Root Access

Hello71

12:46 AM

I would have voted to close as subjective, but it might just be me.

Sathya

4:08 AM

@Hello71 This would be borderline of allowable, I suppose

Sathya

4:25 AM

Question to @Diago @IvoFlipse @Random : Why did Molly leave SU ?

random

:152648 From memory it was something related to the nature of other users on the site. Not sure though. Was offline for that whole period.

5

Q: Where did Molly go?

Being an irregular regular on Super User, I know most of the crew which are also usually the most knowledgeable ones, and the first on the scene, when it comes to answering questions. Lately, I haven't seen Molly answering any, and upon checking the user list I find her name missing. It isn't st...

discussion

Sathya

thanks for the link @random

random

All the posts are still there, but ghosted to user Molly7244

Sathya

yeah, I noticed that.

Molly/John T/Wil would almost beat anyone in getting an answer posted :/

shame that Molly had to leave, tho. Some of the best answers on SU

random

Have they slowed down though? Haven't ever really been on the site when they posted an answer for a fastest gun

Sathya

4:33 AM

John T has most definitely slowed down.

random

It's possible for Molly's account to be re-instated, but would take some kind of dev work for the unghosting and relinking.

Sathya

Wil, perhaps a little bit

Would Molly be interested in returning ?

was also reading about Neil on meta

Ivo's comment reminded me of Molly.

random

Asking for your account to be deleted is a drastic thing. Would personally just not log in for a while if the time for a break was needed

Sathya

True

Jeff Atwood

8:09 AM

@sathya @random Molly felt s/he (don't know gender) was

1) S/he feels anonymous voting is counter productive.
2) S/he feels the moderators are not doing enough to keep the site classy.
3) S/he is tired of being down-voted without any reasons as to why.

"You know what sucks ? Having 8k+ on Super User and then goto web apps or any other SE site where you have no rep and then you see this ugh question" -- flag it! we have mods that will handle it across all sites!

Diago

@Jeff FYI: I am so good I can close twice:

superuser.com/questions/184116/…

No idea how that happened btw :P

Jeff Atwood

it's possible if you click twice, I've done it before

you just count as vote #2

Diago

It could be the proxy at work being slow.

@JeffAtwood BTW. Thanks so much for my gift. It has come in truly handy :)

Jeff Atwood

8:36 AM

you're very welcome!

Josh

1:22 PM

Aw, rats, @JeffAtwood was here and I was asleep! I'll need to remember not to sleep during nighttime, apparently that's when the celebs appear ;-)

Sathya

4:22 PM

:152937 I see, thanks for clearing that up.

:152938 yeah, that's what I do. Just feels weird not being able to do something, when you're so used to doing it all the time.

2

Q: Why is google.com not opening for me ?

I'm having this weird problem where only google.com and Google's subdomains are not opening. I'm using Chrome, though the same behaviour is prevalent in IE8. Seems name resolution for google.com fails, as get an error message Error 105 (net::ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED): The server could not be f...

windows-xp browser internet-connection

Having this weird problem ^

even google talk doesn't connect.

Chealion

Does going to 74.125.227.18 work?

Sathya

@Chealion yes

Chealion

Ooo. New mention features since I was here last. </sidetracked>

Flushed your DNS cache?

ipconfig /flushdns if I remember correctly.

Sathya

yup, done. @Chealion

Ok, now after doing a sample search, its back :-\

Chealion

4:37 PM

Is that after the flush or were you able to do that before?

Sathya

@Chealion: I had flushed before and it didn't make any difference. I didn't flush now.

Chealion

Thanks. (Just wanted to clarify)

Sathya

@Chealion: Problem fixed by itself. gah.

2

Q: Why is google.com not opening for me ?

I'm having this weird problem where only google.com and Google's subdomains are not opening. I'm using Chrome, though the same behaviour is prevalent in IE8. Seems name resolution for google.com fails, as get an error message Error 105 (net::ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED): The server could not be f...

windows-xp browser internet-connection

Chealion

Worse you can't tell for sure if the search wasn't just a coincidence.

Sathya

yeah :\

Sathya

6:02 PM

Duke Nukem Forever shall not die, apparently

1up.com/news/gearbox-confirmed-duke-nukem-development

TomWij

6:51 PM

Sathya: If you are on a march to close questions:

0

Q: What is the real meaning of installing software ?

What is the real meaning of installing software ? In Linux perspective and Windows perspective what is the meaning of installing software ? Can somebody explain what happens internally when we install software ?

installation operating-systems

Sathya

I don't see why that should be closed.. can't find a dupe.

TomWij

His question is vague to me and the comment on the answer asks another vague thing which results in a very broad answer and edits or comments like in we saw in: Why is “127.0.0.1 localhost” needed in HOSTS file ?

I can answer this question in a valid way that says that executable files are written to the hard drive and could later be requested by the OS and then executed. :-)

Another answer could contain an alinea that the Installer key of the registry is being adjusted so that you have the ability to uninstall the software...

Uh well... He is satisfied with his answer, a diamond user should look into it. :-)

Sathya

7:11 PM

:154729 Well I disgree on that the question should be closed. You are entitled to your opinion and have cast the vote accordingly :)

Diago

8:57 PM

@TomWij @Sathya I originally closed but have since re-opened and converted it to CW. I don't think it is a valid question, but it did get a pretty good answer. Not to be encouraged thought.

Chealion

@TomWij Enjoying your tag editing? ;-)

My Google fu is failing me - Finding duplicates is a pain.

TomWij

@Diago: Community Wiki seems like a good idea, people could make the question and answers more complete that way, or answer from different perspectives...

@Chealion: Yeah, noticed late that I was all over the front page... I wonder if that's the right behavior...

Chealion

@TomWij The downside of tag editing - moderators are able to do mass re-tags without updating questions.

TomWij

9:15 PM

Yeah... But these were only two times 10-15 questions. If it were more I would indeed suggest a tag synonym or a tag request on the meta...

I was looking through the the most old Super User questions too... Did some small improvements there.

Chealion

@TomWij I'd say do the synonym anyway before retagging. You can't create a synonym for a tag that doesn't exist.

Sathya

9:42 PM

:155103 I rarely search - just click on ask a question and enter the keywords. The related questions fetches the dupes for me.

:155083 didn't know mods convert a Q to CW. Cool

Josh

:155275 I think anyone with >2k rep can...?

Sathya

:155288 Nope.

Josh

nope

nevermind

I do CW so very rarely

In fact I think my first might have been today

Sathya

I don't think I've ever asked a CW question

Josh

No, actually my first SW answer was today

I asked a CW question which I intended to answer on an SE site, and didn't want any rep

Sathya

9:50 PM

ah ok

what're your plans for the weekend ?

Josh

Taking a half day Monday, and the half the day I am working I'm working only on fun internal projects, not client work. Doing a BBQ Monday afternoon

Sathya

:155306 neat-o. have fun :)

Josh

A bunch of errands on Saturday, but vititinga nice seafood restaurant on Sunday with friends

Oh, and trying to build an XMPP interface to these chats, :-D

Sathya

:155310 oo nice

is it possible ? thought the chat doesn't have any APIs

Josh

:155311 yeah wish me luck, I'll need it!

:-)

Sathya

9:54 PM

:155313 Good Luck :D

Josh

:155312 It doesn't, hence the luck :-)

I'll be going off the partially built IRC interface, which just parses the JSON I think

Sathya

:155318 oh I see

Josh

24

Q: IRC access for the chat?

Will there be any way of accessing the chat over IRC? As beautiful ajax interfaces are ... IRC is still #1 for chats.

discussion chat irc

Sathya

bloody amazing

github.com/ghewgill/soirc

Josh

:155329 yeah, neat huh?

I don't know python, I'll be attempting it in ruby

Sathya

9:58 PM

:155332 Nice :)

Josh

:155335 Thanks :-) Actually since many people might want to discuss this I just created a room:

chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/241/xmpp

Sathya

in The Tavern (General) on Meta Stack Overflow Chat, Sep 3 at 21:41, by Josh

@Shog9 Yeah, I learned Ruby on Rails and that introduced me to Prototype, and that changed my whole view of JavaScript

Nice. I'm (trying) to learn Ruby & Rails

Josh

:155340 Stalking me, huh? ;-)

:155344 It was really cool but I never used it in production. Never was able to give it the time I needed to become proficient

Sathya

:155345 hahah :) let's just saw background checks :P

:155348 I see. (web) development befuddles me

Hiya @TomWij

Josh

:155353 Web development is my life, but mostly PHP and JavaScript

Sathya

10:04 PM

:155356 I see. I work on Oracle databases

Josh

:155357 Awesome! Like, developing and building them for customers, or, you work at Oracle itself?

Sathya

:155358 Na don't work for Oracle. Build and deploy apps on Oracle

mainly Oracle databse & middleware

Know a little bit of Oracle forms

but application tuning is what fascinates me

Josh

Very cool

Sathya

can also function as a stand-in DBA :D

for some reason, I can never seem to write any decent code

I can understand what code does, for instance the one you linked to @Josh

but try to write something and I fall flat :/

Josh

:155368 I'd have to see your code to be sure it wasn't decent, but I would guess it probably is. Writing really good code is an art, and it takes practice!

:155372 How do you feel you fail? Are you not able to figure out what needs to be done to solve a given problem, or do you struggle more with the language, or?

(I taught and TAed a few programming courses, this is why I ask :-)

Sathya

10:11 PM

:155374 tbh its like a mix of all :( I guess its more of lack of practice. I know what needs to be done, but I cannot grasp how I can do it.

:155375 that's nice :)

Josh

I gotcha. A number of my students got frustrated and would want to give up when often they would be really close to a solution. It can be tough at first, heck it's tough for me sometimes, but the key (I find) is breaking down a project/problem into chunks and determining how to handle each small chunk

For myself if I focus too much on the big picture it can be daunting. I generally have an idea of how I want the pieces to go together, and work on things one piece at a time. The issue is making sure the pieces can be easily modified in case my big picture isn't accurate, and that's much easier said than done!

Sathya

:155379 that's interesting

Josh

As indicated by my recent SO question, HAHA

3

Q: Do the benefits of mysqli warrant rewriting a large, working system?

I apologize if this question is a duplicate. I have read many other mysqli questions first, but none seemed to be an exact duplicate. I am the senior developer on a project my company has been working on for 4+ years. It's a large PHP MVC framework system with modules for a CMS system, an eComme...

php mysql mysqli

(I realize now that core parts of my system might benefit from a rewrite. Bad planning on my part)

Sathya

:155384 about last year, I had to do a complete rewrite of our app's core rating engine

Josh

:155389 It's never fun when one has to do a complete rewrite :-/

Sathya

10:16 PM

(background: The app I work on is an Insurance program which accepts a wide range of parameters and arrives at a premium number,based on various factors )

Josh

Ooooohhh. I can kinda relate

Sathya

:155393 Yeah. But its better than patch work.

if { con1} elsif {fail condition2 } elsif { .. } so on

Josh

We have a product which quotes prices for complex printed products, and the first version had to be rewritten like 3 times because the pricing schemes were so complex

:155398 This is true :-)

Sathya

:155402 for me the reason for rewrite was a huge gap in documentation, client expectations, and team understanding.

on analyzing, I found that it was better to do a full rewrite because the changes that need to be done were akin to a full rewrite

Josh

:155406 That's how it was with our first version of my team's app. We delivered it to the client three times and each time they said "Well how do we quote xyz?", to which my team responded, "You never told us about THAT!!!"

Sathya

10:20 PM

:155413 aaah yes, the ever infamous you-didn't-ask-so-we-didn't-deliver

:155413 and always, always they-didn't-ask translates into - I thought the system would do so automatically

Josh

:155414 Welcome to software development! :-)

That's a big part of why my company is transitioning into doing SaaS instead of custom development

Here's the product as we think it should be built. If you like it, great! Buy it! if not, there's the door...

Sathya

:155418 the tragedy is that our "product" was supposed to be SaaS

the product team was so brilliant, we had to keep plugging the holes to avoid it from leaking

sigh