/dev/chat

Michael Homer

04:11

I'm all right

Kusalananda

13:38

Are questions like this one, i.e. ones that are "bumped to the homepage by Community", bubbled up to the top of the line by magic (i.e. some script) or is there a human going through and marking unanswered questions?

Faheem Mitha

14:26

@Kusalananda I don't know for sure, but it's almost certainly automated.

That's always been my assumption, anyway. And if it is a human doing it, it would seem to be a singularly tedious, thankless and pointless task.

Faheem Mitha

14:39

Oh, and what makes me think it automation is that most of the time, the bump is futile. E.g. a question is years old, and either has no answer or an unaccepted answer.

Kusalananda

@FaheemMitha Yes, this sounds reasonable.

Stephen Kitt

@FaheemMitha that’s the point of the bump, to give the question a second chance...

Faheem Mitha

@StephenKitt I wonder if that second chance ever works out.

And hi. How's it going?

Oh, and bumping is fine in theory. But not if the question is too old.

Kusalananda

@FaheemMitha "Oh, there's no point in even trying"?

Faheem Mitha

When I occasionally look at my old questions/answers, some of the time I can't remember writing them, and I not infrequently don't understand what they're about.

@Kusalananda I never said that. One problem with the script or whatever is that it seems to pick really old questions. See above.

After a certain point of time the question is probably dead. The original poster has probably lost interest, and possibly has forgotten he/she wrote the question.

Kusalananda

14:49

I have answered some old questions (albeit not 4+ years old, but 1+ years) and had the answers accepted.

Faheem Mitha

@Kusalananda Impressive. Can you link to an example (or examples).

Come to think of it, so have I. But they weren't bumped.

Often what happens is that I need the answer to something. I do a search, find a question that asks what I want to know. The catch is, the question either doesn't have an answer, or it doesn't work for me.

So, if I do find an answer, I add it to the thread.

Often in those cases, the question is months old.

Though I think those answers are rarely accepted. But they do get upvotes.

Probably the standout is that AU question where I posted an answer, basically saying the existing answers were nonsense. :-)

Kusalananda

15:31

@FaheemMitha I have 1156 answers. No, sorry, can't give a specific example ATM. I'll let you know when I come across one though.

derobert

17:05

@Kusalananda there is a badge for it, necromancer

unix.stackexchange.com/help/badges/44/necromancer

Kusalananda

@derobert That's 6 months. I got it.

No, 60 days. With score 5+

derobert

yes, not quite the same, but similar

Kusalananda

Yes, similar.

deostroll

Does (exit 0) mean terminate the script with a success status?

derobert

@deostroll In parentheses like that? No. It'd start a subshell (that's what the parens mean) and then immediately exit that. Where are you seeing that?

deostroll

17:19

mmm... in the script that comes courtesy curl -L https://www.npmjs.org/install.sh

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Pop quiz - without looking it up, do you know what the Bill of Rights is?

I was just watching a clip of a film called "Captain Fantastic".

derobert

@FaheemMitha yes, presuming you mean the ten (maybe 11, technically) amendments to the US constitution...

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Hmm, that's better than I did. I knew it was a bunch of amendments, but I didn't remember which. Do you?

And what else could I possibly mean?

Then again, you probably went to school in the United States.

derobert

@FaheemMitha its the first ten. I could probably say what most of them are

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Very good.

WP says there were originally 17, but some of them were never ratified.

derobert

17:34

1st is free speech, association, religion, press, petition; 2nd is firearms; 3rd... ummm... will get back to that one; 4th is searches; 5th is a whole bunch of rights of the accused & due process stuff...

Faheem Mitha

Here is the clip I was watching.

I was a bit surprised by 10. I didn't remember that one at all. And it's a bit of an odd one out, imo.

derobert

3rd might be quartering troops. One of them is, would have to look that up. Six/seven/eight are prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, excessive bail, and guaranteeing jury trial in criminal and civil matters (forget the order)

Faheem Mitha

It's ironical that I know more about the US constitution than I do about the Indian one (basically nothing).

derobert

9 is a confusing one along the lines of just because we didn't mention a right doesn't mean it doesn't exist

Faheem Mitha

Then again, Indians seem to spend a lot of their time disparaging the Constitution.

derobert

17:36

10 is the one about powers not given to fed reserved to states or people

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Yes, that one. I don't see how/why it belongs.

derobert

And the 27th (I think is the right number) was technically proposed as part of the Bill of Rights, but was only ratified in the 90s. It's about Congress giving itself pay raises.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Yay.

BTW, do you remember this from school, or did you pick it up elsewhere?

Personally, I don't think I actually learned anything in school. Maybe a bit of math. And the odd Shakespeare play.

derobert

@FaheemMitha Not sure. I'm sure it was covered in school, though.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Yes. In Civics?

derobert

17:40

@FaheemMitha Well, it was much more important before the courts decided to take a few provisions of the Constitution really broadly... There is a section of the constitution that lists powers of the federal government. If you take that strictly, the 10th amendment is a serious limit on the federal government's power. Even taken broadly, 10th still comes up in court decisions.

@FaheemMitha Yeah, civics or American history. Probably both.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert It's important, agreed. I meant that the Bill of Rights is about the rights the people have under the constitution. But the States aren't people.

derobert

(BTW: for other things you could have meant by Bill of Rights, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_rights .... they have a long list!)

@FaheemMitha It's not. It's a list of things the federal government may not do.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Oh?

Oh, I didn't realise there were so many things that could be called the Bill of Rights.

derobert

@FaheemMitha yep. Take a look at how they're worded; there is a reason that e.g., the 1st says "Congress shall make no law..."

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Yes, I see.

derobert

17:44

They didn't apply to state governments until after the passage of the 14th Amendment after the Civil War.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert What didn't?

derobert

@FaheemMitha The Bill of Rights.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Ok.

derobert

(and really, enforcing the Bill of Rights against the states didn't start happening until the late 1800s, early 1900s)

Faheem Mitha

@derobert So the states ignored the Bill of Rights for some time?

derobert

17:54

Not really ignored; it didn't apply to them.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert But what substituted, then?

derobert

Huh?

Faheem Mitha

I wonder if there is an amendment which covers technological eavesdropping.

derobert

@FaheemMitha Generally the 4th.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert The Bill of Rights was at least partly to protect citizens against the Federal Govt.

But what protected citizens again the States?

@derobert searches and seizures? That's a bit of a stretch.

derobert

17:57

@FaheemMitha States have their own constitutions, many of them have various protections in them; other than that—their right to throw the jerks out at the ballot box.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert I don't get the bit after the semi-colon.

derobert

@FaheemMitha vote them out at the next election

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Not following.

Vote out who?

derobert

@FaheemMitha if you don't like the laws your state government has passed, you vote for different people to run it

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Oh, I see. How is that different from the Federal Govt, though?

derobert

18:01

@FaheemMitha The founders were more afraid of a larger, far-away (for many of them—weeks of travel) federal government than their much closer state governments

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Ok. But how is that relevant?

derobert

That's why the federal constitution has a bunch of restrictions on the federal government, including the Bill of Rights.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Oh. But the State Govts can be plenty scary if they want to be.

And the US states are really large. Some as large as well-known countries.

They could do well at oppressing citizens if they wanted.

derobert

@FaheemMitha Sure. And a lot of them have similar protections in their constitutions. But that was left up to the people of each state to decide.

(And of course, those really large states weren't around back then.)

Faheem Mitha

@derobert I see.

derobert

18:05

The states were already fully-functional governments when the US constitution was written.

They were replacing one national government (under the Articles of Confederation) with another.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert One national govt? Meaning the British?

derobert

@FaheemMitha No. The current US national government is the 2nd attempt. The 1st attempt was the Articles of Confederation.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Oh. I did not know that.

derobert

Articles of Confederation

The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement among the 13 original states of the United States of America that served as its first constitution. Its drafting by a committee appointed by the Second Continental Congress began on July 12, 1776, and an approved version was sent to the states for ratification on November 15, 1777. The Articles of Confederation came into force on March 1, 1781, after being ratified by all 13 states. A guiding principle of the Articles was to preserve the independence and sovereignty of the states. The federal...

Faheem Mitha

@derobert You're certainly well informed. You're a credit to... somebody?

I was just reading about the unusual story of the 27th Amendment.

derobert

18:10

@FaheemMitha It's a bit of US history. I doubt it really matters much to anyone outside the US. I certainly can't tell you much about India's history....

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Do you know what the Battle of Plassey was?

derobert

Not without checking Wikipedia....

Faheem Mitha

Arguably one of the most important historical events in Indian history.

@derobert Ok.

How about Partition?

derobert

@FaheemMitha If I've heard of that, it's probably under a different name.... I mean, that's a really generic term!

Faheem Mitha

@derobert The Indian Partition.

Hmm, that's a bit more surprising.

Educated Indians tend to have heard of the Battle of Plassey. It was a big deal for India. But Partition was both more recent and more visible.

derobert

18:14

Ok. So looking it up on Wikipedia, I've heard of some of those events...

Faheem Mitha

The Battle of Plassey was a famously nasty business. It's been approx 250 years, but even now the topic is sufficient to raise blood pressures.

Though the British perspective on it is (or used to be) somewhat different.

These days they're more likely to try to pretend those kinds of things didn't happen.

derobert

@FaheemMitha That seems to be a popular way to deal with evils in your past.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert For the British, yes. And for the Indian govt, increasingly so.

Hmm, so Congress is ignoring the 27th Amendment. Why am I not surprised?

derobert

By freezing their pay? I think no one running for re-election wants to litigate that one...

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Doesn't anyone else have standing? Don't taxpayers?

It's their money, after all.

derobert

18:30

@FaheemMitha I doubt it, not like taxpayers are suffering any harm by Congress not giving itself a ~2% raise.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert No, I mean the other way around.

Maybe I misunderstood what I read. But the 27th Amendment puts restrictions on pay raises.

derobert

Well, pay changes. Not just raises.

Faheem Mitha

And I read that Congress isn't abiding by it.

@derobert Right, pay changes.

derobert

The only thing I could find accusing Congress of violating it was by decreasing its pay. Not increasing.

Faheem Mitha

@derobert Oh. Then maybe I misread.

Faheem Mitha

21:47

I see there is a lvm and a lvm2. Are both of these needed?

lvm2 has a tag summary (or whatever it is called). lvm doesn't.

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