointless

@MichaelT Yep, followed your advice

Ok

What does that have to do with global warming, environmental disasters, and so on?

user55340

One part of the code that I'm working on is a finance tool for offenders who have been paroled who have restitution to pay. Why? Because they've found that sometimes offenders with restitution get into financial trouble again and reoffend... and are back in the system.

user55340

(it would be available to all, but the ones with restitution are the ones where finances are somewhat tracked in the current system)

user55340

1:51 AM

Little finance program... keeping people who want to stay out of prison out of prison and helping them manage their money better.

user55340

That's a difference in my book.

Well

yes, if we take that tack, we can just say that if you're getting paid, you're making a difference, since clearly someone has deemed your efforts worthy of reward

user55340

I used to work at a logistics company... that would work on computing the best route through town for auto-part deliveries. Saved quite a bit of gas each day with more efficient rounds (say hello to the TSPSolver serice)

@mooseburger you know, that could be re-written as: tl;dr: everyone will die someday, so the entire field of living seems pointless.

user55340

Google is on the forefront of the most efficient data centers in the world.

1:54 AM

there's more to motivation that solving the biggest problems in front of you

user55340

google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/internal

I mean, cancer kills a lot of people, so should we invest 100% of our effort into trying to solve cancer?

user55340

user55340

(PUE is Power Usage Effectiveness... it measures watts of power for computation vs wats of power for cooling)

@Ampt, you're being facetious. Perhaps everyone you and I know will dies, but the human species continues, hopefully to someday figure out a loophole out of enthropy

1:55 AM

I like that you can see summer vs winter

@mooseburger no, I'm pointing out that your argument is alarmist

yes, global warming is a serious problem, no, I don't believe that all other efforts are useless

user55340

@Ampt part of the reason they like the pac northwest... its colder all year around there from the current coming down the coast.

perhaps not useless, just insginificant

if you want to help solve it with your programming skills, I seriously applaud your effort, and wish you the best of luck

useless/insignificant (read: not worth doing)

It's like I'm a moisture farmer while the Galactic Civil War is going on

and to that, I say that you are wrong.

if you want to try and win the war, please, go ahead

there will be another after this one

and another after that

just as global warming is but one hurdle in mankinds existence.

Not saying that its an easy problem or that I think I can solve it... but I have faith that people like you, who are passionate about the problem, will save us all

user55340

1:58 AM

@mooseburger The essence of the job in IT is to make systems more efficient through the use of technology.

so I'm going to go ahead and do what I'm passionate about.

I personally don't believe technology is guaranteed to save us

maybe you're right. Maybe we're doomed

If anything all the scientific forecasts are pretty dire

user55340

Wherever that efficiency plays out... sometimes you see it in lower datacenter cooling costs. Sometimes its in social issues. Other places its in vehicle design and such. Other places its quality of life issues.

1:59 AM

@mooseburger look, I'm not disagreeing that it's a big deal. I've conceded that point.

but, there are a lot of big deals out there

what about asteroid mitigation plans?

we could solve global warming only to have an asteroid take us out

An asteroid impact is unlikely

global warming is occurring right now

tell that to the dinosaurs.

I'm not sure what you're looking for

agreement that the problem is bad?

help solving the problem?

user55340

Playing into the doom and gloom of global warming (while real) and spending resources like is going to be over tomorrow... that doesn't help things.

general well wishes?

Looking for suggestions as to what exactly I can do to at least help the cause

user55340

2:01 AM

Yes, big things are needed to avert it, but small things make it better too.

you're asking the wrong people haha. You need to ask the people solving the problem

if I had to guess, research and academia are where the big stuff is happening

Well, I was wondering if among the many programmers here there were a few that perhaps are working on something related

maybe you should run for office as a congressman and push a green agenda onto the US

user55340

We're mostly line of business types...

are a very, very, very small subset

user55340

2:03 AM

working as cogs in the machine to improve their efficiency.

user55340

But even our own improvements help things...

we have <20 regulars here. Out of the thousands of programmers in the world, this is the furthest from a good sample as you're going to get

user15026

@mooseburger This feels very much like a teaspoon and ocean problem - how do you define "related"? Like you're talking such big picture issues, what specifically are you looking for?

user15026

@Ampt Also this.

I don't wish you to think us uncaring... but we are pragmatic

2:04 AM

I don't know, that is why I wound up asking here

the gloom and doom does not motivate me. I do what I do because I'm passionate about it or it makes me happy

if the world ends tomorrow, I'll die a happy man, and that's about all I can ask for I suppose

user15026

@mooseburger So you don't know what you are looking for, but you wanted to find it here? I am a little confused by that.

user55340

Worried about global warming? How about (again from my DOC experience) improvement in network infrastructure at the prisons and courts so that judges can hear issues and cases from the prison rather than a 3h drive from Madison up to Northern Wisconsin?

user15026

@Ampt Sounds like a decent way to go about it.

user55340

Small change... but its a bit of CO2 that didn't need to be spent.

2:05 AM

if knowing that you could have added an extra day to the worlds life by contributing 110% of your effort to the cause will make you roll in your grave for the rest of eternity, you should do what you need to do to make peace with that.

And, as @MichaelT has been pointing out, we can all contribute in small ways to solve the problem, the same way we all contributed in small ways to cause it.

Yes, I did read what MichaelT said

which gave me some ideas

user15026

It's not something that can be fixed overnight - its going to have to be a series of small changes that turn into bigger changes. Like raindrops and an ocean.

(You should, he's a smart guy)

I know that

Anyway

I did have a vaguely formed idea

I know some machine learning

user55340

Prediction of water / power is a significant thing that power and utility companies are looking at.

2:08 AM

I thought that perhaps machine learning algorithms can be put to work in discovering new materials

user20683

If you really want to help, figure out how to simulate nuclear fusion accurately

user20683

that'll net you a turing award and a nobel simultaneously

user15026

Turing award?

user55340

I look at it more along the lines of we are the services industry of information... we're not researchers here... we keep the researchers machines running.

user20683

@AshleyNunn highest award for computer science

user15026

2:09 AM

@WorldEngineer ah :)

user20683

they don't hand out nobels for that or math

user20683

math is either the fields medal or the abel prize

user55340

Nobel awards in the sciences are for experimentalists, not theorists.

user20683

@MichaelT mostly because the theory stuff largely didn't exist at the time

user55340

Thats why Einstein didn't get a nobel for E = mc^2 - he got it for the photovoltaic effect.

user20683

2:11 AM

that's true

user20683

there's also a bunch of politics involved

user55340

nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates - look at what its awarded for.

user55340

> "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources"
"for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"
"for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems"

user55340

And so on... they are the experimental side of the physics world... not the theory.

user20683

@MichaelT except for the Higgs

user20683

2:14 AM

an experimental result yes but very much in the theory camp

user55340

> which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"

user55340

2:25 AM

@Ampt dataphys.org/list/electricity-power-demand

user55340

(other fascinating things in dataphys.org/list )

user55340

> The version at Said Business School in the exhibition Imagining Business, June 2008, asks passers-by to consider how strategic they have been this week and has badges with these texts:
•I made mistakes
•I saw the big picture
•I thought then acted
•I acted then thought
•I used Powerpoint

user55340

lucykimbell.com/LucyKimbell/PhysicalBarCharts.html

user55340

I'm amused at the last bullet point.

user55340

2:42 AM

And for other fun links for the night: On the taxonomy of spaceships (sci-fi)

user55340

All the public transit routes... in the world (well, at least those that have their schedules and routes available in the right format)

user15026

@MichaelT They do not have my buses.

user15026

They also only look to have the Toronto subway.

user15026

It's hardly "all".

user55340

> at least those that have their schedules and routes available in the right format

user15026

2:55 AM

I know, but I am just annoyed they don't have any I know.

user15026

Other than the TTC subway, but that's not all that interesting.

user55340

General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS)

user15026

Now I am curious what specification the TTC uses for buses and what GRT uses for buses because they both work in Google Maps. And I just like knowing things.

user15026

TTC is Toronto Transit Commission, GRT is Grand River Transit, so Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge

user55340

code.google.com/p/googletransitdatafeed/wiki/PublicFeeds - you'll note TTC isn't in the main list there, but it is mentioned in the comments. (Clicking the 'published' link in the tracker.geops.ch 'about' panel links to that)

user55340

3:01 AM

So it just may be they haven't picked up the feed because its not in the main table?

user55340

or... dunno... the link for TTC goes to a license page and maybe they didn't want to deal with that?

user55340

Oh neat... click on a route and see it all.