I hope this is not off-topic or something, but I have a question: what do you guys do when you have an idea but don't know anyone to talk with about it? and you clearly need an opinion from someone else, because it might be a bad idea, or you just need advices...?

I posted an answer a few hours ago. I got a notification (and its email) because Brant voted it up. Then I got another notification (and its email) because this second answer was posted. Note that watching the post is not enough to clear the notification, the (1) is still there. Also, I had the bad idea of improving my answer with an image, which automatically puts it in this "Under review" limbo. Clearly, a two liner starting with "+1" is more trustworthy.

@Brainfeeder I come in here and braindump on people and make them talk to me.

@badp nobody wants answers, they want sympathy upvotes

@badp It's like saying "First", but not, but still with additional addition-based emphasis.

Also, while I took the time to read the linked post, which complained about wanting to comment at 1 rep, everybody else stopped at the title, Does SO suck?, and answered that question instead.

if that catches anyone's interest... it is a 'recursive' idea! :)

See what you made me become, Stack Overflow? A person who reads before answering?

@Brainfeeder yeah, just float it around :)

@Brainfeeder in this room the only offtopic post would probably be making a post that asserts being not offtopic.

The part that's tricky is going "but you're all anonymous to me, why would I burden you" to which I say "read my transcript" ;) :p

@badp lol

so can I talk about it and get some criticism? :)

though I will be honest, I pretty much stopped answering SO questions

@Brainfeeder - hit me

@AidenBell I stopped ages ago.

@drachenstern Though it depends on what the subject is. If it's a serious conversation about a particular topic that SE already covers, it's likely there's a more suitable chat room (just because I like to drive up interest in using the other rooms appropriately :P)

@badp - sad times, moderation is the only vestibular of comfort.

man, I think I've just discoverd a really bad chrome JavaScript bug

@balpha let me know it

Actually, I stopped when I got my t-shirt ... correlation or causation?

Is it worse than the one that decided to claim that our variable was undefined until I put a console.log() statement in?

@AidenBell Didn't you get busier with work then? :P

well, I was just looking around for some software project ideas, and I thought... why not making a webapp that lets users post a software project idea, with the ability to upvote/downvote ideas ala stackoverflow? could this work?

Actually, I just updated Chrome, lemme see if that still is around.

Oh, @TimStone, meant to tell you. That isn't us. I've gotten several random sites telling me jQuery isn't defined. Something about 'c' not being defined from jQuery.min.js. I didn't get a chance to look into that more.

Oh, I know it wasn't our fault, but :P

That makes me sad though :(

Well if it can't figure jQuery out...

@TimPost - Ahah, that t-shirt is resulting in the dire work increase ... an omen, an item of impenetrable darkness.

what version are you on now?

mm

10.0.648.11

@Brainfeeder - On the face of it, it sounds like a bad idea. OnStartups/business SE would do

Unless you bring something unique enough to the table that people prefer it and there is enough demand

Still broken :(

wonders how long @balpha will keep us in suspense

for (var i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
    s = s + " ";
}

@brainfeeder dont ask "is this a good idea?" as "Is there demand for this"

Yeah, that's the version I've got.

how many space does that append to s?

I've noticed that opening the dev tools before I load a page helps lol.

@badp - 1 billion?

no 2

errm 3.2

I give up

1!

1 is correct

@balpha - that sounds like bad voodoo

unless you do it in the console; where it's 4 as it should

Yeah, the answer should totally be pi

Ah, was gonna say, I got 4 in the console. (:

@badp - sorry, bad-tabbed @balpha

@RebeccaChernoff Me too.

Adds 4 for me when running from the address bar, too. Where did you get 1, @balpha?

@AidenBell no well, I was just asking if it could be useful. I've seen this implemented on a few sites like wordpress.org and mybb.com for feature and mods/plugins ideas -- I was thinking about a more generic version of this concept

@RebeccaChernoff - you seem more serious and blue these days. I think you should quit SO

o:

@Brainfeeder - could it be useful? Ask the people who might use it. I develop new software projects, and not sure I would use it.

instantrimshot.com

more serious and blue??

@balpha No repro on my end (just threw it up on a test site)

@RebeccaChernoff Your name is in blue

@RebeccaChernoff - well, your name is bluer

@TimStone still trying to construct the simplest possible test case

Yes, @YiJiang doesn't let me forget that. But more serious?

OK :)

@AidenBell By that argument, everybody who works for SO should quit, including Jeff and Joel. :-P

(it's happening in the middle of Showdown)

@balpha Oh, I wonder if this is our bug then..

@Brainfeeder you're not really looking at a great proposal there, to my eyes. And the bad part is you're proposing a bit of software that lets people propose software and have the idea get up/downvoted, and the metaconcept is getting downvoted ... I say bad idea, but clearly you're onto something

one of them :)

@AidenBell that's the point, I have no idea who could use it :) maybe the same people who periodically check sourceforge's homepage looking for open source projects to join

Quick questions, does anyone know how soon they will post the election results? (@balpha, @RebeccaChernoff)

@RebeccaChernoff - :) just playing

@balpha what do you do with s after adding the spaces?

the Math results file was available immediately iirc

@ChrisJesterYoung - Who are these Jeff and Joel?

have you made a jsfiddle on it?

@RebeccaChernoff I just meant the issue we're having, because in our case it's like the variable magically goes out of scope.

yeah I was just being silly.

I've heard I'm too serious (;

@RebeccaChernoff Ah, of course, I should have known ;)

@RebeccaChernoff yup, I announced the Math winners on chat before the site did :)

@AidenBell I don't know either. I think they fell off the radar after the end of those podcasts. :-P

@RebeccaChernoff Thanks

ok, wtf jsfiddle, come on

anybody else having jsfiddle loading issues or is it just my computer?

@ChrisJesterYoung - oh yea, I remember an awesome podcast with couple of dudes in, and a blog that used to be good ... what was that called Programming Scary or something?

@badp So I should be on chat then

@badp - willie wong

2.5 hours until SO ends?

@AidenBell Assembly Horrendous

BTW Anyone bothered to watch that YouTube link from coding horror yet?

1.5 until SU/SF?

@RebeccaChernoff uh, don't they both end at 2000Z?

it's 1921Z now btw

SO ends in 2.5 hours!! NOOO!

SU/SF = 21:00, SO = 22:00 I thought?

@RebeccaChernoff Yep (to the latter).

@RebeccaChernoff Yep

oh. okay.

@balpha jsfiddle.net/8xVSm

cancels at jobs

1h 40m for SU, SF; 2h 40 mins for SO

damnit

@JustinjjnguyNelson the downloadable election data will be available moments after the election is over so you will be able to run the results yourself using OpenSTV - the official announcement of winners will come shortly after we verify that data

it's a bug in the debugger

@drachenstern alerts out 6 then 10

I'll miss both as I'm having pizza tonight!

@balpha Hardcore.

@balpha Wow. Very nice.

@GeoffDalgas Fantastic, thanks!

(Unless you wrote the debugger, in which case, slightly less very nice.)

@GeoffDalgas Wow, you run MeekSTV by hand? :)

@balpha - just crack out the debugger debugger

yes, I sit in a room and count every vote while @CodingHorror beats me

gdb `which gdb`

@Nyuszika7H which is expected

We have to count the hanging chads.

@badp Cue Jon Skeet jokes....

OpenSTV isn't free :(

@RebeccaChernoff Too localized

@JustinjjnguyNelson Tsk, SO has thought about this

@badp - gdb /usr/bin/gdb /bin/ls would be really grim

it will be for people who have > 150 rep

we have donated to OpenSTV to bring this to you at no cost

This page has the OpenSTV download links.

\o/

@GeoffDalgas I'm so happy!

there will be a download link along with the results

Also, the Ubuntu repos have OpenSTV in their repositories. No credit card required, no reputation required.

@badp Thanks!

so @balpha did you figure it out or what's the deal?

Ubuntu will charge you a slice of dignity however

@AidenBell which one?

@drachenstern - that long film on Netscape or some crap

@badp, That appears to just go to OpenSTV's page that asks you to paypal, unless I'm blind?

@AidenBell no then, I did not

@drachenstern thank you sir

@RebeccaChernoff maybe it changed since I installed it; all I know is I have OpenSTV installed regularly on my Ubuntu partition without paying a cent.

(I meant the link from the math election page)

@RebeccaChernoff Oh, then no. It's a direct download link.

@balpha We may need to go inflict pain on the Chrome debugger authors.

ie, it goes to openstv.org/download

Why the hell does setting a breakpoint on one tab halt THE ENTIRE BROWSER?

@drachenstern the chrome JS debugger only shows one trailing space for the watched variables, no matter how mainy there are

@RebeccaChernoff No, it goes to http://math.stackexchange.com/election/download-openstv?os=pc

if you have enough REP (> 150) we give you the download

which for me downloads a 5.2 MB exe file

Reps for software!

@balpha so they're probably just HTML displaying it then, which should be expected, I would think.

otherwise we must direct you to the OpenSTV site

Gah, right. I don't have enough rep on Math.

Oy, duh.

hides under a rock

By the way, it's written in Python

@badp 404

@badp well that's just expected, btw

so all you need to do is find the source code online

@TimStone chrome or firefox?

@balpha where is it?

obligatory python, ewwww

@drachenstern Chrome

@RebeccaChernoff obligatory flag

hides under the same rock

@drachenstern does that look like I should be expecting "just HTML displaying it"? :)

@balpha isn't the render engine for the debugger based on HTML output?

Kind of hard to "inspect element" on the inspector

@balpha, what does a local variable set to s.length say?

But the way the lower pane functions I rather thought it was HTML display

Is it actually s that is wrong, or just the display of s?

@RebeccaChernoff just the display of s

just the display

s.length is correct, and the actual content is correct as well

awesome

Sweet! Confirmed chrome bug. Can we confirm in firebug as well?

no, I checked firebug first

to make sure I wasn't just missing something stupid :)

Does it confirm or act differently?

it shows several spaces

just as it should

What version of Chrome? (:

8

By the way

launchpad.net/ubuntu/maverick/+source/openstv/1.6.1-1/+files/…

I understand asking for donations. Requiring donations for FOSS, not so much.

That .tar.gz only contains source code, so if you use Windows you'll also need Python, a .tar.gz decompresser (like WinRAR) and some $PATH fiddling.

So this was a known bug for Chrome and they quashed it. Nice.

If you don't know how to do that you know where to pay to have this done for you, or where to get 150 reps.

Ok people, my belly is saying I should've eaten a while ago. Not happy.

bbiab

@badp 7zip

@Nyuszika7H Err, I see it in Chrome 10...

@JustinjjnguyNelson that probably works too

If I put a debugger line in @drachenstern's jsfiddle and step through s never shows as anything more than "string "

Ok, but @Nyuszika7H says it's norepro, so one of you two is incorrect...

and I'm gonna go eat food, so I'm abstaining until I return

code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=71698

Microsoft pays back the Google Chrome Frame favour

@balpha starred.

@balpha starred.

@balpha Starred here too.

starts digging under the rock he's hiding under

@badp O_o

Maybe I should have included "oy" in the bug report. That tends to attract lots of stars.

sigh

I'd have included something like:

var s = 'string';
alert (s.length);
for (var i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
    debugger;
    s = s + " ";
}
alert (s.length);

So, I think that Chrome is insane.

Hm, or Firefox is doing something differently much earlier on that doesn't cause this code to be called at that point in time, hmm..

@TimStone no, it just collapses the spaces

it has nothing to do with the loop

If you're talking to me, we're talking about two separate things :P

"yes, I was", and "oh, okay"

Heheh :)

hi, my account in meta.stackExchange.com is not being associated with my other accounts

should they?

@Zypher - Are you around?

@Moshe kinda ;)

@Zypher Ok, check out this artwork real quick:

(I had to up my score for this...) :-D

hahaha AWESOME!

@Zypher Yep, it's submitted to Apple. Later, I have things to do now. Just wanted to show you.

sweet, appreciated :)

@Moshe GO @Zypher!

@belisarius! What an unexpected surprise!

@PopularDemand good afternoon

@belisarius you are here

:)

question for you

@Trufa Seems you're right

sent you an invitation

(need to speak in spanish)

They/you disabled prepending "chat." to questions to auto-generate a room in chat, huh?

@PopularDemand what is that about?

@PopularDemand I have head of this feature before, but never saw it actually work

@PopularDemand if I understood you correctly, I would love that feature

@TheRenamedException And now you never will.

@PopularDemand /blame balpha ?

@PopularDemand :( any meta post about that?

That was disabled quite a while ago.

@RebeccaChernoff I think it was disabled even before I started using chat!

@TheRenamedException Not quite :P

Ok. OK. I am wrong again then! :-)

pulls out hair

I really should be doing work now too, hrm..

@RebeccaChernoff What, just because of a silly thing like "nobody ever used it"?

I want the wheel Of blame back! I need to blame someone that Apple hasn't reviewed my app yet!

@Moshe jsfiddle.net/yijiang/AYPpF/24/embedded/result

I should host the wheel of blame...

Surprised that "The World" isn't on the wheel, @YiJiang

Blame Canada.

is excited

but not about blaming Canada

I don't really have any suitable domains under which to host the wheel though...

blame.josh.gitlin.name does not sound like the right URL...

@TheRenamedException damn thats cool

@Trufa isn't it? Thank @YiJiang

@TheRenamedException as soon as I see him!

@TheRenamedException I think it sounds like the perfect name, though we really need the wheel then q: