English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

KitFox

14:02

Hello.

I just figured out that one of our production order forms points to a QA server.

Robusto

Not good.

@KitFox Yes, it's a Java server page. I don't know about .do

MrHen

14:28

@KitFox Haha

@Robusto Yeah, pretty much. If your game cannot tell me what it is better than that other game in less than 30 seconds, I'll go play the other game.

If you spend an entire blog post trying to articulate one simple point (ours is harder) than you have a lot to learn about what people want in a puzzle game.

Robusto

@MrHen True.

And they don't realize that theirs may be too hard for most people. Not enough reward for the effort.

MrHen

I play 2048 because I cannot play Threes on my device. So, score one for OSS.

Robusto

True game design keeps the carrot almost always just out of reach, but not seeming unreachable.

MrHen

@Robusto And gives people who can beat it a chance to brag and feel superior. :P

Robusto

Heh, yeah.

MrHen

14:36

"Winning" is important. They've fully admitted no one has won Threes.

Robusto

So everyone who has played Threes has gone away disappointed.

I don't mind games being hard. I don't see the point of games that are impossible.

MrHen

It's a tough dilemma.

Robusto

Plus I hated the solecisms in their blog post.

MrHen

A very relevant article by another very hard puzzle game:

gamasutra.com/view/feature/172250/…

!!define solecism

KitSox

@MrHen solecisms plural form of

@MrHen My pocket dictionary just isn't good enough for you.

@MrHen solecism Erroneous or improper usage; absurdity.

MrHen

14:38

Yeah.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@KitFox .do is the traditional suffix for a web-app written with Struts (a Java web MVC framework)

MrHen

Plus, they spent a year and a half on a game someone could clone in less than a week. Whoops.

Robusto

From a review for Braid. "Gentlemen, I think we’re looking at a masterpiece, in the same sense in which Portal is one too. A cerebral and pleasant experience, never frustrating without proper reward, never dull or monotonous."

Tell me Threes (or 2048 for that matter) is never dull or monotonous.

MrHen

@Robusto Yes. Portal hits that sweet spot in puzzle games where you have to stop and think for a bit but (a) can figure it out and (b) can always optimize a solution to do it better

Robusto

And there is a larger puzzle you have to solve while solving the smaller puzzles.

MrHen

14:41

> The first incorrect assumption we made was thinking that everyone likes science. Although the internet may love "Science!" thanks to games like Portal, games that look like actual chemistry remind most people of chemistry class.

This is from the SpaceChem post-mortem linked above.

Also this, which is more relevant:

> There's nothing wrong with having difficult puzzles in a puzzle game; the capabilities, interest, and patience of your players will always span a huge range, so difficult puzzles can keep the best players challenged and give everyone else something to aspire to. However, when progression through a story is blocked by progression through the gameplay, making the game too difficult denies all but your best players completion of the story and the satisfaction and enjoyment that goes with it.

Robusto

@MrHen For me, though, coding puzzles related to the work I do are the most engaging. Sometimes when you solve one with a beautiful, simple solution, you feel almost godlike.

MrHen

@Robusto Yes. But that isn't exactly marketable.

Robusto

Other times you solve them with code you know you could improve, so the puzzle is still there when you go back to refactor.

MrHen

I, for instance, get paid to solved those puzzles.

Robusto

@MrHen No, but it pays me. :)

MrHen

14:44

pseudo-jinx

Robusto

Jinx.

MrHen

Uhoh

Now what?

Robusto

Meta-jinx!

I think we owe each other the small print on the can of Coke.

MrHen

@Robusto Yeah. I love refactoring, personally. I find it incredibly cathartic.

Robusto

My favorite code comment: // TODO: refactor this ugly POS.

MrHen

14:46

@Robusto My best comment for myself was // remove comment

It took me some headscratching before I realized it was actually accurate and the code afterward was stripping comments out of a file

Robusto

@MrHen /* no comment */

I usually only put comments in places where the code is counter-intuitive.

MrHen

@Robusto Right. Or to make snarky remarks about someone else's poor naming choices.

Robusto

@MrHen Hehe, don't get me started on that. I've worked with programmers who couldn't spell, so they'd have variable names like concattinatedOutput and it would be all over the place.

MrHen

@Robusto Heh. I see a lot of botched environment names, too

We actually have a spell checker hooked up to our SCM

It helps a little

Robusto

And if you refactor those, you take responsibility for whatever breaks.

MrHen

14:55

@Robusto Well, our major projects are all in C# so it isn't so hard to refactor it

Robusto

@MrHen Yeah. That's the nice thing about Visual Studio.

Well, one of the nice things.

MrHen

Agreed.

Although, I work on [one of] the [many] VS team so I'm a little biased. :)

Robusto

And justifiably so. But I don't like the VS 2010 implementation of regular expressions for search. Why can't I just type \btext\b?

Instead of checking the little box that says "whole word" or whatever?

MrHen

No clue.

Mitch

Eclipse gives you the choice

checkbox for regex or not.

Robusto

14:59

Yeah. Eclipse has other problems though. I'd rather use NetBeans with Java back ends.

MrHen

Sadly, VS still has a ton of those bizarre non-features

MετάEd

@KitFox Deming would not be pleased.

Robusto

@Mitch No, you misunderstand. There is a checkbox for regex, but they make you check the "whole word" box if you want to search for the word not as a substring of a larger word.

Mitch

Deming is kind of a picky eater.

MετάEd

@MrHen Ha!

Ronan

15:00

Have I stumbled on the main StackOverflow chat room by accident?

MετάEd

@Ronan On purpose.

Mitch

@Robusto Ohhh.... because the Java class has a different function for each,

MετάEd

But we do talk about language too.

APL for example.

MrHen

@Robusto So, basically, they just don't have \b support?

Robusto

@MrHen They didn't have a lot of support. I stopped using it and went back to my free IDE for searching the code base with regex.

Ronan

15:01

@Mitch ?>

MrHen

@Robusto Mmk, interesting. Not my particular feature group, I'm afraid.

Robusto

Back in 2008 I remember having to use properties of classes (like RegExp.CrLf or whatever it was) instead of \r\l literals, etc.

MrHen

@Robusto Haha, ouch.

Mitch

matches and find. one must match the whole string -always-, the other is a substring. I can never remember which is which.

MrHen

I'm kind of surprised by how many edits people make to their closed questions that don't actually help fix the closed reason.

Robusto

15:12

Darwin's Dilemma

Darwin's Dilemma is a personal computer game released in 1990 for the Macintosh and Sharp X68000 platforms. It was developed by André Ouimet and published by Inline Design. Darwin's Dilemma is a puzzle game in which the goal is to match creatures together. After enough matches the creatures will "evolve" into new ones, and these new creatures must be again matched so they can evolve, and so on. References *"Darwin's Dilemma: A Field Guide to Evolution", Andre Ouimet and Anne L. Peck, 2nd Printing - February 1991 *"New for Macintosh: Darwin's Dilemma upgrade", Newsbytes News Network, Ju...

There you go, Threes developers. You guys just ripped off a 23-year-old game.

This was an extremely fun puzzle game.

More.

Mitch

@MrHen People are dumb

Cerberus

15:30

@Robusto Ah, I'm not surprised.

And I think "ripping off" is actually perfectly fine in this case.

So did you play that game, 23 years ago?

Robusto

@Cerberus Yes.

Ronan

Reminds me a bit of the excellent Chip's Challenge.

Robusto

@Cerberus You can download it and play it on the PC now. It has multiple levels and takes a long time to "win" the whole game, but the game mechanics are more interesting than threes or 2048, and you can save at each level IIRC.

Plus every level has a whole new "stage" in evolution.

MrHen

15:47

11

Q: Bring back the Summer of Love (aka Make new users feel more welcome)

I'm a big fan of SE sites and spend an awful lot of time on StackOverflow. When I saw an English Language site, I pointed a few of my friends and family this way (one of whom is an English professor and another is a TEFL teacher). I thought they'd enjoy the site, expand their own knowledge and m...

discussion

So... anyone giving odds on how much difference this will have?

terdon

@MrHen He does raise a valid point. The users he describes sound like they would be a good addition, scaring people off is not something we should encourage I think.

Mind you, some new users deserve what they get.

Robusto

@MrHen Slim to none.

If they start paying me to respond here, I will be nice as pie.

MrHen

@terdon Sure; it is a valid point. But will anything change now that the point has been raised? Why or why not?

Robusto

The point is, most people aren't snarky in their comments.

terdon

Not sure about the "summer of love" but yes, I have too often seen certain users being needlessly rude and or offensive in the comments.

@Robusto No, most aren't.

MrHen

15:55

@Robusto I'd say that there is quite a bit of snark.

Robusto

Well, perhaps. I don't much read the questions these days. One or two every couple of days.

terdon

I think the main problem is that people who like this site tend to be a tad opinionated. Myself included. That sometimes gives rise to snark.

Robusto

Can you point to half a dozen or so in the last couple of days?

terdon

Nothing wrong with being opinionated mind, some of my best friends are pedantic bastards.

@Robusto Anything that Kris wrote?

Robusto

I don't follow Kris.

Seriously, I don't really follow too much of anything on this site, except for my normal chat appearances.

MrHen

15:59

@Robusto Probably. But I also read tons of old questions because I work on Unanswered so I may have a skewed perception.

I don't really read the new stuff that comes in every day.

Robusto

Once in a while I comment, but it's usually to offer the user more wisdom than wit.

MrHen

(Unless they have close votes... which are also probably a skewed exposure.)

medica

@MrHen - I've created a room, do you want to go private?

MrHen

@medica Sure

I think you can invite me to it?

I don't have a lot of experience with the various rooms.

medica

@MrHen - I set it up, all are free. just look for a room that is titled Mr Hen et al.

terdon

16:01

Hmm, I take back my last comment. I just had a look through the latest comments and all of them were perfectly decent. I was thinking of older posts, glad to see I was wrong.

@medica @MrHen just so you know, the room will not actually be private as such. Others will be able to see what you write.

MrHen

@terdon Yes, thanks.

terdon

Also, @medica, are we OK? I did not mean to pressure or offend you in any way with my comments the other day.

medica

@terdon - yes, but will need to go to an extra effort to do so.

@terdon - no, we are absolutely ok. I very much appreciated that we came to an understanding. People disagree. I don'thold that against them. I have never felt tension between us.

terdon

@medica Good, glad to hear it :)

And same here, by the way. I like disagreement, conversation gets boring without it.

Cerberus

@Robusto OK cool, perhaps I'll play it sometime.

@terdon Star!

terdon

16:09

Hear hear! And morning, by the way oh ye who keeps as strange hours as I do.

Jasper Loy

Hey @medica, lol.

Just watched Cellular and Camel Spiders on TV, nice movies.

medica

16:26

@terdon - I'll have to check if they're availabe on Amazon or netflix.

@terdon - are they scary? what genre are they?

terdon

I once had a camel spider drop onto the table where I was eating dinner.

@medica Wrong user, @JasperLoy posted that.

Jasper Loy

LOL

medica

(Oh, sorry!

Hi, Jasper (blushing)

Jasper Loy

Are you tired or something?

terdon

I was wondering what the damn thing was for years until I stumbled upon a photo of camel spiders.

medica

16:27

Me? not really, why?

Jasper Loy

Then why did you mix up the two users?

medica

@terdon - I don't think we have camel spiders here...

Oh, my mind is on what MrHen said, i guess

terdon

@medica That was in Greece and it wasn't one of the huge ones you get in the middle east. Only about 5 inches long or so.

only (!)

Jasper Loy

We have Mr Hen but no Ms Cock, lol.

terdon

I think there are some species in the US though.

Jasper Loy

16:29

I once saw a spider the size of a hand.

medica

oh, gosh! that's 4 inches too long in my book!

MrHen

@JasperLoy That's because I'm not sharing.

medica

@JasperLoy - if I get that nickname, I will know who to look for!

Jasper Loy

@medica You haven't told me why you changed your username.

terdon

@medica Yeah, you should have seen us scatter :) I then rushed to follow the thing but I also grew up to be a biologist so...

medica

16:30

@terdon - we have jumping spiders here... one crawled into my son's ear and was biting him, on his *eardrum!!

terdon

@medica Ewww, ouch! That must have been horrible for the kid.

medica

It was

The worst part is that I didn't believe him that his ear hurt that much...

terdon

We have a really cool species endemic to a single island in Greece. Not very dangerous but their sting hurts and legend has it they can jump about a meter into the air.

@medica Aww, bad mom!

:P

medica

until I got out my otoscope and saw it!

(ik, right?)

terdon

No permanent damage I hope?

medica

16:32

no, a few blisters on his TM, and drops... then he was fine

but he has retained a lifelng fear of spiders

terdon

A bee once got into my aunt's ear and stung her eardrum, that was probably even worse what with the buzzing and all.

Jasper Loy

I'm scared of all insects, I'm a wuss.

terdon

@medica Fair enough.

medica

@terdon a meter! have you ever seen it?

Cerberus

Scary!

medica

16:33

@Jasper, lol

Cerberus

So what happens when an insect stings your eardrum?

You just wait until it heals?

terdon

@medica No, which is why I said legend has it. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the claim but I've heard it from various people.

medica

@terdon - omg! that's terrible

terdon

@Cerberus You scream first. Loudly.

medica

lol

Cerberus

16:34

By the way, my friend told me on some Greek islands there were centipedes whose bite could semi-paralyse your hand or something.

medica

ugh

I hate centipedes

Cerberus

Maybe it was Zacynthos?

terdon

Yeah, the worst was what happened to my dad. He was driving a scooter, wearing shorts and hit a bee which stung him on his testicle. That was no fun.

@Cerberus No, Lesvos.

Cerberus

Oh...

medica

@Cerberus - eardrums heal really well most of the time

Cerberus

16:35

So how bad are those centipedes really?

terdon

@Cerberus Hurt like hell and some are immense.

Cerberus

@medica Ah OK, good to know. Even if they are, say, punctured, or torn by very loud noise?

terdon

A friend moved to the Congo for a couple of years and described ones whose length was measured in feet.

Cerberus

@terdon And the paralysis? How large can they be?

@terdon Ouch!!

medica

yes, they will heal very well, unless the puncture is at the periphery; then at times, it will not heal at all.

KitFox

16:36

You've heard about the yak-killing wasps, right?

terdon

@Cerberus paralysis?

Cerberus

@medica Ah OK, good to know.

medica

YAK KILLING???

what is this country, so that I may never visit it?

KitFox

!!wiki yak-killing wasps

KitSox

@KitFox No result found

Cerberus

16:37

@terdon Two separate questions: can they really paralyse your hand? How big do the centipedes on Lesbos really get?

KitFox

@medica The place where they have yaks.

medica

(we have some here...)

Cerberus

(By the way, talking about Lesvos, have you heard the news about the new poem by Sappho that was recently discovered?)

KitFox

Asian giant hornet

The Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia), including the subspecies Japanese giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia japonica), colloquially known as the yak-killer hornet, is the world's largest hornet, native to temperate and tropical Eastern Asia. Its body length is approximately , its wingspan about , and it has a stinger which injects a large amount of potent venom. Anatomy The head of the hornet is orange and quite wide in comparison to other hornet species. The compound eyes and ocelli are dark brown, and the antennae are dark brown with orange scapes. The clypeus (the shield-like plate on...

terdon

@Cerberus No!

Cerberus

16:38

Now you have.

Jasper Loy

I just killed a lizard some days ago.

terdon

@JasperLoy That's yuk not yak.

medica

@JasperLoy - why?

terdon

Here's a nice centipede:

> S. heros has an average length of 6.5 inches (170 mm), but can reach up to 8 in (200 mm).[1] Its trunk bears 21 or 23 pairs of legs.[2] It is aposematically colored, to warn off potential predators, and a number of color variants are known in the species.[1]

medica

nooooo...

oh, oh, oh, no...

Jasper Loy

16:39

@medica Didn't want it crawling around the house. Scares me.

terdon

Yeah, poor lizard, lizards are nice.

Jasper Loy

Not when they are huge.

terdon

Completely harmless too, unless we're talking alligators or the like.

medica

@JasperLoy - lol. why not just put it outside?

Cerberus

A new Sappho poem is more exciting than a new David Bowie album

Jasper Loy

16:39

@medica I am scared. But I try to deal a quick and painless blow.

terdon

!!wiki comodo_dragon

KitSox

Comodo Dragon

Comodo Dragon is a freeware web browser. It is based on Chromium and is produced by Comodo Group. Sporting a similar interface to Google Chrome, Dragon does not implement Chrome's user tracking and some other potentially privacy-compromising features, and provides additional security measures, such as indicating the authenticity and relative strength of a website's SSL certificate. Overview Upon installation, Comodo Dragon offers the opportunity to configure either the Comodo Dragon or the user's entire computer to use Comodo's own DNS servers instead of the user's Internet service prov...

terdon

Huh?

Cerberus

@terdon Noo and this lives on Lesvos?

Jasper Loy

!!wiki komodo dragon

KitSox

16:40

Komodo dragon

The Komodo dragon A member of the monitor lizard family (Varanidae), it is the largest living species of lizard, growing to a maximum length of in rare cases and weighing up to approximately . Their unusually large size has been attributed to island gigantism, since no other carnivorous animals fill the niche on the islands where they live. However, recent research suggests the large size of Komodo dragons may be better understood as representative of a relict population of very large varanid lizards that once lived across Indonesia and Australia, most of which, along with other mega...

terdon

@Cerberus No, that one in the Americas

Cerberus

Oh, phew.

terdon

@JasperLoy Thanks. idiot terdon

Robusto

@KitFox I saw a science show about that thing. Very scary.

terdon

@Cerberus we have this on in the Mediterranean though and that's quite bad enough thank you:

!!wiki Scolopendra cingulata

KitSox

16:42

Scolopendra cingulata

Scolopendra cingulata, also known as Megarian banded centipede, and the Mediterranean banded centipede is a species of centipede, and "the most common scolopendromorph species in the Mediterranean area". Description The species has alternating bands of black and yellow-gold. At approximately 10-15 cm, Scolopendra cingulata is one of the smallest species in the family Scolopendridae. Its venom is also not as toxic as that of other scolopendrid centipedes. Distribution Widely distributed, this species can be found throughout southern Europe and around the Mediterranean Sea, in such countr...

terdon

> At approximately 10-15 cm, Scolopendra cingulata is one of the smallest species in the family Scolopendridae.

Hate those buggers. They're the only living thing (and mosquitoes) that I kill on sight.

Jasper Loy

I have not been bitten by a mosquito for years.

terdon

Lucky man. Europe has been invaded by the tiger mosquitoes which don't even have the decency to go away in the winter.

Being bitten by mosquitoes in December is just plain wrong.

Robusto

Well, there's climate change for you.

terdon

@Robusto Yeah.

medica

16:48

@JasperLoy - (what genre were those movies in?)

Robusto

I'm confused about Chrome. It doesn't show I have Flash installed or enabled, but when I go to a Flash-using site it runs the content. I want to dump Flash altogether but I don't see a way to do that.

terdon

@Robusto It's included I think, how are you checking for it?

Jasper Loy

@medica Oh, I was just mentioning them casually. You really interested? Cellular is about a kidnap and Camel Spiders is horror spiders.

Robusto

@terdon Looking at the extensions in settings.

Jasper Loy

@Robusto Go to about:plugins.

terdon

16:50

@Robusto It's in plugins: chrome://plugins/

Robusto

@terdon Ah, just found it. Thanks.

Jasper Loy

Jinx.

@Robusto I said first, lol.

terdon

@JasperLoy Damn!

Robusto

Does disabling it mean I can't use YouTube? I'll have to check that out.

terdon

@Robusto It depends I think, most if not all youtube videos are now in HTML5

Jasper Loy

16:51

@Robusto It is recommended to use pepper flash instead of adobe flash if you use chrome.

medica

@JasperLoy - ok, I did see cellular, but not camel spiders. I love scarey movies. They just don't make them scarey enough anymore...

Jasper Loy

Pepper flash just means the chrome built-in flash.

Robusto

Wah!

Jasper Loy

Mozilla has a shumway project to render flash but it is not ready.

terdon

@Robusto Yes, I think it's only some. But youtube works on iOS which doesn't have flash, try viewing the same page in the mobile version.

Robusto

16:53

I don't know which Flash is the built-in one.

Oh, I see.

NVM

Jasper Loy

@Robusto You can look at the description. Show all details.

Robusto

Already got it. Why is it called Pepper Flash and what's different about it?

Jasper Loy

Well, Google partnered with Adobe to make this.

I don't know why.

Robusto

Then it's probably even more invasive.

Jasper Loy

Adobe knows that Flash is gonna be replaced by html5.

terdon

16:56

@Robusto It's spicier?

Jasper Loy

But the change won't happen so soon, so Google sort of bought over the technology.

On Linux, chrome flash is the only way to get the latest flash.

Robusto

@terdon Hmm, Pepper Potts wasn't all that spicy.

Jasper Loy

On Linux, one cannot download the latest flash from adobe.

Robusto

The big problem with Flash is that it has access to your fonts, and between that and a few other things can create a pretty individual signature for you. Like seven digits of reliability in determining your "unique" signature.

Jasper Loy

I am pretty sure my browser settings create a unique signature too.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…