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5:03 PM
@Fosco did you ever do that MoneyPak thing?
I just got an email about it too
sounds like a total scam
 
I did not... don't see a reason to.
it's not a scam though
it's like an electronic money order.. provides a quick way to fund your paypal account with cash
the $10 is a scam... you dont get $10 unless you buy a card and use it to fund paypal
 
@Fosco Ahhh, it's a contest. pffft
@Fosco Yeah, that's what I meant :-)
Thanks for saving me the time to investigate!
 
@YiJiang You know, that script of yours doesn't look even remotely intelligent when there's noone else talking
 
5:23 PM
0
Q: Matching Subset in a String

Milli ZealozoskiLet's say I have- String x = "ab"; String y = "xypa"; If I want to see if any subset of x exists in y, what would be the fastest way? Looping is time consuming. In the example above a subset of x is "a" which is found in y.

I (and a half dozen others) have already answered this, but none of the answers are that good. I'm curious if anyone here can do better. It's an interesting problem.
 
Yes, it is. If anyone comes up with a solution that works in an RDBMS/SQL scenario, I might consider not abandoning SQL Server.
 
@TheUnhandledException if you feel too calm, enjoy 3 seconds hero
if you want instead to get angrily amused, look at this patent
 
someone patented thinking?
 
someone patented clicking on an item to get more information about it
they'll accept a "reasonable royalty rate of 80k$"
> The firm's site claims that it has made licensing deals with Apple, Google, Nokia, Sears, Sony and Orbitz.
Your tax paying money goes protect this company
Your (and our) non-tax paying money goes finance this company
 
5:39 PM
@radp Thank you for the edit.
 
I hope you're proud :)
 
I remember reading an article about patents worldwide a few years ago that said a Russian patent was filed for "glass bottle" in this decade.
Some loophole about it not being patented before was involved; I don't remember the details.
 
@radp - disgusting article.
 
I'd patent common sense, but it'd be difficult to find infringing parties to extort.
 
I'm sure prior art can be demonstrated tho wrt the article
 
5:51 PM
Hope you all enjoy reading FARK:
Illinois candidate Whitney is 'Whitey' on some Chicago ballots. FARK: His first name is Rich http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=5689294&tt=s
 
@spoulson Now there's a name I haven't heard in five years.
 
@PopularDemand Whitey or FARK?
 
Hi all
 
@spoulson FARK.
 
Fark whitey
 
5:56 PM
@TheUnhandledException - Near your keyboard?
 
@Moshe 'lo.
 
Jin
i crave bacon
 
teehee
 
@Jin Too much work on the Food & Cooking design?
(My favorite one of the bunch, by the way.)
 
6:11 PM
People keep quoting me on a time; there is no specific time, other than "when we're ready", broadly around that time.. . Could be an hour either way.
(re chat.so)
 
@MarcGravell So what you're saying is, you're going to check to make sure Michael Mrozek isn't logged in before you launch?
 
Mmmmmmmm - bacon
 
@MarcGravell - I thought that was implicit anyway
 
@balpha @Marc @Jin ... could the patrons of this fine establishment get the SO chat password out of you with bribes of bacon?
 
oops
 
6:14 PM
lol
a ruse
 
Jin
i had bacon. all is good now.
 
If you type "I'm gullable" 7 times, it lets you in...
 
hahaha
 
@MarcGravell - make sure you echo who does it here
lol
 
What if you spell gullible right? Does it let you in then?
 
6:17 PM
@Jin Design suggestion for the Cooking SE design: display a "food of the day" somewhere.
Here's the code for it:
if(true)
    display("Bacon");
 
(I wonder if I should check the IIS logs, just to see...)
 
Does IIS log POST data?
 
@MarcGravell you'll find some donations of reps to a black fund in Italy
 
It logs that a post happened. and 7 times from 1 ip to that page would stand out
 
it is thus true: there is no cake^H^H^H^Hchat
 
6:20 PM
people are still bugging out about the password?
 
@rchern Blame Marc.
 
it is enough fun that we dont even need an actual password. Just an entry box.
 
10 mins ago, by Marc Gravell
People keep quoting me on a time; there is no specific time, other than "when we're ready", broadly around that time.. . Could be an hour either way.
 
Like the dummy red button at NORAD.
 
@MarcGravell It occurred to me early on that odds are you just show a password dialog to unauthorized users and don't accept anything
It didn't stop me from trying to guess anyway
 
6:22 PM
@MarcGravell - I think the box does nothing, just puts the entries into a "for amusement" log
 
@PopularDemand ok.
/blame @MarcGravell
 
Sigh. If only we'd implemented that. That would be very cool.
 
@rchern your image program lightened that a couple of notches
 
6:24 PM
@rchern You've got to be kidding me. There's a balphaSez web app somewhere?
 
Hmmm... We need more unicornify in chat
 
@balpha I don't need MSO chat anymore; the green grasses of SO chat beckon
 
@MarcGravell Speaking of an easter egg for Programmers SE chat....
 
forgot a !
 
6:25 PM
wut
 
I feel a bit bad for starting this :)
 
mrozekma needs better unicode handling!!
 
@radp That guy is an idiot anyway
 
@MichaelMrozek, we need a @MarcGravell one too please! (;
 
6:29 PM
!so.mrozekma.com/balpha/Ť̠̺̹̥̩ĥ̴̲̳̤̽ḛ̦̙̒́̚r̴̸̹̠̿̉e̲̦̳̥̊́ ̙̟̾̔̌̚i̱̻̖̅̽̎ṡ̷̢̟̩̻ ̣̏̓̀̎̆ń̩̲̫̉̍o̴̱̲̘̿̎ ̴̙̤̝̥̎c̵̡̮̭̙̚a̸̢̠̋̊̉ķ̙̤̜̏̈e̷̜̤̅̉̆.̵̢̪̙̜̈
:(
 
ha
 
@rchern Where does it end? Who won't we speech bubblify? Geoff? Attila? Emily?
 
@PopularDemand rchern? She foolishly used her picture as her gravatar
 
@MichaelMrozek I'm only talking about notable people. Obviously we're not going to implement this for just anyone.
 
6:33 PM
getting colder
 
Obviously the service should be available for every BubblifiableImage object
then be astracted to allow non bubbles.
 
Dang, I sure wish they'd fix all the notification bugs. Just got to reenter three different recent activity pages to see old stuff.
 
then be astracted to allow more than one addon.
then be abused to the point you can implement unicornify with it.
 
what about an image API
JSONified
 
how about it's just simpler to whip up mspaint
 
6:36 PM
less fun though
 
does paint have distributed callbacks so you can implement your own image_plugin server ... no
 
not yet!
 
@AidenBell Are you sure? Have you read the documentation?
 
@PopularDemand - /me cracks out symbol inspector lol
 
@PopularDemand burnnnnn! ouch indeed! (;
 
6:38 PM
Howdy everyone
 
@Oded Howdy, Dr. Nick!
 
@Moshe I just got back
@Moshe: Check my "About Me" for status
 
@TheUnhandledException ok - I'm in the Roach Motel. Can we talk there?
 
3
A: Individual Status field for chat

The Unhandled ExceptionIn the absence of such a "status" feature I am using the "about me" field on my chat profile to indicate my status. So if you're trying to send me things or if you're going to post love notes to me, before getting offended that I don't respond, check my info box to see if I'm away:

If anyone is willing to assist @Moshe with advice on PHP sessions, cookies, and HTTP statefullness, he's looking for advice in
I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment
 
6:46 PM
If only I knew php...
 
Tim
I'm busy trying to figure out this JPA nonsense at the moment, but maybe later.
 
Gotta love David Mitchell
 
hmm, the gravatar hovercard is kinda cool
doesn't play all that well with chat though teehee
 
Jin
i'm scared... be gentle
 
no more beta icons!
 
Nice, @Jin!
 
Jin
thanks. i'm sure i'll be spending the rest of the day fixing css and styling issues :)
 
What's the last one?
 
7:08 PM
@jin oh wow! no tab on-hover transitions? :P
 
Ah cooking
 
Although the gold looks more like sand than gold.
 
@Jin Hehe, you're gonna be worn out before you get to a 2nd pass through the sites (;
 
Wow, the beta logo looks terrible there. (Yes, I know, it's just a cached image.)
 
Oh awesome cooking went live?
 
7:11 PM
yes, 8 minutes ago
 
Jin
@radp i'll make the on-hover transition to 10secs long next time, just for u.
 
@Jin Actually, that's my favourite design so far
 
Sweet. Congrats @balpha and the rest of the team!
 
I'm innocent in this
All your bug are belong to @Jin
 
7:12 PM
 
@Jin
on cooking
the new design
the up/down-vote buttons are misaligned
the up-vote button is 1px further to the right
(aprox. - there's some antialiasing, so it might be a tad more/less)
 
Jin
@shog9 i see that now. i'll put in a fix thanks.
 
@Shog9 +1 nice catch
 
The little things that get under your skin...
 
Sites going through their nightly "don't load for ChrisF" dance at the moment
 
Jin
7:17 PM
@shop9 yep i agree. sometimes when i stare at something for too long i can't tell anymore. it's like proof-reading my own paperp
 
yup.
On a more serious note
the descender in the g in the title is cut off
 
@Jin Star off and star on are inversed
 
perhaps by the addition of the "Beta" scrawl?
 
So when I change the class to be .star-on I get the black/white version, and when I change it to .star-off I get the coloured version
 
@ThomasMcDonald No, you just like everything on that site by default. Starring is opt-out.
 
7:19 PM
Like the accepted answer mark on the home page
 
hmpf, stupid waterghosts and their wishes...
Goodbye echox the Ranger...

You escaped from the dungeon with 84 points,
1 cheap plastic imitation of the Amulet of Yendor (worth 0 zorkmids),
and 16 pieces of gold, after 589 moves.
You were level 1 with a maximum of 15 hit points when you escaped.
 
@Shog9 Example?
 
@balpha I tried replacing each question title on Unix with you speaking it, but the graphic is too big :(
 
Why would I care that Ubuntu won't hibernate? I'm running Fedora.
 
How to kill @MichaelMrozek's server, part #1: $.each($(".content"),function() { $(this).replaceWith("<img src='http://so.mrozekma.com/balpha/" + escape($(this).text()) + "'/>"); });
 
7:21 PM
 
@Shog9 old logo. hard refresh
 
@balpha You've unraveled my nearly flawless deception :)
 
That's still the old logo - the new one's much nicer :)
 
stupid Chrome
 
@Shog9 That got me yesterday with the webmasters launch
 
7:22 PM
Out of curio; why fedora? @balpha
 
@Shog9 In that case, dupe:
 
I hard-refreshed thrice, and still it peristed in loading the old one
 
11 mins ago, by Popular Demand
Wow, the beta logo looks terrible there. (Yes, I know, it's just a cached image.)
 
Jin
@thomas argh can't believe i did that. fixing
 
@Shog9 Odd, worked for me in one. My favicon hasn't switched over, though.
 
7:23 PM
FF of course loaded the new one on the first try
I shouldn't use Chrome for SE browsing at all, but Chat works so nicely in it
wonder if there's a way to get it to open links in FF...
 
I find that the first thing I do on any newly graduated SE site is Ctrl+F5. I just assume it's part of the process, now.
@Shog9 Post to SU? That'd be a really great feature.
 
Ctrl+F5 - what does that do?
 
@Moshe In Chrome? Nothing useful.
In other browsers, it reloads everything, skipping the cache.
 
Refresh ignoring cache
 
ah ok.
makes sense.
I never knew.
 
7:25 PM
@MarcGravell When I decided to switch to Linux, I took the Linux Distribution Chooser test, and it said Fedora
2
@Shog9 Shift-F5 in Chrome
 
I'm working on PHP login in the Roach Motel. Anyone wanna help? You're invited.
And, who can tell me about connection speeds, fancy websites and jQuery?
 
@balpha That worked - go figure. Chrome is starting to ape Opera in the "different for the sake of different" philosophy...
 
@Moshe I can tell you that jQuery does everything you could ever need it to
 
@Shog9 I'm pretty sure there's a totally reasonable "this helps us make the internet better" reason for it
notify me when you've found it
 
I can also tell you that Steam has decided to completely hose my connection, one minute
 
7:28 PM
@balpha Nice link.
 
i have 5 100% matches, and 2 90% hehe
 
137
A: What requests do browsers' "F5" and "Ctrl + F5" refreshes generate?

someIt is up to the browser but they behave in similar ways. I have tested FF, IE7, Opera and Chrome. F5 usually updates the page only if it is modified. The browser usually tries to use all types of cache as much as possible and adds an "If-modified-since" header to the request. Opera differs by s...

 
Anybody want to talk monitors?
 
You really have to click that link, the onebox doesn't do it justice.
 
Funnily enough, I just took the test, and it gives me Mint, Ubuntu, Suse, Kubuntu, and Mandrive
I'm still pretty happy with the Fedora choice :)
 
7:32 PM
Says kubuntu or mandriva for me, or mint ubuntu or open-suse. Fedora is a lower %
 
@balpha Wow, I got Debian, SuSE, Kubuntu and Mandriva. This can't be right.
 
mandriva, ubuntu, kubuntu, linux mint, open suse, and then fedora and debian at 90%
heh
 
Tim
Heh, I got Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Kubuntu, Mint, Fedora, and Debian.
 
"What desktop environment do you prefer?". "None" is conspicuously missing
 
I'm pretty sure back when I took the test I wasn't given 5 results all with 100%
 
7:35 PM
Maybe the distros are co-evolving nicely then?
 
100% Gentoo/Slackware. Victory
 
@MichaelMrozek Well played, sir.
 
@MichaelMrozek lol
what did you say? "Do you like pain? Yes."
 
Yes | No | bring-it-on!!
 
Tim
7:37 PM
Hahahah
 
wtf?
95% slackware
 
Way to lack dedication
 
@MichaelMrozek Just curious, what value did you enter for "Linux snobbery"?
 
@PopularDemand It didn't need to ask, it could sense it
 
haha
 
7:41 PM
@MichaelMrozek - Why does your last image look like Win 3.1?
 
I've only used two distros, so I lack the experience to make fun of the rest. Not that that actually stops me
 
@MichaelMrozek this looks like an empty line to me.
 
@PopularDemand It's a graphic from "arouse.net", so if you're at work that probably didn't go over well
 
@Moshe hey you are right :-) i would have expected some motif gui :-)
 
@MichaelMrozek Not familiar with that site, but since I am at work, I'm going to assume I don't want to be and move on.
 
7:42 PM
@echox - I grew up on Win 3.1. I'd recognize it anywhere. (I think.)
in fact, I had 3.1 through the 95 & 98 era.
 
I drooled to play with 3.1 when it came out
 
@PopularDemand I would edit it, but it's been 3 whole minutes so I can't. It's here though
 
But jerkwads in Electronics Boutique always protected the on-display PCs
 
@spoulson - so did you get?
Actually, is there any way to get 3.1 now in a VM?
Is it really illegal?
 
well, you can still download win 3.11 from MSDN
 
7:47 PM
eh, @Jin, you still here?
 
yeah I've had 3.11 in a VM just for nostalgia
 
@rchern Tell us the password so we can actually test the beta. By now I expect it fully supporting backward smileys.
 
Jin
@Shog9 yes
 
why is the "up-vote" indicator for comments so frickin' huge?
 
@balpha - Really? Wow.
@Fosco - What program do you use for VM?
 
7:48 PM
@Moshe I have to admit, I didn't own a computer that time, but a friend of mine. we used it to play commander keen :-)
 
@Moshe Was only like 12 or something at the time
 
Jin
@shog9 it can be a big smaller. i originally had the comment text bigger too.
@shog9 if you're still going through the site for stlying issues, please post a list on meta so i can check them at once. thx!
 
@spoulson So you are about 27 or 28, yes?
 
@Jin Ah, ok. Just curious - the Q&A up/down vote indicators are smaller than on the other sites, so it sorta jumped out at me.
 
@Moshe VMWare Workstation
That linux distribution chooser is odd.. I got FIVE 100% matches
 
7:50 PM
@Jin I'm not doing that intentionally, just reading today's questions. If I come up with more stuff, I'll post it.
 
what is the link to said linux chooser?
 
@Fosco everyone did
 
@Fosco If you like, I'll write a more specific one.
 
Jin
@Shog9 it's also red too :)
 
But I'll need root access to your machine.
 
7:50 PM
@balpha see? Those links are not evident, change the darned color or font
 
Fedora, LinuxMint, Mandriva, Ubuntu, and OpenSuse
 
@Moshe 33 actually
 
@Moshe Win 3.1 came out ~90-91 IIRC.
 
@spoulson - i was going to guess lower thirties, my math is off
 
7:51 PM
Windows for Workgroups
 
@spoulson - i was estimating from when I started, not when it came out, my mistake
 
@JohntheSeagull please... GNU/Windows for Workgroups
 
@echox thanks
 
They should call it the linux distribution lister then, and get rid of the questions.
 
@JohntheSeagull you too? |:
 
7:52 PM
although, I think I'm actually going to try LinuxMint
 
@Moshe Can I guess your age now? :)
 
You guys are making me wonder what computing would be like today if Windows Bob had been sucessful.
 
@spoulson - you can, but I might not tell you. ;-)
 
@rchern I don't actually give a damn, just felt compelled to pester you and make yabsj
 
@PopularDemand if this had happened, I would not getting my money with software...
 
7:53 PM
@PopularDemand - Well for one, there would be a different cipher in windows XP. (I read somewhere that Bob was used as part of some encryption inXP.)
 
(yabsj = yet another backward smiley joke)
 
I don't know what I'm talking about there, so ignore it.
 
oy
6
 
Microsoft Bob was a Microsoft software product, released in March 1995, which provided a new, nontechnical interface to desktop computing operations. Despite its ambitious nature, Bob was one of Microsoft's more visible product failures. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer mentioned Bob as an example of a situation "where we decided that we have not succeeded and let's stop". Origins Microsoft Bob was designed for Windows 3.1x and Windows 95 and intended to be a user-friendly interface for Microsoft Windows, supplanting the Program Manager. At one point, the project was managed by Melinda French, ...
 
So Vista was Bob 2.0, but they didn't stop upon failure?
 
7:55 PM
@Moshe Indeed, "Bob's install images are used as "padding" on the original Windows XP install CDs as an anti-piracy measure." (Wikipedia, citing Raymond Chen)
 
I think @rchern fans should learn to restrain themselves
 
@PopularDemand - that's what I was referring to.
 
@JohntheSeagull Only 1 star is them restraining themselves :)
 
ughhhhh who starred that? ):
 
@MichaelMrozek wait for it
 
7:56 PM
@spoulson - I'm waiting for your guess so I can tell you that I'm not answering :-)
 
Mmmmmhhh Microsoft Bob ... Steve Ballmer with glasses...
back then...
 
Anybody see the Chinese imitation Steve Jobs?
 
In next month's issue of Your Favorite Newsmagazine Title Here: "Is rchern the new Jon Skeet?"
 
First it was the iPhone, then iPad, now Steve Jobs himself.
 
7:57 PM
@Jin Ah, that could be it
 
@Moshe Well you make a very smart 10 year old
 
 
@echox I will flag that picture as offensive
@MichaelMrozek told you
 
@JohntheSeagull sorry, dont wanted to scare anyone here
 
7:59 PM
The eyes follow you around the room... looking for something to throw at you
 
@shog - they do.
 

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