The Whiteboard

user55340

2:00 PM

Second paragraph of question is refuting a blog.

user41796

As an opening to an answer, that will cause me to reflexively VTC the question.

user55340

That hints at opinions

user41796

@MichaelT Oh! Then it's perfectly on-topic here as that's what the site is for.

durron597

I have attempted to clarify the scope of the question to objective answering criteria

user55340

The core problem with the question - there is no problem.

Thomas Owens

2:01 PM

Reading from a mounted SAMBA drive can apparently not get all files or directories.

durron597

@MichaelT "I think it makes my code less readable / understandable when I don't generate timestamps close to consumption"

user55340

Asking to explain something - everyone has a different way of explaining it to the asker.

user55340

Answer is in the question. See help/dont-ask

user41796

@ThomasOwens The app is likely running under different permissions than the account you're using to see things in a console window.

user55340

There is no actual problem being solved "I'm curious if other people feel like I do"

Thomas Owens

2:04 PM

@GlenH7 It's not. It sometimes works.

It's literally a crapshoot. Sometimes, listFiles() returns everything, sometimes it doesn't.

Literally, calling listFiles() many times will give me different return values.

user41796

@ThomasOwens That is weird.

Thomas Owens

I think it has to do with timing out.

Like it will only wait so long for the list of files and go from there.

André

You're using java.io.File?

Thomas Owens

Yeah.

gnat

2:23 PM

...frankly, when I voted for a duplicate, it didn't have answers, and I thought that better-as-stable is the only reasonable interpretation. But now, looking at so many different answers twisting it in so many different ways, I somehow feel that too broad could be a more appropriate close reason — gnat 2 days ago

Duga

2:37 PM

When you use the word "refactor", that indicates that the question most likely belongs on programmers SE — roryap 1 min ago

gnat

21

A: Discuss this ${blog}

Blog posts, (esoteric) web comics, keynote talks, and even letters (and papers) from old computer scientists - trying to cite them and ask about particular parts fail at being good questions for several factors. The first is that many of these are driven ultimately by views. The more views they...

durron597

@Brandon if you're going to recommend cross posting, you should also mention the Stack Exchange cross posting guidelines, i.e. quote: "this can be OK, so long as the question is tailored to each audience on the different sites and is materially different in each case. Just to be 100% clear, copy-pasting a question across sites with no changes is considered abusive behavior. " — durron597 1 min ago

If I start channeling @gnat too much, will I become a trollbot too?

André

nods It is like Agent Smith of trolling

gnat

in Duga's Playground, 4 hours ago, by Duga

Certainty level 1.4

durron597

@gnat I didn't know it was possible to be more than 100% certain.

gnat

2:49 PM

@durron597 after @André migrated to maven, everything became possible

André

I'm 9001% certain you can be over 100% certain.

Duga

@Disappointed If you have a specific programming problem, e.g. "I don't like that my code works like blah blah, how do I fix it"? Then the correct place is Stack Overflow. If you have a section of working, complete code, and you are interested in receiving comments about all aspects of that code, then you should use codereview.stackexchange.com. If you have a more general question about "how do I design my code to avoid problems like this one", you can use Programmers... but keep in mind that Programmers is for when you are in front of a Whiteboard, not in front of your IDE. — durron597 44 secs ago

durron597

We should just rename the whole site to "The Whiteboard"

André

> Pants optional when telecommuting.

durron597

we shouldn't change the URL, in the same way that gaming.stackexchange is "The Arqade"

gnat

2:55 PM

would be funny to change help center wording, from "conceptual questions about software development" to "questions about design or something squishy like that" :) — gnat Feb 18 at 20:18

^^^ there's a lot that we can... improve

durron597

@gnat Something squishy isn't particularly meaningful.

gnat

> Why are they saying that this isn't a good question for Programmers.SE? What is in scope on that squishy site with the out of focus whiteboard background and a coffee thing as its favico?

2

^^^ gone in 60 seconds

durron597

@gnat @Oded I'm impressed

user41796

@gnat Are you actually a bot under Oded's control?

durron597

@GlenH7 I doubt it, why would Oded have wasted one of gnat's close votes

amon

3:11 PM

@durron597 to maintain gnat's cover

gnat

folks, Oded just diligently follows advice given to him by our moderators in times when he was just a regular user...

@Oded - down-vote and vote to close as appropriate when you come across one of his posts in the normal use of the site. — ChrisF ♦ Apr 27 '12 at 19:13

:)

Robert Harvey

3:24 PM

Is there a way to open up an HTML form in a WebBrowser using LocalHost?

ratchet freak

@RobertHarvey boot up a small http server?

otherwise use the file: protocol

Robert Harvey

Which one do you recommend, that can be packaged with a small winforms application?

Ah, check this out.

WinForms WebBrowser + HTTP Server

200 lines of code awesomeness.

durron597

Hey @MetaFight I tried Harmonium last week, I forgot to mention. I enjoyed it but I wish the grid were a bit bigger

I also wish there was a "clear grid" button

Jimmy Hoffa

3:45 PM

@RobertHarvey depends entirely on the purpose. Web browser's put a lot of security restrictions on local files.

OWIN and WCF are both capable of giving you a simple basic self-hosted HTTP service, but your process may need elevation depending on the configuration of said server

Robert Harvey

This particular purpose needs LocalHost specifically.

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey why?

Robert Harvey

NoCaptcha works on localhost, for "testing purposes."

Otherwise, you have to match the original domain.

Which I suppose I could do.

Jimmy Hoffa

You mean you're making a web request of NoCaptcha?

Robert Harvey

You have to display it somehow, so someone can solve it.

Jimmy Hoffa

3:47 PM

why not just make your winforms application request the NoCaptcha image, display it, take the users input in a text box and pass that on to NoCaptcha?

Robert Harvey

It's not that kind of Captcha.

It's the one that you click on.

And (possibly) match cat pictures.

So it's all mouse-driven.

Jimmy Hoffa

I see, well I guess a web browser may be required then if they are hosting the application directly themselves; and presumably redirecting users back to localhost when they're succesful?

MetaFight

@durron597 I thought there was a clear button. I'm not sure anymore :| I remember putting a lot of thought in how the controls worked... I revisited the game a few years later and realised the controls were horrible! Typical dev in UX.

Robert Harvey

@JimmyHoffa The plan is to fire up a local copy of the captcha in a webbrowser control using the site's public key, and then poke the result back into the DOM of the original page using HTMLAgilityPack.

The website can then validate the captcha result on the server in the usual way, using their private key.

durron597

@MetaFight Nope. I even tried loading an empty save, and that didn't work either

@MetaFight I wanted to put some of the smallest pattern from this page most only the very smallest fit: pentadecathlon.com/lifenews/oscillators

Jimmy Hoffa

4:06 PM

@RobertHarvey you're going to have an uphill battle; injecting captcha entries into a page via code is precisely what all those captcha tools exist to stop people from doing. If people could just inject results from code, they could brute force them. Good luck.

MetaFight

@durron597 odd. According to my controls page texture the X button should clear the current grid.

do you mean clear the history?

gnat

21

Q: Tags that only exist on locked questions, should we treat these the same as tags that don't exist at all?

Since locked questions cannot be edited by anyone but a moderator, and (especially for historically-locked questions) many are off-topic, they have a higher incidence of bad tags. My request is simply to put the same reputation requirements to using tags just barely kept live by locked questions...

^^^ any volunteers to bounty this after Yannis and me?

durron597

@MetaFight Maybe I didn't see the button

@gnat I'd like to have at least 3k before I start bountying stuff

user55340

4:31 PM

I'm almost to 10k on mse. Then I get to find the what do I name my cat equivalents.

user55340

I'm sure Yannis has some bookmarked.

Duga

It's not helpful if it flies in the face of what this site is intended to address. Please try and respect the format. There are other sites like Programmers that would welcome this line of questioning. — tadman 26 secs ago

user55340

I'd add though that Programmers has often complained that opinion-based questions sent to them from Stack Overflow are also off-topic there. Look at their rules prior to posting please. — halfer 55 secs ago

Robert Harvey

4:55 PM

@JimmyHoffa The captcha itself is being solved by a human, with complete oversight from google. The tricky part will be to get the environment right (a browser with the proper execution context, cookies, etc).

This is just a way to get the captcha to work remotely so that it can be solved by a human being.

But you're right. There are going to be obstacles. At least I don't have to attempt to write an AI engine to compete with Google's AI engine.

durron597

Enjoyable MSE trainwreck

-16

Q: Incorrect behaviour from moderators

There was dominative, dictatorship and ignorant behaviour done by rolfl and jamal on Code Review. Without listening to the points made, these moderators have taken decisions, such as changing the title of questions and deleting comments made only by me. This is singling out behaviour; what can...

discussion edits moderation behavior

Robert Harvey

5:12 PM

Those despot moderators... They should be burned at the stake.

durron597

@RobertHarvey Don't you mean dectators?

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey s/stake/state/f

durron597

@JimmyHoffa s/state/steak/f

Thomas Owens

The new thin Oreos are a bunch of crap.

Robert Harvey

s/steak/oreos/f

Thomas Owens

5:24 PM

:(

gnat

free spam flags: programmers.stackexchange.com/a/289113/31260 (on a really crappy question that essentially asks for such spammy "answers")

Robert Harvey

Talk about some serious marketspeak. Does anyone really respond to that sort of tripe?

gnat

5:43 PM

"That city is too strict and authoritarian about littering. If it weren't for the fact that its streets were so clean I would never go back." — gnat 10 mins ago

Robert Harvey

@gnat Classic.

Duga

6:18 PM

Language does matter but this question may be better off at programmers.stackexchange.com — Kasper Souren 12 secs ago

amon

6:40 PM

♫ 𝄆 Close, close, close this crap
Flowing down the screen.
Down-vote and close-vote, delete it and flag it,
Now the site is clean. 𝄇
— “a 10k-er's song”, to the tune of “row your boat”

3

Duga

So much pedantry on this site sometimes :) vptr is a pretty standard written term, and a lot of people use the term "Virtual Pointer" in reference to it. "Virtual pointer" make as much sense as "virtual table" (the table isn't virtual, it's a virtual method table or a dispatch table), and at the end of the day most programmers are smart enough to know what you're talking about from the context. — Gerald 15 secs ago

Duga

7:15 PM

@johannes , I posted that on programmers after I posted it here and got like 10 downvotes in an hour. Only reason why I haven't deleted it here is because I don't know if it belongs here; it definitely belongs in programmers. — Andrew Luhring 2 mins ago

Jimmy Hoffa

8:09 PM

@ThomasOwens a bunch of crap does not sound even remotely like something I'd want to eat; milk or no.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa crap-cookie-sandwich doesn't sound appealing? How about "chocolate cookie wafers with a deliciously thin smear of crap between them" instead?

gnat

user20683

@JimmyHoffa how's the mac treating you or have you slathered it with Windows and called it a day?

gnat

8:46 PM

"This question is really off-topic, but I feel the need to answer anyway"

37

A: Should one advise on off-topic questions?

What you should do: cast a down vote vote to close (flag to close if you're under 3K rep) comment and explain why their question is bad and how to fix it, use the tour, the help, maybe even a chat session Don't ever answer a question, not via chat, comments, or any other way. It is even dange...

durron597

@gnat I downvoted it. Someone upvoted it for some reason

@gnat Also, I forgot I had one CV left, so, yay!

I'm downvoting this answer because Stack Exchange guidelines explicitly discourage answering off topic questions — durron597 20 secs ago

gnat

Upvoters: really? By upvoting, you're effectively telling this new user "keep asking questions like this". — Andres F. Jun 30 at 16:27

durron597

@gnat Well that comment is gonna be gone in about 24 hours

Jimmy Hoffa

@WorldEngineer the apple logo on it at this point may as well just be a sticker it's so fake.

gnat

10

Q: We need to downvote answers more (even mediocre ones)

I propose that: This site's core users MUST much more frequently downvote answers even if they are "only" mediocre or we are going to face a consistent decrease in quality because (each of these is expanded on at length below): All (or at least most) our questions are subjective Anyone can ...

discussion voting

durron597

8:55 PM

@gnat People don't want to lose one fake internet point

@gnat I gain and lose about 30 rep every day on SO right now for downvoting answers like this one

gnat

@durron597 some consider it spending. But it is indeed investment...

Jul 1 '14 at 18:25, by GlenH7

@gnat - thanks for the opportunities to invest in the site. DV's and VTD's applied.

guess I gotta... invest one repz into that SO answer you referred (tomorrow, out of votes there today)

durron597

@gnat The one I just linked?

It will be gone via roomba by tomorrow

gnat

@durron597 yes

durron597

The SEDE search is for all closed, non-migrate, non-duplicate questions with exactly one answer that has exactly one score, sorted by ascending score

I'll be into the -5 questions soon

gnat

ah, okay then. Still, bookmarked it, just for (unlikely) case if asker accepts and roomba breaks

durron597

9:00 PM

@gnat Don't bother bookmarking that. Bookmark this instead

user20683

I don't downvote on principle

user20683

It was a campaign promise

durron597

@WorldEngineer Good thing my name isn't blue

user20683

@durron597 only applies to me, it was a weird election

durron597

I downvote stuff because I have fundamental disagreements with the roomba guidelines on SO and so I use my votes to make stuff roomba eligible

gnat

9:05 PM

@WorldEngineer yeah I remember that. Seeing how you do you job though, I think I can't complain :)

user20683

@gnat it gives me traction to play good cop

durron597

@durron597 Upvoting the answer because "Guidelines" are called that way because there are exceptions sometimes. This is one of them. — Alexus 54 secs ago

gnat

@WorldEngineer yes, and this too :)

Jimmy Hoffa

ugh I am in web forms hell! There are 2 different types of cookie collections and cookie objects with slightly different interfaces, and apparently they're both thin oreos and somebody just sent an e-mail saying there's cookies in the break room and if I have to look at one more cookie I think my head's going to explode

durron597

@gnat 1

gnat

9:11 PM

@durron597 (just in case, I am outta comment votes today)

durron597

@gnat Did you get refunded because the post got deleted (I assume by world engineer)?

gnat

@durron597 yes. Actually, all these recent deletions make downvoting answers more and more like zero sum game (in the past, it was draining 5-10 repz from me daily). I mean not singular exceptional deletions like today's "worm" garbage, but systemic cleanups per STCI. I did not realize how much garbage I voted down in the past in answers to tags we cleanup

durron597

@gnat Haha, so you're probably gaining ~5 rep per day as these questions get deleted. "where did that come from?"

gnat

@durron597 yeah, that's how it looks like, really. Not that I complain :)

durron597

9:30 PM

-1 Your code example shows no particular benefit, has no explanation and doesn't have anything to do with returning a function. — Crazy Train Jun 15 '13 at 13:40

gnat

I think this post could be cut down to Without downvotes on mediocre answers, there is no incentive to stop posting them — ReallyTiredOfThisGame Jan 17 '13 at 19:05

durron597

@gnat You don't need to link me the desperate accept MSO post again ;)

@gnat Of course Rachel is leading the charge on not downvoting crap

gnat

@durron597 I disagree with her but respect her position. People should retain right to vote as they want

durron597

@gnat true

Okay I'm going to start working on burninating source-code for a little while

durron597

9:46 PM

Okay @gnat here's one you can bookmark for tomorrow

@WorldEngineer are you still here?

user20683

@durron597 for the moment

durron597

Can you synonym refactor -> refactoring? The former only has 5 questions

user20683

@durron597 sure

durron597

I could just retag but that would bump everything and the synonym prob should be there

@WorldEngineer Thanks

@WorldEngineer this is less straightforward. What are your thoughts on separate mobile and mobile-app?

user20683

@durron597 from a purely theoretical standpoint mobile could mean close to the metal coding for mobile devices but given that the mobile tag refers specifically to apps...

durron597

9:59 PM

@WorldEngineer Ha! I forgot I wrote this: Mobile STCI answer

user20683

@durron597 well there ya go then

Jimmy Hoffa

10:41 PM

@ThomasOwens grabbed a sixer of that not your fathers root beer, going to crack one of those in a few.

Robert Harvey

10:55 PM

@JimmyHoffa "Web forms hell" is slightly redundant.

user20683

@RobertHarvey it's a multilayered hell

Jimmy Hoffa

@RobertHarvey yeah, they brought on a new guy sometime ~a year ago, and gave him his first .NET project to do a small website, so not knowing any better he made a web forms site...ugh. I'll be rewriting it at some point in the next few months I suspect; it's not huge or complex, but for the quick task I had on hand for the moment it was more reasonable just to add the functionality to what was there

@ThomasOwens this root beer is awesome

user55340

11:56 PM

Today I helped another guy convert a project to maven... and then was able to finish doing spring-test my own code. As part of it I found out how to make my own Context for JEE container mocking.

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