> Back in 1985, when he was founder, president, and chair of MacroMind (now Macromedia), he cowrote and launched the product that became Director and its playback module, Shockwave, still among the most popular tools for CD-ROM, DVD, and Web multimedia. He's now CEO of a startup called Broadband Mechanics, developing applications in anticipation of the era of true high-speed Internet access.
Oh the innocent early 2000.
> Still, someone has found time to paste a brand name on the side. I'm expecting it to say "DigiScents," the name of the company Bellenson and Smith have formed as partners. But the lettering reads "iSmell." - "That's the product name?" I ask. "For real?"
> In 2005, researchers from the University of Huelva developed XML Smell, a protocol of XML that can transmit smells. The researchers also developed a scent-generating device and worked on miniaturising its size.[9]
I think a lot of people just voted on ETH's answer and forgot about it though which bothers me because it didn't really cover the pro-showcase perspective fully
Construct a Gaussian Blur Matrix
Gaussian blur is a method used for blurring images smoothly. It involves creating a matrix which will be used by convolving it with the pixels of an image. In this challenge, your task is to construct that matrix used in Gaussian blur. You will take an input r wh...
If I made a challenge that used butteraugil for scoring can I tely on folk to do the scoring locally themselves or should I make a website where they upload the picture and it spits out the score
I'll probably have to require SE OAuth + captcha though because it's fairly COU intensive and I don't want people messing around with it too much
This isn't really about fun as it is convenience. It isn't that hard to build butteraugil so I'd only do it if people thought it would really cut into participation
And it would be pretty hard on my C9 workspace. I might have to do an AWS instance instead
@xnor re:this The community is formed by bringing in people from HNQ and popular challenges. Users are far more likely to share their excitement about coding when there are tangible rewards like rep. Yes. people are driven by winning and rep and clout but that's ok. It's how capitalism works.
In addition, I know personally I feel more accountable to create interesting snippets of code for that challenge, since I know that making "boring" snippets will make future upvotes less likely, and thus future progress.
i have a hugely upvoted answer on meta to stop upvoting trivial solutions, yet these keep getting tons of upvotes, hence my skepticism of the masses of HNQ as an asset
@xnor Quality concerns are a valid issue, and maybe that should be a focus. I admit idk if the answer quality on the Showcase has been good or bad recently, but that'd be a reason to cull answers, not close the challenge.
@xnor And, despite sensationalism and FGITWs and all that, I'd bet you anything that my HNQ challenges have inspired at least a few people to join PPCG and become productive members :)
The rather stringent nature of the showcase doesn't really allow for bad answers only bad languages. Look at the deleted answers you'll see pretty much nothing comared to most pop cons
@xnor This makes it too broad and also pretty boring.
I kind of would like to hear your thoughts on my answer by the way I thought I broke down what's going on pretty well but I feel I've missed the mark a bit since the upvotes are a little mixed
eh, i don't see what's added by "mention your language and a factoid first to see if people throw a few upvotes", but i think i'm not the target audience
@xnor Agreed, but that opens up new bags of worms. I'd rather leave it as is and (if they are on topic) wait for a new, more popular "Showcase"-style challenge to come along. New, unique challenges are always out there.
Do you think that the other questions are of value and have the property discussed though? That's the main point I'd like to connect even if you don't support the showcase
@quartata I really think it's far too late to change the challenge format. No factoid may have been better at first but now it would just confuse people
That would require a more fundamental change. but i don't think that has a whole lot to do with whether it should stay open. To answer your question though, tokens?
It's tough to have a definition of tokens that covers every language but a language dependant one is quite easy.
The votes so far are extremely mixed in general... and honestly I have no clue what the community is even supporting. The question suggests locking and is +9/-8, while top-voted answer also leans towards locking / transitioning to an alternative and is +19/-7.
No, don't close it, don't lock it
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Unless there are severe quality issues, don't let bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo get in the way of a challenge that many people are clearly entertained by on a site that (I believe) is, at-the-core, about entertainment — about enjoyin...
Eth was always part of the "it's off-topic" side, but initially supported creating a rules exception for it / keeping it open, and then decided that it's probably best to close it and find an alternative.
Well I can't right now but someone else could reupload it somewhere for you. I would rather not edit the post to change it away from SE imgur since it's more official/reliable
tor is blocked. if used, the process disables internet access for 24 hrs, the school network blacklists your mac address for a day, and administration is notified.
no ide because school computer. I ssh into my server with PuTTY and use vim.
Hmm... I think my main problem with all of my question's downvotes is that the downvotes push it off of the "hot meta posts" list, reducing visibility.
@PhiNotPi That's why you should keep the question neutral and post your opinion in an answer. If the question brings up a point that is worth discussing but you disagree with the author's conclusion, you'll probably wind up downvoting.
This is kind of a hot mess now. It isn't really Phi's fault though because what was a very specific question opened up the whole general popcon can of worms
In the specific case of Showcase, it's had a long-standing DV from me, but I never close voted that I remember. Personally, I feel it's off-topic for the site. I never voted it closed because I didn't care enough to get in a close/open thing. Do I think it's actively harmful? Not really, but I don't see how it can really be argued that it's an example of what should be considered "on-topic".
One of my chief complaints is the voting/length tie. By posting a new language, you're basically asking (and getting) upvotes for doing absolutely nothing.
Part of the problem is that people are looking at it too much from the showcase perspective. The contents of the snippets are what impress me not the language.
@Geobits Programming contests is what we do though.
I can think of plenty of examples of contests that aren't on topic... I mean, hell, we have puzzles in the name of the site, yet look how that's turned out.
The contents of the snippet are impressive, or at least some of them. You could also get equally impressive answers if the question was Do anything you want in 100 bytes. Well, actually, that's pretty much what it is.
Like I said, I don't think it's actively harmful, unless it starts being used as "hey this is on-topic, so why not mine?". But if it does, I'd rather close it.
In this task, you are allowed make an useful program to do anything you can write within 100 characters. You are allowed to use less characters, but not more.
Rules, just to protect from standard loopholes that are no longer funny:
Your program cannot access the internet, unless it really has ...
I wrote a poem inspired by the latest meta discussion:
"We must stop the pop-con!" the lock-bloc proposed. "No hope it's in-scope, so the post must be closed! No space for a showcase of PPCG, where votes for the top are just not meant to be!"
An opposing voice spoke: "Why fix what ain't broke? We're not trolling code, but this brings in the folks. As pop-cons may go, there are cons and there's pros. It's what voters chose, so why step on our toes?"
So go shop for some popcorn, pop open some pop. 'Cause the pop-con commotion is not gonna stop!
On an entirely different note, I just got this question from the Google Surveys app: "If you could vote for a Superhero to be President who would you choose? Be specific and provide the details on why this Superhero has the right qualities for the job!"
My answer: "Mr. Incredible. He acknowledged that he couldn't do everything on his own, that he needed help. Humility is a rare quality for one of the world's strongest men to have. Plus, he has a great way of dealing with bureaucracy and excellent family values. He knows how to deal with overpowered children, a useful quality for dealing wi…
The problem with locks is one that I fear. It's something I hold quite near and quite dear. My smile will vanish (and turn to a frown), When I find a post that I can't vote down.
I click on the button; it just doesn't work. It's not like my duties are something I shirk. But just like the icon of Downy the Goat, I feel "y u do dis" when I cannot vote ;_;
@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC It's a long story, lol. Originally I was DJMcMayhem, but I wanted to change it to an anagram, and the only thing I could think of was "my ham DJ". So Alex started calling me "DR ham jam", so from then on all of my usernames had ham in them. Then I changed it to "DR Green Eggs and Ham DJ", so downgoat started making Dr suess puns and I just played along
No, don't close it, don't lock it
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Unless there are severe quality issues, don't let bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo get in the way of a challenge that many people are clearly entertained by on a site that (I believe) is, at-the-core, about entertainment — about enjoyin...
In this task, you are allowed make an useful program to do anything you can write within 100 characters. You are allowed to use less characters, but not more.
Rules, just to protect from standard loopholes that are no longer funny:
Your program cannot access the internet, unless it really has ...
