The Whiteboard

gnat

6:00 PM

@JimmyHoffa I'm out of CVs, otherwise there would be one more voter

in that sense you did miss indeed. You did miss my CV

:)

Jimmy Hoffa

Ah, that's the hole.

@MichaelT @GlenH7 does this guy smell like a troll? He's now posted to 3 different sites; used a different user for one of them, and now argueing in comments on UX ux.stackexchange.com/users/33658/da-txomin

gnat

@MichaelT specific version JBoss can't update to use 1.7? Wow these guys have to be doing something hardcore I guess. Or have stupid config somewhere, with "JAVA_6_BLAH" hardcoded

@JimmyHoffa would be great to be able to flag for mods to merge his accounts but that likely won't work. My flag on that few months ago was declined, they can't do cross-site merges

the only difference, I wanted to merge good user back then :)

oh! you can flag for cross-post

if there are cross-post that is

user55340

@gnat specific features against JBoss 4.2.3 that changed behavior slightly in later versions, and 4.2.3 won't run on Java 7. And Java 7 builds don't like xdoclet annotations. There's a plug in against a specific version of ant (I still don't understand that one) too.

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat The cross-post on SO is closed, what will they do about that? and the UX isn't quite the same Q

gnat

@JimmyHoffa well that makes it tricky then

posting here in chat or maybe at meta would be the way to go probably

just like you did

user55340

6:11 PM

Mutating question... my approach (as a close-ist) would be "close 'em all, let the mods sort 'em out... or have the OP reask the real question on the proper site now that it is 'understood' where that is."

Ampt

@JimmyHoffa I find your accusations flippant, malicious, and of absolutely no value to anyone

Jimmy Hoffa

@Ampt I wish I could do flips... that would be cool

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Its easy just to flip you off...

gnat

@MichaelT um hum. Big system, rich functionality, codebase under development for a long time. That makes it more understandable, thanks. ant failure to run - that one I also can't understand. ant is rather simple

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat That depends on whose writing your ant scripts....

Ampt

6:16 PM

@JimmyHoffa You are my favorite person of the day.

Man this guy is full of gold

user55340

@gnat custom ant tasks for the awfuly designed code to handle things. ant.apache.org/manual/develop.html - again, specific version target that itself wasn't written correctly thus the strong linkage.

gnat

@JimmyHoffa ant scripts would be issue of scripts not ant

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat Yeah, but horrible ant scripts could make for a horrible ant experience wherein ant hardly works, or better yet, somebody writing their ant scripts as custom tasks... ick...

user20683

@JimmyHoffa As far as using a different name being a troll smell on different sites, it isn't. Many of the SO mods have different names on meta.SO. Or you might want use your real name for SO posts but not for say Christianity.SE.

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer I get that, but you can change the name on individual sites without using a different account

gnat

6:18 PM

@MichaelT OIC. Ant failure makes sense, then. I was lucky to never touch complicated stuff in it, experienced guys covered it for me. that made me feel it's simple (for the stuff I did myself). Not it clicks

user20683

@JimmyHoffa true but many people don't know that.

Ampt

@WorldEngineer Lol @ troll smell. We love our smells don't we. Code smells, design smells, even troll smells

user20683

@Ampt I think it comes from the root smell: Nerd Funk

user20683

:)

gnat

@JimmyHoffa all one needs to deal with horrible ant scripts is ant guru as a friend. I had one and my ant experience has never been horrible.

user55340

6:20 PM

There's a project underway to rearchetect it so that things are in the right spots so that things compile right in maven... and that was actually being done when I left. Though, it was going to require a custom maven task to handle the xdoclets and annotation mix which isn't supported (you shouldn't do it) in maven.

user20683

or as they call it at Georgia Tech: ECEs

user20683

0

Q: Latex vs Word - Resume

When I read this: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/11955/what-are-the-benefits-of-writing-resumes-in-tex-latex I thought of no reason for using MS Word for Resume building. But later I realized that this is "Tex" forum, so they would be "selling Tex". Question: Do we have reasons for no...

user20683

O_o

user55340

@WorldEngineer I've heard of people at cons going around with free deodorant.

user20683

@MichaelT I've seen it

user20683

6:21 PM

also I'll handle the above

gnat

@MichaelT xdoclets what's this? it's like old-fashioned early Java doclets? I recall doing annotation-kind magic with these on Java 1.3... or maybe 1.4 i can't remember

these were definitely version-sensitive

user55340

XDoclet

XDoclet is an open-source code generation library that enables Attribute-oriented programming for Java via insertion of special Javadoc tags. It comes with a library of predefined tags, which simplify coding for various technologies: Java EE, Web services, Portlet etc. Example A typical XDoclet comment might look like this: /**** * This is the Account entity bean. It is an example of how to use the * EJBDoclet tags. * * @see Customer * * @ejb.bean * name="bank/Account" * type="CMP" * jndi-name="ejb/bank/Account" * local-jndi-name="ejb/bank/LocalAcco...

gnat

meaniong they were known to break at every version change, 1.2 -> 1.3 -> 1.4

user55340

So yea... joys all around.

gnat

@MichaelT ah these! "special Javadoc tags" then it's all clear. Yes these should break at Java major version change. as I wrote, i remember these breaking (not for bugs, but for some cryptic legitimate reasons!) at upgrades 1.2 -> 1.3 -> 1.4 It's only natural this sequence to continue further, 1.5, 1.6 etc etc etc

user55340

6:26 PM

@gnat With 1.5 they were deprecated in favor of annotations.

gnat

plan to test and fix doclets at every major version change should be normal part of dev process that uses these

user55340

But when you're working on a code base that was clearly 1.4 with some hits of it being 1.3 in some places... and not small either, moving all of them on hundreds of ejbs to annotations (the localization stuff was also in xdoclets too) amounted to about 500-750 hours of work.

gnat

@MichaelT yes and deprecation was the right thing to do, exactly for the stuff I wrote about :)

user55340

The idea of "tie up one developer for an entire release cycle (3 months) just doing something that has no visible business gain" never was accepted... until you had to do it for the business advantage of "It is required that we upgrade, and can't use this anymore."

gnat

@MichaelT right - total switch to annotations is not always viable

user55340

6:29 PM

Gah

user55340

-2

Q: please suggest me some good books for web development

I want to learn enterprise development programming from front end to end process, please suggest some book for beginners

web-development web-applications web

user20683

@MichaelT I tied it up and left it in the corner

user20683

I will literally prowl the front page at certain times of day...

gnat

@MichaelT that game is familiar. I somehow learned the right moves. It's cumbersome but doable.

the trick is to figure business advantage and present it. It's an illusion that only business-requested features can pass through like that. These features just pass by default, the rest requires thinking and mapping. And a lot of patience...

...and a bit of political games

not the most pleasant stuff for programmer

that's why many prefer to stick with straightforward businwess request

and collect technical debt

until it crashes

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat Yeah, I've had to do this, the worst part of the political game is when you've fellow engineers who try calling you out on it in front of the business people. "Yes, this isn't really that much of a business request, but SHUT UP, they don't know the difference unless you tell them!"

It's hard to stay honest when you have to play those stupid games just to do things that are utterly necessary

Arghh I have to vote close this question because it's a terrible question, but a magnificent chance to evangelize haskell...

0

Q: scala or scheme or haskel for pure start of programming?

(i was browsing stackoverflow, and i guess my non concrete question fits here better. first time ever posting on this forums.) i was long time wondering about start learning programming, but never know right language for me. people say that for absolute beginner is good to start with something f...

programming-languages haskell scala scheme getting-started

also it's a cross-post

Unless I'm failing to browse SO correctly, which might be the case. oops.

user20683

6:44 PM

@JimmyHoffa What Cross Post?

user20683

I see no cross post

user20683

Also tied up and left in a corner.

thorsten müller

Can't we invite him to Chat?

user55340

74

Q: Invite low rep users to participate in chat

I'm aware of the preference for 'general answers to general questions' attitude on SO, and wholeheartedly agree that questions that are focused on specific, one-time issues are not as valuable to the site. However, where an issue is potentially useful but getting to the heart of it is taking som...

feature-request chat access

user20683

All in favor say aye and I'll enable him

thorsten müller

6:48 PM

I

user20683

My self.spelling() is throwing all kinds of exceptions today.

gnat

@JimmyHoffa BTDT. I somehow learned to deal with this, either. Basic idea is, really painful stuff is indeed typically tied to business value. It may be just buried too deep for people to see it. But, as you sense that freakin' pain of technical debt, this should serve as indication that "business gold" it 99.999% somewhere there. And you keep digging... and digging... and maybe, digging again. That's where patience / stubborness come into play

...then, you eventually dig it out. Clean it up (not the easiest thing, too, but still). Wrap it up into business suit. Package and sell. And suddenly, everyone around begans to agree. Business guys, engineer fellows, magmt. "Yeah now that is business stuff". Can't tell this feels rewarding, for there were soo much efforts involved

Rewarding part comes later. When it gets approved at last and you are free to do real work

user55340

I am always in favor of bringing in any low rep user who has asked a not-spam question. Mentoring is one of the important things that SE has difficulty with.

user20683

it's not letting me do it

user20683

@MichaelT you're a room owner, you try.

user55340

6:54 PM

The problem is he doesn't have a chat network identity... I think.

user20683

@MichaelT hmm

thorsten müller

@MichaelT it's serious pain to see people ask those questions and put quite some effort into making them as good as they can and we can't help them (though I mostly agree with the reasoning behind the limitations)

user55340

@thorstenmüller I do find it painful too and have often dispaired at the inability to actually chat with and direct new users on how SE works and answer their real question... which isn't a good SE question many times, but still one that they did come here to ask (and get answered).

thorsten müller

Can't we subversively upvote him to 20rep? Question will be closed anyway soon enough...

Ampt

he just needs 4 more lol

user20683

7:01 PM

@thorstenmüller I've told him to go register with chat.SE

Ampt

he has 21 rep now

user55340

I feel guilty now.

user55340

Rapier

21

getting-started haskell programming-languages scala scheme

user20683

the issue mostly is that chat is a separate system from the main site

user20683

@MichaelT would you like me to suspend you for "voting irregularities"? Would that make you feel better?

Ampt

7:02 PM

@WorldEngineer you better lock me up too. I did it haha

@MichaelT by our powers combined...

user55340

@WorldEngineer Yannis would be sad... he's been looking forward to another delete voter for awhile.

thorsten müller

I started it. You could downvote one of my answers or something

user20683

I honestly don't care

thorsten müller

We know :)

user20683

I should but I don't

Ampt

7:05 PM

I wouldn't mess with us @WorldEngineer. We're rebels. Living life on the edge, throwing around votes with reckless abandon.

user55340

It is one thing to upvote a "please suggest me some good books for web development" for someone who hasn't even presented a real problem. Its another to get a person who wrote five paragraphs on a question that has put some thought into it, but doesn't have enough rep.

user20683

@Ampt you guys are tame compared to gaming's insanity.

Ampt

@WorldEngineer "well, somehow you got 20 rep, please register and join us in Programmers Chat"

"somehow"

user20683

@Ampt you're quoting me inaccurately ;)

user55340

Awhile ago I had my own failed experiment with the career chat room. The problem was finding anyone who would go into chat if they had more than 20 rep... most had only one rep.

Ampt

7:10 PM

@WorldEngineer I see that squigly line. You aren't fooling anyone

gnat

@WorldEngineer then, you're guilty too. To amend all these sins will be easy though since you joined this black mass against holy upvote. With your mod powers, you can simply remove that question after you're done with chat stuff.

user20683

@gnat guilty how, I've not upvoted anything today.

gnat

it can sit at these satanic +2 / +3 / whatever as long as it's needed to discuss stuff

user55340

its a conspiracy I tell you! You can get anything that you want, at Alice's Restaurant

2

gnat

then you can clean it up and be salvaged

►

user55340

7:13 PM

I counter your tube with my own!

user55340

►

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT Careful, you're treading directly into @gnat's territory now...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa probably not a troll; just clueless wrt to SE

thorsten müller

@MichaelT haven't watched that movie for a decade

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 probably true. just thought I'd toss it for review

@thorstenmüller Did you at one point watch that movie for a decade?

user55340

7:16 PM

@JimmyHoffa Its long enough....

Jimmy Hoffa

Fair point

thorsten müller

@JimmyHoffa I think when you watch it on some psychedelics that would count like a decade

user41796

kind of good though when I-see-trolls-everywhere will give them a pass...

user55340

@thorstenmüller Try watching that last bit of 2001 under any sort of altered state... "2001 - the ultimate trip."

gnat

@JimmyHoffa that is a great threading, thanks @MichaelT I didn't know Woody had a son. And, fuck me, he seems to be good!

►

user55340

7:21 PM

City of New Orleans... ahh... good song.

thorsten müller

I love that whole group W bench scene:

►

user55340

@WorldEngineer Hmm... what would happen if we invaded the bridge and started posting youtube links to folk music...

user20683

@MichaelT LessPop_MoreFizz would start critiquing your choice of music.

user20683

the rest would probably just yawn

gnat

@WorldEngineer guilty for not suspending for "voting irregularities", of course! :)

user20683

7:28 PM

@gnat I'll put myself on trial later

Jimmy Hoffa

I've actually never put a bounty on a question before...hmmm...

For the first time ever I just peered into the close queue on SO since I'm over 3k there, it's much scarier than ours...

gnat

@WorldEngineer deal :) That will be your darkest hour

►

user55340

@JimmyHoffa It looks like they've adjusted the number of reviews per day there to 40...

user55340

And @gnat - I don't think the "clear the queue in 22 months at this rate" estimation from MSO is headed in the right direction.

Jimmy Hoffa

That was an audit review... and it's a deleted question... I'm not 10k but it showed me a deleted question in audit review....

Is this a known issue? Or on purpose?

user55340

7:38 PM

@JimmyHoffa by design.

Jimmy Hoffa

Ah

user55340

I've gotten some here... and its ones that they know are bad.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT They're right, look at that Q, that is awesome...

user20683

Desperation makes fools of us all.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa The proper response should have been "migrate to CS.SE"

Jimmy Hoffa

7:45 PM

I almost feel like there should be a drop-down at the bottom of the off-topic choices with the various known-close reason blogs from atwood, just a dropdown with:
Gorilla vs. Shark
Q&A is hard, let's go shopping
et al

user55340

Well, thats 2 of the 3 custom ones...

user55340

Ecplise inclines adam.getPoo().makeSloshy() -> adam.produceSuperDiarrhea() — Thomas Eding 10 mins ago

gnat

@MichaelT as of now, the right direction is rather "double the queue in 22 months at this rate". To clear would be easy peasy if they wanted it, but they just don't care. Oh well

11

Q: Strongly separate duplicates from "the rest" in close votes review queue

Review flow for questions having duplicate votes / flags substantially differs from all other items, because no other items require reviewer to consider more than one question. For reviewers unaware about filtering by close reasons, mixing two such different flows could significantly lower produ...

feature-request status-declined review vote-to-close exact-duplicates

Ampt

Why the limit on reviews at all? Do they not want someone to go on a rampage? Why not have a review weight like flag weight

gnat

61

A: Huge close votes review queue on Stack Overflow

Which action could be taken to clean it up? TL;DR Educate active reviewers to filter SO Close Votes queue by single close reason, with "duplicate" and "too localized" additionally filtered by their favorite tags. Based on my experience, this leads to substantial productivity gain. Bo...

Ampt

7:47 PM

higher weigh = more reviews

user55340

12

A: How slow is the Close Votes queue being processed? And how large should it get daily when the backlog is gone?

According to Huge Close Votes review queue on SO, the total was 55K questions to review back in October. 7,000 questions have been removed from the queue since then, so I think that's pretty good progress. If it keeps up at the same pace, we should have it cleared in just under 21 months from n...

user55340

(I'm curious to see if that comment flag is marked helpful...)

Jimmy Hoffa

> On the 4th June, 1996, the maiden flight of the Ariane 5 launcher ended after 40 seconds with the launcher spread over a fairly large part of Kourou, greatly depressing the market in tiny pieces of launch vehicle.

user55340

aside: 'o_O' is not a suitably long enough chat flag.

Jimmy Hoffa

That is a class A snark (not to be confused with class B or what I typically share of class D and below)

Moral of the story, NASA should start coding in Agda... a total language kind of makes sense for any life or death software

More so than the pain of a total language does anywhere else

gnat

7:55 PM

wonder how does it happen that 300 golden badges laying in front of about 10,000 eligible users can't help to attract more reviewers to work in this queue. "300 freaking easy golden badges that could drain 40,000 items from the queue in less than a month, and so little interest in these among 10,000 eligible users - why?" — gnat Mar 18 at 17:52

user55340

@gnat I remain surprised at how few people participate in reviews.

thorsten müller

I do sometimes, but to be true that's quite tiresome

user20683

@JimmyHoffa NASA doesn't use Ariane 5's

user20683

that was an ESA rocket.

user20683

and it was a hardware error.

Jimmy Hoffa

7:59 PM

@thorstenmüller Yeah, it's boring, and if you made it to 3k, chances are fairytale badges and points really aren't the end-goal for you, you generally reach 3k because you like to learn/help

@WorldEngineer leshatton.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Ariane5_STQE499.pdf

user20683

Ada was the Agda of its day. Strongest type system outside of the MLs

Ampt

@MichaelT well I know that at least for me personally, there are only 2 types of posts I can review here, and 9 times out of 10 they are empty, so I never even check anymore

but of course this is P.SE not SO.SE

user55340

@Ampt Yep, we tend to clear the non-close queue very fast. Even on SO, they tend to be empty fast. Its that close one that lingers.

user20683

@MichaelT I forget exactly why that is

user20683

I think it's mostly volume

user55340

8:08 PM

(btw, if you want a voting irregularity, reopen programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/34594 so you can find out who cast that reopen vote... no, I didn't cast that in the queue)

user20683

@MichaelT it won't be listed

user20683

it doesn't say "reopened by"

user55340

It shows up in the edit history I think...

user20683

well in the edit logs it does

user20683

yeah

user20683

8:10 PM

not witch hunting

user20683

sorry

user55340

I wouldn't expect it. Just one of those "why did this show up?"

user55340

There we go... you can see an example of "who reopened it" in programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/187642/revisions

user20683

oh good, back pain seems to have decided to vacate the spine... :)

user20683

now to get some real work done

user41796

8:29 PM

@MichaelT I think that only shows up once 5 votes accumulate. It won't show the individual votes until then.

user20683

@GlenH7 it will if I force it open.

user41796

@WorldEngineer Find an activator method chiropractor in your area. Cleveland College trains quite a few. They're simply amazing. The premise blends both eastern approaches to meridians as well as western approaches to chiropractic care

user41796

@WorldEngineer You and your diamond powers .....

user41796

and now I'm out of close votes for the day. Just used the 10k tools to see recent close votes and to pile on. :-)

user20683

@GlenH7 on my todo list for after real job

user41796

8:35 PM

How is that hunt going?

user20683

@GlenH7 not so grand, need to fix up my careers profile I think

user41796

is it public? Are you receptive to unasked for advice?

user55340

@GlenH7 Correct. Thus my occasional temptation (but no more so than that) of accepting such a reopen so that I could see who it was that initiated it (out of curiosity). There are some strange questions that get reopen nominations and have an active vote on them (so its not just a flag).

user20683

@GlenH7 not yet public

user20683

soon

user41796

8:39 PM

@WorldEngineer there's a number of gray beards that you know who also do a lot of interviewing (both sides of the table).

user41796

Don't be afraid to ask for help and guidance. :-)

user20683

@GlenH7 I will. Just need to get all my ducks in order. Got my performance review in, it's very good

user20683

so that's one less hurdle

user55340

For programmers.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/34594 to have a pending open vote suggests to me that there is someone who is either poking fun for amusement (and thus not taking ownership of the site themselves despite having 3k rep) or has a strange (to me) understanding of what questions should be open on an SE site.

user41796

I can certainly understand needing to clear out some irons before putting more in the fire.

user41796

8:46 PM

@MichaelT You have a point there. AFAIK, not everyone agrees with book recommendations being off-topic.

gnat

9:38 PM

@MichaelT you mean, in that huge queue full of golden badges? :) I for one am not surprised at all. Very few would go to meta to dig out if it maybe could be done easier (or amybe couldn't). Most will give it a try, find it too difficult and drop. I know because I was like them...

> This queue felt a bit difficult from the beginning, but I thought I'll get used to it after a while. 300+ review actions passed, but it still felt cumbersome... Discomfort I felt when running through queue reminded me of old review system and of the reason why I didn't want to use it...

I was 200% seriously going to drop it after silver badge (250 reviews IIRC), the fact that I am at over 5K reviews now, is pure luck. Quite sad that in discovering the right way to do, I was totally alone, Stack Exchange does nothing (n-o-t-h-i-n-g) to help CV reviewers to find the easy way

Dynamic

Does anybody know of a library used to search and extract text from and image?

user20683

@Dynamic in what language?

Dynamic

@WorldEngineer Anything really, but preferably Python, Ruby, or Perl

Ampt

@Dynamic there are tons of such libraries, the search term you're looking for is OCR

user20683

@Dynamic simpleCV could probably do it

user55340

9:47 PM

search.cpan.org/~jmastros/OCR-PerfectCR-0.03/lib/OCR/…

user20683

simplecv.sourceforge.net/doc/SimpleCV.html

user20683

you want the "read text" function

user55340

> OCR::PerfectCR is a fast, highly accurate "optical" character recognition engine requiring minimal training. How does it manage this, despite being written in pure perl? By ignoring most of the problems. OCR::PerfectCR requires that your input is in perfect shape -- that it hasn't gone into the real world and been scanned, that each image represent one line of text, and nothing else, and most difficultly, that the font have a fairly wide spacing.

user20683

because you know "magic"

user20683

yes, I know how it probably works. Feature detection can be a pain in the ass though

Dynamic

9:49 PM

@WorldEngineer Thanks! I think that's what I'm looking for!

@MichaelT I'll look into it, but the fact that the input needs to be "perfect" is a huge turn-off.

user55340

@Dynamic It depends on what you are trying to do. If you have something that was exported to (for example) .png and you want to get the text out of that, it would work great.

user20683

You can also do all kinds of things to the image to improve the sharpness

user20683

clean up noise

user20683

et cetera

user55340

9:51 PM

PerfectOCR would be able to pick that one up exactly.

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat There's an easy way to figure out if it should be CV'ed?

gnat

I always wanted to review, and with prior review system I always know I won't do it because it was so inconvenient. New review system felt exactly as inconvenient, that made me certain I'll drop it. I was exploring differences with filters out of pure curiosity, but I was going to drop it, because I didn't know what a difference it makes

►

can't believe it braindead Youtube doesn't have Billie Holiday singing it

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat Now I'm goign to have to actually go listen to see what song you're talking about, who doesn't love Billie Holiday

ah, good song

gnat

@JimmyHoffa Youtube doesn't. They don't have her "What a difference a day makes"

idiots

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat Her media is probably worth too much for the media company's to not scan for constantly posting takedowns

gnat

9:55 PM

@JimmyHoffa guess so. The fact they don't have it with Ella, also speaks in favor of your hypothesis

Dynamic

@MichaelT I'm basically trying to scan hand-written notes and convert it to word document.

user55340

@Dynamic PerfectOCR would not work for that at all.

gnat

@JimmyHoffa yes, absolutely. Filtering does the magic (don't forget I am talking SO, at Programmers it won't cut it)

> My testing of filtering by close reasons began with "off topic". Bingo! Review went smooth and fast, and most important, I felt comfortable - just about like I felt with all other queues in new system. I tried "not constructive", then "not a real question" - great, the magic is there.

Dynamic

@MichaelT Anything that will?

user20683

@Dynamic that's not OCR, that's hand writing recognition

user20683

9:58 PM

loads and loads of statistical machine learning

Dynamic

@WorldEngineer I'm assuming that's a lot more difficult to handle :P

user20683

@Dynamic yeah

user20683

you want "statistical pattern recognition"

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat To be certain I prefer Sara Vaughan to either of them; though Billie Holiday's "They can't take that away from me" is one of my favorite jazz songs

user20683

@Dynamic there are basically two main ways of doing it

user20683

10:00 PM

one is to compare blobs

user20683

the other is to figure out curves and then compare those

user20683

yes I took a class on this

gnat

2 mins ago, by World Engineer

loads and loads of statistical machine learning

...I would add, this exactly makes a nice fat market opportunity for one who finds out how to do it right. Complicated stuff => little competition => be the first, grab the market. Of course, assuming doing it right - which is the trickiest part

user20683

k means clustering is another way

gnat

@JimmyHoffa Sarah let's see. One minute

agree on "They can't take that away from me"

though I also like how Ella does it

psr

10:05 PM

k means clustering is another way
u used to cluster me that way
tho i found you clustering her today
u can't take that away from me

maybe I'm reading too fast.

user20683

@psr been afflicted with MUMPS too much lately?

psr

@WorldEngineer YES!

gnat

very good! thanks @JimmyHoffa My heart remains with Billie, but... wow. How come I didn't hear her singing it. That was quite a gap

►

interesting did Nina Simone did it

Dynamic

@WorldEngineer So are there any libraries for this then? I'm sure somebody has thought of doing this before and didn't just close-source it...

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr As you further on the road of this new fancy pantsy system in MUMPS, are you hating yourself more and more every day because... more mumps...new mumps..just like old mumps..AHHHHH??

user20683

10:09 PM

@Dynamic it's not so much that the libraries don't exist, it's more that the problem domain is complex

Dynamic

@WorldEngineer There's this: zinnia.sourceforge.net

psr

@WorldEngineer MUMPS has the concept of opening a device (pretty much i/o of any type), then you "use" the device, and from then on the thread applies all "read" and "write" commands to that device, cleverly forcing everyone to have lots of error handling code because not restoring the prior device is catastrophic.

user20683

@Dynamic try it and see

user20683

that's what Engineering is about

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat My favorite classic female jazz artist could beat up your favorite classic female jazz artist. (Ok based on the stories about Billie, that's not even almost true)

psr

10:12 PM

But the best part is, special device codes are sent using "w *-3" (or some other integer), and, I love this, each device has entirely unique special codes (to do stuff like flush a buffer), and throws an exception if it gets any other device's code. So you can't actually re-use ANY device handling code. Nor can you write your own - it's all built in. And built in libraries use the write command without wrapping it in an object. Seriously! Can we have any usable abstraction?

user55340

@Dynamic hand writing recognition lets you have even more fun than google translate english -> spanish -> english. angelos.demon.co.uk/clare/literature/jabb-handwriting.html

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr It's an abstraction obstruction! I won't stand for it!

psr

@JimmyHoffa My system is going fairly well and I'm doing my own, private, "MUMPS, the sort of good parts". But the team has been forced to drop everything to do maintenance on an old system. Thus, "AHHHHH!".

user55340

'Beware the tablespoon my son,
The jaws that bite, the Claus that catch.
Beware the Subjects bird, and shred
The serious Bandwidth!'

Jimmy Hoffa

@psr "MUMPS, the I wish these were good parts"

psr

10:15 PM

@JimmyHoffa It's like they tried carefully to make sure it would almost work, yet still be unusable and unfix-able.

user55340

And a reasonable article from wikipedia.

user55340

Handwriting recognition

Handwriting recognition (or HWR) is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. The image of the written text may be sensed "off line" from a piece of paper by optical scanning (optical character recognition) or intelligent word recognition. Alternatively, the movements of the pen tip may be sensed "on line", for example by a pen-based computer screen surface. Handwriting recognition principally entails optical character recognition. However, a complete handwriting r...

psr

@JimmyHoffa Yes. More accurately, the "I can work with these if I hold my nose and waste time on silly things daily parts".

gnat

@JimmyHoffa let's agree that both of them could beat Holly Cole :)

►

Jimmy Hoffa

@gnat Yeah, that's terrible heh

gnat

10:28 PM

@JimmyHoffa you've got to hear Doris Day doing it

8,402,444 views at Youtube

programmers.stackexchange.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/questions/…

clicking above displays problemz

user20683

@Dynamic If you want a MacArthur Fellowship and Academic Posts for life, use Handwriting Recognition and whatnots to crack Linear A

Jimmy Hoffa

10:43 PM

@gnat Any linke like programmers.stackexchange.com/… will display an error, that's by design (note, inspect the url of the link you and I posted)

@WorldEngineer academic posts... doesn't that have to be like boring as hell though? Teaching and grading and crap?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa not if you land a research post

user20683

Universities often have two faculties: Teaching and Research

user20683

and for the record, teaching can be fun

user20683

grading is just price of admission

user20683

or you have a TA who does that

Jimmy Hoffa

10:46 PM

@WorldEngineer No no, it's teaching and preaching, the first part gets underpaid, the second part makes sure the first part looks great as it advertises them everywhere

user20683

fair enough

user20683

Bell Labs then

user20683

or similar

Jimmy Hoffa

I jest, I know practically nothing about academia having disavowed myself of it long before I was wise enough to even understand it

user20683

@JimmyHoffa it greatly depends on the college in question

user20683

10:51 PM

@JimmyHoffa I did have this lunatic idea for a Haskell program, use it to build fictional languages

user20683

like you input certain rules and it coughs up a language

user20683

granted it's a multi year side project

user20683

but if I can pull that off, I don't think anywhere would turn me down

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer And it's absolutely useless, but at the end of it you have a really weird little program no one would ever use!

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Not completely useless, useful for RPGs and the like

user20683

10:52 PM

just an idea

Jimmy Hoffa

heh sounds neat and yeah you're probably right (except that large swaths of industry believe a PhD means you're useless and will never do actual work)

user20683

never said it was for a PhD

user20683

:)

Jimmy Hoffa

It would be an awesome research concept, you would surely learn a lot. The really cool thing would be when you gave it all the constraints of english and it spits out a partially-english language all on it's own

user20683

that's the acid test right there

Jimmy Hoffa

10:54 PM

@WorldEngineer Yeah, but in industry, somebody who does a multi-year personal research project for something like that is as well as a PhD

user20683

true enough

Jimmy Hoffa

Only crappy company's have such damaged ideas in their heads anyway

you wouldn't want to work for them

user20683

probably not

Jimmy Hoffa

11:06 PM

Learn PHP... Get hired in a week... Heh

gnat

@JimmyHoffa the URL I was trying was http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4680/is-it-possible-to-become-a-good-programmer-if-you-dont-like-math

programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/4680/…

and the URL for error page is, respectively,

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/questions/4680/is-it-possible-to-become-a-good-programmer-if-you-dont-like-math

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