Ask Ubuntu General Room

yep, I have my finger on the trigger :)

Heh

@StefanoPalazzo Real Men™ use at jobs!

...which probably will fail!

while true; do ./hammer-the-server; done ;-)

I've never used at for anything, now come to think of it

7:56 PM

@MarcoCeppi my extremely poor edited screenshot suggests to me you might be right

@StefanoPalazzo at is so very useful though

I've added Google Fonts to the header

and committed

just not pushed/rolled out to apt.mc

I've read about it in a 1970s book about UNIX :-)
(learning how to use it is on my to do list, just not very far up)

Give it a try

Election closes in 51 seconds.

7:59 PM

@MarcoCeppi In IE?

@htorque better get my vote in...

Sure, whichever

hammer hammer hammer hammer hammer hammer hammer

Congrats to the rightfully chosen!

Ended: 10 secs ago

> Winners are Marco Ceppi, Stefano Palazzo, and Oli.

great!

8:00 PM

We have our winners!

> Winners are Marco Ceppi, Stefano Palazzo, and Oli

11

nice :-)

I'm shocked that Marco was the last to be elected!

I promise I'll behave (:

@MarcoCeppi Woo!

> Gaming: Winners are Grace Note, Juan Manuel, and badp.

8:02 PM

I think I got 2/3 from here I guess!

Congrats @badp

why would anyone vote @MarcoCeppi? :D

nice @badp

Looks like it was a close run

well, i got two right :)

8:04 PM

so did I :)

@Oli Ping

@MarcoCeppi I'm humbly looking forward to your guidance, if I'm honest (:

Good job both me and @Oli didn't both get elected else we'd have two thirds of our moderators from the same city...

at least not all are from the same time zone :D

aww none of the people I voted for won... that figures...

I knew I should have asked for more money

Thank you everyone who ran for election @fluteflute @GeorgeEdison @dustyprogrammer :)

8:12 PM

@txwikinger as well :)

another year under @MarcoCeppi leadership... should be interesting...

@TheX He's elected for life now ;)

j/j @MarcoCeppi I love you..

for LIFE?!?!?!

to (my) consolation, @fluteflute would've won if there were four seats

Unless I step down - that's how it works

In a year we'll have elections to add moderators to the team

8:13 PM

so no more elections?

if I would have known I was voting for dictators...

Jorge Castro

wait who won?

" 145 voted"

wow, that's pretty horrible

14 mins ago, by Marco Ceppi

> Winners are Marco Ceppi, Stefano Palazzo, and Oli

@StefanoPalazzo yes I calculated that one too :) next year... perhaps

@JorgeCastro I don't think the percentages are too bad.

Jorge Castro

congrats to everyone who ran!

and new mods!

maybe next year I will run and get a vote or two

8:19 PM

Congrats, @Stefano!

I just got back to my desk.

You too, @Oli.

And of course, @Marco... :)

Thank you everyone for letting me serve for the last 6 months or so.

thank you very much @George

@GeorgeEdison you will be missed

I'll still be here though.

YAY!

Of course...

...I just won't be able to do as much.

...but I have >3k rep., so I can do most things.

8:22 PM

Next 10k user? hint hint

I'd like to be... but I'm no expert at Ubuntu... yet :P

@Marco: What's the link for editing the site banner?

@GeorgeEdison .

that's pretty funny :D

Wha....?

I added a message to the site... congratulating the winners.

I'm a little hurt that they don't have Linux in the download links

8:29 PM

....ya, and on an Ubuntu site too!

ha, I didn't even notice

I mean, we're obviously smarter than Windows and Mac users - which explains why we could parse the results without needing the link directly - but still :P

Jorge Castro

or just an apt link

Michael Mrozek

@MarcoCeppi I don't even need OpenSTV, I just look at the election file and do the math in my head

2

Now begins the rule of our new overlords

8:33 PM

how close was it for @fluteflute?

he was 4th

But I have NO idea how to read these results

@htorque On the "last round" Marco got elected with 37.6 votes, and I had 16.9

with @GeorgeEdison with 16.0

On the last round I had more than the other two elected - that's why I'm not sure how this all works

well, better luck next time! :-)

8:35 PM

@fluteflute I'm not sure that number is relevant as so "how close" someone was

I can't read the file format :)

@StefanoPalazzo I think this is a very complicated system...

Counting Single Transferable Votes

There are many ways to count votes in Single Transferable Vote elections. Voting If a class of children were choosing representatives, say, they could line-up behind the candidate of their choice. They would all know that each candidate only needs a certain number of classmates to vote for them to be elected. So some of those standing in line for a candidate who has more than enough votes would choose to not waste their vote and would instead move to another line to help someone else to win. Naturally, they would not move to a line that already has enough to win. Likewise, those childr...

@StefanoPalazzo the file format or output of the results?

I will re-read the wiki article

I actually studied STV in the last few months. But it was reasonably simplified.

8:37 PM

the raw file. it looks like this:

7 3
1 1 2 3 0
1 1 2 4 0
1 1 2 4 0
1 6 1 7 0
...
0
"Marco Ceppi"
"Stefano Palazzo"
"Oli"
"fluteflute"
"George Edison"
"txwikinger"
"dustyprogrammer"
"Ask Ubuntu Moderator Election 2011"

Well the first row is the number of candidates and the number of spaces to fill

after that it's anyone's guess...

the 1s and 0s appear to just part the start and end of lines

with the three numbers between being the "number" of the candidates they voted for (in order)

Oh right, that sounds right

and the last strings being the names of the candidates

for instance there are three "second columns" that read 7

the last name is dustyprogrammer

and we know from the output of openstv that he had three first preference votes

they could have used something other than a decimal digit for a sentinel :P

I changed a few things around and ran the election with 2, 4, and 5 seats

8:42 PM

@MarcoCeppi you changed things other than just the number of seats?

Nope, just the seats

I got the percentage of votes

@MarcoCeppi 27% @StefanoPalazzo 36% @Oli 48% @fluteflute 11% @GeorgeEdison 11% @txwikinger 9% @dustyprogrammer 3%

Actually - not sure if that's percents or not.

It adds up to a long way over 100%

Yeah, it adds to 145 - so that must be ballots cast?

I thought this was weighted based off 1st, 2nd, 3rd though

Here is my super simple STV explanation:

1. A "quota" is calculated. This is the number of votes needed to win.

just tallying up the raw vote counts yields this:

Marco Ceppi 101
Stefano Palazzo 96
Oli 98
fluteflute 58
George Edison 36
txwikinger 30
dustyprogrammer 9

8:47 PM

(This is calculated using the Droop quota) - in our case 37

No idea if that's even remotely right

2. Based on first preference votes you see if anyone matches the quota

if they do they get elected

Which was Oli I suppose

 R|Marco Ceppi   |Stefano Palazz|Oli           |fluteflute    |George Edison
  |              |o             |              |              |
  |--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------
  |txwikinger    |dustyprogramme|Exhausted     |Surplus       |Threshold
  |              |r             |              |              |
=============================================================================
 1|     27.000000|     36.000000|     48.000000|     11.000000|     11.000000

Any votes they have above the quota (e.g. Oli had 48, so 48-37=11 votes) are redistributed to the voters second preferences

in what ratio? @fluteflute

8:49 PM

[This is where I assume it gets complicated and what I say won't fit exactly with what happened for us]

Suddenly this all makes sense

@StefanoPalazzo well exactly

:D

So 3. you see if anyone now exceeds the quota

I now understand what "round" means, thanks @fluteflute

8:50 PM

if they do they get elected

if no-one reaches the quota you eliminate the bottom candidate, and redistribute their votes

What I don't understand is both Oli and Stefano passed the 1st round threshold

shouldn't they both have been elected first round?

@MarcoCeppi no you needed 37, Stefano got 36

How do you figure? It says threshold 29

@MarcoCeppi where do you see that?

8:53 PM

Oh yeah :P

Oy I'm an idiot - that was for the election with 4 seats

 R|Marco Ceppi   |Stefano Palazz|Oli           |fluteflute    |George Edison
  |              |o             |              |              |
  |--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------
  |txwikinger    |dustyprogramme|Exhausted     |Surplus       |Threshold
  |              |r             |              |              |
=============================================================================
 1|     27.000000|     36.000000|     48.000000|     11.000000|     11.000000

That's round one

Okay that makes more sense

A: How are moderator election votes counted, in plain English?

So basically - I was more selected as a 3rd choice than a 1st or 2nd?

Oli was the majority of people's first choice

and Stefano 2nd?

13

Meek's method of STV is an iterative process that approaches the will of the people asymptotically. TL;DR Your vote, valued at 1.00 vote, is applied to your candidates in the order you rank them. Each candidate only uses as much of your vote as needed to become elected (shared equitably betwe...

Nicely found

Very cool process

8:59 PM

"approaches the will of the people asymptotically"

Congratulations Marco, Stefano and Oli as the Ghidorah say's three heads are better than one after he trampled that small Japanese town

thank you @Allan :)

amazing, I finally got over 1500 rep :P

@ajmitch i have been stuck at 1497 for 2 weeks :(

@StefanoPalazzo all the best hopefully you don't have too many tough decisions to make

9:06 PM

for some reason I got quite a few votes for the answer about changing the default shell

@ajmitch congrat's aiming for 1000 by May

why wait till then? You could get there by the end of the week

Ask a simple beginners' question about the command-line ;)

those seem to do very well

(which doesn't surprise me at all by the way)

I remember the rush of first getting a sense of the bash syntax, and realising how expressive it is, how much work I could get done, as a linux vetaran, you may forget how immesely powerful the bash appears, and how cool it is to learn how to use it

1) everyone loves the command line
2) but we don't know how to use the command line
3) so we upvote simple questions because we think they're cool

3

I've got a cli question I'm working on at the mo if any ones interested

9:12 PM

and some of us are far more familiar with the command line than with the changing world of GUIs

...and some of us are in the middle.

what is this "gui" you speak of?

:P

@StefanoPalazzo and then how many inscrutable quirks there are in the actual usage..

qui == 'Quite Ugly Interface'

...as in Windows.

@djeikyb right you are :)

9:18 PM

as much as i love w3m, i'd much rather browse the web with a gui app

@Allan what's up? i'm no cli genius, but i like problems

Q: How to move multiple files over network from terminal

0

I am using this command gvfs-move file smb://server/directory/file to move files over a samba share I would like to transfer multiple files by piping the results of a gvfs-ls to the same command however I cannot use a wild card to limit the search like this gvfs-ls smb://server/directory/*.mk...

woot. just made my daily quota purely from yesterday's efforts

an excellent question!

@StefanoPalazzo thanks I try my best ;)

are you trying to use a single command, or would a short script suffice?

9:22 PM

you can always remove the newlines to make it a command :P

pastebin.com/f496fff67

that was before I learned to use bash properly, so don't be too harsh :P

lol

some programmer is way too optimistic... first, 1:59 h show up as 1 hour, then 1,516 hits make the question appear with "2k" views? :D

and let's not forget the copy editor badge i don't deserve :..(

So this time next year we may have just elected some more moderators. I wonder where we'll be in twelves months time. (considering this site's only been here for six months!)

On the moon.

@badp no we can't colonize the moon, sperm can't live up there...

something about the gravity...

9:38 PM

hopefully more users, questions, answered questions, voters. let's not forget world domination.

@TheX then we'll fork the moon and fix this bug!

lol

well, we already have libmoon

in 12 months, we're going to get questions like "I tried to install Ubuntu on my personal teleportation device, but I'm getting an out-of-memory error. Do I need to install the 512 bit version to access all 2 petabytes of memory?"

may be a bit optimistic there

"Ubuntu Wiki to be re-licensed to CC BY-SA" - "We are contacting you because you have contributed content to the Ubuntu wiki at wiki.ubuntu.com."; - uhm, o rly?

9:41 PM

and my ipad will be obsolete...

@htorque I was just reading that email

and @MarcoCeppi will complete is transformation into a complete robot...

hm, i don't remember what i've contributed

haha I just came up with my campaign slogan if I decide to run for election next year...

"TheX marks the spot"

@htorque I just got that email

9:43 PM

I did too

all happy contributors :P

unfortunately, the site seems to be very slow indeed right now

possibly related to the email ;-)

ha, found me in the wiki!

(08:32:50) htorque left the room (quit: Quit: Leaving).

^^

lol

yeah, it is slow: "The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request."

10:14 PM

Have fun

0

Q: What is a Daemon?

I hear a lot of talk about Daemons running on my Ubuntu computer - what are they?

service definition

where are my terry pratchett books when i need them..

10:34 PM

@MarcoCeppi I've added source code (:

@StefanoPalazzo if you're going to ignore my edits, at least spell it right :)

sorry?

I'd edited your reply to correct your spelling of deamon to daemon

@ajmitch It wasn't logged in the history of the answer :\

Oh, you must have done it while I was still editing

10:36 PM

@MarcoCeppi perhaps I'd edited it too late

strange, i got no warning

Was it an edit suggestion? If so his most recent edit (likely started before your edit was happening) would have been ignored

I went ahead and did it (noticed it before you brought it up in chat)

Well I don't have 2k rep, so it had to be approved

oic :)

@ajmitch I've corrected it, thank you.

It's now spelled wrong, correctly (:

I am freaking amazing

10:44 PM

nice :)

@StefanoPalazzo spelled wrong, how? :)

@StefanoPalazzo I had help tough

@ajmitch wikipedia calls it an "alternative spelling" of demon, that says it all

though

This sounds like a difference of Locale - however I don't think I've ever seen anyone (Wikipedia included) spell Daemon as Deamon

10:47 PM

wikipedia distinguishes between the two

(deamon is just plain wrong though) :)

@MarcoCeppi right, nobody except me.

:D

You're just special :P

I'd spelled it like I say it

we must have order! (;

@StefanoPalazzo how do you pronounce it?

DAYmon is how I've said it

10:50 PM

Do you think Pixar will hire me?

dee-mon

I shouldn't argue with one of our almighty overlords, should I?

I used to try and say "DAY-Emon" but that was way too hard

Oli

daemon?

@ajmitch The powers have not yet been bestowed upon said overlord yet. You've got a few more hours :P

When the names turn blue you'll know :)

10:51 PM

@ajmitch you can argue... just don't push them to the point where they strike you dead with lightening

@MarcoCeppi oh good, I'll cause some havoc for a few hours, shall I? :)

I also pronouce Router as "root-er", so.. I'm not the authority

I used to spell "figure" as "fiqure" for about 6 years.

Until my friend said: "I don't get that joke - why do you spell it like that"

Oli

@StefanoPalazzo That's correct.

"Rowter" is just silly

10:53 PM

ROUTE-ER not ROOT ER :P

Ah, dialects are fun

those sound exactly the same :PP

jgbelacqua

Router, router, it's all the same to me.

Device of local internet distribution

DLID

jgbelacqua

I put an ospf RFC on my kindle, and let the text-to-speech read it to me (American accent), and she says root-er.

router... is OUTER....

10:54 PM

You can pronouce it Dill-id

with an r on the front of it

@jgbelacqua robots are idiots... ask....

I wonder how festival will pronounce it

espeak says "dlid"

Perfect - we found a better name for Router: DLID

I like the distrubted local internet device...

10:56 PM

I seem to remember you could instruct espeak to speak in different accents, i can't find it now

jgbelacqua

Hrm. I think it lacks descriptive accuracy.

espeak -v cy
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