The Whiteboard - 2014-01-23 (page 1 of 2)

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1:53 AM

@GlenH7 Just for reference, that slew of posts was just for fun. I was worried it would be taken wrong, but @gnat assured me it wouldn't be. Here's said message:

in The Water Cooler, 19 hours ago, by jmac

@gnat, oh dear, you posted my little story there in The Whiteboard? I hope it won't be seen as offensive.

And there isn't actually a question, How do I deal with the fact that I'm awesome and everyone around me sucks?, that was just a meta post outlining the issues with questions of that type.

2:17 AM

I leave way too many Easter eggs around the site for 10kers

@JimmyHoffa I'd be happy to verify that after a quick 100 upvotes.

9 hours later…

11:27 AM

Chatting various ideas of site logo at Wate Cooler

3 hours ago, 42 minutes total – 99 messages, 4 users, 6 stars

Bookmarked 1 hour ago by gnat

user image

3 hours later…

user41796

2:32 PM

@jmac - thanks for the clarifications. I'm sensitive to concerns of TW becoming Prog's toilet bowl; especially since we've put a lot of effort into cleaning up from being SO's toilet bowl. There happened to be a TW question mentioned in here recently that was pretty well summarized by that satirical meta question. OP of the post had previously received a frosty welcome here at Progs. So ... you can see where my concerns came from. :-)

user41796

2:42 PM

@gnat - is TW finally graduating?

broke everything at work. Gonna be a long day.

2:56 PM

@GlenH7 I get the concerns, and I know you guys don't want to dump that on anyone else. Which is all good. If I could ask for anything it would be a little more TLC prior to the migration (particularly questions of the format, "What is the best way to..." or "What should I do..." or "Is this normal..." are generally going to be off-topic anywhere on the network as opinion-based among other issues)

@GlenH7 And the general trend seems to be that once a site has at least 3k questions, it can graduate. At the current rate we'll reach that in a couple months.

3:06 PM

I am trying to gather some ideas since a project is soon starting, it basically builds something similar to Stack Overflow, with different target audience and adjusted reputation etc.

Only requirement is that it uses PHP. Everything else is open to discussion. I thought about using MongoDB, jQuery and eventually the JavaScript template engine Moustache.

Aside from that, what would you consider using? This is more like a brainstorming question

user55340

@jmac A difficulty with such (part of the issue with any migration) is that while we know it may belong on there, making modifications to it to change it may change it the wrong way... we've recently had one poster get very irate about modifying his question.

user41796

3:23 PM

@Toskan - thanks for deleting your Q on main.

user41796

@jmac - here's another example (where you may recognize the OP) as also getting very irate about edits to their question. programmers.stackexchange.com/posts/212517/revisions which they then took to meta meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6190/53019

user41796

Wow. That's ... broad. Here's what I would do.
Gather the team together.
On a whiteboard or a big piece of paper, draw boxes for all the layers or components of the stack.
Have the team go through the products they know and / or like and start filling in the boxes.
Then draw together some consensus on what to go with.

user55340

@Toskan What advantage do you see Mongo giving you compared to... something else?

user41796

Tackling something that big means that what you know or know of is far more important than what's out there.

user41796

Fred Brooks calls out as a potential red flag of a death march any time multiple new technologies are being used on a project.

user55340

3:29 PM

Good read: stevemcconnell.com/rdenum.htm

user55340

(the one I was after...)

user55340

>
#32: Research-oriented development. Seymour Cray, the designer of the Cray supercomputers, says that he does not attempt to exceed engineering limits in more than two areas at a time because the risk of failure is too high (Gilb 1988). Many software projects could learn a lesson from Cray. If your project strains the limits of computer science by requiring the creation of new algorithms or new computing practices, you're not doing software development; you're doing software research. Software-development schedules are reasonably predictable; software research schedules are not even theore…

user41796

@MichaelT - Q has been revised. Thoughts? I'm thinking that it may be narrow enough if the 3rd bullet is nuked. programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/225109/…

user55340

@GlenH7 Meeting in < 30 sec... I'll look at it again in a bit.

user41796

@MichaelT It seems like McConnell should get more respect than what it seems like he does.

user41796

3:44 PM

maple glazed donut FTW

user55340

@GlenH7 There was some discussion about this before... he's very much into the Engineering part of Software Engineering - the risk management side. This means discipline, methodology, consistency - things that programmers, managers, and clients typically reject.

user41796

@MichaelT yeah, and risk management will never have the glam, limelight appeal

@MichaelT well it is more dynamic since we will probably introduce many changes during development

user55340

@GlenH7 It pushes back against the heroics that some programmers enjoy and people believe that everyone can do.

user41796

and no one wants to hear ahead of time that they're going to fail. Perhaps even miserably

user55340

3:47 PM

@Toskan What changes?

user41796

@Toskan 2nd red flag for a death march

@GlenH7 well that is the point, I don't know many frameworks in php, coming from JEE background

user55340

Are you thinking your'e going to be suddenly changing the schema on its head mid way through?

@MichaelT well of the db schema obviously, what else could u change in a db?

user41796

@Toskan - you would be well advised to go back and listen to all of the old StackOverflow podcasts. When Jeff & Joel built SO they were very deliberate in what it was they were going to build.

user55340

3:49 PM

The difficulty you will face with a dynamic database and a dynamic language while turning the database on its head every so often is that these won't be breaking changes in the system - but will be bugs.

user55340

The formal schema means that changes will break things and you'll need to fix them. Compare to "oh, that field doesn't exist anymore" and you're still testing its existence down the chain.

user55340

@GlenH7 glance at the "Process" set (#14 to #27)... in part in context of this discussion too.

user41796

@MichaelT I have read it before, it's on my list for today to re-read. Always good to remind yourself of those items.

user55340

@Toskan I've got a couch database that eventually gets its data to javascript right now. Typos in one aren't breaking the other... and very painful bugs to track down.

user55340

"Oh, I spelled it "viz" in couch and "vis" on the app... it didn't work, but it didn't break"

3:54 PM

yes you are completely right. It was someone else recommending doing that step and I read other companies had great success with it. You must be very aware of what you are doing i guess
that sounds horrible

user55340

There's a.... "cult" of NoSQL who think that NoSQL is the answer to all problems and preach it as such. Its not. Its the answer to some problems, and you need to understand what and why you want it for.

user55340

(see the classic:

user55340

user41796

@MichaelT nice timing

user55340

I do like Couch for some things. I've got static json documents that are available to all the instances. Its a mini-web server in my mind for this application... works nice. However, we've also got a relational database sitting next to it for the relational data.

user55340

3:58 PM

Trying to store relational data in a NoSQL database that isn't meant for relational data is very high on the "not fun" scale.

user55340

I'll also point you to data.stackexchange.com where you can see the actual schemas of the data for StackExchange.

user55340

(and that they aren't using a NoSQL database)

user55340

@GlenH7 btw, you get to hear me complain about no close votes all day today.

user41796

@MichaelT I have just a few left

user41796

Correction, I have 2 left.

4:04 PM

@MichaelT hmm so probably two databases might be a good valid solution

user41796

And you probably just heard me sigh

user55340

@Toskan depends on what you use them for.

user41796

@Toskan Have you read the McConnell article @MichaelT linked to earlier? If not, then you really, really, really should.

i can't find the blog posts I think... or are you referring to http://blog.stackoverflow.com/category/podcasts/page/11/
i think they exist a lot longer than 2011

user41796

They started the conversation back in 2007 or 2008, IIRC. And they were podcasts, not blogs

thorsten müller

4:06 PM

@Toskan for something like SO some fulltext search engine will be mostly mandatory. Something like Apache Solr, ElasticSearch or Sphinx.

@thorstenmüller thanks for pointing that out, i'll have a look at it

thorsten müller

Solr and as far as I know ElasticSearch too work basically similar to some NoSQL databases. They do not only the text search part, but you can add any amount of tags and similar data and then search posts for such tags too.

@GlenH7 you don't know where they had their podcasts? they switched to soundcloud like 2 years ago

user41796

offhand, no. It's been 5 -6 years since I listened to those particular ones. :-)

user41796

@MichaelT 400 more points and I get another delete vote. I hate being out of votes when there's so much more to clean up.

user55340

4:32 PM

@GlenH7 1.3k until quick vote to delete.

user41796

@MichaelT twitch. twitch.

0

A: How to Explain Coding is not just Copy and Paste to non Software Developers?

I've ran into a similar problem where the programmers only copied and pasted old code to new projects. It came to the point where every class had similar code except for 10% of the code. So, I had to explain how if there is a problem in one of the classes then the problem is consistent in all the...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa already put a VTC as dupe on that one

Yeah I will in a second but I was reading the answers and that one is fun

he solved the problem of copy/paste coding by convincing his colleagues to put all common code into one super class, and if his classes are really very similar he suggests you just redesign your design patterns

@Ampt hey can you do me a favor, I need you to redesign some design patterns, sounds right up your alley, thanks!

user41796

@JimmyHoffa look at the pinned comment from him - apparently he already did that.

user41796

4:43 PM

2 hours ago, by Ampt

broke everything at work. Gonna be a long day.

user55340

Now the question... did @Ampt break everything? or is everything broken?

user55340

@GlenH7 btw, you best get on fixing all the stuff your sock puppet broke. He's not mine today.

user41796

a'ight....

user41796

back in a bit, but I'll get right on that

@GlenH7 as @jmac said. TWP has about 200 questions left to reach 3K, at current rate (5-7 a day) this will take 1-2 months (roomba could influence this somewhat but not by a wide margin)

user55340

4:49 PM

We should migrate more marginal questions to them... right @jmac ? (Joking)

someone knows how i can figure out what my userid is/

_

?

user55340

133 5

db2 java-ee virtual-machine web-development work-environment workflows developer

user55340

Mouseover the name to the link there - /users/29473/toskan - its 29473 on P.SE

thanks

user55340

(I assume you're poking on Data.SE? If you log in to there it will automatically populate that field)

4:56 PM

@MichaelT yes exactly. Well that's what I thought I did, but it logged me in as jon.doe with the login i typically use. But I guess I messed up something

@MichaelT btw is it possible to see the data schema somewhere? i mean those people writing the queries didnt just guess those values did they

user55340

Its on the right hand side.

user55340

Compose a query...

user55340

user image

user55340

I've done a bit of dabbling on Data.SE and can answer a number of questions about how its designed.

user55340

The other thing to read, when considering NoSQL is martinfowler.com/bliki/PolyglotPersistence.html

user55340

5:09 PM

@GlenH7 ISO 9000 question out there... sounds like something for an Engineer.

@MichaelT I'm so comfortable with RDBMS and tuning them just stupid I'm happy to stick with them for a large portion of things, the most diametrically opposed to RDBMS of the NoSQL offerings in my book is the document-store type, so that seems like the most useful to me insofar as it's the NoSQL which is most effective at something RDBMS is least effective at

user55340

@JimmyHoffa There are situations where storing sessions... its easier in Redis. Or doing graphs? That's easier in Neo4J.

user55340

The thing is people consider "NoSQL" to be as large of a problem domain as RDBMS. Its not. Its much larger. The difference between a KV NoSQL database and an Object database is greater than the difference between a KV NoSQL database and an RDBMS.

@MichaelT I'm thinking sessions type stuff. Yeah storing graphs is a bit odd in RDBMS but it still fits the relational model better than sessions/documents do. I'm talking about something that's more OLAP style - like storing whole composed reports as documents

that's where RDBMS does a crap job when you have a lot of them, it blows the disk out and doesn't scale very well

user55340

There are NoSQL databases that are optimized for storing graphs. They're really good for social media type sites (and a document based one would suck there).

5:21 PM

@MichaelT I know, but that's my point- RDBMS can store graphs better than it can store documents. Document storage is the most diametrically opposed to RDBMS; that is it's what RDBMS is least effective at in my book of the NoSQL types out there RDBMS can stand in for many of their purposes except document stores

it can do all of them, we have for many years been doing all of the NoSQL type tasks in RDBMS, but of all of those types of work, the document-storage is the one that RDBMS fails at the most in my experience

user55340

But what if we through away some of the 'relational' aspects of a relational database and delved further down the graph path? Could we get something more by not having some of the traditional RDBMS?

@MichaelT I'm not saying RDBMS is better at graph stuff than a graph-focussed NoSQL store

user55340

The thing to watch out for (and both RDBMS and NoSQL adherents fall into this... I feel its worse for the NoSQL types because they often stick with one db that is really not appropriate than RDBMS types who can force the db to do it, though not optimally) is working with only one solution and using it as the solution to all the problems.

just that for all the hype and hooplah, I don't care to bother using NoSQL anytime soon for many things, I'm happy to stick with RDBMS until I have some serious needs of NoSQL - after all I am very good at making RDBMS dance, as such the only thing that would get me seriously looking at NoSQL for a critical infrastructure point in something I'm doing would be the document store tasks

I'm sure I'll be happy to use various NoSQL stuff just as much as I'm happy to use RDBMS in the future, but I've got to see more of this stuff in serious application before I'm there

user55340

Just remember all those places LDAP sits... its the forgotten NoSQL db.

5:26 PM

@MichaelT haha fair point

To my point though, wouldn't you call LDAP a document store?

@MichaelT Well I've narrowed it down to our label printer being possessed.

user55340

Maybe... though I don't think of them as documents. Part of its the hierarchal structure (though thats just the 'overlay' on it). Its also not arbitrary data... it does have schemas.

@JimmyHoffa Redesign some design patterns? Clearly you're mistaken. you simply make more design patterns, not change the old ones.

'It has a ghost in it. Take it back.' 'No.'

@MichaelT thanks!

user55340

5:31 PM

# EXAMPLE.COM SCHEMA FILE
# takes values:
# true = wears clean socks on monday
# false = does not wear clean socks on monday
attributetype ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.6863.2.3.107 NAME 'dohicky'
  EQUALITY booleanMatch
  SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.7 )

# if present must take the value = 0
attributetype ( 1.3.6.1.4.1.6863.2.3.108 NAME 'ageAtBirth'
  EQUALITY integerMatch
  ORDERING integerOrderingMatch
  SYNTAX 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.27 )

# string used to describe the height of the person in either feet/inches or meters

user55340

There's an ldap schema.

user55340

@Toskan No problem. I'm fairly familiar with it.

@MichaelT true, I recognize it does have Schema... yeah LDAP is kind of an interesting store. Doesn't quite fit with any of the others, but then like you said, NoSQL should be called NoRulesSQL because when you throw away the constraints of typical approaches you find tons of different ways to go about things and as such the NoRulesSQL offerings are far more different from eachother than they are from RDBMS even

user55340

What really becomes useful is when you are familiar with all the different flavors of NoSQL and can pick the right one for a certain type of persistence and data store.

user55340

Having slowly changing data backed by a database that has a REST api? Ok, use this one (which gets nice for doing cached data queries with your already existing web cache in house... or save them so you can cache them for an offline interface).

user55340

5:43 PM

Lots of different uses for them, and quite a few distinct systems. Sure, one can force a RDBMS to do it... just like you can force Java to do massive text processing... but its not the right tool for that and you'd rather use something thats cleaner for such systems.

user55340

@Ampt you need close votes.

6:10 PM

@MichaelT Yeah, I would love to get there. Right now I have a vague understanding of some, I've done technical analysis of a few in the past but it's been a bit and everywhere I've worked has been too conservative to let us run amok on any of them yet.

That'll change in time; surely. but until then..

At least I know how to make an RDBMS do anything and everything as well as it can; even if "as well as it can" isn't always that well.

user55340

6:48 PM

@JimmyHoffa The best way to introduce it is likely "This is a (json) structured data file that is accessible via a REST API and would mean that we don't need to have this file mounted on these servers"

@MichaelT Thing is the technical folks here would see it and say "That's a new server technology that we have to maintain" - Not something they're altogether against, just something that we'd really have a seriously important requirement for, and as long as they can imagine doing it in RDBMS they'd say there's no reason to bother

user55340

I'd rather manage a distributed server than trying to do a cluster/distributed file system.

user41796

0

A: My organization is relatively small; how can I follow ISO9000/1 as a matter of best practice?

Here's ISO9000 in a nutshell: Have a measurable process to develop things Make sure everyone involved understands and follows the measurable process Build things following the measurable process Measure your progress while you follow the process of building things Finish building things Evaluat...

user55340

At a small shop, its an argument of "which is easier" to manage. Here, we've got at least 5 databases I can count. Oracle, Postgress, Couch, Mongo, Redis.

user41796

And I also took a stab at the team communication one.

user41796

6:54 PM

0

A: How big can a mobile development team be without being too big?

The upper limit for any team size is dictated by the governance in place within the company and the individual projects. As the team grows larger, more governance is required in order to continue to remain productive. Communication without governance grows by an exponential rate (n*(n-1)) becau...

user41796

Hopefully those will get me closer to having more delete votes. Mwah ha ha ha

user55340

Its a "this is the right tech" and it goes on the stack.

I'm terrible at answering questions...

user55340

At a larger shop, its a matter of writing the requirements for the server that you want in a way that forces them to adopt the right technology.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa You did pretty good at answering that TW question. ;-)

user55340

6:59 PM

"Database accessible via REST for client side Javascript calls" - "no, we don't want to push all those calls back through C# MVC and out a connection pool that is already strained. It would be much more robust to have the CouchDB (Erlang backed) to handle all those requests without the additional layers. We might be able to do it if you double the CPU on the C# server accounting for future scale, and increase the connection pool size by 3x..."

user55340

The other model is "the guys running the servers... we are their clients, here's something we want to put in place... they need to find a solution to it."

user55340

(Argh - more close votes... I'd wish to translate delete votes into close votes... but I'm out of those too...)

user41796

@MichaelT I've got one left now. :-)

Blog - Stack Exchange: Stack Exchange CC data now hosted by the Internet Archive

David Fullerton on January 23, 2014

We’ve been publishing an anonymized dump of all user-contributed Stack Exchange content since 2009. Unfortunately, at the end of last year our former host, ClearBits, permanently shut down. So we set out to look for a new home for our data dumps, and today we’re happy to announce that the Internet Archive has agreed to host them:

We’ve been big fans of the Internet Archive for a long time, and we’re really happy to be working with them on this.

All community-contributed content on Stack Exchange is licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license. As part of our commitment to that, we relea …

3

@MichaelT That was a P.SE question when I answered it! Let's just be clear about that.

I'm just too picky; hate answering questions unless I know for certain the ins and outs to give a comprehensive answer

I need to take more stabs in the dark, I'll never make 10k like this

user55340

7:13 PM

@JimmyHoffa Quite understandable. I loath to do the short answers myself.

user55340

Hmm... MSO feature request: one boxes have the title of the page fetched so that they're nice links when stared.

user41796

@RobertHarvey - regarding your recent answer to the "Can I stealz the CSS?" question. Seems like it's a question regarding ethics and on-topic for the site. Thoughts?

I don't have thoughts one way or the other. I was trying to get across that his thinking is wrong, so I haven't actually answered his direct question, but decided to enshrine it in an actual answer anyway, just to give it some weight.

user55340

I'd go dup hunting if I wasn't too busy... but it might also be in the "recently deleted" because I don't recall it being a great question (or answer).

user41796

okay. I think I'm going to burn my last CV for the day on that one.

user41796

7:19 PM

@MichaelT We nuked something similar recently, yes

user41796

I was hemming and hawing about whether it could be salvaged and we came to the conclusion that they were looking for permission to steal.

FWIW, copyright is obliquely related to licensing. But I agree the question and its answer are both a bit of a stretch.

user55340

Maybe its time to try for the "self learner" on here with a canonical answer.

user55340

Html, CSS, Javascript... they're in that "I download it and see it, can I copy it" that questions regularly show up for.

What could you add beyond "you need their permission?"

user55340

7:22 PM

De minimis is a Latin expression meaning about minimal things, normally in the locutions de minimis non curat praetor ("The praetor does not concern himself with trifles") or de minimis non curat lex ("The law does not concern itself with trifles"). Queen Christina of Sweden (r.1633-1654) favoured the similar Latin adage, aquila non capit muscas (the eagle does not catch flies). In risk assessment, it refers to a level of risk that is too small to be concerned with. Some refer to this as a "virtually safe" level. Examples of application of the de minimis rule In criminology, the de ...

I'd rather not split hairs discussing his discomfort about possibly getting caught. His discomfort is already a legitimate signal. He's looking for people to allay his discomfort, and I won't do that for him.

user55340

On your personal web page? Its probably de minimis. Its licensed somehow? Deal with the license. Ask permission. What is copyright, does copyright extend to CSS?

user41796

@MichaelT Maybe as a meta post then?

user55340

Can't dup to a M.P.SE question.

user55340

I was thinking of something that you could close this as a dup of (or one like it some day)

user41796

7:24 PM

I'm really reluctant to allow any "can I stealz plz" question to become a canonical answer. Just smacks of wrongness.

user41796

Having a canonical to dupe against makes more sense, but I think there has been reluctance in going down that route.

user55340

Its challenging writing a good self-answered question to start with.

user41796

Conceptually speaking, is it okay if I steal as a programmer?

user55340

If its not copyrightable, its not an issue.

user41796

(forgot the as a programmer bit)

user55340

7:28 PM

11

Q: Can CSS be copyrighted?

I know CSS on a website is protected under the website's copyright since it is considered part of the overall design. I also know that images used in CSS are copyrightable. How about when CSS is used to create images? There is a CSS3 icon set that has a $25 license fee. Another developer claims...

css copyright css3

user41796

@MichaelT RH just added a follow up comment to my close vote of "... and not about a conceptual programming topic"

user41796

@MichaelT and bleh, I forgot about that whole murkiness. We could also use "legal matter outside of the community's expertise."

0

A: Push vs Poll when large delay (hours) is acceptable

Polling is always acceptable when real-time isn't a necessity. What you have to ask yourself is why would you use one instead of the other? The purpose of a push service is a couple things; it can be considerably less traffic for you to deal with if your pushes are broadcasts and a 3rd party pro...

There, I took a stab in the dark.

Pretty crappy answer...

user55340

@GlenH7 Prefixed appropraitely with legal... but the thing is, we keep closing this. I'd be perfectly happy to do a self answered question that gets closed as a legal question.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa +1 for blathering away more than the other answers

user55340

7:30 PM

The thing is, once we have it, it can be a useful dup target to quickly close the others.

@GlenH7 Oh, I can blather alright. Doesn't really equal a quality answer though. Just not really a question that's interesting...

makes it hard to bother trying to write clearly

user55340

and since the others typically are poorly written, they get deleted and arn't found in search or as a useful dup target.

user41796

@MichaelT I'd agree with that. I'm working through how the Q & A could work there

user55340

One of the key bits in copyright law (I've got to dig this up) is: "The code fragment in question must generate machine code in the executable" -- CSS doesn't do that.

What? No.

user41796

7:32 PM

Q: I wanna steal some code. Is that okay?

Otherwise, books wouldn't be copyrightable.

user55340

Copyright of source code is different than literary works.

user55340

Just like photographs, audio recordings and dances can be copyrighted... they're not books either.

user41796

@MichaelT I'm really hesitant to put any legal backing in there as that's going to depend upon jurisdiction

I don't think so. A work is a work. Source code is copyrightable, even if you never pass it through a compiler.

user55340

7:33 PM

@RobertHarvey As I said, I've gotta do some research on this to make sure I'm saying correct things. Just one bit I found while quickly looking for CSS copyright now.

user41796

How copyright is handled, and which works are considered copyrightable has quite a few peculiarities depending upon jurisdiction. AU is quite different than UK or CA or US or even CN.

user41796

Heck, I don't know if you can even find authoritative information on how CN treats copyright.

user41796

But the meta aspect of those questions is the same - can I steal the code?

user55340

For the US, copyright.gov/circs/circ61.pdf

I copyright this statement. It is mine, and as the sole owner of the intellectual property herein, I reserve all rights to it. As the author I retract any claims of licensure admonished to this transmission by third parties such as StackExchange or SpolskyCo. This is mine and you can't have it. If you receive this statement through a third party I expect damages to be paid by the third party and yourself, none of which have been granted rights to this material by me. Any redistribution by you or your subsidiaries will be held as onerous malcontentive activities and such activities will be r…

7:38 PM

Good luck with that.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa Except you can't make that statement in an enforceable fashion since the Ts&Cs of SE already dictate the licensing of all SE material

@RobertHarvey Lucky for you there was no intellectual property in there.

user55340

There are other fun bits that get in there... (looks like US is computer = literary work)

user55340

However, recipes and phone books aren't copyrightable. Is CSS a recipe rather than a story?

@GlenH7 I just pressed enter, I didn't sign any written agreement that what I wrote above was receivable or distributable by SE. It's not their material and they are stealing it from my browser everytime I press the enter key.

7:39 PM

@GlenH7 That's why we have stuff like the Berne Convention to regulate copyright internationally

user55340

It certainly gets murky when it comes to copyright and CSS. And if I do a self-answer of the question, I'd be happy to cast the first close vote on it for saying its a legal question and beyond the realm of the information programmers are able to give an answer for.

user41796

@amon Agreed; but as a community we have agreed that those sorts of questions are outside of the community's scope.

@MichaelT Phone books aren't copyrightable because they are just a list of things. Not sure why recipes are not copyrightable; the article that a person writes to describe how to make a dish is almost certainly copyrightable.

@GlenH7 Also interestingly, such statements as I made above may very well stand over Ts&Cs in some countries like Germany where peoples property rights are quite sacred to the point that some things can't have their copyright given away like a picture of a person

user55340

@RobertHarvey copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html

user55340

7:41 PM

> Copyright law does not protect recipes that are mere listings of ingredients. Nor does it protect other mere listings of ingredients such as those found in formulas, compounds, or prescriptions. Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expression—a description, explanation, or illustration, for example—that accompanies a recipe or formula or to a combination of recipes, as in a cookbook.

user41796

@RobertHarvey recipes can require a degree of creativeness to create.

@GlenH7 Recipe: Hot dog, microwave 1 minute, add salsa - BEWM. Intellectual Property.

Shit SE did it again! They distributed my IP! Those bastards!

user41796

@JimmyHoffa But we all know you're not in DE. :-P

Right. Lists of things. The preparation process (as written down in paper or electronic form) can be copyrightable. It is a creative work.

Wow, I actually got rep for that shitty blather

user55340

7:43 PM

(as a side bit, a layout for a recipe can be patented... cookingforengineers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=240 )

I feel kind of guilty

Ah, but it's a good guilt.

I assume you mean that answer you posted on TW?

Hell, I posted one answer there, and got edit privileges.

@RobertHarvey No I just wrote an answer on P.SE for push vs poll that was effectively a wall of jabbering which hardly said anything

Rep whoring

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Soon, you'll have 10k rep... then you'll feel "its worth it"

user55340

Unless, that is, you give bounties to @Ampt so that he gets to 3k rep and can cast close votes so you don't have to.

7:46 PM

@MichaelT Is that a threat? Because I will start dropping bounty bombs like there's no-tomorrow, I will not be threatened and I do not negotiate!

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Just think of all the crappy license questions you'll be able to cast a vote to delete on.

First it's rep whoring. Next thing you know, you'll be stealing CSS.

@MichaelT Oh shit yeah I need those DVs...

user41796

@JimmyHoffa And then you start lusting after 35k rep so you can have the maximum number of DVs available.

I would love to write a nice little state machine here and show you how to do some neat monadic control flow structures which would be great, but I'm wrestling myself away from writing an answer because this is the absolute definition of micro-optimization, wayyyy more optimization than could possibly be necessary. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. — Jimmy Hoffa 38 secs ago

I could rep whore the answer but the correct answer is seriously Stop Drop and Roll - that is way too pernisckety, it's not like he's writing assembly on an embedded device in 1980 or anything

8:06 PM

well... after 5 hours I figured out a solution to my problem... but not the problem itself

@Ampt so reduce the solution by pieces until you know the precise part that fixes it

if you added a function, find the source code to that function and in-line it, and reduce one line at a time until it breaks again.

user41796

@Ampt Good enough by quittin' time

@Ampt alternatively, hard code the lat/lon of Colorado into the controllers to disable them when they get here because I don't want no faulty damn snow plows dropping on my car

user55340

Oh, I can see it now... high speed wing plows doing a "flip the cars in the other lanes away" - like pinball paddles.

@MichaelT It just snowed a good bit last night, and now I am officially staying the hell away from any snow plow I happen to see on the road...

8:38 PM

@JimmyHoffa its a proprietary printer coding language which seemingly randomly pops into and out of an indeterminate state

@JimmyHoffa drat. there goes my plan

user55340

@Ampt Printers are a pain.

2

@MichaelT it's a little thermal label printer we use to print the SN labels for the devices

user55340

I'm just recalling the printer and mag stripe reader getting into unknown states on the register.

@MichaelT living that nightmare

theres no debug commands either. there is a single led that blinks when it receives data

send it a bad command? It's now in an indeterminate state, have fun getting it back out!

i hate my life. I think I'm about to make a single databse field a semicolon deliminited field (!!??!!)

user55340

8:48 PM

Part of the problem is the program thinking it knows the state, but it doesn't. The state machines for the printer and the program are off.

9:08 PM

TIL Printers are dumb and I hate them

user41796

@Ampt think of how happy you'll feel once you solve the problem though?

@Ampt This has ever been the truth.

user41796

This is why some people think RPG-IV is da bomb.

@GlenH7 I don't think it's going to get solved. I've developed a hack which gets the printer back into a stable mode of operation but that's about it.

I wrote another answer

sadly this answer will be migrated to SO.

Damnit.

user41796

9:19 PM

@JimmyHoffa enjoy the soon-to-be SO rep

user41796

maybe I'll double vote it if I remember to look for it on SO.

user55340

@RobertHarvey: yes, it would. Jimmy's solution is probably better — Steven A. Lowe 31 secs ago

user55340

@JimmyHoffa it helps cement your ability to close vote on SO... because we know you love TW rep so much.

@MichaelT I can close vote on SO...

user55340

Just in case someone goes by and deletes one of those answers that puts you well over 3k there.

9:24 PM

I hope that I convinced the guy to edit his question to make it more P.SE by suggesting he ask a broader question of "How should I try to get results X from my data" by mentioning that the execution plan for the join I wrote would be gobsmackingly bad

I'm genuinely not even sure if that's a functioning join

ORing to join table 1 or table 2 is disturbingly bad and I wouldn't be surprised if SQL is just like "What? No, that's crap try again."

user41796

@JimmyHoffa You could always edit the question yourself to say that and make it stick around. Steven Lowe won't care.

@GlenH7 I don't frankly know the details of what he wants well enough. He gives a narrow technical problem which I can solve and is why it's good for SO, but the solution is suboptimal and I need the broader technical context to give an optimal solution, but I don't know that broader context..

user55340

I'd be tempted to look at something along the lines of a join (select ...) FOO on (T.id = FOO.id)

user55340

Though, I also haven't read it fully enough to figure out what he really wants.

@MichaelT The fact that it's a right join tells me he may have his whole query sideways and wrong to begin with. I would wager he'd be better off using a more comprehensive join and culling in the where

user55340

9:36 PM

Oh rep! oh... MSO rep.

user41796

I have switched to believing that SQL is the gateway drug to FP, so I refuse to deal with it anymore. You think you start to understand SQL so you start playing with some LINQ. And once you start playing with LINQ you start thinking all sorts of crazy talk

@GlenH7 Actually it is but not even because of LINQ, I never thought about it before learning FP- I'd heard SQL is declarative but what that meant I really never knew. Now that I know a bit of FP it occurs to me my extensive experience with SQL thinking in terms of accomplishing full operations in a single statement by composing query clauses and aggregations actually helped me in understanding FP

user41796

@JimmyHoffa The best part of my baiting comments is the kernel of truth within them.

user41796

and JavaScript's dynamic typing is giving me ulcers.

An abundance of interfaces: one of the many reasons I find DI frameworks overkill for most applications, and generally overused. — Robert Harvey 8 mins ago

user55340

9:40 PM

@GlenH7 you know what you need? A good dose of NoSQL and CouchDB... where javascript is the query language.

@GlenH7 That's ok, there's a simple cure, no typing - no problems.

user41796

I like @JimmyHoffa's cure best

user41796

Can I sip a scotch at the same time?

@GlenH7 Only if you pour me a glass too

user55340

@JimmyHoffa You need to write a NoSQL database where haskell is the query language and then start trying to push that mainstream, because its webscale or something.

9:42 PM

@MichaelT exists.

user55340

@JimmyHoffa But is it webscale?

user41796

Oh! I ran across a new scotch while at Trader Joe's the other day. They claimed it was an exclusive to their store. Islay Storm was the name I think. I grabbed it because it claimed to be an Islay.

Linq is a backdoor to FP, not a gateway drug. Most FP languages already know how to do what Linq does.

@MichaelT acid-state.seize.it

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Does it have sharding?

user41796

9:43 PM

(sniped)

user55340

@GlenH7 did you ever watch the "I am a javascript programmer"?

user41796

(point to @MichaelT)

user41796

@MichaelT haven't heard of it

user55340

user41796

@MichaelT queued

9:44 PM

@MichaelT I shared the web-scale one of these with my boss a couple months ago, he's an ex-oracle employee, he busted a gut.

user55340

You still think you know the Bad CaRMa site?

user20683

I am not a javascript programmer, I just like using it.

@MichaelT "But it would be faster to solve them on paper" - hah

alrighty I need naming help, how do I make this table name shorter - EquipmentNumberTechnicalIdentificationNumberRelationships

:\

@enderland E

done.

@enderland Wait sorry, I forgot shortening rules - no vowels, so Q.

9:48 PM

win. I'm sure my coworkers will love me. "wtf is the big E? this ain't no WWII carrier"

better yet - ENTINRels

user55340

Remove the vowels: QpmntNmbrTchnclDntfctnNmbrRltnshps

user41796

EqptNoTechIDNoRels

USS Enterprise (CV-6)

{| |} USS Enterprise (CV-6), was the seventh U.S. Navy vessel to bear the name. Colloquially referred to as the "Big E", she was the sixth aircraft carrier of the United States Navy. A Yorktown class carrier, she was launched in 1936 and was one of only three American carriers commissioned prior to World War II to survive the war (the others being and ). She participated in more major actions of the war against Japan than any other US ship. These actions included the Battle of Midway, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, various other air-sea eng...

@GlenH7 I like this one

user41796

or EqptNumTechIDNumRels

9:49 PM

@GlenH7 yuck.

user41796

No vs. Num is an ideological war

@GlenH7 and it's Num.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa gotta know how real engineers think

@JimmyHoffa No

user41796

No is num. And shorter

9:50 PM

user image

maybe I'll go with just "E" - that is one damn fine looking ship

@enderland sometimes you need to be more specific in naming things so you think about details of the object you're naming and use some of them in the instance name, other times you need to be less specific so you remove details thinking about the general object - you're relating X to Y, so what's a generic name for X and what's a generic name for Y?

Is there any less specific way to think about an EquipmentNumber? Is it just Equipment?

eh, kinda

I could try something like

what's the Tech Id identifying specifically?

EquipTechIDRelationship

also don't put "Relationship" in the name of a table

9:52 PM

it's "technical identifier" technically

that's like putting Object at the end of your object names

hehe. sometimes I do "Str" at the end of strings :P

user55340

AbstractObjectFactoryBuilder

@enderland what does the "technical identifier" identify? The Equipment or something else?"

If I write yet another "printers are a pain" message, do I get a star?

9:52 PM

@enderland My vote is definitely for 'Big E'

@MichaelT This is my favorite class!

@JimmyHoffa the answer is "you don't wnat to know how wtf complicated this is and why I'm having to create this table" :P

@RobertHarvey No. you get 6 stars

lol

and a pin

9:53 PM

@enderland If it identifies something else - use that something else instead of "Technical Identifier" but you could just call the table: EquipmentTechnicalId

user41796

@JimmyHoffa You also have to understand that for the domain he's in, specifying relationship may actually provide useful information for others

user41796

It's not as redundant as you may think.

user55340

But we're not the bridge, because we don't star everything.

cough and a pin cough

no no no. wrong message.

UUUGH

@GlenH7 "EquipmentTechnicalId" would give off the idea that there's equipment and technical ids, so you go in and see an equipment id and a technical ID, that makes sense

9:54 PM

how funny would it be to name all these tables after WWII carriers

user41796

@Ampt No no no. Right message.

you don't need to put "relationship" in it

@enderland I love it.

@JimmyHoffa not to mention my table ID field would be EquipmentTechnicalIdID

@enderland I think you're mistaking 'awesome' for 'funny'

@enderland Why would you have a table ID?

Bridging tables don't need those

9:55 PM

oh. good call! I never even thought about that

I like EquipmentTechnicalId then

user55340

@enderland history.navy.mil/danfs/index.html

@MichaelT oh don't even get me started. I've spent HOURS on wikipedia

If it makes you feel better you could call it EquipmentTechnicalNum

reddit.com/r/warshipporn is a trap

user41796

@JimmyHoffa EqptTechNo

9:55 PM

because Id has a DB specific connotation and the Technical Number Identifier I presume isn't the same as a DB ID

@JimmyHoffa yeah that's true. Maybe I'll write out "identifier"

that's still way shorter

@GlenH7 too many vowels. QptTchN

@enderland for a second I read the 'a' as an 'o' and was like "whoa, NSFW dude..."

EquipmentTechnicalIdentifier

@JimmyHoffa no it's definitely safe for work, unless you live in 1944 Japan

user41796

@Ampt Good consultants know when to break the rules. :-P

9:56 PM

@enderland read it with the first 'a' as an 'o'

LMAO

@MichaelT also, this is wrong. I have exactly as many close votes as I can responsibly handle

user55340

@Ampt There were some painful ones today...

user55340

(I'm still wondering how this one lasted several days... )

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