Tavern on the Meta

@Benjol I'm not very good with either Math or Music, so I have no idea what the question is trying to say :P

@YiJiang, yeah, well I only skip along the surface, but I think it's a prime example of 'making the internet a better place'

@JeffAtwood I have no presence there, but that ... discussion today was so frustrating even from the perspective of an outside observer that I had to close the window to end the insanity.

most of the madness is hidden away in meta, except for the comment vandalism

@JeffAtwood The willingness for some to defend that behaviour despite all sensibility was nothing short of astounding.

7:50 AM

ok, I missed all that :) I do recall from occasional forays into the dark underbelly of mathoverflow's meta that it was pretty shark-infested

anyways, we deployed just now. comments are no longer pre-expanded after you've entered a single comment, you must re-click "add comment" each time. Enjoy :)

Gah, now I'll have to go update the comment auto-complete userscript, I think...Let's see how it changed.

At the same time, that's also a great idea, so. ;)

@JeffAtwood, good call, I'm reading the monster thread right now. They're a tough bunch...

Oh, I lied, no changes were necessary, even better heh.

Is there an Area51 proposal for conspiracy theories? If there is, it seems that it should be rocketing to stardom...

Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theorists

8:02 AM

I actually think there is/was...

21

Proposed Q&A site for people wanting to know what's REALLY going on!

Currently in definition.

@TimStone I don't know why, but I find that really funny :P

@YiJiang My assumption there would be that every question and answer was itself a conspiracy, and as a result the site would bring me no closer to the real truth. ;)

area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4659/…

Welbog! Well, that's to be expect, but still...!

Hah

lol

8:09 AM

I prefer the british spelling of "Welboug".

area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/4659/…

3

Q: Rename the Welbog contest

Since Welbog no longer seems to know (or remember) his name from day to day, I propose a naming contest to choose one for him that is both memorable and amusing enough for him to keep.

discussion fun welbog

lol

> Do Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky really exist?

Right, @JeffAtwood, what do you have to say? Are you really just a puppet of @JonSkeet?

Stack Overflow Blog: What Happens When You Reach 200k Reputation?

Posted by Jeff Atwood on September 1st, 2010

Have you ever wondered what happens when you reach 200,000 reputation?

Just ask Jon Skeet.

Apparently, what happens is … you get a painting of unicorns, signed by us, dedicated to you.

Estimated value? Priceless!

Joel and I actually sat down with Mr. Skeet himself to record Stack Overflow podcast #72 during the London leg of DevDays — in the very Google offices pictured here.

Although we sometimes joke that Stack Overflow was accidentally constructed as the ultimate Jon Skeet honeypot, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Jon has a long history of answering people’s questions not just on Stack Overflow, but all over the internet and usenet. Apparently he enjoys learning alongside his peers and teaching others. Which, at least in my mind, is the whole point of Stack Overflow and the rest of the Stack Exchange network. So if we have somehow managed to build the sort of site that attracts people of Mr. Skeet’s caliber, then we have succeeded far beyond my wildest dreams. …

> Joel and I actually sat down with Mr. Skeet himself to record Stack Overflow podcast #72 during the London leg of DevDays — in the very Google offices pictured here.

But it's all Jon Skeet talking to himself, and when @JeffAtwood speaks it's really just Jon speaking in a funny voice, no?

8:14 AM

@YiJiang Plus, Jon Skeet got that cool painting, he could be made to play along with anything...

And that supposes that Jon Skeet really exists too

I don't know how I could be Jon Skeet, I mean, he has more programming skill in his little finger than I have in my whole body

4

@Benjol His book profits have to go somewhere, there'll be a money trail.

@Benjol True, it might all be GoogleBot doing all the hard work

Re enter-enters-comments, I guess chat is a bad place to find anyone who's against :)

8:15 AM

@JeffAtwood I still believe he's a robot. ;)

@JeffAtwood Are you saying that you are, in reality, part of Jon Skeet's little finger?

@TimStone Ah ha! We have him now!

@JeffAtwood, I'm reading through that meta-comment-marathon, basically what they're saying is they don't like democracy, and they want special rules for special people. Cool.

some of them are saying that

@Benjol This is true. People should start using comments for comments instead of trying to use them for novels though, heh. Or tape down their shift key. That's it! All Maths users must become members of Gaming, take up Minecraft, and instinctively tape down their shift key.

8:20 AM

@JeffAtwood, and am I wrong, or isn't there a 15 second time limit? which means he has to wait each time. So unless he is an awfully slow typer, he's really suffering for his principles.

yes, Jarrod pointed that out as well.

@Benjol In one of the screenshots, the "single" comment spans three minutes.

he's going FAR out of his way to do this.

Hohum, whether you really exist or not, I'm glad I'm not you ;) [i.e., that I'm not in your shoes]

Seconded. Kudos for your level of patience. Some of the comments...I had to double-check to make sure I was still on the maths site, since there seemed to be a underwhelming amount of logic.

8:24 AM

Right, to really solve this, I propose we introduce about, say 25% of the functionality of chat (@-mention autocomplete, explicit replies, edit history etc.) to comments. That should solve quite a number of problems, aye?

God it's cold in here. My typing speed is a lot slower than usual

That, or they could just use chat for what they're labeling as discussions...

sorry, I am manually merging Robin Chapman comments on math.se at the moment

@TimStone, my thoughts exactly

@mootinator You actually made a bad joke room? :P

@TimStone True, but the discussion need to happen in the public, and as it is now, chat is getting even fewer visitors than meta, which is getting far fewer visitors than the main site

8:28 AM

chat is really for the most avid users

it also takes a LOT of scale to work

@YiJiang I'm confused where you're going there.

God it's cold (am I just going to keep repeating that for the next two weeks I'm here?)

@TimStone Well, you suggest that they should really be discussing in chat, since chat is more appropreate for discussions, which is true, but I think that moving to chat would reduce the visibility of the discussion, which is vital for this particular discussion

@JeffAtwood But surely not because it isn't intuitive enough? I find it very user-friendly, at it seems like if there's a great needed for that level of extended discussion it's the most suitable venue. Or, at least, it makes more sense to me than trying to shove reply upon reply into comments.

chat is real time and somewhat ephemeral, it's not the same as comments

@YiJiang Ah, alright. I can see that being the case, and I'm not sure if there's a way to improve that. I'm also not sure to what extent the discussions relate to a specific question either, so.

8:31 AM

though I agree in the Theory of Communication Escalation

codinghorror.com/blog/2008/02/on-escalating-communication.html

@TimStone I thought that too, but if you look at the comments on that question, they are very spread-out in time

A: Number of isomorphism types of functions f:[n]->[n]

1

If you want to count the number of functions up to renamings on the domain and codomain, then the number is $p_n$, the number of partitions of $n$. Later: now that you've made precise what you wanted... This is counted here, with references.

> @Robin: I really don't mean to complain, but it would be easier to read if that was all in a single comment. You can edit a just posted comment instead of adding another one, if you for example posted it by accident by hitting return. (Doesn't the "at most one comment per 15 seconds" blocking drive you insane when you write multiple comments like that, by the way?!?)

yes, "nobody" complained about this. I guess it was the Family Circle NOT ME ghost.

lol

With three Great Comment marks too, heh.

in related news, being an intentional jackass is annoying

8:35 AM

7

Alternate Stack Overflow

Proposed Q&A site for users of Stack Overflow who want to unwind. The format would be the same as Stack Overflow, but with the goal of absurdity rather than accuracy. Contrast Wikipedia with Uncyclopedia, that would be as Stack Overflow to this site.

Currently in definition.

This just pop'd up on top of the 'hot' view for proposals

@YiJiang Yeah....I saw that earlier when I went looking for the Conspiracy Theory one.

Now, the real question is, What, isn't Meta good enough for you guys?

@YiJiang At the end of a long day asking questions and giving answers, I like to unwind by asking questions and giving answers. :P

@TimStone Like, say, Does Jeff Atwood really exist?

I'm content with the part of Jon Skeet's little finger theory. Even though it doesn't make much sense, since Jeff seems to type too quickly to be just one small section of a hand, I'm willing to overlook that in the interest of being right. On the Internet.

8:42 AM

@TimStone Yeah, but at the rate that Jon Skeet answers questions, it may be reasonable. ;)

2

@GeorgeMarian Ah, good point!

thedailywtf.com

I wonder when Burger King and McDonalds open in the morning...

@DanGrossman I haven't visited that site much since it became a poster child for itself.

> Michael rolled his eyes. "She uses goldenrod paper for meeting invitations, of course."

5

lol

8:52 AM

Ha!

Heh, nice

@DanGrossman Better be careful, you don't want to get reported to Joel, hahah.

A: Since many brokers disallow investors from shorting sub-$5 stocks, why don't all companies split their stock until it is sub-$5

1

I do believe it comes down to listing requirements. That is getting very close to penny stock territory and typical delisting criteria. I found this answer on Ivestopedia that speaks directly the question of stock price. Another thought is that if everyone were to do it, the rules would change...

@GeorgeMarian Why does that site appear to have the programmers favicon?

Ah

Because that would be an F :)

heh

You ad me going there for a sec.

5pm! Right, time to bath my hands in zero degrees celcius water as I wash rice for dinner

9:01 AM

@YiJiang Sounds like fun

@GeorgeMarian Oh wow, that OP seems excessively harsh..

Dense is as dense does, my moma always told me.

I've seen worse. Needless to say, the discussion ends there. I don't have the desire to explain myself to him anymore.

but someone on the internet is wrong! (cue xkcd, kill me now)

@JeffAtwood stab, then washes hands

@JeffAtwood Yes, it goes against my very nature not to respond. :)

9:04 AM

@DanGrossman Oh god, I just washed my hands stabs again

@DanGrossman That reminds me, i still haven't gotten a print-out of that for my wall.

I kind of viscerally hate xkcd now

Why's that?

it's the Garfield of programming comics... mostly, just wildly overused as a substitute for, y'know, thought or communication

@JeffAtwood And yet there are places where it fits so perfectly you'd swear Randell was prescient

9:08 AM

prescient, like in a movie I've seen a thousand times way

heh

he's good, but it's overused. not his fault per se. That "favorite programming cartoons" thread broke something inside me

lol

@GeorgeMarian, "I think you are being dense on purpose". I'm going to keep that to one side and use it on you some other time ;)

9:13 AM

@Benjol LOL

Better then being unintentionally dense. :)

God I can't feel my fingers anymore. I'll invite anyone who tell me that the cold is fun to come over and wash rice for me

@YiJiang Pass.

Then again, i wouldn't be one that would tell you that cold is fun. However, I do like snow.

@GeorgeMarian Yeah, except that no precipitation is predicted for Nanjing for the next few weeks...

Why do I always get all the problems but none of the benefits?

@Benjol Seriously though, am I missing some argument he's making?

@YiJiang Cause you're a programmer? ;)

@YiJiang I suspect it correlates to the number of images you post that hurt my eyes. :P

9:18 AM

@GeorgeMarian, sorry, I'm not clued up enough on financial stuff. (Strangely, my brain can handle maths until you stick a currency symbol in front :)

@GeorgeMarian I don't think me been a programmer has anything to do with the lack of snow

@TimStone Divine retribution! I like it, but no, I'd like to attribute it to global warming a bit more, though that's probably wrong too

If global warming causes a new ice age, would removing all the CO2 scrubbers and burning more coal get us out of it by warming the planet up faster?

Or maybe nuking the same spot so many times you breach the crust and create a nice huge open volcano to warm things

"Sometime billions of years in the future, he predicts, the core and mantle could cool and solidify enough to meet the crust. If that happens, Earth will become a cold, dead planet like the moon."

Why would the planet become cold and dead from that? :(

I would figure the temperature of the surface is almost entirely dependent on the sun and atmosphere, not the planet's core

@DanGrossman I think that means tectonically dead, in a geological sense

A: Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange

Just did my first update on this answer:

48

2010-10-?? (Clue?) New user preferences: Hide Ignored Tags, I'd like email notifications of activity on questions I've asked and I don't want notifications of activity on questions I've favorited (as introduced 2010-05-31). Also some intriguing cross-site tag sets link. Oct/Nov/Dec 2010 20...

9:35 AM

Add yet another question to my favorites.

Sigh, any recommendations on what to listen?

It's one of the weird problems with suddenly finding yourself having hundreds of thousands of songs to listen to

radio

@YiJiang new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/listoftheday/2463/…

don't ever stop listening to your heart, @YiJiang

9:47 AM

@YiJiang added some questions.

I will not be posting the results of me experimenting with what to listen, in case I offend anyone with my taste in music (or there lack of)

you can't get worse than me

►

@DanGrossman Don't post YouTube links since I can't actually see them.

(YouTube's blocked by the Great and Almighty Firewall)

> A computer program, that became a virtual girl, who became a very real star in the hearts of her fans.
> Now, live on stage.
> A round of internet-applause for Hatsune Miku, everyone.

:nods:

9:57 AM

dang, nabit

=/

Another contender for "worst taste in music" collection: youtube.com/watch?v=OFJC8MerV8Q

The Song Picker thingadongdong looks interesting, but I haven't found anything interesting yet

@DanGrossman I stopped at the 4 second mark.

I want the DVD of that hologram's live performance, but it's only available if I import it from Japan, and only on Blu-Ray :/

lol

10:01 AM

@GeorgeMarian So what's that then?

I'd rather listen to the badger song.

@GeorgeMarian Okay, maybe I shouldn't ask

I've really got to close meta.math and get on with some work, but man, what a cantankerous bunch. I won't be hanging out there any time soon

@YiJiang I have no idea, though I'm glad to see that I can copy-and-paste the title just fine: みさお達に「Ievan Polkka」歌わせてみた【らき☆すたMAD】

@YiJiang A very strange rendition of listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Ievan+Polkka/3n8Ea

10:03 AM

@Benjol Yah, they are something else.

Does any of these look interesting?

@DanGrossman Sounds like an East European folk song

Don't you have some real music? ;)

One of the weirder things I've subjected my ears to for a while

@GeorgeMarian It's what the song picker thingadongdong throws up when I entered some parameters at random

@YiJiang But, is it from your collection?

@GeorgeMarian No, it shouldn't be, since it's for discovering new songs

spoulson

10:07 AM

Hello.

Although I have noticed some repeats

spoulson

Long time no chat.

@YiJiang Ah.

@spoulson Hola.

10:34 AM

Upgraded to Chrome 8 and... wow, speech recognition on form inputs.

spoulson

hmm

Sounds like a step forward if on a tablet

"Captain's log, supplemental..."

12:49 PM

Um, is there a meta 10ker around?

If you go to my profile you should see a bug report about the election system that has been deleted, as far as I can see.

I'd like to know if it has indeed been deleted... and why.

@radp Both @balpha and @MarcGravell are, but they're also mods

I mean, I didn't expect the [diamond-o-matic] tag to survive really, but...

> deleted by Jeff Atwood♦ Dec 2 at 23:11

I guess he didn't leave a comment and I guess the report wasn't appreciated.

Oh well.

no further comment -- I guess that was the fast version of "[status-completed]"

12:52 PM

aborts the long meta SO question he was writing about the elections.

I've been playing around with Grooveshark; it's an interesting service, but the streaming speed is weird

It's fast for some and slow for other songs

1:12 PM

Any advice on how to tell someone not to use the title field for the body of his post?

@PopularDemand Eh...

@radp Deleted posts don't show up in profiles no matter what the viewer's rep is.

@PopularDemand Unless it's a diamond mod

@YiJiang Diamonds exist outside of the reputation system, though.

@PopularDemand Bah.

C. Ross

3:09 PM

Does anyone know the blog post about question rep being decreased?

Stack Overflow Blog: Important Reputation Rule Changes

Posted by Jeff Atwood on March 19th, 2010

In the next few days, we will be rolling out two important changes to the way reputation works on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, and Meta. We’re letting you know now so you can be prepared.

Item the first: question upvotes will now grant only +5 rep instead of +10.* There is no change to answer upvotes. This will apply retroactively to all users.

Why?

In other words, we’re rebalancing a bit to favor answers. Based on the existing data in the trilogy, I believe this will be a positive change for everyone. For more discussion see the meta topic. …

Stack Overflow Blog: The Great Reputation Recalc Begins

Posted by Jeff Atwood on March 21st, 2010

As previously discussed in Important Reputation Rule Changes, we are now beginning site-wide reputation recalculations on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and Super User. You may see some changes in your own reputation, along with changes in other users’ reputation.

In addition to rebalancing question upvotes as +5 instead of their old value of +10, we also fixed the following minor bugs in the reputation system:

If you have questions about your rep you can run a report detailing exactly how it is calculated; see How do I audit my reputation? …

@radp Feel ashamed

@MichaelMrozek My answer has more reply.

C. Ross

Thanks

3:12 PM

Nov 23 at 17:50, by balpha

19 hours ago, by radp

@PopularDemand (a)Shamed I shall be indeed!

How does the list of "newest" questions with a given tag work? If a tag is edited into the question, does it become the newest question with that tag, or is "newest" decided by the question's ask timestamp

the latter

The Walking Dead (TV series)

3:29 PM

The Walking Dead, good/bad?

The Walking Dead is an American post-apocalyptic horror television series developed for television by Frank Darabont and based on the comic book series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard. It premiered on the AMC network on October 31, 2010 with a 70-minute premiere episode, during the network's "Fearfest". AMC has renewed the series for a second season of 13 episodes. Plot The Walking Dead tells the story of the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse; it follows a small group of survivors, traveling across the desolate United States in search of a new home a...

@YiJiang, @Zypher needs to be added to the WOB!

@RebeccaChernoff Right, of course. Duly noted.

(if it is full, you can remove me from it to make room for @Zypher)

@RebeccaChernoff The WOB is never full, so you're not getting off that easily

Had to try!

Zypher

3:32 PM

you've run out of bits!

@NickT Oh man, great! I've been looking for something new to watch.

If you like post-apocalyptic tv series, Jericho is definitely for you.

Sadly, it was cancelled after the 2nd season

@Rejoicerejoicekbdisback No, don't say that, it was basically left open-ended.

@Popular yeah, but it's still worth watching IMO

Jericho (TV series)

Jericho is an American action/drama series that centers on the residents of the fictional town of Jericho, Kansas in the aftermath of nuclear attacks on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States. Produced by CBS Paramount Network Television, with executive producers Jon Turteltaub, Stephen Chbosky, and Carol Barbee, the show was broadcast in more than 30 countries. The show ran on CBS from September 20, 2006 through March 25, 2008. It was initially canceled after its first full season due to poor ratings. While a fan campaign was able to convince the network to bring the show ba...

It had strong grassroots support (I think the 2nd season was in danger already but was saved by huge numbers of fans speaking up in its favour). Too bad it didn't work out

@balpha Is there any way to get a list of questions recently tagged [status-completed] then? I keep missing new features

non that I know off

except this:

Q: Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange

3:36 PM

53

It appears that there has been no move to create a formalized official repository of recent changes, so for now, we will be keeping track of it ourselves. RSS feed for this question

support faq

morning

Yeah, that's how I discovered I keep missing new features :). I didn't know about self-recalcs or split close votes

Hey, the special tags don't get special borders/colors here in chat. That'll knock 'em down a peg or two.

Ok, thanks

Anyone know about percentages in A51 commits?

3:38 PM

Nope, nobody! It is driven by a random number generator.

I saw somewhere (here perhaps) that commits only count towards rep if the users has a certain amount of rep, (50 or something)?

is helpful ^__^

@Rejoicerejoicekbdisback My friend told me to watch Jericho...he compared it to Firefly

So it's either really good or he's really full of shit

@NickT - It could be both :P

@RebeccaChernoff rchern('is helpful ^__^') == 'is not helpful ^__^'

2

3:40 PM

@Moshe There's a list based on rep (200+), and another that isn't, and some other metric, and the lowest of the three controls the displayed commit percentage

So if you have 5 million people committed with 100 rep and 0 with 200 rep, the commit percentage will be at 0%

Oh, so if committers on the committee get more rep, (like the random invitees) then the site won't get enough commits to be committed?

Okay, that was poorly phrased. Let me try again.

I'm comfused

So if 100 people commit and they all have 1 rep, the percentage will be at a lower percentage than if the committers had 300 rep.

yes?

@balpha ...so tempting...must resist commenting...

@balpha that's conforting!

3:43 PM

@NickT They are both good (if, unlike me, you can get over the inconclusive ending of Jericho) but not really similar.

@Moshe I think so (thought about it more and changed my mind)

There's a good explanation of it here:

35

A: Area 51 Commit Percent

My answer here: In the first round, we only want to launch sites that will DEFINITELY succeed. So we require (1) lots of users, and (2) lots of users with high rep, because we know that those users contribute a lot and know how the system works. The formula right now is weighted...

If nobody committed is over 200 rep I think the commit percentage will be stuck at 0

@MichaelMrozek - Ah, ok.

Well, look at these:

45

German language

Proposed Q&A site for students having questions about German, expert speakers of German wanting to discuss the finer points of the language and translation questions from any language to German.

Currently in commitment.

45 commits, 22 percent.

85

Jewish life and learning

Proposed Q&A site for people who base their lives on Jewish law and tradition and anyone interested in learning more. (If created, this will be the new home of mi.yodeya.com.)

Currently in commitment.

85 commits, 26 percent.

How does that work?

172

Graphic Design

Proposed Q&A site for professional graphic designers and non-designers trying to do their own graphic design (e.g. programmers creating icons/logos for their applications)

Currently in commitment.

172 commits, 84 percent.

@balpha - I'm comfused!

@Moshe I second @RebeccaChernoff, it's a PRNG :P No, seriously, did you look at the calculation post linked by @MichaelMrozek?

@YiJiang - no, one more time please.

@Moshe the higher the overall rep of the committed users, the higher the commitment percentile.

3:48 PM

@Moshe Then go read it. Now.

Ah, ok.

So if I get more rep, I help drive my commitments?

duh.

gtg will be back soon.

@radp -cool

Well, possibly. It's not just a continuous curve; Jon Skeet can't make a proposal hit 100% by himself

Put another way, every proposal that launches must satisfy these three criteria:

1. A total Commitment Score of 500,
2. 200 committers
3. 100 committers with at least 200 rep on a single site

It's not yours to say what Jon Skeet can or cannot do!

6

3:57 PM

@MichaelMrozek That's a critical bug which @balpha should fix at once, obviously

Jon Skeet probably has at least 100 sockpuppets

Mmmhmmm... the Javascript room just created it's first bot. Of course we already have our own @RebeccaChernoff, but it's been misbehaving for a while now

@YiJiang Say what now?

@PopularDemand chat.stackoverflow.com/search?q=!kitten&room=17

@YiJiang Yeah, when are you going to fix it's backward smilies

4:02 PM

Coding Kitten, Kitten valley.

56 2

javascript flash html5

^ This is the bot, a sock puppet created by Ivo

Tyler Chacha

Good Morning

@TylerChacha Level 85 yet?

Tyler Chacha

Nope

...

@YiJiang Yes, that was unbelievably annoying yesterday

Not the bot itself, just...everyone else.

4:05 PM

Sigh.

Cannot find include file <stdint.h>

Give me back my Python IDE T_T

\o/ Ben Folds is coming to StL

@RebeccaChernoff Standard template library?

or St. Louis.

I saw him in Ann Arbor, MI, good times

Tyler Chacha

When I create users for Triton I'll probably make it somehow able to be tied with Google Accounts

4:10 PM

I've seen him...a bunch, heh.

Last show was awful though, need to go again and have it be fun. (:

Yeah, I also saw him at Albion college...but it was kinda shitty there

essentially a gym

Friend bailed on me last minute, could hardly hear as people behind me were yelling/fighting, got beer spilled all over me, ugh, it was not a fun night.

Holy crap. $32 tickets? I don't think I've ever paid more than $10 for a Ben Folds show.

@RebeccaChernoff o_O

@RebeccaChernoff Your problem is that you were interacting with human beings. That never goes well.

@PopularDemand Human beings are over-rated

4:17 PM

@NickT Ok, maybe $15 but this is Oo

@RebeccaChernoff You can't even get decent AHL tickets for $15

AHL?

NHL's (hockey) little brother

Oh. I was still thinking music. (:

There's a team in my town, feeds the Red Wings

4:23 PM

@RebeccaChernoff It's actually more like every two minutes.

So I'm tired of dealing with it at the moment, and shall just /blame @balpha

/blame Canada

@TimStone I can support this.

I love it when I put a development version of a library (version 2.8.1) in my project, then check later to find Ubuntu shipping a newer version (version 2.8.4)

Ugh, I hate Java, it seems to be right between C and Python; doing low-level array ops seems clunky, but there isn't(?) any easy way to do array slicing.

Python spoils.

4:43 PM

I like my extremes...assembly + unhosted C, and Python.

@NickT I guess it depends on what you define as easy, but either way I'd agree.

drachenstern

4:54 PM

@TimStone do you sleep? I just caught up on the thread and I'm curious when you do

@drachenstern This belongs on MSO.

drachenstern

@PopularDemand nono, I'm not asking if JonSkeet sleeps, just @TimStone ;)

@drachenstern It happens from time to time. Especially around the times where I have meetings, apparently.

A: Award a Bounty to a Competing Answer on a Relatively Uninteresting Question

@drachenstern All MSO user personal habits are on-topic for MSO.

Jon Skeet is the example, not the exception, in this case.

In other news,

3

I really like Kate's answer so I am stealing it. Seems to me that the usual response is to click on the other user's name, then on the profile go and look at some other answers and upvote them (should they deserve it, which they probably will because this is a helpful person.) They get rep, y...