/dev/chat

strugee

02:53

@slm this is very true. e.g. I recently (~5 days ago) bought Classic Shell Scripting, an O'Reilly book. that's the first book on real shell programming I've bought, despite having 2-3 yrs experience screwing with the shell.

the book is gonna be nice to fill in the gaps of my knowledge but it would have taken me a lot longer to become comfortable with the shell if I had started with a book.

@derobert yeah, I haven't read through your answer but I saw that question in the sidebar and it didn't really make sense to me

davidkennedy85

06:32

HAI

@Gilles are you awake?

I suspect all the normal people are sleeping

Faheem Mitha

07:41

@slm Ok.

@strugee Personally I don't find computer books all that useful, and I haven't bought one for a while.

For one thing, they date. For another, you can find all the information you need on the net. And you have to lug the things around with you if you move.

Faheem Mitha

08:08

And speaking of scripting, the people on #bash on freenode are quite helpful, if you have questions.

terdon

10:55

@FaheemMitha don't you want to accept this answer?

3

A: Removing the last n characters from every line in an emacs buffer

You can use the same replace-regex approach to remove as the append case, just prefix the end-of-line regex meta-character with an any-character meta-character: M-< M-x replace-regex RET .$ RET RET To replace multiple chars, you can, in a pedestrian fashion, start prepending .? (one optional a...

Faheem Mitha

11:57

@terdon I expect I will. I usually wait 48 hours before doing so, though. I think SE recommends that somewhere.

terdon

@FaheemMitha OK, fair enough. I just thought you might have forgotten is all. I was about to send of my boilerplate "please accept this if it helped solve blah blalh" message and then saw it was you who knows the system well enough to not need help :)

Faheem Mitha

@terdon I kinda thought acceptances were not considered that important anyway, except possibly for the answerer to feel good, since the upvotes are more significant.

terdon

What gave you that idea? Accepting is important cause 1) it shows that the answer actually works and was what the OP was looking for so I can safely assume that it will solve my issue when I stumble upon the Q 2) Gives the answerer a deserved rep boost 3) Closes a question so it is marked as answered and helps both our stats and the organization of the site.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Ok. In any case, I do mark questions answered if they answer the question - of course, they don't always.

terdon

Of course. No, seriously, I only pinged you cause I know you. I often ask people to accept who are new to the site and figured that since you're often on chat I may as well remind you. Obviously, you should only accept if you feel that it answered your question.

Faheem Mitha

12:21

Is the comment at the end of unix.stackexchange.com/q/37636/4671

added automatically, or did a person add it?

terdon

12:44

@FaheemMitha must be automatic or maybe a mod (matdm had commented on that post) but I've never seen it before.

Faheem Mitha

@terdon I've seen that message occasionally before.

terdon

huh, perhaps @community then?

Faheem Mitha

Dunno. Possibly. Maybe a bot based on the length of replies. Maybe a staff member.

slm

@FaheemMitha @terdon - accepting A's is extremely important as a signal to ppl that visit the site that this is the A that solved the OPs issue. I just had a A that I wrote which was the accepted for using feh + svg images. The OP unaccepted my workaround A b/c someone finally figured out how to actually get feh to read svg images. That exactly how things should work. So the next person that finds the site should see the new A that solves the problem.

4

Q: Are there any multiformat image viewers, which are similar to feh and can show SVG files?

At the moment I'm working with a lot of SVG files and I don't have a good tool to inspect this files. Normally I use feh to take a look at an image, but feh can't show SVG files. Now I'm looking for a replacement. The replacement should have all the features of feh and should be able to open SVG...

It's also an important signal to everyone that A's Q's. If a Q has an accept then you know that Q has likely been resolved so don't waste your time on it further.

Faheem Mitha

@slm Ok, noted. As I said, I do accept answers when they answer the question. BTW, what is the easiest way to find out who the current moderators are?

terdon

12:50

@FaheemMitha

unix.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators

On the main site, click on "Users" then click on "Moderators"

Faheem Mitha

@terdon Yes, I see it now. Thanks.

Are these people actually active? I haven't seem them around much.

slm

unix.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators

The mods are accessible from the users link on the top bar

there is a mods link all the way to the right on the secondary bar

Faheem Mitha

@slm Thanks.

slm

They are active, Michael is the most, but mattdm is around almost as much, and I see xenoterracide once in a while.

Faheem Mitha

@slm Ok. These days I see you, @terdon, Gilles and derobert most.

slm

12:56

When we've talked w/ Michael they aren't too busy, most of the regulars handle the day to day of the site, we only need his help occassionally.

Michael was in here yesterday resolving something

Faheem Mitha

@slm Ok. Thanks.

slm

but, yeah the regulars do the bulk of the work.

terdon

and xenoterracide commented on my meta post on learning materials

Braiam

weeeeee, we are under spam attack?

slm

@Braiam - how do you figure

Braiam

13:00

meh, AU is under an attack by a guy that wants to be a mod, harassing users

Manish Kumar

Hello , i want to know about Unix Network programming

is it similar to C network programming?

Faheem Mitha

14:49

@Braiam Details?

Braiam

15:00

@FaheemMitha ^ like these, all night long

Faheem Mitha

@Braiam Don't see anything out of the ordinary. What is the procedure for dealing with people like that?

Braiam

we decided the spam flag

Faheem Mitha

15:30

@Braiam Ok. I meant, how to get them to stop coming around? Delete the account?

slm

@FaheemMitha - that's really all you can do, try and keep the content from staying around on the front page too long

we've had a fair share here too

Faheem Mitha

@slm Ok. I suppose deleting the account won't stop them. They can easily create another account.

slm

16:10

@FaheemMitha yes there are throttles with new accts. to slow them down, they can only post a Q every 30 mins. or something like that for example.

@nixveloper - why was your account suspended for 24 hours?

chat.stackexchange.com/users/104955/nixveloper

> This user has been temporarily suspended by a moderator and cannot chat for 23 hours 56 minutes.

slm

16:45

@MichaelMrozek - I think you mentioned this before but I couldn't find it in the chat archives. What are the throttles for new users + questions?

Braiam

he was talking crap since some time in AU chat room

slm

@Braiam - so he doesn't get banned in all rooms, just there?

Braiam

nope, he was purged literally of all SE...

slm

So why does he still show in our room up at he right?

Braiam

> no user data available

slm

16:53

i jumped over to AU room

strugee

17:38

@FaheemMitha codinghorror.com/blog/2008/04/…

@terdon he commented on my Plan 9 meta post too

@slm @Gilles I volunteered as the scheduler, etc. for the blog

Braiam

17:54

do > truncate the files right?

slm

yes

@strugee - good link from Jeff's blog. I completely forgot about that post, it sums it up perfectly!

@strugee - how did you want to proceed?

@Braiam - lamolabs.org/blog/1044/one-liner-zeroing-log-file

Braiam

18:13

@slm is lost forever right?

derobert

@Braiam Not really, the data still exists on disk.

At least until it is overwritten. It could be recovered.

/me notes there is also a coreutils truncate, which can do the same thing (and more)

@Gilles @slm I can help out with the administrative duties, I have experience doing it on the cooking.SE blog. At least before we ran out of things people wanted to write...

Faheem Mitha

@strugee I dunno. I don't really think there is all that much to computers, personally. You can generally just pick it up. Having said that, I did read Seibel's Practical Common Lisp, which is a good book. You couldn't get easily that information online otherwise. Also, the C++ primer is a good book. But good programming books really aren't that common.

Also, considering the terrible tools most people use for programming, MS Windows & PHP for example, maybe some people could stand to get a little more education about stuff. Then, they'd realise, for example, maybe, what an abhomination PHP is.

slm

@Braiam - as deroberts said, the data "payload" is sstill on disk, the meta info about the file may be there too, but the file has been marked as 0 size.

derobert

@slm seems like you need a new keyboard, before you become @sslm

Faheem Mitha

tex.sx has interviews of high rep users. that is a possible topic

slm

18:27

@derobert - ??

derobert

You had a couple extra s's in there, so I'm going to assume you have a stuck key.

slm

@derobert - yes my keyboard has been acting up. The l key sometimes doesn't work and the shift sometimes isn't getting picked up on. Guess I shouldn't have eaten all those snacks in front of it, now it's getting full of crumbs. The s too I have to sometimes make sure that I hit it, so I do 2 at times

derobert

Aha! It is time for a new keyboard. Or a vacuum, at least.

slm

but i love my thinkpad

might need to get a donor keyboard from ebay

derobert

Hmm, laptop keyboard is harder to replace. You could try cleaning it, if it has a ton of cruft in it.

slm

18:30

i have some compressed air here

When the letters are worn off the keys so that you can't see them mean you using it too much?

Faheem Mitha

@slm Try turning it upside down and shaking it first. Turn it off before, of course.

@slm Define "too much". :-)

slm

I usually take it apart so that the keyboard comes out. I've had thinkpads for years and it's usually easy to do.

this one is 3+ years old

Faheem Mitha

@slm Didn't know you could do that.

Braiam

@derobert mm... I should told off a couple of AU users then...

slm

so relatively young in my mind

Braiam

18:33

@FaheemMitha enough to cause problems

slm

yeah there are 3-4 screws on the bottom, when you remove them you can usually push up or pull down on the keyboard around the F8 key and it will come right out

then I can completely vaccum and blow it out.

derobert

Letters wearing off keycaps just means they didn't paint them on very well...

slm

yeah

ok, off to a fun meeting

derobert

18:49

I hope I have not scared our new user away...

0

A: Disc light comes on when pressing keys in Iceweasel Preferences? Is this malevolent?

The short answer No, it's probably not malevolent. It appears Iceweasel writes its preferences file after every keystroke. The long answer (how to find out) The same thing happens here. There is a way to determine exactly what's going on, by using the kernel's block-access dump feature. All o...

strugee

19:14

@derobert and here we have a second benefit of getting a keyboard with no key labels on it. the primary being, look awesome

terdon

20:17

@derobert I don't see why, that was a hell of an answer!

strugee

@slm I'll probably start by pinging people who answered the "who can write" question on Meta

@slm all you need to do is hold your keyboard in front of you. look at the home row, cross your eyes so the g and h overlap, and lift the keyboard over your head while staying focused. that will fix it.

slm

21:12

@strugee - I added my name to the list..

0

A: Starting a blog, part 2

Just adding my name to the list. I too maintain a technical blog outside of SE but would be interested in doing articles under the guise of SE. Topics that I would like to cover: Taking Answers that I've written and expanding them I'd like to do multi-part series on topics such as: Samba User...

strugee

21:59

@slm thanks. do you have an opinion on the "planet-style" blog thing I mentioned in comments?

@slm it might be interesting if we had some sort of syndication, similar to how a lot of planet.*.org sites do it. e.g. you would have a list of RSS feeds, and whenever one of those feeds added a post tagged "stack exchange" (or whatever), that post would show up in the community blog. that way, you could still do your thing but we'd have interesting content. — strugee Jan 6 at 7:17

slm

22:34

@strugee - I'd be OK with that.

@strugee - you might want to do a review of the blogs that get looped into the planet though, I'm in a couple of others and they start to dilute the better blogs when they let everyone's blog in

strugee

22:48

@slm the way I'm thinking we could do it is the way planet.mozilla.org is done: you have to explicitly tag something in order for it to be syndicated. assuming that the SE people can set that up, of course

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