« first day (1919 days earlier)      last day (3088 days later) » 
00:00 - 22:0022:00 - 00:00

enderland
enderland
12:14 AM
haters gonna hate. but this is good stuff a friend gave me:
 
user15026
Some little kid just called me and was like "hello hello hello" babygiggle "hello" button pressing "goodbye bye bye hello bye". Best support call ever.
 
user15026
@enderland That would make a great milkshake I bet
 
Brandin
Brandin
Nonsense
I found the top answer here explains why the whole notion of code quality is bunk programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/195045/…
Forget about code quality. Just write code that works.
 
whatsisname
whatsisname
12:31 AM
15 people they should have a written policy by now
 
user15026
@whatsisname Entirely possible that we do, I've just not seen it.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
@Brandin so, the counter-argument to "code quality matters" is "what if my code is so amazingly exceptional nobody can understand it"? or that "some algorithms are complicated, therefore there's no point trying to make their implementations readable"?
 
Brandin
Brandin
No, I think it matters. But you've got to have a real understandable explanation of what you mean. And no one ever does. Instead they come up with vague musings about how to name variables and where to put braces and other triviliaties that never matter. Come up with some real way to define the concept, the same way we do for natural language texts.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
I guess I have the good fortune not to know anyone like that where I work
there's one or two guys who often lead with the vague statement and I frequently have to ask for clarification, but they generally succeed at clarifying (or do other stuff until they figure out how to articulate it)
 
 
1 hour later…
user55340
1:45 AM
@Brandin programming-motherfucker.com (note, web page title should be half a hint that it isn't exactly work safe... well, it is, it just uses language.)
 
user55340
They do recognize the issue though, and have taken care to make swag to try to address the issue.
 
user55340
 
user55340
The text is rot 13.
 
user55340
For some reason, I don't think this shirt would go over well even with rot 13 at my place of employment.
 
user55340
(the book list is really quite good)
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
1:50 AM
@MichaelT I had to face palm so hard the other day; I jokingly said to my boss as we spoke of how to securitize a piece of data without the hassle of keys "I know! ROT-13!" - and it fell completely flat. He literally had no clue what i was talking about even upon simple explanation; he'd never heard of it. 'tf...
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa for added security, double rot 13.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT I always double it (sometimes quadruple it) in every communication I make. Duh.
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa which is why we have no idea what you are saying half the time.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT I know! If you guys only had a clue half the things I'm saying about y'all! Hah! Ahhh scotch.
 
user55340
Tonight's imbibery:
 
user55340
1:52 AM
 
user55340
(note where brewed - Door county is famous for cherries)
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT how do you feel about the idea from @Ampt of a sub-section in the recipes github for "Recommendations" where we can have categories (beers, wines, ciders, whiskeys, etc) with encouragements for choices of off the shelf goods?
 
user55340
That could certainly work.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT at first I liked the idea of the cherry in the cider, but upon closer inspection; I'm most intrigued by the enjoyment of a product from a place called "Door county". Just a great name for a county; sounds homely.
BTW @MichaelT do you like Mead at all? I would think you would considering the sweetness
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa Its the thumb of Wisconsin.
 
user55340
1:57 AM
 
user55340
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
Thumb county! Even better! Now I must get my hands on some of their products.
 
user55340
 
user55340
2:14 AM
Btw, did you see the packer's game last night?
 
user55340
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
2:26 AM
@MichaelT ... what the hell makes you think I would ever see a game? Piggers are giong all the way this year...piggers number one
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa Lets just say that at my place of employment, jeans are typically unacceptable clothing for permanent staff. We were given special notice that yesterday, you may wear jeans... and green & gold casual attire. Its kind of big here.
 
user55340
However, that last play is one that if nothing else, skip to -1:30 from the end and watch. You don't often see that type of play.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT when I was in Pittsburgh, business casual was the rule but a steelers jersey always counted as a part of that..
 
user55340
A not-small part of the fans left sports bars at half time. Many others were leaving in the third quarter... and fourth. Watch that last play.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
@MichaelT Before the weekend kicks; you should really look at besiege. It's definitely your style of game
getting the physics right is downright tricky on it for sure
 
user55340
2:32 AM
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
heh, have you gotten a catapult to work yet?
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa Not yet. It was a "yea, good game... going to do a little bit of easier games for a little" I'll be back at it when I can think more clearly.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
aye. It's tricky; it's like debugging though - hard to stop messing with whatever I'm putting together
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
3:29 AM
note: Catapults suck at killing knights
drills + saws + cannons = best for that
 
user55340
The short film that inspired Borderlands: vimeo.com/7432584
 
user55340
4:42 AM
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
10:10 AM
@MichaelT interesting
 
 
1 hour later…
Duga
Duga
11:27 AM
May be a better question for programmers.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic, alternatively it may be possible to refine the question to specifics of an implementation to be relevant for SO. P.S. Both of the examples you have posted perform server-side calculation. The first requests and replaces the filter HTML chunk the second updates the counts from a JSON object. As for server-side implementation, likely lots of caching and optimisation. Too broad to cover in a single answer. — Stuart Wakefield 19 secs ago
 
 
2 hours later…
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
1:26 PM
I like how SO goes into read-only mode without warning at any moment
and @StackStatus has no tweets since November
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
2:04 PM
there've been a few today now
and the last November one was only five days ago
 
enderland
enderland
saturday morning US time isn't a time many of SE are online probably
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@enderland Most Stack Overflow users are not Americans.
It's a whole big world out here, mate.
So cut out the Americentricism. Thanks.
@Ixrec No updates on the status blog in three months
 
enderland
enderland
@LightnessRacesinOrbit how many SE employees are in the USA vs timezones that are not in the USA morning ?
because I'm pretty sure most SE employees are based in USA timezones
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
Employees are different from users
(It's not as close as you probably think, though. stackexchange.com/about/team)
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
2:39 PM
Hmm I appear to be in a bad mood for no apparent reason. Ignore me.
 
user55340
I will give props to sharepoint for one thing. It let me 'win' (at least part of) an argument about how to organize REST endpoints. The DBA lead is trying to argue for /main/sub/{id} as the resource path ("because parameters go at the end of the query"). Using sharepoint as a "we should make it so that the endpoints are exactly where we would put files in sharepoint" it made sense to my manager. /{id}/main/sub
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
What actually is Sharepoint, anyway? I know there's an SE for it, disguised as a support desk, and that's about it.
(you can stop ignoring me now)
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
MS intranet portal for office collaboration with doc stores and file sharing that integrates with office products for multiple real time editors like google docs, plus lets you create forms for entering data into spreadsheets
Happy coffe day. Swift is forgetting the only reason I Ever use ++ or -- as they're atomic
Maybe swifts aren't though
 
user55340
> Eh, maybe it does not matter. Question is a duplicate anyway and Roomba is going to eat it. I'll help. – Snowman 16 hours ago
 
user55340
The question currently has two comments, so that's not enough @Snowman - you need to get @gnat to delete his comment which will get it under the roomba threshold.
 
user55340
2:54 PM
 
user55340
 
amon
amon
@JimmyHoffa In which language is increment/decrement atomic? I can't think of any language that sports these semantics by default.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
C# in 64 bit
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
um, are you sure?
it certainly isn't in 32-bit and C# 64-bit would be the exception to the rule if it were
 
user55340
@JimmyHoffa The thing is 80% of the time, people are just ignoring the return value.
 
user55340
2:59 PM
And if the return value is ignored, then x += 1 is just as atomic.
 
user55340
It also encourages those foo(++a, a++) questions where people do (too) clever things.
 
amon
amon
The C# docs on operator ++ say nothing about atomicity, which would be a very important (and expensive) guarantee.
 
user55340
And there's the implication that you shouldn't be doing increment style for loops, but rather iterator style loops.
 
amon
amon
… and neither does the C# 4.0 language spec in §7.7.5 Prefix increment and decrement operators.
 
user55340
Java doesn't say anything about atomicity. If anything, it hints that it isn't. docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/…
 
amon
amon
3:08 PM
… but §5.5 Atomicity of Variable References guarantees that reads and writes for int-or-smaller primitives are atomic, noting “Aside from the library functions designed for that purpose, there is no guarantee of atomic read-modify-write, such as in the case of increment or decrement.”
 
user55340
> Note that the binary numeric promotion mentioned above may include unboxing conversion (§5.1.8) and value set conversion (§5.1.13). If necessary, value set conversion is applied to the sum prior to its being stored in the variable.
 
user55340
(for java)
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
The answer would be just fine, actually the best in my view if you would just remove the inaccuracy that "an integer is a whole number" and the pointer to the problematic wikipedia article. — g24l 6 mins ago
Sigh.
The stupids are out in full force this morning.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
sunufuhbitch; now I want to know which numbskull convinced me that 64-bit incremenet/decrement is atomic. Must be cause the 64-bit assignment of all value types is atomic but that's bloody irrelevant. Some jerk-off "senior engineer" I worked with put that crap in my head years ago and I've been wandering about unawares. Bleh.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
LOL
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
3:22 PM
Just goes to show; unless you read something from a proper source, don't go telling other people shit which is why I'm always telling people to quit spouting off garbage about GC that's just based off the incorrect rumor mill on it throughout the industry..
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
so basically you're a saiudghfkausygdfa
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
if I had a nickel for everytime I heard someone say "Objects are collected as soon as a method ends, that's what a garbage collector does!" or "At the end of a statement block" or "At the end of a using block" I would drown some asshole in nickels for spreading such bullocks
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
rofl
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
Dumbass me believing something I had heard repeated enough times without having double checked it..grumble. Stupid .NET devs. Stupid me.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
17 mins ago, by Lightness Races in Orbit
The stupids are out in full force this morning.
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
3:29 PM
In other news, I have succesfully created a pretty good crane and gun-truck in besiege. @MichaelT if you want the .bsg file for something - though I believe there's a steam way of downloading community ones that are surely much better
 
amon
amon
at least C# has operator overloading so you could define an integer-like type with atomic -- or ++.
I love operator overloading. Unfortunately, this Uni project I'm doing requires the usage of Java, which would lead to delightfulness such as hOffsetProperty().bind(widthProperty().subtract(size).divide(2)) if I'd to write the GUI in reactive style.
 
Duga
Duga
3:45 PM
Now this may be appropriate for Programmers.SE. It's a whiteboard/algorithm/design/decision question. — Lightness Races in Orbit 36 secs ago
 
user55340
@amon Operator overloading is neat, and you can do quite a bit of things that make for very reasonable code. However, it also can make for very unreasonable code in a way that I believe is otherwise matched only by open classes. I've just seen far too many "ohh, I can make Set + Integer mean add(int) and Set<Integer> * Integer mean multiply all values by the integer, but Set<String> * Integer means join and returns a String.
 
user55340
It just gets stupid clever when you have to go look up what '+' means each time you read someone else's code.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
to be fair, the argument that a feature is not good because someone can potentially abuse it is not that persuasive
 
amon
amon
I don't buy the “operator overloading is evil because you can define bad overloads” argument. I'll admit that Haskell code tends to be incomprehensible simply due to the amount of custom operators, and that creative overloads break many expectations. Usage of << and >> to mean stream-insert and stream-extract in C++ was the worst idea ever. But the good usages outweigh that crap: custom numeric classes, APL-like distributing matrix operations as in numpy, symbolic calculations, ….
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
I personally dislike operator overloading because I like to know what the most basic, primitive tokens of my language do; even if it's rarely the case, the idea that I sometimes have no way of knowing what () or + or , will do is a bit undesirable
 
user55340
3:52 PM
Need to recall what the original focus of Oak Java was. It was for small, sensible, embedded language to go into the early internet of things before that was an idea.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
I like a visual distinction between things that always have a certain meaning and things that have a user-defined meaning; calling a method on a class is obviously going to invoke user-defined stuff, so keeping overloading behaviors confined to classes and methods is fine by me
 
user55340
It didn't need to go into operator overloading for math - that wasn't what it was about at all. The core focus was for safety and reasonability of programming.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
it also seems like mathematical libraries are the only really big, clearly legitimate use case where operator overloading is probably a net win (are there others?)
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@gnat Sigh
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
@LightnessRacesinOrbit what did gnat do?
 
amon
amon
4:02 PM
@Ixrec for numeric operators, yes. But also think of user-defined conversions (especially to booleans), pointer operators (in C++), operator () for function-like objects, comparison operators, …. In C++, requiring iterators to supply == and ++ operators makes a lot of sense to keep semantic compatibility to pointers.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
true, in a language that has raw pointers and no first-class functions, those are compelling use cases
 
amon
amon
Even with first class functions closures, letting an object behave like a function can be extremely convenient.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
C++ doesn't have first-class functions?
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
it sort of mostly does now
 
amon
amon
C and C++ have first class functions: function pointers. C++11 introduced lambdas, which are closures, and are implemented as objects with an overloaded function-call operator
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
4:07 PM
oh, right, function pointers
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Oh, I see.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
sorry, I always forget those exist because the syntax is so scary it looks like something you only do when hacking on far lower level stuff than I work on
but yes lambdas are syntactic sugar for functors
the big win of lambdas is that they allow defining anonymous functors, and defining functors in the middle of another function so you don't have to declare it 500 lines above the one place you use it (like I always end up doing when I try using <algorithm>)
how type safe are function pointers exactly? I've never used them, but I have the vague impression you have to do some casting to get them to work
 
amon
amon
They are completely type safe. The problem is they can't have associated data like closures do. Therefore, C functions that take callbacks usually also keep track of a void* that holds arbitrary state required by the function, which will then require casting to access. In C++, you'd rather pass around a functor or an object + member pointer.
 
gnat
gnat
4:33 PM
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
4:43 PM
@RobertHarvey don't worry about it. Someone with the aptitude to understand the question clearly already provided a good answer. — Viziionary 47 secs ago
Whee!
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
burn
@Ixrec I thought I had the migrate-to-Programmers thing down but he still found a way to make me wrong!
actually that question looks okay to me tbh
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
The answer improves the question.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
shrug
1
A: why there's not std::is_struct type trait?

Lightness Races in Orbit It returns true for both classes and structs. I know that in C++ they are almost the same thing, but I'd like to know why there's not a distinction between them in the type trait. Unfortunately this is a common misconception in C++. Sometimes it comes from fundamental misunderstanding, but a...

one of my better answers?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
0
A: When > apply a performance and memory profiler?

Robert HarveyUse a memory and performance profiler when you need to find out why your program is running too slow or using too much memory.

One of my better answers.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
trade you an upvote?
(inb4 6 month suspension for "voting irregularities")
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
4:59 PM
Done.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
the suspension or the upvote? ;)
@LightnessRacesinOrbit I should apologize, I agree that I'm being confrontational. The thing is, for over a year, every question I've asked, many which have been upvoted, this gnat guy is always there within minutes providing negative comments or feedback. He never suggests improvement. He never provides an answer. Its just always negative feedback, all the time. It has become very irritating over the course of a year. — Viziionary 3 mins ago
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
The upvote. [high-five, bumps fist]
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
[gets jiggy wid it]
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
5:12 PM
A rare behind-the-scenes photo of William Shatner checking Facebook in between takes:
 
gnat
gnat
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
5:43 PM
Ahh functor /= function. It's a structure with a binary operation that takes a binary operation and a value enclosed in the structure.
Yucky c functor terminology
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
wot
since when does C have functors?!
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
C/c++ :)
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
WHAT U SAY
HOW DARE U
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
since pointers became objects
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
a C++ functor is any callable type, where callable means can be called, which includes those classes with a member-operator(). It need not be a binary operator. Instances of the type may optionally hold state.
C doesn't have any of this
 
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
6:14 PM
C/C++ does though
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
6:55 PM
I wonder if anyone writes "C11/C++11" code
 
Brandin
Brandin
7:10 PM
C++ doesn't really have functors either. It just happens to some features that people use in a certain way that are typically referred to as functors.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Ixrec lol
@Brandin "C++ doesn't have functors. It just has some things that people call functors". wtf
whaddya think std::function<T> is buddy ^_^
just cos its not built in doesnt mean it aint no part of the language yo
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
this is getting philosophical now
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
so #deep
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
it feels like clickbait, but they don't really have to do anything to make it sound as ridiculous as it is
 
Brandin
Brandin
It's like saying C doesn't have callbacks. If you look, every C program has callback's. Yet, at the same time, no C program has callback's, because there is really no such thing. C just defines a feature that enables the creation of a thinga-majig which we call callback.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
7:28 PM
o.O
Might as well say C doesn't have pointers. It does however have a feature that enables the creation of pointers.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
@LightnessRacesinOrbit to be fair, I used to watch a show on the History Channel called "Mail Call" which was all Q&A about military history and technology, more than a few questions boiled down to "here are the pros and cons of this famous gun"
but they never presented this stuff as something an ordinary consumer would buy
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
-4
Q: I do not know what Design pattern to use?

J.doeIf for instance, if i have a Waiters class and if i want to have the waiters class to have one of two contract types full-time and part-time. In addition, the system should be flexible and allow waiters to change their contract type. So in this sort of scenario what sort of design patter is neces...

design-patterns uml software engineering
ugh
lostcause.png
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
well, we did nuke it pretty fast
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
yeah but that person still exists in the world
problem not solved
 
Brandin
Brandin
Design patterns are worthless. Every time I try to read up on them I get bored and then go back to the actual work of writing programs.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
7:34 PM
:)
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
they're handy as a shared vocabulary for communicating some non-obvious solutions to other competent programmers, but yes, treating them as if they were part of the fundamental ontology of programming is a big facepalm
 
Brandin
Brandin
To test this I think I need an actual experiment. Make a program with equivalent functionality, one using supposedly proper "design patterns", and the other just using whatever design came into my head (which has some kind of chaotic pattern perhaps). Which one can be more easily extended/modified. Look at the commit logs of each project in parallel to compare the work involved.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
7:50 PM
and everyone will claim one or the other is a straw man depending on their personal feelings toward the phrase "design pattern"
 
Brandin
Brandin
You mean we don't agree on what is a design pattern? Why can't it just be like idioms. Everyone knows what the "pimpl idiom" is for example in C++ and what it's purpose is.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
it's a bit fuzzy sometimes, especially when you get into that "design patterns are workarounds for missing language features like first-class functions" argument, but I'm sure we can all agree on what is and is not a visitor pattern for instance
I was more referring to "a program using supposedly proper design patterns" being something we probably cannot agree on quite so easily
 
ProgrammingMachine5000
ProgrammingMachine5000
Hey, I don't quite know if this is the right place for this, but if I set up a LAMP Stack in the Cloud like this cloud.google.com/compute/docs/tutorials/setup-lamp to host a website, how much would this cost on average per month?
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
just to check, would it be fair to assume that "idioms" are usually specific to one language (or family of similar languages) while "patterns" can be used in pretty much any language? (even if they're not as useful in certain languages)
@ProgrammingMachine5000 that's what we'd call a "tech support question", because the only way to get an authoritative answer is to talk to the people at Google who will be billing you for it
and now I'll be ignoring the chat because Doctor Who is on
 
ProgrammingMachine5000
ProgrammingMachine5000
8:07 PM
@Ixrec okay thanks, they have some sort of calculator up but I can't figure it out quite right....I just thought someone might know because they did it themselves
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
9:06 PM
@Ixrec that was surprisingly good
I'm giggling a little
spin-off, anyone?
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
I'm quite happy with it, yeah
I was worried it wouldn't answer all the questions left by the last episode but it came pretty close
the only thing I'm not clear on is how the confession dial thing got him to that planet in the first place, but that one thing by itself I'm willing to handwave
dunno about a spin-off, but maybe
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Ixrec yarp
@Ixrec well, I'm joking, but those two girls together is TOP
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
TOP?
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
as in NOTCH
 
user15026
@Ixrec I've not watched Doctor Who since the first ep of this season.
 
user15026
9:17 PM
I keep forgetting.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
I forgot several times, but there's always iPlayer
though I also hang out in the sci-fi chats so someone is bound to mention it before it falls of iPlayer no matter how distracted I am
 
user15026
I just have so many other things to watch that I tend to not care. I've not super loved it the last few seasons.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@AshleyNunn ||̸|| ||̸|| ||̸|| ||̸|| ||
(Phil C's comment)
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
to be fair, we all wish something like that was feasible
and it's already pragmatically true in the sense that any browser version with low market share ceases to be supported
 
user15026
@Ixrec I could see a few decent usecases for it.
 
amon
amon
9:26 PM
@LightnessRacesinOrbit evergreen browsers are one of the best things that have ever happened to the poor web devs after they'd been punished by having to use JavaScript.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
and all modern browsers auto-update by default nowadays, so as time goes on more and more "typical" users will be on the latest versions by default
 
amon
amon
of course, Phil's argument has a fallacy – how can a user research online how to change the registry if their browser won't work?
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
lol
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
I hate auto-update with an cosmic passion
actually not auto-update so much but this notion of "never mind version numbers just make it 'the product as it is today' and upgrade transparently without people even needing to know"
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
why?
oh, well, there are still version numbers if you care to look, >90% of users will never care of course
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
9:28 PM
the moment you can't download "Product Name v1.2.34.exe" any more is the moment you can't develop for certain things
now, in practice, fortunately, they still have to leak the abstraction a little bit, which is why you can still see version numbers if you look for them
hopefully that will remain the case
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
yeah, if only as a development feature I would think they have to support that
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
it just seems rather short-sighted to me, this modern notion that everything should either be "in the cloud" or just magically kept to the most recent version without giving you a say in anything. I'm a hoarder. I want programs on my PC and I want installers on my PC and I want to be able to use it self-contained, dammit!
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
even if in the future the support consists of opening yet another browser tool that keeps local copies of said browser's past versions and lets you launch any of them at will
the whole point is that this way is more self-contained
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
you have no idea how difficult they make it to keep Skype at v6.6. But I have to. Because all the ensuing versions are uggggglyyyyyy with a discussion interface that's styled like iOS or Facebook chat - totally useless for serious antics
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
from the point of view of "don't make the user do things they don't care about"
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
9:30 PM
old Skype looks more like this. which is great!
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
well, software getting bad updates is another issue
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Ixrec well I understand abstracting that stuff away from people. I understand why they want the masses to have it like this. I do. it's great. make it all transparent. fine
but not at any cost plz
let software be software
rarr rarr rarr
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
sadly we're talking about software that is part of an ecosystem where any one old version sticking around too long blocks everyone else; sufficiently old versions of Skype probably won't even work forever if the official servers are too up to date
if we're talking about something like a non-cloud-based office productivity suite, yeah, keep all old versions up for download forever, they'll all work as long as the Windows version they were made for continues to exist (or have VMs)
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
I think my real problem is that society is sleepwalking into absolute dependence on corporate servers. I can accept my multiplayer Halo 4 life having a limited shelf-life because it's multiplayer and that's the nature of it (though I still miss the good old days of CS1.6 servers having mostly real people on them)
but the moment nothing works because X Corp decides it's "unsupported", when they could have avoided any reliance on central servers in the first place, is the moment I will get cross....
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
well that we can agree on
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
9:33 PM
@Ixrec granted web browsers seem like a bit of an exception to all of this, if only because, well, they're web browsers :D
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
have you heard about the "always-on DRM" scandals with various video games?
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
yeah good example
same thing in microcosm I guess
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
@LightnessRacesinOrbit the ecosystem thing applies to browsers even more so; people will eventually start writing web pages in ES6, and then the old browsers will mysteriously stop working for reasons only we techies understand
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Ixrec right - Adobe CS is all cloud though now innit
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
what I've heard is the kind of people who pay for photoshop are actually entirely okay with this
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
9:35 PM
also auto updates etc are a real pain in industries where you can't hook your machines up to microsoft.com and just accept every new piece of code chucked at them over the web
i.e. literally any secure environment
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
now, Microsoft Office being (only) a cloud-based or subscription-based software, that I would agree is objectionable, because everyone needs that software
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
you need to know exactly what you have, and you need to know that it'll keep working without needing to let external processes interfere on an ongoing basis
(hence I still have to support IE6 on XP lol)
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
yeah, any program smart enough to autoupdate should also be smart enough to work offline
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Ixrec yeah because the kind of people who actually pay for Photoshop are too dumb to understand the risk :P
 
user15026
@Ixrec Coworker of mine was telling me you have to provide a cellphone number to MS for validation for new copies of Office and stuff now? That sounds pretty terrible.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
9:36 PM
ew
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
I was more thinking of professional graphic designers whose income relies on this software
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Ixrec sure
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
@AshleyNunn what
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
again, they are not likely qualified to understand the problem
same reason so many people were for Cameron's auto porn blockers
 
user15026
@Ixrec That's just what he was telling me - he said they text you some sort of validation code.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
9:37 PM
they may not notice it but I think they could understand it if it became a real issue
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
well okay sure
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
there's loads of non-technical people worried about data privacy for instance
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
they are not unqualified to have the capacity to understand it, but they lack the background and knowledge to understand it or to know that they should understand it or that there's a thing to understand
or whatever
 
enderland
enderland
@Ixrec the nice thing is that you can get free versions now pretty easily between openoffice or googledocs
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
for now the users keep trusting these services because, so far, they've been pretty damn reliable, and we all know they have a huge financial incentive to stay reliable
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
9:38 PM
@Ixrec there are more non-technical people dead set on banning encryption in networks, cos terrorists
 
enderland
enderland
I'm not a fan at all of the subscription approach though, meh
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
@enderland yep, I've been using LibreOffice for ages because I have zero desire to pay for Microsoft Office
 
user15026
@enderland Yeah, there is that at least.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
@LightnessRacesinOrbit yeah, that is just stupid
 
user15026
@enderland It frustrates me how many things are moving to that. Like I don't mind paying for software, but I'd liek to know I own it forever once I buy it
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
9:39 PM
@enderland I guess I don't mind the subscription model actually. Pay for what you use sounds fair to me. If licensing software could make that work properly for non-cloud products so it happened everywhere, I'd be okay with that
Pay for what TV you watch everywhere would be great too. For one, you'd have actual viewing stats, not the made-up bullshit pandered about by the networks nowadays. And then perhaps SGU wouldn't have been cancelled -.-
 
user15026
I mean if you add it up over time with a sub, the amount you pay for MS Office compared to how much the average person uses it would get stupid really fast.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
imo, the concern about how to track down "bad guys" in an era where software does everything and becoming is increasingly decent at protecting basic privacy in ways that prevent escrow is legitimate, but I have no idea how to solve that problem; banning encryption obviously won't fix anything because that just means only bad guys will use encryption
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
mm
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
I've yet to hear anyone propose a solution to that problem which would actually help, regardless of how one feels about freedom of information or whatever
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
well I guess at least encryption being de-normalised by such a ban surely would contribute somehow
I'm not saying it's anywhere near foolproof (probably just go back to the days of coded messages hidden in the newspaper) but you would at least be able to spot "encrypted" traffic vs plaintext traffic, a lot of the time
and decide to go after the perpetrator
assuming they're up to no good, cos banned & denormalised
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
9:42 PM
only the bad guys using encryption would make them stand out slightly more, but that's the only benefit, and a very weak one; it's certainly nowhere near enough to solve the problem
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
now it's sort of de facto done anyway but with the harmful effect of pseudo-criminalising anyone who doesn't want to be snooped on
 
Brandin
Brandin
subscription software has the major disadvantage that the service will eventually stop. If it stops being lucrative, they stop. On the other hand, the old package that you bought back in 1995 that you are using for your side hobby project or whatever will continue working. With subscription software, it will break.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Ixrec I probably agree
@Brandin we would have to insist that they make it free to use at EOL (and because, as said previously, it would be non-cloud) it would technically work for as long as you want it to, on your PC, after they flip that switch
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
@Brandin modulo Windows versions
unless we're talking open source of course
clearly we all need to switch to linux
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
would never work tho
non-cloud subscription licensing can always be broken by "hacking", so...
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
9:44 PM
hence always-on DRM
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
hence
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
which can also be hacked!
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
which
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
that
 
Brandin
Brandin
If you're willing to "hack it" what's the point anyway. Just hack it from day 0. I don't think the legality changes just because they stopped supporting it.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
9:45 PM
you can't hack a service remotely hosted
(generally)
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
eh, the morality does, and the financial incentive to enforce the legality does
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Brandin in my "proposed" model the legality would be irrelevant because they would declare that it's now free to use after they stopped supporting it
 
enderland
enderland
@AshleyNunn 1yeah. Thogh it makes sense from a company perspective why they want to do it that way
 
Brandin
Brandin
@LightnessRacesinOrbit Yes, but there's no incentive for a company to put such a clause in the license. That's the problem.
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
5p per hour of use (max £10 per week) until EOL (say, three versions later) - then free to use
breaks with this "continuum of versions" bullshit but eh
 
enderland
enderland
9:47 PM
@Brandin that too...
My ipod touch can't play podcasts since it's too old to have any app that supports it install
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Brandin it's one of a few problems, yes
though, it's been known to happen
proprietary game engines have been open sourced after a while
I see this as very much the same thing
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
@LightnessRacesinOrbit are you referring to online streaming services with a subscription that can easily track what you actually watch because internet, or similar services where have to you pay separately for each episode/movie you choose to watch?
I'm a much bigger fan of the former
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@Ixrec both. either.
I actually think the latter would ultimately be the fairest
(whoops)
the former is really just the way it is now with broadcast, but with the bonus of real tracking (which was just one of my noted advantages)
thing is the current broadcast model relies on millions of people paying for stuff they will never watch. a pay-for-what-you-want service would have MUCH fewer shows, would not even be able to fill a 24/7 broadcast slot, I'd bet, and would employ fewer staff
so good luck with that
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
what makes the latter fairer? I'm fairly sure the subscription services pay royalties to the content creators based on which shows you actually watch
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
um because with a subscription you're paying for things you don't watch?
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
9:50 PM
@LightnessRacesinOrbit completely agree there, that's why it's slowly dying off
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
if I didn't watch anything last week because nothing I liked was on, then "whoops"
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
I guess you could argue that
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
I did ;)
much prefer "oh Doctor Who series finale is available as of today 8pm ... here's your £1 or whatever ... yay"
 
user15026
@enderland Yeah, I get it, but I don't like it :P
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
suppose it would have to be much cheaper than that when you compare with broadcast subscription rates of now
probably too cheap
then you're back to arguing about whether Spotify should be more expensive or not - £9.99 is nothing! but compared to how much people pay on radio, CD over a month? hmm.
this all feeds into the debate over digital consumption of entertainment and the business models that support it / will support it / must support it in the future etc
it's quite fascinating how complex it is, not just because of the technology we're talking about but the technology we're coming from
and quite fascinating therefore what a difficult problem it is
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
9:53 PM
I suppose the main reason I'm a bigger fan of the subscription model is just the empirical fact that you can get way more content for your quid that way given current prices in both types of services
at least on the ones I've used/looked at
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
you'd think it'd just be "look right here's the service at this price take it or leave it" as with any other product. but nooo
 
enderland
enderland
subscription theoretically incentivizes creating good software
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
it's still that way on the pay-per-item services
yeah, subscription makes economic sense when most of the company's expenses are in ongoing support and maintenance rather than the initial creation of the software
or in non-technical things like royalties that also have to keep being paid as long as people use the service
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
@enderland I suppose the downside of this from the TV perspective is that it decentivizes creating programming enjoyed by a minority
hmmm
shit
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
on-demand services should heavily incentivize creating content that people get really into
at the moment on-demand correlates to streaming + subscription, though I suppose you could separate the two
 
amon
amon
9:58 PM
@LightnessRacesinOrbit how so, more than the current state of affairs? Why would a broadcaster develop niche content when they could capture a broader audience?
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
define "people" I suppose
@amon I... er... hmm
for appearances?
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
if anything the kind of "mainstream" zero-brainpower content we're used to seeing TV filled with is likely to decline heavily when networks no longer need filler shows
 
Lightness Races in Orbit
Lightness Races in Orbit
funding isn't an issue when everyone pays a flat fee so it doesn't cost them
and there's nobody complaining
but if you get 99% revenue from creating Show X, fans of Show Y are going to be mighty disappointed
I think you can justify that as a business problem in a pay-for-what-you-watch model
but as a broadcaster (i.e. now), I dunno, maybe they're afraid of social backlash?
don't really know.
 
Ixrec
Ixrec
assuming your subscription fees really do get distributed to content creators based on how much of each content you watch via royalties (which is how it should work if it doesn't already), I would except shows that attract a passionate minority would become totally feasible
 
00:00 - 22:0022:00 - 00:00

« first day (1919 days earlier)      last day (3088 days later) »