The Whiteboard - 2013-02-15

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9:36 AM

"Free speech" cannot yet be translated into Russian, but they're slowly working on it. — Kaz 11 hours ago

That's from the ELL Q isn't it?

Yes

9:58 AM

I asked my first question on there just before

I'm so proud of myself :D

@Deco Same problem in Greek, I always have to explain which grandparents I'm talking about.

I speak English natively, but I've never actually thought about that before

as it was always mormor, farmor, etc..

then when I tried to express it - my brain wouldn't let me :)

and I think it's a good question for ELL to answer anyway, hopefully it helps someone else in the future

10:46 AM

> Fatal error: Maximum function nesting level of '100' reached, aborting!

Hm, something went terribly wrong there (recursion is fun!)

4 hours later…

user41796

2:53 PM

@YannisRizos - is the current "Low answer quality score" flag a community wiki flag? Looks like another flag that should be ignored by lesser mortals, er non-mods.

@GlenH7 Yes, it's an auto flag. But it's one that you can do something about, assuming of course it's a valid flag (the bot doesn't always get it right).

You can: Comment and/or downvote and/or flag as "not an answer".

If it's a link only answer, and you are feeling generous you can also edit it and provide some context for the link, in case it breaks.

user41796

@YannisRizos - I think we've found "yet another" reason for you to have a 10k+ sock puppet. :-) For me to comment or vote, I need to drill into the question itself for those options. All I see is the "flag or disagree" button.

user41796

And I'm voting that one in the gray zone. The answer isn't all that great, but neither are the other answers there.

user55340

-1

Q: How to write a program in java that prints square of integers without using variables?

I was reading an article about functional programming where the writer states (take 25 (squares-of (integers))) Notice that it has no variables. Indeed, it has nothing more than three functions and one constant. Try writing the squares of integers in Java without using a variable. O...

java programming-languages functional-programming

@GlenH7 Oh, I know that. Flags are just signals that there might be something wrong, it's completely up to you to decide how much time you'll spend on each one. If you think it's worth a comment, for example, you should open the answer in a new tab and comment.

user55340

3:01 PM

I'm trying to figure out what the proper answer to this should be. Is an iterator in the runtime a variable?

user55340

Would unrolling a loop be a variable? Are parameters to methods variables?

@MichaelT I think the proper answer is that the quote in the question is stupid.

user41796

3:14 PM

@YannisRizos - cool, thanks for the guidance. I will promptly ignore that particular one now. :-)

3:38 PM

@Yani

@YannisRizos you're smart, help

I can never remember those different types of argument thingies that are latin terms and shit.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Semper ubi sub ubi.

What's the name of that when instead of making a counterargument somebody just makes a stupid insult

user55340

ad hominim.

Yeah that one

thanks

Ad hominem. But: In order for the argument to be ad hominem then the personal attack must be part of the argument itself, otherwise it's just a personal attack.

user55340

3:40 PM

Remember that "hominem" refers to "the man" - ad hominem is to attack the man rather than the argument.

Is there a different one for like over simplifying something to a tag line and acting like that tagline statement alone is a complete refutation

Is that ad hominem?

user55340

Or rather, to say that the argument is flawed because the person presenting it is supposedly flawed in some way.

user55340

Straw man.

user55340

List of fallacies

A fallacy is incorrect argument in logic and rhetoric resulting in a lack of validity, or more generally, a lack of soundness. Fallacies are either formal fallacies or informal fallacies. Formal fallacies A formal fallacy is an error in logic that can be seen in the argument's form without requiring an understanding of the argument's content. All formal fallacies are specific types of non sequiturs. * Appeal to probability – takes something for granted because it would probably be the case, (or might possibly be the case). * Argument from fallacy – assumes that if an argument for some...

user55340

Straw man – an argument based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position

3:42 PM

That's a straw man? I think of a straw man like.. making up a whole argument that is flawed and then picking it apart

Right

@JimmyHoffa yourlogicalfallacyis.com/poster

Thanks

@JimmyHoffa btw if there's an actual insult in the discussion, don't bother responding and just flag.

It's not

-2

Q: How to write a program in java that prints square of integers without using variables?

I was reading an article about functional programming where the writer states (take 25 (squares-of (integers))) Notice that it has no variables. Indeed, it has nothing more than three functions and one constant. Try writing the squares of integers in Java without using a variable. O...

java programming-languages functional-programming

"Hatred of variables" is used in an answer as a term to basically just hand-wave away the idea that there's reason for people to remove state

It lacks any explanation and is used as if that tag-line is refutation when it has no evidence or reasoned explanation

I don't disagree with the guy's answer

Just want to point out that is... I guess ad hominem against statelessness?

Or is that a different type of fallacy?

Ahh I think it's this one

Fallacy of the single cause

The fallacy of the single cause, also known as complex cause, causal oversimplification, causal reductionism, and reduction fallacy, is a fallacy of questionable cause that occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause of an outcome when in reality it may have been caused by a number of only jointly sufficient causes. It can be logically reduced to: X occurred after Y. Therefore, Y caused X (although A,B,C...etc also caused X.) Often after a tragedy it is asked, "What was the cause of this?" Such language implies that there is one cause, when instead there were probabl...

"causal oversimplification" he's claiming the cause of people to do things statelesly is "hatred of variables" when there's a large number of reasons for it

user55340

4:00 PM

Perl has no hatred of variables, and yet map, sort, grep are functionalish. Map / reduce wasn't for "hatred of variables" but rather "mutable variables make parallelism hard."

user55340

The hypothetical "squares-of(integers()).take(25);" in java would have integers() as a new iterator like thing. squares-of would take one iterator and return a new one that wraps it. And then take 25 would pull the first 25 into a list and return that. Doable, but anti-idomaitc in java. But so what.

user55340

That beautiful part of the CS "theory of programming languages" class I took that had us write idiomatic in each style... was that you had to think about it differently. You don't write java in clojure, you write clojure in clojure. Don't try to write clojure in java either.

Yeah I agree

I just hate seeing people treat hand-waving like reasonable refutation

I'm glad that modern C# idiomatically can be pretty functionalish

user55340

One may dislike the idioms of one language or style of programming... I dislike the idioms of python - but if I was to write python, I would strive to write idiomatic python.

user55340

The idioms of a language or style are rarely done for simplistic reasons.

4:18 PM

Aye, I've no idea of the idioms of python

user55340

And the meta ask to reopen it...

user55340

0

Q: Is this question inappropriate for Programmers? Can we reopen it?

This question, which was just closed, seems appropriate to me. My reasons: the asker is trying to learn about functional programming when reading an article about FP, the asker wasn't able to understand an example due to a key missing concept the intent of the question is to understand the con...

discussion closed-questions close-reasons vote-to-reopen

user55340

Its the whole 'pythonic' thing. Things such as whitespace scoping is a python idiom.

user55340

Programming idiom

A programming idiom is a means of expressing a recurring construct in one or more programming languages. Generally speaking, a programming idiom is an expression of a simple task, algorithm, or data structure that is not a built-in feature in the programming language being used, or, conversely, the use of an unusual or notable feature that is built in to a programming language. The term can be used more broadly, however, to refer to complex algorithms or programming design patterns. Knowing the idioms associated with a programming language and how to use them is an important part of gainin...

Eh, I was a member of the eff-whitespace thing until learning haskell

Haskell has so very little syntax one of the benefits from it is I'm no longer bothered by any syntax from one language or another, I can finally just not care like everyone says you shouldn't

Though I have learned a complete revulsion for the switch case, and else. Which sucks because those are total C# idioms that would make my code bad if it was completely without them

user55340

4:22 PM

@YannisRizos I do agree with the not constructive thing. The answers and comments are showing discussion and arguments with no sign of abating - which was my reason for closing.

@MichaelT you know ruby?

Perl is dynamic right?

@MichaelT No worries. The question had problems, and that's what closing is all about, it's just a signal that something needs to be fixed.

...I think I'll port my monadic library to perl/python/ruby... it's a tiny library and really simple so shouldn't be anything to it, those are all dynamically typed (right?) so I can fake parametric polymorphism just like I did in Javascript

Plus it'll mean learning those 3 languages

@MichaelT care to help me out with the perl? I haven't touched a line of perl in 10 years. I'll bug you to about some syntax perhaps. Perl has encapsulation in objects right?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Unfortunately, I know some.

user55340

And yes, perl is quite dynamic.

user55340

4:36 PM

@JimmyHoffa Perl has objects, I would suggest using Moose in today's perl.

user55340

Moose is an extension of the Perl 5 object system. It brings modern object-oriented language features to Perl 5, making object-oriented programming more consistent and less tedious. Features Moose is built on top of Class::MOP, a metaobject protocol (aka MOP). Using the MOP, Moose provides complete introspection for all Moose-using classes. Classes Moose allows a programmer to create classes: * A class has zero or more attributes. * A class has zero or more methods. * A class has zero or more superclasses (aka parent classes). A class inherits from its superclass(es). Moose supports m...

Perl's an easy install, no?

user55340

What system do you have?

Do you use emacs or vi?

user55340

vi.

user55340

4:38 PM

No, wait... ed. I use an EDitor. ed is the standard text editor

user55340

I had a co-worker use ed briefly, his session was nearly exactly like the one in that link.

wait wth, what kind of developer are you, don't even remember the IDE you use :P

user55340

I am the resource in the team for "How do you do XYZ in shell / vi"

user55340

But I'm a vi nearly master... I know how to use block mode, but rarely do.

heh

and yeah, that's basically my experience with ed as well

I recall having that experience with it years ago and ever since ignoring people who talk about using it or any variants, and even have mixed feelings about awk just because people talk about using it with sed so much

even though I don't even know what awk does

user55340

4:41 PM

Back in the days of the 1200 modem, I played on muds. To code was either the tedious process of write locally, and then transfer it, or learn ed. I learned ed.

user55340

It came in useful once when someone borked one of the machines and the single user mode terminal wasn't in termcaps (so vi and emacs wouldn't work). I had to ed some files.

user55340

If you like functional, look up poplar. It was around at the same time, never gained acceptance... it did similar things to awk.

see and in those scenarios I've tended to rely on stdout redirection

cat/grep/tail/echo and I could reconstruct whichever portions of a file I needed hehe

ed probably would have been easier

perl.org is practically down. maybe it's running perl. maybe I don't want to get involved in this perl nonsense...

@MichaelT don't like ruby?

ActivePerl, DWIM, or Strawberry for windows? Which will make my library more widely usable/standards compliant?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa It doesn't seem to be designed with any thought to it and the consequences.

user55340

Ok, so you've got functions that return booleans have the convention that it ends with a ?. And a function that destructivly modifies something ends in !. Ok. Great. They are conventions and not always followed...

user55340

4:49 PM

however, this means that the construct "x?1:2" is a syntax error while "x ?1:2" is not.

Interesting, you're the first person I've heard criticize ruby actually (other than enterprisey folks with there "it's just for college kids huhuhuh" ignorant blather)

user55340

So you want to see if a key is in a hash in ruby. You can use h.has_key?(key) or h.include?(key) or h.key?(key) or h.member?(key)

user55340

They all do the same thing!

user55340

ruby-doc.org/core-1.9.3/Hash.html#method-i-has_key-3F

lol

those are both pretty stupid things.

4:51 PM

@JimmyHoffa The reason you don't hear people criticizing Ruby is because no one actually uses it.

user55340

Why have four methods that have different names that take the same arguments and return the same thing have four different names?!

@YannisRizos Now that sounds crazy, what are you talking about?

Rails is all over the web

user55340

Get the size of a hash... take your pick... h.length or h.size.

No h.count ? ah c'mon...

user55340

And then there are open classes... which freak me out (the things you can do with them are terrifying when trying to write something that has some semblance of security).

4:53 PM

I know 2 folks who worked on production ruby for different companies

user55340

tryruby.org

Yeah I heard about the open classes, but it's a dynamic language

I would expect next to no barriers

@YannisRizos are you serious about that?

@JimmyHoffa No.

Well, sort of. Tons of hype, but extremely small community.

user55340

"foo".bar
=> #<NoMethodError: undefined method `bar' ...
class String
  def bar
    "bar"
  end
end
=> nil
"foo".bar
=> "bar"

user55340

Go try that on try ruby... I changed how the String class works.

user55340

4:55 PM

Now, I can go in and make it that if the string class has a 16 digit number, send it to me.

yeah I know, I saw about open classes and I got a twinge in my gut, but again, it's a dynamic language..

I really expect in dynamic languages you are tossing out safety as a whole

user55340

Other dynamic languages don't let you redefine it at that level... at a base language change.

user55340

Objective C doens't let you make that much of a mess, and its dynamic. Nor do perl and python.

user55340

I can't change how every scalar behaves in perl.

objective c is dynamic?

user55340

4:58 PM

Clojure is a dynamic language... you can't redefine String.

user55340

Dynamic programming language

:This article is about a class of programming languages, for the method for reducing the runtime of algorithms, see Dynamic programming. Dynamic programming language is a term used broadly in computer science to describe a class of high-level programming languages that execute at runtime many common behaviors that other languages might perform during compilation, if at all. These behaviors could include extension of the program, by adding new code, by extending objects and definitions, or by modifying the type system, all during program execution. These behaviors can be emulated in nearl...

No i get it

I just mean

user55340

Open class does not mean dynamic, nor vice versa.

it doesn't surprise me, biting off dynamicism in my mind means expect any one bit of code to trash the whole system

I know dynamic doesn't mean open classes, but open classes are just another way for you to trash the whole system

a snippet of code in a dynamic language can replace all the methods on every object they can find access to. most dynamic languages have an eval() method which could be used by some bit of code to trash everything

open classes would scare me if it was a typed language, but it's already saying "There is no safety whatsoever in this language" just by being dynamic

Which perl should I download for windows? Strawberry, ActivePerl, or DWIM?

user55340

Active is likely the most common one.

5:04 PM

@YannisRizos It's really that small? I mean, everyone says it's an easy and fun language, it seems everyone and their mother is learning it because the hype, so there's a lot who know it plus rails runs tons of websites.. or is my perception just skewed by the hype you figure?

user55340

When you compare the size of the complete modules in ruby to that of perl (or even python) - its very small.

user55340

There is a lot of "ohh, ruby!" out there, but when you want to find something that is complete and mature and maintained in ruby... its just not there.

Yes but perl and python have been a bit deal since 90-95, Ruby's only caught serious traction in industry since ~06/07 ?

s/bit/big/f

user55340

Ruby and rails works nicely for "quick, we need to write some CRUD app for someone paying us" as a contractor... but less so in the "this is the glue behind everything."

user55340

Ruby is from '95. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_%28programming_language%29

5:08 PM

I get that, but python/perl were in serious industry use ~93 (earlier for perl), ruby only has seen real industry use since ~06/07

user55340

Perl is '87. Python is '91.

(guessing here)

user55340

The big issue (for me) for not-ruby in the enterprise is that it isn't stable over time. Things change too much between versions.

how mature was the perl/python stuff available around 98?

yeah I have seen that in some of the research I did on it

user55340

CPAN was 3 years old in '95.

user55340

5:11 PM

'98 rather.

CPAN?

user55340

CPAN, the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, is an archive of over 114,000 modules of software written in Perl, as well as documentation for them. It has a presence on the World Wide Web at [http://www.cpan.org/ www.cpan.org] and is mirrored worldwide at more than 200 locations. CPAN can denote either the archive network itself, or the Perl program that acts as an interface to the network and as an automated software installer (somewhat like a package manager). Most software on CPAN is free and open source software. Modules Like many programming languages, Perl has mechanisms to use ex...

@JimmyHoffa I think what happened with Ruby, is that when RoR first came out, most people said "awesome!" and cloned it for their own fav language. Very few actually used it. Last time I saw stats (don't know how accurate they were), there were 2 CakePHP installations for every RoR one (CakePHP is a RoR clone - of sorts)

The fact that ruby won Steve Yegge and Martin Fowler claims it has tried to be a lot of SmallTalk are pretty strong arguments in my mind, but those only argue it's worth evaluating seriously

I wouldn't say it must be good just because other people said so

and yeah I know ASP.NET MVC is a huge deal and that's just stealing the RoR model

user55340

@JimmyHoffa There are some interesting theoretical things in ruby for refactoring and rapid code development. However, as something I would want to have running my scripts... no.

5:14 PM

Martin Fowler isn't an objective voice on the matter though either

user55340

The lack of 'maturity' in the language designers is an issue for me. That "hey, we can add that too!" makes me think that ruby will become php like.

yeah, what you mentioned about the hash keys stuff sounds very PHPish to me

Do perl/python/ruby have lexical closures?

I think python does..

php definitely does not (does it @YannisRizos ?)

user55340

Consider perlmonks.org/?node_id=719475

user55340

And perldoc.perl.org/perlfaq7.html#What%27s-a-closure%3F

@JimmyHoffa wiki.php.net/rfc/closures

user55340

5:18 PM

@JimmyHoffa I'm sure that php does... it has everything else.

lol

You told me before php has closures, but lexical closures are a little different, nesting can be arbitrarily deep and each frames stack is available to be enclosed at every depth of child below it

is that the case with PHP's closures?

That example looks like probably so

5:32 PM

@JimmyHoffa Yes, with the caveat that variables must be passed to the child through use.

Also $this can't be passed to a closure. Don't remember why, but it's been removed.

but anything in $this can be?

you can pass $this by copying it, but that means that you only get access to public methods / properties.

You can enclose any members of $this right? Just not the whole $this

$this was usable in closures for a short time, stuff broke and it was removed. I'm not 100% sure on the current status.

But I think you can enclose any member of $this. Even if it's unorthodox. It's PHP after all.

user55340

unorthodox is idiomatic php.

user55340

6:00 PM

PeurtoRicoException extends InvalidStateException... at least until its voted on.

haha

Are we actually going to accept Puerto Rico as a state? I haven't followed that close enough since the election which sounded like it would actually happen

I would think if that's actually going to happen we would have heard a hell of a lot more about it by now

I'm all for it, that adds the tropical vacation destinations that are actual states to 2, and puerto rico is much cheaper to go to than the alternative

6:36 PM

0

Q: Create a unterminable process in Windows

I want to create a application in VB6 which can't be terminable by user from task manager or taskkill. Is it possible to create one and how to create one.

process visual-basic-6

There's no way this is not an attempt at doing something malicious

Does SE have a common set of rules about handling questions that have extreme likelihood of someone trying to learn how to do something bad?

Does is have to be 100% in the black and with no possible gray area for the question to be tossed? Even if they are 100% admitting trying to learn how to do something-- for lack of a better word, wrong, does the question get tossed?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Malicious on a personal machine is not necessarily out of place in the enterprise environment.

How do you mean?

user55340

6:52 PM

A program to redirect certain sites to another on a home machine is malware. On enterprise environments, its content filtering (don't be looking at espn from work).

user55340

A program to prevent you from mounting usb drives on a sales desk machine in a store (to make sure people aren't inserting malware through that vector, or copying off data) - in a personal machine this would be bad, in an enterprise, its ok.

And yeah I realize there is reason to do that

but... it just smells fishy especially without background

first thought to me is all those computers at best buy you can play around on or at a library, any public machine should have control software that can't be meddled with by a user

user55340

Recognizing who owns the machine and what restrictions the owners want to place on other people who use it is key.

user55340

Personally, I don't believe that that question is on topic for P.SE - its dealing with specific implementation questions rather than more abstract... the code side implementation would be more appropriate for SO. The security side would be SU or Security.SE.

Yeah, security actually could be a good place for him to ask a general question about what facilities windows gives to allow a programmer to do such things

I still think the question wreaks, VB6 is the classic go to for anyone trying to hack up some nasty

user55340

7:01 PM

I read that more as "VB6 is classic go to for someone who doesn't know how to code deeply and is on a windows box"

user55340

I still don't think that its on topic for P.SE in its current form.

0

Q: Flags and close votes based on ethical or moral issues

I believe that we should not use flags or close votes to enforce content that is legitimately on topic, yet has potential ethical or moral issues involved. Create a unterminable process in Windows I am going to be perfectly honest here, I don't believe him that he is not trying to create a piec...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa It hasn't gotten too much more attention. Look some day at the representative allocation algorithm. Assume the numbers stay unchanged from 2010 census. Write a program to display the new distribution of the house.

@MichaelT what?

user55340

Peurto Rico. The number of senators changes, but the house recalculates after the next census. The algorithm for this recalibration is interesting. Who would gain and lose seats assuming no change to the current 2010 - that is a non-trivial program to write.

7:14 PM

Ah

Right, the effects on federal representation across the country could be interesting indeed

user55340

7:27 PM

Huntington–Hill method

The Huntington–Hill method of apportionment assigns seats by finding a modified divisor D such that each constituency's priority quotient (population divided by D ), using the geometric mean of the lower and upper quota for the divisor, yields the correct number of seats that minimizes the percentage differences in the size of the congressional districts. When envisioned as a proportional voting system, this is effectively a highest averages method in which the divisors are given by \scriptstyle D=\sqrt{n(n+1)}, n being the number of seats a state is currently allocated in the apportionmen...

user55340

7:37 PM

@YannisRizos That "squares of integers with no variables" question... it appears to be attracting code golf type answers... and there are multiple correct answers to it... its feeling like it shouldn't be in P.SE again.

7:51 PM

@MichaelT you might be pleased to know that Shirky's article recently got yet another "convert" :) ...

Wow, that "A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy" article is excellent, I can't thank you enough. One note - some supposedly 'subjective' conversations (on SO) go that way, but some don't, it's not a law. I understand though; To avoid drowning in bathwater, we have to throw out a few babies. — Spike0xff 1 hour ago

user55340

@gnat Whoo whoo!

user55340

@gnat The important thing about Shirkey's paper is that it explains why some things are designed a given way (either consciously or unconsciously). Saying "no discussions, avoid subjective" is a foundation of the site doesn't say why they are that way. A Group gives the information for someone to think about what it would be like if it was designed differently.

You don't take questions on MS licensing here do you? Is there another stack that does?

user55340

@JackDouglas What is the question? I can imagine "yes" and "no" and "maybe" and "not on *.SE"

@MichaelT It's about SPLAs and minimum monthly reporting levels

I'm trying to work through finding the correct license for providing DR services to clients

the scenario is that they license the software day to day and I ship images of their VMs, but when disaster strikes, we switch to me hosting their VMs, which isn't covered by their license

and the regular VL prohibits hosting for a client

hence SPLA, but of course there is no way of knowing if/when a switchover might happen

it seems slightly unlikely to me that the SPLA would permit a '£0' report every month for 5 years :)

user55340

8:04 PM

Personally it doesn't feel answerable on SE. The only authoritative source on that is Microsoft itself. But that's just my take on it.

@MichaelT true, but their EULAs are freely available. There are plenty of experts out there: it is a career path on it's own. Depends a bit on what you mean my authoritative of course.

Those experts are called lawyers, and I can't imagine any part of SE is interested in having legal advice since that opens SE up to liability issues

user55340

Consider - does a professional programmer have the necessary knowledge to determine the correct answer for a Microsoft EULA?

but I take your point and I have already asked my MS reseller rep. I just wasn't very satisfied with the answer: he said after 6 months MS would start to ask questions :)

Honestly you should consult a lawyer if the MS guys are giving you answers you want to make...malleable..

8:08 PM

@JimmyHoffa I was guessing that was the reason why. It's probably bogus imo: it could all be disclaimed

I don't think anybody's worried about whether or not it could be disclaimed, it's probably just concern about the time sink of actively having to disclaim

@MichaelT no, I only asked in here because someone suggested it: I thought there might be somewhere else on SE you guys would know about

which involves lawyering in and of itself

@JimmyHoffa well ianal so idk ;)

thanks anyway and nvm

user55340

@JackDouglas Thank your for asking. We would have a much better site and questions if more people followed your lead.

8:17 PM

@MichaelT You're welcome and it's very kind of you to say so :)

Thanks for taking the time to humour me :)

user41796

@JackDouglas - ServerFault.SE may be an appropriate place to ask that question. In my SysAd days, I had to deal with a lot of license agreements terms and construct things around that. I'm not sure which chat board is theirs, but that's where I would check next.

user55340

8:36 PM

@GlenH7 The Comms Room appears to be their main chat room.

user55340

8:58 PM

altering Window's system files such that instructions to kill the process are ignored. this is what i am looking for — VarunDotCuDotCc 6 mins ago

user55340

Ghah.

user55340

0

A: Create a unterminable process in Windows

I do not believe that what you are trying to do is possible. You would have to subvert the OS to prevent a process from being able to be killed. All processes run within the OS, therefore the OS can kill any process. You can even kill processes like "explorer.exe" which is what runs the start ...

user55340

Just look at the comments going back and forth. Varun is looking for a tutorial on how to do this in the comments. I do not believe this would have been much better on P.SE... and I doubt it is constructive now. He wasn't looking for the concept of "these are attack vectors" - he wants the "how to."

just curious my eye.. little bugger..

9:13 PM

@MichaelT Actually I am very curious about that too, as I work Tech Support a lot and am curious what makes a process "unkillable" from Task Manager

user20683

@Rachel The version on IT Sec has been upvoted and answered

user55340

I just believe: (a) we don't have the depth of knowledge in P.SE that he is looking for. (b) the type of information he is looking for (specific how to) is off topic. (c) he wants to be hand held through the process of creating such a service (this being a poor fit for SE Q&A style - chat would be better).

user20683

@MichaelT he's also a moron for asking when he's got linked Twitter and Facebook and what not

20

A: What are the most effective ways to guide new users?

Treat new users like actual people. Understand that they don't understand the site yet, and show a genuine interest in helping them out. I still remember my first experiences with both SO and Programmers. I thought I understood the sites, but realized later that I had barely scratched the surfac...

To quote one section: "Don't call them or their posts names when you're talking to other users about them"

This attitude is part of why I got sick of Programmers

@Rachel do you honestly not think this kid is trying to create malware?

9:17 PM

I don't believe he's a moron. He's a student looking for information because he's curious, and he doesn't know the SE site rules

@JimmyHoffa I honestly believe that's the sort of stuff I would have posted once upon a time, and no I would not have been creating malware

user20683

@Rachel The question is not moronic, leaving a trail if he wants to be a virus writer is

@WorldEngineer Well I don't believe he said he wants to be a virus writer. That's the impression everyone else gets

user55340

He is asking questions that can't be answered and looking for someone to walk him through creating such an application in comments. Unfortunately, neither of these fit well in SE.

You would have explained you deal with it in tech support, he's just vaguely waving his hands when asked why he wants to know

@MichaelT I would disagree. I see a request for how it's done in plain english, but not requests for a tutorial on how to do it

9:18 PM

further if he was curious how, the general how would have sufficed for him, he actually wants to create an application like this which is why he's asking for step-by-step

But anyways, I've said my 2c and I'm off now :)

user20683

sigh Perhaps I was too harsh

I think I created the Y combinator in javascript..

Or am trying to

it's hard and confusing. I really need to spend the money and go get a copy of the little schemer

user55340

I maintain my objection to the question is not about the morality, or legality (that needs to be answered by SE itself) but rather the offtopic nature of it for P.SE, the polling nature of the question as it stands now, and the apparent "looking for a walk through" in the comments - its at 19 comments at the time of this writing, without being any closer to an answer.

user20683

@MichaelT true

user55340

9:28 PM

The extent of the P.SE knowledge on this is likely akin to the classic approaches (see catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html - the bit on Motorola and Xerox)

user20683

I probably overreacted, it's been a long day

Meh, I don't feel immoral responding negatively to someone when all my senses are telling me they're trying to create malware, I could be wrong but my response was rather harmless in that case, and if I'm not hopefully it becomes more annoying for him to create

just like it's annoying to all of us to deal with

Yep, it's the Y combinator and I still can't figure it the damn hell out. gah. I hate that stupid thing

woot I fixed my until

user41796

10:28 PM

@Rachel (and all) - I would recommend looking at the original version of the interminable process question. Maple_shaft edited in the statement about "I'm a student..." I doubt he's a VX'er since he's left an obvious trail linking back to who he claims he is, and there are much better sites for picking up malware tutorials. Given that he claims to hail from India, I'll grant that English is his second language and some of the challenges in this thread are due to miscommunications.

user41796

This is the original version of that question: programmers.stackexchange.com/revisions/187231/1

11:04 PM

github.com/JimmyHoffa/Machinad added parser combinators lib with example

Just a few combinators for example, not a full parsing library

user55340

Just had a question about Klingon. There should be a "Klingon Language Inquires" stackexchange. That way it can be "KLI.SE" for some recursive nature to it.

11:24 PM

...that's recursive? heh

Anyone here do a lot of redditing?

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Pine is not elm. Emacs makes a computer slow. KLIngon Language Inquires.

user20683

11:40 PM

@MichaelT Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

@MichaelT pfft I have fallen in love with emacs over the course of this year, blasphemer

You're just an EDitor, what do you know..

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