« first day (69 days earlier)      last day (4955 days later) » 

2:00 AM
@Tim I've tried that, it's an ineffective strategy.
 
Tim
@PopularDemand I figured the additional show of violence might coerce it into behaving...you seem to be right though.
 
so, continuing from earlier, was The Event any good tonight?
 
@Popular I'm working on it right now, I'll write back after I send it. By the way, can i select usernames with the keyboard?
 
tab
 
@MarkC I am at once intrigued, confused and scared.
 
2:06 AM
@Popular I mean here in chat when the autocomplete box comes up.
 
4 mins ago, by rchern
tab
@MarkC (:
 
Oh sorry
 
Sorry, I didn't answer you because @rchern already did.
 
I got used to filtering
 
hehehe q:
 
2:07 AM
Okay, I just heard "I muted rchern -Mark C"
Rude.
 
You should know better than to believe I know how to do that.
 
lol
 
Tim
@PopularDemand I'm beginning to think that this devilish system requires a blood sacrifice or something, as there appears to be dark magic involved in its decision not to work correctly.
 
@Tim Yes, I know the theory behind SVN and Maven, thank you. I'm not an idiot, you know.
 
Tim
@PopularDemand Ah, you're aware of the trial by fire then. In that case, apologies for disturbing you. :P
 
2:18 AM
@Tim No worries, it happens.
 
@Popular OK hang in there, I'm almost done
@Popular Message away!
Make sure you have a few tabs handy
 
@MarkC On the internet nobody knows you're a dog.
2
 
@MarkC Not bad. Good luck toppling the established winner, though.
 
Well if I had posted that at the very beginning (when cookie only had ~7 or so), but do you think it's worth the laughs?
Had you seen that Borg one before?
 
Wow. Comments on BBC News's website are all given a "complain about this comment" link.
 
2:30 AM
Nice.
 
@MarkC I hadn't, but I don't really keep track of him personally.
 
It came up on an image search, I think
Or maybe on another search I did
 
@MarkC Certainly would have been early on; I think people have used up their interest in the topic, though. Certainly nothing wrong with adding it on, I just don't think people will care anymore.
 
Ok no problemo
Maybe I'll hold out for the screening event
 
@MarkC The what?
 
2:34 AM
@Popular The screening of the movie, of course!
I'll pop it into their hype thread, and PRESTO! a threadjacking.
 
@MarkC I wasn't aware that such an event was in the works.
 
@Popular It's a rumored event, just like the rumored film.
 
What ever happened to Websnark?
 
I don't know what that is.
GOogle time!
@Popular were you asking me? All I know now is that it's a blog and a comic.
@Popular, sorry, comic review site. I blame Google search previews.
@Popular, by the way, if you have a coupe of minutes, have you seen this before?
 
@MarkC Are you trying to destroy my faith in humanity? If so, congratulations.
 
2:47 AM
o:
 
@Popular, you should read Mars Saxman's comment down below.
 
@MarkC Ah, icosahedrons, I already clicked away, hold on.
 
I could probably Google this, but what are WCF and JIT?
 
From now on, whenever I think "I'm not very good at what I do," I'll then think "oh wait, yes I am."
JIT = Just-In-Time
 
So the modern equivalent of what Mel does?
 
2:50 AM
WCF = Windows Communication Foundation (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Communication_Foundation)
 
argh, because of the comment on the 10th question this guy asked: stackoverflow.com/questions/3908270/java-error-correction
 
I'm not familiar with WCF beyond what the letters stand for.
 
he's now continuing to post yet more nearly identical questions
 
@MarkE Ha ha, sounds like you have your hands full!
 
meh, tired of seeing this damn LinkedTree implementation reprinted
 
2:52 AM
Yeesh, the last six questions he posted?
A few is okay for a new user, but this is approaching troll behavior.
 
yeah i know
 
Call him vgv8 and see what happens....
 
and it's worse
when they get answered, he deletes them!
 
Can't you not delete posts with a certain number of upvoted answers?
In any case, flag for mod and move on.
 
@MarkE Ouch. @Popular We should cook up a Trollmobile graphic for this kind of stuff.
 
2:54 AM
Not worth your precious time.
 
I wish i had better things to do
@PopularDemand maybe if I help him he'll stop posting
 
@MarkE I was once like you.
Actually, I still am, but I know it's a losing bet.
 
haha
so he says on a comment "oh, that got rid of my error"
AWESOME, now WHAT?
0
A: Java LinkedTree Help

Markroot is null. You're not intializing root to anything or checking that it's not null before accessing it on this line: return root.getChildren().size() + 1; Perhaps: return (root == null) ? 0 : root.getChildren().size()+1;

blood pressure rising
 
I need to favorite this user so I can get the 80 rep standing between me and 2k.
 
lol
 
3:04 AM
Argh, induction.
 
induction?
 
Show that F(z) = z + zF(z) + z^2F(z) using induction.
 
oh
that sounds like fun
I'm sure that has practical use, some day
some people just aren't meant to be programmers
@PopularDemand, where are you going to school?
 
@MarkE Drexel.
 
ah, very cool
 
3:11 AM
You think so? You show that about F(z), then.
(But no, you're right, it is.)
(It's just this first assignment that's irritating me.)
 
google.com/…^2F%28z%29%20using%20induction.
@popular
But don't look until you need to!
 
@MarkC Ha, I know I could Google it. But I've got some time yet.
Thanks though.
 
Is this Problem 4-6, p 74?
Or 4-5, p86?
 
Uh, maybe in an earlier version of the textbook. But that's assuming you've got the right text, which would be something of an achievement.
 
Well yes this is from 1997
Or 2001 at the latest
@Popular the hit there is algebraic, though, it might not qualify for your inductive assignment
OH wait never mind, you just do the algebraic one and show it works for z+1
 
3:23 AM
you assume it works for z
and then show it works for z+1
 
Yeah, I get that principle. But I'm not seeing the math.
 
The math is teh ez
 
Says you.
 
If you have the solution in front of you
Thanks @MarkE, it's been a loooong while since i've done any induction
shame on me
 
haha
 
3:25 AM
Just added a bunch of Demotivational posters to my cache
 
i just wikipedia-d it for reference
Mathematical induction is a method of mathematical proof typically used to establish that a given statement is true of all natural numbers. It is done by proving that the first statement in the infinite sequence of statements is true, and then proving that if any one statement in the infinite sequence of statements is true, then so is the next one. The method can be extended to prove statements about more general well-founded structures, such as trees; this generalization, known as structural induction, is used in mathematical logic and computer science. Mathematical induction in this ...
 
Except for induction into the Hall of Fame, yeah, dig it
@Chacha what do you mean?
 
@Chacha102 priceless
I'm having an intense comment debate with this guy about his implementation of LinkedTree
 
No no, what do you mean by "to my cache"/
 
3:27 AM
my armory of demotivational posters
 
Ok figures
I'm thinking I saw an awesome one recently
Oh, here's a funny pic
@MarkE If he's so sure about it, why is he posting on SO?
@Chacha PICTURE IS NOT RELATED
 
@MarkC because when all else fails you should debate with someone trying to help you.
 
Is there any reason to be using his own Linked List anyway?
 
he wants to make a LinkedTree
which as best as I can figure ought to be self-referential
but he doesn't understand the concept...and as i'm hacking away at his code, I'm starting to see that the interface is possibly poorly defined
 
The root doesn't have to do does it? Or what did you mean by self-referential then?
 
3:36 AM
er
so a LinkedTree should likely be a value and then a list of children with a pointer to the parent tree
children are LinkedTrees
 
Right
Just like a list
 
precisely
 
I thought you meant something beyond that
 
but, er, having possibly many children
no...he doesn't even get that much of the concept
 
Just point out that if a node doesn't have a parent, then it's nost linked and it's just a tree
 
3:37 AM
> @Brian: I think you should start by considering your interface. Of all the questions you've posted to fix errors in your code, you're missing the fundamental problem: you don't quite understand how to construct this thing. Perhaps (and I can't believe I'm recommending this) you should post a new question asking for conceptual help; please spend some time writing up you're understanding before you ask that question, though.
 
*not
 
yeah, I need more space to answer the question correctly
 
Moshe appears to have committed to the same proposal twice.
 
er
and he needs to ask the right question
this is a classic case of someone posting a reasonable question, but not the right question
@PopularDemand impressive
 
Any other matter to report, Oberleutnant Poppenschnautzer?
@Popular
 
3:44 AM
@MarkC How'd you guess I was German?
 
cognitive dissonance is a bitch; when people ask for help they need to be willing to accept that the answer is different than their perception of reality: don't ask for help if you don't want the answer.
@PopularDemand doesn't it say so in your profile?
 
@Popular If you're serious, I didn't know (or remember, at least). I was making a Stasi joke.
Since you were snooping around and reporting comrade Moshe.
 
@MarkE It does not.
 
Biste echt wirklich?
 
@MarkC I was looking into a separate bug and happened to see, that's all.
 
3:47 AM
@PopularDemand hm, must've been someone else's profile i looked at
 
@Popular Yes, we know it is your job to make it look like that! Here are 500DM and a new apartment.
 
I got killed by a unicorn! Why do they hate me! Why why why... it's not fair... (sniff)
 
I'm way too tired for that to make sense.
 
His or mine? I thought you said you're German, or were you joking see my reply a few above.
@popular
 
@MarkC Uh, yours. But I'm not actually German, you just seemed to assume I was. Like I said, tired, I'm missing things.
 
3:52 AM
Yes, I was pretending you were an East German Stasi agent or the like.
 
Whatever you say.
I'd better get to bed.
See you all.
 
@Popular, hey, what's your username on SO?
Good night. Don't let recursion bite.
 
@PopularDemand later!
 
@YiJ what are you talking about?
 
4:09 AM
ah, askubuntu.com
so now we have domains for some SEs
interesting
 
what's up @Feeds!
 
4:27 AM
@MarkE where is posted?
 
Posted by Jeff Atwood on October 11th, 2010

We’re pleased to announce that ubuntu.stackexchange.com, in partnership with Canonical, Ltd, has become Ask Ubuntu.

We’re excited to see this come to fruition, because:

I have to admit that I voted strongly against having both Unix/Linux and Ubuntu sites, but I deferred to the overall votes not to merge both inside and outside the company. We collectively said Fork It. It’s clear now that given the strength and self-identification of the Ubuntu community, they are the exception that proves the rule. …

 
Ok thanks
 
4:49 AM
easy C questions are always such huge rep gains
 
4:59 AM
well, i'm out
see ya
 
5:10 AM
@MarkE Goood night
 
 
2 hours later…
7:30 AM
finally oneboxing for the SO blog!
 
oh yes, I didn't notice :)
 
8:04 AM
banksy does the Simpsons. Hard to watch as a unicorn fan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1iplQQJTo
↓
"Yay" for copyright!
 
It astounds me every time I see that. Youtube has a magic thing for copyright holders when it detects violations that lets them insert ads before videos and get paid for it, all automatically. And usually they choose to just block instead
It's like a page on Youtube with two buttons; one says "make me money effortlessly", and the other says "encourage fans to bittorrent my stuff", and they all click the second button
 
@MichaelMrozek This one was the video with the Korean sweatshop, the kitten chopper, the wolf tongue glue and the unicorn punching ;)
I think "on copyright grounds" is only technically the reason they brought the video down.
If you are in the US, obviously. You european filth.
Anyway, you can watch it on Hulu.
*You filthy europeans.
 
8:23 AM
@radp, so you're not a filthy european? :)
 
I'm from the internet!!
(Yeah, I also am a filthy european, except filthier.)
 
Did I miss anything about the SO beta chat? Last I read Marc was denying it existed, or something like that
 
wow, fragment much? I don't know how anybody is going to be able to keep track of all the different places that chat might happen
2
 
btw @balpha this is what happens when you don't patent technology like the StackExchangeâ„¢ QuasiOracular ChatPreviewerâ„¢
now GReader has feeds items from 12 hours in the future!
 
8:36 AM
no, that's correct -- SO Inc. bought out Google last night
3
 
cool! When can we expect to see the StackExchangeâ„¢ MultiCollider SuperDropdownâ„¢ on Google then?
man, that inbox window is going to get busy now.
 
@balpha no that happened tomorrow morning
 
@radp oh, we're thinking of just killing of the search engine part of Google. Nobody uses that anyway, right? We're just in it for the ball pit.
 
Fair enough. Who'd use search when you can chat?
I also can't wait to for getting chat contextual ads!
 
@balpha To be very honest.... I would not be surprised if that actually happens one day. Except Google is just going to hand it all over to Jeff and Joel because SE is the second biggest web presence out there.
 
8:46 AM
then we'd have gaming.google.com, webapps.google.com... kinda works for me :P
 
:231071
                        ----------
                      /          \
                     /    REST    \
                    /      IN      \
                   /     PEACE      \
                  /                  \
                  |      zhang       |
                  |      319 Au      |
                  |   killed by a    |
                  |      kitten      |
                  |                  |
                  |                  |
                  |       2010       |
 
Kittens hurt.
Especially if they used to be your pet, they gained a few level then turned onto you.
Anyway, @YiJ, it sounds like you need to be introduced to this 50. fella
(it means "rest until something happens for 50 turns max")
 
9:04 AM
@radp this is what I was referring to:
 
need to update the message onebox for the new urls
 
Apparently
 
Tom
9:20 AM
hi everyone !
 
welcome, not much happening here at the moment
 
 
1 hour later…
10:33 AM
@YiJiang
                       ----------
                      /          \
                     /    REST    \
                    /      IN      \
                   /     PEACE      \
                  /                  \
                  |        bp        |
                  |      107 Au      |
                  | killed by a gray |
                  |     unicorn      |
                  |                  |
                  |                  |
                  |       2010       |
                 *|     *  *  *      | *
:)
 
Tim
That's what you get for messing with unicorns :P
 
I didn't mess with it :(
 
Tim
Did you look at it the wrong way?
 
but it insisted it had to show me its powah!
 
@radp Going near it without offering it precious gemstones as gifts is messing with it.
 
10:41 AM
@sepp2k I don't think my deity would appreciate that. I'm not very spoiled re: unicorns, however.
(PS: this whole discussion is why per site chats just don't work well.)
 
@radp You mean nethack is not related to MSO? Lies!
 
You guys going on about nethack is starting to get me curious. I have a suspicion I should stop thinking about it right now...
 
May I ask further Nethack discussion takes place here? :)
in other news, later
 
11:01 AM
@radp, not got an account there yet :(
 
 
1 hour later…
12:15 PM
16
Q: Regex to tell difference between O and 0

Letseatlunchas the title says and shows i need a regex in c# preferably) to tell the difference between O and 0 (Zero and a capital letter o, the one right after n and before p). I am getting user input and i need to make sure that my app can distinguish the two. Further more it'd be appreciated if it could ...

 
@balpha - asked
today
viewed
22,115 times
latest activity
wtf
 
It was posted on reddit
 
How did that question get any upvotes - let alone 26?
 
12:21 PM
no idea. A disgrace
 
for the same reason that people watch those "reality soaps" on tv -- it makes you feel smart when other people look dumb
 
I hope there isn't an increase of this crap as first-time users come on rep whoring
I mean, 22k views
 
@balpha I'm still curious how that "Negative code" question could've got so many views
Tried googling for the permalink and title, but it didn't pop up on reddit or anywhere like that
 
6 mins ago, by Lasse V. Karlsen
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/dpzma/regex_to_tell_difference_between_o_and_0/
 
I mean, that "what is negative code" question
Currently No.5 on the month view
112
Q: What is negative code?

AnonymousI was reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_McIlroy and found a quote that mentions "The real hero of programming is the one who writes negative code." Can any one explain what that means?

 
12:28 PM
allo
 
Good Morning!
 
@YiJiang Huh, when did that happen? The last time I checked it had a perfectly normal vote/view count. At least it's not closed as subjective anymore.
 
I saw that question the day it was asked
Had +20 votes on it already
 
Hm, ok, maybe I just didn't notice the abnormal vote/view counts...
Maybe people just upvoted to "protest" the close votes.
 
Can't see why it got so popular - the correct answer arrived in 1 min, and another in 5
Then it should have fell out of the frontpage for at least 1.5 hours
Until the next answer arrives
 
12:33 PM
It was posted on reddit , see @LasseVKarlsen above
 
@YiJiang Well because of the close and then reopen votes it was prominently featured in the 10k tools for a while. That doesn't explain the numbers though...
 
@AidenBell Not the regex question, the negative code question
> Sep 27 '10 +334, -4, protected, A×6, 3 revisions, 19 comments
That's an incredible number of votes for something that really didn't stay on the front page for that long, only > 15 bumps I think
 
@YiJiang oh k
@YiJiang - Still, that's alot of views
 
@AidenBell Yeah, and that too... the average question gets about 40 views per bump
 
Stupid other websites. We have a good thing going here, stop messing with it!
@YiJiang Wow, how'd you calculate that?
 
12:42 PM
@PopularDemand Erm... guessing
 
Actually looking at the front page right now, it's not too bad a guess
var votes = '';

$('.views .mini-counts').each(function(){
    votes = votes + $(this).text() + ' ';
});

console.log(votes);
22 0 4 11 1 12 1 13 34 2 9 4 13 23 44 27 14 4 40 6 2
38 13 17 25 13 1 38 17 18 3 20 2 21 1 3 18 8 24 50 21
2 54 3 6 5 3 20 17 12 86 63 42 27 46 1 16 1 20 19 13 23
157 82 3 120 27 5 17 15 56 3 11 21 11 19 4 4 34 55 14
15 46 9 62 3 18 6 27 19 15 103 11 6 26 11 9 7 7 10 6 13
57 16 18 8 11 740 11 95 5 14 67 7 21 29 2 8 2 34 16 19 4 21
4 45 2 3 4 59 2 27 22 21 2 13 46 12 14 7
218 42 40 29 76 7 65 25 3 3 59 366
77 31 9 8 7 7 26 500 3 47 4 7 2 10 23 18 4 10 17 15 167 82
262 9 9 12 7 7 7 27 4 31 5 54 3 28 37 13 48 20
 
oh goodie. jQuery ui autocomplete errors to start off the morning. can you tell how excited i am?
 
var total = 0;
var indivisual = [];

$('.views .mini-counts').each(function(){
    console.log($(this).text());
    total += parseInt($.trim($(this).text()), 10);
    indivisual.push($(this).text());
});

console.log(total);
var mean = total/indivisual.length;
console.log(mean);
var median = indivisual[Math.round(indivisual.length/2)];
 
12:58 PM
someone should create a [which-site] tag on meta for questions asking which site their question belongs on
or something better named
 
@rchern I have already done this.
 
total = 8971
avg = 40.049107142857146
median = 14
 
There are I think seven [site-rec] questions already.
 
oh, i guess i do have tagging powers on meta
 
@rchern (Named after [webapp-rec], incidentally.)
 
12:59 PM
oh great...more *-rec tags
i hate that naming convention
 

« first day (69 days earlier)      last day (4955 days later) »