@slm actually I did. That's the page where all suggested edits can be voted by the community, because you are a mod you see them all, but I see only 2 that I can vote
One mistake I see people making over and over again is trying to parse XML or HTML with a regex. Here are a few of the reasons parsing XML and HTML is hard:
People want to treat a file as a sequence of lines, but this is valid:
<tag
attr="5"
/>
People want to treat < or <tag as the start of ...
@polym Please respect the formating preferences of authors; that was a pointless edit. If you are editing other things of substance and the author was just too lazy to format their post then by all means go for it, but using code block formatting for all instances of command names is not always appreciated.
I also picked my paragraphs carefully. Meanwhile there were typos that could have been fixed and there are lots of actually badly formatted posts on the site to worry about. Thanks for understanding.
@polym You'll find plenty of people that will argue code formatting non-code is counter-productive. Personally I don't much care and there is a time and place for it when it disambiguates something but don't edit just for that.
@polym Personally, I reserve code formatting for code snippets or when it is a command with instructions to be run as entered, not when just off handedly mentioning an application name.
any mods (on SO) able to lend a hand for a minute? (I know this isn't really the place to be looking, but I see blue!)
tl;dr it appears someone has a script randomly staring then unstaring messages in this chat room chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/17/javascript - looking at the ws we've pretty well determined who it is as well.
@polym There is a difference between saying something like "I suggest only giving sudo access to trusted users" and saying "you can run sudo -s to get a root shell".
@Caleb Ok. I won't change any preference of yours :). Just tell me if I do something wrong, I'll fix it then. I'll try to adapt to your preference :). Thanks!
I never intented to change any preferences of you, @Caleb :)
@rlemon We do, Caleb asked for help, you should be receiving it soon. Also, in general, asking in the tavern would probably work better. A lot of SO mods and SE employees hang out there.
@polym That goes for more than just me. Don't edit anybody's posts in general just to change that. Again if there are other issues you are fixing then it's fine to clean that up too, but the impetus for the edit should be the other things.
@polym The latest suggested edit from you that I reviewed looked very good. Please keep in mind that your changes (until you have achieved 2000 rep) do have to be reviewed by 2 people (unless improved), so make them substantial as Caleb also indicated. The system already forces you to have a minimum of (I think) 6 characters that need to change.
After 2000 rep you are supposed to know what you are doing and can also make minor adjustments. But by then you also don't earn points for accepted suggested edits anymore...
@Anthon ok :). I just want to learn how to edit correctly. If you guys tell me what I am doing wrong, I'll adapt to it and fix it. I am editing mostly questions, because there are spelling or grammar mistakes, improper paragraphing, missing highlighting in executed commands or code sections, unclear questions and because I think some things could be improved like changing a paragraph full of questions to a list of questions :). That way, the question is more appealing to the reader
@polym I think you are already getting the hang of it. There are of course slight variations in the preferences of the people frequenting this site, and between the people doing your suggested edit reviews. Just keep an eye on those of yours that don't get accepted and/or are further improved and you'll be doing fine.
@FaheemMitha sunsite hosted source tarballs for a ton of packages. If you were running something like Slackware with no package manager back in the day, it was a good place to find everything you needed. LSL occasionally would snapshot the FTP site onto CDs and it was a decent option if you didn't have fast internet
I have some question in closing port, I think I got some strange things.
When I use execute
nmap --top-ports 10 192.168.1.1
it shows that 23/TCP port is open.
But when I execute
nmap --top-ports 10 localhost
it show that 23/tcp port is closed.
Which of them is true? I want to close this ...
@Creek yeah it's a bit of luck for that. But it does seem that often what IMO are weak Q's get picked up more frequently and have higher views then much stronger Q's. We've discussed this at length here and it seems to be that weaker Q's have a broader appeal since they're easier for many to understand.
@Creek - if you're looking for Q's that have 10k+ views I believe unix.stackexchange.com/users/5614/naftuli-tzvi-kay is the best at asking these types of Q's. He has ~10 gold badges and seems to have a knack for asking them.
@slm I've noticed his Q's get alot of publicity. None of the highly viewed ones are mindbogglers so I think you're right about weak questions. It seems like the most popular Q's are ones with a million possible answers or they're about some ancient unquestioned part of *nix, like why is ~ short for home
@Creek Yes so the ancient stuff is pretty well covered, I've poured over them looking for holes, the best bet is to ask a novice Q that's just so duh or find something very novel, which is really hard to do.
@Creek - also current technology Q's are good candidates, that's what unix.stackexchange.com/users/5614/naftuli-tzvi-kay is pretty good at doing. I would look for docker or lxc or cgroup types of Q's since they're new tech that you'll get the rest of the world catching up to which will result in getting a lot of views as time goes by
throwing a bounty on a Q can also get extra traction.
@slm agreed about the old Q's, after I was on SE for a couple weeks I realized that all the REALLY good questions have come and gone and there's a fair amount of duplicates these days
@Creek the other tactic one can take is to look for a canonical Q. We get a lot of Q's about how to parse this output getting column X etc. If you can formulate a single A that covers several Q's these can get 10k+ views over time as well.
If you haven't noticed I've put a lot of thought into trying to get this badge 8-)
Me neither, I like to understand the mechanics behind the whole SE site.
Sometimes ppl confuse when someone is asking about these things as if they're only aim is to get a badge or rep, it's important for some of us to understand what the Matrix is 8-)
As we know, apt-get has Super Cow Powers and aptitude does not:
$ apt-get --help | grep -i cow
This APT has Super Cow Powers.
$ aptitude --help | grep -i cow
This aptitude does not have Super Cow Powers.
and of course, APT has an Easter egg to go with i...
I have 2 files as below.
file1
0.34
0.27
0.32
file2
0.15
0.21
0.15
Now, I would like to calculate the sum of squares between each column. For example,
[(0.34 - 0.15)^2 + (0.27 - 0.21)^2 + (0.32 - 0.15)^2 ] / 3
Where 3 is the total number of lines in the file. I will be having same numb...
From man page of file command,
file command actually performs 3 tests on determining the file type.
First test
The filesystem tests are based on examining the return from a
stat(2)
system call.
Second test
The magic number tests are used to check for files with data in
...
I am a non-programmer but I use LaTeX to write books. Sometimes I would like to try different versions on the tex-files. What would you recommend to use as a version controlling for a tex-writer? Is it easy to learn git for my purpose?
@derobert, your suggestion to modify the /etc/my.cnf is working really nice. :) Probably once the restoration is over, I will put it as a question and post your solution as the answer.
@Ramesh Bazaar is mostly dead. One of its developers even wrote a requiem of sorts. Which shouldn't be hard to find if you want to. It's an interesting read.
@Ramesh I don't think that is version control. :-) Plus google gets to keep all your data and look through it. Maybe you should read the user agreement.
@FaheemMitha, its fine. But if you see that image, google actually has version control in the side of the document. Of course, it cannot be a replacement but for small word documents and other stuffs, it is very good.
@ryekayo Hello to you too. The other answer suggested setting variables called "GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT*" to 0. I don't see these in my /etc/default/grub. I only see "GRUB_TIMEOUT=5" and when I look at my /boot/grub/grub.cfg I see set timeout 5 as expected. So maybe try only setting that.
@FaheemMitha They're more like mini-urban areas now on account of the large population density and the spread of high-rise apartment buildings to accommodate it. You'd be hard pressed to find single- (or even double-) story houses with their own gardens in Cairo's "suburbs".
@ryekayo Please re-send the link and remove my name from it.
@JosephR. The latter, mostly. I don't feel unsafe in Bombay, but it isn't that safe either. To some extent it depends where you go, like anywhere. But I have enough things to do, and generally moving around in the city is unpleasant. Most of the people one meets are what one might term ill-favored in appearance.
I recall I was having a bad day some weeks ago, and wound up doing a fair amount of walking in South Bombay. That day I felt like a character in the Island of Dr. Moreau.
@FaheemMitha "... moving around the city is unpleasant... " Boy, do I hear you! I have started ditching my car whenever I can and just hoofing it or using public transportation.
@JosephR. I see you write in your profile "Doing Linux sysadmin stuff for lack of someone better." What would something better look like? Just curious.
@JosephR. Well, I'm not sure which method is less pleasant. It all sucks in different ways. I suppose Cairo and Bombay are similar in some ways.
@JosephR. overall it's been good. Still adjusting to how to balance the mod tasks w/ being able to A. Looking to get back on the A horse and do more of it this month. The last month has been slow for me.
@FaheemMitha Not "something better", "someone better". By that I mean someone who is a computer techie by training. Most of what I know I picked up from the guy before me then added some reading (and tinkering) of my own.
@slm "good to see you too BTW 8-)" Whoops. Looking back on my greeting it seems that I've done no greeting at all, have I? Sorry about that. Good to see you of course.
Is there any way to make a Wacom Intuous CTH-480 work under Easy Peasy 1.6 (Ubuntu 10.04)? I have installed the Wacom Driver files according these instruction, replacing 3.7 with 2.6.30, as Easy Peasy 1.6 uses kernel 2.6.32-21-generic:
http://matthewwittering.com/blog/ubuntu-tips/how-to-install-...
@JosephR. Neither. :-) Technically, unemployed. Though I've been writing research papers in the last few years. Actually more successfully than when I was employed.
@FaheemMitha I used to work part time for a small startup but I quit that to focus on my MSc thesis. I am currently solely employed by my university as a teaching assistant.
@FaheemMitha If you're referring to the sysadmin stuff, I'm doing that (almost entirely) pro bono for the research lab I work at.
@FaheemMitha So what kind of research are you pursuing now?
@FaheemMitha Interesting. A friend of mine is looking to get into the computational biology game. He's from a biology background so he approached me for advice on which scripting language he should learn to get an edge in academia. So would you recommend Perl or Python? Or something else?
@FaheemMitha "getting published is a giant pain in the behind." Yes. But networking at conferences I find really good.
@FaheemMitha Why am I doing it pro bono. Several reasons.
@JosephR. Either Perl or Python would work to start with. Personally I prefer Python, it is a much better language. Though they are both slow. Really, none of the languages commonly used by research are really good/suitable.
4) I get the gratitude of a bunch of professors who can then help me academically and provide letters of recommendation/job opportunities (both of which already happened).
@JosephR. Ok, but wouldn't they do that anyway? Or, aren't they required to do that anyway?
@JosephR. Common Lisp is a pretty nice language which is quite suitable for computational research. The only drawback is that basicall nobody uses it for this.
I once tried to help a professor (technically two I guess) with computer stuff, but the person in question could not have been less grateful. He was a grade A asshole.
@FaheemMitha Yes, I see what you mean. My point was, I got to work directly with more professors so I was able to ask them for strong recommendation letters.
@FaheemMitha Well, not exactly. I also maintain the simulation software and have often used my time to help younger research assistants with the experience I gained in the industrial sector in my field of study.
The real reason I agreed to the job to begin with is that the lab is driven by individual efforts as I've told you so everyone pitches in as they are able.
So how did you deal with that professor of yours?
I often fantasize about leaving behind destructive worms/trojans/... for people like that.
The thing is, you know they'll jump straight to blaming the IT guy, so I can't turn thought into action :D
@JosephR. I didn't. I eventually left. Well, my contract was not renewed. But I gradually became less and less keen on doing the work. I think in the last 6 months I mostly just went into maintenance mode. Once I knew my contract was not being renewed, in some cases I just refused to do stuff.
@JosephR. Yes, I thought of stuff like that, but it would have hurt the guys research group, who hadn't done anything to me. Plus, it would have been criminal, and I'm not a criminal.
I once closed the browser for a guy who was being annoying on purpose and rigged it up to say "Sorry your browser went on vacation" whenever he tried to start it again.
I was just trying to help the guy out because (initially) he seemed nice, and I was grateful he had given me a job. Bad move. He turned out to be a real psycho. But that's what you get for trusting people.
@JosephR. :-)
@JosephR. Yes, it can be really thankless work. Just be sure those people appreciate it, and aren't taking advantage of you. In hindsight I wish I'd just done things that helped me.
I've never found counting on people's appreciation has worked well for me, but I've probably not been around the nicest people.
@Gilles I see your point. But when a user starts a resource-intensive simulation and then comes to complain about their computer not being responsive, it gets old quickly...
@Gilles Hey, I noticed you're a LotR/Tolkien fan from your posts on Scifi.SE. Always glad to meet a fellow fan :)
I'm on OS X, which has a BSD version of sed (which I'm guessing is inferior to a GNU version on Linux), and all the techniques for removing color on commandlinefu.com did not work. I tried replacing the -r switch (non-existent on OS X) -e, but that didn't help.
Is there some reliable way I can ...
One mistake I see people making over and over again is trying to parse XML or HTML with a regex. Here are a few of the reasons parsing XML and HTML is hard:
People want to treat a file as a sequence of lines, but this is valid:
<tag
attr="5"
/>
People want to treat < or <tag as the start of ...
I have some question in closing port, I think I got some strange things.
When I use execute
nmap --top-ports 10 192.168.1.1
it shows that 23/TCP port is open.
But when I execute
nmap --top-ports 10 localhost
it show that 23/tcp port is closed.
Which of them is true? I want to close this ...
As we know, apt-get has Super Cow Powers and aptitude does not:
$ apt-get --help | grep -i cow
This APT has Super Cow Powers.
$ aptitude --help | grep -i cow
This aptitude does not have Super Cow Powers.
and of course, APT has an Easter egg to go with i...
I have 2 files as below.
file1
0.34
0.27
0.32
file2
0.15
0.21
0.15
Now, I would like to calculate the sum of squares between each column. For example,
[(0.34 - 0.15)^2 + (0.27 - 0.21)^2 + (0.32 - 0.15)^2 ] / 3
Where 3 is the total number of lines in the file. I will be having same numb...
I am a non-programmer but I use LaTeX to write books. Sometimes I would like to try different versions on the tex-files. What would you recommend to use as a version controlling for a tex-writer? Is it easy to learn git for my purpose?
I'm on OS X, which has a BSD version of sed (which I'm guessing is inferior to a GNU version on Linux), and all the techniques for removing color on commandlinefu.com did not work. I tried replacing the -r switch (non-existent on OS X) -e, but that didn't help.
Is there some reliable way I can ...
