/dev/chat

Stephen Kitt

7:10 AM

@AndrasDeak I love how converting a series of comments to a chat ensures they are preserved instead of disappearing like deleted comments (which IMO is what should happen to comments)

Faheem Mitha

I'm probably going to regret posting this, but please do feel very much free to ignore it if you wish - lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/06/msg00020.html

So turns out I don't need to ask Stallman. He already gave his opinion. But with zero justification, which is not helpful.

On further thought I'm inclined to think this kind of behavior doesn't actually violate the GPL, but it's certainly a grey area.

As always, not a lawyer.

Though the email isn't actually from him, so I'm not sure what's going on here.

See also lwn.net/Articles/721895

Michael Homer

7:30 AM

It's hard to read the GPL as requiring anybody to distribute future code to anybody in particular, but I would not want to be taking either side of that to court

Which, I suppose, is broadly the same result as "no violation"

Faheem Mitha

8:49 AM

Also opensource.stackexchange.com/q/5426/149

Faheem Mitha

9:22 AM

Related - lwn.net/Articles/178550

Michael Homer

9:41 AM

I would be interested to see consideration of the application of the desert island test and perhaps dissident test to that theory

It is definitely an uncomfortable corner, but I am more uncomfortable with the opposite corner

ilkkachu

10:49 AM

@StephenKitt I still hate both. Also, I still want to know what the proper way of providing critique on answers is, since comments apparently isn't.

@FaheemMitha indeed. Note the "If I understand right", which kinda hints that he hasn't looked too closely, and that the subject line, at least the one shown says "GRsecurity is preventing others from [redistributing]"

αғsнιη

@ilkkachu it works perfectly

you just need code:"*>>*" instead

code:">>" looks for the ">>" within <code>... </code> tags only

cc @terdon

ilkkachu

@αғsнιη what? That seems to match pretty much everything :D With that, I get this answer as the top one (sorted by votes), with all the text bolded as if matching the search: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/198590/what-is-a-bind-mount/… and.. that one doesn't even have the two characters >> as far as my Chrome can search the page

don't say this depends on the browser?

αғsнιη

Ohhh, you are right

it's useless then :D

ilkkachu

what I was hoping and expecting to match with code:">>" was pretty much this unix.stackexchange.com/questions/159513/… and it also has >> all by itself inside backticks. So... I just... can't even guess what it ends up doing.

αғsнιη

yes, I see

at least Google search has better result

">>" unix terdon

:D

terdon

11:02 AM

@ilkkachu Comments are the way to provide critique on answers. it's just that not all critique is worth providing.

ilkkachu

@terdon providing or preserving?

@terdon and those cases where there are upvoted comments and the whole lot gets hidden to chat because of an unrelated comment explosion later? Or the cases where a moderator decides on what critique is worth providing on their own answer?

Also, I don't mean that it would be worth preserving all over-long arguments or endless yabbering like the ones we saw on that "file that doesn't exist". But the sort of stuff where someone points out that "There's a problem with this answer because X"

Or a counter-argument to some viewpoint an answer makes.

Stephen Kitt

@ilkkachu we had a discussion here at some point where the conclusion was to mention significant problems (such as potential data loss) as edits to the post

@ilkkachu if the viewpoint is significant with regard to the question, presumably a counter-argument would go in a separate answer

ilkkachu

@StephenKitt yes, ... except that if the post owner doesn't approve of the edit?

Stephen Kitt

@ilkkachu then you end up in a situation where neither edits nor comments are going to be satisfactory, unfortunately

ilkkachu

@StephenKitt yes. Edits can be countered by the post owner, and comments get deleted by the mods. Downvotes don't show unless you explicitly look, so there's no negativity, and everyone is happy, no?

Honestly, I think it would be better if the system allowed pinning notes directly on downvotes, and would show that "N people disagreed, they gave M reasons why". ("allowed", not "forced")

terdon

11:18 AM

@ilkkachu providing. If it's good enough to be preserved, make it an edit. And yes, there are always edge cases. As for a mod, mods should avoid acting on their own posts. I broke that rule on my answer about the temp file because I was under a lot of pressure and reacted badly. I should not have done so.

Normally we don't touch our own posts and instead ask a fellow mod to handle it.

At the end of the day though, you just need to accept that there is no such thing as a perfect system. The SE model is by far the best system I have seen which is why I am active here. That does not mean it is perfect or near perfect, but nothing is.

ilkkachu

@terdon I didn't mean that case. There was no sensible criticism there...

@terdon but see other room

terdon

@ilkkachu Maybe you didn't mean that, but it is a very valid criticism regardless. I shouldn't have moved to chat myself. Granted, there was an automatic flag raised, but I should have left it to someone else.

terdon

4:40 PM

There is no way to safely concatenate arbitrary file names (i.e. can contain any character except for the NUL byte and the slash) and then tell them apart, unless you use the slash as a separator (works for file names, not paths, of course). Hence, showing all the relevant commands will make it easier for other users to suggest better approaches. — fra-san 10 mins ago

@fra-san why not? As you point out, NULL is disallowed, so you can concatenate arbitrary file names with a NULL separator and then tell them apart. We have loads of answers suggesting that, after all.

What am I missing?

Kusalananda

5:01 PM

@terdon In bash, you wouldn't be able to do that and store the the pathnames in a string in a variable. In the question, the user should use an array though.

terdon

@Kusalananda Ah no, not in a variable. I wasn't thinking of variables, that could indeed explain what fra-san meant.

I was just thinking of files or output streams etc. Things like GNU find -print0 or xargs -0 etc.

Kusalananda

I think fra-san had the specific use of a scalar variable in the question in mind, yes.

@terdon Where using a nul-delimited list makes perfect sense.

Jeff Schaller

5:38 PM

Calling any & all systemd experts (or anyone else that has ideas to try) -- unix.stackexchange.com/questions/644160/…

fra-san

8:27 PM

@terdon As usual I put too much stuff in the limited space of a comment. As Kusalananda said, what I had in mind was that variables cannot contain NUL bytes. I should have written "concatenate arbitrary file names as a string and store it in a variable".

(And "unless you switch to zsh")

Anyway, the question has been edited with what we were asking for and my confusing comment is now gone.

Andras Deak

Is zsh the ed of shells?

Does it store strings as non-null-terminated?

Kusalananda

@AndrasDeak No, zsh is the whatever editor the cool kids are using nowadays, of shells.

Andras Deak

Oh, I sense a cultural divide ;)

I see, thanks

Kusalananda

@AndrasDeak The zsh shell uses character arrays and keeps track of their length (allowing them to contain nuls). Other shells uses strings, which are terminated by a nul.

Andras Deak

Ah, sounds reasonable

It also sounds very high-level

compared to my impression of bash, I mean

fra-san

8:37 PM

I only knew that "it can do it", with no knowledge of the internal workings :-)

Kusalananda

@AndrasDeak It's not much more high-level than bash. It's just that it has all the features you could ever think of a shell could ever need.

Andras Deak

:) Ambitious

Well, if I assume "you" does not specifically refer to me. I'm not very creative :D

Kusalananda

Doing a thing like "get me the five most recently modified files in an array" is as easy as array=( *(.om[1,5]) )

Andras Deak

Hmm, yeah, I wouldn't expect a shell to be able to tell me that

Adam L

9:31 PM

this is the worst thing ever i just found all of seinfield on cds that an ex gf gave me like decades ago and this laptop doesnt have a cd rom drive

jesse_b

scan them

Adam L

also i need to apologize for my previous comments about Peterson, i have found my zen in the rick and morty quote "ok the therapists are getting bored, we need to increase their supply of incest porn by 20 percent"

i dont know what you me by scan

oh you mean on my other computer

but cant i buy an external thingy to put in the laptop? i can only assume its illegal its seinfield someone somewhere is going to be angry if i do it

jesse_b

no in a scanner

Adam L

the scanner of printed paper to digital image or...

jesse_b

yes then you can just print out your seinfield episodes

Adam L

9:38 PM

:-| your being mean bro this is mean

and or blowing my mind if this is serious

jesse_b

if you convert them to gif format you can print them easily

Adam L

so you want me to put the cds... on the scanner... then this will how exactly work from that point on>?

jesse_b

scan to usb and then you can put your cds on a thumb drive

Adam L

your being mean jesse and to someone as nice and i dont know where i was going with this ok fine whatever im just going to go to my grandfathers place when its day time and take all of the electronics abandoned and there will be a dvd player in there somewhere also ur mean and you should feel bad

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