The Whiteboard

user41796

12:26 AM

@Ampt - I feel your pain. I'm in week 4(?) of a sinus infection. Whatever fitness training I had been attempting has been sidelined. Fortunately, my doc(s) can / will write prescriptions for sudafed so I can keep the overall swelling and pain down. Hopefully your issues will clear up faster than mine.

user55340

1:52 AM

If I went and added an answer to 2/3 of the bad-code questions, I'd have a tag badge in that.

Ampt

5:38 AM

@GlenH7 Yeah the first doc I talked to in the emergency clinic prescribed me some vicodin for the pain even though I told him I probably wouldn't need it. He told me that these things tend to get more painful, not less and i'm glad he did because it was the only way I was able to sleep for more than 5 minutes at a time. Finally starting to get better though

gnat

11:16 AM

how come that none of 3 answers posted by this user makes any sense to me? programmers.stackexchange.com/users/127682/shubhojit

Oded

Probably because they don't make sense? They look like they should be comments, but even then, they don't appear to be all that great.

user41796

11:46 AM

@gnat I hope there isn't an algorithm to detect serial delete-answer-votes.

ratchet freak

@GlenH7 mods would be so screwed by that...

user41796

@Ampt You know it's a great infection with the doc preemptively gives you vicodin. I only got prednisone for my pain but I'll admit it worked very well. I'll have a CT scan at some point this week to get a better idea of what's wrong.

user41796

@ratchetfreak I'm pretty sure mods are excluded from a lot of the automatic algorithms. But it would be hilarious if they weren't.

Thomas Owens

1:47 PM

Can anyone explain how anyone thinks this No Estimation movement is anything other than pure comedy? It seems like people thing it's serious. There's no way in hell it can be. Can it?

Oded

I estimate that it is all about... Oh wait

user55340

@ThomasOwens I'm curious about the full article for cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/1/170859-estimation-is-not-evil/… (though I'm not going to ask anyone to give me a copied text)

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Will read at home.

user55340

First off, programmers can be notoriously bad estimators. So much so that our estimates can be worthless. It takes skill and time to practice estimation and consider what it means - and like many soft skills, this seems to be undervalued by programmers.

user55340

Outsourcing to people who way lowball estimates to get the contract and then jack up the price doesn't help this perception at all.

user55340

2:02 PM

Next, there's a "it doesn't matter what you estimate, this is when it needs to be done" from on high and deadlines that make a wooshing noise as they go by.

user55340

On high doesn't seem to want realistic estimates. They've got their own "this will be completed when" and resource planning (and reality) is just something that gets in the way of their expectations.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT it's undervalued by the managers of programmers - if it weren't for the fact that for the entirety of the industry history 90% of estimates given by programmers was wholey ignored by the people who requested the estimate, we might have by now become good at estimating. It's not worth practicing and trying to do well though.

user55340

And thus, the no estimates movement is an attempt at rejecting all of the above and just saying "it will be done when its done" - but that misses the resource planning is a necessary tool for prioritization.

Jimmy Hoffa

Recently we had a ~2 hour planning meeting with tech folk from each group here to look at and talk through the required work for a large feature to estimate each teams efforts required. We came up with it would take ~1.5-2 years to complete. The managers took this and decided not to do the feature. 2 months later they came back and said it's priority number one, and it's due in 3 months.

user55340

(if I've got a list of 15 things, and 5 of them will take 1-3 days and 5 of them will take 1-3 months and the remaining 5 will take 1-3 weeks - you as business person needs to prioritize them based on those estimates... because working on a 1-3 month may have less bang for the buck than doing a bunch of 1-3 day and 1-3 week instead)

Jimmy Hoffa

2:06 PM

and as you well know, that's totally common in this industry.

@MichaelT prioritization is only attended to by maybe 10% more of the industry than estimates, mostly it's just people deciding at random what they like and telling devs to do that with no regard for RoI

user55340

Its absolutely common - and that goes to one of those deadlines making a wooshing noise as they go past, increased stress and burnout.

user55340

But thats where the no estimates thing comes from - and while it has some points to it, it is a correction that is too radical and ultimately counter productive...

Thomas Owens

Estimates are also useful for sanity checking those business deadlines. If you say you want to promise the customer 6 months, but I think it'll take at least 9, that's a problem. Hopefully business comes to engineering before the customer...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I have to say, I think this is more largely a junior problem. Well, usually. None of the devs working on that feature plan to be done in 3 months, they're doing it hackily and quickly with an "it'll be done when it's done" - but none of them are busting ass with heroics, nor will they when the deadline passes. Juniors with something to prove are oft the ones you find trying to get the job done regardless of the mistakes of others - a senior doesn't stress and makes management look bad

though there's a logic to all that. Seniors know they can just move on, juniors know they can't so easily.

user55340

I've seen the heroic senior too - the savior of the project.

Jimmy Hoffa

2:11 PM

@MichaelT yeah, he's an ass and usually doesn't deserve the title with the code he spews, also apparently he hasn't yet in his years learned that he's giving positive reinforcement to very very bad decision making

user55340

@JimmyHoffa in the case I'm thinking of, the first is true... though the second not so much... and he was the second to last to leave my former employer.

user55340

Oh, btw, I found my old Netapp job online while poking at their careers 2.0 site.

Jimmy Hoffa

Heroic software engineers will ruin a company by deceiving the management into thinking they're doing things correctly when that couldn't be further from the truth.

user55340

(not sure if this link works: careers.netapp.com/TGWebHost/… )

user55340

Jimmy Hoffa

2:14 PM

@MichaelT negative, redirects to a URL that has ?ErrMsg=NO_COOKIE_[...]

@MichaelT heh, funny and sad. Something tells me NetApp may not be churning out the same quality of yore...

ratchet freak

and looking at the core url careers.netapp.com says directory listing is not allowed...

not even a redirect to the main site

user55340

Start from careers.netapp.com/TGWebHost/…

user55340

@JimmyHoffa You note my old skill set of java, oracle, perforce, perl, soap in there...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT aye, I guess they still haven't really moved forward to newer tech

makes sense, they deal with devices as much as anything don't they? they don't need to move as fast as SaaS folks

user55340

Its hard to rewrite that much code into newer technology... and if it works, why rewrite?

Jimmy Hoffa

2:20 PM

SaaS seems to be the fastest moving section of the industry at this point from my perspective, does that sound about right to most of you? In so far as constantly moving forward to newer and newer techs every few months

ratchet freak

but then you can't use those shiny new servers...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT tons of reasons, but many of those reasons don't apply when you're a hardware vendor

user55340

yep, SasS is moving faster than others - new frameworks, new protocols... and customer facing. The web browser as the client.

ratchet freak

you can move fast if there is no dead weight called legacy

Jimmy Hoffa

scalability is the name of the game with SaaS which is "why rewrite" more often than not for them, but like I said - hardware vendors don't live on the same set of constraints and requirements

was interesting working on the medical software I did, that was SaaS for a device vendor where the service was device data processing and reporting, made our little group in a big building full of device engineers stick out like a sore thumb

user55340

2:23 PM

For internal facing applications, things don't need to move as fast... and I'd contend that when not-dealing with a web browser (javascript), SOAP is superior to REST. So what if its bulky - you're talking between machines with gigabit connections to each other.

user55340

Having a strong validation (schema) between teams that can have a meeting to settle differences is easier/better than trying to track down who is creating/processing the json wrong.

Jimmy Hoffa

@ratchetfreak usually you can't afford to move at all without a weight called legacy. I always liked the quote from a friend of mine: Show me a software company without legacy software, and I'll show you a software company without software.

ratchet freak

you can move slowly with legacy, rewriting the oldest first as you go...

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I agree completely(ish). Outside of the browser I could see a few places where the REST approach may make sense - when you're doing things more akin to resource retrieval like grabbing an RSS or Atom feed - getting general content data by REST makes sense sometimes, but as soon as you're doing any type of RPC where the client isn't JavaScript based, REST stops making much sense quick.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa node to XYZ... well, thats still javascript clientish, just that its not browser based. And Netapp isn't a node shop.

Jimmy Hoffa

2:28 PM

@MichaelT to be entirely fair - it's still completely unclear to me why no JSON/REST schema technologies have spread.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa They haven't been able to agree on one.

user55340

json-schema.org is likely the furthest it went.

user55340

And the draft specification: tools.ietf.org/html/draft-zyp-json-schema-04

user55340

json-schema.org/implementations

user55340

> Implementations below are written in different languages, and support part, or all, of the specification.

Jimmy Hoffa

2:30 PM

@MichaelT it's been around more than long enough though - it doesn't make sense. WSDL showed up mightly quick after XML RPC became a thing. Even before XSD became common, people would do DTDs (and wasn't there another one older than DTD?) - back then people didn't say "we can't agree so we'll use none" they said "We can't agree, but I'm goign to use this one"

perhaps it's just industry size. When XML became a thing, it lived long enough in a small group of folks for them to come up with and agree on things before it really spread to a userbase too large to create conformity among. Nowadays, as soon as a tech hits the industry, so many people are using it right away - it's impossible to get any conformity amongst them all without a long drawn out darwinian battle of techs in the industry until one comes out on top

I wonder how many SE's there are now vs. '97

ratchet freak

but now everyone and their dog is programming with it so if you can't establish a consensus quick you won't ever get one

Jimmy Hoffa

@ratchetfreak s/can/can't/f ?

ratchet freak

@JimmyHoffa why would I want to type "can't't"?

user41796

@ratchetfreak because you misapplied ~~your~~ his regex

user41796

@JimmyHoffa - thanks for the thoughts. Honestly, I'm a bit worried about this too. It's frustrating waiting for the Dr office to call back to say the radiology orders have been faxed over knowing that they are waiting on the insurance company to get back to them saying they approve of the procedure. Uncertainty sucks.

Jimmy Hoffa

2:47 PM

@GlenH7 yeah, I've dealt with plenty of that myself, sometimes you can help things along just calling the insurance company yourself and asking about what they're waiting for, and contact the doctors the same. Iduno how many times the insurance co has told me "o they entered it as X code when it just needs to be Y code" and I call the doc office and have their medical insurance coder (that's a job - so ridiculous how screwed up that industry) just send the slightly-different-acceptable code

user55340

@GlenH7 in that 10k Meta.P.SE post - glance at the edit view only comment.

user41796

@MichaelT :-) I see what you did there

user41796

@JimmyHoffa My fear is that's going to become a routine thing for me in the very near future. Normally my doc's office is really good about getting the codes right. I think everyone is going to be in for a world of hurt with the pending changes to the coding system.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 that's true. Things are going to change for sure, nothing to be done about that though. Also on the note of a CT - something worth being aware of is Flash CT systems which give significantly less radiation than a normal CT. They're not everywhere, but whatever the nearest major research hospital to you is may have one, my wife and kid get CT's often so whenever possible we try to get them to where they can get the Flash CT...

The image quality from them is supposed to be better as well. They're quite new though, really not common, they have one at Johns Hopkins, dunno how far the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic are from you, but I'm certain those would both have them as well.

I take the wife and kid to hopkins often enough to use theirs

Repeat CT's can really give you quite a dose of radiation... should always keep track of when you've had them yourself because doctors are only recently getting in the practice of monitoring and communicating that stuff to stop themselves from doing too many, most docs don't pay any mind to it.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa A quick google indicates I don't have any in my area. And while I wouldn't mind a trip out to Scottsdale and their Mayo clinic, I'm thinking that's a bit much in this case. Thanks for the heads up on that technology though. I have never had one done, so it will be an interesting learning experience.

Jimmy Hoffa

2:59 PM

@GlenH7 aye if it's a one-time thing it doesn't matter, just worth knowing that techs out there in case it ever becomes common.

user41796

And as much as I would love to use this as an excuse to move to Celebration, FL, I don't think that's in the cards at the moment either.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 How about Truth or Consequences, NM instead then?

user41796

Nah, Celebration is just outside of WDW. But I have driven through TorC, NM several times.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 really? I never been, just love the name. Seems apt, if you can't go to a place called Celebration, the opposite must be the next best destination heh

user41796

T or C is really kind of a blip on the highway. Beyond the name, there's not much to it. I have several friends who live(d) in NM and they have visited there for giggles. Kind of a big "meh".

user41796

3:04 PM

@MichaelT - I'm looking over the VLQ history and noticing a distinct pattern. I wouldn't call it abuse, but I sure wish someone would stop voting "looks good" so often.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 aye, just like we have No Name out here as a blip on the highway

user41796

I was wanting to give the benefit of the doubt, but the pattern I'm seeing over the past few pages is pretty clear.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa It's not a good sign for the town's viability when you have to rely upon publicity stunts like that.

user41796

Then again, Topeka KS offered to change their name (for a day) to Google, KS in an attempt to lure Google Fiber to town. Obviously, it didn't work.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Let's be honest though - that would have been absolutely worth every cent

user41796

3:12 PM

But AT&T U-verse looks to be planning quite a bit of expansion of their fiber systems, so that's good news for everyone.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Yeah, it would have been pretty epic. And I think Google even gave Topeka a specific shout-out when they announced Kansas City, KS as their selection.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Oh? Haven't heard. All the same, all of them try to make as much hoopla as possible about the huge planned expansions of all their fiber systems. It's been this way for years, all plans and hype, no substance. Marketting fluff - "Come on down, we've got a brand new Corvette for $15k!" you get there and "We're all sold out, but how about this pinto!"

user41796

@JimmyHoffa yeah, we'll see. :-) I'm not holding my breath, but there's at least a chance it will roll out this year. att.com/att/gigapowercities

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Yeah, interesting thing about the KC thing I recall was they were planning on focusing on the inner city if I recall correctly as an experiment to see how it effected the area - which having lived there for a while I can vouch could use the help. Cool idea altogether, not sure how much high-speed broadband will help an area like that out though... who knows.

ratchet freak

they would attract more spammers

user41796

3:18 PM

@JimmyHoffa KC, MO managed to get included as the local electric utility continued negotiations with Google while KC, KS was being selected. Oddly enough, the KC, MO roll-out has gone more quickly than the KC, KS side. The utility was better organized than the KC, KS city / county gov't was.

user41796

The MO side is actually soliciting a 2nd round of subscribers to catch the areas that missed / ignored the first round.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 that fits from what I was saying - the inner city on KCMO tends to be worse

user55340

@GlenH7 As I've said... I poked SE's contact us page pointing out the difficulty with the change and how it affects sites like ours (its an SE's change issue and that user's reviews is an example of the problem - the aspect of that user's reviews on P.SE in particular are things that the mods need to look at if its an issue).

user41796

And there are a number of things being done in the core of KC, MO. Some of it is effective, some of it is just throwing money with the hopes that something will happen.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 sometimes experiments don't start with a hypothesis so much as a curiosity

user41796

3:22 PM

There's a "green initiative" that matches that description. My sincere hope is that some of it will stick and help that area. It certainly could use it.

enderland

3:36 PM

is it ethical to not ask "what about this?" or "are you sure you want to do this?" types of questions when you know what your stakeholders are asking for is not going to be what they actually want.......

user41796

@enderland judgement call there

user41796

if you know they don't want to hear of any alternatives, then you are wasting your time and theirs asking about alternatives.

Jimmy Hoffa

0

Q: Expression Lambda error "Argument types do not match"

For the life of me I cannot figure out what I'm getting wrong. I've spent a hell of a lot of time tweaking this code this way and that, and cannot figure out what type I'm getting wrong in what argument here. Please can someone who's good at constructing .NET expressions manually look at this co...

user41796

But if they just think they want XYZ then you ought to ask a few more clarifying questions.

MetaFight

programmers.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/60251

enderland

3:39 PM

it's more, "here's what you wanted" and then the "but.... this is going to work in practice different than you probably want because of X, Y, and Z" situations

I'm just frustrated I guess. lol

MetaFight

Am I wrong in thinking this question is offtopic? It's upvoted out the wazoo and, as such, made me fail a review audit.

enderland

because I'm facing this problem increasingly:

2 hours ago, by MichaelT

Next, there's a "it doesn't matter what you estimate, this is when it needs to be done" from on high and deadlines that make a wooshing noise as they go by.

user41796

@enderland If they aren't railroading the decision through, then you ought to express your concerns. Leave a "way out" in the conversation though

user41796

@MetaFight Others disagree, but IMO that one is on-topic. It's scoped enough that the community experience can answer the question. When in doubt, always click through to the question to check for audits.

MetaFight

@GlenH7 Good enough.

user41796

3:43 PM

@enderland you can also push back and ask for a prioritized list of features. State that you'll do your best to get them all done but that you don't feel there is enough time to complete everything.

enderland

@GlenH7 the primary problem is in effectively scope creep. "I think it will take about a week to do that." "but... since you didn't think through enough what 'that' is you're going to want it to be signifcantly different from what I estimated"

user41796

In a previous life, we would call the below-the-cut-line items as "run at" goals. As in, we'd give a run at trying to get them in but no promises.

user41796

@enderland Having a prioritized cut list helps with this. When the scope creeps, you can ask "are these additional changes worth moving the cut line higher on the list?"

user41796

And it pushes the decision right back to them.

user41796

Easily said, I realize. The devil is in putting it in practice. But when I've been able to do so, it's very effective.

enderland

3:45 PM

hmmm

user41796

I use it all the time with a problematic internal user. They have X hours budgeted to them (and they know it). So they have to pick and choose carefully what they want me to spend time on.

enderland

I think the biggest thing is actually convincing coworkers that they can't have everything they can dream of

user41796

@enderland "Yeah, I'm good but I'm not that good."

enderland

and more realistically, I'm NOT going to work my ass off and blow up my personal life to implement everything they can think of for me to work on in the hopes that such a self enforced death march will result in anything positive

user41796

@MetaFight - the other thing to keep in mind is that it's just one audit. No biggie. I fail close review audits on a semi-regular basis. And some of the time I circle back to the question and kick it into the close review queue. :-)

enderland

3:50 PM

I think the main frustration I have is that I am doing most of the
1) feature definition
2) project management
3) estimation
4) brainstorming

and... also implementing

arg. I just feel like complaining

:15093102 it's pretty loosely that, yes. lol

user41796

The ___'istas will be after me if I leave that up.

user41796

@enderland not uncommon for a small shop

enderland

except the iterations are reasonably non-defined deliverables at this point

user41796

Is your boss (and his|her boss) happy with your work?

user41796

Delete votes please:

user41796

3:56 PM

-2

Q: Writing own program on company computer, who owns the program?

I'm planning on writing a program and designing a product on a company computer. It is a laptop that I bring home and use as a personal computer/remote work when not on the clock. If I were to write the program on the company laptop, the company would have no claim to the software right? And no...

software-law

user41796

@MetaFight - there's an example of a legal question that is outside of the scope of the site. And while the answer is correct, "check your contract | atty", leaving it in place doesn't help the site. If anything, it encourages similarly bad questions to be asked.

MetaFight

@GlenH7 gotcha. That one does seem less ambiguous.

user55340

@GlenH7 blam

user41796

That said, I get annoyed when my boss' boss implies I shouldn't have any problem with using personal equipment for the benefit of the company. Perhaps he's just more tolerant of creating ambiguous situations with respect to intellectual property.

user41796

@MichaelT , @ratchetfreak - thanks!

user55340

4:03 PM

Current employment, I've gone the other way... I'm using a personal laptop for work (allowed) and I offer the company if they want additional access on my machine (do you want the sysadmin to have an admin account on my machine? - nope, thats fine...)

user41796

@MichaelT I hope they compensate you an additional amount for using personal equipment? And / or I take it they aren't too worried about potential IP claims?

Stack Exchange

Blog - Stack Exchange: Putting the Community back in Wiki

Grace Note on April 22, 2014

Ever seen this diagram?

That’s the visual elevator pitch for Stack Exchange. We were the little dot in the middle, a potent mix of useful traits from other tools, a wiry mutt full of hybrid vigor. The purpose of this blend was to allow and encourage the construction of a library of solutions, by providing communities with the tools they needed to share their experiences and challenges with others who might struggle with the same issues.

The diagram illustrated where we stole drew inspiration for the design of those tools, and their influence occasionally shows up in the results. Sometimes, …

Jimmy Hoffa

0

A: Expression Lambda error "Argument types do not match"

I resolved this! The problem was the IfThenElse expression neither does an implicit return like a Block does, nor does it allow an explicit return using an Expression.Return (at least not as far as I could tell, unless I was doing them wrong), the solution was to change the code so the IfThenElse...

Resolved it. Finally. Spent most of yesterday afternoon on this, don't know why I didn't decompose it sooner, was stupid really. O well..

user55340

> Yea we are dumb.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Have some imaginary integers for your efforts

user55340

4:08 PM

@JimmyHoffa Sometimes answering a question on SO means just going through and writing a good question.

Ampt

@MichaelT seen this yet? theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/22/…

I know you were talking about the older model but it looks like they're finally trying to break out of the niche market

Link to Lytro Site

enderland

@GlenH7 I think so. Biggest thing is timeline keeps coming up, and I'm supposed to estimate things based on very vague concepts at this point :P

user41796

4:23 PM

@enderland So perhaps the trick there is to do a better job at documenting when things change from the original (vague) spec.

user55340

@Ampt Got one.

user41796

"We started with X. Consulting with the client indicated we needed Y & Z as well. Y and Z added ### weeks | hours of development time, pushing the schedule back."

user55340

Though not the new one... hmm.

user41796

@enderland so long as you always keep it neutral, then you're just reporting on where the time went.

user55340

$1500 vs $300 - big price difference.

Ampt

4:25 PM

Hands on with an early prototype

@MichaelT oh totally. Very different price ranges, but I think this is less of a toy than the original

enderland

@GlenH7 I'm tracking all my time on my calendar too :)

user41796

@enderland It's a little bit beyond just tracking time. You want to demonstrate how the scope creep increased the project schedule.

enderland

@GlenH7 yeah. I'm more or less ok with this, the trick is convincing the project mananger I'm NOT a miracle worker with an ATM where I go to get time :D

user41796

From there, it's up to the "owner" to decide if that's how they want to spend time. Or if they want you to put a bigger safety margin into your estimates to account for the inevitable creep.

user55340

Less of a toy... its a difficult thing to work with in general and designed for digital only media.

enderland

4:28 PM

@GlenH7 heh. yeah. trying to change a culture of "things will work themselves out" is hard ;)

user55340

> Lytro is hoping that its new Illum camera, which is available for pre-order for an introductory price of $1,499 (£890) for shipping in July, will offer enough to entice photographers to ditch their smartphones and digital SLRs and embrace light field technology where the company's first generation Lytro camera failed.

user41796

@enderland That will come with repetition of this technique. And when you get big changes in scope then you should pause and say "we probably ought to re-prioritize things as this change will impact other requests."

user55340

Here's the thing... the original $300 one is a nice price point for a point and shoot toy camera.

user55340

It might take the place of some artistic snaps rather than my iphone.

user55340

But $1500 isn't a toy camera anymore. Its even well beyond the range of the other digital point and shoots. And for that, I want something that can do quality prints if I want them.

Ampt

4:30 PM

You think that it's incapable of that?

(I will admit I didn't find any resolutions mentioned)

lets say it had a modest 15MP Equivelant resolution

would you be interested then?

user55340

maybe

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I can't call a $300 price point device for a brand new tech a failure when they have a second entrance for that tech that's $1500 of some crazily higher quality. It's hard to spend $1500 on a product in a new tech when you have no way of knowing how it could possibly work or not. Spending $300 on the first attempt just to see how the tech even does or doesn't work is a great product to get people to trust the tech enough to spend $1500

If they only have a $1500 device with that new tech, they'd have no chance of creating a market for that tech. Any new tech needs a low-end model for people to test the tech.

user41796

Now to come up with a good close reason....

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Its not a failure - its a nice tool for a snapshot to digital media.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT that's what I'm saying

user55340

4:34 PM

The $1500 one is something that early adopters will like, but thats still an expensive price for someone.

Jimmy Hoffa

They just referred to it as a failure, I said it's not - rather it's quite necessary for any business trying to generate market for a new tech. Even if it has faults, so long as it showcases the concept of the tech it'll generate interest to get people buying other forms of the tech.

user55340

Its going to have about a 2-5 megapixel single focal plane image... not sure exactly, and that means that a single focal plane can't be used to export to print.

Ampt

@MichaelT wait, where did you see that?

Jimmy Hoffa

Nine times out of ten when somebody creates a new tech, it never get's off the ground and no market appears because it only ever exists in some far-too-expensive form.

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa agreed. I like the route they've taken. Low end, seemingly toy to introduce the idea, now they're following it up with a real, viable, useful product

user55340

4:36 PM

@Ampt Experiences with the first one. Its an "11 megaray camera", this is a "40 megaray camera"

user55340

The first one is about a 1 megapixel focal plane when exported, this one I would expect to be about a 4 megapixel focal plane when exported - not high enough quality for print.

Ampt

@MichaelT hmm. I was wondering about that "megaray" notation

that's dissapointing

user55340

cnet.com/news/lytro-camera-5-things-to-know-before-you-buy

user55340

> It's great that the Lytro shoots so fast and you don't have to worry about focus. However, to do anything other than poke around changing focus (which could get old, fast), you have to convert it to a lifeless, tiny 1,080x1,080-pixel-resolution JPEG (that's roughly 1.2 megapixels, folks).

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Got anything from it you can put online yet so we can see how it comes out?

user55340

4:38 PM

Now, the 4-6 megapixel range is the original size of the higher end DSLRs of the day (6 megapixels) so isn't awful...

Jimmy Hoffa

I never trust the examples

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Need the right weekend... its not an easy camera to work with.

user55340

I'd love to go to a botanical garden and play with it.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT interesting. It doesn't just point and shoot?

user41796

@MichaelT Epcot Food & Garden festival then?

user55340

4:39 PM

@JimmyHoffa It does, but its a new medium... composition is just as important for a good picture as before... more maybe.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I didn't mean a good picture; I don't know the difference anyway. I'm just curious what you get out of it when you take a picture - what kind of file, how you can work with that file etc

it's gotta be something unique/different; presumably it generates some kind of 3d model data rather than 2d raster (that's the name of pixel data right?)

They have examples on their site - but do the pictures actually come out like that? I presume those examples are doctored up showcase demo toys

user55340

Other people's photos: pictures.lytro.com

user55340

Those aren't lytro official photos... they're the imgur of lytro that have the features enabled.

user55340

Note that a fair number of those photos don't make any good use of the camera.

user41796

@MichaelT I'm playing with the focus on the lego / back to the future one. very cool

Jimmy Hoffa

4:44 PM

@MichaelT yes I see that; that's what I was looking for cool. It shows some of the backgrounds are not focussable which is what I was expecting. Their toy demos don't show the fact that there can be any fault in the image at all.. was curious about that

user55340

Its a "I need to just go down to Mitchell Park in Milwaukee some time and take some photos"

user55340

(not so sure about Minneapolis's gardens)

user55340

I'm sorry... but...

user55340

10

Q: How to chain a druid?

How can a captured druid be restrained so that he can't shapeshift to something that can slip his bonds (such as a small snake)? I would prefer minimum or no magic used. And what about natural-fibre ropes—if those count as "worn" items and simply melt into the druid's form when he shapeshifts, is...

dnd-3.5e

user55340

If they were going for the Gaming.SE style name this would be "Bondage, Druids Shape-changing and Metal"

user15026

4:57 PM

@MichaelT Yeah, more than likely :P

user55340

@AshleyNunn Gaming.SE has such a wonderful culture of outrageous titles.

user15026

It really does :P

user15026

I had someone complain about that the other day saying it made the site unprofessional :P

user41796

@AshleyNunn Tell them to quit having a dirty mind

user15026

@GlenH7 Good idea :)

user55340

5:00 PM

@AshleyNunn as opposed to progamers?

user41796

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand. Would you explain what's wrong with that title?"

user15026

@GlenH7 snorts So tempted.

user55340

But... is gaming supposed to be professional?

user15026

@MichaelT I deal with esports at work....so...sort of? Maybe?

user55340

33

Q: How can I kill puppies without consequences?

The starting pets can sometimes get quite annoying, since they keep getting in your way. Those little dogs keep blocking my path! Therefore, I quite reasonably want to slaughter them brutally. But of course I want to do this safely. I've noticed that whenever I kill my pet, I "hear the rumble of...

nethack

user55340

5:02 PM

9

Q: Can Vegans eat Jewelry?

I am a Vegan. Would it break the conduct if I eat jewelry? The Vegan conduct states that I can eat: food rations, cram rations, K-rations, C-rations and lembas wafers melons, oranges, carrots, pears, apples, bananas, kelp, eucalyptus, garlic, wolfsbane, and user-defined fruit the co...

nethack

user55340

32

Q: Why did my dog just eat my cat?

I was carrying around a tripe ration in an effort to keep my dog close, when I found a nice housecat that was in need of a good home. So I fed it my tripe ration, and a very happy heart appeared over its head. I named him Katt, and he purred and snuggled against me because he was so happy to ha...

nethack

user55340

(too bad can't migrate that to Pets.SE)

user41796

> Therefore, I quite reasonably want to slaughter them brutally

user41796

Taken out of context....

user55340

17

Q: How do I make cats less proud?

I have several cats running around my fortress, killing vermin and doing what they do best. Every now and then, a cat runs into my fortress dragging behind it a fresh kill as if to say "Look at what I did!". This is promptly followed by a dwarf dragging the corpse back outside to the refuse pile....

dwarf-fortress

MetaFight

5:08 PM

So he has the right idea, but the wrong implementation.. they should fashion the lowest quality possible metal armor and put it on him. If it's uncomfortable and heavy so that he's encumbered too, so much the better. I suggest that it be put together from metal dinner plates, and call it dinner plate mail. — Gus 2 hours ago

Robert Harvey

5:18 PM

Gotta love Arqade question titles.

user55340

22 mins ago, by MichaelT

If they were going for the Gaming.SE style name this would be "Bondage, Druids Shape-changing and Metal"

Thomas Owens

Have I posted this here yet? coolrunning.com/results/14/ma/Apr19_BAA5K_set1.shtml

user55340

@ThomasOwens 4387?

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT wrap them in duct tape, they can't be proud of their fur if they're solid duct tape. Though to be sure, I'd be proud of my duct tape at that point, way better than fur to be sure.

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Out of almost 8700.

29:32 5k time. Average speed of 6.3 mph over the course.

user55340

5:21 PM

You know, a lytro camera would be very neat for race finish line photos.

Thomas Owens

I was too exhausted to use my phone. I sprinted the part from Boylston to the Marathon finish line and then around the corner to the 5k finish line.

user55340

@ThomasOwens lytro.com/camera

user55340

Oh, and here's something to make you feel young (or out of shape): cbc.ca/q/blog/q-on-sports/2014/01/16/olga-kotelko-runner

user55340

(and then the 'why are Kenyans always top runners?' from NPR back in November: npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/… )

Thomas Owens

There's also the lack of teamwork of American runners, with an exception for this year's Boston Marathon: letsrun.com/news/2014/04/…

Nick Arciniaga was amazing. He was trying to get the crowd more pumped up as he was on the last mile or so.

Jimmy Hoffa

5:29 PM

@MichaelT totally. you could focus on any individual - that would be pretty cool

> If you take a runner and put 8 pounds of weight around his waist, he can still run reasonably well. But if you put those same 8 pounds in the form of two 4-pound weights around his ankles, that will take much more energy and slow him down considerably.

makes sense

Robert Harvey

That would be like running through a peat bog.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa One spot where it could be used (the light ray) is as a fast, high speed sports photo from close shots (rather than distance - when you shoot from a distance, everything is in focus and you lose the light ray sensor utility)

user55340

Example: focus at 10 feet, the depth of field would be 7 feet to 14 feet. Focus at 32 feet, and everything from 16 feet to infinity is in focus.

user55340

Thats why close up photos work the best for the light field... you want to keep that dof as shallow as possible.

user55340

So if you could have a long enough lens with a shallow depth of field, some sports photos could be really neat.

Thomas Owens

5:41 PM

Getting a shallow depth of field in sports photos is hard. Let's go shopping.

user55340

5:55 PM

@maple_shaft regarding trivial edits: programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/56832 kicking from a review queue

user55340

The issue is that a single 'edit' review on the low quality review queue kicks it out of the review queue. This means that the rest of the community can't do a recommend delete on it - this is supposed to be the 'solution' for how to handle poor answers.

user55340

However, when the eject criteria for the low quality review is so low, this doesn't work... and its the 10k flag review queue that the 20ks see and act upon to delete answers that aren't in the low quality review queue because of such an ejection.

user55340

(context for above: )

user55340

I would argue that a trivial edit does the opposite of what you suggest and in fact makes it less likely for a moderator to delete it. The reason is that most of the NAA flags that end up in the moderator queue come from vigilant users in the review queue. If people aren't doing reviews and flagging things then we are less likely to get flagged as well. This of course ignores that we sometimes get auto flags from the community bot on low quality posts as well. — maple_shaft ♦ 5 mins ago

user55340

From the MSE post:

user55340

5:59 PM

> Worst of all, we have a [much better tool for handling crap answers](http://stackoverflow.com/review/low-quality-posts/) that's available to anyone with the editing privilege. It even has logic built in to prioritize answers likely to be deleted for users with [the reputation to delete them](http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/trusted-user). It's like we gave you a car for your 10th birthday, and then replaced it with a rusty bicycle when you turned 16.
-- Shog9

user55340

@ThomasOwens You just need a fast, long, lens. 1200mm f/5.6 bhphotovideo.com/c/find/newsLetter/Mother-of-All-L-Lenses.jsp (and bhphotovideo.com/find/newsLetter/Canon-EF-1200mm.jsp )

user41796

@MichaelT I like lenses where you mount the tripod to the lens instead of the camera.

user55340

@GlenH7 My 80-400 has that structure.

user55340

Ampt

I think that springs from the fact that the center of mass is shifted so far forward with bigger lenses

user41796

6:11 PM

It's not a real lens until you have to mount the tripod to it instead of the camera. (My new law of photography)

user55340

Though the 2000mm f/11 takes the cake:

user55340

mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/nikkoresources/reflex/…

user55340

Incidentally, there is very little of a lens in that lens.

Ampt

@MichaelT oh come on, thats a telescope, not a lens

@GlenH7 you must hate wide angle shots ;P

user55340

6:12 PM

@Ampt I actually agree you...

user55340

@Ampt just a bit...

whatsisname

one of the guys in photo.se bought some 800mm L-series lense for bird photography

user55340

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT How do you get a shallow depth of field with an f/5.6?

whatsisname

said it cost 15kilodollars or so

user55340

6:14 PM

That's a 6mm lens.

whatsisname

f2.0 or so I think

user55340

@ThomasOwens Long lens makes for a shallow depth of field.

whatsisname

@ThomasOwens get as close as possible

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT Oh, yeah. I forgot about that factor. Focal length and aperture both affect depth of field.

user55340

6:14 PM

That's shot with a 1200mm (granted, probably from the other end of the block)

Ampt

@MichaelT you say that like thats a bad thing :P

Thomas Owens

It's hard to link to at work, but my Marathon pics are in my G+ profile.

Ampt

@MichaelT i give it a 23% chance she knew she was being photographed

user55340

whatsisname

it's actually easier to get a shallow DOF with a long focal length than through aperature

Ampt

6:15 PM

slightly out of frame is the person she was actually smiling at

whatsisname

however it makes for more difficult composition

user55340

Btw, new article on fisheye lenses: pierretoscani.com/echo_fisheyes_english.html

user55340

whatsisname

the most majestic chipmunk: fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/…

user55340

Notice the light rays for that one - it has a lens that can take pictures from behind the camera

whatsisname

6:18 PM

that was with a 300mm at 5.6 or so

user55340

And then there's this one:

user55340

That has a 270 degree field of view.

user41796

@MichaelT Because who doesn't need that? Wider is always better. :-)

user55340

@GlenH7 And you need to mount the lens to the tripod...

user41796

6:19 PM

ergo it's a real lens

user55340

But you'd likely really like to look at that website... lots of neat stuff in there.

user41796

@Ampt - is it a bad sign if I can tell time based upon the decongestant wearing off?

Ampt

@GlenH7 no. That was me and the vicodin. Oh, I can feel my heartbeat in my ear again. Time for another pill

user55340

Fairly standard when you need it for you to notice very acutely the effects of it wearing off.

Ampt

@GlenH7 The more you say it, the more real it becomes.

user41796

6:26 PM

@Ampt I'd rather make up silly laws than deal with subqueries in MS Access or think about my sinus infection.

Ampt

@GlenH7 Theres not a lot I wouldn't do to avoid working with Access

user41796

Speaking of which, new law. If you need to use subqueries in MS Access then you probably ought to be using a different database.

user41796

unfortunately, all of my source data from this project is coming from there.

user55340

The one lens I wish that Nikon had that Canon has is a 400mm f/5.6 prime... I use my 400 end of the 80-400 quite a bit... which is similar to Canon's 100-400. But compare the lenses: luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/forgotten-400.shtml

Ampt

vs

user55340

6:29 PM

Yep.

Ampt

guess which one is the 100-400 and which is the 400

uncropped image

for reference

user55340

I might have to 'settle' with a 300mm f/4 instead: bhphotovideo.com/c/product/207356-USA/…

user55340

but I really like those tight 400mm shots of waterfalls.

user41796

@MichaelT Only 1 looks good review may not be sufficient to kick out of the VLQ queue. programmers.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/60270

user55340

@GlenH7 It needs an equal number of looks good to eject that many low quality flags.

user55340

6:38 PM

Without the 10k pile on effect, this becomes harder to achieve sometimes.

user41796

makes sense. Hopefully "recommend delete" and VTD count as validating the original flag and therefore require more "looks good" votes to kick out of the queue.

user55340

Part of the 'this runs counter to my sensibilities' is that guidance we got from the mods awhile back about what 'low quality' means.

user55340

The 'if you can read it, its not very low quality'

user41796

I had noticed that shift as well

user41796

Current implied definition seems more in line with what you would expect from that phrase.

user55340

6:43 PM

And in this light, I'm going to do more low quality focusing more on the wording of the flag than the guidance: "This answer has severe formatting or content problems. This answer is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed." - severe contact problems that cannot be salvaged through an edit.

user55340

It might change back - by us validating the flags through a delete and the mods not seeing them (and thus not rejecting them), we may have encouraged a different interpretation of the flag that that original guidance we got. Now mods are going to likely see more of them and that might cause the flags to get rejected more frequently.

user41796

Whee! social experimentation.

user55340

Hey there @Oded

Thomas Owens

Anyone here have any experience with some kind of internal networking tool called "MySite"?

user55340

@ThomasOwens never heard of it...

Thomas Owens

6:47 PM

@MichaelT Work is going to be piloting it to allow engineers to find other engineers with skills sets.

Kind of like an internal LinkedIn, I guess.

user41796

@ThomasOwens this? office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/…

Thomas Owens

I have no idea.

user55340

Could be useful in a larger company with lots of (internal) developers or self organizing teams.

user41796

> A way for other users to learn about you and your areas of expertise, current projects, and colleague relationships.

user55340

(or more flexible teams)

Thomas Owens

6:49 PM

I'm 99% sure that SharePoint can do everything.

I mean, I could probably get plugins and extensions to make my breakfast for me.

user41796

@ThomasOwens that statement is only true if there's an emacs plugin for it.

Oded

@MichaelT howdy

user55340

I'd once again like to say "thank you for those 'closed by Oded 15 seconds ago'" when I go look them.

user41796

Race to close:
(hint it's from the NPR days)

user41796

21

Q: Emacs-as-OS: obsolete?

In an attempt to reach at least beginner status with such a legendary editor, I have been coding in Emacs for the last two months. I try to keep an open heart, but I find myself continally disagreeing with one core design choice: that Emacs allow its users to never have to leave. In a 2010 worl...

text-editor philosophy osx emacs

Oded

6:52 PM

heh - always a pleasure ;)

Thomas Owens

#winning

user41796

If any of y'all heard the sound of a million souls screaming it's because I'm writing a "clever" query in MS Access. Ugh.

2

user55340

7:38 PM

@GlenH7 hadn't heard about the nurse scheduling problem before as that name.

user41796

@MichaelT Whatever path I had followed down is what caused me to stumble upon that one. At a high level, it seems like an NP-hard problem with a couple of different names depending upon how you want to look at it.

user55340

Its linked from:

user55340

Schedule (workplace)

A schedule, often called a rota or roster, is a list of employees who are working on any given day, week, or month in a workplace. A schedule is necessary for the day-to-day operation of any retail store, manufacturing facility and some offices. The process of creating a schedule is called scheduling. An effective workplace schedule balances the needs of stakeholders such as management, employees and customers. A daily schedule is usually ordered chronologically, which means the first employees working that day are listed at the top, followed by the employee who comes in next, etc. A we...

user55340

Which was your first link... and yea, its the righter answer (not the job shop problem)

user55340

> For large organisations employee scheduling can be complex,[2] and optimising this is framed as the Nurse scheduling problem in Operations Research.[3] Advanced employee scheduling software also provides ways to connect with the staff, ask for their preferences and communicate the schedule to them.[4]

user41796

7:47 PM

From my point of view, I'd like to write an app to help the local soccer leagues schedule their games. Essentially it's the same problem, just with slightly different constraints.

user55340

I've seen people spend months trying to do something that people like... only to find them swapping shifts after the schedule had been automatically generated with all their constraints.

user55340

It would have been easier just to put everyone's name down randomly and then let them swap anyways.

user41796

yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a manual process right now. And that's just crazy.

user55340

The only time the scheduling software is 'better' is when you don't allow swapping of shifts and want some modicum of 'fair'

user55340

Btw, on the source of the 'VLQ' guidance:

user55340

7:50 PM

4

A: Why was my flag in this question declined?

I didn't handle this flag, but since I'm hanging around anyway... I flagged this question for immediate closure Actually, you used this flag: ...That's the description for the "very low quality" flag. Clearly, it's intended for questions that are little more than festering boils - skip c...

user55340

Now, thats a question flag rather than an answer flag.

user55340

and if you need it, I've starred the two M.P.SE questions that are the source of that guidance.

user41796

At the league level, beyond the sheer volume of teams to coordinate, they are hampered by a huge influx of last-minute team registrations and requested conflict dates. The league doesn't help things though because they won't allow changes to requested conflict dates after you register. So coaches are effectively given an incentive to wait until the last minute to register.

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