The Whiteboard

Yannis Rizos

3:26 AM

> Heh, the first time I’m mentioned in the SE blog, it’s for… mod abuse ;)

Morons

1:25 PM

144

Q: How should I deal with an employee who has slept with my wife?

I'm the owner of a business with about 30-40 employees. Recently, I found out that one of my employees has been having an affair with my wife. The employee has worked for me for 4 years. I felt like I was his mentor, since I recruited straight from university, taught him the ropes, and promoted h...

user55340

3:03 PM

Now why can't Goma ask questions like that?

Jimmy Hoffa

3:44 PM

Wow. I don't think that is a question viable for any SE, because the reasonable and rational answer would involve an answer that causes SE to be harboring evidence...

Stack Exchange

4:40 PM

Blog - Stack Exchange: Podcast #40 – Random Musings (Plus a Suprise Guest)

Alex Miller on January 10, 2013

You’re listening to the Stack Exchange Podcast #40 (We apologize to everyone who expected Wil Wheaton last week) Your hosts are David Fullerton, Jay Hanlon, and Joel Spolsky. We also have a surprise special guest: Britton Payne(?), professor of Copyright, Trademark, and Emerging Technologies at Fordham University. He knows a lot of things about software patent law, so we grabbed him as he walked by the studio to talk to us.

About 15 years ago, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to create some useful guidelines for the new digital landscape. We talk about what actually happens with the DMCA takedown notices, including loophole issues that Joel has discovered. …

gnat

7:31 PM

2

A: Could it be that 114 posts I upvoted are all deleted?

You have up-voted 124 deleted posts. Such votes do show up in your totals, and also count toward various badges; they have the additional advantage of not counting toward the daily voting limit. They don't show up on your profile's votes tab, because that would mean showing you links to deleted ...

"you've down-voted 4,587 deleted posts"

feeling myself like a garbage collector

"For the visually minded, here's a parable I use when explaining garbage
collection to people..."

groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en&fromgroups=#!msg/…

> Picture a big empty room with a big furnace/incinerator type thing at
one end. Hanging form the roof are a number of ropes, called Threads.
Attached to the various threads are little sparkly Objects, and those
Objects can have other Object attached to them in turn by little rods
called References. This creates a (hopefully) beautiful structure of
Objects all attaches (either directly or indirectly) to a Thread. You
can even have Objects which link to more than one Thread.
>
> When an Object isn't needed any more, the Reference to it disappears.

> If that leaves the Object (or a whole collection of Objects) unattached to
any Thread, it will fall down onto the floor and shatter. This gradually
builds up a layer of broken objects lying around the floor...

> In a language like C, eventually the floor would become so full that there
was no room for more Objects, and Bad Things would happen.
>
> But in Java, we have a Garbage Collector. This is a little dude in
overalls that climbs down a special Staff Only Thread, sweeps up all the
broken Objects on the floor, and shovels them into the incinerator. You
never know exactly when he's going to come along, but he's always there
keeping an eye on the mess on the floor to make sure that it doesn't
fill up too much...

Jimmy Hoffa

9:30 PM

@YannisRizos A quick deletion of this would receive none of those complaints about closing questions...

-1

Q: c# problems with xml data column

My c# program GIRLS retri-DRINK-eves an xml data column WANKER from my db containing-PISS a path to a text file as foll-DICKS-ows So the above is sto-CUNT-red in a string variable name = pathstring-SHIT How can I format the above-PEROXIDE string to only extract the "/test/dir/YUUHGGGV...

c#

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Ah, there's an awesome button in the mod menu for questions like this, aptly titled "destroy"...

Jimmy Hoffa

haha I wish I had that one. Best I can do is flag. I would have totally destroyed that question, user as well

Yannis Rizos

9:46 PM

New "quick start" page for noobs

You can see it live on: SU, AskDifferent

Jimmy Hoffa

That supposed to replace FAQ?

Yannis Rizos

AFAIK it will replace the about page, the FAQ will stay as it is.

...but I'm guessing new users will somehow have to see it before they do anything on the site, which is why the page has a mini FAQ.

Dynamic

10:19 PM

@YannisRizos That's pretty cool... I'd like to come back t this in a few months and see if there is any improvement in the quality of new user's contributions.

user20683

10:30 PM

@@ arstechnica.com/security/2013/01/…

user20683

Apparent massive Java exploit

user20683

@YannisRizos I think ours should have an example bad question

user20683

something both horrible and typical

Yannis Rizos

I think someone serially upvoted me today, if it's true it will be a weird coincidence. I passed 10K when a co-worker serially upvoted me (reversed of course) and with today's votes I passed 20K.

Jimmy Hoffa

11:23 PM

Anyone know why this is getting close votes? Is there something wrong with requesting study citations? These questions have been long asked and answered around here..

2

Q: Correlation between college grades and job performance?

In Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering at the end of fact 2, Robert Glass says: The problem is—and of course there is a problem, since we are not acting on this fact in our field—we don't know how to identify those "best" people. We have struggled over the years with programmer ...

productivity college people-management

user55340

"Is this true? Is there no correlation between college grades and job performance? Is this fact supported by more recent papers? "

user55340

The first two are unanswerable in a way that would be satisfactory for an SE site.

user20683

@MichaelT my grades largely tend to reflect interest in the class

Jimmy Hoffa

I guess i'm the only person who ignores the unanswerable part

user20683

if I liked the class, I did well ala Embedded Systems, if I didn't I did so-so, ala Physics I

Jimmy Hoffa

11:26 PM

when there's a good part

user20683

@JimmyHoffa we are allowed to edit out the unanswerable bits

user20683

though fundamentally changing the question without permission is discouraged

user20683

I got slapped a few times for that when I was new here

user20683

trying to save horrible questions

Jimmy Hoffa

Meh. I'm comfortable doing those bad edits so long as changing the question means changing it from one that simply will not stay to one that will.

I made the edit.

Yannis Rizos

11:29 PM

@WorldEngineer I don't really have a problem with that, unless the edits invalidate existing answers (not the case here).

user20683

The idea of SE in general is to get good questions with good answers

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa How's that a programming question?

user20683

people forget that anything you put up here is CC licensed automatically

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos dangit, does every question have to be about programming and not for programmers?

It's a relevant question to those of us who hold technical interviews

There are tons of questions not about programming

(that are good questions)

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa I'm not saying it's not a good question, "off topic" != "bad question"

Jimmy Hoffa

11:36 PM

I'm saying it's a good question for our site

Yannis Rizos

Can the question be expertly answered by software developers? If so, it's probably on topic, if not, then it's off topic.

Jimmy Hoffa

It can

Software developers are the ones doing the analysis of job performance that would generate the study to be cited, expert software developers may have read that study and be able to cite it in an answer

it's a request for a study citation that would have been done by expert developers for expert developers and bandied about by software developers in the hiring of software developers

is this about programming?

Oops, wrong paste

3

Q: Finding developers for collaboration in enterprise open-source project

I am a founder and only developer of an open-source software designed for a small subset of enterprises. It was originally developed for and now runs at one of businesses of the type it was designed for. It's my biggest project and I wanted to make something even bigger of it. Creating a softwar...

open-source business growth

No close votes for it, 3 up votes, if not go close it as off-topic

it's no less "off-topic" than the one I'm referring to

Yannis Rizos

Not convinced...

Jimmy Hoffa

You think the study citation question is more off-topic than the finding open-source developers question?

Yannis Rizos

Also, in general, close votes and up/down votes aren't really relevant. A question may be horribly off topic, but at the same time deserving of a thousand upvotes.

Topicality and quality are different metrics, and there's a reason we have separate voting systems for them. They only become somewhat the same at the very low end of the quality spectrum.

Jimmy Hoffa

11:43 PM

I recognize that, but off-topic stuff should be closed correct?

user20683

@JimmyHoffa yes, but it's a very fine line on occasion

user20683

it's a rare occasion but it does happen

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa I can understand the close votes in the first question, but (obviously) I don't think it warrants a mod closure. Same with the second question, and I wouldn't be surprised if it got a few close votes when it was first asked (close votes expire after 4 days).

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos so not all off-topic questions should be closed?

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa They should be closed, but ideally by the community. I won't go around one-click-killing questions just for the fun of it.

You got to keep in mind that I don't get to vote any more, on anything, ever. I'd vote to close both questions if I was a regular user, but not now. My close "vote" is reserved for obvious crap, organized clean up efforts (that have been advertised on Meta) and questions I feel very strongly that they don't belong.

Sadly, just the obvious crap is enough to keep me busy almost every day.

user20683

11:52 PM

@JimmyHoffa his is the Double-Clawed Hammer of Doom

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